The New Beginning

Monday, September 24, 2007

King and I (2007) - SBS Entertainment news (2007-09-12)

Great King Four God Story

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太王四神記番宣伝特集

太王四神記 태왕사신기 - Trailer

태왕사신기 太王四神記 Opening

太王四神記 태왕사신기 - MBC Section TV (2007-08-24)

「VOD]太王四神記MUSIC -JOE　HISAISHI-

「太王四神記スペシャル」で公開されたヨン様のシーン

太王四神记主题曲

Baek Ji Young(백지영) - 나쁜사람(황진이 ost)

Baek Ji Young - Sarang Ahn Hae (SBS Inky Gayo)

Hwang Jin-Yi Bloopers! (NG's)

Baek Ji Young - Sarang An Hae (Jung Da Bin MV)

Baek Ji Young - I Won't Love ( 백지영 - 사랑안해 )

백지영 - 사랑은아름답습니다

白智英 백지영 EZ Do dance live

EZ Do Dance - Baek Ji Young kpop mv

ゴムとﾁｿｺによるEZ do dance

Stuff from Movies IGN

John Rambo's Fitting End
Co-star talks Stallone sequel.

Dini Writing Gatachaman
Batman scribe boards movie adaptation.

ADVFilms page for Gatchaman

Veronika's Gatchaman Page

Gatchaman - Home of the White Shadow

Slow Food International

website

Slow Food is a non-profit, eco-gastronomic member-supported organization that was founded in 1989 to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.

Slow Food USA

wiki for Carlo Petrini, the founder
Slow Food; The Case for Taste; Carlo Petrini
Carlo Petrini: The slow food tsar - Independent Online Edition ...
92510: the East Bay Blog - Slow Food Founder Harshes on Local ...
TIME Europe Heroes 2004
some pdf
Whole Foods Market : Press Room : Exclusive Interview with Slow ...
Special Guest Interview: Carlo Petrini - Whole Foods Market Podcast
Summer 2007 - Slow Food founder Petrini is inaugural lecturer at ...
Atlantic Unbound Interviews 2002.11.14
Gabriela’s Feast - Slow Food Carmel
Farmers and chefs get ready for a Slow Food picnic

Slow Food Nation: An Evening With Carlo Petrini

Hyori lee- making Tucson CF

LeeHyori - AnyMotion(Korea Cf festival)

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Lee Hyori - Anymotion - 2007.9.18 MBC Korean TV AD Festival

이효리 - Vidal Sasson CM

New season of Dancing with the Stars starts tonight

website

Jennie Garth and Josie Maran! Bios here. Cheryl Burke and Julianne Hough are back! I'm sure the Philosopher would be interested in Karina Smirnoff and Edyta Sliwinska, or Anna Trebunskaya.

I wonder how long Mark Cuban can survive. My guess is that he will actually try to work at it, unlike Tucker Carlson.

JULIANNE HOUGH & BRIAN FORTUNA-Rumba

Tony Dovonali & Elena and Julianne Hough & Derek - DWtS

JULIANNE HOUGH & TONY DOVOLANI-Waltz

Hayley Westenra - The Water is Wide

Wendell Berry, Christianity and The Survival of Creation

via Rod Dreher

Christianity and The Survival of Creation
By Wendell Berry

I confess that I have not invariably been comfortable in front of a pulpit; I have never been comfortable behind one. To be behind a pulpit is always a forcible reminder to me that I am an essayist, and in many ways a dissenter. An essayist is, literally, a writer who attempts to tell the truth. Preachers must resign themselves to being either right or wrong; an essayist, when proved wrong, may claim to have been "just practicing." An essayist is privileged to speak without institutional authorization. A dissenter, of course, must speak without privilege.

I want to begin with a problem: namely, that the culpability of Christianity in the destruction of the natural world, and the uselessness of Christianity to any effort to correct that destruction, are now established cliches of the conservation movement. This is a problem for two reasons: First, the indictment of Christianity by the anti-Christian conservationists is, in many respects, just. For instance, the complicity of Christian priests, preachers, and missionaries in the cultural destruction and the economic exploitation of the primary peoples of the Western Hemisphere as well as of traditional cultures around the world, is notorious. Throughout the five-hundred years since Columbus's first landfall in the Bahamas, the evangelist has walked beside the conqueror and the merchant, too often blandly assuming that his cause was the same as theirs. Christian organizations, to this day, remain largely indifferent to the rape and plunder of the world and of its traditional cultures. It is hardly too much to say that most Christian organizations are as happily indifferent as most industrial organizations to the ecological, cultural, and religious implications of industrial economics. The certified Christian seems just as likely as anyone else to join the military-industrial conspiracy to murder Creation.

The conservationist indictment of Christianity is a problem, secondly, because, however just it may be, it does not come from an adequate understanding of the Bible and the cultural traditions that descend from the Bible. The anti-Christian conservationists characteristically deal with the Bible by waving it off. And this dismissal conceals, as such dismissals are apt to do, an ignorance that invalidates it. The Bible is an inspired book written by human hands; as such, it is certainly subject to criticism. But the anti-Christian environmentalists have not mastered the first rule of the criticism of books: you have to read them before you criticize them. Our predicament now, I believe, requires us to learn to read and understand the Bible in the light of the present fact of Creation. This would seem to be a requirement both for Christians and for everyone concerned, but it entails a long work of true criticism--that is, careful and judicious study, not dismissal. It entails, furthermore, the making of very precise distinctions between biblical instruction and the behavior of those peoples supposed to have been biblically instructed.

I cannot pretend, obviously, to have made so meticulous a study; if I were capable of it, I would not live long enough to do it. But I have attempted to read the Bible with some of these issues in mind, and I see some virtually catastrophic discrepancies between biblical instruction and Christian behavior. I don't mean disreputable Christian behavior, either. The discrepancies I see are between biblical instruction and allegedly respectable Christian behavior.

If, because of these discrepancies, Christianity were dismissable, there would, of course, be no problem. We could simply dismiss it, along with the twenty centuries of unsatisfactory history attached to it, and start setting things to rights. The problem emerges only when we ask, Where then would we turn for instruction? We might, let us suppose, turn to another religion--a recourse that is sometimes suggested by the anti-Christian environmentalists. Buddhism, for example, is certainly a religion that could guide us toward a right respect for the natural world, our fellow humans, and our fellow creatures. I have a considerable debt myself to Buddhism and Buddhists. But there is an enormous number of people, and I am one of them, whose native religion, for better or worse, is Christianity. We were born to it; we began to learn about it before we became conscious; it is, whatever we think of it, an intimate belonging of our being; it informs our consciousness, our language, and our dreams. We can turn away from it or against it, but that will only bind us tightly to a reduced version of it. A better possibility is that this, our native religion, should survive and renew itself, so that it may become as largely and truly instructive as we need it to be. On such a survival and renewal of the Christian religion may depend the survival of that Creation which is its subject.

If we read the Bible, keeping in mind the desirability of those two survivals--of Christianity and the Creation--we are apt to discover several things that modern Christian organizations have kept remarkably quiet about, or have paid little attention to.

We will discover that we humans do not own the world or any part of it: "The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof: the world and they that dwell therein" (Ps. 24:1). There is in our human law, undeniably, the concept and right of "land ownership." But this, I think, is merely an expedient to safeguard the mutuality of belonging without which there can be no lasting and conserving settlement of human communities. This right of human ownership is limited by mortality and by natural constraints upon human attention and responsibility; it quickly becomes abusive when used to justify large accumulations of "real estate," and perhaps for that reason such large accumulations are forbidden in the twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus. In biblical terms, the "landowner" is the guest and steward of God: "the land is mine; for ye are strangers and sojourners with me" (Lev. 25:23).

We will discover that God made not only the parts of Creation that we humans understand and approve, but all of it: "all things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made" John 1:3). And so we must credit God with the making of biting and dangerous beasts, and disease-causing microorganisms. That we may disapprove of these things does not mean that God is in error, or that the creator ceded some of the work of Creation to Satan; it means that we are deficient in wholeness, harmony, and understanding--that is, we are "fallen."

We will discover that God found the world, as he made it, to be good; that he made it for his pleasure; and that he continues to love it and to find it worthy, despite its reduction and corruption by us. People who quote John 3:16 as an easy formula for getting to heaven neglect to see the great difficulty implied in the statement that the advent of Christ was made possible by God's love for the world--not God's love for Heaven or for the world as it might be, but for the world as it was and is. Belief in Christ is thus made dependent upon prior belief in the inherent goodness--the lovability--of the world.

We will discover that the Creation is not in any sense independent of the Creator, the result of a primal creative act long over and done with, but is the continuous, constant participation of all creatures in the being of God. Elihu said to Job that if God "gather unto himself his spirit and his breath; All flesh shall perish together . . . " Job 34:15). And Psalm 104 says: "Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created.... " Creation is God's presence in creatures. The Greek Orthodox theologian, Philip Sherrard, has written that "Creation is nothing less than the manifestation of God's hidden being."(n1) Thus we and all other creatures live by a sanctity that is inexpressibly intimate. To every creature the gift of life is a portion of the breath and spirit of God. As the poet, George Herbert, put it,

Thou are in small things great, not small in any.... For thou art infinite in one and all.(n2)

We will discover that, for these reasons, our destruction of nature is not just bad stewardship, or stupid economics, or a betrayal of family responsibility; it is the most horrid blasphemy. It is flinging God's gifts into his face, as of no worth beyond that assigned to them by our destruction of them. To Dante, "despising Nature and her gifts" was a violence against God.(n3) We have no entitlement from the Bible to exterminate or permanently destroy or hold in contempt anything on the earth or in the heavens above it or in the waters beneath it. We have the right to use the gifts of Nature, but not to ruin or waste them. We have the right to use what we need, but no more, which is why the Bible forbids usury and great accumulations of property. The usurer, Dante said, "condemns Nature. . . for he puts his hope elsewhere."(n4)

William Blake was biblically correct, then, when he said that "everything that lives is holy."(n5) And Blake's great commentator, Kathleen Raine, was correct both biblically and historically when she said that "the sense of the holiness of life is the human norm...."(n6)

The Bible leaves no doubt at all about the sanctity of the act of world-making, or of the world that was made, or of creaturely or bodily life in this world. We are holy creatures living among other holy creatures in a world that is holy. Some people know this, and some do not. Nobody, of course, knows it all the time. But what keeps it from being far better known than it is? Why is it apparently unknown to millions of professed students of the Bible? How can modem Christianity have so solemnly folded its hands while so much of the work of God was and is being destroyed?

"The sense of the holiness of life" is not compatible with an exploitive economy. You cannot know that life is holy if you are content to live from economic practices that daily destroy life and diminish its possibility. And many if not most Christian organizations now appear to be perfectly at peace with the military-industrial economy and its "scientific" destruction of life. Surely, if we are to remain free, and if we are to remain true to our religious inheritances, we must maintain a separation between church and state. But if we are to maintain any sense or coherence or meaning in our lives, we cannot tolerate the present utter disconnection between religion and economy. By "economy" I do not mean "economics," which is the study of money-making, but rather the ways of human housekeeping, the ways by which the human household is situated and maintained within the household of Nature. To be uninterested in economy is to be uninterested in the practice of religion; it is to be uninterested in culture and in character. Probably the most urgent question now faced by people who would adhere to the Bible is this: What sort of economy would be responsible to the holiness of life? What, for Christians, would be the economy, the practices and the restraints, of "right livelihood"? I do not believe that organized Christianity now has any idea. I think its idea of a Christian economy is no more or less than the industrial economy--which is an economy firmly founded upon the seven deadly sins and the breaking of all ten of the Ten Commandments. Obviously, if Christianity is going to survive as more than a respecter and comforter of profitable iniquities, then Christians, regardless of their organizations, are going to have to interest themselves in economy--which is to say, in nature and in work. They are going to have to give workable answers to those who say we cannot live without this economy that is destroying us and our world, who see the murder of Creation as the only way of life.

A second reason why the holiness of life is so obscured to modem Christians is the idea that the only holy place is the built church. This idea may be more taken for granted than taught; nevertheless, Christians are encouraged from childhood to think of the church building as "God's house," and most of them could think of their houses or farms or shops or factories as holy places only with great effort and embarrassment. It is understandably difficult for modern Americans to think of their dwellings and workplaces as holy, because most of these are, in fact, places of desecration, deeply involved in the ruin of Creation.

The idea of the exclusive holiness of church buildings is, of course, wildly incompatible with the idea, which the churches also teach, that God is present in all places to hear prayers. It is incompatible with Scripture. The idea that a human artifact could contain or confine God was explicitly repudiated by Solomon in his prayer at the dedication of the Temple: "behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee: how much less this house that I have builded?" (1 Kings 8:27). And these words of Solomon were remembered a thousand years later by St. Paul, preaching at Athens:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands....

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said.... (Acts 17:24 and 28)

Idolatry always reduces to the worship of something "made with hands," something confined within the terms of human work and human comprehension. Thus Solomon and St. Paul both insisted upon the largeness and the at-largeness of God, setting him free, so to speak, from ideas about him. He is not to be fenced in, under human control, like some domestic creature; he is the wildest being in existence. The presence of his spirit in us is our wildness, our oneness with the wilderness of Creation. That is why subduing the things of nature to human purposes is so dangerous, and why it so often results in evil, in separation and desecration. It is why the poets of our tradition so often have given Nature the role, not only of mother or grandmother, but of the highest earthly teacher and judge, a figure of mystery and great power. Jesus' own specifications for the church have nothing at all to do with masonry and carpentry, but only with people; Jesus' church is "Where two or three are gathered together in my name" (Matt. 18:20).

The Bible gives exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) attention to the organization of religion: the building and rebuilding of the Temple; its furnishings; the orders, duties, and paraphernalia of the priesthood; the orders of rituals and ceremonies. But that does not disguise the fact that the most significant religious events recounted in that book do not occur in "temples made with hands." The most important religion in the Bible is unorganized, and is sometimes profoundly disruptive of organization. From Abraham to Jesus, the most important people are not priests, but shepherds, soldiers, men of property, craftsmen, housewives, queens and kings, manservants and maidservants, fishermen, prisoners, whores, even bureaucrats. The great visionary encounters did not take place in temples, but in sheep pastures, in the desert, in the wilderness, on mountains, by rivers and on beaches, in the middle of the sea; when there was no choice, they happened in prisons. However strenuously the divine voice prescribed rites and observances, it just as strenuously repudiated them when they were taken to be religion:

You new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth: they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear them.

And when you spread forth your hands, I will hide mind eyes from you: yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear: your hands are full of blood.

Wash you, make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil;

Learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow. (Isa. 1:13-17)

Religion, according to this view, is less to be celebrated in rituals than practiced in the world.

I don't think it is enough appreciated how much an outdoor book the Bible is. It is a hypaethral book, such as Thoreau talked about--a book open to the sky. It is best read and understood outdoors, and the farther outdoors the better. Or that has been my experience of it. Passages that within walls seem improbable or incredible, outdoors seem merely natural. That is because outdoors we are confronted everywhere with wonders; we see that the miraculous is not extraordinary, but the common mode of existence. It is our daily bread. Whoever really has considered the lilies of the field or the birds of the air, and pondered the improbability of their existence in this warm world within the cold and empty stellar distances, will hardly balk at the fuming of water into wine--which was, after all, a very small miracle. We forget the greater and still continuing miracle by which water (with soil and sunlight) is fumed into grapes.

What the Bible might mean, or how it could mean anything, in a closed, air-conditioned building, I do not know. I know that holiness cannot be confined. When you think you have captured it, it has already escaped; only its poor, pale ashes are left. It is after this foolish capture and the inevitable escape that you get translations of the Bible that read like a newspaper. Holiness is everywhere in Creation, it is as common as raindrops and leaves and blades of grass, but it does not sound like a newspaper.

It is clearly impossible to assign holiness exclusively to the built church without denying holiness to the rest of Creation, which is then said to be "secular." The world, that God looked at and found entirely good, we find none too good to pollute entirely and destroy piecemeal. The church, then, becomes a kind of preserve of "holiness," from which certified lovers of God dash out to assault and plunder the "secular" earth.

Not only does this repudiate God's approval of his work; it refuses also to honor the Bible's explicit instruction to regard the works of the Creation as God's revelation of himself. The assignation of holiness exclusively to the built church is therefore logically accompanied by the assignation of revelation exclusively to the Bible. But Psalm 19 begins: "The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handiwork." The word of God has been revealed in fact from the moment of the third verse of the first chapter of Genesis: "Let there be light: and there was light." and St. Paul states the rule: "the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead. . . " (Rom. 1:20). And from this free, generous, and sensible view of things, we come to the idolatry of the book: the idea that nothing is true that cannot be (and has not been already) written. The misuse of the Bible thus logically accompanies the abuse of Nature: if you are going to destroy creatures without respect, you will want to reduce them to "materiality"; you will want to deny that there is spirit or truth in them, just as you will want to believe that the only holy or ensouled creatures are humans, or only Christian humans.

By denying spirit and truth to the nonhuman Creation, latter-day proponents of religion have legitimized a form of blasphemy without which the nature- and culture-destroying machinery of the industrial economy could not have been built--that is, they have legitimized bad work. Good human work honors God's work. Good work uses no thing without respect, both for what it is in itself and for its origin. It uses neither tool nor material that it does not respect and that it does not love. It honors Nature as a great mystery and power, as an indispensable teacher, and as the inescapable judge of all work of human hands. It does not dissociate life and work, or pleasure and work, or love and work, or usefulness and beauty. To work without pleasure or affection, to make a product that is not both useful and beautiful, is to dishonor God, nature, the thing that is made, and whomever it is made for. This is blasphemy: to make shoddy work of the work of God. And such blasphemy is not possible so long as the entire Creation is understood as holy, and so long as the works of God are understood as embodying and so revealing God's spirit.

In the Bible we find none of the industrialist's contempt or hatred for nature. We find, instead, a poetry of awe and reverence and profound cherishing, as in these verses from Moses' valedictory blessing of the twelve tribes:

And of Joseph he said, Blessed of the Lord be his land, for the precious things of heaven, for the dew, and for the deep that croucheth beneath,

And for the precious fruits brought forth by the sun, and for the precious things put forth by the moon,

And for the chief things of the ancient mountains, and for the precious things of the lasting hills;

And for the precious things of the earth and fullness thereof, and for the good will of him that dwelt in the bush.... (Deut. 33:13-16)

I have been talking, of course, about a dualism that manifests itself in several ways; it is a cleavage, a radical discontinuity, between Creator and creature, spirit and matter, religion and nature, religion and economy, worship and work, etc. This dualism, I think is the most destructive disease that afflicts us. In its best known, its most dangerous, and perhaps its fundamental version, it is the dualism of body and soul. This is an issue as difficult as it is important, and so to deal with it we should start at the beginning.

The crucial test is probably Genesis 2:7, which gives the process by which Adam was created: "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul." My mind, like most people's, has been deeply influenced by dualism, and I can see how dualistic minds deal with this verse. They conclude that the formula for man-making is: man = body + soul. But that conclusion cannot be derived, except by violence, from Genesis 2:7, which is not dualistic. The formula given in Genesis is not man = body + soul; the formula there is soul = dust + breath. According to this verse, God did not make a body and put a soul into it, like a letter into an envelope. He formed man of dust; by breathing his breath into it, he made the dust live. Insofar as it lived, it was a soul. The dust, formed as man and made to live, did not embody a soul; it became a soul. "Soul" here refers to the whole creature. Humanity is thus presented to us, in Adam, not as a creature of two discrete parts temporarily glued together, but as a single mystery.

We can see how easy it is to fall into the dualism of body and soul when talking about the inescapable worldly dualities of good and evil or time and eternity. And we can see how easy it is when Jesus asks, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matt. 16:26) to assume that he is condemning the world and appreciating the disembodied soul. But if we give to "soul" here the sense that it has in Genesis 2:7, we see that he is doing no such thing. He is warning that, in pursuit of so-called "material possessions," we can lose our understanding of ourselves as "living souls"--that is, as creatures of God, members of the holy community of Creation. We can lose the possibility of the at-one-ment of that membership. For we are free, if we choose, to make a duality of our one living soul by disowning the breath of God that is our fundamental bond with one another and with other creatures.

But we can make the same duality by disowning the dust. The breath of God is only one of the divine gifts that make us living souls; the other is the dust. Most of our modern troubles come from our misunderstanding and misvaluation of this dust. Forgetting that the dust too is a creature of the Creator, made by the sending forth of his spirit, we have presumed to decide that the dust is "low." We have presumed to say that we are made of two parts: a body and a soul, the body being "low" because made of dust, and the soul "high." By thus valuing these two supposed-to-be "parts," we inevitably throw them into competition with each other, like two corporations. The "spiritual" view, of course, has been that the body, in Yeats's phrase, must be "bruised to pleasure soul." And the "secular" version of the same dualism has been that the body, along with the rest of the "material" world, must give way before the advance of the human mind. The dominant religious view, for a long time, has been that the body is a kind of scrip issued by the Great Company Store in the Sky, which can be cashed in to redeem the soul, but is otherwise worthless. And the predictable result has been a human creature able to appreciate or tolerate only the "spiritual" (or mental) part of Creation, and full of a semiconscious hatred of the "physical" or "natural" part, which it is ready and willing to destroy for "salvation," for profit, for "victory," or for fun. This madness constitutes the normality of modern humanity and of modern Christianity.

But to despise the body or mistreat it for the sake of the "soul" is not just to burn one's house for the insurance, nor is it just self-hatred of the most deep and dangerous sort. It is yet another blasphemy. It is to make nothing, and worse than nothing, of the great Something in which we live and move and have our being.

When we hate and abuse the body and its earthly life and joy for Heaven's sake, what do we expect? That out of this life that we have presumed to despise and this world that we have presumed to destroy, we would somehow salvage a soul capable of eternal bliss? And what do we expect when, with equal and opposite ingratitude, we try to make of the finite body an infinite reservoir of dispirited and meaningless pleasures? It is the same spite and destruction, the same poor, preposterous assumption that Paradise can be recovered by violence, by assaulting and laying waste the gifts of Creation.

(Times come, of course, when the life of the body must be denied or sacrificed, times when the whole world must literally be lost for the sake of one's life as a "living soul." But such sacrifice, by people who truly respect and revere the life of the earth and its Creator, does not denounce or degrade the body, but rather exalts it and acknowledges its holiness. Such sacrifice is a refusal to allow the body to serve what is unworthy of it.)

If we credit the Bible's description of the relationship between Creator and Creation, then we cannot deny the spiritual importance of our economic life. Then we see how religious issues lead to issues of economy, and how issues of economy lead to issues of art, of how to make things. If we understand that no artist--no maker--can work except by reworking the works of Creation, then we see that by our work, by the way we practice our arts, we reveal what we think of the works of God. How we take our lives from this world, how we work, what work we do, how well we use the materials we use and what we do with them after we have used them--all these are questions of the highest and gravest religious significance. These questions cannot tee answered by thinking,but only by doing. In answering them, we practice, or do not practice, our religion.

The significance--and ultimately the quality--of the work we do is determined by our understanding of the story in which we are taking part.

If we think of ourselves as merely biological creatures, whose story is determined by genetics or environment or history or economics or technology, then, however pleasant or painful the part we play, it cannot matter much. Its significance is that of mere self-concem. "It is a tale/ Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/ Signifying nothing"--as Macbeth says it is, when he has "supped full with horrors" and is "aweary of the sun."(n7)

If we think of ourselves as lofty souls entrapped temporarily in lowly bodies in a dispirited, desperate, unlovable world that we must despise for Heaven's sake, then what have we done for this question of significance? Not much, I think. For we are still stuck, like Macbeth, in a condemnation of this life and this world, which were not made for our condemnation. If we divide reality into two parts, spiritual and material, and hold (as the Bible does not hold) that only the spiritual is good or desirable, then our relation to the material Creation becomes arbitrary, having only the quantitative or mercenary value that we have, in fact, and for this reason, assigned to it. Thus we become the judges, and thus inevitably the destroyers, of a world we did not make, and that we are bidden to understand as a divine gift.

It is impossible to see how good work might be accomplished by people who think that our life in this world either signifies nothing or has only a negative significance.

If, on the other hand, we believe that we are living souls, God's dust and God's breath, acting our parts among other creatures all made of the same dust and breath as ourselves; and if we understand that we are free, within the obvious limits of mortal human life, to do evil or good to ourselves and to the other creatures--then all our acts have a supreme significance. If it is true that we are living souls and morally free, then all of us are artists. All of us makers, within mortal terms and limits, of our lives, of one another's lives, of things we need and use.

This, Ananda Coomaraswamy wrote, is "the normal view," which "assumes. . . not that the artist is a special kind of man, but that every man who is not a mere idler or parasite is necessarily some special kind of artist.... "(n8) But since even mere idlers and parasites may be said to work inescapably, by proxy or influence, it might be better to say that everybody is an artist--either good or bad, responsible or irresponsible. Any life, by working or not working, by working well or poorly, inescapably changes others' lives, and so changes the world. That is why our division of the so-called "fine arts" from "craftsmanship" and "craftsmanship" from "labor" is so arbitrary, meaningless and destructive. As Walter Shewring rightly said "the plowman and the potter have a cosmic function."(n9) Bad art in any trade dishonors and damages Creation.

If we think of ourselves as living souls, immortal creatures, living in the midst of a Creation that is mostly mysterious--that, even when visible, is never fully imaginable--and if we see that everything we make or do cannot help but have an everlasting significance for ourselves, for others, and for the world, then we see why some religious teachers have understood work as a form of prayer. We see why the old poets invoked the muse. And we know why George Herbert prayed, in his poem "Matters":

Teach me thy love to know; That this new light, which now I see May both the work and workman show.. (n10)

Work connects us both to Creation and to eternity. This is the reason also for Mother Ann Lee's famous instruction: "do all your work as though you had a thousand years to live on earth, and as you would if you knew you must die tomorrow."(n11)

Explaining "the perfection, order, and illumination" of the artistry of Shaker furniture makers, Coomaraswamy wrote: "All tradition has seen in the Master Craftsman of the Universe the exemplar of the human artist or `maker by art,' and we are told to be 'perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.'" And searching out the lesson, for us, of the Shakers' humble, impersonal, perfect artistry, that refused the modern divorce of utility and beauty, he wrote: "Unfortunately, we do not desire to be such as the Shaker was; we do not propose to 'work as though we had a thousand years to live, and as though we were to die tomorrow.' dust as we desire peace but not the things that make for peace, so we desire art but not the things that make for art. . . we have the art that we deserve. If the sight of it puts us to shame, it is with ourselves that the re-formation must begin."(n12)

Any genuine effort to re-form our arts, our ways of making, must take thought of "the things that make for art." We must see that no art begins in itself; it begins in other arts, in attitudes and ideas antecedent to any art, and in nature. If we look at the great artistic traditions, as it is necessary to do, we will see that they have never been divorced either from religion or from economy. The possibility of an entirely secular art, and of works of art -- made things -- that are spiritless or ugly or useless, is not a possibility that has been among us for very long. Traditionally, the arts have been ways of making that have placed a just value upon their materials or subjects, upon the uses and the users of the things made by art, and upon the artists themselves. They have, that is, been ways of giving honor to the works of God....

In denying the holiness of the body and of the so-called "physical reality" of the world -- and in denying its support to the economic means by which alone the Creation can receive due honor -- modern Christianity has cut itself off from both nature and culture. It has no competent interest in biology or ecology. And it is equally uninterested in any feature of culture by which humankind connects itself to nature: economy or work, science or art. It manifests no awareness of the specifically Christian cultural lineages that connect us to our past. There is, for example, a splendid heritage of Christian poetry in English that most church members live and die without reading or hearing or hearing about. Most sermons are preached without any awareness at all that the making of sermons is an art that, at times, has been magnificent. Most modem churches look like they were built by robots without reference to the heritage of church architecture or respect for the site; they embody no awareness that work can be worship. Most religious music now attests to the general assumption that religion is no more than vaguely pious (and vaguely romantic) emotion.

Modern Christianity has become, then, in its organizations, as specialized as other modern organizations, wholly concentrated upon the industrial shibboleths of "growth," counting its success in numbers, and upon the very strange enterprise of "saving" the individual, isolated, and disembodied soul. Having witnessed and abetted the dismemberment of the households, both human and natural, by which we have our being as creatures of God, as living souls, and having made light of the great feast and festival of Creation to which we were bidden as living souls, the modern church presumes to be able to save the soul as an eternal piece of private property. It presumes moreover to save the souls of people in other countries and religious traditions, who are often saner and more religious than we are. And always the emphasis is on the individual soul. Some Christian spokesmen give the impression that the highest Christian bliss would be to get to Heaven and find that you are the only one there -- that you were right, and all the others wrong. Whatever its twentieth-century dress, modern Christianity as I know it is still at bottom the religion of Miss Watson, intent upon a dull and superstitious rigmarole by which supposedly we can avoid going to "the bad place" and instead go to "the good place." One can hardly help sympathizing with Huck Finn when he says, "I made up my mind I wouldn't try for it."(n13)

Despite its protests to the contrary, modern Christianity has become willy-nilly the religion of the state and the economic status quo. Because it has been so exclusively dedicated to incanting anemic souls into heaven, it has, by a kind of ignorance, been made the tool of much earthly villainy. It has, for the most part, stood silently by, while a predatory economy has ravaged the world, destroyed its natural beauty and health, divided and plundered its human communities and households. It has flown the flag and chanted the slogans of empire. It has assumed with the economists that "economic forces" automatically work for good, and has assumed with the industrialists and militarists that technology determines history. It has assumed with almost everybody that "progress" is good, that it is good to be modern and up with the times. It has admired Caesar and comforted him in his depredations and defaults. But in its de facto alliance with Caesar, Christianity connives directly in the murder of Creation. For, in these days, Caesar is no longer a mere destroyer of armies, cities, and nations. He is a contradictor of the fundamental miracle of life. A part of the normal practice of his power is his willingness to destroy the world. He prays, he says, and churches everywhere compliantly pray with him. But he is praying to a God whose works he is prepared at any moment to destroy. What could be more wicked than that, or more mad?

The religion of the Bible, on the contrary, is a religion of the state and the status quo only in brief moments. In practice, it is a religion for the correction equally of people and of kings. And Christ's life, from the manger to the cross, was an affront to the established powers of his time, as it is to the established powers of our time. Much is made in churches of the "good news" of the gospels. Less is said of the gospel's bad news, which is that Jesus would have been horrified by just about every "Christian" government the world has ever seen. He would be horrified by our government and its works, and it would be horrified by him. Surely no sane and thoughtful person can imagine any government of our time sitting comfortably at the feet of Jesus, who is telling them to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. . . " (Matt. 5:44).

In fact, we know that one of the businesses of governments, "Christian" or not, has been to re-enact the crucifixion. It has happened again and again and again. In A Time for Trumpets, his history of the Battle of the Bulge, Charles B. MacDonald tells how the SS Colonel Joachim Peiper was forced to withdraw from a bombarded chateau near the town of La Gleize, leaving behind a number of severely wounded soldiers of both armies. "Also left behind," MacDonald wrote, "on a whitewashed wall of one of the rooms in the basement was a charcoal drawing of Christ, thorns on his head, tears on his cheeks -- whether drawn by a German or an American nobody would ever know."(n14) This is not an image that belongs to history, but is one that judges it.

Notes

(1.) Philip Sherrard, Human Image. World Image (Ipswich, Suffolk, England: Golgonooza Press, 1992), 152.

(2.) George Herbert, "Providence," lines 41 and 44, from The Poems of George Herbert, ed. by Helen Gardner (London: Oxford University Press, 1961), 54.

(3.) Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. by Charles S. Singleton, Bollingen Series LXXX, and Inferno, canto XI, lines 109-11 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1970).

(4.) Dante, Inferno, canto XI, lines 109-11.

(5.) William Blake, Complete Writings, ed. by Geoffrey Keynes (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), 160.

(6.) Kathleen Raine, Golgonooza: City of Imagination (Ipswich, Suffolk, England: Golgonooza Press, 1991), 28.

(7.) William Shakespeare, Macbeth, ed. by Kenneth Muir (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), V v, lines 13; 26-28; 49.

(8.) Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Christian and Oriental Philosophy of Art (New York: Dover, 1957), 98.

(9.) Walter Shewring, Artist and Tradesman (Marlborough, Mass.: Paulinus, 1984), 19.

(10.) Herbert, The Poems of George Herbert, 54.

(11.) June Sprigg, By Shaker Hands (Hanover, N.H.: University of New England, 1990), 33.

(12.) Coomaraswamy, Selected Papers, vol. 1 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1977), 255, 259.

(13.) Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, in Mississippi Writings (New York: Library of America, 1982), 626.

(14.) George MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets (New York: Bantan Books, 1984), 458.

By Wendell Berry

WENDELL BERRY is a well-known poet, essayist, and farmer. This essay is taken from, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, which will be published in the Fall by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Copyright 1993 by Wendell Berry.

Copyright of Cross Currents is the property of Association for Religion & Intellectual Life and its content may not be copied without the copyright holder's express written permission except for the print or download capabilities of the retrieval software used for access. This content is intended solely for the use of the individual user.
Source: Cross Currents, Summer93, Vol. 43 Issue 2, p149, 15p.

Benedict XVI's Address to Bishops

Benedict XVI's Address to Bishops
"Never Cease Praying for New Vocations"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT. 23, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI gave today when receiving in audience Saturday morning participants in the meeting of recently ordained bishops. The audience took place at Castel Gandolfo.

* * *

Dearest brothers in the episcopate,

It has become a custom in the last few years for recently nominated bishops to come together to Rome for a meeting that is, in essence, a pilgrimage to the tomb of St. Peter. I welcome you with special affection. This experience, besides inspiring you to reflect on the responsibilities and tasks of a bishop, enables you to revive in your souls the awareness that you are not alone in holding up God's Church, but that you have, together with the help of grace, the Pope's support and that of your brethren.

Being at the center of Catholicism, in this Church of Rome, opens your souls to a more vivid perception of the universality of God's people and develops in you a concern for the entire Church. I thank Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re for his greeting and I greet Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, prefect for the Congregation for Eastern Churches, while I greet each one of you and hold each one of your dioceses in my thoughts.

On the day of episcopal ordination, before the laying on of hands, the Church asks the candidate to assume certain tasks including, besides faithfully proclaiming the Gospel and safeguarding the faith, that of "preserving in prayer to the omnipotent God for the good of his holy people." I would like to focus with you in a special way on the apostolic and pastoral character of the "Bishop's Prayer."

Luke, the Evangelist, writes that Jesus Christ chose the Twelve Apostles after praying all night on the mountain (Luke 6:12); and Mark, the evangelist, specifies that the Twelve were chosen "so that they would be with him and that he could send them out to preach" (Mark 3:14). We too, like the Apostles, dearest brethren, as their successors, we were called above all to stay with Christ, to know him more deeply and to take part in his ministry of love and his relationship of full confidence in the Father. In the personal and intimate prayer of the bishop, like the faithful yet more so, is called to grow in a filial spirit toward God, learning from Jesus himself confidence, trust and faithfulness, Christ's own attributes in his relationship with the Father.

And the Apostles understood well that listening in prayer and then proclaiming what they heard must have first place among their many tasks, because, as they decided: "We dedicate ourselves to prayer and ministry of the Word" (Acts 6:4). This apostolic program is still relevant today. Today, in the ministry of a bishop, the organizational aspects are absorbing, the commitments are numerous, the needs are many, but the first place in the life of a successor of the Apostles must be reserved for God. In this way, especially, we help our faithful. St. Gregory the Great in the "Pastoral Rule" said that the pastor "in a special way must be able to elevate himself above everyone in prayer and contemplation (II, 5). This is what tradition formulated into the famous expression "Contemplata aliis tradere" (cf. St. Thomas, "Summa Theologiae." IIa-IIae, q. 188, art. 6).

In the encyclical "Deus Caritas Est," referring to the narration of the biblical story of Jacob's ladder, I wanted to show how through prayer the pastor becomes sensitive to the needs of others and merciful toward all (cf. No. 7). And I recalled the thought of St. Gregory the Great, who said the pastor rooted in contemplation knows how to welcome the needs of others, which become his own through prayer: "per piertatis viscera in se infirmitatem caeterorum transferat" ("Pastoral Rule," ibid.).

Prayer educates us to love and opens our hearts to pastoral charity to welcome all those who look to the bishop. Formed interiorly by the Holy Spirit, he consoles with the balm of divine grace, illuminates with the light of the word, reconciles and edifies in fraternal communion. In your prayer, dear brethren, your priests must occupy a special place so that they will persevere in their vocation and remain faithful to the priestly mission entrusted to them. It is greatly edifying for each priest to know that the bishop, from whom he received the gift of priesthood or who is at any rate his father and friend, is near to him in prayer, in affection and is always ready to welcome him, listen to him, support him and encourage him. In the same way the bishop must never cease praying for new vocations. These supplications must be offered up with persistence to God, until he calls "those that he wants" for the sacred ministry.

The "munus santificandi" that you received commits you to be promoters of prayer in society. In the cities in which you live and operate, often frenetic and noisy, where man runs and loses himself, where one lives as if God does not exist, may you be able to create places and occasions of prayer, where in silence, in listening to God through "lectio divina," in personal and communal prayer, man can meet God and have a living experience of Jesus Christ who reveals the true face of the Father.

Never tire of making sure that parishes and shrines, places of education and places of suffering, and also families become places of communion with the Lord. In a special way I exhort you to make the cathedral an exemplary house of prayer, above all of liturgical prayer, where the diocesan community gathered together with their bishop can praise and thank God for the work of salvation and intercede for all men.

St. Ignatius of Antioch reminds us of the strength of community prayer: "If the prayer of one or two has great strength, how much more that of the bishop and of the entire Church!" ("Letter to the Ephesians," No. 5).

In brief, dearest bishops, be men of prayer! The "spiritual fecundity of the ministry of the bishop depends on the intensity of his union with the Lord. It is from prayer that a bishop must draw light, strength, and comfort in his pastoral activity," as is written in the Directory for the Pastoral Ministry of Bishops ("Apostolorum Succesores," No. 36).

Turn to God for yourselves and for your faithful with the trust of children, the audaciousness of a friend, the perseverance of Abraham, who was untiring in his prayer. Like Moses may you have your hands raised toward heaven, while your faithful fight the good fight of faith. Like Mary may you know how to praise God for the salvation he is carrying out in the Church and in the world, convinced that nothing is impossible with God (Luke 1:37).

With these sentiments and Impart to each one of you, and to your priests, to the men and women religious, the seminarians and the faithful of your dioceses a special apostolic blessing.

[Translation by ZENIT]

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Vatican: Divine Innocence Spirituality Flawed

Vatican: Divine Innocence Spirituality Flawed
Archbishop of Southwark Releases Decision

Vatican Note on Divine Innocence Community
"The Community's Spirituality Is Flawed at Its Root"

LONDON, SEPT. 23, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Here are the observations of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith on the writings of Patricia de Menezes and the Community of the Divine Innocence. The observations were communicated to Archbishop Kevin McDonald of Southwark on July 16, and published along with a statement from the archdiocese Friday.

* * *

There are four main areas of concern in the writings of Mrs. Patricia de Menezes:

1. The exaggerated claims made for the Community of Divine Innocence.
2. The inappropriate words and phrases attributed to Jesus.
3. The questionable demand made concerning the status of aborted children.
4. The intemperate language used in the "Inspirations" when attacking Church authority.

Exaggerated Claims

De Menezes makes extravagant claims for the Community of Divine Innocence: "Regarding all the different spiritualities and charisms within the Church, Our Lord showed me that they were like facets of a diamond, but the Way of Divine Innocence is the whole diamond" (31.1.01).

What is more she clearly believes that she has supernatural sanction for this conviction: "Jesus: The founders of these great orders and communities waited for this hour, and how they wish it was already blazing -- blazing for all to see" (12.4.98).

At points an almost hysterical note enters the dialogue which is not compatible with a communication from the Word Incarnate: "Jesus: You are the beginnings of the New People of God (11.1.94);

"This spirituality is the Perfect Original Spirituality of the Church Herself (12.4.98);

"This Order, the perfect Order of My Divine Innocence is the First and last Order! The Alpha and the Omega, I AM. This Order is MY ORDER! This Order is Perfection! The Order of MY Divine Innocence precedes all orders, and supersedes all orders, it is the original perfect Christian Universal Order of God!" (12.4.88).

Inappropriate Words and Phrases Attributed to Jesus

The words and phrases attributed by de Menezes to Jesus in her "showings" are at times strange and bizarre. They are not consonant with the sane and wise Gospel tradition.

The "voice of Jesus" which we hear in these revelations indulges again and again in a kind of colloquial chit-chat: "Jesus: So you don't believe me? De Menezes: Sorry Lord it was just curiosity. Jesus: Curiosity killed the cat: Let's get back to St John. (4.12.93);

"Jesus: Tell them this university offers a master's degree, your Lord and Master's degree, and I expect every student to attain first class honors with a 'P' grade. 'P' for perfection. (29.11.95);

"De Menezes: Lord, the Way of Divine Innocence does not seem to be what the young want. Jesus: What do the young want? De Menezes: Excitement. Jesus: I can give them enough excitement to give them a heart attack!" (11.1.01).

The Questionable Demand Made Concerning the Status of Aborted Children

The central message that de Menezes claims to have received since 1984, namely that the Church proclaim the martyrdom of all the innocent children deliberately killed before birth and acknowledge these unborn children as companion martyrs of the first Holy Innocents, is doctrinally problematic. A martyr is someone who bears witness to Christ. If the victims of abortion were to qualify for martyrdom it would then seem that all victims of any moral evil should be likewise deemed martyrs. De Menezes' notion of a "Baptism of Love" is not, as claimed, a development of doctrine. Rather it is an innovation which is difficult to harmonize with the teaching of the Church.

Violent Language Used in the "Inspirations" when Attacking Church Authority

De Menezes' supposed revelations and writings demonstrate a litigious and dissident spirit. The Church stands accused of impeding Jesus' efforts to save the souls of millions of aborted children and, therefore, "Jesus" ranks the hierarchy of the Church, who are unwilling to "claim" the aborted, alongside abortionists and abortion-sponsoring legislators. As such, the "Jesus" of de Menezes' supposed revelations displays ignorance of the Church's uncompromised stance against the evil of abortion and its compassionate hope for the salvation of children who have died without baptism. It is as if Jesus were inordinately bound by his own Church: Jesus refrains from working any good for the children, it seems, until the desired "claiming" is declared.

The unusually violent and threatening language used in the "inspirations" to attack the authorities of the Church seems incompatible with any genuinely divine revelation: "Jesus: Those who subject the children to trial by neglect, I will subject to trial by fire. ... Wicked short-sighted shepherds. ... Vengeance is mine! Let those who know of this grace not be complacent! Cardinals, bishops, theologians and people, your duty is clear! Millions of human lives and immortal souls are at stake!" (11.9.97 ); or again "Inform the archbishop that his hard-heartedness is like that of Pharaoh and it will bring down disaster on the people" (19.8.95).

The Statutes of the Community of Divine Innocence

The statutes cannot be judged or assessed on their own merits, but must be read in the light of the questionable "inspirations" of Patricia de Menezes according to which the members are expected not only to pursue "ongoing study of the faith" but also to undertake a "study of the character and spirituality of the Family of Divine Innocence, which is contained in the inspirational writings of our foundress, Patricia de Menezes" (p. 6). The members are "obliged to abide by the teaching and guidance of the Mother Foundress during her lifetime" (p.7). Thereafter the superiors elected "must abide by the founding inspiration" (p.7).

Given that the supposed revelations which ground the spirituality of the Community of Divine Innocence are highly questionable, it follows that the community's spirituality is flawed at its root. Because this spirituality thoroughly animates the community's proposed constitution, it cannot be approved.

[English original distributed by the Archdiocese of Southwark; text adapted]

On Wealth and Poverty

On Wealth and Poverty
"Equal Distribution of Goods Is a Priority"

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy, SEPT. 23, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the address Benedict XVI delivered today before reciting the midday Angelus with several thousand people gathered in St. Peter's Square.

* * *

Dear brothers and sisters!

This morning I visited the Diocese of Velletri of which I was the titular cardinal for several years. It was a familial encounter, which permitted me to relive past moments rich with spiritual and pastoral experiences. During the solemn Eucharistic celebration, in speaking about the liturgical texts, I was able to reflect on the correct use of earthly goods, a theme that St. Luke the evangelist, in various ways, has brought to our attention over the last few Sundays.

In the parable of the dishonest, yet sharp steward, Christ teaches his disciples the best way to use money and material riches; share them with the poor and in this way earn their friendship, in view of the Kingdom of heaven. "Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon," says Jesus, "so that when it fails they may receive your into the eternal habitations" (Luke 16:9).

Money is not "dishonest" in itself, but more than anything else it can close man up within a blind egoism. What is needed therefore is a sort of "conversion" of economic goods: Instead of using them for one's own interests, we need to also think of the necessities of the poor, imitating Christ himself, who, wrote St. Paul, "Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich" (2 Corinthians 8:9). It seems to be a paradox: Christ did not enrich us with his wealth, but with his poverty, that is with his love that motivated him to give himself completely to us.

This could open up a vast and complex field of reflection on the theme of wealth and poverty, even on the world stage, in which two rationales regarding economics come face to face: the logic of profit and that of the equal distribution of goods, and one does not contradict the other, provided that their relationship is well-ordered. Catholic social doctrine has always sustained that the equal distribution of goods is a priority. Profit is naturally legitimate and, in a just measure, necessary for economic development.

John Paul II wrote in "Centesimus Annus": "The modern business economy has positive aspects. Its basis is human freedom exercised in the economic field, just as it is exercised in many other fields (No. 32). However, he adds, capitalism is not considered the only valid model of economic organization (No. 35). The crises of hunger and the environment are denouncing, with growing evidence, that the logic of profit, if it prevails, increases the disproportion between rich and poor and a harmful exploitation of the planet. When the logic of sharing and solidarity prevails on the other hand, it is possible to correct the course of action and orient it toward proportional and sustainable development.

Mary Most Holy, who in the Magnificat proclaims: the Lord "has fed the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty" (Luke 1:53), help all Christians to use with evangelical wisdom, that is, with generous solidarity, earthly goods, and inspire governments and economists with farsighted strategies that favor the authentic progress of all peoples.

[Translation by ZENIT]

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana

Fr. Lang on Reorienting the Mass

Reorienting the Mass
Father Lang Comments on

LONDON, SEPT. 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- The statement asserting that the priest celebrating the older form of the Mass has "his back to the people" misses the point, says Father Uwe Michael Lang.

The posture "ad orientem," or "facing east," is about having a common direction of liturgical prayer, he adds.

Father Lang of the London Oratory, and recently appointed to work for the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural Heritage of the Church, is the author of "Turning Toward the Lord: Orientation in Liturgical Prayer." The book was first published in German by Johannes Verlag and then in English by Ignatius Press. The book has also appeared in Italian, French, Hungarian and Spanish.

In this interview with ZENIT, Father Lang speaks about the "ad orientem" posture and the possibilities for a rediscovery of the ancient liturgical practice.

Q: How did the practice of celebrating the liturgy "ad orientem," or "facing east," develop in the early Church? What is its theological significance?

Father Lang: In most major religions, the position taken in prayer and the layout of holy places is determined by a "sacred direction." The sacred direction in Judaism is toward Jerusalem or, more precisely, toward the presence of the transcendent God -- "shekinah" -- in the Holy of Holies of the Temple, as seen in Daniel 6:10.

Even after the destruction of the Temple, the custom of turning toward Jerusalem was kept in the liturgy of the synagogue. This is how the Jews have expressed their eschatological hope for the coming of the Messiah, the rebuilding of the Temple, and the gathering of God's people from the diaspora.

The early Christians no longer turned toward the earthly Jerusalem, but toward the new, heavenly Jerusalem. It was their firm belief that when the Risen Christ would come again in glory, he would gather his faithful to make up this heavenly city.

They saw in the rising sun a symbol of the Resurrection and of the Second Coming, and it was a matter of course for them to pray facing this direction. There is strong evidence of eastward prayer in most parts of the Christian world from the second century onward.

In the New Testament, the special significance of the eastward direction for worship is not explicit.

Even so, tradition has found many biblical references for this symbolism, for instance: the "sun of righteousness" in Malachi 4:2; the "day dawning from on high" in Luke 1:78; the angel ascending from the rising of the sun with the seal of the living God in Revelation 7:2; and the imagery of light in St John's Gospel.

In Matthew 24:27-30, the sign of the coming of the Son of Man with power and great glory, which appears as the lightning from the east and shines as far as the west, is the cross.

There is a close connection between eastward prayer and the cross; this is evident by the fourth century, if not earlier. In synagogues of this period, the corner with the receptacle for the Torah scrolls indicated the direction of prayer -- "qibla" -- toward Jerusalem.

Among Christians, it became a general custom to mark the direction of prayer with a cross on the east wall in the apses of basilicas as well as in private rooms, for example, of monks and solitaries.

Toward the end of the first millennium, we find theologians of different traditions noting that prayer facing east is one of the practices distinguishing Christianity from the other religions of the Near East: Jews pray toward Jerusalem, Muslims pray toward Mecca, but Christians pray toward the east.

Q: Do any of the other rites of the Catholic Church employ the "ad orientem" liturgical posture?

Father Lang: "Facing east" in liturgical prayer is part of the Byzantine, Syriac, Armenian, Coptic and Ethiopian traditions. It is still the custom in most of the Eastern rites, at least during the Eucharistic prayer.

A few Eastern Catholic Churches -- for example, the Maronite and the Syro-Malabar -- have lately adopted "Mass facing the people," but this is owing to modern Western influence and not in keeping with their authentic traditions.

For this reason, the Vatican Congregation for Eastern Churches declared in 1996 that the ancient tradition of praying toward the east has a profound liturgical and spiritual value and must be preserved in the Eastern rites.

Q: We often hear that "facing east" means the priest is celebrating "with his back to the people." What is really going on when the priest celebrates Mass "ad orientem"?

Father Lang: That catchphrase often heard nowadays, that the priest "is turning his back on the people," misses the crucial point that the Mass is a common act of worship in which priest and people together -- representing the pilgrim Church -- reach out for the transcendent God.

What is at issue here is not the celebration "toward the people" or "away from the people," but rather the common direction of liturgical prayer. This is maintained whether or not the altar is literally facing east; in the West, many churches built since the 16th century are no longer "oriented" in the strict sense.

By facing the same direction as the faithful when he stands at the altar, the priest leads the people of God on their journey of faith. This movement toward the Lord has found sublime expression in the sanctuaries of many churches of the first millennium, where representations of the cross or of the glorified Christ illustrate the goal of the assembly's earthly pilgrimage.

Looking out for the Lord keeps the eschatological character of the Eucharist alive and reminds us that the celebration of the sacrament is a participation in the heavenly liturgy and a pledge of future glory in the presence of the living God.

This gives the Eucharist its greatness, saving the individual community from closing in upon itself and opening it toward the assembly of the angels and saints in the heavenly city.

Q: In what ways does "facing east" during the liturgy foster a dialogue with the Lord?

Father Lang: The paramount principle of Christian worship is the dialogue between the people of God as a whole, including the celebrant, and God, to whom their prayer is addressed.

This is why the French liturgist Marcel Metzger argues that the phrases "facing the people" and "back to the people" exclude the one to whom all prayer is directed, namely God.

The priest does not celebrate the Eucharist "facing the people," whatever direction he faces; rather, the whole congregation celebrates facing God, through Jesus Christ and in the Holy Spirit.

Q: In the foreword to your book, then Cardinal Ratzinger notes that none of the documents of the Second Vatican Council asked for the altar to be turned toward the people. How did this change come about? What was the basis for such a major reorientation of the liturgy?

Father Lang: Two main arguments in favor of the celebrant's position facing the people are usually presented.

First, it is often said that this was the practice of the early Church, which should be the norm for our age; however, a close study of the sources shows that this claim does not hold.

Second, it is maintained that the "active participation" of the faithful, a principle that was introduced by Pope Pius X and is central to "Sacrosanctum Concilium," demanded celebration toward the people.

Recent critical reflection on the concept of "active participation" has revealed the need for a theological reappraisal of this important principle.

In his book "The Spirit of the Liturgy," then Cardinal Ratzinger draws a useful distinction between participation in the Liturgy of the Word, which includes external actions, and participation in the Liturgy of the Eucharist, where external actions are quite secondary, since the interior participation of prayer is the heart of the matter.

The Holy Father's recent postsynodal apostolic exhortation "Sacramentum Caritatis" has an important discussion of this topic in Paragraph 52.

Q: Is a priest forbidden from "facing east" in the new order of the Mass promulgated by Pope Paul VI in 1970? Is there any juridical obstacle prohibiting wider use of this ancient practice?

Father Lang: A combination of priest and people facing each other during the Liturgy of the Word and turning jointly toward the altar during the Liturgy of the Eucharist, especially for the Canon, is a legitimate option in the Missal of Pope Paul VI.

The revised General Instruction of the Roman Missal, which was first published for study purposes in 2000, addresses the altar question in Paragraph 299; it seems to declare the position of the celebrant "ad orientem" undesirable or even prohibited.

However, the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Sacraments rejected this interpretation in a response to a question submitted by Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna. Obviously, the relevant paragraph of the General Instruction must be read in light of this response, which was dated Sept. 25, 2000.

Q: Will Pope Benedict's recent apostolic letter liberalizing the use of the Missal of John XXIII, "Summorum Pontificum," foster a deeper appreciation for "turning toward the Lord" during the Mass?

Father Lang: I think many reservations or even fears about Mass "ad orientem" come from lack of familiarity with it, and the spread of the "extraordinary use" of the Roman rite will help many people to discover and appreciate this form of celebration.

Father Cantalamessa on Dishonest Wealth

Father Cantalamessa on Dishonest Wealth
Pontifical Household Preacher Comments on Sunday's Readings

ROME, SEPT. 21, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of a commentary by the Pontifical Household preacher, Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa, on the readings from this Sunday's liturgy.

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Make friends with wealth
25th Sunday in Ordinary Time
Amos 8:4-6; 1 Timothy 2:1-8; Luke 16:1-13

This Sunday's Gospel presents us with a parable that in certain respects has important contemporary relevance: the parable of the dishonest steward. The central character of the parable is the farm manager of a landowner, a well-known figure in our Italian countryside when the sharecropping system was still in existence.

Like all good parables, this one is like a miniature play, full of movement and scene changes. The actors in the first scene are the steward and the master and the scene ends with the master firing the steward: "You can no longer be my steward."

The steward does not even try to defend himself. His conscience is not clear. He knows that he is guilty of what the master has discovered.

The second scene is a soliloquy of the steward, who is now alone. He has not yet accepted defeat. He immediately thinks about what he can do to get himself out of this situation and save his future.

The third scene -- steward and tenant farmers -- reveals to us the plan that the steward has devised. He asks the tenants, "And how much do you owe?"

"One hundred measures of wheat," is one reply.

"Here is your promissory note," he says. "Take it and write down eighty." A classic case of corruption and falsehood that makes us think of similar situations in our own society, often on a much larger scale.

The conclusion is disconcerting: "The master praised the dishonest steward for acting prudently."

Is Jesus approving and encouraging corruption? We need to recall to our minds the particular nature of teaching in parables. The moral doctrine that is aimed at is not in the parable taken as a whole, in every detail, but only in that aspect of the parable that the narrator wishes to pick out.

And the idea that Jesus intended to bring out with this parable is clear. The master praises the steward for his resourcefulness and for nothing else. It is not said that the master changed his mind about his decision to fire the man.

Indeed, given the initial conduct of the master and the quickness with which he discovers the new scam we can easily imagine the outcome, which the parable does not report. After having praised the steward for his astuteness, the master orders him to immediately restore the fruit of his dishonest transactions or pay it off in prison if he lacks the means.

It is cleverness that Jesus also praises, outside the parable. In fact, he adds: "The children of this world are more clever in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light."

That man, when he was faced with an emergency situation in which his whole future was at stake, showed a capacity for radical decision-making and great resourcefulness. He acted quickly and intelligently -- even if dishonestly -- to save himself. This, Jesus observes to his disciples, is what you too must do, to save yourselves, not for a worldly future but for an eternal future.

"Life," Seneca said, "is not given to anyone as a possession but as something that we are stewards of." We are all "stewards," so we have to act like the man in the parable. He did not put things off until tomorrow; he did not "sleep on it." There is something too important at stake to be left to chance.

The Gospel itself makes different practical applications of this teaching of Christ. The one that it insists the most on is the one regarding the use of wealth and money: "I tell you, make friends with dishonest wealth, so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings."

In other words, do as that steward did; make friends with those who, when one day you find yourself in trouble, will welcome you. These friends, we know, are the poor.

We know this from what Christ says about his being the recipient of what we do for them. The poor, St. Augustine said, are, so to speak, our couriers and porters: They allow us to begin transferring our belongings now to the house that is being built for us in the hereafter.

Pope's Homily in Velletri

Pope's Homily in Velletri
"A Grand Gesture of Charity Is to Pray for Others"

VELLETRI, Italy, SEPT. 23, 2007, (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the homily Benedict XVI gave this morning during a Mass celebrated in the plaza of the Cathedral of San Clement, on the occasion of the Pope's brief pastoral visit to the suburbicarian Diocese of Velletri-Segni, some 25 miles southeast of Rome.

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Dear brothers and sisters!

I have returned with great pleasure in your midst to preside over this solemn Eucharistic celebration, in response to you repeated invitations. I return with joy to meet your diocesan community, which for many years was also mine in a special way, and which is still very dear to me today. I greet you all with great affection. First of all I would like to greet Cardinal Francis Arinze, who succeeded me as titular cardinal of this diocese; I greet your pastor, Monsignor Vincenzo Apicella, whom I would like to thank for the courteous words of welcome with which he welcomed me in your name.

I greet the other bishops, priests, men and women religious, and pastoral workers, the youth and all those at work in parishes, movements, associations and various diocesan activities. I greet the prefectorial commissioner of Velletri, the mayors of towns of the Diocese of Velletri-Segni and the other civil and military authorities, who honor us with their presence.

I also greet all those who have come from other places, Germany in particular, to unite themselves to us in this day of celebration. Bonds of friendship link my native land to yours: This bronze column from Marktl am Inn, given to me in September last year in honor of my apostolic trip to Germany, is a testimony of that, and I wished it to remain here, as a further sign of my affection and my goodwill.

I know you have prepared for my visit here today with an intense spiritual journey, adopting as the motto a meaningful verse from the First Letter of John: "So we know and believe in the love that God has for us" (4:16). "Deus Caritas East," God is love: My first encyclical begins with these words, which pertain to the core of our faith --the Christian image of God and the resulting image of man and his journey.

I rejoice in the fact that you have chosen as your guide for the diocese's spiritual and pastoral journey this very expression: "We have known the love that God has for us and we have believed." Today's liturgy cannot but focus on this essential truth, on the love of God, able to impress upon human existence an absolutely new orientation and value. Love is the essence of Christianity, which renders the believer and the Christian community yeast of hope and peace in every situation, especially attentive to the necessities of the poor and needy. Love brings the Church into existence.

For the past few Sundays, St. Luke, the Gospel writer who more than the others is concerned to show the love Jesus has for the poor, he offered different ideas for reflection on the dangers of an excessive attachment to money, to material goods and to all that impedes us from loving the fullness of our vocation to love God and our brethren. Also today, through the parable that provokes a certain wonder in us because it speaks of a dishonest manager who ends up being praised (cf. Luke 16:1-13), and the Lord is offering is a salutary teaching. As he often does, he draws from current events: He speaks about a manager on the verge of being fired for his dishonest management of the affairs of his master and, to guarantee his own future, he tries to slyly come to agreements with his debtors. He is dishonest, but astute: The Gospel does not present him as a model to follow in his dishonesty, but as an example to imitate for his cautious craftiness. In fact, the brief parable ends with these words: "The master praised the unrighteous manager because he had acted shrewdly."

What does Jesus want to say to us? The Evangelist follows the parable of the unfaithful steward with a brief series of sayings and admonitions about the relationship we should have with money and the goods of this earth. Brief phrases that invite us to a choice that presupposes a radical decision, a constant interior tension. Life is in truth always a choice: between honesty and dishonesty, between faithfulness and unfaithfulness, between egoism and altruism, between good and evil. The conclusion of the Gospel selection is incisive and authoritative: "No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (Luke 16:13).

Mammon is the original Phoenician term that evokes economic security and success in business; we could say that in wealth is found the idol in which one sacrifices everything to reach personal success. Therefore a fundamental decision is necessary -- the choice between the logic of profit as the ultimate criteria of our action and the logic of sharing and solidarity. The logic of profit, if it prevails, increases not only the disproportion between poor and rich, but also the devastating exploitation of the planet.

When, on the other hand, the logic of sharing and solidarity prevails, it is possible to correct the course of action and orient it toward proportional development, for the common good of all. In the end it is a decision between egoism and love, between justice and dishonesty, and a final choice between God and Satan. If loving Christ and our brethren is not considered as something accessorial and superficial, but moreover the true and final scope of our existence, we must know how to make fundamental choices, to be open to radical renunciations, even martyrdom if necessary. Today, like yesterday, the Christian life demands courage to go against the tide, to love as Jesus did, who ended up sacrificing himself on the cross.

We can say therefore, paraphrasing St. Augustine, that through earthly riches we should obtain those that are true and eternal: If in fact there are people who are ready for any kind of dishonest action to ensure material well-being, which isn't sure, how much more we Christians must try to provide for our eternal happiness with the goods of this earth (cf. "Discourses" 359:10). Now, the only way our personal gifts and abilities will be fruitful along with the wealth we possess is to share them with our brethren, showing ourselves to be good stewards of what God has entrusted to us. Jesus says: "Whoever is faithful in little, is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in little will be dishonest also in much" (Luke 16:10-11).

The prophet Amos speaks about this fundamental choice to be performed day after day in today's first reading. With strong words, he stigmatizes a typical style of life of someone who lets themselves be drawn in by a selfish search for profit in every possible way and is transformed into a thirst for gain, a contempt for the poor and in exploitation of the poor for their own advantage (cf. Amos 4:5). The Christian must energetically reject all of this, opening his heart, on the contrary, to feelings of authentic generosity. A generosity that, as St. Paul tells us in today's second reading, is expressed in a sincere love for all and is manifested in the first place in prayer. A grand gesture of charity is to pray for others.

The Apostle invites us first of all to pray for those who carry out tasks of responsibility in the civil community, because -- he explains -- from their decisions, if they tend toward the common good, result in positive consequences, ensuring peace and "a calm and tranquil life with piety and dignity" for all (1 Timothy 2:2). Our prayer is just as valuable, a spiritual support for the edification of an ecclesial community faithful to Christ and to the construction of a more just and supportive society.

Dear brothers and sisters, let us pray, in a special way so that your diocesan community, that is undergoing a series of transformations, because of the transfer of many young families out of Rome, the development of the service industry and the arrival of many immigrants in town centers, may lead to an ever increasingly organic and shared pastoral action, following the indications that your bishop is offering with outstanding pastoral sensitivity.

To this end, his pastoral letter of last December proved to be very opportune with an invitation to attentive and persevering listening to God's word, to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and the magisterium of the Church.

We place in the Madonna of Grace's hands, whose image is kept and venerated in this your beautiful cathedral, all of your intentions and pastoral projects. May the maternal protection of Mary accompany the journey of all of you present here and of those who were unable to participate in today's Eucharistic celebration. In a special way, may the Holy Virgin watch over the sick, the elderly, the children and anyone who feels alone or abandoned or is in particular need. Free us Mary from the greed of wealth, and make it so that lifting our free and pure hands, we can give glory to God with our life (cf. Offertory Prayer). Amen!

[Translation by ZENIT]

© Copyright 2007 -- Libreria Editrice Vaticana