Posted in category "Seasons of the Spirit"

Christ became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.

Posted by Christine Nusse on Apr 1, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

I find it very difficult to “blog” the Holy Week!
On one end, a joyful crowd is ready to make Christ king, and few days later, an angry one, the same, or perhaps another, is screaming “crucify him”. The Holy Week indeed runs the gamut of emotions. How was Jesus able to handle it? First the high of the entry in Jerusalem, then the intimacy of a festive meal with his friends, but only a few hours later the betrayal of Judas, the denial by Peter, the abandonment by all, even his God. Only the women followed “who mourned and lamented him.”
How did Jesus live this last week of his life? What were his emotions, his feelings? What did he think? Did he have any hope left?
I am going to go back to the four gospels and read each one of the Passion accounts beginning with the Passover meal and I will highlight all the places where we are given even a hint of Jesus’ emotions and feelings. That should give me some clues to what Paul wrote about Jesus being obedient to the point of death. Obedient to what? Why? How?
I don’t believe in the blood of the cross being what redeems us from our sins. I don’t believe in that sort of redemption. Redeem to whom? A mean God sending his son to death? Even if it is done out of love for us, it makes no sense to me. This is not the God Jesus told us about.
So what is it in the Passion of Christ which won the age old battle of good against evil?

 

Almost Palm Sunday..where did Lent go?

Posted by Christine Nusse on Mar 25, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

For many reasons, all very good, I did not have -or make- time this year for Lent. That is, I did not fast in any fashion, I did not take time to reflect, pray, meditate and the likeand I did not give alms! Yet!
I kind of long for other Lents when the season had been for me an occasion to know Christ a little bit better. This year in contrast I am tired, seeking not inspirational readings but funny movies.
Nothing really sinful about all that. After all, I work hard and had a lot on my plate for the past few weeks. And yet, the habit of not attending to spiritual matters might not be the root of all sins, the root of a sinful life?
Indeed the habit of not looking for food, shelter and exercise would eventually bring malnutrition, disease and physical death, would it not? In the same way the habit of not looking for spiritual food, shelter and exercise would accomplish the same for the spirit.
Lent is supposed to help us attend to that sort of activity: “Convert” that is “Turn away from, turn to”. This is a directional time, a sort of GPS of the soul.
With the lack of spiritual activity comes a vague and yet paralyzing sense of guilt. Like water in the fault of a rock, it enlarges the break slowly but surely, and the erosion, that is the separation from the spiritual becomes bigger and bigger.
Yes, it is time to convert! To re-center myself, to trust again. Isn’t spiritual life a succession of turning back? Letting go of my worries and self absorption, of my guilt and lassitude, to answer the call my mediocrity has not yet managed to silence.
The resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-45) is a good image: I feel tied up in metaphorical burial bands! If only I accepted to hear Christ’s call to me: “Come out and live”.

 

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive..

Posted by Christine Nusse on Mar 4, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

Forgive us our sins, as we forgive..
Lead us not into temptation
But deliver us from evil

“Sin, sin, sin, and scandal”, say our Catholic teaching authorities (the Magisterium) when two out, and committed, lesbians want to be active in their parish.
“Sin, sin, sin, and scandal” we say in turn when the women’s bishop and pastor kick them out from the communion table.
It’s sure not easy to know what sin is! I will give, for a moment at least, the said teaching Magisterium the benefit of the doubt. Let’s assume they do believe active homosexuality is a sin and thus a scandal if we are unrepentant, happy and public with our so-called sin. After all why should we have to hide, since we do not believe it to be a sin?
Sin is very subjective, wouldn’t you say? This feeling that sin is subjective is one of the most disturbing consequences of the Church’s obsession with the sins ‘of the flesh’. Our Church’s obviously outdated understanding of sexuality leaves us without a sure understanding of sin.
But sin does exist. We do recognize it so well when we see images of Darfur’s refugee camps, Baghdad’s markets after a bombing, young soldiers stuck in an inadequate Vet hospital, New Orleans 9th Ward one year and a half after Katrina, working children, abused children, polluted water sources.. All this we understand clearly as being consequences of sin. In fact today we experience it deeply in ours, the collective conscience of a nation at war.
But how does it relate to me, my choices, my moral understanding, my freedom to sin, my own participation in the very scheme of evil?
Sin, like the Spirit, is easily observed in its results. But where it comes from is quite another story.
When we see some images or we witness certain actions, we do believe in evil, don’t we? But if we go back to the human causes of this evil, to the individuals directly or indirictly causing the evil, all becomes very subjective and it is so very difficult to attribute sin. Only God sees in the heart!
So much so that both the Church’s sexual obsession and our subjective understanding of sin leave us so uneasy with the whole issue of guilt, evil and sin that in the end we prefer not to think about it altogether.
Lent is precisely the time offered to use to go against the grain and do just that.

 

"You are dust and to dust you shall return"

Posted by Christine Nusse on Feb 19, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

Ash Wednesday.
I never liked Ash Wednesday! “Remember that you are dust and will return to dust”. I have a better idea of myself and like much better to hear that I am made in God’s image. And one might wonder, which one is it, dust or God?

Lent is a long period of penance, forty days during which we are supposed to ask God forgiveness for our sins.
But what is sin? In this age of psychotherapy there is really no sin left to be responsible for, is there? I can trace all my faults and shortcomings to my upbringing, my genes, a need for my ego to survive no matter what, you name it. And if by chance I feel too guilty about my actions, therapy is suggested so I can feel good about myself again.

Before the 10th century, people who had been excommunicated, meaning they really committed a ‘big’ sin and were seeking to come back to the Christian community, would put on a burlap-like garment and cover themselves with ashes. They would do penance for 40 days, and at Easter be forgiven and welcomed back in the community. After the 10th century this process of conversion, marked by receiving the ashes and followed by forty days of penance, was extended to all.

Is it still today an act of penance, like Yom Kippur or Ramadan? By the way, Jews need only one day, Muslims thirty and we Christian forty days. What does it say about us Christians?

What is sin? It seems that the Church is putting so much emphasis on the sins of the flesh and on sexual morality that it has no time for other sins anymore.
Obviously, I am not going to do penance for being a lesbian, “disordered” and all! So what is (are) my sin(s)? What does it mean to do penance?

 

Where does Candlemas come from?

Posted by Christine Nusse on Feb 2, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

The word Candlemas of course comes from the word Candle.
It has its origin in a mix of pagan, Jewish and Christian traditions:
– An ancient Roman feast, the Parentalia when dead were honored by all night vigils with torch and candles. The god Pluto and Proserpina(Persephone), Demeter’s daughter were honored.
– Another all night vigil, this time much more lively is also quoted : the priests of the god Pan roamed the streets of Rome, holding torches and lashing young women to ensure their fertility. Women would bear their breasts and welcome the lashes. This might be compared to some aspects of New Orleans’ Mardi Gras with the throwing of beads and the baring of breasts.

-Celtic traditions honor Brigid, the fertility goddess on this date. She got ‘demoted’ by the Church from goddess to saint! Her feast was celebrated at the mid-point between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. The winter is half over and seeds begin their still invisible germination within the earth. Days are longer. Hope is renewed.
– The Christian feast finds its origin in the Jewish law which required mothers of baby boys to go to the temple in Jerusalam to be purified, 40 days after the birth, and fathers to consecrate their first born son to God. This is what Mary and Joseph did. See Luke 2:21. Both went up with Jesus and the prescribed offerings of two doves. There they met the old man Simeon and the prophetess Anna.

In 472 CE, the pope Gelase, probably tired of the all night Pan festivities, decided to Christianize the day, I mean the night, and offer an alternative. He organized processions with candles from church to church, celebrating Jesus, ‘light of Israel’, to quote the old Simeon.
Thus, the Purification of Mary and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple were bundled up together, with -of course- the Presentation taking first place.
Today, Ground Hog Day seems to be better known than Candlemas and all the other traditions, rituals and celebrations. To the exception perhaps of crepe-making in France, at least.

 

Abbe Pierre

Posted by Christine Nusse on Jan 27, 2007 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

The priest Abbe Pierre was buried yesterday in Notre Dame of Paris cathedral. He was 94 year old and was for 50 years France’s leading champion of the homeless and destitute. He topped national popularity poll for 17 years in a row. The Archbishop of Paris preaching at his funeral declared him as ‘a moral authority for France’! President Chirac and many personalities from the religious and civil establishment were on hand to give tribute for a man who had been for them..a real pain!
Moral authority? Abbe Pierre in a book written in 2005 made clear what he had said before, that he was in favor of married priests, women priests, religious and civil commitment’s for homosexuals, and that the Church hierarchy was too obsessed with sex and not enough with justice. I have not read the book but that seems the gist of it.

We always seem to mean the hierarchy, the Pope, the bishops, the ‘Magisterium’ when we say ‘the Church’.. It is not. The Church is a priest like Abbe Pierre as well as many others, unknown, working in the footsteps of Christ. Much more inspiring indeed.
See below quotes from CNN International edition (usually a very informative source as it tells us things we would ordinarily not learn from other exclusively USA media) wrote on Jan.22nd.:
PARIS, France (AP) — Abbe Pierre, a French priest praised as a living legend for devoting his life to helping the homeless, using prayer and provocation to tackle misery, died Monday, his foundation said. He was 94.
One of France’s most beloved public figures, Abbe Pierre died at Val de Grace military hospital in Paris, his foundation said. He had been admitted with a lung infection January 14.
The founder of the international Emmaus Community for the poor, Abbe Pierre had served as a spokesman for France’s conscience since the 1950s when he persuaded parliament to pass a law — still on the books — forbidding landlords to evict tenants during winter months.
President Jacques Chirac said in a statement,”We have lost a great figure, a conscience, an incarnation of goodness.”
A former monk, Resistance fighter and parliamentarian, Abbe Pierre long remained spry and determined despite the infirmities of old age. Last year, he spoke to parliament from his wheelchair, urging lawmakers not to reform a law on low-income housing.
Often donning a beret and cape, Abbe Pierre — a code name from his World War II days — topped polls as France’s most beloved public figure year after year. He had the ear of French leaders for decades.
The Roman Catholic priest freely admitted to using provocation as a tactical weapon in his war on misery.
“I’m not by temperament a man of anger,” Abbe Pierre said in a 1994 interview with The Associated Press. “But when I must denounce something that destroys man, I get mad. …
“It is love that engenders this holy anger. They are inseparable.”
In 1992, he refused the Legion of Honor, France’s highest award, because he considered government policies toward the homeless inadequate. He accepted the honor when it was proposed again in 2001. At the time, Chirac praised Abbe Pierre as a “living legend.”
The legend began in the winter of 1954 when an indignant Abbe Pierre issued a radio appeal on behalf of the homeless after a 3-month-old infant froze to death in a bus that served as the family’s home, and after a woman died on a Paris boulevard with an eviction order clutched in her frozen hand. Lawmakers had just rejected funds for postwar emergency housing.
Within minutes of his radio appeal, millions of francs poured in. A hotel, train station and army trucks were commandeered to collect tons of donated supplies that included jewels and fur coats.
There have been some blips in the saint-like career of Abbe Pierre, however.
Scandal swirled in 1996 when he came out in defense of a book that questioned the number of Jews killed by Nazis in World War II and accused Israel of exploiting the Holocaust for political ends.
His position astounded much of France, all the more so because Abbe Pierre had helped Jews during World War II.
He later retracted his support for the book, “Founding Myths of Israeli Politics” by revisionist historian Roger Garaudy, a friend of the priest, but not before fleeing into brief exile at an Italian monastery and threatening never to return to France.
At one point, Abbe Pierre said he “in no way (intended) to question the horrible reality of the Holocaust and the millions of Jews exterminated simply because they were Jews.”
Always frank, Abbe Pierre became even more so in old age. In a revealing 2005 book, the priest suggested he had sex as a younger man and said he favored allowing priests to marry. In “Mon Dieu … Pourquoi? (“My God … Why?”), he also wrote that he supported unions of gay couples and the ordination of women as priests.
Born Henry Groues on August 5, 1912, one of eight children in a well-heeled Lyon family, he exchanged comfort for a monk’s cell for six years before joining the priesthood in 1938.
He entered the Resistance in World War II, taking the name Abbe Pierre in 1942 as a cover for his work manufacturing fake identity papers and helping Jews cross the border to Switzerland.
Elected to parliament after the war, in 1945, his devotion to the “street sleepers” was awakened. A lawmaker for seven years, he occasionally begged alms while organizing rag picking among the homeless so they could fend for themselves.
With the help of an ex-convict and his lawmaker’s salary, the first Emmaus Community house was born in 1949 in Neuilly-Plaisance, northeast of Paris. Emmaus — the name refers to a biblical location where Jesus appeared after the resurrection and was sheltered — helps the disenfranchised to help themselves and is now present in many countries. In France, he created his own Abbe Pierre Foundation in 1992.
Besides his Legion of Honor, Abbe Pierre was twice decorated for his wartime activities, with the Croix de Guerre and the Resistance Medal. In his interview with AP, he conceded to one regret: “Everything I was not able to do.”

 

Christmas! The Savior is born!

Posted by Christine Nusse on Dec 25, 2006 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
What changed? Yesterday evening surfing through the TV channels I could see that Christmas is really the feast of Love, selfless love that is. Short of a catastrophe such as Katrina or a Tsunami, it seems to be the only time that our media culture acknowledges as politically correct to be nice to one’s fellow person, and the poorer that person, the better. That in itself would be the great accomplishment of Christmas. So, yes, for that today, something has changed. Already something is accomplished: we understand, and celebrate -if only once a year-, the knowledge that things could be different in the world if we were just a little nicer.
It’s great. OK. And tomorrow we will be back to our old tricks! Has anything changed?
I understand better the mystery of the ‘already and not yet’ by comparing our world of the ‘here and now’, the world of limitations of time and space, to a drop of water in the ocean. The drop of water is part of the ocean, sustained by it, moved by it. It goes up and down, this way and that way, sometime hot, sometime cold, more or less salty, more or less transparent. It can even evaporate, but eventually it will go back to the ocean. The little drop cannot comprehend the immensity of the ocean, or even imagine what in fact it does belong to, willing or not.
I find this image very helpful. The drop is not separate from the ocean, and yet it has a life of its own. That explains the ‘already’! We are already part of the Divine’s immensity, of the Divine’s existence, if not we would not exist. That is pretty simple.
The ‘Not Yet’ is that we cannot for the moment comprehend, in the true sense of the world, the reality we belong to.
But, there is Christmas! There is a portal, an access, which allows us to communicate with the larger reality, the divine reality. That portal I believe is Jesus. The Good News announced by John the Baptist, the Kingdom of Heaven proclaimed by Christ is the power which was given to us to access the Divine reality. Yes, we can!
Each time we love, we access the divine. Whomever, wherever, whatever the religion. God bursting into our world in the person of Jesus, made possible our access to the Ocean, whenever we so choose. Each one of our acts of love is indeed a sacrament of God’s presence.
Christmas is indeed the feast of Love, but also and perhaps more the feast of Hope.
Merry Christmas!

 

4th Sunday of Advent

Posted by Christine Nusse on Dec 22, 2006 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

Is there one this year?

There are only 3 weeks of Advent in 2006. Tough luck for the collection basket as the 4th Sunday is folded into Christmas Eve and the 4th week altogether completely dropped from the calendar!
I could have used that 4th week, and some. Pre-Christmas rush is even worth this year, isn’t it? Shopping, cooking, with enough planning I can manage. But those dreadful Xmas cards? No time to send them before Christmas, they do become New Year Greetings, but then the card design and message are all wrong. So in the end nothing goes out and I start the year with guilt.

The tempo of the liturgy for the days preceding the 25th also is accelerating. There is an urgency to make it all happen, now. I love those ‘O’ antiphons which begin on the 17th of December:
Each day’s mass begins with a different one. I got this version from Joan Chittister: Life Is for Living, Advent Reflections
O Wisdom, Come teach us the way of prudence
O Adonai, Come with outstretched arms and teach us
O Root of Jesse, Come do not delay, deliver us
O Key of David, Come lead prisoners caught in darkness
O Dayspring, Come disperse the gloomy clouds of night
O Ruler of Nations, Come and open hearts to one another
O Emmanuel, Come be born in us, God of Life

Yes, the winter, the war, misery for so many people, God, may your reign come, now.

 

Rejoice in the Lord, always!

Posted by Christine Nusse on Dec 17, 2006 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

3rd Sunday of Advent

“Have no anxiety at all” continues Paul writing to the Philippians. Easy to preach! The command is made in the present tense. Today, rejoice and relax. Not when I am finished with this particular project at work, not when our apartment is finished being painted, not when I will finally have one week vacation, not when Friday evening arrives. No, now! In the present of my life as it is today. In my here and now are joy and peace available.
We are now in the final pages of the mystery I was talking about last week. It begins to unravel. Today’s liturgy gives us two more clues to chew on:
-From the second reading, Paul continues: “Have no anxiety at all, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God.”
-From the Gospel of Luke 3:10-18: “The crowds asked John the Baptist, ‘What should we do?'” John answers with a series of very pragmatic suggestions: if you have two coats, give one, don’t cheat and cut corners in your business.
And the last sentence is the clue: “Exhorting them in many other ways, he preached the good news to the people.”
We have an inkling that here is the key to solving the mystery. But again, it complicates more than it helps. How can giving at the coat drive help me rejoice, find peace, and banish anxiety? It might ease my conscience a bit, like sending tax deductible contributions before December 31st. I might feel good about myself. And for that end John the Baptist’s message was enough. However it still does not explain the “already and not-yet”, nor the promise of joy and peace in spite of everything contributing to the contrary. John’s preaching is about good behavior. It will make for a better world, but not a radically different one.
What does Christ bring which will make it all radically different?

 

2nd Sunday of Advent

Posted by Christine Nusse on Dec 10, 2006 | Categories: Seasons of the Spirit

And all flesh will see the salvation of God. Lk 3:6

Already – Not yet. I love mysteries and read at least one a week. This particular one is my advent teaser. At mass today -2nd Sunday of Advent,- this quote by Luke of the prophet Isaiah, struck me as once again, putting in the future an event which already happened in the past. Where is the salvation of God, announced by John the Baptist and accomplished in the birth of Jesus?
Today an other element is added to the puzzle: The salvation in question, the kingdom of God if you wish, is a very physical occurrence. “All flesh” will “see”. I do not have to go into some kind of mystical out of the body experience to see. But it brings more questions than it solves: if it is physical, it has to be in the here and now of my own body-self. It has to take place within the limits of the 2 dimensions we, as human being are stuck into, along with the whole created world: space and time. Indeed the conundrum is getting more complicated. On the one hand there is the time dimension of the already/not yet, and on the other, the space dimension promising me salvation in my own flesh. So the solution has to be in the here-and-now, right? But how? If it is not in the here-and-now, in the who-and-where I am today, it does not do me any good. It is not relevant and has no purpose for me. But if it is, how does it work?