As many of my friends know, I deeply enjoy watching and collecting good movies. If asked my favorite, without a doubt, I point to the 1984 Academy Award winner, Amadeus, which is a drama based on the life of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as seen through the eyes of one of his rivals and contemporaries, Antonio Salieri. While the account is a fictionalized dramatization of the rivalry between the two men, it speaks so deeply to the human heart, the human desire to encounter and possess the divine, that the story is, so to speak, probably better than the truth.
Salieri remarks how he was never encouraged to develop his musical talent; his father "didn't care for music". The child prodigy Mozart, on the other hand, was carted all around Europe, performing 'like a trained monkey' for courts of royalty and ecclesiastical nobility, under the encouragement of his father, who taught him everything he knew. Upon his own father's death (which Salieri interprets as a 'miraculous gift'), Salieri finally has the freedom to take up his muse and with much success rapidly rises through the ranks of the musical elite, becoming the court composer in Vienna, writing more then 40 operas, and winning wide acclaim as one of the most accomplished composers in Europe.
It isn't until some years later, when Mozart appears at a concert at the palace of the Prince-Archbishop of Salzburg, that Salieri and Mozart formally meet. Mozart is to direct a concerto, and Salieri muses whether the radiant talent of someone with Mozart's reputation might be "written on [his] face"... "who could he be?" And so, the camera pans across a room full of young men, dressed in waistcoats and finely-powdered wigs, engaged in polite conversation. One face after another, Salieri scrutinizes the room, looking for signs of one blessed by divine favor. A loud, boisterous rogue fiendishly chasing a woman momentarily distracts Salieri, until in his wanderings he finds himself alone in a room, surveying sweets and treats to be served at the event (Salieri was noted to be a 'sweet-tooth' in real life). Into the room comes the young rogue and the object of his pursuit. Along with Salieri we witness a vulgar, bizarre, flirtatious exchange between this couple. Meanwhile, as the party continues in another room, the whisper goes out, "where's Mozart?" A few moments later, in the distance, we hear the opening cadences of the glorious concerto, and the young rogue jumps up, shouting, "they have started without me!"
Salieri remarks as an old man, "That was Mozart! That giggling, dirty-minded creature I had just seen crawling on the floor!" Put-off by the young man, Salileri was nonetheless captured and enraptured by the unspeakable beauty of his musical output. In the years that followed, Mozart would come to Vienna and gain fame and notoriety by way of his music that Salieri could only see as a divine gift... a gift he desired and sacrificed everything for... his industry, his humility, even his chastity. But he determined that he had not received 'the blessing' of the divine music which animated Mozart... a music which was written as no other: finished, complete, perfect, as if dictated from the mind and voice of God himself. "I was staring through the cage of those meticulous ink strokes at an absolute beauty." After being insulted and shamed by Mozart in the court and in public, and after discerning that a prima donna of his affections was fiendishly deflowered by this man-child, Salieri declared himself an enemy of God... for what good god would speak through the gross immaturity of such a beast? "There is no God of mercy," Salieri confesses, "just a God of torture." At a crisis point, we see him praying, begging, "Dear, God, enter me now. Fill me with one piece of pure music. One piece with your breath in it, to show me that you love me. Show me one sign of your favor, and I will show mine to Mozart." After a final spiritual crisis which he discerns as God's final rebuff, Salieri decided that his job in life was to destroy this impertinent little man who was an insult to all that is just and good and holy. Looking upon the crucifix, Salieri laments, "We, you and I, are enemies... because you choose as your instrument a boastful, lustful, smutty, infantile boy... and give me for reward only the ability to recongize the incarnation." Setting the crucifix on a burning fire, he continues, "Because you are unjust... unfair... unkind... I will block you. I swear it. I will hinder and harm your creature on earth as far as I am able!" And so the movie proceeds tit-for-tat, until Salieri determines that the best way to get at Mozart would be an act of psychological warfare, ending in Mozart's murder. In this he could "finally triumph... over God!" (In the scenes where Salieri is an old man in confession, the early morning and day has now given way to the intense darkness night... it has been quite a long confession!)
Shortly following the death of Mozart's father, observing the anguish in Mozart's heart over his father's passing as expressed in the opera Don Giovanni, Salieri covertly commissions a musical setting of the Requiem (funeral) Mass, which he plans to receive and publish as his own composition. He's not quite sure how to kill Mozart, squeamish about the prospect of actually having to physically end his life. "First I must obtain the death Mass, then I must achieve his death... it's one thing to dream about it, but quite another... when you have to do it with your own hands." But in writing the Requiem (along with the intense need to write for the opera in order to bring money into the house to pay large debts) Mozart begins a slow journey into insanity, ill-health, drunkenness, and even estrangement from his wife.
After the premiere of The Magic Flute, we see Mozart collapse. Upon being returned to his home with Salieri's assistance, he seizes the opportunity to push him over the edge... he 'delivers' the message to Mozart that the Requiem must be completed... tonight... and thus begins a scene which is perhaps one of the most spiritual in all of cinema: Salieri receives the dictation of music for the Confutatis, a section of the foreboding liturgical sequence, Dies Irae:
Latin
|
English (in poetic
translation)
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| Confutatis
maledictis, Flammis acribus addictis: Voca me cum benedictis. |
The
wicked are confounded, Doomed to flames unbounded: Call me with thy saints surrounded. |
| Oro
supplex et acclinis, Cor contritium quasi cinis Gere curam mei finis |
Low
I kneel in submission, Like ashes is my heart’s contrition; Help me in my last condition. |
Today's Gospel from Luke (18: 9-14) presents the familiar parable about the Pharisee and the tax collector who go to the temple to pray. The Pharisee, wrapped in his own self-righteousness praises God that he is not like 'other men' in their foibles, imperfections, and sin. The tax collector, unable to even raise his eyes, proclaims, "have mercy on me a sinner". Perhaps the Pharisee was a better man, perhaps the tax collector was deserving of all the self-condemnation that he could muster, but the question Jesus gets at is, whose prayer was heard by God? The Pharisee was the center of gravity in his oration... using the personal pronoun "I" no less than 4 times in the short verse we get in the Gospel (at least in the English version). He was separate from God and separate from other men in his self-justification... in a bizarre kind of isolation caused by his status as a 'religious person'. The tax collector had no illusions about himself, other than being in need of God and in need of reconciliation with God and, presumably, his fellow man.
There is a radiant passage from Thomas Merton's 1966 book, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, which I think provides the perfect antidote to that sense of separation which the religious life (and religious service in general) threatens. Indeed that separation not only yields the fearful tendency towards unreflective and smug self-righteousness, but perhaps sometimes in the more-recollected, it yields that death-dealing feeling of inadequacy or dualism between what one is and what one hopes to become. For many in this latter mind-set fearfully aspire to become, as Merton calls it, a pseudo-angel, rather than fully human. (Been there, done that, have the trophy.) In this parable, then, the challenge is to embrace the humanity that Christ himself embraces, while engaged in the struggle to finish the race and obtain the crown of righteousness in God's grace alone. (cf. 2 Tim 4: 6-8, 16-18, which is our second reading.) Without further ado, here's Merton:
In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and Walnut [less than a block from the Cathedral of the Assumption], in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I was theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world, the world of renunciation and supposed holiness. The whole illusion of a separate holy existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my vocation, or of my monastic life: but the conception of "separation from the world" that we have in the monastery too easily presents itself as a complete illusion: the illusion that by taking vows we become a different species of being, pseudo-angels, "spiritual men", men of interior life, what have you.
The masses were generally interested only in wonders and in security. When He multiplied the loaves and fishes, He startled their eyes. When He filled their stomachs he satisfied their sense of social justice. That was the kind of king they wanted, a bread king. “What else can religion do for man, anyway except give him social security;” they seemed to ask. The masses tried to force Him to become a king. That is what Satan wanted, too! Fill gullets, turn stones into bread, and promise prosperity—this is the end of living for most mortals. Bur Our Lord would have no kingship based on the economics of plenty. To make Him King was His Fathers business, not theirs: His Kingship would be of hearts and souls, not digestive tracts. So the Gospel tells us He fled into the mountains Himself alone, to escape their tinsel crown and tin sword. How close the masses were to salvation. They wanted life; He wanted to give life. The difference was in their interpretation of life. Is it the business of Christ to win followers by elaborate social programs? This is one form of life. Or is it the business of Christ to be willing to lose all the stomach-minded at the cost of reaching the few with faith, to whom will be given the Bread of Life and the Wine that germinates virgins? From that day on, Christ never won the masses; within twenty months they would shout, “Crucify!” as Pilate would say, ‘Behold your King.’”
The political implications in our search for a perfect society, engineered by entitlements and unrestricted license masquerading as "freedom", are readily apparent. All too easily we roll over on our backs and allow ourselves to be enslaved by the contentment of "Bread and Circuses" offered by our kings. "My tears have become my food day and night, while men say to me all the day long, 'where is your God?'" (Ps. 42:3) Noneother than St. Thomas More's political philosophy offers us the image of "Utopia" (Greek: "no where"), a mythical land where human cooperation and ingenuity soothes the injustices of the day. But his fictional world is just that... fictional. What More offers in this brave, new world is mere satire. Even if a political system should work well for a while, (which in and of itself is an unbelievably difficult undertaking given the fallen nature of man,) the perception (which is never true in reality) of earthly perfection crushes human spirit which has been created and is destined for a greater calling, which is happiness in God alone. While we rightfully work to stem the injustice in the world, our calling is not to this world, but to the Kingdom which is to come. The graces of plentiful food, peace, justice, wealth, and success in the here-and-now are but tears and mourning in the sight of what is yet to come. "Where is your God?" "Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, meek, and riding the foal of an ass... the warrior's bow shall be banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth." (Zechariah 9: 9-10) 
First, October 17 is the memorial of St. Ignatius of Antioch. He is a most notable martyr of the first generation after the Apostolic age. Perhaps a disciple of St. John the Apostle, and a contemporary of St. Polycarp, St. Ignatius produced seven notable letters to early Christian communities, and is best remembered for his Letter to the Romans, which he wrote (chapter 4) on his way to Rome for execution as a Christian martyr. In this letter he begs the community, "I am writing to all the Churches and enjoin all, that I am dying willingly for God's sake, if only you do not prevent it. I beg you, do not do me an untimely kindness. Allow me to be eaten by the beasts, which are my way of reaching God. I am God's wheat, and I am to be ground by the teeth of wild beasts, so that I may become the pure bread of Christ." The Eucharistic reference shows Ignatius' understanding of his suffering and sacrifice as a reflection of the Lord's own offering hidden under the signs of bread and wine. It is an offering circumscribed by time and place and circumstance, that nonetheless transcends this world, sanctifying the Church by courageous witness, and leading Ignatius, himself, into the hands of the Eternal Father.
The Gospel (Luke 11: 47-54) finds Jesus hounding the pharisees and scribes about their complicity in the dishonor, persecution, and death of the prophets... from their own time back to the foundation of the world. "You have taken away the key of knowledge. You yourselves did not enter and you stopped those trying to enter." The religious leaders Jesus addresses are not only guilty of the blood of a man of God, but they also find themselves and the entire nation blinded to God's intentions and glory revealed in their midst.
Finally, St. Paul writes (Romans 3: 23-26): "... all have sinned and are deprived of the glory of God. [All who believe] are justified by his grace through the redemption of Christ Jesus, through faith, by his Blood, to prove his righteousness, because of the forgiveness of sins previously committed, through the forbearance of God--to prove his righteousness in the present time, that he might be righteous and justify the one who has faith in Jesus..."
Reflecting on these images, I was drawn to the fictional, but all-too-real, story of the young, suffering, unnamed priest in Georges Bernano's most famous novel, Diary of a Country Priest (1937), which is remembered even more fondly as a 1951 movie from France, directed by Robert Bresson and starring Claude Laydu. Appointed to his first pastorate as the Cure of Ambricourt, the unnamed priest finds a sleepy little town that is not particularly welcoming to him or to the faith he proclaims as their parish priest. He laments that his parish "is bored stiff... like so many others! We can see them being eaten up by boredom and we can't do anything about it. Some day, perhaps, we will catch it ourselves--become aware of the cancerous growth within us. You can keep going a long time with that in you."
He has a profound answer, "Faith is not a thing which one 'loses,' we merely cease to shape our lives by it." In choosing not only to stay faithful, but in chosing to persevere, the priest cooperates a grace that neither the most hardened sinner nor the lapsed, unconscious church-goer can resist. For God's love and grace permeates the world, drawing all things to himself, and demanding a response in faith--be it affirming or negating. The little priest faces down temptation and the devil--evil itself--not unlike our Lord who went into the desert for forty days and forty nights to be tested. Like the Lord, this little priest will not be alientated from the Father in the midst of trial and tribulation, rather, he is strengthened by an understanding of his weakness, and his reliance upon God's grace in all things. This is how the wrenching challenge of faith forms him, and keeps him centered in God, rather than drawing him away in the midst of the disasters that would claim his life and livlihood. |
| A capybara! See a previous reference to their 'non-meat' status here. |
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| Rhinoceros |
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| Hyena... but is it dead? |
I have a particular interest in St. Denis as about a year and a half ago, I had the opportunity to visit the cathedral-bascilica dedicated to his honor in Paris. While the overtones of a religious pilgrimage were there (now what train do I need to take?), it was in no small part due to my interest in the famous Cavaille-Coll organ, which really put Aristide Cavaille on the map as an organ builder in the mid-late 19th century. I have a recording or two from that instrument, and it is frequently featured in tours of significant instruments in the city. Needless to say, the church itself is amazing. Moreover, it is the burial ground of dozens and dozens of kings and other royalty from the history of France. Of interest, there is a building project about to commence there to restore its north tower, which was damaged by weather many years ago.
He celebrated Mass in prison, where he received a special revelation of the presence of our Lord Jesus. After more torture and failed attempts at execution, it was decided that he should be beheaded. (Afterall, that should work, right?) And in front of an idol of the Greek god Mercury, he was dispatched.
One of the ironies of being a priest, or perhaps, one of the ironies of me being a priest is to find myself standing in front of a congregation of faced with the task of saying something intelligent about the scriptures that are in front of me on any given day. I know them, or that is to say, I have read them and I am familiar with what they say, and have some inkling of what they mean, but sometimes I really don't understand them in such a way that they have become and part of who I am and what I can offer when I stand in the well to preach. As many with this ministry will attest, often as the preacher I am in greatest need of preaching, myself.
I am as guilty as anyone might be in living my life by the catchy idea that "there will be time to rest when I am dead" (a quote from Ben Franklin). Or, even more seductively, "work as it if all depends on you, pray as if it all depends on God," effectively separating work from contemplation... or maybe simply corrupting contemplation with work. (Many attribute this quote to Augustine, but I don't have the reference... I don't want to pick a fight with the great teacher of Christian doctrine if he said it, but wow, it is easy to corrupt this maxim.) I also like the image that comes from the Jesuits of striving to be be an "active-contemplative", but I know I'd screw that up as well. Even, at times, what passes as simple prayer becomes infected by a sense of obligation to be 'doing', rather than simply and joyfully 'being'. I suppose that early on-from my parents, and certainly from my early school teachers--through no fault of their own, as they desire what was best as an antidote to my own manifest desires to be distracted by frivolity--I have been indoctrinated with the ideal that time is not to be wasted, but used with utmost care and attention. Time is, after all, the only non-renewable resource we have to better our lives and we must make the most of it. Yes, all of this is true, but does the endless activity we use to fill our time, in reality, actually make us better?
None other than Fr. Robert Barron, through his Word on Fire ministry, has helped me progress in a deeper understanding of this passage. From one of his homilies or videos or writings--I don't remember where--put me on to Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) and his Pensées. Duitifully I looked up the passages about divertissment... the diversions, distractions that we embrace and enjoy and count on to remove ourselves from the most "insufferable" anguish we encounter... to be completely and totally at rest... not just sleeping, or loafing, or being taken up by the myriad of distractions that we have in our contemporary world like Internet surfing, watching TV, or taking up basketweaving, but to be totally at rest. "...to be completely at rest, without passions, without business, without study. He then feels his nothingness, his forlornness, his insufficiency, his dependence, his weakness, his emptiness" (#131) "...the natural poverty of our feeble and mortal condition, so miserable that nothing can comfort us when we think of it closely" (139).
Pascal takes us to the absurdity of our struggle to be distracted by considering the life of the king. Unlike wining any lottery, unlike being rich beyond imagining, there is nothing more distracting than being the king of the realm. "The king is surrounded by persons whose only thought is to divert the king, and to prevent his thinking of self" (139). Jesters, cooks, courtiers, chauffers, generals, and the Queen. Supplicants, synchophants, assasins, and mauraders. Butlers, advisors, wise men, and stewards. Subjects, vassals, nobility, and clerics. All of these people arrayed around the king provide endless distractions. In our modern/post-modern age, is it not enough to consider that what is good enough for the king is good enough for all of us too?To bid man to live quietly is to bid him live happily. It is to advise him to be in a state perfectly happy, in which he can think at leisure without finding therein a cause of distress. This is to misunderstand nature. As men who naturally understand their own condition avoid nothing so much as rest, so there is nothing they leave undone in seeking turmoil. Not that they have an instinctive knowledge of truehappiness... So we are wrong in blaming them. Their eror does not lie in seeking excitement, if they seek it only as a diversion; the evil is that they seek it as if the posession of objects of their quest would make them really happy. (139)
Fr. Ed Oakes, whom I am proud to call a teacher and mentor, offers an absolute tour de force review of the work of Pascal in First Things (Aug-Sept 1999). Oakes opines, rightly, that Pascal was the "first modern Christian", that is, the first Chrsitian thinker who engages the subjectivism of Descartes which spawned the great re-awakening of Europe and the world... not that Pascal sought to put the world back to sleep, but to show it how to truly rest in the Lord. He explains that the desire for distraction in the king, yea for all of us, is nothing less than the driving force, "so overriding and exigent," of ambition. "... our extraordinary obsession with entertainment and distraction constitutes perhaps the hallmark of our civilization in contrast to past cultures. From the time the clock radio goes off in the morning to late-night talk shows, the average denizen of contemporary culture need never be alone, encounter silence, or have to listen to the voice within." But isn't ambition that Pascal and Oaks talks about simply desire for riches, fame, fortune, success, and admiration? Sure, it can look like a big house and two cars for some, that promotion at work, a private island in the South Pacific, raising successful children, the respect of a larger paycheck, besting the neighbor, an extra stripe on a uniform sleeve, the title of 'doctor', and for some it can even look like a ring and miter. But the greatest threat is that ambition alienates us from our families, from our friends, from God, and even from our very selves. Yes, Fr. Oakes is right about that 'diving and exigent' force. Ambition, when unmasked, can be nothing less than the deepest form of distraction in and of itself, twisted together with pride, that we risk enduring.
Faced with the choice to muse in the cattle wearing sack cloth and revel in Jonah's missionary success, or to engage the Martha-Mary story, for probably the first time this morning, I find myself wading into what has been a losing battle for so much of my life. But this is a very different battle now. Rather than running up to it, singing the lyrics to "I am the very model of a modern major-general", I now wear the armor of Pascal. I am very aware that the cleverness of these insights can easily disguise themselves as true growth in holiness, but the battle has changed. Maybe I simply know the enemy better? But as I come to the altar today, I am drawn to the image of St. John who rests his head on the breast of our Lord. I also note that the story of Martha and Mary does not end. We don't know how Martha responds. It is an open-ended question--perhaps an invitation to close the story with our own response to the Lord, as haltingly and tentatively as our activity-infected minds and hearts and bodies can offer and try. The Eucharist we celebrate is nothing less than an extension of that invitation to "come away and rest awhile" by choosing the "better part".
Another thought came to me, as I was trying to 'land the plane' and exit this homily (which is no where near as long or detailed as written here, but when the Holy Spirit speaks...) I seek to live as St. John. I seek to live as Mary and to find rest as Martha. As the first tinges of light begin illuminating the windows of the chapel just after 6 am today, I consider the physical fatigue which I and the sisters encounter every morning as we come to (ironically) the 'resting place' of the altar. We fast our bodies from food in the hours before approaching the Sacred Banquet, that our physical state of hunger may illuminate the spiritual hunger that we all have for the Eucharist. I am now considering that the fatigue of the early morning hour--before the distraction of caffiene and breakfast and the news and Facebook and the Internet and this blog posting--how our physical state informs and illuminates the deeper spiritual desire we all have for rest... true rest, not just sleep. I and many of my priest colleagues (not to mention many of the sisters here) can attest to this struggle, but never have I considered that it is a new and different kind of "fast", for a new and different kind of purpose as I come to the altar... a "fast" from sleep to find true spiritual rest. I am hardly perfected in this discipline either, but it has a new spiritual meaning that weighs upon me as I consider Martha and Mary and Jesus. 
It is ironic... humbling, actually... to be handed the scriptures every day, with the responsibilty of making some kind of sense of them, when I so slightly know the deepest meaning that lies at the heart of its revelation. I imagine that I will have to embrace that inadequacy for the rest of my life, but I admit that not in defeat, but in resignation to the plans of the Lord to form me and prepare me for what will truly heal and save my soul. Someday I pray to receive the gift of his eternal peace and rest in a way that the world cannot give, descending into the green valley, near peaceful waters, as he leads with crook and staff out of the valley of darkness and storms and monsters and bills and calendars and shame and death. And so I preach as one who often squirms, turning over in bed and repositioning the pillow and shuffling under the blankets to try to get comfortable enough to drift off into sleep. But moreso, it is a spiritual rest and attentiveness that I long for... and preach about today. It is the rest that many of us look for, but cannot even express. I ask your prayers and consideration and promise them to you--all who seek--as I also continue to seek, and hopefully find. I invite you to join me in accepting, as best we can, the Lord's own invitation to rest here at the altar today.
