How a Christian must follow Christ even though he does not shed his blood for him

I tell you again and again, my brethren, that in the Lord's garden are to be found not only the roses of his martyrs. In it there are also the lilies of the virgins, the ivy of wedded couples, and the violets of widows. On no account may any class of people despair, thinking that God has not called them. Christ suffered for all. What the Scriptures say of him is true: He desires all men to be saved and to come to knowledge of the truth.

Let us understand, then, how a Christian must follow Christ even though he does not shed his blood for him, and his faith is not called upon to undergo the great test of the martyr's sufferings. The apostle Paul says of Christ our Lord: Though he was in the form of God he did not consider equality with God a prize to be clung to. How unrivaled his majesty! But he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, made in the likeness of men, and presenting himself in human form. How deep his humility!

Christ humbled himself. Christian, that is what you must make your own. Christ became obedient. How is it that you are proud? When this humbling experience was completed and death itself lay conquered, Christ ascended into heaven. Let us follow him there, for we hear Paul saying: If you have been raised with Christ, you must lift your thoughts on high, where Christ now sits at the right hand of God.

St. Augustine, Sermo 304

The Prayer

Stanislaus Chlebowski, The Prayer

Psalm 23 — Trusting the Shepherd

When you see yourself shepherded and guided safely by the Lord, rejoice in the words of Psalm 23.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

I've become very fond of this psalm in the last year. It has the dual effects of being very peaceful and trusting, combined with acting as a promise for believers, no matter how hard times may get.

Everyone from the Church Fathers to us modern folk love this psalm and there is a wealth of commentary to dive into. I am going to share just a few comments that struck me.

An image of Psalm 23 (King James' Version),
frontispiece to the 1880 omnibus printing of The Sunday at Home.

This simple observation cracks me up. It is so funny because it is so true.

23.1 The Lord is My Shepherd

Complete Dependence. Augustine. When you say, "The Lord is my shepherd," no proper grounds are left for you to trust in yourself. Sermon.

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

I like the reminder from both St. Augustine and Pope Benedict XVI that being in God's company radically transforms reality.

23.4 The Valley of the Shadow of Death, You are with Me

A Lamp in a Dark Place. Augustine. As long as you remain in this present life, you are walking in the midst of vices, of worldly pressures, which are the shadow of death. Let Christ shine in your heart, who lights the lamp of our minds with the love of God and neighbor; and you will not fear any evils, since he is with you. Sermon.

Psalms 1-50 (Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture)

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To speak of the "dark" valley, the Psalmist uses a Hebrew phrase that calls to mind the shadows of death, which is why the valley to be passed through is a place of anguish, terrible threats, the danger of death. Yet the person praying walks on in safety undaunted sine he knows that the Lord is with him. "You are with me" is a proclamation of steadfast faith and sums up the radical experience of faith; God's closeness transforms the reality, the dark valley loses all danger, it is emptied of every threat. Now the flock can walk in tranquility, accompanied by the familiar rhythmical beat of the staff into the ground, marking the shepherd's reassuring presence.

Pope Benedict XVI, Prayer

I always think of how I feel about being invited to the feast in the presence of enemies but not about what it means that God offers us that hospitality.

23.5 You Prepare a Table Before Me

To accept another as a guest at one's table was to set aside enmity and to assume responsibility for the safety of the guest while in your dwelling. To sit at Yahweh's table is to enjoy fellowship and communion with him. To do so "in the presence of my enemies" is to have one's special relationship to God declared publicly in a context of divine blessing and security.

Psalms vol. 1 (The NIV Application Commentary)

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The Psalmist becomes the object of much attention for which reason he sees himself as a wayfarer who finds shelter in a hospitable tent, whereas his enemies have to stop and watch, unable to intervene, since the one whom they considered their prey has been led to safety and has become a sacred guest who cannot be touched. And the Psalmist is us, if we truly are believers in communion with Christ. When God opens his tent to receive us, nothing can harm us. Then when the traveler sets out afresh, the divine protection is extended and accompanies him on his journey.

Pope Benedict XVI, Prayer

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here.

Nate Bargatze — a stand-up comedian who is both nice and hilariously funny

Bargatze broke out during Donald Trump’s presidency with the first of two hour-long Netflix specials. A college dropout who insists he’s too dumb to make informed decisions for himself, let alone lecture anyone else, he never talks about politics. He goes nowhere near race or identity issues. He maneuvers so gingerly around other subjects—religion, gender roles, the fracturing of America—that they feel untouched.

After reading this article in The Atlantic, I was intrigued. Bargatze sounded like the comedians I enjoyed most — Jerry Seinfeld, Jay Leno, David Brynner — doing observational comedy without trying to skewer people.

After watching both his Netflix specials we agreed, this guy was somehow hilarious without being mean. We were all laughing out loud at things like ordering coffee and coughing in public. It was a refreshing change of pace. We may be the last people to hear about him, but in case you hadn't watched him yet, give Nate Bargatze a try. 

 I found the article via The Dispatch's daily newsletter. They're good too and not mean. Give them a try.

Dying is nothing ...

Jean Valjean, almost without ceasing to gaze at Cosette, considered Marius and the doctor with serenity. They heard these words, barely audible, come from his lips: "Dying is nothing; what's terrible is not to live."

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables

The Woman in White

The Woman in White, Frederick Walker
Via Books and Art

Vikram Vedha — "Let me tell you a story."

Vikram is a brave and honest police inspector who is decisive about right and wrong. Vedha is a criminal who understands the grey shades between good and evil. Vikram leads an encounter* unit formed to eliminate Vedha. In the course of the manhunt, Vedha tells Vikram three stories which change his perceptions of good and evil.

This neo-noir film is a classic story of cat-and-mouse between criminal and policeman which kept us guessing, especially when Vedha's moral questions kept throwing new light on the investigation. It's an exciting thriller that also makes us think as each time Vedha says "let me tell you a story" with a wicked twinkle in his eye. We see new light shed on our judgment of the characters as Vikram is forced to reassess himself and the situation.

The movie's framework of using stories to engage two protagonists to a meeting of minds is inspired by the Indian folktale Baital Pachisi. They are also known as internationally Vikram-Betaal and are often called the vetala tales. So we can see whence the names of the film protagonasts are derived. These are ancient Sanskrit stories which made us think of the Scheherazade stories in that a framing story encapsulates a lot of other tales.  Knowing just the basic outline of the stories gave us context adding another layer of understanding and enjoyment to the movie. We could only imagine how much fun watching this must have been for Indians knowing the Baital Pachisi.

We were really impressed with the storytelling and directing from the husband and wife team Pushkar · Gayatri. We weren't the only ones. This was a really popular film and is going to be remade in Hindi, using the same directors. The cast were all good but the main stars made the film. We'd never seen Vijay Sethupathi before but his intelligent, self assured gangster with a twinkle in his eye captured our hearts at once. It is easy to see why he is so popular that his nickname from fans is "People's Treasure." (I love the way that the Indian fans love their movie stars.) We've seen Madhavan (Vikram) in other movies but he is something of a chameleon and can be hard to pick out as he ranges from a crazy college kid in 3 Idiots to the hapless love in Tanu Weds Manu to the self assured detective Vikram.

Rating — for viewers with medium to difficult Indian film experience. (It's not rocket science, but without any cultural background at all you might feel kind of lost.)

* Encounter killings are something we have been shocked to find are an accepted feature of Indian society and often featured in films as heroic. Wikipedia explains:

Encounter killing is a term used in India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka since the late 20th century to describe extrajudicial killings by the police or the armed forces, supposedly in self-defence, when they encounter suspected gangsters or terrorists. In the 1990s and the mid-2000s, the Mumbai Police used encounter killings to attack the city's underworld, and the practice spread to other large cities.

There was a door to which I had no key

Illustration for Quatrain XXXII of Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám,
1913, Rene Bull

There was a Door to which I found no KEY:
There was a Veil past which I could not see:
Some little Talk awhile of ME and THEE
There seem’d–and then no more of THEE and ME.

Quatrain XXXII of Rubaiyát of Omar Khayyám

A Movie You Might Have Missed #50: The Overnighters

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

"The problem is we're working with sinners and some people are fearful."

This documentary focuses on Pastor Jay Reinke's ministry to homeless men who have flocked to Williston, North Dakota to work in the oil fields but found jobs are not as plentiful as they thought. In some cases, the men are fleeing former problems which catch up to them and leave them unemployable.

Reinke's Lutheran church begins by offering shelter during the winter. The congregation eventually becomes overwhelmed when the "Overnighters" program shows no signs of shutting down although good weather has come because the needy continually arrive in ever-increasing numbers.

We follow Reinke as he and his family struggle to continue the ministry against increasing opposition, including from local media and city government. I was astounded at some of the frank conversations caught by Jesse Moss with his one camera set up.

At first this looks like a straight forward case of Christian hypocrisy. However, no story is ever as simple as it appears on the surface. As the documentary continues we are shown further strands of the story which lead into challenging, thought provoking waters. By the end we are left pondering a morass of complex issues which embody themes that may lead many a Christian to say, "There but for the grace of God, go I."

I could see everyone's struggle. The pastor trying to live the Gospel, the overwhelmed congregation, the men who just want a chance to work, and even the neighbors and local media. That is part of the value of this piece. It reflects us in so many ways and leaves us thinking about how we serve when the "other" is among us.

Hoopoe

Hoopoe, Remo Savisaar

 

The Merchant's Wife

The Merchant's Wife, Boris Kustodiev

What the angels eat

When one has tasted watermelon, he knows what angels eat. It was not a Southern watermelon that Eve took; we know it because she repented.

Mark Twain

Roosters and Chicks

Roosters and Chicks, Xu Beibong

"And the flower said to the dirt ..."

This is really long but I love the story so much I wanted you to read it too.

It is hard to believe in this love because it is a tremendous love. "It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the living God." If we do once catch a glimpse of it. Once we recognize that we are sons of God, that the seed of divine life has been planted in us at baptism, we are overcome by that obligation placed upon us of growing in the love of God. and what we do not do voluntarily, He will do for us. Father Roy, our dear Josephite friend who worked with us at Easton and who has been these past two years in a hospital in Montreal, learning what it is to be loved, used to tell a story of a leper he met at a hospital up on the Gaspé peninsula. The leper complained to him, How could he believe in the love of God?

Father Roy proceeded to tell his favorite story. First of all, the humus from which all things spring, and the flower says to the dirt, "How would you like to grow and wave in the breeze and praise God?" And the dirt says "Yes," and that necessitates its losing its own self as dirt and becoming something else. Then the chicken comes along and says to the flower, "How would you like to be a chicken and walk around like I do and praise God?" And the flower assures the chicken that it would like it indeed. But then it has to cease to be a flower. And the man comes to the chicken and says to it, "How would you like to be a man and praise God?" And of course the chicken would like it too, but it has to undergo a painful death to be assimilated to the man, in order to praise God.

When Father Roy told this story, he said with awe, "And the leper looked at me, and a light dawned in his eyes, and he clasped my hands and gasped, 'Father!' And then we both cried together."

Father Roy is a childlike man, and the Russian leper up in the Canadian peninsula was a simple sufferer, and he saw the point that Father Roy was trying to make, and he began to believe in this love and to see some reason for his sufferings. He began to comprehend the heights and the depths and the strange mystery of this love. But it still takes the eyes of faith to see it.

Dorothy Day, On Pilgrimage

Psalm 22 (part 2) — The "Today" of Suffering God's Silence and the "Today" of the Resurrection.

In Psalm 22 he speaks in the person of the Savior about the manner of his death. ... The psalmist places all these teachings in front of us because the Lord suffered all this not on his own account but for us.

Athanasius, On the Interpretation of the Psalms

Last week we saw how the Jewish people understood this psalm and would have taken Jesus' reference to it from the cross.

This week we're going to see how it applies to our own lives in a meditation which I put together from Pope Benedict XVI. Definitely click through on the links to read his entire two homilies.

Detail, Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry, Folio 150

... Forsaken by almost all his followers, betrayed and denied by the disciples, surrounded by people who insult him, Jesus is under the crushing weight of a mission that was to pass through humiliation and annihilation. This is why he cried out to the Father, and his suffering took up the sorrowful words of the Psalm. But his is not a desperate cry, nor was that of the Psalmist who, in his supplication, takes a tormented path which nevertheless opens out at last into a perspective of praise, into trust in the divine victory.

And since in the Jewish custom citing the beginning of a Psalm implied a reference to the whole poem, although Jesus’ anguished prayer retains its burden of unspeakable suffering, it unfolds to the certainty of glory. “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”, the Risen Christ was to say to the disciples at Emmaus (Lk 24:26). In his passion, in obedience to the Father, the Lord Jesus passes through abandonment and death to reach life and to give it to all believers. ...

However a question arises within us: how is it possible that such a powerful God does not intervene to save his Son from this terrible trial? It is important to understand that Jesus’ prayer is not the cry of one who meets death with despair, nor is it the cry of one who knows he has been forsaken. At this moment Jesus makes his own the whole of Psalm 22[21], the Psalm of the suffering People of Israel. In this way he takes upon himself not only the sin of his people, but also that of all men and women who are suffering from the oppression of evil and, at the same time, he places all this before God’s own heart, in the certainty that his cry will be heard in the Resurrection: “The cry of extreme anguish is at the same time the certainty of an answer from God, the certainty of salvation — not only for Jesus himself, but for ‘many’” (Jesus of Nazareth, II, pp. 213-214 Ignatius Press, San Francisco 2011).

In this prayer of Jesus are contained his extreme trust and his abandonment into God’s hands, even when God seems absent, even when he seems to be silent, complying with a plan incomprehensible to us. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church we read: “in the redeeming love that always united him to the Father, he assumed us in the state of our waywardness of sin, to the point that he could say in our name from the cross: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’” (n. 603). His is a suffering in communion with us and for us, which derives from love and already bears within it redemption, the victory of love.

We too have to face ever anew the “today” of suffering of God’s silence — we express it so often in our prayers — but we also find ourselves facing the “today” of the Resurrection, of the response of God who took upon himself our sufferings, to carry them together with us and to give us the firm hope that they will be overcome (cf. Encyclical Letter Spe Salvi, nn. 35-40).

Dear friends, let us lay our daily crosses before God in our prayers, in the certainty that he is present and hears us. Jesus’ cry reminds us that in prayer we must surmount the barriers of our “ego” and our problems and open ourselves to the needs and suffering of others....

Pope Benedict XVI, General Audiences, September 14, 2011 and February 8, 2012

Sources are here and an index of psalm posts is here.

The Trail Drive-In

The Trail Drive-In in San Antonio, 1982.

Located at 910 SE Military Drive there in San Antonio. The site where the Trail Drive-In once stood is now a Wal-Mart Store. It was opened on April 28, 1946 with Randolph Scott in “Abiline Town” and operated by Underwood & Ezell. Santikos Theatres took over in 1973. It closed for good in 1984.

Traces of Texas, from whence came this photo.

A Movie You Might Have Missed #49: The Extraordinary Voyage

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

The cinematic journey of the iconic film A Trip to the Moon

We came across this on the Docurama channel when surfing Roku.

What a find! This tells the story of Georges Melies, whose 1902 film Le Voyage Dans la Lune left us with the indelible image of gentlemen in top hats exploring the moon. However, in order to tell Melies' story, the filmmakers wove the story of early cinema itself around the narrative. It winds up following restoration efforts to the only hand-colored print of the film in existence.

In particular I loved seeing how experimenting with a new medium allowed vivid story telling and imaginative special effects in those early days. Clocking in at 78 minutes, The Extraordinary Journey is packed with entertainment and elegant fantasy as well as being a fascinating tale.

When your duty is to be a lotus-eater

For my own part I reckon being ill as one of the great pleasures of life, provided one is not too ill and is not obliged to work till one is better. I remember being ill once in a foreign hotel myself and how much I enjoyed it. To lie there careless of everything, quiet and warm, and with no weight upon the mind, to hear the clinking of the plates in the far-off kitchen as the scullion rinsed them and put them by; to watch the soft shadows come and go upon the ceiling as the sun came out or went behind a cloud; to listen to the pleasant murmuring of the fountain in the court below, and the shaking of the bells on the horses' collars and the clink of their hoofs upon the ground as the flies plagued them; not only to be a lotus-eater but to know that it was one's duty to be a lotus-eater.

Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh, ch 80

This is via DarwinCatholic where Mrs. Darwin attests to the truth of the statement above. I especially loved the description of what he was hearing and watching while lying ill. It was so evocative of the experience.

Worth a Thousand Words: Leaping Carp

Ohara Koson
Completion Date: c.1910, Leaping Carp
Via Wikimedia

A Movie You Might Have Missed #48: The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio

It's been 11 years since I began this series highlighting movies I wished more people knew about. I'm rerunning it from the beginning because I still think these are movies you might have missed.

She raised 10 kids on 25 words or less.

Julianne Moore portrays Evelyn Ryan, a 1950s housewife with 10 children. Submitting jingles, slogans and songs to product contests, she wins prizes and cash that help their family scrape by. Her husband, Kelly, (Woody Harrelson) is an alcoholic who spends a hefty portion of his paycheck on the nightly fifth of whiskey and six-pack of beer so Evelyn's talent with words is much needed.

This started off fun and cute, with stylized presentation that made us think of Pushing Daisies. Then, just when we thought there wasn't more to say, it veered into deeper waters thanks to the complex issues caused by the alcoholic husband. Although it is treated more lightly than in some movies, the film's power comes from watching how Evelyn copes with her husband and the issues his dysfunction raises in the family.

NOTE: I subsequently read the book and found this movie to be a very good adaptation of it. Both are worth experiencing for their own worth.