THE CHURCH IS EMPTY: MISSA PASCHALIS

Last evening I went to the beautiful church of St. Simon and Jude in Prague to hear a stunning concert performance of the Weser Renaissance Ensemble, one of the most sought after ensembles in the world specializing in early 16th and 17th century music. The performance piece was a haunting mass by Flemish composer, Heinrich Isaac, entitled Missa Paschalis, and the ensemble consisted of one counter tenor, two tenors, one baritone and one bass accompanied by a coronet and four trombones. I felt completely carried back to an earlier time in history and into a rare and wonderful sacred space conjured up by the rich polyphonic music. It reminded me very poignantly of how rich the Catholic spiritual tradition has been to so many who have been touched by it in a mystical way and that this mystery has been communicated most powerfully through the Eucharist and the Mass, as well as through the witness of such martyrs to injustice as Bishop Oscar Romero and the Jesuits massacred in El Salvador. In these terrible times of revelation, we have to remind ourselves that the Mystery still exists within the broken container of the institution, even though we are being painfully weaned away from dependence on the structures of authority. These structures have weaved such a tangled, corrupt and suffocating web around the Divine Mystery that it has become obscured to many. It is time for the structures to fall away and the loud noises we are hearing in the streets today, both the anguished cries of the abuse victims calling out for justice and the hysterical, high pitched denials of the Episcopal and Papal enablers, is simply the clattering sounds of the superfluous scaffolding falling away. The authority system, having proven itself defunct,  is simply no longer needed and must be dismantled, leaving the way open for a true reformation of the Catholic communion. It will not surrender its power of its own accord, it will not reform itself from within, so power and credibility must be taken away from it, thereby enabling us to experience the  Divine Mystery that still lives within the living community of the Spirit. This community will still have the responsibility to pass on the tradition and to still act as a conduit for the sacred mystery, but new forms of organization need to rise from the ashes. As the Old Catholic Church so eloquently witnesses (along with other Spirit filled breakaway communities), there are ways of being Catholic outside the control of the Vatican system.

This is why I thought it appropriate to experience this rich, deeply moving spiritual music in a church in Prague which has been de-consecrated and is now used as a concert hall. It's 'sacred power' has been taken away from it, the Eucharist is no longer reserved, and it has  simply become an empty shell of great artistic beauty, but devoid of that unique Catholic mystical presence. As I looked at all of the ornate decorations, the statues, the paintings, the crystal chandeliers, I felt Saint Simon and Jude had become an apt metaphor for the  present state of the Roman Catholic institutional and hierarchical system, a relic of the past devoid of sacred presence. As the scaffolding falls to the ground with a cacophonous clatter, the divine mystery is being set free, like an ecstatic  bird, soaring, soaring through the air on great white wings.
This morning I received this email comment from a close friend of mine which expresses how so many 'Catholics' are now feeling today about faith and spirit and life:

I continue to have moments of special warmth coming from somewhere... it feels like a combination of Christ and Ramakrishna... Christ thru Ramakrishna.
A few weeks ago I felt a cord cut ... a cord that made me feel tied to the Catholic Church... one that had guilt attached. Now, I feel the cord is cut and I am free just to be.
Something is happening and I am different.

Indeed! Something is happening, the cord is not only being cut, we are  not only different - but we are all so much the better for it. Alleluia!

Read More

Ramakrishna and Devotion to Christ

Rare photos of Ramakrishna, patron saint of all religious pluralists. He once had a vision of the divine master of Nazareth who walked towards him and then mysteriously passed through his being. At that moment, Ramakrishna's ecstatic passionate devotion to the goddess Mother Kali was replaced with limitless passionate devotion to the crucified Christ of Christianity, an event of such stupendous spiritual significance that it left the Indian master disoriented for days. Gradually, however, his newfound devotion to Jesus began to fade and was replaced by his original spiritual connection to Mother Kali, the locus of his true vocation. The implications of this experience for any of us who experience devotion to a 'Divine Master' are very great. Ramakrishna was to say that of the many paths to true enlightenment, selfless social service and devotion to the poor (the way of a Gandhi), meditation and pure intuition (the way of a Buddha) and devotion to a human 'divine master' (the central way of Christian devotion), the later path was the easiest for most human beings and the most effective. I refer the reader to Larry Hurtado's great biblical study of early Christian devotion, Lord Jesus Christ. Clearly, the early Christians experienced a call to devotion to Jesus as in some sense 'divine', which they struggled to reconcile with their Jewish monotheism, a call that caused them immense difficulties with their Jewish co-religionists and saw them expelled from the synagogues. However, I would suggest that the practitioners of this early experience lacked a point of comparison with Indian religion where such devotion is commonplace. What occurred in Israel 2000 years ago, was the birth of a devotional religion that was without precedent within Israel, but not without precedent within Asia. The message of Christianity is the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ. A human being had been chosen by vocation to image the divine for one sector of humanity and this was to have immense significance for the future of Western culture. From devotion to the codification of absolute, unique god-like status of the prophet from Nazareth was a very long step. I recommend When Jesus Became God, by Richard E. Rubenstein for a quick overview of the process, but one which does not do justice to all of the theological subtleties. As to the soteriological significance of Jesus' death and Resurrection, a mystery of such profoundity it is almost irreverent to comment on it in a blog post, I refer to an ancient Tibetan saying:

The solitary hermit, through the annihilation of his (or her) ego, becomes a center of boundless compassion flooding itself upon the world.

This saying testifies to an ancient intuition found in all major spiritual religions of the mysterious efficacy of 'redemptive suffering', that somehow we are all intimately connected on the deepest spiritual level and that the sacrificial opening of the heart of a great spiritual master floods the entire human race with 'grace and forgiveness.' Though this is an oversimplification of a profound mystery (for the sake of economy in a blog reflection), I would suggest that this would be a more appropriate pluralistic interpretation for the profound Christian intuition of the redemptive efficacy of Jesus' paschal mystery. We need to be constantly reminded that all dogmatic statements arise out of the need for reflection on prior charismatic experiences of grace. Those who are closest to the master will feel the spiritual impact of his or her death most deeply, but it is only a rigid form of mythologizing that asserts that only the sacrificial suffering and death of one's own spiritual master has exclusive, universal salvivic power for the human race. Nonetheless, with the death and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, we are in the presence of a mystery of such profoundity that it is best to step back and pause in silence, humility and respect.

Here is the video on Ramakrishna, with a beautiful prayer in his honor written by his disciple, Vivekananda. You will note that Vivekananda makes assertions about his master that Christianity traditionally reserves for the Lord Jesus Christ.

He was considered an avatar or incarnation of God by many of his disciples, and is considered as such by many of his devotees today. ^(Wikipedia)

Read More