Preaching on providence

I had the joy of celebrating the opening mass for the general chapter of the Sisters of Providence. What an honour to have been invited! I was just so amazed and delighted to be among these impressive women who have offered so much to God and their neighbour.

My homily was, as you can imagine, on the theme of providence. This is actually a fairly major theme for me in my own spiritual life. As a kid I used to ask myself, "Why am I who I am?" In other words, how was it that I was born into the family I was, in the country and society I was? Why was I born a boy and not a girl, why was my skin/hair/eye colour what it was, why did I have the ancestry I did, etc.?

Of course, it would be easy to say that these sorts of attributes can't be answered with a "why". They simply are what they are. But deep down, I always felt that these things were not just random accidents, or simply the result of some past historical process. And if they weren't, then although I couldn't name it at the time, I was already open in my heart to the idea providence.

I even find the word "providence" fascinating. The root is "pro-videre", i.e. to "see forward". It can mean things like to foresee, to plan for the future, and so on, but basically it means being intentional about knowing the future, and it implies adjusting to meet that future. A good example is a person driving a car: the driver has to "foresee" what is coming, both what he can see, and what he can't but which, through experience, might show up. And of course, the driver needs to steer, brake, accelerate etc. as a function of all that.

Of course, the most important element of driving is knowing where you are going. A driver doesn't just drive, he navigates. "Providence" therefore is not just about reacting well to your environment, it is about having a plan so you can get to your destination.

This is why I think this concept is so important with regards to God. People often experience disappointment with regards to God's providence, thinking that God has not "provided" for them adequately. I can understand this in many cases, especially for people who have been true victims of abuse or neglect and are in the process of reclaiming their strength. But not everyone is in that situation: when a sense of entitlement or a consumerist mentality infects our soul, we lose not just our trust in God's providence, we also lose sight of God's plan.

These are real spiritual diseases. A consumer mentality, when it affects/infests our spiritual life, gradually causes us to objectify others as "suppliers" for our needs and desires. We can even treat God that way. And when we lose sight of God's plan, or worse, the very idea that there even is a plan in the first place, then we implicitly place ourselves as the primary author of that plan for us. It places us at the centre. This is a powerful illusion in this powerful civilization we live in. But when the unexpected does happen, it shocks us in ways we just can't handle.

I believe there are things we can do to keep a sense of God's providence in our life. First of all, we need to see all things as gift. Yes, we may "own" things, but we need to see them as blessings, and not as possessions. And this applies not just to our stuff, but to our relationships. Our job, our school, our family -- all is gift. Of course, when these things are sources of suffering, seeing them as gift is not as easy, but leaving that aside for a future blog post we can at least start with the mundane-to-positive things in our life.

We also need to develop a sense of God's plan. Simply put, human history is bigger than our history. God has been at work for literally billions of years before each of us got here, and history will roll on after we will have died. What is our sense of where we come from, and where we are going? Having a clear sense of these issues helps us to handle whatever might come.

The second point ties to the first. Gifts must be honoured, not exploited. And when we see all things as gift, we enter the plan of love of the giver, who sought to bless us with the gift. In other words, the first attitude prepares and reinforces the second.

It's curious, but I've noticed a lot people reacting very negatively to the idea of providence. It's like they think providence is some naive, fairy tale notion, and that it is important to live in the real world instead. Is it a defence mechanism? Some fear of being disappointed, maybe even by God? It might even be anger, or guilt at feeling angry. It can be really complicated -- but even those feelings can be part of divine providence. After all, if they help a person face something they are running from, or identify a deep-seated need for peace, then God's providence is at work.

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The Gospel and animals

So I was walking down the street today (June 27) to get to a lunch appointment when a guy came up to me while I was waiting at a red light. He handed me the above two cards, and then began to berate the Catholic Church for (in his view) not doing enough to protect the animals, despite Jesus having eliminated animal sacrifice.

Such is life when you walk around downtown Montreal in a Roman collar -- similar to a box of chocolates, you just never know what you're gonna get.

Coming back to my mystery interlocutor, after offering me his cards (as well as a piece of his mind) he took off in another direction. The whole exchange was less than 10 seconds, and as the light changed green I thought to myself, "Now I know what to blog about for today!"

So for what its worth, here is a brief summary of what the Catholic Church teaches about animals, vegan diets, etc.:

The message on the cards includes an exhortation to love animals, because (as the card says) God does. I have no problem agreeing with the general thrust of this message, and in fact it is part of official Catholic teaching. However, it must be lived in a balanced way. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, which acts as a summary of Catholic doctrine, has this to say on the subject:

2416 Animals are God's creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory. Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals.

2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image. Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.

2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.

I recognize that there are some who will object to some of these points because they affirm a special place for human beings within the animal kingdom (and indeed, within creation). However, that special status within the overall ecology of our world is definitely part of the Biblical perspective too (a subject for another blog post sometime).

Within the religious practice of the Catholic Church, there is nothing that mandates harm to animals. For example, as the guy who handed me those cards pointed out, the tradition of animal sacrifices found throughout Hebrew history was not carried over to Christianity. On the flip side, our official book of blessings does have prayers for the blessing of animals. I even got asked to bless a dog in a veterinary hospital once (a neat story for another day).

With regards to special diets, we know that many religions require their followers to follow such diets: kosher for Jews, halal for Muslims, various diets within Hinduism, etc. But for Catholics, there is no moral imperative in natural or divine law to eat certain foods or to avoid certain foods. The Torah does state that certain foods should not be eaten as they are ritually unclean, but the common Christian tradition says that Jesus declared all foods clean (Mark 7:19). The vision of Saint Peter as described in Acts 10:15-16 uses the fact of all foods being clean as analogy to enourage the inclusion of new peoples and cultures in the Church.

While there is no moral imperative in natural or divine law to follow a specific diet, the Church does teach certain diets as part of the spiritual practice of penance. We are asked to avoid eating meat on certain days (Ash Wednesday and the Friday's of Lent, in particular), and to avoid eating more than one full meal on Ash Wednesday and Good Friday. Of course, this is just a minimum -- we can choose a more restricted diet if we wish. For the last couple of years, for example, I've followed a vegan diet during Lent, and I've gotten a lot out of the practice (a story for another time).

On the flip side, the Bible warns us that the following of a certain diet can also lead to a kind of pridefulness. The film Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has a hilarious take on the subject (sorry for the mild swear at the beginning as the title character defends the honour of Toronto):

I must confess, I did not get any vegan powers myself when I followed that diet during Lent, but that's probably because I took Sundays off :-) And before I hear protests, no that was not cheating. To avoid falling into the pridefulness a religious diet can encourage, the Church actually suggests certain days where we are called to feast, not fast! We even call them "feast days", as opposed to the aforementioned "fast days", and Sunday is the essential feast day, even during Lent.

Coming back to the fellow who printed these cards, he is correct that the original plan of God described in the story of creation in the book of Genesis was, in fact, vegan. More than that, it was fruitarian, an even more strict form of veganism. However, we must remember that the story is highly symbolic in nature, and cannot be taken to be a simple outline of a plan of daily living. After all, Adam and Eve walked around naked too, and yet I don't think God is asking all of us to practice continuous nudism as a form of discipleship -- apart from the purely moral and aesthetic arguments against such a practice, it could get a bit chilly during a Canadian winter! Brrr!

That's enough for now. I've already got enough material for three more blog posts on these and related subjects -- so stay tuned!

Learning about conscience, part 1: Saint Thomas More

I was a kid in a time before video on demand services like Netflix. Heck, it was before PVRs and even VCRs. We had one TV in the house, and if you wanted to know what was going on you consulted the newspaper or a print publication like TV Guide. Or, sometimes you'd be channel surfing and if you came across something you wanted to watch, you either just watched it or you let it go.

I don't remember exactly how old I was when A Man for All Seasons came on TV. It was probably between the ages of 7 and 10. It was an afternoon, and I'm pretty sure it was a Saturday. In those days, Saturday morning was a time for kids to watch cartoons, but at a certain point the kids shows stopped and the "grown up" shows took over. My recollection is that I had finished watching "my" shows, and my dad had come downstairs to watch "his show". But as I was getting up to go, my dad invited me to stay and watch the movie with him. I wasn't too sure -- I generally found "grown up" shows boring. But my dad said, "This movie is about someone you are named after." Really? Wow! So I couldn't refuse.

For those who do not know A Man for All Seasons, it is the story of Sir Thomas More (later known as Saint Thomas More). He was the good friend of King Henry VIII, and at one point was Chancellor of England. This was in the 16th century, when the Protestant Reformation was in full swing on the Continent. At one point Henry had himself declared the head of the Church in England, and communion disintegrated between himself and the Pope. Sir Thomas More could not accept to go down that path, and he eventually lost everything, including his life.

At my age, I did not understand all that was going on in the story. It was set in another century, the dialogue was a fairly advanced form of English, and I knew very little about the Protestant Reformation except that some kids in our neighbourhood were "protestants" which meant they went to a different church than us. But my dad explained things as needed, and my focus anyway was mainly on the main character who had the same name as me.

The story of Saint Thomas More left a deep impression on me, leaving me perplexed and even disturbed. My father asked me what I thought about the story, and I remember asking him the same question.

"I've always admired Thomas More," my father explained. "For me, he is a model of what it means to follow your conscience."

"Conscience? What's that?" I asked.

My dad did not answer the question directly. Instead of saying what it was, he said what it meant. "To live by your conscience means to always act according to the truth. That's what Thomas More did."

I changed the focus of my questioning. "But why did Sir Thomas go all the way to being killed?"

"He didn't want to die," my father explained. "If you noticed, Thomas was trying to avoid falling into the danger set before him. He didn't go looking for trouble, in fact he did his best to get out of it, but when in the end they backed him into a corner and said he had to deny his commitment or else, he refused to do so."

"That's what conscience means," he continued. "To live by your conscience means you have to have courage. Anybody can find excuses to avoid challenges and suffering, but sometimes there are things we have to be willing to sacrifice for. For example, if someone ever made me have to choose between my life and yours, or my life and the life of your mother, or brother, or sister, I'd choose to die rather than let you die. At least I hope I would, I hope I'd have the courage to do that."

Now that got my attention. My dad didn't know it, but he was teaching me about the difference between courage and daring. People will sometimes do something dangerous on a dare, but real courage is not just about daring. It is about daring to do the right thing, even if it costs you.

This, of course, raised other questions in my mind. After all, if following your conscience could have such high stakes, you had better be pretty sure of what the right thing is. After all, there is no point suffering for the wrong thing!

My father confirmed as much. "To follow your conscience takes courage, but you also have to use your brain," he said. "You have to always be willing to seek the truth and stick with it. But it also takes humility, because no one can ever know the whole truth all at once. You have to be willing to admit you don't know everything, and to be willing to ask questions. It helps to be part of a community that is committed to finding the truth and living it. That's what the Church is for."

Getting back to my story, I remember asking my dad if all this conscience stuff was really worth it. Remember, I was a kid and peer pressure was a fact of life. If joining with my friends was the path of least resistance, why not just do that, at least in the normal course of life? My father reminded me that, in the film, Sir Thomas had a conversation with his good friend the Duke of Norfolk, who had tried to persuade Thomas to take a false oath "for fellowship". Thomas replied, "And when we die, and you are sent to heaven for doing your conscience, and I am sent to hell for not doing mine, will you come with me, for fellowship?"

I looked at my father and said that this argument did not sound fair. God was going to punish us for not following our conscience? Is that the ultimate reason why we should seek the truth and be willing to suffer for it -- because we are afraid of God?

With great patience, and with (I believe) some delight in the fact that I was pushing the issue so far, he replied that, in fact, having a strong conscience, one that was anchored in truth and had the courage to live it, was actually the source of one of the greatest assets a personality can have: inner freedom. Saint Thomas, in his struggle, showed himself to be more free than the King himself, even when he was locked up in the Tower of London.

We need that inner freedom, my father explained, to be able to live according to the ultimate law: the law of love. I had heard of this law before, during the Bible readings and sermons and church, such as in the expression "love your neighbour". That law doesn't say we have to like our neighbour, but that we do have to love him. We have to even love our enemies. But, as my father explained, how can we do that unless we have the inner freedom to do so? Real love cannot be forced, it must be free. Having a strong conscience makes us free inside, the kind of freedom that Saint Thomas had to declare that he was "the King's faithful servant, but God's first".

"That's why we wind up in Hell if we disobey our conscience," my father explained. "We can't live real love with out. And God is love, Heaven is love. It's not that God will punish us if we don't follow our conscience, it's that conscience is our guide to Heaven, to being with God. And while God sometimes grants people visions or speaks words to them, it's in our conscience that God ordinarily impresses himself up on. If our conscience isn't clear, we can't have a real relationship with Him."

This conversation had a lasting effect upon me, even until today. For example, as I've gotten older I've come to realise this conversation was the start of my passion for ecumenical and inter-faith dialogue (heck, even dialogue with sincere atheists). I like speaking with people who have convictions and try and live by them. Our convictions may differ, but if those convictions are sincere it means the other person is willing to have them tested in the name of a higher principle, i.e. the principle that The Truth is more important than "this or that" truth. As I would learn later, this perspective would eventually come in handy when I started to have my own "crisis of faith" -- that that is a story for another time.

Whatever happened to the Pentecost octave?

I was chatting with a brother priest at lunchtime, and somehow we got on the subject of part of our liturgical tradition: the Pentecost Octave.

What is an "octave", you ask? This is a custom of celebrating a particularly important feast for a period of 8 days. In other words, the feast in question doesn't just get a feast *day*, it gets a feast *week*. An example is Easter, which is celebrated on a particular Sunday, but which continues in its celebration for the week afterwards. Even in secular parlance people are familiar with the notion of "Easter Monday". This expression doesn't just mean the Monday after Easter, it is referring to the idea that the Monday actually *is* Easter, prolonged!

The post Vatican II calendar has 2 octaves: Easter (already mentioned, which goes until Divine Mercy Sunday), and Christmas (which stretches until January 1, the feast of Mary, Mother of God). The older calendar also had an octave for Pentecost, however, which went until Trinity Sunday. For some reason this got dropped, so that the week between the two Sundays is simply a week in what we call "ordinary time".

I never grew up with this tradition, so I guess I don't miss it in any experiential way, but I must admit I do wonder why it was dropped and what we might be missing.

On a theological level, the Latin church is often accused of neglecting what we call "pneumatology", i.e. the theology of the Holy Spirit. Surely a week dedicated to the Holy Spirit would help in that regard!

On a pastoral level, there is something to be said for having a week dedicated to helping people be open to the Holy Spirit in order to better encounter Christ. We Catholics are discovering more and more that individual dedication to Christ, while at the heart of faith, needs to be completed by a personal, heart to heart encounter with Christ. The thing is, we can help people experience the former by means of reason (perhaps why we are more comfortable with it as an approach), but the latter can only be done via a gift of pure grace (and hence is, to a certain degree, out of our control). It is the Holy Spirit alone who permits the personal encounter with Christ, and so our New Evangelization will require a pastorale de l'Esprit Saint, i.e. a pastoral approach with the Holy Spirit being presented and proposed as the key protagonist of our relationship with Christ.

My earliest understanding of God

I grew up in a practicing Catholic family. I was baptised as an infant, learned my prayers at an early age, and was brought to mass by my parents. While I don't ever recall it being at all overbearing, I also can't recall a time when religion wasn't part of our family experience. Simply put, God, prayer and Church were just there, as part of our lives. It felt very natural.

Still, I do recall when I put forward what may have been my first real question about God. I know I was at most five years old. We were sitting at the supper table, and out of the blue I asked, "Where is God?"

My father replied, very simply, "God is everywhere."

I pressed on a bit. "Really? Is God here in this room with us right now?"

"Yes, he is," my father said.

I remember holding up some solid physical object, and asking, "Is he in this?"

"Yes," he repeated, and with a bit of a smile as I seem to recall. But he didn't stop there, adding, "But more important than that, he wants to live inside of you. He wants to live inside all of us."

For a young child, that last statement was big news. I remember that my questions in that conversation stopped at that point, not because I understood, but because I needed to think about what I'd just been told.

The question, in my little kid brain, was simple: how could God be everywhere, and yet at the same time be inside of us in a special way?

I don't quite recall how long it took, but a few days later I came up with an answer. Simply put, I thought about air. Air is all around us. Since it is invisible, most of the time we don't notice it unless it is acting upon us (as with a breeze, or the wind), but that didn't make it any less real. Finally, the most important air was the air we breathe in — the air inside us that gives us life.

Again, in my little kid brain, my question now had an answer: God was like air. I knew he wasn't actually the air, but that he was like air: invisible, all around us, but able to be inside us in a special way, especially to give us life.

Now it may sound funny, but this insight actually had an effect on my early prayer life. Up until then, prayers were things I said. After this, though, I started to sometimes do a kind of childlike praying where I would think about my breathing as I was doing it, and pretending that I was feeling God being around me and inside me. I won't pretend that I was particularly disciplined in this form of prayer, and I don't claim that "intentional breathing" is necessarily spiritual, but I do know that this practice was important for me. God was around me, God was inside me, and imagining God as I breathed helped me be aware of the presence of God.