Happy Anniversery Diet of Worms...

488 years and counting. I salute you with a white guy rapping about Church History a la Jay Z & Rick Rubin:

Father Richard John Neuhaus

I just received this month's First Things Magazine (a fine Catholic monthly). Their long-time leader and editor, Richard John Neuhaus recently died after battling with cancer. Neuhaus was a Lutheran who then became a Catholic priest. He was greatly involved, and remained so to his dying day, in civil rights and advocacy. On the last page of the magazine is a brief reflection written by Neuhaus shortly before he died. It shows the grace, depth, and humour he exhibited throughout his life and public career. How beautiful and challenging to us all as we inevitably face our mortality.As of this writing, I am contending with a cancer, presently of the unknown origin. I am, I am given to believe, under the expert medical care of the Sloan-Kettering clinic here in New York. I am grateful beyond measure for your prayers storming the gates of heaven. Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is must that I hope to do in the interim. After the last round with cancer fifteen years ago, I wrote a little book, As I Lay Dying (titled after William Faulkner after John Donne), in which I said much of what I had to say about the package deal that is mortality. I did not know that I had so much more to learn. And yes, the question has occurred to me that, if I have but a little time to live, should I be spending it writing this column. I have heard it attributed to figures such as Brother Lawrence and Martin Luther- when asked what they would do if they knew they were going to die tomorrow, they answered that they would plant a tree and say their prayers. (Luther is supposed to have added that he would quaff his favored beer.) Maybe I have, at least metaphorically, planted a few trees, and certainly I am saying my prayers. who knew that at this point in life I would be understanding,as if for the first time, the words of Paul, "When I am weak, then I am strong"? This is not a farewell. Please God, we will be pondering together the follies and splendors of the Church and the world for years to come. But maybe not. In any event, when there is an unidentified agent in your body aggressively attacking the good things your body is intended to do, it does concentrate the mind. The entirety of our prayer is "You will be done"- not as a note of resignation but of desire beyond expression. To that end, I comment myself to your intercession, and that of all the saints and angels who accompany us each step through time toward home. (02/09)

That's What I Call A LUTHER-LASHING

In reading a source letter from Martin Luther, responding to a peasant uprising, I find a particular warning very helpful. The peasants were scripturally backing and defending their demands as Christian. Luther, after attending to the rulers, then deals with the peasants:

“I say all this, dear friends, as a faithful warning. In this case you should rid yourselves of the name of Christians and cease to boast of Christian law. For no matter how right you are, it is not for a Christian to appeal to law, or to fight, but rather to suffer wrong and endure evil; and there is no other way (1 Cor 6). You yourselves confess in your Preface, that all who believe in Christ become kindly, peaceful, patient, and united; but in your deeds you are displaying nothing but impatience, turbulence, strife and violence; thus you contradict your own words. You want to be known as patient people, who will endure neither wrong nor evil, but will endure what is right and good. That is fine patience! Any knave can practice that! It does not take a Christian to do that! Therefore I say again, however good and right your cause may be, nevertheless, because you would defend yourselves, and suffer neither violence nor wrong, you may do anything that God does not prevent, but leave the name of Christian out of it; leave out, your impatient, disorderly, un-Christian undertaking. I shall not let you have that name, but so long as there is a heartbeat in my body, I shall do all I can to take that name from you. You will not succeed, or will succeed only in ruining your bodies and souls.”
Then later:
“For Christians fight for themselves not with a sword and gun, but with the cross and with suffering, just as Christ, our leader, does not bear a sword, but hangs on a cross…”

I think that Luther shows great wisdom and pastoral discernment in diffusing this difficult situation. That we may have ears to hear such hard words now. Amen.