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Thank you for visiting. I hope you will enjoy the variety of topics to enhance your spiritual life. You can read them below or download them and read at your leisure. I have also added my Sunday Homilies.
CURRENT TOPICS: Notes for Presentation on Mary + God Is Beautiful + Hosea, The Unwanted Prophet+
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4th Sunday Lent – Luke 15:1-3, 11-32
Prodigal Father means Reckless, Generous, Extravagant Father
The first son abandoned three aspects of his living with his family by abandoning them, his nation, and his religion. He left his family to live among foreigners, making no attempt to seek help in his troubles from his many fellow exiles. He worked among pigs, unclean animals, a fact which showed that the religion for which his ancestors had suffered so much meant nothing to him. *But God had not abandoned him; he came to himself and was able to admit his sin and its effects. He was prepared to live as a slave; he realized he had no claim on his family, nation or God.
The elder son had not been wasting time looking-out for his brother. He was hard at work. His questions to the servants show that they knew more about his family than he did. His father came out to plead with him. He neither addressed his father as father nor spoke of his brother as his brother. The calf that had been slaughtered, he understood in terms of pay, not as a gift or a token of joy. He would not accept his place in the family, preferring his life as a servant. *His father did not rebuke him; he just spoke of the good news of the return of his other son.
The father’s concern for his son was such that he put aside normal ways of behavior for a man of his culture. Instead of disinheriting his son, he watched out for him. Seeing him far away, he ran out to greet him. He did not allow his son to finish his speech of repentance. Before he had finished speaking, he installed him with greater authority than before, symbolized by robe, ring and sandals. Forbidden to be a servant, he is awarded a status higher than ever in his family. *Obviously, the Father unconditionally loved both his sons!
Did the elder son go into the feast? Did the Pharisees recognize themselves in the elder son? Do we? We can name plenty of people who fit both sons, but what about ourselves? At what point do we realize that Lent should be more than just naming our sins especially those of others who seem worse than us. Once we compile this list, what should we do with it? Eventually I hope our focus will come back to the father, who is really the most important person in the parable. Jesus is responding to his critics, the Pharisees and Scribes with their tendencies to count all the ways one can sin against God.
Focusing on God will be more fruitful than listing our sins and those of others. *After all, it is God who can and will forgive us in the end. After all, God is the Prodigal Father. Webster defines the word Prodigal as exceedingly or recklessly wasteful, extremely generous, extremely abundant. Our God is all the above with his love for us.
Nature seems to mimic the Prodigal Father in many ways. One example is in springtime when millions of pollen fills the air, but only one is needed to pollinate the flower. Those of us with hay fever sometimes suffer from God’s prodigal nature, but never from his love. Yet how many time have we ignored the beauty in nature all around us? There are billions of people living on this planet, yet how many actually are aware of God’s steadfast love for us? Throughout the centuries God continues to journey with us personally through his presence in our conscious, and through his Son’s presence in our Eucharist. But is does not end there, *since Jesus continually suffers and dies with us until the end of the world. “Paul, Paul, why do you persecute me.”
A Liturgy that is rich in the Divine Attributes of God, brings us closer to understanding how rich God’s love for us is. God is love, God is also good, beauty, truth, and just. Needless to say, a Liturgy that is very restrictive can’t also be prodigal. An example that I have learned is from the Liturgies in Africa when I lived in Malawi, Zambia, and Kenya. The Liturgies where in the native tongues, not English, the tongue of the conquering colonia power. Their Liturgy was sung in native melodies, rich in tradition and meaning, as Saint Ambrose’s hymns were in the Liturgy of Milan, Italy. When filled with dancing which was natural to the African people, the whole body was involved and moved with the music, not confined by kneelers. The vestments are rich in traditional colors that also speak to the people of their culture through the Kente patterns in the cloth, not necessarily in the color coding. Added to this the African carvings of their saints, new and old, and the architecture. Now one can be transported to a sacred place that was not only familiar but heavenly. Only then can God’s prodigal love make sense to those open to the gospel message, where the father put a ring on son’s finger, sandals on his feet, and covered him with a robe, the traditional symbols in Jesus’ time. That gospel comes alive when a prodigal God open to all cultures simply through his love.
But the Prodigal Father’s love for us is meaningless unless we leave our Eucharistic Celebration to bring his Son Jesus out into the world as Ambassadors of God’s divine and everlasting love within us. This is modeled for us by Saint Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles of many cultures. And we are gentiles, but we are also Jewish through Jesus Christ, Joshua Ben Josef, who lives on in our very Jewish liturgy despite our additions!
GOD IS BEAUTY – BEAUTY IS GOD
PART THREE: The Nature of Beauty and the Desire for Perfect Beauty
Nature of Beauty – Ontological Status of the Beautiful
It is good at this point to talk about ‘Beauty’ from the philosophical point of view. In his book, New Proofs for The Existence of God, Fr. R. J. Spitzer, SJ, treats the subject of beauty within the main topic of his book. Fr. Spitzer draws on the traditional philosophical treatment of the subject, which would include Plato’s view as foundational, “Beauty itself is inextricably linked to Truth itself, Justice/Goodness itself, and Love itself, which is perhaps the most fundamental insight of this chapter. Inasmuch as all of these transcendentals are absolutely simple, they must be unique, and therefore the same Reality,” (p.257)
It is good to know that Fr. Spitzer also makes the connection of beauty to beautiful objects, music, visual arts, architecture, and poetry. I am sure that he would also include mathematical formulas if he had read Jim Holt’s book, When Einstein Walked with Godel. However, he reminds us that “though beauty is frequently a part of art, art need not be beautiful,” (P.253), and that goes for math as well.
Spitzer quotes Johannes Lotz, who going back to Albert the Great, suggested that there are three characteristics that give rise to the aesthetic emotions: perfection of a particular form (essence), harmonious resonance, and ‘shining forth’ (luster of splendor) pointing beyond itself, (P.254).
The first characteristic referred to by Lotz is called “what we enjoy in natural objects coming to perfection,” which could have a wide range of meaning. He mentions that “…it is a delight to see.” Of course, the opposite evokes no emotion at the least but revulsion at worse. “Individual form brought to perfection is intrinsically beautiful.”
Second characteristic of beauty that he mentions is “harmonious resonance,” and he uses music to express this with two notes in harmony, whereas the two notes are unrecognized in their isolation. He says this holds true when applies to the visual arts, and again, architecture, poetry, etc.,” (p.255). Lotz also points out that there is more to harmony than “…evoking of deeper delight, repose, reveling and enjoyment.” In their complexity as in a Bach, Beethoven or Brahms symphony, architecture, or in poetry like Eliot’s Four Quartets, they point to a kind of ecstasy, or a ‘mysetrium tremendum.” And he adds that, “…the more complex, grand, and sustained the harmony, the more it evokes the sublime or exalted emotions, and the more it seems to connect us with the glorious, the beautiful, and the Subline Itself.”
[What is interesting is that Spitzer notes that Roger Fry’s “matter of infinite importance” (who initially quoted Johannes Lotz who quoted Albert the Great – yes, one can get lost in all the quotes!) whose explanation lies in the “depth of mysticism,” mysticism! (We will explore that subject another time.)
And the third characteristic of beauty is a shining forth, splendor, and luster, refers to “access to perfection of form or harmony.” As suggested above, complex, grand, and sustained beauties point “beyond” their complementary unified forms to unity, perfection, and sublimity itself. Again, Fr. Spitzer uses music to point this out (p.255).
When one hears Mozart’s Requiem, one recognizes and then reposes and revels in more than music brought to its perfection, more than the human emotions evoked by the harmonies and melodies.
One enjoys the more perfect manifestation of unity, and then reposes and revels in it, feeling a deep and abiding sense of exaltation and glory. Now, when the Requiem is performed within a magnificent church with magnificent art, and the music, art and architecture are unified as a whole, one feels drawn into a perfection bigger than all the forms combined. One is drawn into the perfection of complex unification to which one appends the name “glorious” or “magnificent.”
The author then uses other examples like a beautiful ocean, a beautiful mountain, waterfall, sky, and all three taken as a “contiguous whole,” and other such examples. He mentions that this kind of unity “…seems to have no intrinsic limit.” And …it seems that all forms have an ideal complementarity with all other forms, revealing yet another kind of ideal or perfect unification withing the phenomenon of beauty.”
In the end, the author connects beauty as one of several attributes to God. We will explore this more later in our series.
“Go Back To Where You Came From!”
Amos, The Unwanted Prophet: Introduction
Amos was the first of Israelite Prophets of the 8th century whose words were assembled onto a scroll. His contemporaries were Hosea, Micah and Proto-Isaiah. He was a herdsman and dresser of sycamore-fig trees in a village of about 150 in Tekoa, a hilly fortified village southeast of Jerusalem. This prophet was called by God to preach to the Israelites in the North. Needless to say, the North eventually told him to go back to where you came from.
His name probably means “Yahweh has carried,” from “Amasiah,” or amos-ah. He had no reason to prophesy for money, since he already had an occupation. His only reason, he declared, was because God had summoned him to do so.
“Herdsman” means “sheep-master” and refers to owners and managers of a very special kind of dwarfed sheep that were bred and raised from ancient times in the Near East famous for its wool.
This fictitious account is based on facts gleaned from his book, Amos. Enjoy!
“I had a dream last night,” Amos said to his wife. They were having breakfast at sunrise to watch as the sun lit up the view below. They were at 2800 feet above sea level, right at the point where the cultivated lands ends and the uncultivated land begin that slope down to the Dead Sea.
“Tell me about it,” she asked interested. He rarely talked about his dreams, so this should be interesting. She followed his gaze, since from the Heights of Tekoa the world was spread out before them like a gigantic map. Gilead, Ammon, Moab and Edom to the east, Jerusalem, Samaria and the regions of Damascus and Phoenicia to the north, Beersheba to the south, his own people Jacob, looking so small right below him.
“Go and prophesy to my people Israel,” Amos began.
Miriam interrupted him, “The Lord God spoke to you?” she asked shocked.
“I had a vision,” he quickly added.
“You had a dream, you said,” she corrected.
“Dream, vision,” he shrugged, “What’s the difference?”
“A big difference,” she said. “I had a dream too, thinking I was living in a palace instead of surrounded by sheep.
“Let me finish my dream, and then you can decide,” he said, emphasizing my. “Besides, my love,” emphasizing love, “the Lord God has blessed us through our sheep, with the best wool around where even King Mesha of Moab would be envious.”
“You have to admit,” she reminded him, “planting those sycamores have kept the grass greener through their shade.”
“That is true,” he admitted. “It has been a wonderful pastureland for our sheep.” In a more conciliatory tone, “You suggestion was a double blessing.”
“Your vision,” she teased.
“Go and prophesy to my people Israel,” Amos said with some shock and trembling. “for I am about to send a plague of locust upon Jacob to destroy him.”
Miriam was frightened. “Amos, I am sorry to hear this message from our Lord God! That is frightening! What will you do?”
“I will plead with the Lord God for forgiveness.” He was thinking, “I have been formulating a response.”
Miriam looked at him with fright, “You can’t be quiet, Amos. You have to deliver the message.”
“Yes, Yes, I will my love,” he said. “On the way north, I will deliver my message and ask the Lord God to stop and not carry out his plan.”
“Maybe the Lord God will relent before you get there,” she said hopefully. “Since House of Isaac may refuse to repent, and then what?”
“Pray for pleasant dreams,” Amos could only say.