A Prayer...

... for this second Sunday in Lent.  This was posted on FB by a friend of mine from college, and it struck me as a good prayer for Lenten devotion.

"Lord, I am in this world to show Your mercy to others. Other people will glorify You by making visible the power of Your grace by their fidelity and constancy to You. For my part I will glorify You by making known how good You are to sinners, that Your mercy is boundless and that no sinner no matter how great his offences should have reason to despair of pardon. If I have grievously offended You, My Redeemer, let me not offend You even more by thinking that You are not kind enough to pardon Me.
Amen."

By Father Claude La Colombière, the confessor and spiritual director of Margaret Mary Alacoque.  I am told, by the same friend who originally posted this, that when Margaret Mary began having her visions of Christ, Father Claude tested the reality of the visions by telling her to ask the Lord what his (Father Claude's) greatest sin was - something which Margaret Mary could not know.  Apparently, she came back with the answer from Christ "I don't remember."  Although the cynic in me thinks that sounds like an easy out, it also sounds remarkably like the sort of thing Jesus might say, perhaps with a little bit of playfulness.

Lenten Fun

Not a phrase you are likely to read often.  However, Lent is one of my favorite seasons of the year, as it always feels like a time of real slowing down and introspection.  This is just a light post, because anyone who is observing Lent will surely get enough that's grave and weighty today.

For resources on keeping Lent, take a look at Full Homely Divinity, a useful little website with thoughts, suggestions and history on the seasons of the year.  As you might guess from the title, the emphasis of the website is on ways to keep the seasons of the Church year in mundane, domestic life - not just in the liturgical setting of corporate worship. Check it out,  it's a fun website.  

The Collect

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all those who are penitent; Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we, worthily lamenting our sins and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

And, reposting from last year, here is a little song by Tom Waits, that always seems terribly fitting to me on Ash Wednesday. I'm probably a little odd, but I can live with that.  This time, it's a cover done by the great Johnny Cash.  

Have a blessed Ash Wednesday everybody, and a holy Lent. 

The Ordinary Call (brief, curmudgeonly and unsystematic thoughts on vocation)

From the Catholic Illustrators Guild
(I wont look quite this cool on Saturday)

Well, in two days, God willing, the creek declining to elevate - or in upstate NY, the snow declining to fall- I shall be ordained to the sacred order of deacons in Christ's One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.  I have naturally been thinking a lot about the theology and 'practice' of the deaconate.  I admit to never having much sense of a call to the deaconate, except in so far as it is a part of the way to priesthood.  I once heard a lady who was a transitional deacon say she 'didn't identify with the deaconate.'  That comment has stayed with me, and continued to bother me for a number of reasons.  

It bothered me primarily, I think, because I have a very simple theology of vocation in general, which works something like this: if you are ordained a deacon, you are called to be a deacon.

Let me illustrate.  A priest I know once told the story  of a young couple he married, who came to him some weeks later, complaining that they didn't 'feel married.'  Now there may have been any number of underlying problems with their relationship, but he assured them that whatever they felt, they were in fact married.  Calling to ordination is much the same.  Whether we feel like we have been called or not, once ordination has happened, then the calling is clear.  Married people are called to be faithful, however they may feel when they got up this morning, and deacons are called to be deacons, even if they are moving toward the priesthood.  I don't mean of course that those pursuing ordination should not discern whether they have real gifts, just as those who are getting married should be discerning.  Still, once the vows are made, there is no question anymore. We always called first of all to be faithful where we find ourselves.

While I am on the subject of vocation, I should add that I think we often make the notion of a "call" into something rather too mysterious and spiritual.  There are people I know who have had visions and supernatural experiences which lead them to ordained ministry.  There are just as many who simply looked at what is involved in the work of a pastor, looked at their gifts, prayed about it and decided they would seek to be ordained.  Occasionally you'll hear people saying with great assurance that they are called, that they know they are called, that the Church would commit a sin by denying them ordination.

I am thinking of a few bull headed individuals I have known (men and women) who seemed to think that asserting a sense of calling with enough ferocity meant it must be a real calling.  The problem with this is that no one is ordained or called apart from the community of the Church.  If you believe you are called to be a priest or deacon, and the Church disagrees, then you are not somehow a priest or deacon in virtue of that sense of calling, because to be a pastor is always to be a pastor for the people of God. I don't mean that no one is ever wrongly excluded from ordination - people are - but at the same time, there is a real reason that we have ordinations.  God calls, and God ordains, but in the ordinary course of things, he uses the ministry of actual human beings in that process because it is these people who will be receiving ministry from the ordained. Part of being called is therefore being called by the Church, and I think there is a real sense in which that calling is not quite actual until ordination.  

In all this, no doubt, my theological preference for the ordinary and routine probably comes out.  There are individuals with striking charismatic and prophetic ministries, who break all the molds and rise up in the Church; there are individuals who have visionary experiences of calling that are incredibly powerful.  I simply get suspicious whenever we start elevating the exceptional, the idiosyncratic and the exciting above the ordinary and the common elements of life.  God surely acts in both ways, but the incarnation suggests to me that God works first and primarily through the humble and simple, in the form of a craftsman from Nazareth, in the simple realities of water, bread and wine.  Looking for exciting spiritual escapes and experiences is more characteristic of Gnostics than orthodox catholic Christians.

I think this preference for the ordinary is also rather characteristic of the ministry of deacons.  Deacons are not called to absolve, bless or consecrate; They are not called to do the most exciting things in the Church.  Instead, they are called first of all to ministry with the poor, to proclaim the gospel in action in the midst of the people, and to lead the people in prayer. The liturgical duties of a deacon all point toward this.  There is a sense in which a deacon is called to be much more 'in the congregation' than a priest is, in some ways to be much closer to the simple needs of the congregation.  Recall that deacons were first appointed to care for the poor.
The deacon's ministry, I think, is primarily to serve as an image of the ministry of humble service to which all Christians are called. In reality there is nothing concrete a deacon can do which a lay person cannot, and that is part of the point of the ministry of deacons.

At the moment, I am working a part time job at a newly opened Petco in town.  I need to right now to make ends meet.  I will admit freely that I hate retail, and I would rather be able to devote all my energy to full time ministry.  That said, I think there is something good about being in this situation during the time I am a transitional deacon.  There is something right about having to simply get by and try to minister to the people I am working with, through service and prayer.  In fact, I am making it my daily prayer that God would show me how to be a servant to the people I am working with.

Of course, for all the ordinary qualities of the deaconate, it is also the case that deacons have been among the first and greatest of the heroes of the Church, and  there is heroism in the ordinary as well.  St. Stephen, charged with feeding the poor, was also the first martyr; we can also mention St. Laurence, the saint, who while being burnt to death on a large grill requested that his torturers turn him over, "Because I'm done on this side;" or among women deacons, the great St. Olympias, the friend, confidant and supporter of St. John Chrysostom.   I will be praying for all their intercessions this Saturday, and as I undertake the ministry of a deacon.

I aitn't dead yet...

...To quote Granny Weatherwax.  It is hard to believe that it has been six months since I last blogged.  Those six months have been highly interesting, to say the least.  I spent time in DC finishing my Clinical Pastoral Education, learning the city, working at Starbucks to make ends meet, working on my last semester of seminary classes by distance, and finally graduating last month.  I am now looking at Ordination in exactly two weeks.  I moved back to New York, partly because DC was too expensive, and partly because Albany is my home diocese and I needed to be here for a while.
It was a crazy six months, but definitely formative.  Important things happened on a personal and intellectual level for me.  The personal things, I plan to keep personal, but the theological ones I will comment on.  CPE was brutal, mostly in a good sense. It functioned as a sort of ministry boot camp, and I am grateful for it.  I have no desire to function as a hospital chaplain, although I enjoyed the actual interaction with patients and doing visits.  I disliked the theological approach to inter-religious ministry, and that probably deserves a whole post of its own.  I am not basically opposed to inter-religious ministry, and even inter-religious prayer, but it takes some care to know how to do it properly.  Still, I think my experience with CPE, not to mention the extended stay in DC, was both humbling and strengthening, and at least in my own eyes I seem to be a more poised, but less arrogant man for it.

Next, I will say that the last semester of school work was challenging, mostly because of how busy I made myself with other things, and I ended up having to cram a lot of work into the last few weeks.  Oddly, that ended up being a blessing.  I ended up writing a term paper on Hans Urs von Balthasar and Sergius Bulgakov, for a study on Christology that I was doing.  I don't know why I thought this was a good plan, since these men are two of the more challenging, controversial theologians of the last century (Bulgakov was tried for Heresy by his jurisdiction of Russian Orthodox Church, but never condemned), and I was almost totally new to both their works.  Modern theology isn't really my thing.

Anyway, I managed to get a feel for both of these thinkers in the space of about two weeks, reading Mysterium Paschale by Balthasar and The Lamb of God by Bulgakov.  This had the overall effect of something like the intensive language course I took a while back, where a whole semester of Greek is compressed into three weeks or so.  You begin by feel totally overwhelmed, and as if someone is holding your face underwater, but at some point around the middle of week two something happens and you suddenly become able to breathe in the strange new environment.  I am no Bulgakov expert, still less do I claim to understand Balthasar, but I don't feel totally overwhelmed by their ideas any more.  Further, I think discovering Bulgakov has been the most important thing that has happened to me theologically in the last three or four years.

Fr. Sergius Bulgakov

I am not saying I am an out and out 'Bulgakovian,' whatever that would mean; there are some problems with his thought, some of which are pretty serious.  Still, he does provide a way of thinking and speaking about the relationship between God and the World that I find helpful.  Expect more on this, as I attempt to make a return to blogging.

I expect that the blog may take a slightly different path in the near future, as I transition from the life of a seminarian to that of an actively ministering transitional deacon, and finally a priest, but I don't want to let the blog die.  I think it helps me to have it, to get my thoughts out and even from time to time, to start conversations with people.  So anyway, I will be blogging again, especially as I have more sermons to put up. I think my sermons are among my best writings, and I hope they may, in fact, be of use to other preachers who might stumble across the blog.   See you soon.
Peace in Christ
Paul Hunter

Corpus Christi and the CBS

A blessed feast of Corpus Christi to all! Today, (much) of the Western Church celebrates the mysterious grace of Christ's presence in the Eucharist. Today, I am also celebrating being inducted into the Confraternity of the Blessed Sacrament, the Anglican Devotional Society which seeks to promote the honor due to Christ in this sacrament. I will be inducted at Solemn Evensong and Benediction this evening, at St. Paul's K Street in Washington, DC.

I want to post some reflections on the Eucharist and Christian life today, especially in relation to social justice issues, in honor of the feast. Perhaps later this evening after evensong.

The End of the Year and the Beginning of the Summer

I feel like my blog didn't take off until last Summer really, when I began my internship in New Mexico. Well this year, I have completed my residential training at Trinity, and will be finishing my Seminary education by distance this Fall. I will be spending Summer in DC doing CPE at Washington Hospital Center. For those who don't know, CPE stands for Clinical Pastoral Education, essentially an internship as a Chaplain at a hospital, prison, or hospice which many denominations, including TEC require of their postulants for ordination. I arrived in DC last Friday, and begin my internship next Monday. I am very excited, and more than a little nervous, so your prayers, gentle readers, are coveted. As last year was a particularly productive and spiritually fruitful time for me, I expect this year will be as well - especially since I will be near several dear friends, including Amy Moffitt, the wonderful author of Without a Map and Joshua Gonnerman, a good friend who has garnered some attention recently with this article and its companion piece here.

The next two weeks or so will probably be quiet, but after that, do look for posts and reflections as I begin to dive into more active ministry.

I Love My Seminary

Here is Dr. Don Collett, assistent professor of Old Testament at Trinity, preaching at the Baccalaureate Mass from two weeks ago. Dr. Collett has been one of the two or three professors who have influenced me the most in the last few years at seminary, and he has helped me develop and deep and abiding love for the Old Testament. The Bible faculty at Trinity is really excellent, and probably our strongest point as an academic community. In addition, we have been granted the blessing of having Biblical scholars who are also really exceptional pastors and models of the Christian life on faculty, as well as having really wonderful academic gifts. Dr. Collett also has exceptionally good taste in single malt scotch ;-)

Joss Whedon's (almost) Augustinian Moral Imagination

I am a huge Joss Whedon fan. Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are probably my favorite TV showes of all time, and I am reasonably certain that at the end of time, the Divine Liturgy will resume where it left off in Hagia Sophia at the time of the Turkish invasion, and be followed by a showing of the rest of Firefly (and, of course, season 4 of Arrested Development).

So, of course, I had to see The Avengers, written and directed by Mr. Whedon. I am also planning to see Cabin in the Woods, despite a distaste for horror films. Now that the semester is over, and I am don't have final papers hanging over my head, I have a little time to reflect on the film, and give a few thoughts on its moral and, yes, even theological themes.

The Avengers is probably the best comic book movie since the Dark Knight. It's well written, with snappy dialogue and great pacing, that keeps the dramatic tension high. One of the more impressive aspects of the film is how well the incredibly large cast of superheroes are balanced. It would have been very easy for the film to become fragmented, with each character having their own sub-plot, leaving little time for the main action. Think, for example, of the clumsy execution of the Fantastic Four movie with its two dimensional characters that each took up far too much screen time. Each of the Avengers, however, was a relatively well rounded, believable character, because each was given the space to develop through the course of the plot and through their interactions with each other. Whedon has a knack for this kind of group character development.

Like all of Whedon's stories, Avengers has a strong moral element to it. That's not to say it's a preachy film. This is a comic book movie, and wisely doesn't try to be more; but comic books, at least of the super-hero variety, are inherantly moral. Comic books assume a world where moral conflict makes sense, where there are good guys and bad guys. Of course, there have been plenty of bleak, super hero comics, like Alan Moore's V for Vendetta or Watchmen, but those books are precisely subversive attempts to deconstruct the whole mythos of the super-hero. Avengers isn't that sort of comic book movie. It's just a really, really well executed super-hero flick.

While his characters are complex and conflicted, often with major moral flaws, an overview of his stories shows that Whedon still believes in heroes. Behind all the winking post-modern ironies of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or Angel, the title characters of those shows are still champions of virtue. Which is why Whedon is the perfect person to make the ultimate Marvel comic book movie. He has enough sympathy with the moral world of comic books that he can make a movie that is unapologetically entertaining, unapologetically a comic book movie, and not trying to be anything else, while still packing in a bit of moral reflection on power and violence. And of course, we have Marvel and Stan Lee to thank for giving us complex, coflicted super-heroes, another thing Whedon is good at.

One of the most striking moments in the movie is what seems to be Captain America's throw away line, when he is warned not to try to fight with Thor and Loki, the Norse god's (who are in fact extremely powerful aliens in the Marvel universe). Captain America declares that "There's only one God..."
Some people have made rather a big deal about this line, because as much as its a throw away, I think it actually gets at a central moral question in the plot. Loki claims to be a god, and demands worship, but he demands it purely on the basis of power, thus raising the question, is it power alone that deserves worship? Or put more biblically, Whedon is saying "choose this day whom you shall serve."

This discussion is given a little more context with a scene that occurs after Loki has appeared with a show of power in Germany, and demands that a crowd bow before him, because, as he explains, human beings need a master. Freedom is too much for us. An old man in the crowd stands up and says "Not to a man like you."
Loki replies "There are no men like me."
"There will always be men like you." The old man responds.

Here the question is put quite blatantly: what kind of god deserves our worship? who will we bow before?
But again, apart from one passing reference from Captain America, we have no answer. What the film seems to say is that power alone is not enough. Might doesn't make right, and just because one man happens to hold all the power doesn't make him a god. This is another staple Whedon theme.

Whedon's heroes are all outcasts and underdogs, and he has a marked distrust of any sort of power structure. In this, I think he has an affinity with C.S. Lewis, who portrayed Hell as a particularly dreary bureaucratic office in The Screwtape Letters. If you are familiar with Whedon's other projects think of Wolfram and Hart, the literally demonic law firm in Angel, the Alliance in Firefly, or the Watchers council in Buffy, which is bungling and arrogant at best. Evil, in Whedon's universe generally comes in a corporate guise, and I think that is partly because he understands that evil is ultimately a depersonalizing force, something that eats away at the soul and makes a person into a dull, sad, cog in a machine. Evil is not fun, exciting or vital; it is a disappointing emptiness, the opposite of vital. In this, Joss Whedon is a good Augustinian.

The unfortunate thing is that he does not seem to have a corresponding grasp of the Good. Joss Whedon's worlds are all very moral, but there does not seem to be a clear moral center of gravity to them. In fact one of the marked weaknesses of all of Whedon's story telling is the way in which he handles religion. Religious characters are rarely portrayed well, and when they are, they are still somewhat comical, like Shepherd Book in Firefly (although the character showed signs of interesting developments had the show not been cancelled. Sigh...). The religious/ spiritual world of the Buffyverse, is a good example. There are plenty of powers and even 'gods' who mess about with the workings of the world, but in Whedon's storytelling Christian images coexist side by side with neo-Pagan style witchcraft. The spiritual world of Buffy is a post-modern, pluralistic smorgasbord, and there seems to be no one power, let alone a benevolent power, that wins out. This comes across particularly in the final episode of Angel, which concludes with a heroic last stand against Wolfram and Hart's diabolical "Senior Partners," that is heroic and noble, but ultimately there is no assurance of victory.

So where does that leave us? Where do we look for a moral center, according to Whedon's view of things? I think it is no coincidence that we hear a Christian proclamation from Captain America, a character who, having only recently been thawed out from a cryogenic sleep, is a throw back to an earlier age. There are at least two ways I think we could take this. Perhaps Whedon is looking back with a kind of nostalgia on an innocent faith that we could all hold once upon a time, but which is forever lost now. We can't go back to Captain America's old fashioned American values, of which Christian monotheism is a part. On the other hand, maybe Whedon is suggesting that it is precisely in looking to our past that we will find an answer.

In another scene Captain America is given his new uniform, which looks really rather a lot like his old uniform. He asks whether the Stars and Stripes aren't a little old fashioned. "With everything that’s happening, things about to come to light," the designer of the uniform says “people might need a little 'old fashioned.'" I don't want to attribute too much philosophizing to Whedon - he is first of all a story teller, after all, and a first rate one - but I think there is a hint of suggestion that the answer to post-modernity's moral disorientation lies in returning to the past, and even to tradition.

True, we cannot simply go back, and we cannot simply reclaim God as another American value along with Mom and Apple Pie. Perhaps though, we can come to what philosopher Paul Ricoeur famously calls the 'Second Naivete;' The point when we have passed beyond mere criticism of our formerly naive beliefs in God, religion or morality, gotten past the phase of being rebellious adolescents, and we can reclaim our old faith in a new, more mature way. Joss Whedon does not tell us what kind of God to worship, but I think perhaps he points us in a direction, and that direction seems to be toward the God of the Christian Tradition.

Spiritual Friendship

My internet (and sometimes real life!) friends Ron Belgau and Wesley Hill have started a new blog under the title of Spiritual Friendship.  Ron and Wesley are both doctoral students, Ron in philosophy and Wesley in Biblical studies, and both men are also celibate, gay Christians, committed to the traditional Christian sexual ethic. 

Here is how they describe their new blog. 

We embrace the traditional understanding that God created us male and female, and that His plan for sexual intimacy is only properly fulfilled in the union of husband and wife in marriage. However, this blog was born out of frustration with the prevailing narratives about homosexuality from those who embrace this traditionally Christian sexual ethic: an excessive focus on political issues, and the ubiquity of reparative therapy in one form or another.

We want to see more discussion of celibacy, friendship, the value of the single life, and similar topics.

I have gained a lot from the work both these guys are doing, and I think their project is very important for the whole Church, not just those who have homosexual desires.  Recovering a robust theology of friendship and of celibacy is an important part of responding to many of the problems our culture has with understanding love and sex. 
They are also providing a valuable service to the Church by pointing out the genuine homophobia that exists in so many Christian responses to gay people.
I also highly recommend Wesley Hill's book, Washed and Waiting: Reflections on Christian Faithfulnes and Homosexuality.  I think this may be the best book out there on the topic right now.

A Shameless Plug

April is National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo). You may have heard of National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), where participants write - at least attempt to write - a novel over the month of November. Well, NaPoWriMo is the same basic idea, except participants write a poem a day, every day for the month of April. I first heard about it through the poetic postings of Miss Amy Moffitt, the wonderful author of Without a Map, when she did NaPoWriMo last year. I have been looking forward to this April all year, in the hopes that she would begin posting poetry again.

Well, she has not disappointed my hopes - she has posted everyday so far, and there are already some gems. If you are not doing so already, I highly recommend that you follow her poetry as she posts this month. The first poem, which I especially like, is here. Get thee hence!