Make Room

Today, Tuesday of Holy Week, while surfing around on Facebook, this irreverent and flippant (and funny) meme popped up:

And, well... it got me to thinkin'. Scripture is neat that way: often even a sidelong and casual glance at it will burns a reflection into the mind. Is not my word like fire? (Jer. 23:29).

You see, it is Holy Week, and someone thought this was an appropriate post for the occasion. And that is because, in all of the synoptic accounts of the events of Christ's final entry into Jerusalem and His passion and death, this event - the "Cleansing of the Temple" - is placed in the very days leading up to the climax of the story.

But what is interesting is that, in John, the incident is placed quite early - in chapter two, in fact.

So, what gives?

Well, of course, details in the narratives, and particularly timing - and especially in John, who includes weighted little descriptors like "and it was night" - can be theologically significant. Anyhow, though, we won't digress into debates of the synoptic problem and all that. After all, it is as likely as not - in the present case - that the placement of the synoptic accounts of this particular event corresponds to the historical fact: indeed, the ruckus caused in this scene not only provide motive for those who would petition Christ's death, but also a rationale for the Roman government to quell a known rabble-rouser.

What's interesting to me, though, is that this scene comes in the narrative of this week - and what it might mean for each of us.

Of course, it's always worthwhile in these matters to consult The Fathers.

Jerome reminds us why this exchange trade was going on in the Temple in the first place [emphasis added]:

It should be known that in obedience to the Law, in the Temple of the Lord venerated throughout the whole world, and resorted to by Jews out of every quarter, innumerable victims were sacrificed, especially on festival days, bulls, rams, goats; the poor offering young pigeons and turtle-doves, that they might not omit all sacrifice. But it would happen that those who came from a distance would have no victim.

 The Priests therefore contrived a plan for making a gain out of the people, selling to such as had no victim the animals which they had need of for sacrifice, and themselves receiving them back again as soon as sold. But this fraudulent practice was often defeated by the poverty of the visitors, who lacking means had neither victims, nor whence to purchase them. They therefore appointed bankers who might lend to them under a bond.

Now, Jerome's interpretation of this passage, as with most Patristic commentators, seems basically to be that it contains a moral for priests and bishops and others who minister in God's sanctuary.

But, if I may, I find something fascinating in the background Saint Jerome chooses to give here - how potentially packed with meaning it is! Think about it: people too poor to provide a victim to satisfy... and laid upon them, by those supposed to help them gain atonement, a kind of double-debt on top of the first debt of the Law.

This is all of us: for humanity, on its own, is so impoverished, and also so doubly-in-debt: we need both a true Victim and a true Priesthood. And in the events of the same week in the Gospel, Christ presents Himself as both, and initiates in the same Last Supper the two sacraments that shall re-present Him as Victim and Priest to all the baptized until the end of time: the Eucharist and Holy Orders.

On top of this, Origen saw in this passage even more meaning still, applying it equally to us all and not just to our ministers:

Mystically; The Temple of God is the Church of Christ, wherein are many, who live not, as they ought, spiritually, but after the flesh; and that house of prayer which is built of living stones they make by their actions to be a den of thieves.

Yes, other reflections on this wonderful scene have been offered, and will continue to be. Of course, it has also to do with issues of avarice and greed, and the relative blessedness of the poor - after all, immediately after we see iniquity chased from the Temple, we see the lame and the crippled invited in to be healed. But I offer that we shouldn't press any social justice reading of this too far: after all, of all the Gospel accounts, the tersest and in some ways least interested comes from Luke, who is usually identified as the Evangelist most concerned with the plight of the poor.

Instead, I offer that the central motif here is one of MAKING ROOM: making a space ready for a new thing to be ushered in. Therefore, it is somewhat incidental to us whether this historical event happened in that first historical Holy Week or earlier in Christ's ministry - (or, as Augustine and others suggest, it happened twice). For us, in any case, there is a great spiritual merit to making it part of our Holy Week now.

We are the Temple of God. Indeed, beyond what Origen here observes, we should also be reminded that each of us is  "A Temple of the Holy Ghost". (I might also commend to your reading this week, along with this passage, Flannery O'Connor's brilliant story by that title.)

In order to "make room," as it were, for His Victimhood, His Priesthood, and His Rites of Atonement, Christ first had to clear out what only foreshadowed these, and imperfectly. Furthermore, He made it clear clear that the New Covenant demanded a break from all worldly thought: no hedging bets and conniving would have any place. Christ's rebuke to Peter - "You are thinking as man does, but not as God" - comes back to us here this same aspect of meaning as Christ's demonstration in the Temple. This was a merciful act, and an act of love: these things had to be cleared out, for they were passing away: the animal sacrifices and the dealings and the calculations were all to fade away under the shadow of The Cross. That Cross was the one and only payment that could be made, and we must bind ourselves over to it and to no other debt.

Holy Week provides us a last and urgent opportunity to "make room," even if all of our Lent has been squandered. It gives us a chance to clear out the old ways from our life, to abandon our compromises and our bets, and to cancel all our debts to falsehood.

We are the Temple of God. And we might find ourselves sometimes very much a den of thieves. But the True Victim and the True Priest, He Whose Temple it is... well, this is what He does. He rebuilds and restores the Temple. He cleansed the Temple once (or twice) upon a time. He restored the Temple (of His body) after three days following its destruction. And He rebuilds us, however broken from sin we may be, each and every time we fall - indeed, each and every day, with His Grace. We just need to make room for Him to do what He does.

A Short Exegetical Argument

A couple of weeks ago, after attending Midnight Mass for Christmas, a friend of mine inquired about the apologetics problem that often arises in discussion of Matthew's infancy narrative. The passage in question is at the end of the first chapter of that Gospel, which reads: "When Joseph woke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took his wife, but knew her not until she had borne a son; and he called his name Jesus" (Mt. 1:24-5; RSV). The problematic phrase, highlighted in this excerpt, is sometimes used to argue against the Virginity of Mary during and after the birth of Christ. Of course, for Catholics, the consistent teaching on the Virginity of Mary is that she is semper Virgo, always Virgin - in the words of Saint Augustine, quoted in the Catechism, "concipiens Virgo, pariens Virgo, Virgo gravida, Virgo feta, Virgo perpetua: a Virgin conceiving, a Virgin bearing, a Virgin pregnant, a Virgin bringing forth, a Virgin perpetual" (CCC 510).

However, according to the argument, the word "until" from Matthew's birth narrative makes it plain that the abstinent marriage of Joseph and Mary ceased after the Nativity of Christ.

At the time my friend brought this up, I made reference to him of various other passages in Scripture where the word for "until" - donec in the Latin, eos in Greek - simply denotes passage in time and doesn't imply anything about what comes after. (In fact, there's nothing essential about the meaning of the word in English that it would imply a change in a course of events coming after the moment modified by "until" - it simply has come to be that we use the word thus idiomatically. English authors have sometimes used the word in its literal sense simply as a way of describing a passage in time without setting up some kind of apposition. For example, one could write, "We were in the restaurant until around 1:00 when Bob showed up, and he sat down and had lunch with us. We spoke about many things." Here, the implication is clearly not that we left the restaurant after Bob showed up; the "until" simply takes care of describing the expanse in time before he did arrive.)

The reason I bring this up this week is that the Old Testament reading for today's Mass gives us an instance of this usage of the Scriptural "until" that illustrates the kind of reading one should give Matthew's. In Isaiah, the Prophet describes the Lord's Servant in this way: "He will not fail or be discouraged till he has established justice in the earth, and the coastlands wait for his law" (Isaiah 42:4). This is the same word "until" as we have in Matthew 1:25. And here, we can clearly see that what the Servant is not doing before (failing and being discouraged) doesn't suddenly begin happening after justice is established. In fact, this usage relates perfectly to the passage in Matthew because it is idiomatically very similar in its use of a negative description in the time described by the "until." Just as the Servant did not suffer discouragement or failure before and neither will start to suffer them after justice comes to pass, so Mary and Joseph had no relations before and none after the birth of their Son. At least, while the text may not establish certainly that it was NOT the case (either that the Servant then suffered or that Mary and Joseph became intimate), it doesn't necessarily imply the contrary.

If anyone has any examples at the ready from English literature, I'd appreciate them: I know this usage of "until" is a common formula which I've come across, I just can't recall where at the moment. For whatever reason, Dickens seems to come to mind. Anyone have any more thoughts?

Even His Own Life

We live in a very sentimental age. I'm mired in the muck of it from day to day, and mostly grin and bear it, although many an encounter could easily enough prompt me to hold forth here on the matter. I've been a very lazy blogger this year, preoccupied with other business and expert in making excuses for neglecting this organ of mission. But once in a while, a homilist will annoy me so greatly that I feel positively compelled to write something in response - so any faithful readers who continue to watch here for some kind of update can always pray for the certain provocation that a bad sermon will provide.

This Sunday at Mass, Our Lord in the Gospel gives one of those hard-sayings that astonish disciples and halt us in our tracks:

If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. - Luke 14:26

Now, the most interesting thing in this brief saying to my nerdy sensibilities is its structure.

In the Greek text, there's a turn of phrase before the last item on the list - his own life - which is rendered in the NAB translation as even. Even, of course, gets the job done, but there's an emphatic weight that is sort of lost to us unless the one proclaiming the Gospel really nails that word. The fact is that the Greek phrasing does contain an adverb meaning "even", but that its situation amongst a conjunction and a particle make it a very emphatic, very insistent "even." It's a "moreover" even, a "yes, even" (as the RSV renders the phrase).

An illustration might help us get deeper into it. Another Lukan use of this phrase can be found in the moreover in the 28th verse of Chapter 21 in Acts. The Jews from Asia are bringing accusations against Paul:

Men of Israel, help! This is the man who is teaching men everywhere against the people and the law and this place; moreover he also brought Greeks into the temple, and he has defiled this holy place.

Now, observing the effect of the "moreover" in this sentence, we can see that it is an obvious signal for a particular kind of argument: namely, the a fortiori, the argument that builds up from weaker to stronger reasons and ends by emphasizing the strongest evidence. This is a kind of argument found throughout the Scripture: recall the place where Christ compares the goodness of human fathers in giving good gifts to their children in order to highlight how "much more so" the Father in Heaven will give good gifts to the persevering supplicant.

Well, the a fortiori is in full operation in the passage from this week's Gospel as well. And this is where the bad homily and sentimentality comes in.

Good-natured modern folks are often guilty of a very blithe kind of altruism. It's a dressed-up aping of the virtue of humility that forgets the self rather than transcends the self, and - in an ironic solution - ends by disallowing self-transcendence because of that very forgetfulness. How to better illustrate what I mean?

Let's look at this reading as an example. Now, a good modern preacher's first approach to a reading should always be a response to a "concern." What is the concern, the felt need of the community, the point of friction or challenge, that a particular pericope pinpoints? The bad homilist I have in mind from this weekend was, emphatically, not a bad preacher - he responded directly to the most obvious felt need of his congregation in engaging this passage. What I will be taking issue with here is the nature of that need, what it means for modernity, and how the fact of feeling it ought to become to focal point for the preacher's sermon. The preacher in this case focused on why Our Lord demands such terrible things as that we hate our mom and dad, and oh isn't that terrible? He succeeded, I suppose, in making some sense of the matter, but he left out the main part: the denial of self to which all this ordered and from which all this stems.

Admittedly, a modern listener is jarred by the admonition to hate anything at all coming from Our Lord's mouth in the first place - and further discomfited by the specific direction given that it's our own parents, siblings, spouses, and children that we must hate in order to follow the call of discipleship. By the time the argument spins round - a fortiori - to the emphatic call to hate even one's own life, it glances off. In a strange way, the moral and ethical self-consciousness of this Gospel's hearers swallows the hardest part of this saying most easily: we can almost imagine the congregant saying, "Well, the call to deny self I'm used to; I can do that, sure, and who does that hurt but me? But how can I hate me dear old mum?!"

It's the same sort of distaste that creeps into our perception when Christ generically addresses his Mother as "Woman." (Of course, this is not so generic as it seems on the surface, but to discuss that here would be too long a digression.) We often get another hint of the problem of sentimentality when people talk about or teach the "law of love." How many times have you heard someone interpret the saying, "Love your neighbor as yourself" or draw the inference from it that we're to love our neighbor MORE than our very selves? Now, there's a drawing toward truth in this inference, but the fact is that most of the time its utterance is too easy, too glib, and devoid of depth or meaning. It's a sentimental altruism, a sort of stoic generosity. We swallow the hard pill of self-denial (in theory) and suddenly find it's not so hard anyway, because gosh isn't it swell to be so loving and selfless and all?

But the a fortiori will not abandon its strength, and finally we must confront its deeper signification: in this saying, in the law of love itself, in every place where Our Lord tells us without confusion that there's a "better way" of reading His message. It does no good to reconcile ourselves to the hardness of His words if we simply throw ourselves against them without discernment of the meaning of the pain. What is the difficulty? What do we understand from this hard saying? Why is it hard - and what does the challenge mean for us?

Well, I'm for reading the Gospel as a whole, and for the answer to this paradoxical question, I'm going to turn to an ulikely source. Whether intentional for this purpose or not by the Church authorities who constructed the lectionary, I think the Holy Spirit offers a solution to the problem of this Gospel in the reading situated before it in the liturgy: the section from Paul's letter to Philemon.

In verses 15 and 16, Paul gives a very beautiful rationale for the slave Onesimus's temporary absence from the community to which Paul is returning him:

Perhaps this is why he was parted from you for a while, that you might have him back for ever, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, as a beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord.

Now, I don't think I take undue liberty with this text if I argue it to be an intepretive text for the Gospel of the day. Paul has given us a rubric, a hermenuetic if you will, for understanding what happens when we "give away" something to the Lord's will and service: we get it back, a hundred-fold.

I don't see this as a liberty with the text because of Our Lord's own words to this effect in a different Gospel passage, which bears a resemblance to the "hard sayings" given this week by Luke: "And every one who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and inherit eternal life" (Matthew 19:29). (Another interesting note is the proximity in both Gospels of this saying to the one that "the first shall be last, and the last shall be first".)

Our Lord is making a radical proposal demanding a real trust on the part of the disciple. There was not so much confusion about this for the Apostles themselves: they had literally left family, fields, and all manner of other things behind, and eventually followed Christ even to death.

This is not a sentimental suggestion about merely being willing to walk away, but a challenge to put our actions in line with our words - and if not our external actions, our internal ones. There's nothing stopping a single disciple from fully renouncing all that he's been given in this life, today, by an internal act. For those familiar with the method of Saint Louis de Montfort's consecration to Our Lady, you might recognize in this something akin to where de Montfort speaks about "giving up" even our own intentions and concerns of intercessory prayer, and relinquishing them to Our Lady. In fact, we don't really give them up, but we begin with that total dedication, that total commitment to her, and accept our own intercession - even our own will - back as gift.

Why is sentimentality the enemy? Because sentimentality forgets that the "giving up of ourselves" which we find so easy, in contrast to the difficulty of denying our loved ones, is not a real giving up. We're taking refuge in the things we love, and the very pleasure we have in loving them becomes a consoling balm. We forget that what we struggle with in the saying about hating mother, father, sister, brother is the pronounal reference of these: they are abstract terms, situated primarily in our own relation: it's MY mom, MY dad, MY sister, MY brother, MY spouse, MY kids. And that's why the a fortiori drives so hard at the self: it's getting after the MY. All of those things which are MINE must first be severed from my ultimate desires in order that the ME may follow. Contrarywise, if we truly accomplish this abandonment of self - of all our desires, hopes, dreams, pains, sorrows, loves, wishes - into the Lord's service as perfect disciples... well then of necessity all of the things which were MINE become HIS along with my very self. And the new point of reference for all relating to the things which might have been MINE is now centered in Christ: if I love them, it's primarily because they're His; if I deny them, it's ultimately because I'm His.

Once again, and important to remember, the long road of martyrdom and some external act to finalize and concretize this commitment is not our immediate concern. No, the Cross is ours to carry today, and every moment of prayer affords us an opportunity of total abandonment, of relinquishment, of renunciation. This is a hard saying indeed. Will we, today, "hate" these things and give them away? Will we, that is, deny them unless and except they are His? Will we accept them only as return from Him, and not as already given? Will we love them only when they come back to us through their being His and our being His together? And when sentimental love begins to ache in our heart, will we tear our heart away and place it within His own pierced heart, never to beat again or to love again unless in perfect harmony with His?

The a fortiori does not give up its strength. We can't stop at moreover.

Roots in the Furrow

Now hollow fires burn out to black,
And lights are guttering low:
Square your shoulders, lift your pack,
And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,
Look not to left nor right:
In all the endless road you tread
There's nothing but the night.

A. E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad LX

There are occasional phrases in the New American Bible that make me wince. This Sunday contained one of them.

In the Gospel passage selected for this week's reading, the rendering of the first verse (Lk. 9:51) reads: "When the days for Jesus’ being taken up were fulfilled, he resolutely determined to journey to Jerusalem...." Omnis traductor traditor, the saying goes. The Greek phrase in this verse describing Jesus' determination is idiomatic, and rendered literally in the Latin of the New Vulgate: "Et ipse faciem suam firmavit, ut iret Ierusalem." Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem.

Now, the Gospel selection chosen in the lectionary at first glance seems a hodge-podge of events and sayings. But there is an intrinsic unity that argues for interpreting the verses from 51 through 62 as a coherent pericope, exactly as the lectionary has it. This unity, however, does not show forth so clearly in the New American translation - hence my wincing.

The first section of this passage is about Christ's determination to set out on his journey to Jerusalem, where he will undergo his passion. Immediately following this, we are told that Jesus is rejected by a Samaritan village, and that Christ rebukes the indignation of his followers. Luke deliberately chooses these events to show Christ's resolution to become the Suffering Servant, and to foreshadow his rejection by his own people. Finally, we have several sayings on discipleship which, placed into the context of this foreboding doom, take on a much weightier significance. Discipleship means rejection by the world (v. 58); it means an eschatological worldview of mortification and attentiveness to the last things of man (v. 60); and it means unwavering and unswerving commitment (v. 62). This last condition, encapsulated in the saying, "No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God," is a literary recapitulation of the idiom with which Luke begins the passage: Jesus "sets his face" toward Jerusalem. He looks toward the city of destiny, and he never looks back. Luke displays Christ first exemplifying the words he is about to preach. As Jesus looks toward his trial in Jerusalem, so the disciple must not look to what is left behind once having determined to follow in Christ's path.

Discipleship begins with baptism. Now, the infant baptism ritual can be a very tidy and sanitary affair. Pretty white dresses, adorned with lace; pictures; the inevitable tiresome jokes from the minister about the baby's reaction to the water, like it's something the parents haven't seen at every bath-time: all of this can make us lose sight of the terrible magnitude of this sacrament. Dying with Christ, and rising to new life with him: yet not so early the final rising to glory, but rather rising to the life of discipleship, to the toilsome weight of a lifelong cross. Easy and light though his yoke and burden are with grace to help us, this is no mean undertaking. A child is marked on that day with the sign of the cross: he is marked for execution, for rejection by the world and for a sign that he will have no stake in its pleasures; he is marked like a criminal to be hunted by the world, the flesh, and the devil until an hour not of his choosing, when his fugation should end.

No, discipleship isn't easy. And if we find that, for us, it is - then, maybe this week's Gospel calls us to consider how firmly our face is set toward our final destination, whether we ever swerve in the plowing of our furrow for the Lord's great harvest.

There are many roots in the way of our plow, roots cast up by the seeds of sin and ignorance. Everyday the news reveals how much more the world has been overgrown with the destructive weeds of modernity, and if we do not feel our work getting harder with each sunrise, that might be a sign to us that we're not going about it with enough vigor.

I remember hearing once that ancient Christian art used to represent the plow as a Cross. It's an interesting carrying on of the Old Testament prophecy that words and sheilds should, in the Messianic age, be beaten into hooks and plowshares. It gives an added depth to the fact of the Cross being our only weapon in this world: a weapon by which to sow and reap rather than to maim and kill.

The harvest needs laborers. Elections coming up, the economy in shambles, social justice being compromised each day for money or power or just plain lazyness: plenty of soil that needs to be upturned; plenty of roots in the way. We have, of course, just the tool for the job. But how well do we use it?

Meeting Our Membership Goals

You may be a construction worker working on a home,
You may be living in a mansion or you might live in a dome,
You might own guns and you might even own tanks,
You might be somebody’s landlord, you might even own banks

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody,
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

- Bob Dylan

When Anthony Card. Bevilacqua, Archbishop Emeritus of Philadelphia, retired, he took up residence at Saint Charles Seminary. It was not uncommon for seminarians to meet him walking the halls. Looking with consideration at them from beneath his bushy eyebrows, he would sometimes ask, "Are you one of mine?" - by which he presumably meant to find out whether it was a seminarian who had been accepted to Philadelphia during his term as Archbishop.

The amusing question became a popular joke among the seminarians, but few ever stopped to consider the rather profound ecclesiastical implications behind its unconventional wording. The Shepherd had a sense of real possession over the members of his flock and his phrasing evinced this theological posture.

The mystery of membership in Christ's Body is one which provides for copious reflection. Indeed, the concept of personal identity is radically different for the Christian than for any other kind of person: the defining question in Baptism changes from "who we are", as the individual dies in the sacred waters and is claimed for Christ through the power of resurrection, and thenceforth the matter becomes a question of "whose we are" - we belong to Christ, living as members of His Mystical Body, the Church.

Our understanding of the social order ought to be framed by the theological import of this ultimate relation. The simple dialectic between the radical individualism of Western liberalism, on the one hand, and the depersonalizing solution into an absolute Social State, on the other, fails adequately to cope with this ontological transformation brought about by the Incarnation.

Even in the Christian tradition, the popular interpretation of the social Gospel has been insufficient in this regard. I'm thinking particularly of the work of Prof. Michael Novak, who sees something analogous between the ideal of the American market economy and the mystery of the Mystical Body.

The problem seems essentially to be that Paul's discourse on the Body in 1 Corinthians 12 lends itself to an organismic interpretation. Although this idea is by no means explicit in the Apostle's words, one can easily see how someone might begin to understand "membership" in the social order as a functional reality, with the different parts performing their specific roles as members or organelles of an organic whole. Yet, it is important to realize that the Body of which Paul speaks is a unique kind of Body. It is not merely metaphorical, true; but our understanding is problematic when the interpretive hermeneutic begins from the biological reality of the human body as we know it, and proceeds thereby toward an understanding of Paul's teaching. Rather, Paul's teaching is to be itself an interpretive key to other aspects of the Revelation in Christ, and vice versa. Taken in such a way, the guidelines for understanding the symbol become more cogent.

Number six of Lumen Gentium contains a taxonomy of metaphors from Revelation with the Body of Christ as foremost, but all of which are contingent for a full understanding of ecclesiology (and, by extension, these formulae condition our interpretation of the Church's evangelical mission with regard to the social order). The Church is a sheepfold with Christ as the one door; She is a flock to whom He is the Good Shepherd; She is a fecund land, a vineyard, "the tillage of God"; She is the building of God with Christ as cornerstone; She is "mother" and the "spotless Bride of the Lamb"; and She is finally the Body of which Christ is head. The document then goes on to speak extensively of the Church as the holy People of God, "a nation of Kings and Priests," with Christ himself as the High Priest.

The vision imparted by this rich tapestry of symbolism is not easy to summarize, but the major outline might be said to be one of distinction within unity. The individual is not annihilated by the role of service, but rather fully realized and actualized by the very "belonging" - again, the question is best put in terms of "whose" we are: into whose flock we have been cordoned, onto which building we have been built... and so on. However, the question is certainly not one of function. The gifts and charisms which are committed to the individual parts are secondary to the primary identification established by the ordering of the whole to its end. These aspects do not define the members in themselves, but are ordered to the service of the same ontological reality to which the members are ordered as persons, namely Christ. Put another way, all individual services and ministries, vocations and callings, are contained within the basic Baptismal call to holiness and relationship with Christ.

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Now, the Church's proclamation of the Kingdom of God contains as an essential element the building up of a more just social order. And since this mission of the Social Gospel is nothing more than the extension of Christ into the world, it follows that the same kind of formal structure applies to that message as the one we've seen defining our ecclesiological ordering.

In a forthcoming post, I will speak about the shortcomings of a too-functional view of social justice. I will try to demonstrate that the same dual integrity of distinction and unity must apply to the social order as applies to the Body of Christ as a sacramental reality. Only in this way is the ordering of society truly analogous to the Mystical Body. It is not something brought into being by diversity of function and roles, but rather something primary to which any diversity of function and roles is contingently ordered. Finally, I will try to show that personal realization - what in the order of the Church is the "calling by name" of each sheep in the flock, the Baptismal claiming of each particular member for unique relation to the end - is just as crucial in the ordering of a just society, which is sadly lacking in our current arrangements which relegate economic players to the position of functional technicians rather than fully thematic persons.

The Rationality of Topsy-Turvydom

Even in more normal moments he seemed to be one who singly pursued a solitary train of thought, and he was still talking, like a man talking to himself, about the rationality of topsy-turvydom.

"We were talking about St. Peter," he said; "you remember that he was crucified upside down. I've often fancied his humility was rewarded by seeing in death the beautiful vision of his boyhood. He also saw the landscape as it really is: with the stars like flowers, and the clouds like hills, and all men hanging on the mercy of God."

G.K. Chesterton, The Poet and the Lunatics

Today, the Second Sunday of Lent, the Church invites us to consider the Transfiguration of the Lord.

I've always been partial to Mark's account of this event, because of an oft-overlooked phrase at the end of the pericope: "So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what rising from the dead meant" (Mark 9:10 - NAB).

Now, Mark's Gospel is arguably the one most situated within the "eschatalogical dimension," that is, the one most concerned with the immanence of the Lord's return (although the focus is certainly present to the other Evangelists' accounts, especially Luke's).

The reason that this phrase in Mark particularly strikes me is that, in the immediate context, Christ has just finished emphatically his first prediction of His passion (see Mark 8:31ff). Also, more remotely, Jesus has already been depicted miraculously restoring the daughter of a synagogue official to life (Mark 5:35-42). That the man whom Peter had affirmed to be Christ, the Son of God, was given power even over life and death could not have escaped his followers' attention. So, why the confusion about "what it means to rise from the dead?"

The key to the answer is the meaning of the Transfiguration itself. Six days before the Transfiguration, Christ had been teaching his disciples about the eschaton, and the "coming of the kingdom of God in power":

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them, "Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this faithless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of when he comes in his Father's glory with the holy angels" (Mark 8:34-38).

Then, on the mountain-top with Peter, James, and John, he provides a glimpse of the glory to be revealed in that day. The root of the question: "What does it mean to rise from the dead" seems to rest in this vision of glory, accompanied by Christ's paradoxical teaching about laying down one's life in order to gain it. This is not mere resuscitation that Christ intends to accomplish for Himself and for all who follow Him: it is not simply the restoration to former life. It is an inauguration of a new being, the recreation of nature in a glorified state, turning inside-out and upside-down all that was once twisted and distorted by sin and death.

In the early Church, this vision became manifest in the witness of the martyrs. Stephen, dying, realizes the eschatological promise of Christ: "He, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God; and he said, 'Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God'"(Acts 7:55-56). Whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. Rising from the dead means rising to new life; and it means, first, dying to the world and sin. Resurrection "means" the death of martyrdom, in the sense that an effect "means" or intentionally manifests its cause. Indeed, the vision of Christ glorified on Tabor might even have included a glimpse of His future wounds shining in splendor as they do in Heaven now for eternity.

For the evangelist Mark, the Gospel was meant to shine light and meaning on the sufferings of his present-day community. The persecution by Rome challenged the believers of Christ to place their hopes in the eschatological dimension: to see future glory present in immediate sufferings, to find future gain in present loss. And the Gospel bears this message as meaningfully for us today.

It is really fortuitous that the seasons of Paschal-tide coincide each year with tax season. As we fill out our earnings statements and take stock of our worth, we would do well to ask what we really have "gained" by our year's efforts. Have we gained even the whole world, at the cost of our soul? Have we stored up treasure on earth like the fool in the Gospel, whose life would soon be demanded and find him sorely lacking in the accounting book of Heaven? Or have we acted instead like that other Fool in the Gospel, the Fool for Christ's sakes who bumbled his way along as the head of the Apostolic Church and found himself at his life's end hanging upside-down in a comical testimony to the dramatic reversal brought about by Christ?

The Transfiguration teaches us that Resurrection means death, that hope of future glory can only be substantiated through acceptance of present shame. "What it means to rise from the dead" is to have first died the death worthy of a follower of Christ. It is not only our final end that matters in this regard: it encompasses all the little daily deaths, the denials of self and turnings away from sin.

Of course, the focus of this website is economics and the social order, but this reflection is easily brought to bear in that context as well. As we go about our business these next five weeks of Lent and beyond, we may find that the building up of the kingdom of God here on earth is a drudgery and a plodding affair. Rome was not built in a day. But the kingdom of God in glory shall come like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky, and we must always be ready to stand judgment on that day. Every economizing decision, every political motive, must be informed for Christians by this eschatological focus. The rationality of topsy-turvydom demands reckoning this very day - in our nightly examen, in our filing of our income tax return. May all our testaments in this world, from the lives of our children to the ledgers of our accounts, bear witness to the things which truly matter, to what it means to rise from the dead.

Follow the bier of the dead cold Year

[NB: It might make sense to read this first.]

"It's too early!" Every year the plaint is heard in the checkout aisle of the drugstores, which seem to be the first place where Christmas decorations go on the shelves. There, next to Halloween candy, we find special sales on tree skirts and icicle lights, or bows and wrapping paper in discount packages. There is a seeming incongruity in the images of skeletons populating the side of the aisle opposite Saint Nick and his merry reindeer.

Certainly, when a country twang is heard on the radio belting out the climax of Silent Night - "Christ the Savior is born" - in early November, it is something of a jarring experience.

But let's be precise. What is problematic in November in this regard is equally irksome on the afternoon of December 24th. It is the premature celebration of the event of Christmas, and this does rightly deserve repudiation by discerning folks who want to keep Christmas well.

But once this primary error has been cautioned against and put in its most exact terms, we're left with a dilemma: what is the alternative? If there's a way properly to prepare for Christmas, then how early is too early to begin this preparation? Is the first Sunday in Advent the benchmark? Or perhaps Thanksgiving, when Santa arrives at Macy's to begin his arduous work?

Let's remember that the liturgical seasons, like the seasons of the year, are somewhat fluid and have semipermeable borders against one another. The season of Advent used to be longer than four weeks, but was also kept as a more intense fast in those days. As such, it was thought that lightening the fast - coming as it did in the dead of winter - was a beneficent thing. This remembrance serves as a double critique for us: first, pointing out that we probably keep our own shorter Advent much more laxly than we ought; and second, indicating that perhaps a longer period of (albeit less intense) preparation for the Christmas Season is in order.

Acknowledging that it is difficult to fix any kind of precise schedule, I'm going to try to indicate what I think is a better plan for how we should approach Christmastide, and supply a general time-frame. This is a recommendation only; hopefully, through my explanations and rationalization of my suggestions, the grounding philosophy behind them will become clear, so that if the proposed dates are disputed, at least the general principles will be found agreeable.

So, when do I recommend beginning to look forward to and even prepare for Christmas? Before Thanksgiving. Certainly not before Halloween? Indeed. Try September 14th.

Now, I know this may seem absurd, but it's not. I think that much of the symbolism and meaning of our Western celebration of Christmas (both the customary and the liturgical) will be enriched if we follow my proposal.

Let's consider for a moment the liturgical year as it reflects the life of the Church and the life of the world. The Exaltation of the Cross, the feast falling on September 14th, is an eschatalogical moment. Although the date of the Feast relates to historical exigencies surrounding the finding of the Cross's relics, nevertheless there may be something more than coincidental in it falling on the octave on the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Mary comes onto the scene, the first "player" in the final act of the Divine Drama of Redemption, and now we get a sort of preview of the climax. The Gospel is about judgment: we either hear Jesus telling Nicodemus that the Son of Man has come to save rather than condemn, or else we hear the stirring verse from John 12 after Jesus has predicted his death: "Now is the judgment of this world, now shall the ruler of this world be cast out."

Now, in mid-September, as the season of Pentecost begins to dwindle and the summer wans, this Feast serves as a watchword for us and a note of expectation surfaces. We have seen in the Easter Season Christ dying and rising again, and with Pentecost was ushered in a new age, of the Church. But Christ promised to come again; He proclaimed His cross as a victory and set us to look forward watchfully to His glorious reign after having cast out the devil.

The Exaltation of the Cross reminds us of this eschatological promise of Our Lord and begins a period of expectancy and preparation which lasts until the Feast of Christ the King (the last Sunday before Advent)*. During that time, we focus on the end times: death, judgment, heaven and hell. For example, we fast for Michaelmas Embertide (at the end of September) and look to that Heavenly Prince to protect us from evil things in the long night of winter. And the relationship with our departed brethren becomes more intense as we look forward to the Feast of All Saints and the month of All Souls. And, coinciding with this development, is the harvest.

In our industrial age, we miss out on the richness of harvest time. In previous times, September saw the earnest use of the cider press while laborers worked under the harvest moon as the daylight dwindled. And then October came on apace, the first frost threatening, and the harvest being gathered into the larders. Of the early grain, a brew was put down to ferment so that the excess would not be wasted, and an Octoberfest was held to clear some of the perishable food and drink to a good harvest. In November, spent grain and more perishable excess could be thrown together for a final bock-brew, and more feasts (whence the traditional Thanksgiving arose) were celebrated from the necessity of consuming what could not be stored and could otherwise go to waste.

During these times, man passed his days like a long sabbath. The darkness and cold out of doors found families gathered around their hearths for longer hours; games and warming drinks served to pass the time, now that the year's hardest work was past. Pagan lore and superstition abounded, and while the priests encouraged prayers for the dead, peasants quite easily imagined in these dark months that they could see many of the dead stalking the night. For after all, is that not what the Lord had promised? The lessons of Scripture spoke of the end of the world, and an atmosphere of tension throughout the harvest months became more and more palpable. The Lord will return! It was time that men took stock, and had ample opportunity to do so, since they were forced by necessity into their home and around their hearth where the most important things could be found.

As the days grew shorter and shorter, luminaries and evergreens were hung around the home to provide cheer and to serve as a reminder that winters had, historically, come to an end, and hopefully such would be the case with the present one. What with all the talk about about the end of the world, the peasants reserved a little corner of their hearts to look forward with symbols of life - evergreens, light, etc., - to something a little more cheerful as well. And the Church ratified this desire and provided them a focal point: the birth of Christ.

In November, Advent began, and while the eschatological dimensions of the lessons remained, nonetheless the focus on the birth of the Savior came more and more clearly into view. Within an octave of the feast, the "O" antiphons began, their first syllable expressing how the expectancy and anxiety had reached such a pitch that it practically leapt from the throat. And then finally, right around the darkest day of the year, "light shone forth in the darkness" and the great feast of Christmas began. I say began - for it lasted in earnest until Candlemas in early February, when the first real hope of Spring could begin to break through the Winter gloom.

* The feast of Christ the King, in the old calendar, was celebrated on the last Sunday of October, where it was a further punctuating mark of eschatology. The readings for the "Final Sunday of Pentecost," which was the celebration of the ultimate Sunday of the year, were also apocalyptic in nature. So regardless of what calendar you observe, the general trajectory and meaning is the same, and is in fact only intensified in variation.

---

So, what can we practically apply from this consideration to our modern observances? I would suggest that we need to be more attentive to the death of the year as it symbolizes in nature the end of all things. We need to use the season of autumn as a gradual but continual "tuning in" to the eschatalogical dimensions of the Christmas mystery: that the babe in the manger is also the mighty Judge of the world, Who comes with power, Whose tongue is a sundering sword of Truth.

If it takes putting up Christmas lights in October to alert us to the reality of the shortening days, then so be it! If we must hang a bare wreath on our wooden door even before Halloween to ward off the gloom of death which has begun to hang on the wood of the trees - then so much the better, because it shows we are paying attention.

Songs and movies, games and festivals, and the richness of harvest foods ought to be part of this season. Without admitting of Christmas joy too early - which can be easily avoided with a little discernment - still this should be a time of shutting out the world and the dark, gathering our families around our hearth - even if our hearths are televisions and our cheering lights consist of Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

If the smell of cider has not begun to permeate our homes by mid-November, then it must be asked whether we have any idea what violent travails Nature is undergoing in solidarity with us. We're not (most of us) farmers who are in touch with the earth. We don't see through our macadam and chemically-embellished lawns that great change has been underway. But this is all the more reason for us to find ways of augmenting our sensibilities so that the full impact of God's creation and the mysteries of the year can bear upon our consciousness.

So, if we have not done so already, let's begin to tune in to the death of the year. Let's begin to deprive ourselves of some of the comforts with which in previous ages it would be a necessity now to do without. And let's make up for that with cider and cocoa and cheerful music so that the poignancy of our fast becomes doubly effective. Let's retreat to the hearth away from the dark and the cold, and begin to look forward to the deadest dark of winter where a light will shine beyond all expectations, toward which it is really NEVER too early to begin looking.

My final word on this is not mine, but Chesterton's:

There is heard a hymn when the panes are dim,
And never before or again,
When the nights are strong with a darkness long,
And the dark is alive with rain.

Never we know but in sleet and in snow,
The place where the great fires are,
That the midst of the earth is a raging mirth
And the heart of the earth a star.

And at night we win to the ancient inn
Where the child in the frost is furled,
We follow the feet where all souls meet
At the inn at the end of the world.

The gods lie dead where the leaves lie red,
For the flame of the sun is flown,
The gods lie cold where the leaves lie gold,
And a Child comes forth alone.

History is a pattern of timeless moments

It's an experience familiar to most college students. On a lazy autumn day, you have taken time for your mid-afternoon nap. Waking with a start, you glance at the clock. 5:42 it says. Your room is dark; no light filters in through the windows and the bedsheet you've hung for a makeshift curtain. You wonder how you've slept all the way through the night; but then it comes back to you suddenly that you recently adjusted your clock by order of the United States Congress, so it may just as well be PM as AM. You check your cell phone to confirm this hypothesis and find you are correct; you have not, after all, missed chicken nugget dinner day at the Cafeteria. Relieved, you throw on assorted sweats (bottoms and top assorted in color and even more in degree of cleanliness) and stumble out into the cold, dark evening. The stars are obscured by clouds, and the moon gives no light. You get into line for your chicken nuggets with several minutes to spare before 6 PM, but your appetite is not what it might be for the a vague uneasy feeling deep inside - or memory of a feeling - which seems to sit somewhere near the top of your stomach; the feeling that something is altogether queer about the experience you've just had, even though you might have had the same experience several times before. You can't quite put the quality finely into words, but there is an unparalleled uncanniness in waking to a darkness you cannot comprehend, to an unknown dark hour which may easily be early evening or early morning, or an hour of untold time and darkness - the hour before no sunrise at all, or following the sun's final setting in the sky, the hour of dark which will be ended only in a flash and a trumpet blast....

The unsettling untimely dark of mid-November is an importantly meaningful experience for those who attend to its rich symbolism. Even on days of so called "Indian Summer" (such as this glorious afternoon in which I could walk out in shorts and a tee-shirt), the season asserts itself at the day's early end - however gaily the Sun shines during the daylight, he must keep the same somber curfew. In "The Four Quartets," T.S. Eliot called such unseasonal days their own season: midwinter spring. Elsewhere in the same poem (East Coker, II), he ruminates on the meaning of the autumn's encroachment on the sun's freer summer reign:

What is the late November doing
With the disturbance of the spring
And creatures of the summer heat,
And snowdrops writhing under feet
And hollyhocks that aim too high
Red into grey and tumble down
Late roses filled with early snow?
Thunder rolled by the rolling stars
Simulates triumphal cars
Deployed in constellated wars
Scorpion fights against the Sun
Until the Sun and Moon go down
Comets weep and Leonids fly
Hunt the heavens and the plains
Whirled in a vortex that shall bring
The world to that destructive fire
Which burns before the ice-cap reigns.

Today, a perfect embodiment of "midwinter spring," found me walking out of Church after hearing these chilling words from Our Lord in the Gospel: "Jesus said to his disciples: 'In those days... the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from the sky, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken.'" Looking into the bright blue sky, feeling the warm sun on my face, it was somewhat difficult to feel that we were "in those days" of which Our Lord spoke. But I knew that within a few short hours, already the sun would be retreating from sight and leaving the world to its long vigil of night, and that this night might be the night that does not end in dawn.

This is what November "means," and it means it quite insistently and intensely. And it is well for us to "get it." The world as we know it is ending. If we don't see it, then we're not reading right the signs of the times. No, I'm not talking about 2012 or the dive of the dollar or any of that. I'm talking about the annual "death of earth" which T.S. Eliot poetically celebrated in "The Four Quartets" (read them today if you get the chance). I'm talking about the end of the year, and about a certain event that happens in the dead of winter on the same day annually and yet still manages to find the great majority of us unprepared.

I offer this brief reflection as a sort of pretext to an observation I'd like to make about Christmas and its proper celebration. I'm sure many of us already have seen Christmas lights going up around our home towns, in people's houses or on the light poles. And perhaps some of us find this distasteful or untimely or a corruption. But I would like to suggest another view, one which I think is particularly urgent for our day and age, when the seasons too easily become monochromatic, and the hypnosis of electric light and the constancy of the 9 to 5 workday lull us into a routine that desensitizes us to the visceral life-cycle of the physical and spiritual world around us.

So, please check back for my next post, but in the meantime read T.S. Eliot if you can and ask yourself: What does November mean?

There Will Be Excuses Always

“The poor you will always have with you” (Matthew 26:11).

Every conversation on the application of Christian values to economic theory will eventually careen into this quotation from scripture. Usually it is produced with an air of triumphalism or at least finality and resignation, taken as a pin to a balloon. Often prefixed by phrases like “after all,” or “anyhow,” its rhetorical packaging not infrequently involves a slight frown, the furrowing of the brow, and a slow shaking of the head. Sometimes, for good measure, there is a shrugging of the shoulders and – amongst its more daring practitioners – a considerate and pained sigh.

The atomized quotation falls like an atom bomb into logical discourse and it seems, at least in this singular case, that sola scriptura rules the day. There will be no questioning the matter: Christ himself has said so: “the poor will always be around” – and that’s the brakes. And isn’t it comforting, anyhow? For when we finish the conversation we’ll usually leave a restaurant and hop into an extravagant vehicle to drive home to a comfortable lodging. Sure, anyone could give more... but why go and impoverish ourselves when we have the very words of Our Lord making it clear that no amount of giving and self-sacrifice will completely solve the problem? We’ll give when we can, but the best we can do after all is pray. We can talk and think all we want about changing society and revolutionizing economics but, “after all, the poor you will have with you always.”

It’s usually at this point of the conversation that I want to fashion a cord whip, overturn the table, and... well, you know the rest. The devil himself can quote the Bible (cf. Mt. 4:1-11); and I am personally become convinced that this little verse is one of his favorites. Too frequently is it hijacked as an excuse for apathy, laziness, or indifference. It is delivered with all of the confidence of a scripture scholar, but rarely with one’s acumen. And while people go on suffering squalor and starvation, our ears ring with this conveniently chosen chastisement of Christ’s, deafened to their plight; yet, the Lord hears the cry of the poor.

First of all, let’s take a deeper look at this quotation. The full sentence is nearly identical in Matthew and John, and runs thus: “The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me” (Jn. 12:8 RSV; cf. Mt. 26:11). Often forgotten is the small but significant insertion in Mark’s version: “For you always have the poor with you, and whenever you will, you can do good to them; but you will not always have me” (Mk. 14:7 RSV). The weight of this insertion alone is enough to clear up the matter of this verse being used as an excuse. But the thrust of the quotation is the second phrase: “you will not always have me.” What is the meaning of this phrase?

The context in Matthew and Mark both suggest an interpretive placement by the evangelists. Matthew locates this incident directly after the parable of judgment. Christ has just finished describing the criterion for final judgment: the wicked shall be separated from the righteous based on their treatment of the “least” of Christ’s brethren (cf. Mt. 25:31-46). The rationale given has been that, “Whatever you did for one of these... you did for me” (Mt. 25:40). It is after this discourse that the incident at Bethany is told, and that the anointing of Christ’s feet is criticized as a “waste” of resources that could have been spent on the poor. In context, the absurdity of this complaint becomes clear and the thrust of Jesus’ correction is likewise elucidated: it is precisely Christ’s presence in the poor which gives meaning to our charity toward them. To complain of a direct reverence toward Christ as a misappropriation is missing the point of such charitable action. In no means is this a justification for lacking urgency in the mission to save the poor: “you will not always have me” reminds us of the time formerly described in which Christ will come to us directly in the visage of the least in society.

Mark’s context is also noteworthy. Beginning a few chapters earlier, Christ has been teaching by word and action about the true nature of worship. He has cleansed the Temple and cursed the unfruitful fig tree (Mk. 11); he has spoken of rendering unto Caesar but paying essential tribute and worship to God alone (Mk. 12). Now, Mark is setting the scene for Christ’s crucifixion; but these former theological trains continue. Look first at the opening verses of Mark’s fourteenth chapter: “The Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread were to take place in two days’ time. So the chief priests and the scribes were seeking a way to arrest him by treachery and put him to death. They said, ‘Not during the festival, for fear that there may be a riot among the people’” (Mk. 14:1-2). In the incident which follows, the disciples complain of the squandering of what is equivalent to “three-hundred days’” wages on Christ’s feet. Taken together, these scenes hearken back to the lessons about paying proper tribute to God and rendering authentic worship. The chief priests and scribes have demonstrated their own lack of understanding with regard to Temple worship (cf. Mk. 11), and now have shown a perverse lack of appreciation for the essence of the “festival.” The tension of this entire section of the Gospel is the manipulation of God’s law and even God’s House for human ends. Now, the whole issue is brought to an end, and it is God Himself who is rejected in favor of lesser concerns. The point of “festival” is not to make money or profit (cf. Mk. 11:15-17), but to liberally spend in honor of God. Jesus’ time of physical presence with His disciples is like an extended Sabbath – after all, “the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath” (Mk. 2:28). The incident of the anointing and the commotion shows how greatly flawed are the perspectives and priorities of the religious spirit of Jesus’ time.

There is still more, and it follows from this juxtaposition of the meaning of “festival” worship. It is argued that the woman’s liberality with the oil should have been spent on the poor. Now, the particular part of Christ’s response which is most frequently quoted (“You will have poor with you always”) is itself nearly a quotation. Turning to Deuteronomy 15, we find directives for the celebration of a “Sabbath year” every seventh year in which debts are to be forgiven and liberality shown to the poor. Here we find it said, “The needy will never be lacking in the land; that is why I command you to open your hand to your poor and needy kinsmen in your country” (Dt. 15:11). The context of the place in scripture to which Christ is likely referring serves to make exactly the opposite point of that one often urged by those quoting Christ. The “festival” in the Old Testament is seen as a time of particular charity toward the poor because of the Lord’s special favor for them; and in the New Testament this idea is illuminated by the revelation that Christ has a special identity with the downtrodden in society.

One final consideration might be brought to bear on this often misused quotation from Scripture, and it is this: rather than using Christ’s words here to defend ourselves who are unjust, why not use them to defend the Lord who is just? There are many reasons for the inevitability of poverty in our world. Some are man-made; others are not. Even the most just economic system (such as that which this website was founded to promote) would suffer from the inevitability of natural disasters such as hurricanes and blights of crops. Despite the best efforts, it would be found that “there will be poor always.” But we will not have made those poor; or, at least, we would have tried our best in solidarity to lift their burden. We would not have made excuses for ourselves by a misappropriation of the Lord’s words; but we will excuse the circumstances of nature which sometimes destroy what we work to build. We would see Christ’s words then as a challenge and a call to continued and sustained effort: yes, there will be poor always, but we would do for them as we would do for Christ were he among us still, spending freely and liberally of ourselves lest we be found guilty in the judgment to come.