bearing blog

I don't think I've ever attended Easter Sunday Mass in the evening.  I don't mean the Vigil; I mean, an afternoon or an evening Mass held on Easter Sunday. 

The Gospel reading for the evening Mass of the Lord's Resurrection, is, I think, the most appropriate of all of them for the situation in which we find ourselves today.  That would be Luke 24:13-35, aka, the appearance on the road to Emmaus:

Now that very day two of them were going to a village seven miles from Jerusalem called Emmaus, and they were conversing about all the things that had occurred.  And it happened that while they were conversing and debating, Jesus himself drew near and walked with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him. 

He asked them, “What are you discussing as you walk along?”

They stopped, looking downcast.  One of them, named Cleopas, said to him in reply, “Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know of the things that have taken place there in these days?” 

And he replied to them, “What sort of things?”

They said to him, “The things that happened to Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, how our chief priests and rulers both handed him over to a sentence of death and crucified him.  But we were hoping that he would be the one to redeem Israel; and besides all this, it is now the third day since this took place.

"Some women from our group, however, have astounded us: they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body; they came back and reported that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who announced that he was alive.  Then some of those with us went to the tomb and found things just as the women had described, but him they did not see.”

And he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are! How slow of heart to believe all that the prophets spoke!  Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and enter into his glory?"  Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them what referred to him in all the scriptures. 

As they approached the village to which they were going, he gave the impression that he was going on farther. 

But they urged him, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening and the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. 

And it happened that, while he was with them at table, he took bread, said the blessing, broke it, and gave it to them.  With that their eyes were opened and they recognized him, but he vanished from their sight. 

Then they said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning [within us] while he spoke to us on the way and opened the scriptures to us?” 

So they set out at once and returned to Jerusalem where they found gathered together the eleven and those with them who were saying, “The Lord has truly been raised and has appeared to Simon!”

Then the two recounted what had taken place on the way and how he was made known to them in the breaking of the bread.

What have we got here?  Our scene takes place not where "the eleven and those with them" are gathered together.  Instead, two disciples are alone, dejected, no longer hoping, and headed (probably) home.  And discussing and disputing about the things that had happened.

And what happens?

Jesus comes to where they are, teaches them, enters into their home with them, and blesses the food on their table.  

They do not recognize him, but afterward they speak of how their hearts were burning.  And later, as soon as they can, they rush back to the assembly to tell their friends (who are talking of what Simon Peter had to say) about their own, private, domestic encounter with the Lord.

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In the Vulgate, when the Jesus-they-don't-recognize rebukes the disciples on the road, he mentions their "stupid and slow hearts."  I am very interested in the word "heart" as it appears in the Gospel and in Catholic pious tradition.   Sometimes it seems to refer to an organ of the intellect, other times an organ where virtues such as courage and humility reside, other times it seems simply to be a part of the body.  Belief lives there, belief in people (and indeed the verb credo is thought to arise from an Indo-European root meaning "heart"); but it's never a cleanly distinguished concept:  whether this means intellectual assent to existence, or something more like fidelity and trust in.  Or "setting your heart on" a person.

I've come to think of "heart" as standing in for the bleeding edge between the intellect and the emotions, the will and the action.   It is, to me, the interface and the mystery of how our consciousness and our body coexist and co-produce:  the place where the invisible diffuses across the veil into the visible, and vice versa; the place where our metaphysical choosing emerges as physical manipulation of matter, and where the actions and consequences of the interactions of matter (real matter:  protons and electrons and neutrons, and more) burrows into consciousness and reverberates in the soul.

Contemplate the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary:  we're talking about something that has to do with their bodies, but it's making something else visible as well.

The disciples on the road were discussing and disputing, using their intellect, their brains and their common language and shared experiences, to try to get at what they had seen happen.  They were doing it while walking away from the community, quite understandably, and their efforts may well have been good ones, but this particular effort wasn't going to get them to where they really needed to go.   (And really, could they have known it on their own?)

Here's another situation where having access to different translations helps—because in some of them the stranger on the road says the disciples are stupid and slow, and in some of them He says that the disciples are stupid, or "minds without intelligence," and their hearts are slow, and in some of them (e.g. Latin) he says their hearts are stupid and slow.  In any case, there's something that isn't the intellect, called the heart, that isn't grasping what's going on.  And he teaches them, and explains the Scriptures, and their hearts listen and are set alight.  The mind wasn't enough.  The part of us that can will, and love, and then listen and talk and act from that place of willing and loving, that is what is needed. 

Hear with the heart; experience with the heart; speak from the heart:  it is, I think, the place of loving and knowing and choosing that can also hear, feel, and speak.

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And this is what we have to do, no?  We are sealed up each in our own tiny houses, receiving packages and messages from outside, sending packages and messages away.  No-contact.  

(This is a metaphor.  Did you get it.)

But the metaphorical, liturgical, literary heart is a boundary, a veil, a membrane, a place of sure contact.  Whatever it may mean, and I'm not pretending to know exactly, there is a way somehow we can choose to open it up like a parallel sluice to the senses.  And those same packages and messages will go back and forth, but in a new way, with a new channel, a new way where heart speaks to heart an  we aren't alone on the road anymore, nor alone in our houses, but with Him, and being with Him, being with everybody else, inside and outside of Time.

Since it's Good Friday, we will get the "suffering servant" from Isaiah as the first reading when we watch the celebration of the Passion livestreamed from our parish today.

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One of the things I've been doing for Lent is reading the daily Mass readings (not that it's Mass today, but you know what I mean), first thing in the morning after I've had enough coffee and listless news-surfing to feel ready for it.   Plot twist is that I've been reading it in other languages that I can decently parse, occasionally Latin or Italian or Spanish for the practice, but most often French since I'm close to fluent in it and it's handily available via the iBreviary app. 

I started off thinking that it would be good language practice and that the novelty might encourage me to keep it up, but the language practice has really faded into the background as I have discovered that reading not-in-English gives one a marvelously fresh look at familiar stories.  Many of the Gospel readings have struck me almost as if I were reading them for the first time.  If you have any other language, I highly recommend giving this a try.

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This is a little bit beside the point.  I wanted to look at the Suffering Servant verses today.  I know them so well, I can almost hear the deep tones of the radio-voiced parishioner who always reads the first reading on Good Friday.  But I was kind of interested in excerpting just some of the verses today.

Even as many were amazed at him, so marred was his look beyond human semblance and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man, so shall he startle many nations, because of him kings shall stand speechless…

I was thinking about the "startle," and the "speechless."  (Il étonnera de même une multitude de nations; devant lui les rois resteront bouche bée…)   

I am far from the first to observe that one of our modern problems with understanding the Passion is that we aren't surprised anymore.  We have seen so many artistic depictions that t is stylized in our minds.  The crown of thorns belongs on Jesus's head, the streaks of gore are painted plaster, we don't need to probe the wounds because, yes, yes, we know, there they are, they have pierced your hands and feet and counted all your bones, we know.

I thought to take a close look at the description of the suffering servant before the revelation, before everyone finds out the twist ending.  (Bits from the French readings that seem to differ in translation are added in brackets, for your reading interest as you consider word choice in the English version.)

so marred was his look beyond human semblance [car il était si défiguré qu'il ne ressemblait plus à un homme, because he was so disfigured that he no longer looked human]

and his appearance beyond that of the sons of man…

He grew up like a sapling [a poussé comme une plante chétive, sprouted like a stunted plant]  before him, like a shoot [une racine, a root] from the parched earth;

there was in him no stately bearing [apparance ni beauté, neither appearance nor beauty] to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him [son aspect n'avait rien pour nous plaire, his appearance had nothing that we would like about it].

He was spurned [méprisé, scorned or despised] and avoided [abandonné, abandoned] by people, a man of suffering [douleurs, pains or sorrows], accustomed to infirmity [souffrance, suffering], one of those from whom people hide their faces, spurned [méprisé] , and we held him in no esteem [compté pour rien, counted as nothing].

…we  thought [et nous, nous pensions– emphasis on we thought] of him as stricken [frappé, smited], as one smitten [meurtri, beaten up, bruised] by God and afflicted [humilié, humiliated, shamed].

…Oppressed [arrêté, seized]  and condemned [jugé, tried], he was taken away [supprimé, done away with], and who would have thought any more of his destiny [Qui donc s'est inquiété de son sort? So who cared what happened to him?]

a grave was assigned him [on a placé sa tombe, they put his grave] among the wicked…

I've carefully picked out the phrases that describe the servant as he appears to ordinary people, before the twist ending.  In the reading these are interlaced with sentences about justification, elevation, redemption; but today is Good Friday and none of that is visible yet.

So take a minute and think about being an ordinary person in the ordinary life that you are living, surrounded with various kinds of people.  Whom do you see that gives you the described reaction? 

Have you ever passed somebody and averted your eyes to avoid looking into theirs? 

Ever seen a person, maybe just a photo, of a person with a face so disfigured—burned, misshapen, broken—that they barely looked like a human face? Have you felt the automatic revulsion—it's a natural human response of self-protection—and maybe been ashamed of yourself, so you scrolled rapidly by to soften the discomfort?

Or maybe it's not a physical disfigurement—something in the eyes and expression and behavior that looks too vacant or crazed to possess intelligence and reason behind the eyes?  Not someone that one would call a person—people choose words like "an animal," or "a monster."

Someone who comes from nowhere important, like maybe, not a respectable family.  For whatever reason, stunted at an early age. Wouldn't ever have amounted to anything anyway.  A nothing.  A loser.

Ugly.  Pitiful to look at.   Unpresentable.  Disgusting.

Somebody like that has gotten what they deserved.  We don't want people like that among us.  Take him away, haul him before the judge, lock him up and throw away the key, send him to where we don't have to think about him and people like him anymore, let somebody else worry about him.  Let him die for all we care, and when he dies he can go like the rest, into an unmarked trench with the others.

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"The poor you will always have with you," and we do, and I don't mean the deserving poor, but the untouchables.  The poor that no one wants to serve, not even for the small reward of a charitable act; no, the kind of poor that people hesitate to help, because what good could it possibly do to help someone who is obviously beyond help, someone whose degradation is their own fault, someone who might lash out at me for even trying?

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One could think I meant only what Jesus said, that "what you do to one of these least ones, you also do to me," an urging to perform acts of charity to the poor around us despite our feelings about them; and that's a good sentiment; but that reading is for a different day.  Today's reading is about the surprise. 

For there to be a surprise, there must be a before-the-surprise.

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This is part of what we need to understand at Good Friday: 

This is our God, the God of the disgusting, the God of the smelly, the God of the limping, the God of the repulsive, the God of the self-destructive, the God of learned helplessness, the God who was asking for it, the God who will get what's coming to him, the God of the gutter, the God you won't look in the eye.  The God with his hand out.  

And here we are, at the Triduum already.

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I wrote a post earlier about how it seemed almost appropriate that we should be pressed into quarantine smack in the middle of Lent. 

I was thinking about it as a sort of warning against "reading too much into things," that those of us who are inclined to try to find meaning in the small coincidences of life would probably try to find that meaning anywhere.  That there's nothing particularly special about quarantine during These Forty Days, linguistic parallels notwithstanding.   We'd find meaning if it were Advent too.  If it were Christmas.

And if it were Easter?  I suppose we're about to be tested.

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Consolations.  

Turning to the old, old ideas about consolations is my way to understand the temptations we Americans have to listen to the prosperity gospel. 

Although I suppose anyone can fall into it, I do think it is a peculiarly American idol, this notion that bad things don't happen to good people, that faith is reliably rewarded with material comfort, or that karma will get the bad actors in the end.  It manifests differently on the left and right sides of the political spectrum, it manifests differently among different subgroups; but it isn't evenly spread around either; some folks have it worse than others for sure.  

Aaaaahh, I don't need to write it all over again.  Here's the post I wrote about it last year, inspired by a post Amy Welborn wrote that identified the truth that gets twisted into the "health-and-wealth" gospel.

Humans are perfectly capable of taking true graces that truly come from God and… screwing up our responses to them….

Consolations are, in the writings of the saints and in the writings of the magisterium, the opposite of affliction.   These are free gifts of happiness, contentment, felt blessings, confidence in the presence of God, strong feelings of conviction. All bestowed by God on some of the faithful, and occasionally understood to be withdrawn from them by God, as a means of increasing their (or someone's) growth in faith.

Numerous saints have warned Christians against mistaking the consolation for something it is not. It is not (necessarily) a reward or a punishment; it is certainly not a reliable indication of the holiness of the individual, such that holier people receive more or fewer consolations; and while we may hope for consolations, we are expressly warned against making the consolation the end that we seek.

I feel like with prosperity gospel, the end-of-the-end is a feeling of confidence that one is on the right track.   To practice one's faith and put one's values into actions—and the faith and values don't have to be Christian or even theist ones either, they could be any sort of humanism, for example—think of activists who grow rich on speaking fees, or enjoy accolades from the upticking follower count—

—then to get the payoff, the success, the praise, or even to see what they've worked for come to measurable fruition—

—and to see that payoff as some kind of personal validation, not just that their efforts were well-designed or well-timed, but to see in it a rightness of the cause and a confirmation that they, they themselves, they are good and not bad.

Success = Rightness and Goodness.

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Where am I going with this?  "Consolations" in spiritual writings often refers to feelings of affection and energy and fervor and devotion, which can make it seem that consolations are always abstract things.  I don't think that feelings are abstract things.  I think they come from our bodies and are therefore material things.  And if "consolations" can be one kind of material thing, then they can be other kinds of material things, like our circumstances; our richness or our poverty, our liberation or our captivity (physical, not metaphorical).

And where are we now?

Entering the Triduum, bereft of many of our usual consolations at Eastertime.

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I mean, we may have some other consolations to take their place. 

Some of us have beloved relatives gathered around us who might otherwise be off at school or living in another city.  Some of us have a renewed appreciation for health and safety, and renewed concern for others, and renewed gratitude for the many people whose labor makes life easier for others.  Some of us have had time to reflect thrust upon us, and have found the reflections fruitful.  

But surely not everybody has those consolations.  Some people are in grave danger.  Some people appear to be deliberately spreading malice and lies, perhaps only the tip of the iceberg of mass spiritual danger.  Some people are working harder for less; some people have lost all income and despair of the future.

And—I repeat—we've almost all of us who celebrate Easter lost the ordinary means by which we stir up our hearts to feel the Resurrection.

We have no reason to expect to receive any consolation this year.   I don't mean to exclude the possibility that we'll be graced with it.  I just mean—I look forward to the Triduum liturgies because, in part, they usually give me at least, some little glints of joy, here and there; at best a thoroughly exhilarating feast of the senses.  I guess I feel I'm sort of entitled to that feeling, and variations from year to year are part of the expectation and the pleasure.  What will I find in my basket on Easter morning?

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I expect a kind of poverty this year.  I expect to find out more of what it means to be "poor in spirit," a phrase I turn over often and, despite reading many glosses, have never settled comfortably into understanding.  

I took the position (different from some of the saints) that all consolations are sent by God and it's our response to them that matters; not that some are sent by God and some from the devil or the world-in-opposition-to-God or whatever.  So if consolations are sent by God then the withdrawal of consolations is His as well, and once again, our response is what matters.

We have no wine.

We have no wine.

What happens next?