Job and Simon Peter's Mother-in-Law

Here’s my homily for the Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time. I thought I’d post it because a lot of people seemed to like it. It’s only about 11 minutes.

The Pilgrim Shepherd has moved

Each week I get a traffic report on this blog, and find that there are still about 4 visits a day.  Thanks so much for continuing to check back.  Since life is a Pilgrimage, and Pilgrims are on a continuing journey, I moving my Pilgrim Shepherd blogsite to WordPress.  I've explained why in my initial post, which is now there.  It'll take a while to get it up to speed, but I hope to keep it updated and lively.

It's at  http://tomwelbers.wordpress.com/.  Don't worry, all past content will still be here at http://twlegacy.blogspot.com/.

Thanks for joining me on this journey of faith and life.

Separation Anxiety

America Magazine - Separation Anxiety: "Yet as a major sponsor of education in the United States, the church needs to speak with a clearer voice not merely about textbooks, but about educational policy." Bishop Tom Curry's insightful article on the First Amendment and Catholic schools.

Note: if you have trouble accessing this article, try here.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Paradox of Suffering

This morning in our chapel I read about yesterday's saint, Elizabeth of the Trinity, beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1984.  She was born and died (1880-1906) just a few years after Therese of Lisieux.  There lives overlapped and they were both French, but it's unlikely they ever knew or each other.  Like Therese her brief life was one of total self-giving in the embrace of suffering in union with Jesus as her spouse.

Unlike Therese, she desired to enter a Carmelite convent as a teen, but was forcibly delayed from entering until she was 21 by her mother who hoped she'd get married.  She endured this imposition with graceful obedience, remaining firm in her intention.  Of this she wrote, "Even in the midst of the world, one can listen to God in the silence of a heart that wants only to be his."

Two years later, in 1903, she developed adrenal insufficiency, or Addison's disease, for which there was no effective treatment and which led to a complexity of painful conditions.  Like Therese in her struggle with terminal illness, she was directed to write her thoughts, and in these writings and letters we have a valuable account of her spirituality.  As her illness progressed, she wrote to her mother: "The Father has predestined me to be conformed to his crucified Son.  My Spouse wishes me to be the surrogate human being in whom he can suffer again for the glory of the Father and the salvation of the Church.  This thought makes e so happy."  Although she continued to express joy in her sufferings, like Therese and Mother Teresa, she was also afflicted with feelings of desolation and abandonment and the prospect of death approached.  She died on November 9, 1906, the same year my mother was born.

In these two parallel lives of Elizabeth and Therese there is a pattern of youthful and energetic coming to terms with the most basic paradox of human life: the meaning of suffering. This is a question that is utter nonsense to most people -- in all ages,not just today.  And yet the flight from suffering is a headlong plunge into denial of reality, motivated by fear that often leads to division, blame, violence, and ultimately willfully causing the death one seeks to avoid.  These lives provide an alternate vision -- perhaps the only alternate vision -- and are worth pondering.

Pilgrim Pope

Today, Pope Benedict XVI visited Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, the famous and inspiring pilgrimage site honoring St. James, the brother of John, who was the first apostle to be martyred (in 44 AD), but who visited Spain before then, according to a much later legend.  (You can find a lot more about him and the traditional pilgrimage site of Santiago at the Wikipedia entry.)

I found his three talks very helpful in coming to a better understanding of pilgrimage, as a metphor for the whole journey of life, of Christian life, and of the Church.  This shed a lot light, for me at least, on the reality and purpose of our Early Christian World Pilgrimage.

At the welcoming ceremony at the airport, he said:

In his deepest being, man is always on a journey, ever in search of truth. The Church shares this profound human desire and herself sets out, accompanying humanity in its yearning for complete fulfillment. At the same time, the Church pursues her own interior journey which, through faith, hope and love, leads her to become a transparent sign of Christ for the world.

At his speech at the Cathedral, he gave a wonderful definition of Pilgrimage, which I am going to adopt in future informational and promotional materials:

To go on pilgrimage is not simply to visit a place to admire its treasures of nature, art or history. To go on pilgrimage really means to step out of ourselves in order to encounter God where he has revealed himself, where his grace has shone with particular splendor and produced rich fruits of conversion and holiness among those who believe.

While he mentioned in particular the persons and events associated with the Holy Land, Rome, and Compostela, the Early Christian World sites of Turkey do not trail behind them in significance for the same reasons.

And in his homily at the Mass, he spoke of the common experience and goal of all Pilgrims, whether those who trek the long hiking trail through France and Spain to Compostela or those who, in the relative comfort of Turkey's hotels and tour buses, follow the arduous schedule enforced by Fr. Tom and Aydin:

The fatigue of the journey, the variety of landscapes, their encounter with peoples of other nationalities - all of this opens their heart to what is the deepest and most common bond that unites us as human beings: we are in quest, we need truth and beauty, we need an experience of grace, charity, peace, forgiveness and redemption. And in the depth of each of us there resounds the presence of God and the working of the Holy Spirit.
I urge you to read the whole of these documents; they are not long, but they very much speak to the heart.

Tomorrow, visit the Vatican site to see what he has to say as he dedicated the imposing "work-in-progress" church of La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

You can also watch excerpts from Vatican TV on the Vatican Channel on YouTube.

Initiation and Welcome

This afternoon I gave a talk at the Regional Religious Education Congress for Our Lady of the Angels Pastoral Region here in Los Angeles.  The title I chose was "The Quality of Our Welcome: A Fresh Look at RCIA."  Christian Initiation is all about welcoming people into our family of faith, and I believe it is important for us to take a close look at just what the rite tells us from the point of view of welcome. 

You can listen to the talk using the embedded player.



If that doesn't work, or if you'd like to download it for playing on an iPod or similar device, youcan access it at the following link.

http://www.archive.org/details/InitiationAndWelcome

You can also download my handout/notes by clicking here.

Marriage and Initiation

One of the sensitive areas that must be dealt with as we, the Church, prepare to welcome new members into our family, is the question of how our understanding of the nature of marriage in itself, as well as marriage as a sacrament, relates to the life of a committed Catholic Christian.  This becomes very real when one seeking to become Catholic has a former marriage that has ended, often tragically and painfully.  If marriage is a commitment for life, the implications of this former marriage must be dealt with.

On September 29, 2010, I gave a talk to the Initiation community of Good Shepherd parish in an effort to surface and begin to deal with these questions as they might come up among those preparing to become catechumens.

You can listen to this talk using the embedded player.  Please note that the talk is in two segments (Marriage-1 and Marriage-2), and you can toggle between the segments with the two little triangles facing the lines right and left.


If the embedded player doesn't work, you can download the talk at the following link as MP3 audio files, which you can listen to on your computer or play on an iPod or similar device.

http://www.archive.org/details/MarriageAndAnnulmentsInChristianInitiation

You can also view and download the notes (4 pages) in PDF format by clicking here.

Turkey drifts closer to the West - ŞAHİN ALPAY

A good article to help understand Turkey today, from a Turkish perspective.

Turkey drifts closer to the West - ŞAHİN ALPAY: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Religion: When America feared and reviled Catholics - latimes.com

Religion: When America feared and reviled Catholics - latimes.com: "- Sent using Google Toolbar"


Excellent article, but the author is wrong on one point: anti-Catholicism is not dead, it just takes different forms. As she quotes Mark Twain, history may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme. See: http://www.amazon.com/New-Anti-Catholicism-Last-Acceptable-Prejudice/dp/0195154800

Beyond a 'Darth Vader' view of secularism | National Catholic Reporter

Beyond a 'Darth Vader' view of secularism | National Catholic Reporter"

Excellent piece by John Allen on the Synod of Bishops for the Middle East, beginning today in Rome. Pray for them.

When will American Catholics learn that we are a mere 6% of the Catholic population of world, and open our eyes to the reality of global Catholicism?

(Shameless promotion:  The Early Christian World Pilgrimage can help start the process.)

Development of Doctrine: St. Vincent of Lerins

Today's Office of Readings has a piece by St. Vincent of Lerins, who died in 445, on the development of doctrine that is relevant for us today, especially following last month's beatification of John Henry Newman, whose "Essay on the Development of Doctrine" has been so influential in modern theology and Church teaching, as well as misunderstood by the advocates of both "radical change" and "return to tradition."

	An instruction by St Vincent of Lerins

The development of doctrine

Is there to be no development of religion in the Church of Christ? Certainly, there is to be development and on the largest scale.

Who can be so grudging to men, so full of hate for God, as to try to prevent it? But it must truly be development of the faith, not alteration of the faith. Development means that each thing expands to be itself, while alteration means that a thing is changed from one thing into another.

The understanding, knowledge and wisdom of one and all, of individuals as well as of the whole Church, ought then to make great and vigorous progress with the passing of the ages and the centuries, but only along its own line of development, that is, with the same doctrine, the same meaning and the same import.

The religion of souls should follow the law of development of bodies. Though bodies develop and unfold their component parts with the passing of the years, they always remain what they were. There is a great difference between the flower of childhood and the maturity of age, but those who become old are the very same people who were once young. Though the condition and appearance of one and the same individual may change, it is one and the same nature, one and the same person.

The tiny members of unweaned children and the grown members of young men are still the same members. Men have the same number of limbs as children. Whatever develops at a later age was already present in seminal form; there is nothing new in old age that was not already latent in childhood.

There is no doubt, then, that the legitimate and correct rule of development, the established and wonderful order of growth, is this: in older people the fullness of years always brings to completion those members and forms that the wisdom of the Creator fashioned beforehand in their earlier years.

If, however, the human form were to turn into some shape that did not belong to its own nature, or even if something were added to the sum of its members or subtracted from it, the whole body would necessarily perish or become grotesque or at least be enfeebled. In the same way, the doctrine of the Christian religion should properly follow these laws of development, that is, by becoming firmer over the years, more ample in the course of time, more exalted as it advances in age.

In ancient times our ancestors sowed the good seed in the harvest field of the Church. It would be very wrong and unfitting if we, their descendants, were to reap, not the genuine wheat of truth but the intrusive growth of error.

On the contrary, what is right and fitting is this: there should be no inconsistency between first and last, but we should reap true doctrine from the growth of true teaching, so that when, in the course of time, those first sowings yield an increase it may flourish and be tended in our day also.

The writers of the New Testament consistently record that Jesus has promised to be with us, his Church, until the end of time, as the head is to the members of a body, and that requires that the Church be true in its belief.  That means that the primary place where infallibility resides is in the believing Church as a whole. The infallibility of the teaching Church, the bottom line of which resides in the Petrine ministry of the Bishop of Rome, exists only to serve the faith of the whole Church, the whole Body of Christ.

Vincent and, much later, Newman insist that development of doctrine must be organic growth, not revolutionary change.  It seems to me that this depends more than anything on a humble, open, and patient dialogue between the believing Church and the teaching Church.   Magisterium always must be a two-way street.  Magisterium is always a ministerium.  The "big" (magis) exists only to serve the "little" (minus).  The representatives of Christ-the Head must always respect the real presence of Christ in the members as well.

St. John Chrysostom: relevant words to us today

We think we live in bad times?  Here's an excerpt from a letter of St. John Chrysostom (c. 350-407), bishop of Constantinople, which he wrote from prison near the end of his life to his dear friend and colleague, the Deaconess St. Olympias:

Please listen to what I have to say.  I am going to try to make you a little less depressed and get rid of the dark clouds in your mind.  Why are you so worried, sad, and agitated?  Because the storm that has attacked the churches is harsh and menacing, and because it has wrapped everything in unrelieved darkness?  Because it is reaching crisis point?  Because it brings dreadful shipwrecks every day, while the whole world collapses about us?

We see the ocean whirling up from its uttermost depths and sailors' bodies floating on it.  We see others overcome by the force of the waves. . . . It is all so hopeless they can only scream, groan, cry, and weep. . . .  Everywhere monsters of the deep rise up and threaten travelers.  But no mere words can express the unutterable.  No terminology I can think of can adequately convey the terror of these times.

Though I am aware of all these miseries, I never cease to hope.   I always remember the universal Pilot.  He does not rely on steersmanship to suffer the storm and come through it.  He merely nods to calm the roaring oceans, and if he takes his time in doing so, well that is the Pilot's way.  He does not stop dangers straightaway, but banishes them only when they get close to their most ghastly point, and almost everyone has abandoned hope.  Only then does he show us marvels and miracles.  Only then does he reveal the power which he alone possesses, and teach the suffering how to be patient.

Quoted in the new full edition of Butler's Lives of the Saints, September, p, 112.   St. John Chrysostom, continue to pray for us.

Homily today: the prodigal . . .

I recorded my homily today, and thought it might be worth sharing.  See Luke 15:1-31.


If the above player doesn't work in your browser, you can download the MP3 file here:

http://www.archive.org/details/HomilyFor24thSundayYearC

How can we live with pain . . .?

Here is the talk that I gave at the meeting of our Good Shepherd Seniors' Group, "Young at Heart," at their lunch meeting on Saturday, September 11, 2010.  They asked me to speak on "How can we live with pain and the other things that are just 'not right' in life?"



If the player does not work on your computer, you can download the MP3 file here:

http://www.archive.org/details/HowCanWeLiveWithPain

Invocation at Memorial Service Beverly Hills, California, 9/11/2010

We remember the countless innocent people whose lives were taken away nine years ago today, as well as those who have suffered and died in the many events of its equally tragic aftermath.

But today we especially commemorate, and in a very real sense celebrate, those who have given their lives so that others may live, abandoned their own safety so that others may live secure, freely laid down their lives so that others may be free.

How tragic when life is taken by violence born of fear, anger, hatred, and mistrust. How precious is the life that is freely given for the sake of another.

May we honor the lives of these men and women – these heroes – by not yielding to the illusory satisfaction of revenge or retaliation. Rather, may we face the challenges of our world today with the courage to echo, in the priorities our lives, the timeless and ever-relevant words attributed to St. Francis, who also lived in a time marked by conflict, war, and violence:

May we be instruments of true peace.
When confronted with hatred, may we bring love,
in pain, forgiveness,
in doubt, faith,
in despair, hope,
in darkness, light,
in sadness, joy.
May we seek not so much to be comforted as to encourage,
to be understood, as to understand,
to be loved, as to love.
For in giving, we receive,
in forgiving, we are reconciled,
and in dying, new life is born.
Amen.

Note: It may come as a surprise that the beloved and traditional "Prayer of St. Francis" appears not to have a very long tradition behind it, has often been paraphrased, and has been used in many civic occasions such as this.  So there is ample precedent for my use of it here.

You can listen to it as delivered at the "9/11 Day of Remembrance" ceremony here:


or download it at this link.

http://www.archive.org/details/BeverlyHills911Memorial-Invocation

This is no way to end religious illiteracy | National Catholic Reporter

Excellent piece on media and religious illiteracy by John Allen.

This is no way to end religious illiteracy | National Catholic Reporter

Seventh Catholic History and Heritage Presentation: Questions and Answers

We dealt with topics such as the Roman Catholic-Eastern Orthodox split, Hitler and the Jews and Pius XII and the Catholic Church, and Vatican II.

Here's the player:



Or, if the player doesn't work for you, you can listen or download the audio files here:

http://www.archive.org/details/CatholicHeritagePresentation7
There were no notes prepared for this presentation.

Sixth Catholic History and Heritage Presentation: Vatican II and its turbulent wake

The full title and subtitle of this presentation was:

Vatican II and its turbulent wake: Reform and Resourcement; controversy and conflict

Who would have guessed what would blow in that open window?

Vatican II: fruit of the Spirit or spawn of Satan?  And . . . who cares?

A rather provocative title, I guess.  Then again, we live in provocative times!  Listen to the whole presentation online (my apologies for taking so long to get it posted):



Don't forget you can toggle between part 1 and part 2 with the two little triangles facing the lines right and left. 

As usual, if the embedded player doesn't work for you, you can download the original MP3 files at:

http://www.archive.org/details/CatholicHeitagePresentation6  (Uhm . . . yeah, there's a typo in the address, but it's too much of a hassle to try to change it on that site.)

And, of course, you can view and download the text of the notes, in PDF format, here. (This week I was not able to put any links for further information into the notes, but you can find a lot just by searching Google or Wikipedia with the obvious keywords.)

The reason why I was late in getting this online is that on Wednesday morning I received the 2011 price quotes from our Istanbul tour agency for the Early Christian World Pilgrimage, Orion-Tour, and have spent most of my spare time of the last few days putting together the initial publicity for the Pilgrimage in the form of a bulletin insert/letter for this weekend.  You can see that letter here, and you will be able to keep up to date on the Pilgrimage news and itinerary at my Pilgrimage blogsite, http://ecwpilgrimage.org.

If you are looking for the past presentations, scroll through the list or past blogpost titles on the sidebar to the right, and you'll find them.

Solemnity of Our Lady of the Assumption

August 15 is my most favorite day of the year -- well, one of them at least.  Having been pastor of Our Lady of the Assumption parish in Claremont for 15 years before coming to Good shepherd in Beverly Hills, I had many occasions and lots of time to reflect on the meaning of this feast for us, Catholic Christians today.  I tried to embody some of that in my homily today, which you can listen to here:


Or you can access it at this web address (click here).

Here's what I wrote on the Good Shepherd bulletin cover:

This image of Mary taken into heaven is the tapestry that graces Our Lady of Assumption Church in Claremont, where I served fifteen years before coming here to Good Shepherd. The feast we are celebrating today remains very dear to me, as it is to all Catholics, celebrating the entry of Mary into the same glory that is promised to us.  This beautiful creation is the work of the Barillet Studios of Paris in the early 1950s.  As our parishes are united in Christ and his holy Mother, I ask your prayers for the people of the OLA parish community as we celebrate their patronal feast. (Photo by Fr. Tom Welbers)

That tapestry certainly represents the triumph and glory that we often associate with the Assumption.  As I note in my homily, however, Eastern Christianity has a very different perspective on this same feast, and they traditionally call it the "Dormition of Mary."  (That name is actually older than the "assumption.")  Compare the two images, which I reflect on in my homily, and see which one speaks most deeply to you. (This image is in the Church of St. Savior in Chora [Kariye Museum] in Istanbul, and one of a magnificent series of photos of Turkey by Dutch photographer Dick Osseman, freely available on the web.)

What Does the Pope Have to Do with Our Being Catholic?

Some would say nothing; others would say everything.  Both sides are right . . . and wrong.

Hey, one of the fundamental requirements for being Catholic, as well as Christian -- as well as human, for that matter -- is to make friends with paradox.  Life is not a neat and tidy little package, and there's a lot of apparent contradictions that are simply beyond our power to resolve to our satisfaction.  Like the "core belief" we started with a few weeks ago, the Trinity -- one God, three Persons -- a paradox. And the Incarnation, Christ as fully God and fully human -- a paradox.  And the Eucharist -- all the observable elements of nature, bread and wine, remain, but the substance, the underlying reality, is truly changed and becomes the body and blood of Christ -- a paradox.  So, why shouldn't the Pope be a paradox?

Last week I ventured the opinion that the core beliefs of Catholic faith "boil down to just two: the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and the Primacy of the Bishop of Rome."  Then I discussed the "Real Presence."  Some might say that many Protestant churches, including Anglicans/Episcopalians, celebrate the Eucharist and have a belief similar to ours.  True, but none of them meet the criteria that we hold are essential for the complete reality (or validity) of the Eucharist as we understand and believe.  That's a loaded statement on an ecumenically sensitive issue, and it needs to be unpacked and nuanced.  But that's for another time.  Of course, the place of the Pope in the Church is another sensitive issue, and that's the concern of this little essay.

First we need to be clear that the Pope is the Bishop of Rome, just like any other bishop is bishop of a particular local church, whether Los Angeles or Las Vegas or Talahassee or Talibon . . . or wherever.  The Pope's relationship -- personal or official -- with other bishops, or with all Catholics worldwide, is not the heart of the issue. It's the relationship of the local Church (or diocese) of Rome with other local churches (dioceses).  Because St. Peter, whose name means "rock," was singled out for a foundational role among the gathered disciples (see Matthew 16:18 -- the word "church" etymologically means "the people called together") and because tradition has it that he was the first Bishop of Rome, the same tradition has held that the Church of Rome, and therefore its bishop, has a unique relationship of both honor and authority among all the other churches and their bishops.  We call this relationship primacy.

Christianity, from the age of the Apostles, has placed an essential value on unity and continuity, that is, the various local churches are authenticated both by their unity with one another, expressed in mutual recognition by the bishops of one another's legitimacy, and their continuity with the faith-community of the Apostles (i.e., the early Church) expressed through what is called "apostolic succession."  As important as an individual's, or even a group's, personal faith truly is, the communal values of unity and continuity are more essential to the identity of the Church.  Otherwise, the church becomes a conglomeration of individualistic do-it-yourselfers.

Apostolic succession is a fundamental criterion for a local church to be authentically Catholic. There must be an unbroken line of authority, through ordination, from the beginning down to our own day, and an essential element of that "unbroken line" is union with the local Church of Rome.  Thus our second "core belief," without which we are not Catholic, can be simply labeled "apostolic succession," which must include organic union of all local churches with the Church of Rome.

What happened to Christians throughout the centuries to produce the disunity and fragmentation we experience today?  First of all, the various Orthodox Churches have maintained apostolic succession and valid ordinations of bishops and priests, and therefore a valid celebration of the Eucharist, but split from unity with the Church of Rome in 1054.  This was for a variety of tragically unfortunate and complex historical reasons, and sadly the division is still a long way from being healed.  The Protestants (including Anglicans), for a variety of reasons, many of which legitimately addressed real abuses and even theological problems within the Catholic Church, not only broke the continuity of apostolic succession but also repudiated union with Rome.  And that twofold fracture seems also a long way from healing.

Needless to say, both Orthodox and Protestant Christians would express this division differently, and would not see our core beliefs in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist and Primacy of the Bishop of Rome to be as central as we do.  I call these "core beliefs" of Catholic faith simply because these pinpoint the heart of the difference between Catholic faith and all other Christian faiths.  On the one hand, while there are undoubtedly many reasons why people choose to be or remain Catholic, these two core beliefs have to be at the center.

Obviously much more can (and must) be said.  And I suspect what I have written over the past few weeks may raise more questions (and perhaps objections) than are answered.  I hope, however, that, in trying to be concise, I have also been relatively clear.  The more I have studied and and reflected in recent years, the more it seems to me that these four core beliefs -- two generically Christian and two specifically Catholic -- serve as hooks on which all other elements of our faith, from the smallest to the greatest, can be hung.  Or to change analogies, they serve as the four foundational pillars, rising up from the One Foundation which is Jesus Christ himself, of who and what we are as Catholic Church.

May God continue to bless you and all those you love.  I love you.

Fr. Tom Welbers

P.S. You might be inclined to point out my inconsistency in capitalization of Church/church and Bishop/bishop.  If you look closely, I have tried to capitalize them only when referring to a particular church or bishop, e.g. "the Bishop of the local Church of Fresno," but not when they are used generically, "a bishop in his own local church." 

P.P.S.  This Monday, August 16, is the last of six scheduled presentations on "the History and Heritage of our Faith" at 7:00 pm in the parish hall.  Our topic will move us from the twentieth century into the twenty-first, examining first the Second Vatican Council of the 1960s, and the turbulent years following it, up to today.  The title, "Reform and Resourcement; Controversy and Conflict", I think sums it up pretty well.  (Yeah, I like parallel contrasts and alliteration.)  However, because I was not able to deal with questions at the time of the presentations, I've been asked to do another session just to deal with questions that were raised.  So, there will be an additional session, devoted exclusively to questions and answers, the following Monday, same time and same place.  I'm calling this session, "Your turn . . . have at Fr. Tom!"  Don't forget that all the lectures and the notes are available online at http://tomwelbers.net. Also, new information on the 2011 Early Christian World Pilgrimage to Turkey, April 25 to May 14, 2011, is continually being posted at http://ecwpilgrimage.org.  There is some very good news about how to get there and back!  Check it out.