Seems like Christmas just left us, and here it is, the start of Lent. This year, Lent has a bit of a different dynamic for me, as I know that on the other end, once we get to Easter and Eastertide, I’ll be just weeks away from being received into the Roman Catholic faith. That’s a pretty humbling, yet exciting thing to ponder.

This year, as I think I did last year, I plan on reading Robin Griffith-Jones’ wonderful The Four Witnesses. If you ever thought theology was boring, I’d highly recommend Griffith-Jones’ book - his is not only an accessible read, but his take on the four Gospels is historically genuine, thought-provoking, and, as someone who has read a lot of theology in my time, unique in its breadth and depth.

But that’s really the only thing this Lent and last year’s have in common. While my road to Rome has not been without its share of stumbles, I feel more in tune with my own spiritual self and state of mind. I’ve finally come to accept the fact that I’ll always be a drifter with a sense of displacement, and that goes for my spiritual being as well. I know no one church or faith is perfect and the answer to everything that ails one mentally and spiritually. Nevertheless, my commitment to Roman Catholicism feels right in my soul, and seems where I have been heading all along, even when I didn’t realize it.

My prayer is for a blessed and spiritually-enriching Lent to you all.

Finished our second week of RCIA (Roman Catholic Instruction for Adults) class tonight at St. Mary Magdalene Catholic Church, and remain pretty impressed by the number of people who will join me come late April in being received into the Roman Catholic faith. I’m the lone Episcopalian in the group of the two dozen or so that are making ths momentous step in our lives. We have a few Lutherans, a Presbyterian, and 6 or 7 non-churched / un-churched people, but the majority of them are Catholics who, for whatever reason, now feel drawn to the Church and long to take the sacraments.

Last week we went around the room and briefly told the various journeys that led us to this place, this time, this decision. For some, getting married is the driving force behind joining the Church, for others - actually, many - it was the fervent need, whether due to health reasons or some inner motivation, to get their spiritual affairs in order. For me, it’s all about coming home to the true Christian faith and the integrity that goes with the upholding of the Church’s sacramental traditions, beliefs, and practices that have endured for more than 2,000 years.

Listening to all the stories last week brought me back to our years in Louisville and the “Newcomers Weekend” I attended at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary back in the fall of 2000. How different things were back then! How different I was (or at least felt) back then. Lots of water has passed under that bridge since then, I’ll tell you!

What it mainly did was to reinforce my belief that the biggest mistake I ever made in my life (right behind, of course, adding my sister-in-law Tam and her cell phone to our once-stable and uneventful AT&T calling plan) was turning down the Dean’s offer to join the Presbyterian faith and complete my Master of Divinity degree education at Louisville Presbyterian after being rejected by the Diocese of Louisville for pursuing the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. She knew (as I knew) I was thriving in that rich and intellectually and spiritually challenging environment. Besides, once you have that degree no one can take it away from you, and who knows what kind of bridges that might eventually lead to? Sigh. As Roberto Di Vicenzo said after he realized he signed an incorrect scorecard to lose the 1968 Masters, “What a stupid I am!”

But no use crying over spilled milk. Right now, I’m more than satisfied with taking my place amongst all the other earnest candidates and looking forward to the next three months learning about the Roman Catholic faith and its sacraments, beliefs, and practices. As my friend, co-worker (and sponsor) Jamie tells me, I probably already know more about Roman Catholicism than just about everyone in the room, but hey, I’m just an Episcopalian looking to ride the Tiber’s currents and bring my wretched, beaten-down soul home to safe harbour.

Every fiber of my body and soul hungers and thirsts to receive our Lord’s Body and Blood in the faith and tradition passed down through His Apostles. I realize now I’ve waited more than five decades for this moment. It’s been a long, hard journey, but I can certainly wait a few more months. God willing, come April 25th I’ll be received into the Roman Catholic faith under the Christian name of John (after my favorite saint, St. John of the Cross. I can’t wait.

—

Pool temp: 53 degrees

We live in historic times.

I’ve often thought that one of the most logical ways to address a couple of long-standing desires on the part of the Roman Catholic Church - the furthering of worldwide Christian unification under Rome, and an answer to the acute shortage of priests - was to issue an olive branch to traditional Anglicans and Anglo-Catholics around the world by providing a means and structure through which they could be welcomed back to Rome while at the same time recognizing and seeking to preserve their theological identity.

While I doubt any worldwide unification under the Vatican is ever likely to happen anytime soon, Pope Benedict XVI appears to be taking a bold step in reaching out to to disaffected Anglicans around the globe to come home to Rome:

The Vatican has announced that Pope Benedict is setting up special provision for Anglicans, including married clergy, who want to convert to Rome together, preserving aspects of Anglican liturgy. They will be given their own pastoral supervision, according to this press release from the Vatican:

“In this Apostolic Constitution the Holy Father has introduced a canonical structure that provides for such corporate reunion by establishing Personal Ordinariates which will allow former Anglicans to enter full communion with the Catholic Church while preserving elements of the distinctive Anglican spiritual and liturgical patrimony.”

Think about it: imagine going to an Anglican church and experiencing the inherent beauty of the Anglican rite of worship and receiving the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, knowing that in doing so you are reconciled with millions upon millions of Roman Catholics around the world? The whole idea is absolutely breathtaking in both its scope and impact.

I have no doubt the Pope is sincere in this effort, and I applaud him for his boldness. After all, he’s a keen observer of history and a student of Christianity and the Church, so he is well aware of the historical significance of such an initiative. Sure, there will be some out there who will accuse him of seeking to undermine the so-called “competition” by making it more difficult for churches who support actions Rome doesn’t (the ordination of women and non-celibate homosexuals, for example) to survive by providing an outlet for clergy and parishioners who simply could not swallow full conversion to Roman Catholicism, but to that I say, too freakin’ bad.

Orthodox Anglicans have had to put up with their various churches’ sad slide towards godlessness and irrelevance for far too long. Traditional-minded clergy in churches like The Episcopal Church, the Anglican Church of Canada, and the Church of England have for too long been subject to (dare I say, persecuted by) the heavy hand of gay activists and moral relativists who long ago hijacked these once-venerable institutions and traded the altar of Jesus Christ for the new post-modern (actually, post-Christian) “trinity” of tolerance, acceptance, and diversity. For both these groups, the Pope’s outreached hand is not only an opportunity to vote with their own feet and find a place in Christendom where they are truly welcome, but a 21st century affirmation of the Holy Father’s historic role in preserving and protecting the historic teachings of the Church to the extent where it is possible.

Bottom line comes from Jonathan Wynne-Jones, at The Telegraph, who writes:

Pope Benedict XVI has thrown a hand-grenade into the [Church of England], and it will potentially obliterate Archbishop [of Canterbury] Rowan [Williams]’s hopes of maintaining unity in the Church. He has been at pains to try and find a way of keeping Anglo-Catholics in the Church, but now that power has been removed from him with this formal offer from Rome. Years of protracted negotiations over how to keep traditionalists in the Church could effectively be rendered meaningless by today’s announcement.

(Hat tip: David Virtue)

Of course, the devil (pun intended) will be in the details, and for Anglican/Episcopal clergy and parishes there will be significant obstacles that will have to be considered (for parishes their very buildings, for clergy their pensions and other benefits). Nevertheless, I can see the Pope’s offer being seriously considered by African and Asian churches who have become increasingly restless and vocal in their opposition to increasingly-bold actions taken by their Northern Hemisphere sister churches in their support of the homosexual/transgender movement, and their overall lack of conviction in preserving and promoting the traditional teachings of orthodox Christianity.

As someone who has watched (and witnessed first-hand) the struggle of Anglicans and Episcopalians worldwide who consider themselves traditionalists and found themselves, increasingly, outcasts in their own churches, I find this all incredibly interesting and historic. It will be worth watching to see how in the months and years ahead all of this plays out.

Lots to cover now that I’m back in the saddle again.

Do the Goodboys know how to pick the weather weekend or not? One week later and we’d be fishing haddock out of our golf bags.

Obama overexposed? Surely that’s a rhetorical question, right? He’s freakin’ everywhere, to the point if I see his mug I change the channel immediately. Heck, I half expect him on the next Crest commercial selling teeth whitener toothpaste. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again - this guy has been fondled so much by the mainstream media he actually believes he’s the “Anointed One”. His ego is so big they’re going to need a special annex at the Smithsonian to house it.

I didn’t see The One’s presser last night, but from accounts it was a disaster for him politically. Memo to the President: if you’re gonna call a prime-time press conference, for gawdsakes have something to say and articulate it in a way that warrants the setting.

Memo #2 to Barack Obama: you’re the President, dude. You won the election. Don’t you know your words now have consequences?

I told you this would happen. Just wait, the great exodus has only just begun.

Read T.J. English’s Havana Nocturne during my vacation. One of the most entertaining and informative books I’ve ever read. Highly recommended.

OK, I’ll admit it - I am, and was always an ABBA fan. I’ll never go to see “Mamma Mia” - not my style - but ever since I fell in lust with a girl back in 1975 when “Waterloo” was popular I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart whenever I hear an ABBA tune. Lots of great sounds and catchy hooks. My favorite? It’s this - check out the cool lighting behind those ABBA chicks. How could any red-blooded American male watch that and not immediately fall into lust? Phew. That doe-eyed blonde always made my knees knock…

I think that video even beats this one. Question of the day: what is it about doe-eyed ’70s chicks that turns The Great White Shank into a bowl of quivering jello?

We’ll keep it short and sweet today.

This is just another one reason why I’m counting down the days until I leave the Episcopal Church to become Roman Catholic. If there were ever two entities that deserved each other, it’s this clown and the Episcopal Church.

I’m sure his new denomination will welcome him with open arms - after all, they gave up being picky about who they ordain as leaders a long time ago. Knowing the Episcopal Church, they’ll probably put this guy on the fast-track to becoming a diocesan bishop.

Of course, Cutie’s move would logically seem to beg the question, if you took your celibacy vows so lightly as a Roman Catholic priest, what other vows might you also take lightly as an Episcopal priest? But of course, no Episcopal bishop would ever dare ask such a thing - after all, in today’s Episcopal Church, to do so would run counter to its own post-modern (actually, post-Christian) version of The Great Commission: Do your own thing and feel good about it!

…a Catholic bishop, by the way, and I think it’s about time someone had the guts to defend the faith (hat tip: Hot Air):

A Catholic German bishop has come under fire for his remarks condemning atheists. In a sermon given on Easter Sunday, the bishop of Augsburg, Walter Mixa, warned of rising atheism in Germany. “Wherever God is denied or fought against, there people and their dignity will soon be denied and held in disregard,” he said in the sermon. He also said that “a society without God is hell on earth” and quoted the Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted.”

This is exactly right, and leave it to a Roman Catholic bishop to defend his faith. I guarantee you won’t see the Archbishop of Canterbury or any of his English, Canadian, or American counterparts defend the faith - why, that would offend people, and you know we can’t have that in a multicultural / inclusive society, right?

Personally, I’m far beyond the tiresome arguments of atheists and their efforts to push God out of anything and everything in our society. No one is forcing them to go to church. No one is forcing them to pray. Heck, as much as I pray for their souls and hope they would come to embrace Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior I’m not going to force them at gunpoint or punpoint to do so. Everybody has a choice to make.

The fact is, there is nothing atheists can’t do in this society that any God-fearing person can do, and vice-versa. If anything, atheists have never had more friends in power due to all the Democrats and liberals in Washington who are no friends to any initiative that even smacks of being faith-based.

So here’s my advice to all you atheists out there: enough about the separation between church and state; stop letting your noses get out of joint and running to an ACLU lawyer every time someone says something that makes you feel inadequate over your lack of religous belief. Get over it and just go about your business. Ain’t no one forcing you to do anything beyond perhaps occasionally having to sit through a 20-second prayer at some graduation or commencement ceremony (gasp!) or having to wait 24 hours before shopping at the local Kohls.

That’s far less than us religious folk have to deal with listening to the religion-haters on CNN or MSNBC on any given night.

It is a glorious morning here in the Valley of the Sun.

Alleluia! Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! ALLELUIA!

Last night St. Mary Magdalene parish held their Great Vigil of Easter outside, under a large canoy in the vast field that in just weeks will be filled with the sounds of earth movers as initial construction of their church building begins. The Paschal flame, lit to initiate the 50 Days of Easter that will culminate in the joy of Pentecost, came from a large wood pile that was stubborn to light due to the rain we had earlier in the day. Two large doses of gasoline from a large container took care of that, though, and, since I wasn’t going to receive at Communion anyways, I stayed behind as the rest of the parish proceeded under the conopy to help tend the fire, just in earshot of the proceedings.

As I’ve come to expect from this young, vibrant parish, those proceedings (i.e., music, sermon, atmosphere created) were all quite well done. Watching from my warm, orange-lit vantage point, I thought about Peter warming his hands by the fire outside as Jesus was being questioned by the authorities, then denying him three times before that damned cock crowed - I sure didn’t want to go there! So I made sure that as people drifted by to warm themselves I said hello and exchanged Easter greetings with them. As a dozen or so new people were welcomed into the Church through Holy Baptism, I couldn’t help but feel the first tinges of excitement at the thought that, at next year’s Great Vigil, if it be God’s will, I will be received into the Catholic faith.

But that’s for another day. Today’s a new day, and the spirit of renewal and Easter Resurrection fills my heart with joy. Rather than me blather on, Deacon Keith Fournier of Catholic.org offers up these thoughts as to the true meaning behind the joy I share with millions of others across the world on this happy morning:

The tomb is empty. Death could not contain the One who poured Himself out in Love. The light floods the once-dark cave and fills the entire world with hope. The debt has been paid, the last enemy death has been defeated, Hell has been conquered, the captives have been liberated, love has triumphed and heavens gates have been opened wide. He is Alive and all those who stand at the Altar of the Cross, believing in His promise, shall live forever in Him.

Life for a Christian is not circular but linear. It is always moving forward to fulfillment in Him. There is a beginning - and an end - which is but a new beginning in the One who is Himself both the Beginning and the End. Time unfolds into eternity in Him who has entered time and transformed it by His life, death and Resurrection. That Glorious Day, understood by the Church as the first day of the new creation, that Day that the early Christians called the “Eighth Day”; is now upon us. It is the portal to eternity. He is the firstborn, the first-fruits of a new creation and is making all things new now, within us and around us.

Life reigns. Death dies, dealt a fatal blow at the hands of the Warrior of love. Through sin, death came into the world, and now through the Sinless One it has been vanquished. No longer an enemy it is a friend, an ally, to those who live their lives in the One who has been raised. No longer an end it becomes a new beginning for all who hide their lives in His wounded side and live their lives forever joined to Him. Nothing can separate us from that Love incarnated in the Crucified, Risen Son of the True and Living God.

Happy Easter to everyone from all the Goodboys and Goodboys Nation weblog!

Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed! ALLELUIA!

Holy Saturday. That strange, almost awkward interval between the horror and devastation of Good Friday, and the joy and exhilaration of Easter. What to make of it? Jesus is dead and lies in a nondescript tomb. His followers are devastated, their world collapsed around them. Today, in mainline Catholic and Protestant churches across the world, altars have been stripped, and crosses set aside or displayed in black shroud; a hush has fallen over Christendom. It’s a strange, breathless kind of day.

A portion of a homily from the early days of the Church by an anonymous priest reads as follows:

“Today a great silence reigns on earth, a great silence and a great stillness. A great silence because the King is asleep. The earth trembled and is still because God has fallen asleep in the flesh and he has raised up all who have slept ever since the world began. . . He has gone to search for Adam, our first father, as for a lost sheep.”

In the Apostles’ Creed, which serves as the basic foundation for all Christian belief, this day is remembered with the words “he descended to the dead”, recalling that time between Good Friday and Easter Sunday when Christ either: a) ministered to the souls who lived in darkness and the shadow of death, or b) simply lay dead in the tomb (there is plenty of theological debate on either count) - a death He would conquer through his Resurrection that glorious Sunday.

Me, I’ve often heard among in those words another message, one not nearly so traditional, dogmatic, and/or theologically divisive. This message carries with it a more contemporary, hopeful, and accessible meaning and purpose, one that reflects God’s ultimate desire and purpose for us all: the ready and willing descent of Christ through the Holy Spirit to the world we live in, to minister to the spiritually dead or dying - those souls who have found nothing but emptiness, loneliness, and despair in a fruitless search for happiness and inner peace through all those things the world offers in spades: the pursuit of material weath, creature comforts, unhealthy addictions involving alcohol, drugs, and sex, and unfulfilled dreams and unrealistic expectations.

Jesus’ promise to each of us - “remember, I am with you always” (Matthew 28:20) - transcends not only the bloodstained cross and the darkness of the tomb known to His disciples, but for all those bloodstained crosses and silent tombs each of us has experienced at times in our own lives. For that very reason, Holy Saturday is not a day of mournful despair and silence without any practical reason for hope (as it must have been to Jesus’ followers), but a day of hope and reassurance that God is not just with us always, but is always ready to descend to us in our own darkness and shadow of death to reveal a different way and offer a different kind of peace - one that world cannot give.

The question is, do we have the will and the courage to accept that different way? To allow God to create in us that “clean heart and right spirit” (Psalm 51: 10) that leads to true life and true peace?

For that, too, is the Way of the Cross.

So many times we think of Good Friday in terms of all the stories we heard as children - if we were fortunate enough to be brought up in the Church. The stories of Jesus’ Betrayal, Passion, Death and Resurrection, so familar to us, can lose their ability to impact us and humble us if we allow ourselves to think that suffering and death and martyrdom are just quaint stories cooked up by the early Church to steady the nerves and faith of the faithful. The fact is, the shadow of the Cross still looms large two thousand years later: whether you’re a nun raped and executed in Liberia, a bishop assassinated in Guatemala, or a Christian community in Laos forced to relocate their village, the Cross is more than just a concept, or dogma, or a subject for theological debate.

Consider the martyrdom of Fr. Andrea Santoro, a Catholic priest who was shot dead while he knelt down to pray shortly before celebrating Mass in the little Catholic church he served in the town of Trabzon, Turkey back in 2006. While searching around for information about Fr. Santoro, I came upon this link - a marvelous testimony to a humble and martyred servant of Jesus Christ:

…I saw him two months ago in Iskenderun, at the see of the apostolic vicariate of Anatolia. It was our monthly retreat and we talked about the cross. He told us: ““Often I ask myself: What am I doing here? And the words of John the Baptist would come to mind. ‘‘And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us’’. I live among these people so that Jesus can live among them through me. In the Middle East, Satan continues to destroy, remembering and loyal to the past. As it was at the time of Jesus, silence, humility, the simple life, acts of faith, miracles of charity, clear and defenceless witness, and the conscious offering of one’’s life can rehabilitate the Middle East.””

After a long pause, he took off his glasses letting them hang around his neck and spoke again, calmly, as if talking to himself: “I am convinced that in the end there are no two ways, only one way that leads to light through darkness, to life through the bitterness of death. Only by offering one’s flesh is salvation possible. The evil that stalks the world must be borne and pain must be shared till the end in one’’s own flesh as Jesus did.” Not one word more, not one less.

After he spoke silence fell on the room. Then he looked at his watch and got up quickly, apologised, picked up his small suitcase and left the room almost running. He didn’’t want to miss the plane that would take him back to his Trabzon.

There he was kneeling yesterday, praying in his church. There a bullet pierced his heart.

On this Good Friday we remember that the Son of God “went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory before he was crucified”. And we pray “that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other that the way of life and peace”. So goes the traditional Collect of the Day for Monday of Holy Week. Let it be for all of us a prayer we can take to heart and mind, not just for this most holy of days, but for all our days.

After all, that’s what the Way of the Cross is all about.

It’s Holy Week, and that means not only the most sacred time of the Church Year - a time to recollect and contemplate the Lord’s institution of the Eucharist, His Betrayal and Suffering, Death, and Resurrection, but also a time to see how local churches market their services in the hope of attracting newcomers and those twice-a-year Christians to their Easter services.

Around here you see a lot of aggressive marketing by the “non-denoms” - churches not affiliated with any particular mainline Protestant faith, and therefore non-denominational in nature. These churches are typically Bible-centric, aggressively anti-Catholic (as I’ve come to found out personally), and often have a charismatic leader armed with a Master of Divinity degree and/or vision of a church that combines conservative Christianity with modern-day marketing techniques as a guise for evangelism. You can tell the demographic all these churches are seeking by their slick literature and the people shown in the materials they leave at your door or in your mailbox: the young professional either single or married with children.

Sometimes the materials are very professional and slick; it takes a minute just to figure out that it’s a church and not a dentist that has opened shop recently. Other times, the material is just laughable - like today when I opened my door to see a pamplet wedged into the door jam. Have a look at this picture and see what you think:

Now I don’t claim to know what Jesus looked like, but I can almost guarantee he didn’t look like some Hollywood actor out of central casting with beautiful hair and perfectly-trimmed facial hair, like someone out of a late-night infomercial. And check out the decidedly Anglo-Saxon Protestant features - I mean, that isn’t the Lord, that’s James Brolin, for Gawdsakes!

For some reason, I couldn’t help but stare at the picture for the longest time. My thoughts began to wander. Was that guy on Jesus’ left Judas or Peter? Either way, he too has the same perfectly-styled facial hair. Did they both go to the same stylist before the Last Supper? Perhaps all the Twelve went - you know, to take advantage of the pre-holiday special at Calvary Hairstyling and Salon. I couldn’t help but recall those great lines from Warren Zevon’s classic tune “Werewolves Of London”, where he sang:

I saw a werewolf drinking a Pina Colada at Trader Vic’s,
And his hair was perfect.

Look, I know all about marketing how marketing works - I get it. And maybe some people would have been attracted by this picture and the message it was attempting to convey and have their lives turned around by attending church for the first time in years. And good for them if that were to happen. But to me it was more than just silly, it was offensive.

Of course, knowing today’s culture it all fits. I just wonder what would happen if a church were to graphically and realistically portray what a Jew like Jesus of Nazareth would look like beaten, bloodied, and naked, hanging from a cross and taking all that humiliation, suffering, and pain on behalf of you and me, for your sins and mine, for the redemption of a world I often wonder is even worth saving. But God did, out of His infinite love and mercy.

Somehow I don’t think it would work. After all, the whole idea of anyone having to be inconvenienced - let alone suffer and/or die on behalf of anyone or for anything - is a concept so foreign to our corrupt, self-centered, and narcissistic culture that it’s no wonder some people have a hard time with the concept of God and religion. After all, being an athiest is easy - you can do anything you want to anyone and feel not a shred of guilt, and better yet, you get to sleep in on Sundays or spend all Saturday doing chores around the house.

And that leaves plenty of time to visit the hair stylist. After all, God or no God, you gotta look good, right?