Swords and Ploughshares

So, as I mentioned in my last post, I’ve been watching The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, the first of the recent film versions of C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. So often during Advent we read the passage from Isaiah (2:4) about how we should beat our swords into ploughshares—i.e. make peace, not war. Of course I agree with this. But as I heard this line, I could only think of the brilliant, shining sword that Father Christmas gives Peter in the movie. I thought to myself—no! don’t beat that one up into a ploughshare! It’s too pretty! …See what being a fan of fantasy literature does to you? This Bible passage works better for me if I substitute bombshells for swords…

But to the point. Swords. Not everywhere in the Bible are they portrayed negatively. Take this passage, a favorite in American Christian culture: “Indeed, the word of God is living and active, sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing until it divides soul from spirit, joints from marrow; it is able to judge intentions and thoughts of the heart.” Hebrews 4:12 Here I want to mention Narnia again. When Father Christmas gives Peter his sword, he warns him, “This is a tool, not a toy.” Toys are for fun, tools are for getting a job done. When seen as a sword, the job of the word of God is to defeat evil. Under no circumstances is its job to prove the biblical knowledge of the person wielding it, or to cut people down. The word of God is sharp, sharp enough even to separate the sin from the sinner. Cutting down the sinner instead of the sin would be like killing on the battlefield all those whom the White Witch had led astray, instead of killing the Witch herself and giving the others the opportunity to come over to Aslan’s side.

But how does one effectively wield such a sword, especially today? Absolutely not in blind anger, hacking away at everything and everyone we feel might threaten our precious truths. Tools cannot be used effectively under the influence of rage; rather, we must be calm and guided by reason, and motivated only by love of God and our fellow man. The sword of truth is a brilliant light in the darkness of evil, when in the hands of a Christian with the courage to use it and the love to use it correctly.

Gaudete Sunday: Can We Rejoice in Times of Tragedy?

The irony is unmistakable, even painful perhaps. After hearing of the school shooting in Connecticut, we now hear in Mass that we are to rejoice. Is this a case of the church calendar being in on a completely different planet from ours, blithely going its way without a care for what happens in “real life”? Or is it rather a reminder of what Christian joy really means?

Warning: this post may start to sound like it’s more about Easter than Advent. But could this be because the two are inseparably linked to each other? Without having been born, Jesus couldn’t have died and risen. Without having become human in the Incarnation, he couldn’t have paid the debt of our sins. Gaudete Sunday in Advent is paralleled by Laetare Sunday in Lent—the only two days of the year where the liturgical color is rose. (Gaudete and laetare both mean “Rejoice! Be joyful!” in Latin).

For me personally, today is also difficult. My uncle and godfather recently died, and today is the rosary for him, tomorrow the funeral. My aunt’s dedication to the rosary during this difficult time left me with a renewed appreciation of this beautiful prayer. I would like to interpret today’s message of rejoicing in terms of the glorious mysteries of the rosary, which are always prayed on Sunday.

The glorious mysteries can be seen as a meditation on our own mortality and immortality. They begin with a climax: the Resurrection. Christ conquered death. We hear this all the time. But this is the single most hope-giving truth of the Christian faith. Christ didn’t just passively wake back up again after having been dead for three days. He looked death in the face and said, “Give me your best shot.” He didn’t just defeat death. He accepted the worst that death could do to him, and proved it wasn’t really all that much. He’s been there, done that. And that’s just the beginning.

After his Resurrection, Christ spent some time on Earth with his disciples, and then he ascended into Heaven (the second glorious mystery). Here begins the long period of physical separation, in which we are still living today. Christ ascended so that he could send the Holy Spirit to be with us (the third mystery) in a much more intimate way than he could have done given the constraints of a physical body. These two mysteries show us that physical separation is not complete separation. Those we love still exist—we just can’t perceive them anymore with our five senses.

But even this is not the end of the story. We don’t have to “settle” for a “merely spiritual” union, true as this union may be. The fourth glorious mystery tells of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, an event long held as true by church Tradition. After her death/dormission, Mary was immediately taken into Heaven, body and soul. Christ is the “first fruits of the dead (1 Cor. 15:20),” but Mary’s Assumption makes clear that the resurrection of the body is for all of us. Yes, we too will one day be in Heaven, soul and new, glorified body, with Jesus and Mary and all those who have gone before us.

The final glorious mystery, the Coronation of Mary as Queen of Heaven (hinted at in Revelation 12:1: “a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and on her head a crown of twelve stars”), prefigures the grand finale of salvation history. In the Gospel of John, one of Jesus’s last prayers before being arrested on the night of his Passion is this: “Father, I desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17:24) When we get to Heaven, we, along with all our loved ones, will see Christ face to face and share in his glory, and his joy and ours will be complete.

This is why, as Christians, we can rejoice, even with horror in our guts and tears in our eyes. This darkness is not the end.

Always Winter and Never Christmas?

Lately I’ve taken to watching the Chronicles of Narnia when I’m too tired to concentrate on homework. In today’s gray world, these stories are like a breath of fresh air to me. Re-watching The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005), I was struck by how well the beginning fits to the season of Advent. For as long as the White Witch has ruled Narnia, the land has been plunged in perpetual winter. Always winter and never Christmas. It’s almost impossible for me to imagine winter without the warming glow of candles and Christmas tree lights, carols and cookies and cider.

When Peter, Susan, Edmond and Lucy arrive in Narnia, things begin to turn around. There is even a rumor that “Aslan is on the move”—Aslan, the real king of Narnia. The hope of the Narnians that the four siblings will defeat the witch, along with the news of Aslan’s coming, begins to break the spell of winter. Father Christmas even appears, a concrete sign that Narnia once more has hope. The snow begins to melt, and the ice in the river begins to break (a sign of coming change even in the Soviet silent films that I’ve been watching for class).

As overjoyed as the furry Narnian beavers are to finally witness the arrival of the kings and queens who will conquer the witch and restore peace to Narnia, how much more joyful should we be during Advent, as we await the coming of our King? What is the particular darkness threatening each of us, the ice inside, paralyzing us, waiting to be warmed and illuminated by the Light of the World? The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was (is!) coming into the world! (John 1:5,9)

What my Faith Means to Me

A few days ago, as an introduction to the Year of Faith recently proclaimed by Pope Benedict, I posted the question on my Facebook page, what does faith mean to me? After all, it would be helpful to know why faith is important in my life before I go out and try to convince people it should be important in their lives. I was at a retreat today where spiritual direction was compared to a GPS system. You can have the most cutting-edge system in the world, but unless it can figure out where you are at the moment, it is useless. So here is my initial attempt to figure out where I stand in my faith, and what it means to me.

During this last phase of my life (i.e. college), God has primarily been two things: my reason for existence, and the ultimate friend, lover and beloved. God is for me that ever-elusive “meaning of life”. God gives meaning and worth to everything and everyone, just by creating them. Faith gives me a purpose: to love God and to make him known and loved. I can work on this mission every minute of my life, no matter where I am or what I am doing. No moment need go wasted if I can say a prayer in it. The smallest of my own and others’ actions can become rich in meaning (though I have to be careful not to let my imagination read anything and everything into every little action).

In the person of Jesus, God has been my close friend, who gave everything so that I might live, and who is still present, still desiring to come to me daily in the Blessed Sacrament. In the first month or so of freshman year, I came closer to Jesus simply because I was lonely and hadn’t established close friendships yet. Now that this experience is repeating itself as I start grad school, hopefully I can come even closer. Yet so many times I am not a good friend in return. Another thing the priest said at the retreat was that, in a relationship as close as, say, a marriage, little things are not unimportant. A careless word or an absent mind might not mean so much coming from a classmate or co-worker, but coming from a spouse or a best friend, they can hurt. A few days ago, I was on the bus, all fired up about the Year of Faith and still bouncing around inside from the confidently upbeat praise and worship music to which I’d woken up. Then I overhear this conversation between two guys about how the one had always gotten A’s in religion class because, even though he didn’t believe in God, he could argue his point decently well. He’d argued from a biological standpoint, he said. I felt like I should say the tiniest little thing about how God and science are not incompatible, but hesitated too long and didn’t. Now you could say it was none of my business, but then again it could have led to an interesting conversation. Public transportation gives you those weird opportunities sometimes. Maybe I overreacted, but I felt bad for a good while afterwards. I felt like I’d let down a friend… But, more opportunities will come.

As I transition to a new school, I’ve kind of been absorbing the atmosphere. I’ve been wondering how in the world I can bring God to this world where angry, tattered political stickers cling like scabs to the gray concrete walls, and the bathroom stalls are scribbled over with advice about sex. Now, this is the negative side, to be sure. But in my observations, two things really have stood out to me about evangelization. I (we Christians) need to be joyful and honest. Joy will bubble out beyond fear and will be contagious. Honesty will keep us from deceiving ourselves and being hypocritical. These are a few things I’d like to try and cultivate during this Year of Faith. How about you?

Memorable Moments of my VIDES Experience in Germany

Most of the special experiences I had during my VIDES experience were small and personal. When I say personal, I mean a moment shared by myself and another individual, as opposed to something obvious to the world and measurable in terms of numbers or material conditions.

Working with the afterschool kids was very enriching because it allowed me to view my faith through different eyes—often the eyes of children who knew little about faith and religion. We hardly ever talked explicitly about religion, but sometimes it came up, especially when the kids needed help with their ethics homework. (Every student in the German school system is required to take religion class if they are Catholic or Lutheran, and all the rest are put into ethics classes.) Around Easter, the ethics homework was to copy a paragraph about Easter and what it means to Christians. I was working with this one Vietnamese girl who sometimes spoke to me about Jesus because of the crucifix I always wore. I was checking to see if she understood what she was copying, since she was still learning German. It didn’t seem like she understood everything, so I began to explain the idea of “resurrection” to her. I said, “You know Jesus, right?” She nodded. “Well, he died--” (her face became sad). “But then he came back and was alive again!” (Her face brightened). Her response: “Das ist doch unendlich cool!” (“That’s just endlessly cool!”) Seeing Easter through the eyes of a child who was just getting it for the first time helped breathe new life into my Easter season, when sometimes I started thinking “yeah…I know all that already…etc.”
Another positive development I saw with the afterschool kids was that they actually did start speaking more German. As we got to know each other better, they would talk to us more, and we could talk better with them. It was very encouraging to see some of the kids get moved up to the regular class with the regular German kids.

At the student residency, I had similar small experiences. My prayer group was a test in perseverance for me, because the average attendance was around two people per week, sometimes only one. On St. Patrick’s Day, however, I was able to draw in more girls with the promise of playing Irish music on my violin during the prayer group. (I was also looking forward to this, since I love Irish music.) At this meeting, we had four girls come, a doubling in number! What really made my evening, though, was that one of my closer friends, who had seemed to be feeling kind of awkward at first with the setup of singing praise and worship songs and then exchanging prayer requests actually shared a petition with us! This little bitty moment made me so happy because I felt like it was a big thing for her, since that kind of prayer didn’t really seem to be her style. Little moments like that made it worthwhile to keep up the prayer group, even though there was an evening when nobody but Jesus and I attended.

One more experience, which was typical of my time in Europe, happened on the train. A friend and I were headed to a Holy Week retreat on Holy Thursday in another town. We happened to get a group ticket with another girl and these two boys from Kazakhstan who were studying in Munich. We asked if they were going home for Easter and they told us they were Orthodox, so their Easter was later. This sparked a long and intense conversation about God and the Church—keep in mind these boys were complete strangers to us! It turns out that they had drifted away from any kind of organized religion and even from faith, preferring a more scientific view of the world (they were both studying engineering and physics or something along those lines). They had had bad experiences with relatives who were a little over-zealous in their religion and more attached to ritual than to really spreading God’s love (at least this is what I gathered from the boys’ account). In the end, they admitted that they believed in a certain something, whether it was God or not. The conversation itself, though, and the fact that we were total strangers talking about these most fundamental and deep things, was what moved to me. When we got off the train, I felt we’d known them for a long time.

I found many people willing to engage in these kinds of conversations, and many of them were very thoughtful. Perhaps this was because I was mainly socializing in Christian circles, though even with strangers and long-time-no-see relatives, my volunteering with VIDES often made a good talking point. People would often ask me if I got compensation for what I was doing, and I would reply that I got food and a place to sleep, and access to subway tickets if I needed them. This made one of my uncles comment on how remarkable it was that that was really all a person needs. Food and shelter, loving people and a purpose for life. These little things, these conversations in which people started thinking about God, were what made my mission time in one of the richest cities in Europe worthwhile. (Not that I wasn’t brought to some heavy thinking myself!)  The personal nature of these experiences really emphasized to me the need to get to know and love people individually before you go around trying to “convert” them to your way of thinking. I think this is a perfect example of the VIDES idea of accompaniment—walking the way with people on a journey to the Lord, not just standing there and preaching to them as they pass by.

Pro-life themes in The Hunger Games

Reading Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy left me an emotional wreck, I admit. But despite all the violence, or perhaps partly because of it, I perceived a message of life and love threading its way through the story. For those of you who have not read the book, it basically shows reality TV to the extreme: 24 children and teenagers from the 12 districts of the nation Panem are released into an arena to fight to the death, and only one may return alive. These “Hunger Games”, for which the book is named, are the government’s punishment for a rebellion that happened generations before, and are televised to remind the nation of the government’s absolute power.

As the people of Panem starve to death and watch their children forced to kill each other, we meet Katniss, the main character. She has sworn to herself from an early age that she will never have children, so that they will not be forced to participate in these lethal games. This comes up again and again throughout the book, illustrating how tragic a world these characters inhabit. A world where people fear to have children must be a gravely wrong world. In our country today, how many people also go to such lengths not to have children, though most of our lives are substantially better than those of the people in the book? What are we afraid of? Loss of personal “liberty” to do what we want? Responsibility? Lower living standards in the future? I am not saying that everybody must have ten kids. But a thought came to me while reading these books, probably one of those old thoughts that everyone hears a million times but must ultimately figure out for themselves. Children are hope. A world full of children is a world full of hope. To love a child is to trust that the world will go on and that the future will hold good things for that child. In many circumstances on this planet, the only reason for anyone to have such hope and trust is God. Take him out of the picture and the future seems a lot more depressing.

Another theme in this book is that of love and solidarity as resistance to evil. When Katniss finds herself in the arena with a slain twelve-year old girl, she stays by her side, singing and surrounding her with flowers. This gesture of love shows that the two have not succumbed completely to the evil dog-eat-dog “game”. The people of the young girl’s home district send Katniss a gift of bread in thanks for this act; it is the first time a district has given a gift to a tribute from another district. Normally the districts are not even allowed to communicate with each other—the growing solidarity is frowned upon by the controlling government. Divide the people, turn them each against the other, is part of the evil strategy. As the districts begin to interact more, a rebellion slowly begins to rise against the tyrannical system. Even though this was never Katniss’s intention. But love cannot help making evil its enemy, or else it is not love. In the end, though the revolution ends up bringing about a time of peace, the book makes painfully clear what the war has cost, as well as the danger of living on anger, no matter how justified it may be/seem. This is shown heartbreakingly (for me) in the character of Gale, Katniss’s best friend for most of the books, who helps win the war by thinking like the enemy, but goes too far, inventing a cruel weapon that is ultimately used against those he loves. Opinions may vary, but I find him quite tragic in the end.

I won’t spoil the story by saying more, but, as much as love can be seen as a “liability” in these books, it is the only real weapon against evil, and the only thing that makes life truly livable in the end.