God

Rafael Cardinal Merry del Val's Litany of Humility

“O Jesus, meek and humble of heart,
Make my heart like yours.
From self-will, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being esteemed, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being loved, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being extolled, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being honored, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being praised, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being preferred to others, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being consulted, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire of being approved, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire to be understood, deliver me, O Lord.
From the desire to be visited, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being humiliated, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being despised, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of suffering rebukes, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being calumniated, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being forgotten, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being ridiculed, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being suspected, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being wronged, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being abandoned, deliver me, O Lord.
From the fear of being refused, deliver me, O Lord.
That others may be loved more than I, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be more esteemed than I, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
That, in the opinion of the world, others may increase and I may decrease, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be chosen and I set aside, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may be praised and I go unnoticed, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
That others may become holier than I, provided that I may become as holy as I should, Lord, grant me the grace to desire it.
At being unknown and poor, Lord, I want to rejoice.
And being deprived of the natural perfections of body and mind, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When people do not think of me, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they assign to me the meanest tasks, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they do not even deign to make use of me, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they never ask my opinion, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When the leave me at the lowest place, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they never compliment me, Lord, I want to rejoice.
When they blame me in season and out of season, Lord, I want to rejoice.
Blessed are those who suffer persecution for justice’ sake,
For theirs in the kingdom of heaven.
”

This Litany is quoted in its entirety in the Introduction to Robert Cardinal Sarah's The Power of Silence. The prayer does not ask that good things never happen; rather, it asks for a different demeanor of heart: to not desire esteem and honor, to not fear humilation and abandonment, to truly desire the blessing of others, to rejoice at being forgotten and put in the lowest places. These are all truly hard things to contemplate.

Prayer for the sick and suffering, Good Friday, 2015

Hear us, Good Lord, as we pray for those who are sick, for those who suffer spiritual, emotional, and mental anguish, for those buckling under the burdens of their lives.

These are people we have heard of. These are people that we know. We ourselves are in the midst of affliction.

You have not promised us simple, carefree lives, nor have you sworn that we should be comfortable all of our days.

But you have given us your Spirit, and have joined us to your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, who was perfected in suffering, and whose infirmity and weakness became the salvation of the world.

So if we are joined to his suffering, Good Father, then help us to suffer as he did: willingly for the joy that was set before him.

This joy does not come naturally; despair and illness wear us down. Our faith falters in the weakness of our bodies and minds and circumstances. We ask why you have forsaken us and we no longer expect you to answer.

But joy is a gift and a fruit of your own Spirit, the Spirit who Jesus knew would raise him from the dead.

For those to whom the future looks formless and void, a great fearful blankness, we ask you to give them faith, to trust you for that same joy that the Lord had even in Gethsemane.

Show us your faithfulness. Teach us what joy is, that we would know it when it arrives. Write your words on that great blankness, and compel us to believe you, Good Lord of all comfort, who knows our suffering and has promised not to forsake us or abandon us.

Hear us as we pray for those who are sick and who suffer now.

Gracious God, the comfort of all who sorrow, the strength of all who suffer: Let the cry of those in misery and need come to you Who was despised and forsaken of men, a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, that they may find your mercy present with them in all their afflictions; and give us, we pray, the strength to serve them for the sake of Him who suffered for us, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

another white guy blogging about racism

I worked for years as a land surveyor in the Pacific Northwest, and so had to read a lot of deeds and real estate covenants and so forth. While the Northwest never had segregated bathrooms or the like, it doesn’t take long to run into a CC&R document—covenants, conditions, and restrictions on the use of a parcel of land—stipulating that the property in question never be sold to non-whites. Sometimes the document would simply say non-whites; sometimes it would get real specific (one enumerated every Asian race the document writer could think of); sometimes they employed poetic repetition to get the point across (no Negroes, Blacks, or Niggers). You can find such documents written as recently as the 1950’s and even, so I’ve heard, the 1960’s. A history professor I know tells me of reams of similar documents he’s seen from the Seattle-Tacoma area.

This kind of racism, institutionalized in real estate documents—in the Pacific Northwest. It was common throughout the northern tiers of the U.S. My father-in-law grew up in Chicago, and first saw segregated bathrooms on a road trip down South with his father. He was appalled and told his father. His father shook his head and said, “At least they have bathrooms down here. That’s because everyone’s mixed in down here. Up in Chicago, they just keep them separated, and they don’t give them anything." This dynamic was at play when men like Robert Moses demolished neighborhoods and communities in New York City (my boyhood home) to make way for expressways that created hellholes like the South Bronx. Keeping blacks out of certain neighborhoods forced them into others in a systemic, deliberate way.

So, of course black-on-black crime constitutes the majority of black murders, rapes, assaults, and robberies. We’ve worked diligently for decades to shove them together into the same neighborhoods away from the rest of us. When someone in the conservative circles I frequent trots out the black-on-black adages (and dammit, there’s been a lot of that lately), it reminds me of when I hear someone go on about Martin Luther King Jr’s. theological liberalism: How can we hold that against him when none of the conservative seminaries would admit him because of his skin color?

I think we in our circles use the sad epidemics of black fatherlessness, crime, and social breakdown as comforting bromides when something like Ferguson happens. "The issue isn’t white cops shooting black men, it’s black-on-black crime." Or "I saw a black guy on Fox News who got an education and decries the rioting. Why can’t these other guys get an education?" Or, "The only solution here is the gospel to deal with the individual sins of gang-bangers and deadbeat fathers." 

Statements like these comfort us because they fit neatly into a story where the sin of institutional, systemic racism doesn’t exist, and so doesn’t have to be confronted. We decry the sins of gang-bangers and deadbeat dads because those don’t implicate us. 

I say none of this in support of nebulous charges of white guilt or privilege or whatever the liberals' sin du jour is. Decrying vague, undefined sins—and accusing people of committing them—is, at best, demonic. What I’ve said here may tread perilously close to that in some people’s minds. So let me be clear: Toby Sumpter nails it when he writes that, ”…systemic issues… should be the kind of issues that can be named, defined, and repented of. The devil loves vague guilt, vague accusations, vague condemnation because then you can never be sure you’ve actually repented, actually been forgiven, actually been reconciled.“

I just don’t think we’re in any position to bring the gospel to bear without acknowledging that Ferguson is the latest, most prominent expression of a social evil, deeply embedded in this nation, that is an offense to God and his creation. It would therefore be worthwhile for the church to start naming these sins (and I believe them to be name-able), to develop the vocabulary necessary to protest them, and to articulate what repentance looks like.

For just as culturally- and judicially-sanctioned abortion denies the imago dei of murdered children, so, too, do malignant stipulations in a real estate deed deny the imago dei of whole swaths of humanity.

Thus says Yahweh:

“A voice was heard in Ramah,
Lamentation and bitter weeping,
Rachel weeping for her children,
Refusing to be comforted for her children,
Because they are no more.”

Thus says Yahweh:

“Refrain your voice from weeping,
And your eyes from tears;
For your work shall be rewarded, says Yahweh,
And they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
There is hope in your future, says Yahweh,
That your children shall come back to their own border.

“One thing have I desired of Yahweh,” sings David, “That I may dwell in the house of Yahweh all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of Yahweh, and to inquire in his temple.”

Sounds like three things to me. Then again, this is the Bible we’re talking about, and it has a way of doing things with ones and threes.

David wants to dwell in the house of Yahweh; houses are built by fathers for sons.

David wants to behold the beauty of Yahweh; John later writes to us of what we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon.

David wants to inquire in his temple; the Spirit searches all things, the deep things of God.

One thing, and three things, David wants of Yahweh, all of which are God himself.

The Moral of Pierre by one Timothy Burke →

I’m not sure who Timothy Burke is or where exactly he’s coming from, but this is a superb piece on how neoliberal societies try to get people to change:

“If you want an explanation of the meanness of 21st Century American public discourse, for the fractures in the body politic, this will do as a starting place. “Get that guy to wear his helmet, because otherwise he’s going to cost you money.” “Get that woman to lose weight, because otherwise she’s going to cost you money.” “Hassle that couple because their kid plays too many video games and might slightly underperform in school and not make the contribution to net productivity that we are expecting of him.”

Questions concerning how people treat one another, I believe, are ultimately theological. Whatever we think people are will determine what we think the problems are and why we must solve them. If we think of people primarily as gobs of material or units of economic activity, then we’ll get diagnoses like the above-quoted. 

But what would happen if we acknowledged man as the image of God, as capable having his humanity completed and fulfilled in Christ, brought into the fellowship of the Trinity, and finally able to live at peace with himself and his neighbor? 

The Lord’s Prayer from Rachmaninov’s world-stopping Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, performed by the Cambridge King’s College Choir.

The Dying of thirst passage of this song is astonishing. Even more astounding is how important the skit at the end is to the song—and to the entire record. How is it that a blockbuster rap record climaxes with a baptism scene and the words, “Remember this day, the start of your new life, your real life…”?

good kid, m.A.A.d city might be my favorite record of the year.