Do Earthquakes Like Japan's Suggest the End of the World?

Matthew's Gospel reads:

As he sat on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the close of the age?”  And Jesus answered them, “Take heed that no one leads you astray.  For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.  And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth-pangs. (Matt. 24:3-8)

The common interpretation is that Jesus was giving us signs to look for as harbingers of the end of the world. I don’t think that this is correct.

For one, it would be very inconsistent with His firm, explicit instructions from the same discourse not to worry about or to look for when the end is coming. In fact, in this quoted passage, He actually seems to be cautioning His listeners that reading into these kinds of events can lead one astray.

However, another interpretation of His words exists which is consistent with these messages, namely, one could understand the passage such that Jesus is telling His disciples precisely that these kinds of events are not signs of the end. Remember, He is speaking here to a group of mainly Jews living in an age and with a theological outlook wherein every negative event was taken as a sign of God’s anger. These are the people who asked Jesus whose sin was responsible for a man’s blindness, and who assumed that the fall of the tower in Siloam was yet another punishment. Moreover, He knows that within a generation the terrible disasters of Nero and the destruction of the Temple were to come. It is this people to whom He’s trying to give His message not to see the end of the world behind every falling rock or crashing tower and so be led astray.

Thus, it seems probable to me that His message was, rather than that the terrible events He lists are signs of the end, that they are just simply everyday events which will happen time and time again as the years carry on. “Over the thousands of years until my return,” He says in a sense, “there will be many earthquakes, wars, and famines. These are normal. They don’t mean the end is near.”

And indeed history has been filled with wars, famines, earthquakes, hurricanes, and other such events, and there will be more in the future. I have seen claims there more occurring now than in the past. I don't have the data to evaluate that claim, but if it is true, so what? Geology and climatology are defined by long cycles of increased and decreased activity. If we are in a cycle of increased activity, all the more reason to pray and be vigilant that we may be ready when Christ calls us by name and demands of us an accounting – but no reason to read in these things that the end is near. I dare say Christ told us not to.

Should You Give Up Facebook for Lent?

With ash wednesday just a day away many are finalizing plans for their Lenten sacrifices. The past few years Facebook has become a popular object of these sacrifices. This can certainly be a good idea, Facebook so  often being a distraction from God and from the productive, meaningful, spiritual lives that He calls us to.

At the same time, Facebook is a very easy, convenient option for our Lenten sacrifice - perhaps too easy. To be sure, for many a break from Facebook would lead them closer to our Lord, not to mention all of the "real life" people that He's put into their lives. Yet for others, Facebook is an important means by which they come closer to God and maintain their spiritual lives.

Of course, the easy example of this is that person who does not have very many, if any, spiritual friends to see in his or her day to day life. Such people may in fact get all the Christian fellowship that they do via Facebook friends who may either live too far away or simply not have the opportunity to get together very frequently. Of course, a laudable Lenten effort in such a case might be to try to see one another more frequently. This is a great idea! Yet as Christians we can never let the perfect be the enemy of the good (indeed, the good is an incomplete or particular manifestation of the perfect), and so giving up Facebook with such an approach in mind must be considered prayerfully and carefully.

Yet not everybody who derives spiritual benefit from Facebook does so simply because of a lack of good Christian friends in the being around. How many times have you found a good article on a Facebook link? How many times has an inspiring quotation on Facebook set your spiritual life on the right path a given day? How many times has seeing posts from your spiritual friends prompted you to live life for God that day - when perhaps otherwise you may not have thought of Him? How many prayer requests have you made, and responded to, on Facebook?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to encourage you not to sacrifice Facebook if that is something which will genuinely benefit you spiritually. By all means, if that's the case then case do it! What I am trying to do is to encourage you to make a careful consideration of the spiritual positives and negatives that Facebook affects in your life and prayerfully discern weather it would be a legitimate Lenten sacrifice for you, or simply an option that is easy to sign on to.

It's just like the old giving up chocolate for Lent: everybody seems to make this sacrifice, but in reality it's really only meaningful to a some. I myself, for example, would really not benefit from giving up chocolate or candy for Lent, yet in trying to figure out what sacrifice I should make its just right there and seems like such a common thing to do.  That must mean it's a good thing to do, right?

As people of Christ, we're always very rightly concerned with not giving in to the trends of the world, but we also need to be concerned with guarding ourselves against theological or spiritual trends. Such trends may concern themselves with things which are objectively good, such as abstaining from meat or chocolate or some other thing, but as trends, they don't take in to account our particular souls and our particular spiritual needs. The place I'm at and the needs of my soul maybe very different from where you are at and what you need.  Indeed for some, it may be that giving up Facebook or chocolate or any particular thing may be an "easy out" compared to some other sacrifice which would be a genuinely challenging and enlivening effort to make. 

This is why the Church presents to us both the universal truths - the doctrines and dogmas - as well as the diverse array of different spiritualities as shown to us by the saints. It's why She gives us the Catechism while still encouraging us to get individual spiritual directors. The truth, of course, does not change and so can be presented in black and white in a Catechism. However, Grace builds upon nature, and each of our natures is going to be a little different.

So I encourage you to consider just what you need this Lent, and in particular just what God is calling you to - not by trend, but by name - and then follow Him with generosity.

Did Thomas Aquinas teach that women were just defective men created solely for reproduction?

A question came to me recently from some friends who were reading Women, Sex, and the Church, a collection of essays treating various Catholic teachings on sex and marriage as they relate to women.  In one of the essays, a woman categorized as a "dissident theologian" is quoted, wherein she asserts that St. Thomas Aquinas, the great Universal Doctor of the Church, taught that women A) are merely "defective" and "misbegotten" men who B) God only created so that there would be someone to carry babies during their 9 months of gestation.  The question, of course, is just what St. Thomas taught on this subject?

The first step in considering this question is to locate the reference to which this theologian is referring.  This does not prove difficult, the passage in question being located right where one would expect it to be in the first part of Aquinas' monumental Summa Theologica in his treatise on man.  Specifically, the issue comes up in article 1 of question 92 of the first part.  Here, Aquinas is answering the question of whether or not woman should have been created in the beginning at the same time as man.  He responds that yes, she should have been.  Let us look at the particular texts in question.  

The first comes from the article's first objection and it's response:

Objection 1. It would seem that the woman should not have been made in the first production of things. For the Philosopher says (De Gener. ii, 3), that "the female is a misbegotten male." But nothing misbegotten or defective should have been in the first production of things. Therefore woman should not have been made at that first production.  

Reply to Objection 1. As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence; such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2). On the other hand, as regards human nature in general, woman is not misbegotten, but is included in nature's intentionas directed to the work of generation. Now the general intention of nature depends on God, Who is the universal Author of nature. Therefore, in producing nature, God formed not only the male but also the female.

We do see the "defective and misbegotten" text in question here.  It is first introduced as a quote from Aristotle to support the idea that woman should not have been created.  Aristotle, the objection asserts, declared that woman is simply a misbegotten man, and so she should not have been created in the first place, since nothing that is defective ought to have been created in the beginning, when all was perfect.  In brief, Aquinas' reply is that woman is only misbegotten in her individual nature but not in her universal nature, and so it would have been fine for her to have been created at the beginning by virtue of her universal nature.

However, the soundness of Aquinas' reply is not at issue here.  Rather, it is the question of woman being "misbegotten."  Specifically, we now see, it is the issue of her being misbegotten in her individual nature.  What exactly does this mean?  Fortunately, St. Thomas provides an explanation of why a woman is said to be misbegotten.  The male seed, he says, produces a perfect male likeness, and therefore he reasons that the production of a woman entails some kind of defect.  Aquinas then bases the rest of his response on this fact.  This is important because the "fact" is in error: the male seed does not produce a perfect male likeness.  It can produce either a male or a female, because sperm can contain either an X chromosome - leading to a female child - or a Y chromosome - leading to a male.  Of course we know this now, but in Aquinas' day (and Aristotle's, for that matter) this was not understood.  

It helps to try to look at things from the perspective of people of Aquinas' day.  They knew a little bit about the biology of reproduction, but not very much.  The microscope had not even been invented, and the theory of chromosomes was still nearly 700 years away.  What these people did know was that children developed in women after men deposited their "seed" during intercourse.  Women were thus understood as being responsible for giving a child it's body (as it grew and developed, taking what material it needed from her own) while the role of males was to give the initial seed.  What this seed was, exactly, nobody really knew.  The philosophers considered that it was the form of the child - the "plan" that directed how the material from the mother should be organized.  Whereas a blueprint indicates how girders, wood, and so forth are to be arranged to create the intended building, the man's seed would indicate how the the woman's biological material was to be arranged to form a child.

In any case, one element of their reasoning was a fairly fundamental principle which we follow even today: you can't give what you don't have.  To us, it means that a person who wants to teach must first learn, that a person who wants to bring peace to friends must first gain personal peace, and other similar platitudes along with more basic things like the simple fact that I can't give you $100 when I only have $50 in my pocket.  To the people of Aquinas' time, it made sense that a male could only give maleness.  Therefore, a father's seed could only give the "blueprint" to make another male.  Think about it.  It has been obvious even since the first human beings that we get our "form" from our parents: we look like them!  It's easy to see, then, how people could reason that when a father gives his seed he is giving that "blueprint" that made him.  

What all of this means for the "biology" behind Aquinas' reasoning is that men didn't have the capability of giving the form of a woman in their seed.  Therefore, a woman would have to come about by some defect in the form that a mother did receive.  Further helping us see just how strongly an erroneous understanding of biology influenced Aquinas, he goes on to list what were at the time considered some possible causes of this defect, even including a 'moist wind!'  The individual nature of a woman, he therefore says, is misbegotten.  In other words, in and of herself (individually), a woman is not the result of the perfect transmission of a father's seed.  

Now, we could simply end matters here recognizing that working with a more accurate concept of reproductive biology, Aquinas would have had an entirely different answer.  Were we do to so, however, we would miss something very important about Aquinas' point.  To see exactly what, we need to follow his reasoning through even from his faulty foundation, for next he goes on to address how woman, in her general human nature, is not misbegotten.  Nature, he points out, requires both men and women.  In other words, humanity by its very nature is made up of men and women.  There must be both, or there would be neither - for nobody would ever be conceived.  Now this is from a purely natural standpoint, even apart from considering God's role in things.  It is only at the very end that Aquinas brings God into things, pointing out that God directs nature and so God of course determined that humanity would consist of men and women.  In no uncertain terms, he says that God always intended that there be women.  

Further, we can see from other places in his writings that St. Thomas did not consider women to be of lower value, worth, or dignity than men.  For example, he teaches that the highest act a creature can perform is the intellective contemplation of God (in layman's terms, a way of defining Heaven) which women can of course also participate in.  In his reply to objection 1 in the 4th article of question 93, he rejects the idea that the image of God is not found in women and teaches that both men and women possess and intellectual nature, which he says is the image of God.  Other examples could be cited.  

It is important then to consider just how St. Thomas understands women to be defective or misbegotten men.  He does not mean it as we might use the terms to describe a defective CD player, for example.  Should I go to the store and purchase a CD player with as a broken motor, it would be defective in and of itself insofar as it would not work.  Understood in this way, a defective male would be an impotent man, or a man who had some other problem, but a male who, like the CD player, did not "work."  On the other hand, consider the chocolate chip cookie.  As the story goes, Ruth Wakefield was one day baking chocolate cookies only to discover she did not have the proper ingredients.  Substituting semi-sweet chocolate chips, she unexpectedly created what is today the most popular cookie of them all.  The chocolate cookie, while having a value and worth all its own, was a defective or "misbegotten" chocolate cookie.

The key point this analogy seeks to illustrate is that the "defect" of the woman is not a defect in the sense of a valuelessness, a badness, a brokenness, or even necessarily an inferiority.  Rather, it is a difference from what was originally intended (by the seed): a defect from the male seed's expected ultimate end.  Ironically, we can see a parallel in the way prenatal development really does function: it is generally accepted that everybody begins as a female until the Y chromosome starts to trigger the proper physiological changes to produce a male, and so in a similar sense to Aquinas' ancient one, all men are in a sense "misbegotten" women.  God, of course, intends that souls He intends to be women be women and those He intends to be men be men, and this is an even more important point.  Aquinas' conception of the defect here is purely a material, biological one (and, of course, one based on faulty biology in the first place).  However, he firmly insists (over and over in the course of other questions, in fact) that God's intent is that women be conceived.  In St. Thomas' eyes, then, God does something akin to altering nature itself so as to bring women about.

The second issue - whether or not Aquinas taught that women were made only for the purposes of bearing children - is an easier one to tackle.  The theologian is referring to the main portion of Aquinas answer in the question we have been considering.  He writes:

It was necessary for woman to be made, as the Scripture says, as a "helper" to man; not, indeed, as a helpmate in otherworks, as some say, since man can be more efficiently helped by another man in other works; but as a helper in the work of generation.

It is only necessary to note three brief points.  

First, Aquinas' primary meaning here is, again, natural and not supernatural.  Just as in discussing misbegotten and defectiveness he was thinking in terms of the natural order of things (that is, as regards how women come about according to nature rather than to God), here he is also speaking primarily about women's natural purpose.  He goes on to illustrate his point by considering the ways that plants and animals reproduce.  Some plants, he says, reproduce on their own without the need for others.  Plants, however, are not very high creatures and their sole purpose for existence is to make more plants, and so always have the entirety of their reproductive abilities contained within themselves.  Animals, however, have other purposes, and humans above all have that highest of purposes: contemplating God.  Given this, he says that man should be separated from reproduction so as that he only exists as a reproductive entity during certain times - namely, intercourse  In other words, it's important that human beings aren't in a constant state of reproduction (like some plants) so as to most befit creatures whose ultimate purpose is in the spiritual.  Given this,  mankind's reproductive function is split up amongst different people, and so, he says, nature demands that women exist to take on part of the reproductive function.  For this reason, when considering how woman is a helper for man, he ties it very particularly to reproduction. 

Second, in other places he explicitly states that women have purposes apart from reproduction.  For example, in the very next article he writes, "Thirdly, because, as the Philosopher says (Ethic. viii, 12), the human male and female are united, not only for generation, as with other animals, but also for the purpose of domestic life, in which each has his or her particular duty..."

Third, as has been pointed out already, St. Thomas teaches how God made humanity, in His image and likeness, as man and woman.  Women, he says, have the image of God in them just as do men, and they are able to practice that highest intellective contemplation of God just as are men.  This is a particularly important point, for it is discussed in his treatment of the end of man's origin.  In other words, he teaches these matters as part of a discussion about why God made man in the first place.  Thus, it is very clear that Aquinas considered women to have been created in the Image of God to receive His happiness just as were men.   

St. Thomas was not perfect - though he was close.  On some issues (perhaps most famously the Immaculate Conception) he came to erroneous conclusions because of limitations in the understanding of scientific issues in his day.  The case we have examined here is one such instance.  One ought always to turn to the official teaching of the Church when seeking certainty on a given matter, for it is that teaching which is Divinely guarded and protected from error by Lord.  However, when seeking to understand this teaching better, the reasons for this teaching, or its deeper working, St. Thomas is the first source to which to turn.  Not only did he write about virtually everything, but his is the official theology of the Church - the official "way of understanding" things, as set forth by the popes.  His Summa Theologica was even placed on the altar at the council of Trent alongside the Bible!  A valuable source indeed!

The Meaning of Christian Priesthood

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and God created man in His own image, and God saw everything He had made, and behold, it was very good.  Yet in spite of such glorious and auspicious beginnings, man could not carry on more than a brief moment before the terrible ignominy of sin had torn asunder his relationship with the loving Creator to whom he owed his very being.  Since that time, the life of every human being has been driven by the great, often misunderstood longing to cross the threshold that sin has wrought and return to the loving embrace of Our Father.  The means to this reconciliation, somehow revealed by God to those first transgressors, has been handed down since the time of Cain and Abel, and so all men everywhere have always known that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. Thus has the priest always been the constant fixture in all cultures, punctuating every period of human history.  He – or in those places where men had exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images, she – has, in every place stood daily at service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins, until, in the fullness of time, God sent forth His Son to become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.

Therein lies the distinctiveness, the dignity, and the importance of the priesthood of Christ, which is the priesthood of the Church of God.  Men have sought since time immemorial to turn to God, and have employed the services of the priest for just as long.  However, only when God Himself became a priest in the person of Jesus Christ could such a ministry achieve its intended end.  Jesus Christ is our high priest, and He now continues His ministry through the hands of those men whom He calls to serve in His person at His Altar.  While Christ serves in the Holy of Holies of Heaven, the men of the ordained priesthood perpetuate His ministry on earth, making present to the people of God His one, eternal offering to the Father.  They serve not as priests in their own right, but by participating mystically in His one eternal priesthood, and as such, a true appreciation, and any real understanding at all, of the ordained priesthood can only be found in an appreciation and understanding of Christ Himself.

Inception Review - 3 Stars our of 5

Inception is director Christopher Nolan’s latest big budget summer blockbuster, following on the heels of what is widely regarded as one of the best films of the past several years in his The Dark Knight.  In that case Nolan went to work on a previously existing property, but Inception has been regarded as an original, albeit inspired work.  While this is not entirely true (the main idea of the film is taken almost wholesale from Star Trek Deep Space 9’s 1999 episode Extreme Measures), as a whole it’s fair to say that Nolan has put together a concept that hasn’t yet been given the opportunity to tickle the main stream public’s minds.

This concept can perhaps best be described as a cross between Ocean’s 11 and The Matrix, a sci-fi caper film about an all-star team of dream-thieves trying to pull off an unthinkably large job.  Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is, by his own claim, the best extractor around, which means that he’s really good at infiltrating people’s dreams to “extract” information from their minds.  The film gives the impression that this is normally done on the payroll of large corporations trying to gain a competitive edge, and owing to some initially unexplained legal problems, living abroad and performing these kinds of jobs is the only thing Cobb can do at this point in his life.  When powerful energy tycoon Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers to take care of his problems so he can return home to finally see his children again, Cobb agrees to undertake what all of the other extraction experts repeatedly tell him is impossible: planting an idea in someone’s mind (technically termed “inception.”)

So is the setup, and so begins an Ocean’s 11 style round of team building and heist (or in this case, anti-heist?) plotting.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt of Third Rock from the Sun fame is already onboard as Arthur, Cobb’s sidekick and details-man.  Added to the crew are Tom Hardy, who absolutely shines as Eames, a type of in-dream disguise expert, and Dileep Rao, who puts on a very enjoyable performance as the chemist Yusuf, who must create a sedative strong enough to keep the victim (Cillian Murphy as energy-monopoly heir Robert Fischer Jr.) under while the team attempts to incept his mind.  This leaves one critical role open, one which would in the past have been filled by Cobb himself if some heavily-guarded personal issues didn’t prevent him.  Instead, fresh young grad student Ariadne (Ellen Page) is recruited to design the landscape of the dreams they’ll use to pull a fast one on Mr. Fischer.

And herein lays both Inception’s greatest asset and at least one of its greatest stumbling blocks: to accomplish their task, Cobb and his allies will have to enter into layer after layer of dreams, dreams within dreams, so as to plant the idea deep in Fischer’s mind and make it seem to develop on its own.  This is a fantastic concept, and one which is the foundation of a very exciting and intriguing second half from Nolan.  At one point, there are as many as 4 different simultaneous action sequences taking place, each a dream contained within another dream and influenced by what’s going on in the next one up the chain.  It’s not only thrilling, but it’s also tremendously coherent, which so often the critical, missing element that ruins films attempting to be so intricate.  In fact, Nolan has here put together an altogether coherent work, with even the most intense action appearing on screen in an understandable way (a major problem in some of his previous work, for example the almost unintelligible combat scenes in Batman Begins).

Unfortunately, where this weave of narratives hits in excitement and lucidity, it misses in continuity and consistency.  As the story moves along and our heroes enter into deeper layers of dreams, things inevitably don’t go as planned, which is of course the kind of conflict that plots are made of.  The problem is that over and over again what is at one moment an improvisation to deal with the change of circumstances is in the next scene and from then on foreword treated as though it were a part of the scheme in the first place.  It’s difficult to explain exactly why this is so damaging to the story without giving away spoilers, but suffice it to say it has the end result of taking any real importance away from the dramatic conflict that is supposed to be driving the story.  The conflict never builds; it just remains flat, with many details being introduced at various points in the story to introduce tension which ultimately prove not to be of any consequence when the time comes at which they should make things more difficult.

This may not be such a problem were it not for two things.  First, Inception isn’t meant to be in the mold of other summer blockbusters, where the audience is offered some fantastic visuals and exciting action in exchange for turning off their brains for a few hours.  Fantastic visuals and exciting action Inception does offer, with almost perfectly pulled off effects and plenty of good chases, fights, and race-against-the-clock moments.  However, it’s also meant to be a thinking-man’s film, asking us to pay attention and to try to figure it all out.  This is refreshing.  Unfortunately, spending any time thinking about it rapidly leads one to see these inconsistencies.  Second, the layered dream-within-a-dream second half is really all the film has to offer.  The first hour is a slow moving, predictable collection of bad plot conventions.  It’s also far too expositional, with Page’s newcomer character asking all the right questions to set up long explanations of how dream-sharing works.  Good films show while bad ones explain, and there’s an awful lot of explaining in the first half of Inception.

All that said, Inception was an enjoyable ride, once it got going.  It kept my mind engaged, and as it neared the end I found myself more and more approaching the edge of my seat.  I’d certainly recommend it to anyone looking for an exciting couple of hours to spend at the movie-house, and it will give most people at least some interesting thoughts to dwell on as they walk into the lobby.  I was very open to the possibility of this being a great film, and in some ways it does deliver.  Unfortunately, its problems won’t let it be anything more than average – not great, terrible.  Perhaps the greatest drawback is one which, ironically, the film points out itself.  “Everybody needs a catharsis,” Cobb says at one point.  Ultimately, Inception just never gives us one.

(If you'd like some examples of the consistency problems I mentioned, click the link below.  Warning: Spoliers)

Our Lady of Mount Carmel and Her Universal Call

Today we celebrate Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who is a very big deal to me.  She is my favorite expression of the Blessed Mother, and I have at many times in my life recognized a very special call from her.

As particular as this may be to myself, the fact is that as Our Lady of Mount Carmel, our mother has a very special call to all of us.  Of course, she is the patroness of the Carmelite order, but she's much more than that.  There is a universal quality to her message. The most obvious evidence of this may be that the Brown Scapular, which is of course a gift of hers, is one of the most popular devotions in the Church.  All kinds of people from all kinds of spiritual backgrounds go about their days with the Scapular draped over their torsos.

Less well known, but perhaps more intriguing, is that Mary has chosen to invoke Mount Carmel in some of the other prominent messages she has given to the world.  It was on July 16th, the feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, that Mary made her final appearance at Lourdes.  When she made her final appearance to the three children of Fatima, Mary appeared as Our Lady of Mount Carmel.  It would appear that the message of Mount Carmel is one that the Virgin wants to leave us with.  What, then, is this message?

I can do no better than to quote, via Wikipedia, Fr. Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalene de' Pazzi, OCD, in saying that she offers us:

a special call to the interior life, which is preeminently a Marian life. Our Lady wants us to resemble her not only in our outward vesture but, far more, in heart and spirit. If we gaze into Mary's soul, we shall see that grace in her has flowered into a spiritual life of incalcuable wealth: a life of recollection, prayer, uninterrupted oblation to God, continual contact, and intimate union with him. Mary's soul is a sanctuary reserved for God alone, where no human creature has ever left its trace, where love and zeal for the glory of God and the salvation of mankind reign supreme. [...] Those who want to live their devotion to Our Lady of Mt. Carmel to the full must follow Mary into the depths of her interior life. Carmel is the symbol of the contemplative life, the life wholly dedicated to the quest for God, wholly orientated towards intimacy with God; and the one who has best realized this highest of ideals is Our Lady herself, 'Queen and Splendor of Carmel'."

This coming Sunday, we will hear the Gospel reading of Mary and Martha.  Upon receiving a visit from Jesus, Mary (not the Virgin Mary) sits at His feet and listens to Him, while Martha runs about trying to prepare her house for Him, to feed Him, to clean up, to serve Him.  As we know, Christ concludes this story by explaining that Mary had chosen better.  This is one of the most important Scriptural texts about the importance of prayer, and it is precisely this message that Our Lady of Mount Carmel gives us: listen to Jesus.

Interior prayer is that "one thing necessary" that Christ speaks to Martha about.  This does not of course exclude action, for Christ in fact commands action, but all of our action must stem from this life of interior prayer.  So many people want to serve Our Lord, and this is so laudable a choice.  Especially in this day and age, it is in many ways a heroic choice simply to serve the Lord.  However, so few people actually take the time to listen to Him so that they might actually know what He wishes them to do!  I cannot claim to be at all innocent of this.  I, like many, go about making great efforts to serve the Lord while in reality doing nothing more than what I assume He would want.  Ultimately, we are only asserting our own wills as the Lord's when we do this.

If we wish truly to serve the Lord and to do His will, then we must commit ourselves to a deep life of interior prayer.  For some, this is a call to enter into the interior life in a radical way, by joining a contemplative order or even perhaps ultimately entering the eremitical life.  For most of us, it means - at first - simply taking the time out of our days to engage in silent prayer for some period of time.  (Do not fear silent prayer - it is not at all complicated or difficult.  As a convert, I was very intimidated by the idea of mental prayer as it seemed like such a nebulous concept and I didn't quite know anything about it.  I will shortly post an explanation of how to get started with it for those who may feel the same way!)

Later, this should blossom into the great gift of recognizing one's living in the presence of God at all times.  This can sound frightening, challenging, necessitating greater sanctity than one feels he possesses, or even as though its "going overboard," but it is none of these things.  Each of these objections can be answered simply by pointing out that the Lord is everywhere and everything.  If God is what awaits us when we end this life and Heaven truly is the final goal of all people, how can it be suggested that living in constant relationship with Him now is somehow overzealous?  Those who do not wish to have God a part of every moment of their lives now will have a very difficult time when they find that He is all that there is in the life to come! Beyond that, if God is everywhere, then what difficulty can there be in allowing Him to be a part of each moment of our lives?

Fear not, for this goal is not one that is beyond you.  To live in His presence at all times simply means to recognize what is already a reality.  We do not need to bring God into our lives at every point, but rather simply open ourselves to seeing Him where He already is.  Once we begin to realize this it is and incredibly natural experience to live one's interior life at all times, turning to the Lord in our hearts for each and every moment and decision and letting Him direct every action.  It is well within our grasps, for this Our Lord calls us to and He grants willingly us by His abundant Grace - and of course! - we have Our Lady's constant loving  help at our sides.

Do You Understand the Good Samaritan?

The parable of the good Samaritan is quite possibly the most well known of all Jesus' parables, the only other likely to challenge it in notoriety being of course the parable of the prodigal son.  So ubiquitous is this parable that the phrase "good Samaritan" has come to stand on its own as universally recognized part of the English language.

It came as a great surprise to me, then, when upon listening to the parable during this past Sunday's Liturgy I realized that I did not actually understand the parable!  Of course, as I walked into the church to prepare for Mass I certainly thought I understood it - even recognizing that in all of the Scriptures there are depths of meaning in it that I have yet to reap.  It seems like a rather straightforward parable, doesn't it?  Having been told that he must love his neighbor, a lawyer asks Jesus whom his neighbor is, which the Lord answers with His tale of the good Samaritan teaching that our neighbors whom we should love are the poor, the suffering, the needy, and by extension, everybody.

There's only one problem: the wounded, dying man isn't the neighbor in this parable: the Samaritan is.

It was this thought that occurred to me as I listened to the Gospel being read and which at first led me to some degree of confusion.  Jesus concludes the parable by getting His questioner to recognize that it was the Samaritan who was the neighbor of the dying, penniless man on the side of the road.  I had always understood Jesus' message to be that the dying man who was in need of help was the neighbor, people like whom we as His disciples were called to love.  From the conversations I have had with others, this seems to be how most folks interpret this Gospel at first hearing.

The realization that the Samaritan is identified as the neighbor the lawyer asked about leads to a variety of new questions.  Most significantly, it seems as though Jesus is teaching that our neighbors - those we are called to love - are those who do good to us, those who help us and show mercy to us.  The message of the parable is, after all, that the priest and Levite (whose indifference Jesus juxtaposes with the Samaritan's compassionate help) are not neighbors.  Should then we only love as ourselves those who do good to us, and not those who do not?  Following upon this, what do we make of Jesus' instruction to the lawyer to "go and do likewise?"  In fact, it is by considering this instruction that we can come to understand the greater depth of what Jesus is in fact teaching here.

First, we need to consider what exactly Jesus was telling this lawyer to do.  The instruction comes in response to the man's statement that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy," that is, the Samaritan.  Christ then says that he must imitate the Samaritan.  Here we find an important aspect to this parable that has been lost to history: Jews and Samaritans at this time held bitter hatred for one another, similar - if not even in greater measure - to the hatred that currently exists between Jews and Muslims.  So strong was it that this man could not even utter the answer "the Samaritan," but had rather to convolutely admit that the neighbor was "the one who showed mercy" That this Jewish man would be asked to imitate a Samaritan would have been both shocking to him and a very difficult pill to swallow.

In fact, this hatred is at the very heart of the lawyer's question.  Christ's teaching to "love thy neighbor as thyself" was actually not a new teaching.  It was found in the book of Leviticus, which in the 18th verse of the 19th chapter commands that "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."  The understanding of this existed was that one's fellow Jew was one's neighbor.  That the man asked who his neighbor was "to justify himself" indicates that he asked Jesus this so that the Lord might affirm him in his practice.  Jesus offers the parable so as to help the man see that all people - even a Samaritan - should be loved.  Rather than simply saying as much and being swiftly rejected, He presents the story of the compassionate Samaritan so as to appeal to this man's sense of decency and compassion.  

On this note, it's secondly important to consider that Christ actually changes the lawyer's question around on him.  He had asked who he should love, and while Christ in a roundabout way gives him the hard answer that he should love all people - even Samaritans - His more direct answer teaches who it is that loves.  The man wanted to know who his neighbor was, but Christ taught him that it is more important that he himself should be a neighbor.  The Greek text of Jesus' question actually carries the sense of "who became the neighbor" of the dying man? This lawyer - and all of us - are called to become neighbors to those around us, whether they love us or not.

Yes, then we are called to love all people, not only those who do good to us as did the Samaritan to the victim on the road.  My initial confusion emphasizes the very purpose of Jesus' parable and His decision to answer the lawyer in the way He did.  I, like the lawyer, should be less concerned with who to love than simply with loving.  We need not worry who our neighbors are, but rather, we should worry about how to be neighbors.

Sometimes, our focus is misdirected so that we do not even ask the right question.  Christ, in His Wisdom, often chooses not to answer our misplaced questions but rather to give us the answer to the questions that we should be asking!