Abraham : Idol Shop as Bull : China Shop

An ancient Midrash legend tells of Abraham in his early life, living in Ur of the Chaldees in Mesopotamia, "the land between two rivers" (Tigris & Euphrates).

Abraham was the son of Terah, a man who earned his living as an idol maker. Day in and day out, Terah worked diligently crafting "gods" of stone and wood. The rich pantheon of the ancient gods made it so there was no shortage of work for Terah. But his son did not share his worldview or his enthusiasm for idol worship, even at a young age.

It happened one day that Terah needed to go on a journey. Understandably desiring that his business not be interrupted during his absence, he left the shop in the hands of his son Abraham.

Before long, a man entered and began to peruse the multitude of idols on display. Big gods, small gods, gods as big as your head... masculine gods, feminine goddesses, gods for the sun, the stars, the sea, war, fertility, fortune...

"How old are you?" came a question from the young boy running the shop.

"Fifty," came the reply. Abraham smiled and shook his head. 

"How sad indeed that a man of fifty years wants to bow down to a one-day-old idol." 

Utterly shocked and embarrassed, the man promptly left the shop.

And so it continued for a good while. A woman entered at one point with a basket of bread. She presented it to Abraham saying, "Take this and offer it to the gods."

The boy immediately sprang to his feet, grabbed the nearest hammer, and to the horror of the woman, he went about the shop smashing every idol but one to smithereens. Once he had finished the monumental demolition, he paced over to the remaining idol - it was the largest. Placing the hammer into its hand, he grinned and awaited his father's return.

Terah, as we can imagine, stood frozen in a near catatonic state the moment he shadowed the door of his beloved idol shop. Shattered pieces of stone and splintered wood lay in heaps over every square inch of the place. Everything was destroyed - everything but the largest idol of all. Next to it stood his son Abraham, looking unfazed and rather calm.

Enraged, Terah lit into the boy. "Who did this?" he shouted. "Was it you?!"

Abraham said in a cool and collected reply, "Father, how could I ever hide anything from you? Not long after you left, a woman entered the shop with bread for an offering to the gods. I in turn brought her generous gift before all of them and each one said, 'I shall eat first!' Then, suddenly, the biggest and most powerful one of all leaped forward, clutched the hammer in his hand and set about shattering all of the others to pieces!"

"Are you out of your mind?!" Terah howled back. "Do they have minds? They're made of stone and wood!"

Abraham smiled at his father as the point sank in.

Let's get to work, shall we?

The idols of the nations are silver and gold,

the work of human hands.

They have mouths but do not speak;

they have eyes but do not see;

They have ears but do not hear;

nor is there breath in their mouths.

Their makers will become like them,

and anyone who trusts in them.

Psalm 135:15-18

Helpful Direction in a Raging Storm

Facing a great deal of personal struggle and soul-searching lately, I stumbled across this fascinating conclusion to a chapter in which Father Simon Tugwell explores Christ's beatitude, "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." I'll let him speak for himself, as I couldn't say it any better (very thought-provoking, I'd say):

It is when we are finally stumped, when we can think of nothing more that we can do, that we can most easily - though even then it is not, simply, easy - appreciate that problems are not just things calling for solutions. A problem is, more essentially, a unique situation calling for expression. It calls for a poet, a painter, a composer. And sometimes, in God's providence, we may be that poet or painter or composer. Each individual situation in our world is an artistic, rather than an administrative, challenge. If we would inherit the earth, it must be, not by competent administration, but by something much more like artistic sensitivity and creativity.

It is surely the meek, those whose instinct is not to rush out and do something, but rather to look, helpless, passive before reality, and then, in union with God's Word, to be, so speak, the word which releases each creature into itself, it is they who can enjoy a proper lordship in the earth. So do not get heated because of the wicked, there is no future in them or your fury. Rather rejoice hugely in the Lord and be content to rest in his truthfulness and to gaze with wonder upon the world of his making, and, with the eye of faith and hope, to see that world in the making even in the despair and helplessness of the world of everyday experience.

                                      Father Simon Tugwell, O.P.
                                      The Beatitudes: Soundings in Christian Traditions, pp. 46-47

Kerygma - to accept or not to accept

"There is no entry fee to meet Jesus." - Pope Francis

The journey will cost me everything because it requires a complete handing over of my entire life to the God who gave me that life in the first place. But the invitation, the encounter with the living God who was once dead but no longer lies in the tomb, that is offered freely.

He calls each person by name. He meets you and me somewhere, some day. He is in the darkness and in the light, the highs and the lows. He meets us when we're crazy busy at work mending our nets or collecting tax revenues. He meets us in the dark recesses of an affair or a maddening addiction. He flashes the light of truth on us when we're in the middle of persecuting others through hate-filled political agitating or accusatory, uncharitable protesting - and we fall to the ground like Saul of Tarsus as Christ says, "Why are you persecuting me?"

The encounter comes to each human person in as many varieties as there are people. But He comes to everyone, one-on-one without exception, as if you were the only person who had ever lived. At some point you will be offered this "kerygma" as the Greeks called it - the proclamation of the Good News that God took flesh and paid full price for your freedom from sin. He came to give you a way out of the prison of selfishness, misery and death. And He did it by handing himself over to death itself so as to destroy it from the inside out.

Salvation is God's to give, not ours to take. We cannot dictate terms to Him. The question is this: will we each choose to accept the gift or reject it? He, the infinitely loving Father, will forever respect our decision.

Development of Doctrine

Pope Francis mentioned this reading in one of his recent interviews. It's the second reading from the Church's "Liturgy of the Hours" (the official daily prayer of the Catholic Church) and it comes from St. Vincent of Lérins (?-445 AD). What a beautiful and concise reflection on what we mean by "development of doctrine." Check it out!

Second Reading

From the first instruction by Saint Vincent of Lérins, priest

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.

Christ, have mercy on us

Something caught my eye in Pope Francis' recent America interview. The press was abuzz with shocked experts who, for some reason, were surprised by a pope who said he is a "sinner." For those of us who try fervently to live out our faith in Christ, there is no shock at all over his words. What caught my eye though was that in this portion of the interview he discusses the reality that he is, like everyone else, in great need of the Lord's mercy. He continues:

...the best summary, the one that comes more from the inside and I feel most true is this: I am a sinner whom the Lord has looked upon... I ​​am one who is looked upon by the Lord. I always felt my motto, Miserando atque Eligendo ["By Having Mercy and by Choosing Him"], was very true for me.

He continues with something that catches my attention in a particular way:

I think the Latin gerund miserando is impossible to translate in both Italian and Spanish. I like to translate it with another gerund that does not exist: misericordiando [“mercy-ing”].

It occurs to me that I usually think of "having mercy" on someone as merely a passive action. I want to punish this person, I want them to pay for what they've done, to be brought to justice. But instead I hold back and I behave mercifully instead. Mercy is usually perceived then an act of restriction or repression. I'm holding back from what I truly want. I don't think I'm alone in this; I imagine it's pretty common.

What I find so intriguing about the Holy Father's words is his understanding of mercy as an active action, not a passive one. What a different perspective this can give us. If we are to have any hope of really seeing Christ's mercy as strength and not weakness (and emulating him in being merciful), I think it's crucial to develop this notion of active rather than passive mercy. Then I can start to see "having mercy on others" in the right light. I can begin to see the countless opportunities before me to reach out with a compassionate mind, an empathetic heart, with Christ's own merciful hands. Showing others mercy becomes an act of gift-giving to those I encounter each day.

I'll close this entry with a simple and beautiful quote from Pope Francis in the same America article, a statement born out of true humility and something that should guide all who seek to grow closer to Our Lord:

I am a sinner, but I trust in the infinite mercy and patience of our Lord Jesus Christ, and I accept in a spirit of penance.

"Full of Grace..."

Our Lady of Grace by Joseph's Studio, Roman Inc.

Grace. It's such a commonplace word in the Christian life but I have to admit I sometimes think that I don't really understand it any better now than I did five or ten years ago.

If you're like me, you start with the dictionary. Incidentally, one of my Confirmation students did the same thing but he picked the wrong definition to put down on a test: "Effortless beauty or style," he wrote down quite confidently. I had to laugh - I wasn't asking him about the Olympic ice skating sort of grace!

Here's what we get from glossary of the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

"The free and undeserved gift that God gives us to respond to our vocation to become his adopted children. As sanctifying grace, God shares his divine life and friendship with us in a habitual gift, a stable and supernatural disposition that enables the soul to live with God, to act by his love. As actual grace, God gives us the help to conform our lives to his will. Sacramental grace and special graces (charisms, the grace of one's state of life) are gifts of the Holy Spirit to help us live out our Christian vocation (1996, 2000; cf. 654).

Needless to say, there's a whole lot in there. Today I am content to really focus on that first part and the three underlying points I see there. Grace is a gift that is 1) "free and undeserved", 2) given to us by God in order to 3) "respond to our vocation to become his adopted children."

I think there's enough right there to ponder for a lifetime, don't you? I mean really, let's think about this - why in the world would God save me? What could I possibly dream of trying to do in order to earn the God of the universe's attention, guidance and, above all, love for me?

I have a hard time letting God in to the depths of my heart, of letting him translate what I've come to know on an intellectual level into real, true, flesh-and-blood relationship. I know I'm not alone in this but I'm responsible to God for my own life - for how I choose to think, speak and behave. But how often to I sort of go along with a view of God as the great judge who's just waiting for me to slip up?

How different is the picture painted by this beautiful teaching on grace from the Church he left to be his voice in the world? He gives me grace that I could never merit, no matter how holy I ever become! Why? Because he wants to - that should be enough for me. What's it for? So that I will have the tools that enable me to live as he intended me to from before he created one speck of dust billions of years ago.

Here's a thought for the road - before God created anything that has ever existed, he thought YOU up, he loved YOU with all of his infinite love, and every second you live he is breathing you into being from non-being! Let's try harder today to just accept this incredible gift of God's grace and let it work freely in our lives. We have no idea where it could take us (actually we do - it's called HEAVEN!)

Have a blessed day!

On authority, mercy, and why I seem to be lacking in the latter...

David and the Sleeping King Saul

I find myself musing this evening over the nature of authority, particularly what honoring those in positions of authority means for us. What does it cost at the end of the day? In a word, I think it can cost us everything when we resist our own pride and humbly obey (a word most of us shudder at when we hear it!)

There he was, King Saul, vulnerable and defenseless - and David knew it. Goaded on by his servants, David knew that he could kill Saul right then and there in a desert cave near Engedi.

But what does this young David, to whom God has promised the kingdom, choose to do? He spares Saul, the very man who has come seeking David's blood. Saul has become a truly evil and murderous man, far fallen from grace. He would never spare David were the tables turned.

But mercy is a strange thing. It's unpredictable - the world doesn't control or dictate it. It can always be chosen, no matter how bleak the situation is. Mercy is born out of a deep, mysterious and wild sea of love. It is the very heart of God. Mercy informs the conscience of David and encourages him to be patient and trust that the Lord is trustworthy and will give him exactly what he has been promised. And so David speaks:

"The Lord forbid that I should do such a thing to my master, the Lord's anointed, as to lay a hand on him, for he is the Lord's anointed."                                                          1 Samuel 24:7

Saul is certainly on his way out. But David recognizes that Saul is still the anointed king. Saul has separated himself more and more from God, but God never stops loving Saul. He is, after all, the perfect Father.

And so I think about how often I point my finger in blame and strike at others in authority with angry thoughts and words. Would that I grow more in mercy like David and acknowledge that all men and women are beloved children of God with a special place in his heart. And no one is beyond the reach of His mercy - why should they be beyond the reach of mine?