DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - 'Lent' The Divine Majesty, Stations Of The Cross, Confession, Same Sex Attraction, Homosexuality & Sin

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on Lenten discipline, sin, hope, homosexuality, and suffering into joy. It will run this week in The Record newpaper.

:: BEING HEARD ‘Lent’ ::

By John Heard

The world is broken, and we are not meant to – because we are unable to - fix it.

That is the curious lot of humanity. It marks out our limitations. No matter how hard we strive, no matter our intentions, “the good we choose and mean to do // Prospers if He wills it to // And if not, then it fails”. The poetry is James McAuley’s, of course, from his beautiful Retreat, and the lines were passed to B. A. Santamaria (.PDF) at a moment of particular turmoil, but the lesson is available to all of us.

We have no guarantee that what we do, simply because we want to do it, or because we think we ought to do it, or because we have been told by reliable authority simply to do it - we have no promise that this will be enough.

Catholics must submit everything to G-d for approval, and as we cannot (except via authentic revelation) know His mind in advance (the idea itself is heresy), and we cannot always assign His favor to past activity (that too can be madness); we must leave our best at His feet.

We must surrender. That is the lesson of Lent.

That does not mean, of course, that we are not responsible for our failures, and it does not mean that we can have no part in our victories. Christians are not crude determinists. Rather, we know that man alone is a pitiable thing, and his triumphs are modest. Set alongside the majesty of the One, one is nothing – and we are only made something by the inexpressibly generous love of G-d. Nothing we do, we know, if we are conformed to the Cross-, is done entirely according to our genius; rather it is of the grace of G-d.

Same sex attracted Catholics, and Christians generally, need to keep this in mind, then, when claiming this or that as a Lenten success or failure. I need to keep it in mind.

Certainly, when contemplating sin, literally a “turning away” from G-d, we do well to remember G-d’s majesty. When we suffer, and fail, we must turn again to Him.

Because, of course, while the truth of G-d’s power should encourage us to cultivate a proper fear of Him, we should not forget that He always has the means, the power, to pull us out of darkness.

For the Church teaches us that G-d’s mercy is greater than our sin. He is mightier, indeed, brighter and more loving than all the sin of every man on earth. When we hesitate before the confessional - and same sex attracted men hesitate, I hesitate, Catholics in great numbers hesitate - when we stall and skulk, we must remember His inexhaustible light.

We must allow it to track through our lives, to lick about the filthy edges, and we must stand still, calm and docile, as it wars against our secret shame.

None of this should be abstract, either.

Catholics, especially in Lent and Holy Week, come right up against the mystery of Christ’s Passion. We cannot, therefore, ignore the reality, the bloody mess of sin, and the lengths that G-d has gone to to wipe it all away. The Stations of the Cross, the Passion narratives, these demonstrate that Israel’s One, Who dwells in “unapproachable light” (1 Timothy 6:16) has, by the Incarnation and the Cross, irrevocably bound Himself, in the most immediate way, to our human lot.*

Christ suffers with us.

That should give us great hope, and - enduring these dying days of the Lenten discipline – lend us strength.

For same sex attracted Catholics, struggling to carry our own particular crosses, the fact of Christ’s suffering changes everything. On Laetare Sunday, when the Church puts on rose vestments, indeed, all Catholics get a sense of imminent joy. In the bright flare of Easter night, we will learn again that the meaning of holy suffering is always undying joy.

Whatever we give up for Him makes us better men. It makes us more like Him, Who is goodness and beauty and truth.

Now, however, in the deep days of sorrow, we must endure. The world is broken, and we are not meant to – because we are unable to - fix it. We cannot even fix ourselves. Same sex attracted men must endure, and we must hope. If we have fallen, we must pick ourselves up. I must pick myself up. We must come, same sex attracted or otherwise, you and me, to the confessional. We must interrogate our consciences, and tell of our failures.

:: The Upshot ::

We can do this because He makes all things new (Revelation 21:5), even sorrowful, pitiable creatures, even human beings, even you – and broken down, useless, miserable me.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion and politics online, and on Facebook, join the DREADNOUGHTERS group.

:: Resources ::

- Holy Father's Message For Lent 2009; and

- Vatican Lenten Resources.

* (Many thanks to DREADNOUGHTER Greg for fruitful contributions to the DREADNOUGHTERS discussion thread on "holy sex and Christian friendship").

DREADPUBLISHING: John Heard In 'The Spectator' Australia On The Catholic Mass, The Polychronicon, Father Peter Kennedy & St Mary's South Brisbane

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's feature on the dismissal of Father Peter Kennedy (formerly of St Mary's South Brisbane) was published this week in The Spectator (Australia).

:: The Upshot ::

The venerable British magazine has embarked on an Australian expansion, and the readership here has nearly doubled. Now, they've dropped the cover price. Buy a copy.

:: Resources ::

- A Copy of the Polychronicon (Detail).

DREADPUBLISHING: 'Being Heard' John Heard - 'Totality' Pope Benedict XVI, Victorian Bushfires, Christian Hope, 'Spe Salvi' & Death

:: Update ::

DREADNOUGHT's latest column for syndication is on the Victorian bushfire disaster, death in the family, and Pope Benedict's writings on Christian hope. It will run in The Record newspaper next week.

:: Being Heard - "Totality" ::

John Heard

"To imagine ourselves outside the temporality that imprisons us and in some way to sense that eternity is not an unending succession of days in the calendar, but something more like the supreme moment of satisfaction, in which totality embraces us and we embrace totality—this we can only attempt."

- Pope Benedict XVI Spe Salvi

I’ve had cause to think about death lately: much death, and death that is close. This is, of course, because of the Victorian bushfires, the worst natural disaster in Australia’s recorded history. The catastrophic fires that visited places such as Marysville, Narbethong, Kinglake, and Beechworth took more than two hundred lives. Each one of the victims was precious, each life unique, and now, every one of them is mourned.

Also, however, a member of my family just died, and anyone can tell you how that feels.

Like the mucky green that sprouts after even the most furious fire, however, signs of life are everywhere. Walking out of the intensive care facility, dabbing my eyes, I saw a new mother carrying her baby in a basket.

Praying, just hours after we received “the call” (in the massive silence of St Patrick’s Cathedral at 7AM) I heard the happy clamour of a tenacious, disabled man in an electronic chair.

Wallowing, as we are wont to do, in my bed at home, I was informed that a major British magazine had just published my latest article.

Life and death, all at once, yesterday smashed up against today leaning forward toward tomorrow – this is how a Christian experiences the mystery.

“The supreme moment of satisfaction”, the Holy Father teaches, is a bit like this. It is when “totality embraces us, and we embrace totality”. Now wonder we cannot describe it straight, and we cannot know it like we know other things.

No wonder the ash will not settle just yet, and that my personal sorrows seem so unreal.

In many ways, I am still caught unawares, in what Joan Didion has called that state of “magical thinking” peculiar to those who grieve. There is the queer sensation that nothing has changed, that I am re-living yesterday, and that no one is dead.

But they are, and he is, and I am not.

And so I make an attempt. Perhaps this is hope.

Certainly, the Holy Father’s Encyclical, which I had excerpted and saved in an obscure folder on my computer, makes new sense now. At first, when I happened across it accidentally while looking for something else, I couldn’t place the quotations. I had to Google it, and the search revealed the source: Spe Salvi (“On Christian Hope”).

It is full of meaning, of course. I knew that when I first read it, but now its meaning touches me. It is changing my life.

For the moments of darkest sorrow, the Holy Father warns against nihilism:

“In nihil ab nihilo quam cito recidimus (How quickly we fall back from nothing to nothing): so says an epitaph of that period.”

For moments of more tranquil reflection, he urges authenticity:

“Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human—the art of living and dying.”

And for the future, he writes of renewal:

“The dark door of time, of the future, has been thrown open. The one who has hope lives differently; the one who hopes has been granted the gift of a new life.”

What a boon; what comfort I have taken from these words of Pope Benedict. What a remarkable thing it is, indeed, that an otherwise scholarly, measured, precise text might take on – in the light of painful experience – the character of friendliness, honesty, and compassion.

That a man, a Pope, so far away from the fires and the hospital and the death, might be so closely united with suffering families in Australia: it is something very much like a miracle.

It is, we pray, a foretaste of the “embrace” we long for at the end, and a sign of the satisfaction our dead loved ones might enjoy now.

:: The Upshot ::

It is, of course, Christian to hope. I will drink it in, abundantly, over the weeks and months, and I will hope it visits the hearts of all those who mourn: especially the families touched by calamity.

John Heard is an Australian writer. You can read more of his writing on sex, religion and politics online, and on Facebook, join the DREADNOUGHTERS group.

:: Resources ::

- Donate to bushfire relief (Red Cross, Archdiocese of Melbourne; and

- DREADNOUGHT's first column on Spe Salvi.