Anthony R. Lusvardi, S.J., teaches sacramental theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome. He writes on a variety of theological, cultural, and literary topics.
Sunday November 12 will mark the 400th anniversary of the martyrdom of the Ukrainian Catholic bishop St. Josaphat Kuntsevych. During his lifetime St. Josaphat worked for the reunion of eastern rite Christians with the Catholic Church. He was murdered by an Orthodox mob in 1623.
St. Josaphat, Mykola Azovskyj, 1946
St. Josaphat lived and worked, first as a Basilian monk and then as an archbishop in the part of the world that today includes Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine. The anniversary is an opportunity to seek St. Josaphat’s intercession for the suffering people of Ukraine as they continue to fight for their nation’s freedom.
To celebrate the 400th anniversary of St. Josaphat’s martyrdom, the Gregorian University is sponsoring a conference on his life and legacy as well as an art show. I have to admit, I knew rather little about St. Josaphat before strolling through the display–though he is the patron of Milwaukee’s most beautiful church–and I have never seen so many paintings of the saint before. Here’s a sampling, showing all aspects of his life, from his calling to his monastic vocation, his ministry as bishop and his eventual martyrdom.
November 2 is All Souls Day on which we remember and pray for the dead. For Catholics, November is traditionally a month dedicated to praying for the dead, a practice that goes back to the earliest days of the Church and, indeed, even to pre-Christian times. This pair of days, All Saints and All Souls, is a reminder of the profound solidarity that exists between all Christ’s faithful, on whichever side of the grave we currently find ourselves. Our lives and our journeys continue to intertwine with those who have come and gone before us.
Santa Maria del Purgatorio, Monopoli, Italy
The first reason we pray for the dead, of course, is to help those in the final process of purification we call purgatory. Since heaven means existing in a state of perfection and most of us still aren’t perfect when we die, purgatory is the time we need to reach that perfect way of being we long for.
This doesn’t mean that purgatory is a second chance, as if this earthly life were a video game in which you get five or six lives to move up levels. No, the choices we make in this life are decisive. Our free will really matters. Purgatory is the completion of what we start on earth.
Sant’Agnese in Agone, the church in the center of Piazza Navona, is more beautiful than usual these days because it is hosting a special exhibit of three El Greco paintings. The largest and most impressive of these is the “Baptism of Christ,” a favorite theme of mine and something I think the Church would do well to reflect on more deeply–especially in these days of deep division and various lobbies jockeying for influence.
Sant’Agnese in Agone, Piazza Navona, Rome
At his baptism, the identity of Jesus is revealed by the Father: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” As John the Baptist well knew, Jesus had no need of baptism; the event was for our benefit. The Lord’s baptism reveals what happens in our baptism: we become the children of God by adoption; we come to share in the Sonship of Jesus. The Father’s words come to apply to us. We become the beloved sons and daughters of God.
The reason I think this event is so important is because, for Christians, our status as God’s sons and daughters must become and remain our most fundamental identity. When some other form of identity becomes primary–our national identity, our identification with a particular political party or ideology, even our natural family–we go badly astray. This, it seems to me, is the most serious problem with contemporary LGBT ideology. The problem is certainly not with the people themselves, nor even so much with any particular sexual desires per se–living our sexuality with integrity has always been challenging, in different ways, for all Christians. The problem is when those sexual desires become ideology and ideology becomes identity, when one particular aspect of one’s personal make-up–one’s sexuality–becomes the dominant characteristic in one’s self-definition, the one ring to rule them all.
One of the highlights of my recent travels through Asia was visiting a number of quite impressive Buddhist temples and shrines. This was particularly the case in Thailand, though Chinese temples in Singapore, Taiwan, and Hong Kong were also filled with rich carvings, colorful statues, and piles of offerings including fruit, flowers, and burning incense. The warm red–the color of prosperity–of the Chinese temples reminded me of the red color with which the ancient Romans frescoed the inside of their homes. The desire for a warm hearth is written deeply in the human psyche.
Thian Hock Keng Temple, Singapore
A place of worship that makes an absorbing appeal to the senses is of course nothing new to me. I live in Rome, city of the baroque, where tales of religious ecstasy are told and retold in marble, mosaic, and fresco. The impulse of Christianity to express itself in art goes back to the Incarnation itself, to God revealing himself by entering into the world of the flesh, expressing his divinity in the matter of creation. We Catholics believe that he continues to communicate his grace to us through the sacraments. Artistic expressions using color, smell, and sound to amplify this divine work come naturally enough to a sacramental faith.
But what about Buddhism? Such expressions would seem to me, an outsider, to fit less naturally within Buddhist philosophy, with its distrust of all desire and negation of the world of pleasure and pain. Incarnation and Nirvana are two radically different beliefs. Yet how else to describe the gilded wats of Thailand, the cascades of angels and demons in glittering ceramic, than Buddhist baroque?
Wat Arun Ratchawaramahawihan, Bangkok
Of course, Thailand’s wats are not the architectural expression of pure Buddhist philosophy but a kind of non-culinary Asian fusion–Buddhism grafted into a still older mix of traditional folk beliefs, legends, and superstitions. How cogent such a mix is, I can’t evaluate. But there’s something human about that folk mix that I find more compelling than Buddhism in its purity, which I’ve always thought a little chilly.
Those at daily Mass this week get to enjoy the special treat of hearing the book of Jonah. The book is such a good tale–who doesn’t love a giant sea monster? or a cantankerous prophet?–that I imagine the story originally told dramatically aloud. I think we’re meant to laugh at Jonah, the Mr. Bean of prophets.
Of course, there is a serious message to the book that goes beyond whale innards and the prophet’s pouty attachment to his gourd plant. Jonah reveals the sweeping reach of God’s mercy, extending even to the most wicked of cities–Nineveh, grrr—when those within it seek conversion. Students in my classes are probably sick of hearing it, but one way to get under my skin is to claim that the grumpy “God of the Old Testament” has been replaced by the groovy “God of the New Testament.” There’s only one God. He’s infinitely merciful and revealed in both the Old and New Testaments. And the book of Jonah proves it.
In case you missed it, an essay of mine appeared recently in issue 19 of The Lamp, a relatively new Catholic magazine full of interesting and thoughtful writing (if I do say so myself).
“Public apologies for historical wrongs have multiplied in recent years… Yet we do not seem to have become a more reconciled and understanding society.”
This particular essay, “Confessing Other People’s Sins,” is among the most important things I’ve written. The essay draws on a lot — my experiences in South Dakota, as a confessor, and studying theology.
When I get near the end of my time in Rapid City every summer—or this year, fall—I feel a little nostalgic. It helps me to imagine how St. Paul would have felt throughout his ministry, founding communities and then having to move on. He invested himself completely into each one; he made friends; he faced opposition, persecution, and disease; sometimes he owed his survival to the care he received from the Christians in each place. And because it was much harder for Paul to travel by foot and ship across the Mediterranean than it is for me to book an airline ticket across the Atlantic, I find the yearning and love expressed in his letters particularly poignant. This is especially the case in his letter to the Philippians.
Not all of Paul’s letters are as warm as the one to the Philippians. (The Philippians, just so we’re clear, were residents of the city of Philippi in northern Greece, not to be confused with Filipinos who come from islands in the Pacific.) In some letters—to the Corinthians, for example—Paul is in battle mode, trying to straighten out bad behavior. He wrote his letter to the Romans before he arrived in Rome, so it’s sort of an introduction and also a fundraising appeal. But Paul knows the Philippians well; he describes them as his partners for the Gospel from the first day. His letter to them was written from prison, probably in Rome. Contemplating the quarantine that awaits me on my own return to Rome, this is also something I can relate to. But despite these circumstances, Paul’s letter to the Philippians overflows with joy and peace. It’s obvious that his affection for the little church in Philippi is a comfort to him even in imprisonment. He writes, “I am confident… that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus.” Paul knows that we can never just tread water in the life of discipleship. We must always keep striving. So the letter is an exhortation to continue to grow in Christ, but its tone is more that of encouragement than a call to repent.
Now you are probably used to being told not to take certain parts of the Bible literally. Today, however, I’m going to tell you to do the opposite. Read St. Paul’s words to the Philippians, and take them as if they were addressed to you, as if the letter began, “to all the holy ones of Christ Jesus who are in Rapid City.” And take these words literally: “If there is any encouragement in Christ, any solace in love, any participation in the Spirit, any compassion and mercy, complete my joy by being of the same mind, with the same love, united in heart, thinking one thing. Do nothing out of selfishness or out of vainglory; rather, humbly regard others as more important than yourselves, each looking out not for his own interests, but also for those of others. Have in you the same attitude that is also in Christ Jesus.”
Today’s Gospel raises a host of tricky questions—what is justice? What is the relationship between divine justice and human justice? Or between God’s justice and his mercy? What does the apparently unfair situation described by Jesus in the Gospel—no doubt in violation of several labor laws—tell us about salvation? Or conversion? One thing, however, is clear: if I preach for eight hours, or five hours, or three hours, or twelve minutes, I’m going to get paid the same amount anyway. So I’ll leave some of these questions unanswered.
It’s obvious that Jesus is not giving instruction for how to run a business, but is instead trying to teach us something about salvation. He is also reinforcing what the prophet Isaiah says: “my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” No matter how much advice we give the Lord, he has his own ideas about how to run the universe and he doesn’t always explain them to us. And sometimes he does explain, but we hear only the parts we want to hear.
In its original context, the earliest Christians probably understood today’s parable to be about the relationship between Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians, which was the big controversy in the first century. Even though the Jewish people received divine revelation first, this did not mean that Gentiles who converted to Christianity were in any way less Christian. Still, even then the passage’s broader meaning would have been apparent to everyone: conversion is possible, even for the worst sinner, even a deathbed conversion. Thus, Isaiah says, “Let the scoundrel forsake his way, and the wicked his thoughts.”
Now it sounds very nice to say conversion is possible for even the worst sinners. But Jesus’ parable forces us to confront the difficult question: is that really fair? Or, to put it another way, what does this mean about the relationship between God’s mercy and his justice? Do they contradict each other? We know that God is both merciful and just, but sometimes it’s hard to understand how he can be both. Is he 50% just, 50% merciful? Is he just in the obvious cases, but merciful in the ones that are borderline, sort of willing to round up? In fact, God is 100% merciful and 100% just, and there can be no contradiction between his mercy and his justice. If we’re thinking about divine justice and divine mercy as contradictory, we’re thinking about them wrong.
The giant saguaro, found in southern Arizona and northern Mexico, is the largest cactus in the world, growing up to forty feet tall. Saguaros are covered in spines almost three inches long, spines almost as strong as steel needles, so sharp, in fact, that they have been known to puncture the skull of bighorn sheep that run into the cactus. From this, two conclusions are clear. First, sheep probably do deserve their dim reputation for intelligence, and, second, you really don’t want to hug a saguaro.
Capitoline Museum, Rome
Now you may be thinking, “Thank you, Father Obvious, for that really helpful advice.” Probably we don’t need to be told what a bad idea it is to hug a cactus. And yet, in the Book of Sirach we read about people doing something that is potentially just as painful and damaging. “Wrath and anger are hateful things,” Sirach says, “yet the sinner hugs them tight.” And we have probably had the experience of tightly hugging our anger, of nurturing a grudge with more fertilizer than we give to our gardens. The leaves and flowers fall off a grudge very quickly and leave us with nothing else but spikes.
In last Sunday’s Gospel reading Jesus gave us some practical advice for dealing with conflict between Christians, and this Sunday we have readings on the related theme of forgiveness. I think we can identify two levels of meaning when Jesus teaches about forgiveness. The first is practical—how do I do it? Part of the reason forgiveness is such a frequent theme in the Gospel, I suspect, is that it is often so hard to do. Even if we get to the point of forsaking revenge, of no longer trying to hurt someone who has hurt us, even if we say the words “I forgive you,” the gnawing wound sometimes still remains. We can remove the spike, but the sting is inside. How do we let go?
Of all the Old Testament prophets, the one whose writings most resemble a hallucination caused by LSD is probably Ezekiel. There’s a psychedelic temple; four-faced creatures that are part man, part lion, part eagle, part ox; apocalyptic battles; a bit of cannibalism; an army of dry bones that rattle back to life; and a few scenes that are definitely rated R. If you’re seeking entertainment, cancel your HBO subscription this month and just read the book of Ezekiel.
Now please don’t go home and tell people, “Father preached this morning about LSD. He was a Jesuit—you know how they are.” In order to appreciate this marvelous book of the Bible, I want to draw a contrast between hallucination, optimism, and the central theme of the book of Ezekiel—hope.
Ezekiel lived through what might be considered the most hopeless moment in the history of the Jewish people. The corruption of the Israelite monarchy had so weakened and divided Israelite society that the nation was easy prey first for the brutal Assyrian empire, which utterly destroyed ten of the twelve tribes of Israel, and then a few decades later for the even more ruthless Babylonians. Ezekiel was a priest, who along with the other educated members of Israelite society was carted off into forced exile in Babylon. It would have appeared to any observer at the time that Israel’s story was over. They had been favored by God; they had been given the Promised Land and a covenant, and they blew it. They broke the covenant, lost their land, and had only slavery and extinction to look forward to.
And at this moment in history, in exile in the heart of enemy territory, in Babylon itself, Ezekiel started receiving visions. Ezekiel’s visions were wild but not hallucinations. They pointed toward a better future but it would be difficult to call Ezekiel—or any of the Hebrew prophets—an optimist. Ezekiel’s vision was something else entirely—it was a vision of hope. What’s the difference, you ask.
Tony Lusvardi, S.J. 