Signs of Reconciliation

Returning Soon...

My thoughts (such as they are) will return to this space on a regular basis very soon. Until then, I hope the simplicity and grace of this very personal performance by The Innocence Mission will brighten your winter’s journey through Advent and Christmastide.

A Holy and Blessed Christmas to All!

Amazing Grace, Indeed

Today is the 200th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in Britain, an Act of Parliament fostered and finally won—after years of struggle—by the strenuous rhetoric and activism of William Wilberforce, a Christian of deep conviction and passion. To mark the occasion, a new film about this part of Wilberforce’s life, Amazing Grace, debuted today.

I went to see the film tonight with my wife and three of our children, because, my crusading wife said, “We must support good films on the first weekend they are released.” I try to be an obedient husband.

I am happy to say it’s a very fine film with a cast of mostly unknown but first-rate actors, as any regular art house moviegoer will recognize (among the players, Ciaran Hinds, Rufus Sewell, Nicholas Farrell, and Michael Gambon, who replaced Richard Harris as Albus Dumbledore in the Harry Potter films). Ioan Gruffudd (the hero from the Horatio Hornblower television series) plays Wilberforce and Albert Finney masterfully portrays the converted slave ship captain, John Newton, who penned the great hymn for which the film is named. Finney’s scenes are the best depictions of acted-out repentance since Robert De Niro’s turn as a converted mercenary in The Mission. The talented cast brings a grace-laden artistry to the film that a gaggle of leading Americans would, I fear, find impossible to match.

In today’s Wall Street Journal, Charlotte Allen complains the film sells short the Christian faith which animated Wilberforce; that it substitutes politics and human passion as the driving forces behind the British Abolitionist Movement. I disagree. The film makes Wilberforce’s intense faith—and that of others, especially John Newton’s—palpable and real precisely by portraying characters that are engaged with the world around them while not being “of it.” These characters are not in denial about anything in this world, especially their sins. It would be easy, as is so often the case with such films, to oversell the “message” and undersell the story. Thanks to the direction of Michael Apted and the script of Steven Knight we get a balance here that rings truer to life as we actually experience it: as an amalgam of sorrows and joys, questions and answers, victories and defeats.

The final rousing rendition of “Amazing Grace”  that begins with bagpipes, continues with drums, and ends with an entire brass section will knock tears of joy out of the driest sponge, a joy that comes at the end of a well-run race in which the runner, having given his all, realizes the victory isn’t finally his but Another’s, yet one in which (by a mystery of grace) he truly participates.

As the real-life John Newton testified at age 82 (a line echoed by Finney in the film): “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things, that I am a great sinner, and that Christ is a great Saviour.”

Image: Courtesy Samuel Goldwyn Films and Bristol Bay Productions, LLC

Ash Wednesday

During the nearly six years I worked for Touchstone Magazine, the daily commute ranged from the far western suburbs of Chicago to the downtown “loop” by train and then up Milwaukee Avenue (by subway or bus) to the northwest side, a minimum of ninety minutes one way.

A couple of years ago, returning home from work on Ash Wednesday, I emerged from the Dearborn Street subway (now called the “Blue Line”) amid the usual press of pedestrian commuters. Walking toward the train station, it seemed as if every third or fourth person had ashes on their forehead. One or two subway riders bore ashes, but this was a revelation. Who knew that so many Chicagoans were Christians?

For a block or two, each time a pedestrian with ashes passed by, I felt a surge of pride. A traditional Christian in America is made to feel part of a minority, a fringe. But for a few moments that late afternoon, my tribe, if one can call it that, was made visible by an outward sign of ashen crosses.

By the time I boarded the train for Geneva and noted, as I made my way through the cars to an open seat, that the ratio of commuters with ashes had declined a bit, some misgivings and doubts arose. Chicago is a very Catholic city, after all. It’s not only Sinatra’s kind of town, it’s home to 2.4 million Roman Catholics. This wonderful Ash Wednesday scene, this sudden revelation of how many Christians I walked among every day, was due, in part, to the heavily Catholic population. Not that Roman Catholics aren’t true believers as much or more than the rest of us who claim Jesus as Lord, but that, like many Christians, they tend to observe their tradition’s popular rituals without a change of heart.

That’s finally what struck me on the way home that evening: many of these Christians with ashes on their foreheads—some no doubt Lutherans or Episcopalians or others that observe Ash Wednesday—were Christians only by habit or by family influence or even by a kind of personal sentiment; many of their hearts (and minds) were far from God.

If the number of people with ashes on their foreheads were men and women whose minds and hearts were surrendered to Jesus Christ, counting along with these other liturgical Christians of similar conviction who had not yet observed Ash Wednesday that afternoon or who had washed any sign of it away, plus all serious Christians who do not observe the Great Fast (in America, the majority?), we ought to be living in a very different culture than the one in which we are presently walking around.

I do not mean this only in the narrow political sense in which moral questions have become public policy hot potatoes—the forced acceptance of same-sex everything, the callous killing and discarding of unborn persons, for the two most debated examples—but that our culture evidences very little genuine creativity, or meaningful sacrifice, or costly courage. What’s true or good or beautiful is auctioned to the highest bidder or ceded to the best liar.

As the most familiar Psalm of penance (recited in every Christian service in which ashes are imposed) makes plain, God doesn’t want our pious or petty denials of self (be it food or creature comforts or whatever), he wants our hearts:

For thou hast no delight in sacrifice;
were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.
(Psalm 51:16-17)

And desires a particular orientation and structure within this contrite heart:

Blessed are the men whose strength is in thee,
in whose heart are the highways to Zion. (Psalm 84:5)   

This is what I came to understand that Ash Wednesday: it would be better for a minority to have invisible ashes on their hearts than for a visible majority to apply ashes to their foreheads alone.

Photos: Top: Lincoln Karim/AP; Bottom: Faye Murman/Flickr

A More Permanent Home

As elements grow colder their atoms slow down in that invisible world where particles dwell, until, at the coldest possible temperature—absolute zero—all motion ceases.

A satellite photograph of a street I lived on thirty-seven years ago fills one window of my laptop’s screen (click the image above for a more expansive view). I produced it using Google Maps. One can switch between an online street map of the area and the satellite photo—from representation to reality, from virtual to actual—in a click of a mouse button.

This landscape is frozen in time, not by the desperate cold of space where the photo was taken but by the satellite’s power to capture sunlight as it played upon this spot of the world some bright, clear day who knows how long ago.

The rooftops vary in shape and size; their colors, apart from an occasional shade of orange, are white, drab, or the color of gray flannel. Streaked by shadows from the early morning sun, the old street runs east to west. The shadows, most of them from trees, point northwesterly.

The trees are skeletal, their ghostly verges in outline, their leaves, burned of living cells by a primordial chemical encoding that might as well be alchemy for all we ultimately understand of it, now fallen and raked away.

There is power in this omniscient viewpoint, but we’re too far above ground to really be intrusive.

Were all the houses empty on the morning this picture was taken? Was someone ironing a shirt or napping in a window seat, a languished caffeine high submitting to the warm focused light of the panes? Who was in the car traveling eastbound on the block above my old street? If a soul was present in this scene—someone was driving that car—no one knew this innocuous suburban moment was being captured.

To the east, just beyond the boundaries of the image, the Missouri River divides Omaha from Council Bluffs, Nebraska from Iowa. Here, in the photographed neighborhood, on this street by the university, my family lived in a white house with black shudders in the fall, winter and spring of late 1969 and early 1970.

§§§§§

The first time I tried to go back to that house and that street, while on break from college in 1985, I drove more than a hundred miles off course, a radical detour between two cities—Minneapolis and Tulsa—that do not share Omaha as a stop. In the small hours of the morning, I left Interstate 35 near Des Moines, and headed west on Interstate 80.

A fear of amnesia, perhaps, certainly the illusion of timeless freedom that college casts, drove me that night, through a shroud of fog so dense I could make out little beyond the hood of the car for most of the 100 plus miles of road.

I ended up on the wrong side of Omaha, wandering a neighborhood too far to the east, near the bluffs, as a patrolman I flagged down confirmed with a quizzical glance. Nearly an hour later, my travel schedule shot, I drifted back on to the empty freeway, speeding in a vain attempt to recover lost time. A hundred miles later, at first light, came a tinge of regret for failing to persevere.

§§§§§

In the summer of 1969 my father, an Army officer who came up through the enlisted ranks and attended Officer Candidate School, was sent to Omaha to finish a bachelor’s degree. He’d served two tours in Vietnam already and his time at the university was the longest period myself or my sisters would ever spend with him.

Those nine months were straddled by Christmas 1969. We played in the snow one night before the holiday, watching my parents in the glow of the front parlor, through a glass storm door illuminated by the red, green, and blue lights of our tree. They were arm in arm on the couch. My father gave me two presents: building blocks out of which we constructed a firehouse on Christmas Eve and a toy semi-trailer truck, a British Petroleum tanker made of metal, with working headlamps and warning lights, which we played with—my father and I—under the covers of my bed that night before he put me to sleep.

It was in this house that I became entranced by the Hundred Acre Wood of Christopher Robin and his pals and discovered what remains my favorite word in English: blustery, which never sounds right unless it’s pronounced the way the Disney voice-over artist read the character of Pooh on the vinyl records we listened to most afternoons.

In breaks from my father’s studies, driven by an energy later witnessed in his mother, my father built his children a playhouse in the backyard, modeled after the house we were living in, complete with working windows and doors that latched with hooks.

§§§§§

About a year after my failed attempt to find this last place in which our family lived with my father, my roommate and I, on leave for spring break, went to interview for a summer of waiting tables and tending bar at a lake resort in northwest Iowa. We were driving through Omaha and I convinced him to help me find the house.

This time, armed with daylight and a better sense of where the street was, we found the house, which remained very much like the image burned in my mind. I approached the front door and rang the bell. After telling the not-too-nervous woman who answered the door about the circumstances—that I last lived in the house with my father before he left for Vietnam to never return alive—she was very kind and allowed me to come in and look about the house. She even invited me to explore the upstairs again, but I declined. It was smaller inside than I remembered, but—at the time, just 16 years after I’d last been inside—the house’s interior was the same one retained by my four-year-old brain.

I walked to the back of the house, where the kitchen windows looked out over the backyard. A concrete slab was the lone evidence of where the playhouse once stood.

I asked about the playhouse, telling my hostess that my father had built it. She explained, with what sounded like regret, that they’d had to tear the house down about a year before as it had become unsafe for her grandchildren.

§§§§§

In the spring that followed Christmas 1969, my mother spent a lot of time in the hospital with my youngest sister, and the older children spent time with our father packing and cleaning the house for an eventual departure. None of us knew that by mid-summer we’d be gathered around his grave near Orlando, listening to a 21-gun salute for our father, the highly-decorated Airborne Ranger. One afternoon before we left Omaha, exploring the dank mildew-scented space below the front porch, I came across a caterpillar I’ve never seen in my life since, the larva of a Cecropia Moth, complete with red, blue, and yellow ball-like tubercles. It was preparing to molt and the skin was white in contrast to the brightly-colored tubercles.

Shortly after spying that caterpillar, we moved to a condominium complex in my father’s hometown of Orlando. In the parking lot, by the back of our station wagon, my father embraced me and told me to take care of my mother and sisters, to be the man of the house in his absence. A few weeks later, a couple of soldiers pulled into that same parking lot to tell us the absence would be more final than any of us wanted. The events that led to the death of Major Kenneth Paul Tanner are recounted in a book of the battle in which he perished, on the final pages of Ripcord: The Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam, 1970.

There have been times when my father’s absence is felt acutely and it’s odd what we remember of our childhoods, especially what latches itself to the mind of a child wakened early by the violent, sudden death of a parent.

I’m grateful for the vivid quality of these memories; thankful that, as the caterpillar found underneath a wooden porch in the summer of 1970 emerged the next winter transformed into something beautiful with great freedom that is drawn to light, my father emerged from the cocoon and penalty of death to life eternal with all the saints in that place that requires no light from the sun for the Lord is its Light and in which the houses prepared for us—the houses prepared for our spirits and for our dwelling—do not fall apart, where neither moth nor rust corrupts. As C.S. Lewis put it, Heaven is not less real or material than this fallen world, but more real and weightier.

All the Time in the World

Two of my parishioners live in what we now call “assisted living centers,” in what we used to call nursing homes. The older nomenclature retains at least some sense of warmth and comfort. I’m not sure what the new terminology accomplishes, except assisting our culture of denial.

The good news is that both of these men, members of the “Greatest Generation,” are not to be denied. Herb is past ninety and Peter is very close to it. Herb attends Holy Redeemer as often as anyone and Peter makes it from time to time.

Visits with Herb and Peter give me a sense that we have all the time in the world. The fact is we have all the time God gives us and, in Christ, that is life without end; that beyond this life awaits a mystery: the end of time as any of us knows it in a place that is so wonderful its blessedness cannot be imagined within the limits of our fallen, finite minds: The Kingdom of Heaven.

Herb has more energy and zest for life than most fifty-somethings. Frankly, I go to see him—as often as I am able, which isn’t often enough—to be encouraged, to get the spark back. His disposition is radiant, his words carefully chosen and never trivial, his handshake firm, his smile wry. I think he’s the first man I’ve known to whom the word “indomitable” applies.

A picture of Herb and his wife adorns his tablestand. Taken during the Second World War, they’re at the USO; he in his Army uniform, she, proud to be married to this tall, earnest young man, both obliviously happy.

Herb makes what he calls his “rounds” of the other tenants at his home each day (about 56, at last count), speaks a word of life, listens to them, sits with them if they don’t talk much. He waits with them and on them. He lingers, watching for the moment when just the right word or gesture will make all the difference. Charity is the old word for it. That word and it’s modern counterpart, love, long emptied of their deeper resonances, are reinvigorated by this man. He brings a bit of the Kingdom of Heaven with him wherever he goes.

Peter is a wit. He’s the sharpest knife in the drawer; you know to quit while you’re ahead. In another life he had an office in Manhattan near the United Nations Building. He knew people. He was a success in New York and Washington. Talking with him, you imagine the era: the excitement, the adventure, the almost boundless spirit. America was it. We were the most industrious, creative, sacrificial and accomplished people in the world. New York was—still is, really—the world’s capital.

At parties, Peter was always the one at the piano, and he can play anything, from Chopin to what he calls, in hushed-but-comic tones, “bar music.” He plays beautifully.

Peter’s wife, Alma, worked in intelligence during the war. She was as accomplished and in-demand as Peter. When I first met her she was blind, bound to a wheelchair, and had trouble speaking, but the mind (and some of the spirit) was still there. I last gave her Communion before Christmas. She died a few weeks later.

Up to about two years ago, she and Peter lived in the same apartments, until she got too ill for Peter to care for her on his own. She was moved into a home a few miles away to which Peter traveled twice daily, once in the morning and once in the late afternoon, to be by her side and keep her company, to do small things for her. In other words, he loved her.

By the time she died, Peter had worn himself out with her care; a few weeks later he had a stroke. He’s recovered, but the doctors don’t want him to play Chopin anymore. Peter is a perfectionist and the complexity of Chopin gives his failing fingers fits and this upsets him. “I have to stick to bar tunes, now,” he said last week with a laugh.

Here’s my favorite piece by Frederic Chopin, his Nocturne No. 15 in F minor (Op. 55/1), played skillfully by Idil Biret. The halting, almost unsure quality of the first several bars moves me. I like to think of Peter playing it in New York, at the end of an evening long ago, with Alma at his side, the lights of the city illuminating the terraced Babylonian skyline of that era’s apartment buildings.

Like all of Chopin, the piece has a timeless quality, like we have all the time in the world, like Chopin took dictation from the Kingdom of Heaven. Click the play button and turn up the volume.

Photo: Chrysler Building by Rob Gardiner. Click image for a larger view.

A Southern Baptist on Mary

Timothy George, a Southern Baptist scholar, has penned perhaps the finest essay on Mary I’ve read by anyone (Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican or otherwise) with the exception of Caryll Houselander.

George touches almost every base in the long-running discussions and controversies about the Mother of God.

It’s also a thought-inspiring compendium of biblical and historical insight on this woman who is so central to the story of salvation.

Here’s an extended taste from the beginning of the essay to prove my points:

It seems to many evangelicals that Catholic preoccupation with Mary obscures the preeminence and sole salvific sufficiency of Jesus Christ and thus leads many people away from rather than to the Savior himself. Good Catholics know, of course, that Mary is not the object of worship or the kind of adoration given only to God (latria), but rather of veneration (doulia), albeit of a special kind (hyperdoulia). But this distinction often seems to get lost at the local level.

Such concerns are not alleviated by the campaign of some Catholics a few years ago to have Mary officially recognized, perhaps even with another infallible dogma, as mediatrix of grace and co-redemptrix with Christ himself. Orthodox Catholics interpret such Marian titles in a way that they believe leaves intact the unique role of Jesus Christ as the mediator between God and man. No Protestant theologian could make this point more clearly than Vatican II: “No creature could ever be counted along with the Incarnate Word and Redeemer . . . the Church does not hesitate to profess the subordinate role of Mary.” Still, the very fact of the campaign points to the difference between the ways Catholics and Protestants feel about the Blessed Virgin.

So why should evangelicals participate in and celebrate the Marian moment that seems to be upon us? The answer is: Precisely because they are evangelicals, that is, gospel people and Bible people. Mary has a pivotal and irreducible place in the Bible, and evangelicals must reclaim this aspect of biblical teaching if we are to be faithful to the whole counsel of God. When it comes to the gospel, Mary cannot be shunted aside or relegated to the affectionate obscurity of the annual Christmas pageant. In the New Testament, she is not only the mother of the redeemer but also the first one to whom the gospel was proclaimed and, in turn, the first one to proclaim it to others. Mary is named a “herald” of God’s good news. We cannot ignore the messenger, because the message she tells is about the salvation of the world.

Evangelical retrieval of a proper biblical theology of Mary will give attention to five explicit aspects of her calling and ministry: Mary as the daughter of Israel, as the virgin mother of Jesus, as Theotokos, as the handmaiden of the Word, and as the mother of the Church. Consider Mary’s first title, Daughter of Israel. Mary stands, along with John the Baptist, at a unique point of intersection in the biblical narrative between the Old and the New Covenants. When Mary cradles the baby Jesus in the Temple in the presence of Anna and Simeon, we see brought together the advent of the Lord’s messiah, and the long-promised and long-prepared-for “consolation of Israel.” The holy family is portrayed as part of a wider community, namely “all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38).

Mary appears in the infancy narratives as the culmination of a prophetic lineage of pious mothers: Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah—together with Tamar, Rahab, and Ruth, who appear in the Matthean genealogy. There is a sense in which any of them could have been the mother of the messiah. According to one interpretation of Genesis 4:1, when Eve exclaims at the birth of Cain, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” she supposes that her first-born son was already the fulfillment of the prophecy of Genesis 3:15, the seed of the woman who would bruise the head of the serpent.

The painting of the Annunciation that accompanies this post is one of my favorites illustrating a scene from the Scriptures. Mary can see Gabriel but we remain outside of the mystery, so to speak, as from our perspective only a blinding bolt of light rends the center of the air. Also, unlike so many mediaeval and renaissance paintings, she is situated in the real world of first-century Palestine. You can click on the image for a larger view.

Note: The full First Things article has some annoying punctuation, at least in this internet-posted version.

Painting: Henry Ossawa Tanner, (African-American, active France, 1859–1937), The Annunciation, 1898, Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Odds and Ends

For those who desire to witness greater unity between Catholics and Protestants (as any good Christian, following our Lord's prayer in John 17, should), Father Edwards Oakes enters the fray with this plea. Some of this—Oakes calls them “night-musings”—is for specialists (theologians, clergy, and church watchers) but most of it can be followed easily enough and the salient point is this: something essential was lost to Catholicism at the Reformation (also, Protestants left something essential behind); that a real division occurred—meaning that one is not finally complete without the other, whatever the separated parties may claim. This is, I think, even truer of the division between Rome and the Christian East. But that’s another story altogether.

Then there is this haunting, compelling voice from the past: Alfred Lord Tennyson reading his The Charge of the Light Brigade. Apparently, Thomas Edison sent some of his men ‘round to record Tennyson’s recitations onto wax cylinders back in 1890. Isn’t the internet amazing?

Postscript (2/14/07): In the comment linked below, Father Tom Anderson mentions this recording of Kenneth Landfrey, the bugler who sounded the Charge of the Light Brigade, blowing the charge again. The recording is from August 2, 1890. The sound file is a long collection of various antique recordings. The resounding of the charge begins at about 28:06 elapsed time, is followed by a recording of Big Ben tolling 10:30 p.m., 10:45 p.m. and 11 p.m. in Westminster, London, on the evening of July 16, 1890, and ends with Babe Ruth talking to kids about baseball.

This past September, I visited my sister in London and got to see the old clock tower in person. This will sound strange, but I think it’s the most beautiful man-made structure I’ve beheld. One of my English friends said to this: “It’s only a clock.” Yes, the English are known for understatement, but that wins first prize.

Louis Armstrong in Germany, 1959

Watching something as simple and profound as the following performance, one realizes how much genuine talent and showmanship has been lost in the past generation or two of musical artists, not to mention—as is so often the case with the older songs—the intense-yet-subtle lyric. And this observation (sentiment?) from someone who likes a lot of popular music of the past 50 years, including a great deal of music from the past decade.

Press the Play (>) button and Enjoy.

Prayer Changes Us, Not God

At last Sunday’s Liturgy, I recounted a meal blessing prayed by Father Peter Geromel over a recent dinner we shared with friends. Father Peter (of the Anglican Diocese of the Holy Cross) learned this grace from his bishop (The Rt. Rev. Paul Hewett):

“Give bread to the poor and may we who have bread hunger and thirst for Thee.”

Some of you asked for it and so there it is as best I can remember it.

It is one of those simple, startling prayers—halting the mind and touching the spirit—that reveals the truth about ourselves and about God, about why we hunger and who fills us. It changes our relationship to the food in front of us, moves our attention from our lacks to our abundances—in other words, makes us grateful—and puts us in mind of the only One to whom we owe thanks for our daily bread.

On Wednesday night, after the Alpha presentation, there was a discussion of prayer (this week’s topic) and some of that talk turned to C.S. Lewis. I related a quote from Lewis on prayer, a quote made semi-famous by the film Shadowlands (about Lewis’ late-life marriage to Joy Davidman Gresham). Let me borrow from Kathy Ross’ account of a scene that takes place halfway through the film:

...in conversation with two colleagues, Magdalen College (Oxford) Chaplain Harry Harrington declares that if Joy (Mrs. Lewis) recovers from cancer, it will be a “victory for the power of prayer.” The chaplain is challenged immediately by atheist professor Christopher Riley, who goads him with questions about who qualifies for divine aid and whether or not God intervenes only when asked and whether or not there’s a need to pray if God already knows and does what’s best for us. Harry, obviously stumped, dodges the questions.

Just then [C.S.] Lewis approaches and reports the good news that Joy’s cancer has gone into remission. Harrington, smugly smiling, loudly chalks up this remission to the earnest, persistent prayers of her deserving husband, intimating that Lewis’s prayers have at last prompted God to remedial action. Lewis passionately rejects this notion. “That’s not why I pray, Harry,” he says. “I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.”

As with all good Christian minds, though, Lewis admits—at the same time—that our prayers do participate in God’s economy, that he does use our prayers to accomplish his holy will for all men and for the world. Lewis writes (this is not from the film):

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate.

He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will...

It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.

Last night, at our monthly men’s dinner (attended by fifteen Holy Redeemer brothers and some additional friends), John Thunder recounted a lesson from his school days in England, where a priest taught them that prayer was the expression of one’s conscience to God. It’s about being honest in conversation with the Lord. No matter what the content of our prayers—with or without proper theology or pious feeling—if we are speaking honestly to God, we are praying.

Again, C.S. Lewis:

“Why [our Lord] should ask us to pray, when he knows what we need before we ask him, may perplex us if we do not realize that our Lord and God does not want to know what we want (for he cannot fail to know it) but wants us rather to exercise our desire through our prayers.”

We know this is true from the Psalms. That meal blessing Father Geromel gave last week is also a good example of honest petition that says something deeply true about our nature, about our desires, and about God.

Photo: Portrait of C.S. Lewis held by the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton College, Wheaton, Illinois.

Poem: Red Charity

Today, a poem by Hayley L. Dalgleish, sister of Father Lucas, which was accepted for publication in the annual arts booklet of Palm Beach Atlantic College:

Red Charity

In that moment, that ministered to all other moments meaning,
All prayers and prophecies took particularity.
Time broke as a babe breathed, and then time too kept breathing,
And the Consolation cried, covered in red charity.

Fingertips with fingerprints, a scandal with a frame,
Words in gibberish to words with life, words that cut black from white,
Then hanging on a tree everything becoming then became,
While clothed in red charity, the final black to make all white.

All of this a mission to make lovers of men.
All men, that is, not only the proper and prim.
Oh help us to harbor the beauty of red, amen.
That we may love Particularity, that we may love Him.

The Charism of Forgiveness

Today, on the way to Ford Hospital in Detroit to visit my aunt, I listened to the third of a five-CD Brennan Manning audio series our 20s and 30s are studying together (every other Tuesday night at the Parish House).

I was astonished at how closely a 3-minute portion of Manning’s talk bore significance—shed further light on—yesterday’s sermon.

Manning identifies five charisms (or gifts) that show a person has received the Holy Spirit and is in a saving relationship with Jesus Christ and his Father. (Hint: These are not the sort of “gifts” we often associate with being Spirit-filled.)

One of these charisms Manning identifies is the gift of forgiveness. Here’s what he has to say about this essential sign that one is a child of God (my thanks to Father Lucas for doing the transcription while I was out of the office):

In chapter 5 of Romans, Paul writes, “While we were still his enemies he loved us.”

The sign of the Christian who has experienced the forgiveness of God is that he or she is able to forgive one’s enemies. This is the sign, par excellence, of the presence and the dynamic activity of the Holy Spirit in a Christian’s life.

There’s a lot of discussion going on these days in the churches about what it means to be “charismatic”—what it means to be “Spirit-filled.” In Dallas, Texas a month ago I preached at a Sunday Mass and later, out in the vestibule, a man came up and said, “You must be charismatic.” Presumption—if you give an inspiring sermon, you’re filled with the Holy Spirit.

Others say if you pray in tongues you’re filled with the Spirit; others say if you give a powerful prophecy at a prayer meeting, that means your charismatic; or if you have a healing ministry; or if you have an important position of spiritual leadership entrusted to your care.

There is one sign given by Jesus in the Gospels that you are filled with the Holy Sprit. In chapter 6 of Luke’s Gospel Jesus says, “Love your enemy, then you will be rightly called sons of Abba, since he himself is good to the ungrateful and the wicked.” We saw last night in chapter 4 of Galatians, Paul saying, “The proof that you are sons is that the Spirit has been poured into your heart that you might cry ‘Abba Father.’”

You can’t call God “Daddy,” you can’t be a son of the Father, unless you have received the Holy Spirit—and Jesus says, “You are the Father’s son—you’re Spirit-filled—if you’re into the business of forgiving your enemy.”

I go before the cross, I recognize myself as a forgiven enemy of God. I’m [then] empowered to extend forgiveness, reconciliation, to people who’ve ripped me off, screwed me up, tried to ruin my life, my family, my reputation.

I’d like to repeat here: Jesus Christ nailed to the cross is not simply a heroic example to the Church. He is the power and wisdom of God enabling us to transcend bitter memories, resentments, the desire for the vendetta, for revenge, retaliation, to hurt the other—allows us to transcend the attitude of cool cordiality, polite indifference, “Good morning, sir”—allows us to overcome hatred and reach out a hand toward a brother and sister who’s hurt us in the past.

That won’t happen overnight, but if you persevere in prayer before Jesus nailed to the wood, as he cries out to his Father on behalf of the men who murdered him, “Forgive them, Father, they do not understand what they’re doing”—slowly, imperceptibly, your heart of stone will become a heart of flesh.

By the way, my aunt’s surgery was successful. She’ll be recovering at Henry Ford through Thursday, including tomorrow, her birthday.

Painting: Rembrandt van Rijn, The Return of the Prodigal Son (1662). Click on the image for a larger view of the painting.

The Lessons of Groundhog Day

Groundhog Day (1993) has a permanent spot on my Top Ten Favorite Films list. This story of a Pittsburgh TV weatherman who gets existentially trapped in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, living through an eternal succession of Groundhog Days, is at turns drop dead-hilarious, thoughtful, and poignant.

Full disclosure: I’m a bit of a Bill Murray fan. His What About Bob? is also on my Top Ten Favorite Films list.

When I was working at Touchstone Magazine in Chicago, we published a ten-year retrospective on the film by Michael P. Foley, Phil’s Shadow, which says everything I’d say about its merits.

Here’s an excerpt:

Throughout the movie, the groundhog seems to function as Phil’s nonhuman doppelganger. Both are weathermen and they share the same name. Phil suspects a link but wrongly concludes that as long as Phil the groundhog sees his shadow, he will be doomed to relive February 2nd. (This initiates a tragicomic incident in which he kills himself and the groundhog.) But what we eventually come to realize is that it is not Phil the groundhog’s shadow that proves crucial, it is Phil the man’s. As long as Phil wakes up in the morning and sees his shadow, there will be for him more winter, more of the same. But if he awakes without a shadow, he will be given spring, new life.

What is Phil Connors’s “shadow”? It is his vices, his bad habits and sinful ways that detract from and diminish his God-given goodness. The equation of shadow with vice is apposite, since both are, in St. Augustine’s terms, a privation: Shadows are a privation of light, and evil and vice are a privation of the good. Significantly, when one of the townies hears Phil Connors’s name, he teases him with the admonition, “Watch out for your shadow there, pal!” And significantly, the townie’s name is Gus—short, of course, for Augustine. ...

February 2nd in the liturgical calendar is the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, the feast that commemorates the presentation of her Son in the Temple 40 days after his birth. It was on this occasion that the aged Simeon declared the infant Jesus a “light for the revelation of the gentiles.” Traditionally, candles are blessed on the feast, with a prayer that “just as visible fire dispels the shadows of the night, so may invisible fire, that is, the brightness of the Holy Spirit, free us from the blindness of every vice.”

Simeon’s prophecy led to a folk belief that the weather of February 2nd had a prognostic value. If the sun shone for the greater part of the day, there would be 40 more days of winter, but if the skies were overcast, there would be an early spring. The badger was added later in Germany, but the Germans who emigrated to Pennsylvania could only find what native Americans in the area called a wojak, or woodchuck. Since the Indians considered the groundhog a wise animal, it seemed only natural to appoint him, as we learn in the movie, “Seer of Seers, Sage of Sages, Prognosticator of Prognosticators.”

A quick reference of listings does not show the film on TV this evening (sort of unusual, if recent years are a measure), but you should find it in your local library or video store.

Newbigin on the Reversal of Death

On Wednesday night, during the Alpha presentation at Holy Redeemer, Rev. Nicky Gumbel quoted the late Bishop Lesslie Newbigin: “The resurrection was not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory.” Of course, Bishop Newbigin is not trying to renew the thinking of skeptics but that of many Christians.

I found  the context of the quote, taken from Newbigin’s Foolishness to the Greeks (page 127):

“The first commentary on the death of Jesus was the suicide of Judas. If the cross were the last word in God’s self-revelation then this first commentary would be the only possible one. If all humankind—even in its best representatives—is exposed here as one murderous treason against its Creator, what future is there but death? What is the point of continuing this futile saga of sin, even with all the adornments of civilization? If the cross is the end, then there is no future.

But it is not. The resurrection is the revelation to chosen witnesses of the fact that Jesus who died on the cross is indeed king—conqueror of death and sin, Lord and Savior of all. The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross.”

In the discussion that followed Rev. Gumbel’s talk, Natalie Norman addressed a question about God’s requirement of a blood sacrifice (as revealed in both Testaments) and the role of Christ’s blood in our atonement, saying that if she were to lose her son (for any reason) the only thing that could ever make her whole would be her son’s resurrection, the reversal of his death, which makes Christ’s sacrificial atonement not only palatable to her but glorious.

A few days ago, I posted a reflection by David Hart (commenting on the profound grief of a father who lost four of his five children in the Indian Ocean Tsunami) which deeply affirms Christ’s defeat of death—God’s enemy and ours—as the very heart of the Gospel (see below).

The only reality that reverses the darkness of sin, suffering and death in this fallen world is the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus along with the promise that we who believe will likewise be raised from corruption (John 11:25-27).

This prompted a thought about capital punishment and the deep desire for retribution many family members experience toward the murderers of their loved ones. They often hope the execution of the murderer will somehow bring a kind of closure and relief for them, but this isn’t finally true peace and satisfaction because all human justice is proximate and incomplete. As one American poet wrote, “Only God can make a tree” and only God can raise the dead (which is the justice these wounded souls actually seek).

By the way, Bishop Newbigin (an Englishman who helped found the Church of South India), in his early book, The Household of God, was the first modern writer to draw attention to the three dimensions of a full-gospel church: Sacraments, Word, and Charismata, what some have called the "three streams” of the Church.

No Comprende?

This insightful cartoon translates as follows:

— “I died while waiting for a cure to be found by research on embryonic stem cells, and you?”
— “I was that embryo!”

As Horton the Elephant (of Dr. Suess fame) would say, “A person is a person no matter how small.”

As Christians, we desire to see every person made whole by any ethical means available. We cannot oppose stem cell research using adult stem cells voluntarily donated and collected without harm, nor can we object to any moral advance in health care. But, when research and medical practice involves experimenting on (and, thus, destroying) embryos—the smallest of human persons—we must draw the line. This cannot be done. A person is a person no matter how small.

A New Priest for Holy Redeemer

Bishop Craig Bates ordained our church’s assistant, Lucas Dalgleish, to the priesthood this past Friday evening. All of us at Holy Redeemer are proud of this young priest and his passion for Christ and His Church.

God grant him many years!

Kenneth+

Photos: First: Father Lucas (center) with his parents, Randi and Father Robert Dalgleish (rector of Trinity Communion Church in Rochester, New York); Second: Father Lucas and his bride, Emily (click the images for larger views).

Top Ten “Redeeming” Films of 2006

Christianity Today asked its film critics (and presumably a few other writers and editors) to vote for the top ten “redeeming” movies of 2006.

Here’s the result. Fellow film buffs will doubtless argue with one or more of the choices. I’ve only seen two of the selected films—“The Children of Men” and “The New World”—both of which I saw with my three eldest children and both of which we admired. I was surprised by the way Terrence Malick’s meditative, beautifully-photographed film mesmerized my sons and daughter and held their attention despite the absence of a traditional film plot.

Some of the best films are among a list of ten also-rans that accompany the CT article. Among these, the ones I’d like most to see are “Babel” and
“The Fountain.”

Not the Lord of Evil and Death

A lengthy passage from the end of David Hart’s wise and moving argument for the Gospel’s God where he ponders evil and death in the horrific wake of the Indian Ocean Tsunami, The Doors of the Sea:

“In the New York Times this morning...there appeared a report from Sri Lanka recounting, in part, the story of a large man of enormous physical strength who was unable to prevent four of his five children from perishing in the tsunami, and who—as he recited the names of his lost children to the reporter, in descending order of age, ending with the name of his four-year-old son—was utterly overwhelmed by his own weeping. Only a moral cretin at that moment would have attempted to sooth his anguish by assuring him that his children had died as a result of God’s eternal, inscrutable, and righteous counsels, and that in fact their deaths had mysteriously served God’s purposes in history, and that all of this was completely necessary for God to accomplish his ultimate design in having created the  world. Most of us would have the good sense to be ashamed to speak such words; we would recognize that they would offer no...credible comfort...

“And this should tell us something. For if we would think it shamefully foolish and cruel to say such things in the moment when another’s sorrow is most real and irresistibly painful, then we ought never to say them; because what would still our tongues would be the knowledge (which we would possess at the time, though we might forget it later) that such sentiments would amount not only to an indiscretion or words spoken out of season, but to a vile stupidity and a lie told principally for our own comfort, by which we would try to excuse ourselves for believing in an omnipotent and benevolent God. In the process, moreover, we would be attempting to deny that man a knowledge central to the gospel: the knowledge of the evil of death, its intrinsic falsity, its unjust dominion over the world, its ultimate nullity; the knowledge that God is not pleased or nourished by our deaths, that he is not the secret architect of evil, that he is the conqueror of hell, that he has condemned all these things by the power of the cross; the knowledge that God is life and light and infinite love...

“[W]e Christian are not obliged (and perhaps are not even allowed) to look upon the devastation of that day—to look upon the entire littoral rim of the Andaman Sea and Bay of Bengal and upper Indian Ocean strewn with tens of thousands of corpses, a third of them children—and to attempt to console ourselves or others with vacuous cant about the ultimate meaning or purpose residing in all that misery. Ours is, after all, a religion of salvation. Our faith is in a God who has come to rescue his creation from the absurdity of sin, the emptiness and waste of death, the forces—whether calculating malevolence or imbecile chance—that shatter living souls; and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. ...

“...the world remains divided between two kingdoms, where light and darkness, life and death grow up together and await the harvest. In such a world, our portion is charity, and our sustenance is faith, and so it will be until the end of days. As for comfort, when we seek it, I can imagine none greater than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child, I do not see the face of God but the face of his enemy... . [W]e are able to rejoice that...God will not unite all of history’s many strands in one great synthesis, but will judge much of history false and damnable; that he will not simply reveal the sublime logic of fallen nature, but will strike off the fetters in which creation languishes; and that, rather than showing us how the tears of a small girl suffering in the dark were necessary for the building of the Kingdom, he will instead raise her up and wipe away all tears from her eyes—and there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying, nor any more pain, for the former things will have passed away, and he that sits upon the throne will say, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”

Three Nights of Eucharist

At long last, I’ve posted 107 photos from the three nights of Convocation Eucharists we shared in Manila last week. Though presented in liturgical order, the photos were taken over the course of all three evenings. Cathy Bates and Scott McGuirk contributed several outstanding photos to this album, for which I am thankful.

I invite you to tell your CEC friends and colleagues about this site. Just tell them to visit kennethtanner.typepad.com (and not to put “www” in front of the address!)

For those who cannot get enough convocation photos, Father Jack Lumanog (of the Kansas City cathedral), has posted this slideshow (after clicking this link, which takes you to Father Lumanog’s numerous online photo albums, click on “Manila”). Though it borrows from SOR Jack includes many of his own shots which cover our time there in a way that is transparent to the culture we witnessed.

Photo credits: 1-4 Kenneth Tanner, 5 Father Denny Roland

Auston’s Billboard

As some of you know, Auston Tackett, my second cousin and Archbishop Adler’s great-nephew, has been successfully battling leg and lung cancer over the past year.

Auston was recently featured in a series of TV, radio, and billboard ads (see below) for his hospital, Children’s Hospital of Michigan (in Detroit).

My aunt, Debbie McKeever (Auston’s grandmother), reports:

Auston is doing well. He had a CT scan of his lungs today as the first follow-up test since he finished his therapy. We pray all is well. He will undergo a PET scan later this month. If he remains cancer free, as we believe he will, his ports in his chest will come out! Thank you all for your continuing prayers for Auston and the family.

Auston’s family attends the CEC parish in Rochester Hills, Michigan. Our thanks to the church family there, and Father Kenneth Cates, who has had a particular ministry to Auston throughout his ordeal.

This billboard is a sign of reconciliation for which we are all grateful to God.

SOR Recommends: American Angels by Anonymous 4

Father Denny Roland of Arkansas describes this album as “Russian Orthodoxy meets Backwoods Baptist (or Pentecostal).”

Anonymous 4, famous for their albums of medieval chant and sacred music, perform folk hymns from William Walker's The Southern Harmony and from The Sacred Harp, along with shape note songs, and camp revival songs of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth centuries.

The mountain melodies of the O Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack are here exalted to a celestial height without losing their Appalachian and Southern gospel roots.

The group’s website contains a complete track listing and song samples from American Angels and information on their entire record catalog.

What’s Happening?, You Ask?

First, my apologies for taking several days to post new material.

Our flight from Manila to Los Angeles went without a hitch, save that we made up no time in the air. We landed about 8 p.m. (Pacific) on Saturday evening.

The Manila to San Francisco flight was delayed for an hour on the tarmac in Manila as crews replaced a part. The flight was two hours late into San Francisco causing some to miss connections there, and Deacon Darrell Driver reports that at least part of the Northwest Diocese spent Saturday night in the airport.

We had a memorable Sunday in Southern California. Father Denny Roland and Lucas Dalgleish joined me for worship at St. Michael’s, the best Mexican food in San Clemente (La Siesta – check it out the next time you’re there), Father Denny’s first visit to the ocean (yes, you read that right – it was also his first visit to St. Michael’s), and a barbecue picnic and fireworks with my parents, the Howards, and the Garcias.

Bishop Paulo and Marcia were elated by the fireworks show (their first Fourth of July celebration). After the finale, Marcia was in tears of joy and Bishop Paulo kept exalting “Magnifico.”

Lucas Dalgleish, my son, Harrison, and I boarded a flight to Chicago the next morning, arriving about 6 p.m. (Central) on Monday. I got to bed shortly after arriving home and that’s when the trouble started. I awoke in a start at 1:45 a.m. on Tuesday morning, not knowing where I was, what day it was, or what time it was. Though I got my bearings in about 30 seconds, I never got back to sleep. About the time I arrived at work Tuesday morning, it felt like I’d been hit by a Mac truck, and it just got worse as the day wore on.

I slept on the way home and about nine hours at home last night. When I woke up this morning and still felt pretty cruddy, I began to realize that it wasn’t just jet lag but some intestinal or other bacterial friends that hitched a ride home with me from Manila (told I’m not alone here). As I write, it is early Thursday morning and I’m not feeling a heck of a lot better.

Updates:

The link to Archbishop Adler’s Friday night sermon, is fixed for those who had trouble downloading it.

This morning, a link was posted to Matthew Cuthbertson’s very good sermon given at the convocation’s Laudate Eucharist. The link also contains prophetic words that were given following Matt’s homily.

Also posted were the warm greetings we received from Bishops Joshua Koyo (Kenya) and Paulo Garcia (Brazil) at the first evening’s Eucharist. (Didn’t know the CEC had built a house for Kenya’s ailing senior bishop, Benson O’Tieno, who had never had a suitable home. Did you? We finished the house in July of 2001.)

Each report from the convocation now has its own photo credits and I wish to acknowledge, again, that all transcripts come courtesy of Deacon Vero Librojo, Putch Panis, and the media staff at Cathedral of the King in Manila.

Am working on a photo essay of the three evening Eucharists that will (I hope) knock your socks off. Most of the convocation albums will also be updated. Will also be writing and posting a longish report/commentary on the convocation. Please stay tuned...

Again, I truly appreciate all the words of thanks and encouragement I’ve received. I heard that one church in New York printed off the entire website (photos and all) and posted it on their back wall! I’m grateful the Lord used this ministry to enable hundreds (if not thousands) of you to join us at the convocation via this strange and (usually) wonderful tool we call the ‘Net.

Photo credits: Father Denny Roland

CECHome.com

As was announced at the convocation, the CEC has just launched a news and audio website — CECHome.com.

The new service, which replaces both Sursum Corda and the Bishop’s Best audio series, features online access to timely news and photos from around the communion, downloadable audio files of each and every sermon Archbishop Adler preaches at St. Michael’s, and other audio sermons and talks from CEC leaders around the globe.

This new service is available only to subscribers.

While subscriptions to Sursum Corda and Bishop’s Best used to cost $72 annually, this new online service is $29.95 per year, and includes more than 100 sermons per year along with timelier reporting on the global CEC.

You can subscribe instantly (with immediate access to the site) or, if you are uncomfortable with electronic financial transactions, you can download the print-and-mail form (it will take a week or two for your account and password to be mailed to you).

Note: When accessing CECHome.com from an Apple computer please use your Safari browser. The site’s administrator, Father Greg Ortiz, has worked out the initial bugs for “we few, we happy few, we band of brothers” who use the best personal computers this side of Paradise,

Thanks for Visiting/There’s More to Come...

Dear CEC colleagues and friends—

Thanks to all of you for visiting Signs of Reconcilation this past week. It was encouraging to receive your many notes of thanks as I spent time holed up in my room editing photographs and such. It was my pleasure to pass on some of what we saw and heard.

More photos from the Convocation will be posted in the days to come, and, should time allow, my own thoughts on what has transpired here. Posting my own journal entries, and earlier hopes for audio interviews, evaporated once I realized how much time it would take to simply post the photos, reports, and sermons in my spare time

I began this website for purposes other than coverage of the Convocation, but am glad SOR has had this good use these past several days.

I invite you to come back to the site as often as you can in the weeks and months to come. I will be posting my own writing here, providing links to other writing that I think my readers ought to know about, and in all things done here hoping to cooperate in the reconciliation of God with man (which alone will bring about the unity with one another that our hearts seek).

Our flights to San Francisco and Los Angeles via Philippine Air depart Manila Airport at approximately 11 a.m. (Eastern Standard Time) on Saturday, July 3. As I write, that is about seven hours from now.

Have a blessed Fourth of July weekend and reunification with your family and friends. The peace of Christ be with you.

Photo credit: Father Ed Harris

Thomas of Manila

As a small gesture of our gratitude, Bishop Kenneth Myers, the CEC’s resident bard, wrote the following tribute to Archbishop Thomas Hines:

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
The few are many now,
The happiness seasoned with sorrow,
Yet happy still.
The band, an army now,
And still we are brothers.

And if our names indeed are remembered,
In the flowing cups of years to come,
Among them all will shine
The name of Thomas of Manila,
For it betokens the marks of a true brother --
Integrity, generosity, loyalty, and yes, excellence.
And it will be said that like his Lord,
Behold, he does all things well.

In the memories of tomorrow yet to be made,
Other names will come and other places.
But we who are counted blessed for being here
Will think back with fondness on this day
And we shall always remember Manila.

We also have these photos of the tribute’s presentation to Bishop Hines last night (click the images for larger views).

Afterwards, Archbishop Hines gave all the credit to the people of the Cathedral of the King. Over 500 people worked on the Convocation staff, some 24/7 during the weeks leading up to what has been a resounding success. In all things it was evident they did their (excellent) work out of love for God.

All of us from the visiting nations are thankful for their indefatigable labor of love, their warm hospitality and the reverent passion for worship we experienced each time we walked through the doors of the Cathedral of the King.

Photo credits: Kenneth Tanner

Morning Talks

Following a time of praise and intercession, Archbishop Adler gave talks on Thursday and Friday morning in the packed ballroom of the Westin Hotel. These were informal times to share his heart and recent experiences in prayer with the flock. The anointing on these morning sessions was palpable. Here are transcripts of Thursday’s and Friday’s talks.

Photo credits (top to bottom): Scott McGuirk, Mia Harris, Scott McGuirk

"...that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened..."

Coverage of Friday night’s (July 2) Eucharist:

Here is the transcript of Archbishop Adler’s final sermon for Convocation 2004 Manila, and a few photos (click on the images for larger views) from last night’s glorious closing Eucharist.

Our thanks to Deacon Vero Librojo, Putch Panis and the media department of the Cathedral of the King for providing these timely transcripts every day!

Photo credits: Kenneth Tanner

"The World is shaking with the love of God"

Coverage of Thursday night’s (July 1) Eucharist:

Once again, I am limited to posting this transcript of Archbishop Adler’s sermon and these photos (click on the images for larger views).

Please don’t miss David Sly’s special coverage of Tuesday night’s Laudate Eucharist below.

Photo credits: Kenneth Tanner

Lovesick Followers of Jesus

Coverage of Wednesday night’s (June 30) Eucharist:

At this point I only have time to post these two photos and this condensed transcript from Archbishop Adler’s anointed sermon on the unimaginable passion that Christ has for us.

During the praise before the sermon, Archbishop Adler invited all of the young people to join him around the altar for worship, just like they do on Wednesday night in San Clemente. They literally rushed the sanctuary to join him. It was a powerful display of the love these young men and women have for Jesus Christ. (Click on the images for larger views.)

After the mass, we were affectionately greeted by Bishop Joshua Koyo (of Kenya) and Bishop Paulo Garcia (of Brazil).

Photo credits (top to bottom): Kenneth Tanner, Scott McGuirk