Month: October 2013

Wise Words on Wednesday: The Inexhaustible Well

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I was working in Seattle this last week and while wandering around on Sunday I realized I was close to burial place of Bruce Lee and his son, Brandon Lee. I was a huge fan growing up and so I decided to go and pay my respects.

It was a rather odd experience. While I was at their graves praying for about fifteen minutes there was a steady stream of people coming to have their pictures taken with the headstones! Bizarre.

Anyway, there was a quotation on Brandon Lee’s tombstone which I found rather challenging and a good candidate for Wise Words on Wednesday this week…

Graves

Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. And yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really… How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless…

– The Sheltering Sky, Paul Bowles

Prayer of St. Ephraim

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Tonight I’m giving my Theology On Tap talk on “Reading the Bible for all its worth”. Preparing this talk was rather difficult because there were so many things I wanted to share and talk about that much of it had to get cut due to time constraints. One of the things which unfortunately didn’t make it into the final talk was the Prayer of St. Ephraim from 4th Century, a beautiful meditation on the inexhaustible depths of Scripture:

St. EphraimLord, who can grasp all the wealth of just one of your words? What we understand is much less than we leave behind; like thirsty people who drink from a fountain. For your word, Lord, has many shades of meaning just as those who study it have many different points of view. The Lord has colored his word with many hues so that each person who studies it can see in it what he loves. He has hidden many treasures in his word so that each of us is enriched as we meditate on it.

The word of God is a tree of life that from all its parts offers you fruit that is blessed. It is like that rock opened in the desert that from all its parts gave forth a spiritual drink. He who comes into contact with some share of its treasure should not think that the only thing contained in the word is what he himself has found. He should realize that he has only been able to find that one thing from among many others. Nor, because only that one part has become his, should he say that the word is void and empty and look down on it. But because he could not exhaust it, he should give thanks for its riches.

Be glad that you are overcome and do not be sad that it overcame you. The thirsty man rejoices when he drinks and he is not downcast because he cannot empty the fountain. Rather let the fountain quench your thirst than have your thirst quench the fountain. Because if your thirst is quenched and the fountain is not exhausted, you can drink from it again whenever you are thirsty.

But if when your thirst is quenched and the fountain is also dried up, your victory will bode evil for you. So be grateful for what you have received and don’t grumble about the abundance left behind. What you have received and what you have reached is your share. What remains is your heritage. What at one time you were unable to receive because of your weakness, you will be able to receive at other times if you persevere. Do not have the presumption to try to take in one draft what cannot be taken in one draft and do not abandon out of laziness what can only be taken little by little.

– Prayer of St. Ephraim The Syrian, 4th Century

Chastity for Couples

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In September while I was “in the desert” and just posting quotations from the Desert Fathers, I came across some really great web pages that I wanted to share here. So, over the next few weeks, please expect a few extra posts of the hey-this-is-an-article-you-should-read variety.

Today I’d like to begin with a post written by my favourite street-preaching hobo, Meg Hunter-Kilmer. She recently wrote a article entitled How to Stay Chaste: 10 Tips for Couples packed with some really solid, practical advice:

Chastity For Couples

Update: San Diegans! It has been confirmed that Meg will be speaking at a Goretti Group Mass next Summer.

Empty chairs at empty altars: Part 3

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Yesterday I discussed Mike’s view of the Church and the awkward predicament which comes about from his belief in the conclusion of the sacraments, the papacy, the priesthood and apostolic succession. Today I’d like to finish off by looking at Mike’s treatment of Pope Benedict (who was Pope at the time of our correspondence).

Thus speaketh The Google!

Mike asked me “Why do you think you get over 1,000.000 hits … when you Google … ‘Benedict XVI is a heretic’?”. I said that the answer to that was easy! There are a lot of people non-Catholics out there who think Benedict is a heretic! I would suggest that, since these people would not be Catholic, Mike would probably regard such people as heretics themselves!

Additionally, it’s worth knowing that such a Google query would also return pages which speak of Pope Benedict fighting against heresy. But rather than spend time explaining in more detail how Google determines its search results, I decided to use Mike’s test and apply it to himself…

When I typed into Google the phrase “Mike is a heretic” I found I got 2,540,000 results! That’s over double the number of pages! So…what does that prove? Well, I’d say it probably proves about as much as Mike’s Google query for Pope Benedict…

Benedict XVI

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Empty chairs at empty altars: Part 2

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Yesterday I began talking about an exchange I had with Mike, a sedevacantist gentleman who asserts that the Second Vatican Council was a heretical council…

A Future Restoration?

If one ascribed to Mike’s assessment of Catholicism, things really do look pretty bleak: virtually every Catholic has been excommunicated from the Church and, as a result, there are no priests or Sacraments. I was intrigued as to how Mike imagined this dire situation ever being resolved. I mean, if one held to his position, the New Covenant is in tatters! Wouldn’t Jesus need to come back to re-instute the papacy, the priesthood and the Sacraments? But this is a problem since we know that Jesus isn’t returning until His Second Coming. Here is what Mike had to say:

“I can’t tell you the nature of the Divine intercession by which the hierarchy of the Catholic Church will be restored, if this were God’s will”

Doesn’t it seem odd that Jesus would establish the Papacy, only to see it disappear from the earth with no possible way of being restored? In response to this question, Mike asked me why I trusted the Pope. I said that it’s simply because I trust Jesus Christ. He established Peter as the rock. He gave Peter the keys. If the papacy could survive Pope Alexander VI, I’m pretty sure it can survive Pope Benedict XVI!

Vatican II

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Empty Chairs At Empty Altars: Part 1

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“Sedevacantists” are people who believe that there is currently no Pope, that the “Chair of Peter” is currently empty. In fact, the name “sedevacantist” itself comes from the Latin phrase, “sede vacante”, which literally means “empty seat”.

Sedevacantists typically assert that there hasn’t been a valid Pope since the death of Pius XII (1958), or sometimes even since the death of Pius X (1914). They reject all the Popes which followed (John XXIII, Paul VI, John-Paul I, John-Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis) and usually accuse them of some kind of heresy, typically the heresy of Modernism.

At the end of last year I was contacted by a chap named Mike. I had been commenting on a YouTube video by Fr. Robert Barron concerning the Second Vatican Council and Mike started sending me private messages which quickly revealed his identity as a sedavacantist.

Mike

I decided to devote a few of posts here to my discussion with Mike. His emails were filled with large portions of text which he had copied and pasted from his website and there was also unfortunately some name-calling (mostly against the Church, although later against myself specifically), but fortunately within the midst of all that we actually did manage to have some real conversation. It is my hope that, in reviewing our exchange, if you ever meet someone like Mike you’ll know what sort of thing to expect…

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