Antiphon: Senior Saints

"...The world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever."

Each of us has favorite stories we love to hear over and over again. One of mine is the story of Simeon and Anna, the two old people who figure in the presentation of the baby Jesus in the Temple in Luke's Gospel.  God had promised Simeon that he would see the Messiah; Anna, a prophetess, spends all her time in the Temple and, when she sees Jesus with his parents, tells everyone about the baby.
    Simeon and Anna, two senior saints. What's remarkable, what really distinguishes them as holy people, is their complete openness to what is truly, fundamentally important in life and to embracing it on its own terms and not on rigid terms of their own making.  They embrace the Divine just as they find it--and then reach out to extend it to others. How many "Simeons" in today's secular, consumerist society would turn away in disappointment when the Messiah turned out to be a helpless baby instead of a great lord who arrives in a splash of pomp and, of course, throws a reception with plenty of free food and drink? How many "Annas" would be deaf to the prophetic word unless it were uttered by a TV talk-show host?
    Then there are the real Simeons and Annas that it's our privilege to know. A friend of mine who, at the age of 76, is passionately involved in local politics to help make his township a better place. My Swedish sister-in-law who, even after she lost most of her eyesight in her eighties, continued in a "Senior Dance" group that went around and entertained those confined by age and disability to nursing homes. And little Carmela, who had no family but whose funeral, when she died in her mid-eighties, packed a large Long Island church to the rafters because she unfailingly reached out to others in loving and caring ways, doing kind things or simply asking people about their families and ensuring them that she prayed for them.
    On January 1 the first members of the "Boomer" generation will begin to turn sixty-five. Simeon and Anna stand as role models and, indeed, as signs of hope, that seniorhood needn't and shouldn't mean rolling in the sidewalks of one's life. Embracing the Divine means feeding the hungry, not waiting around to be fed; it means engaging with real people and not losing oneself in a world populated by TV and film stars. But then, that's a challenge issued to all of us, regardless of our age.

A Great Light

"A holy day has dawned up on us. Come, you nations, and adore the Lord.

For today a great light has come upon the earth."

The 16th-century composer Palestrina has the most marvelous setting of this text (Dies sanctificatus illuxit nobis) in which each voice in turn sings a great leap downward on the word descendit. (Come to think of it, the official English text, above, is rather anemic; how does "come upon" capture God's Great Condescension in becoming human?)

    There was no Palestrina at the Christmas Mass I attended in my parish yesterday evening. The young woman music director, who has an amazingly broad command of the standard, traditional hymn repertoire, presided over a motley array of instruments that looked and sounded like something out of a Thomas Hardy novel, and before the Mass the cantor, another young woman with a nice voice, treated us to a selection of religious classics.  Including the Pie Jesu from Lloyd-Webber's Requiem.  Oh well.

    It could have been worse. MUCH worse. I could have gone to the neighboring parish and been subjected to "music" by the Ray Repp Retro Duo Guitars. And our pastor, taking into account the presence of children as well as of many folks who don't normally show up at Mass, preached a grand Christmas version of his standard theme: God loves us more than it's possible to believe.

    Right, that's why we have that Great Light descending upon earth into each of our hearts -- if only we're open to it.

    And yes, the above photo was actually taken at dawn on Christmas morning, three years ago on Staten Island.

    May the Great Light descend on each of you today.

Advent Antiphon: O Emmanuel

"O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel

that mourns in lonely exile here, until the Son of God appear."

On the way to work this morning I took local roads in order to tank up the car, and then I decided to stop at a deli en route to the office to buy a bagel and coffee. I could have got free coffee in the kitchen at work, and it wasn't as if I were really famished for a bagel. But there's a particularly nice man who runs this deli, and two days before Christmas, stopping in there seemed the appropriate thing to do.
    And sure enough, there was the lovely smiling man who buttered my everything bagel and poured my French vanilla coffee.  I told him why I had stopped in, and he smiled even more and was ever so pleased. We wished each other a Merry Christmas.
    Perhaps four, five times at most in my life, I've stopped in this deli on the way to work and my life seems richer for having encountered this man.
    Today we ask Christ under the name Emmanuel to come and visit his people. Emmanuel means "God with us." This is the central meaning of the incarnation, that God has come down and (as John's Gospel says) pitched his tent among us. It's not a God who peers down at us "from a distance," as the popular song says, but one who is right here among us, in the midst of our human condition.  Perhaps in the beauty or sublimity of the natural world, as poet Gerard Manley Hopkins loved to tell us. Or in the love of a friend.  Perhaps in a homeless person we meet on the street. Or in the smile of a man behind a deli counter.
    In what ways is God-with-you?

Advent Antiphon: O King of All the Nations

"O come, Desire of nations, bind in one the hearts of all mankind;

Bid Thou our sad divisions cease, and be Thyself our King of Peace."

The first portion of Handel's Messiah includes many stunning Advent texts from Scripture. One of the best known is the chorus "For unto us a child is born," which gives the child's titles, among which is Prince of Peace.  Consistent all through the ages that longed for the Messiah is this close association between the Messiah and peace. But the Messiah came 2,000 years ago and just look at the money our governments are still spending on war. It's definitely a test of our Advent patience! "Lord, make it happen!"
    Peace isn't some sort of magic blanket that somehow descends from above and coats the earth like fresh-fallen snow. It has to spring up from within us. And yet the song "Let peace begin on earth and let it begin with me" has it all wrong. Peace doesn't begin with us; it begins with God, because you can't give what you haven't got.  St. Francis knew better: "Make me a channel of your peace," he asked God.
    And here I'm showing you another NYC Christmas photo to salute another lyricist, that wonderful singer Rob Thomas, who sends us "a Merry New York Christmas, and a prayer for peace on Earth" in a song he wrote for Christmas 2001. Check out the song, Rob's wonderful lyric gift.

Advent Antiphon: O Radiant Dawn

"O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer our spirits by thine advent here.

Disperse the gloomy clouds of night, and death's dark shadows put to flight."

One of the best things scenic photographers know is going out and shooting a sunrise. It's going to be cold and dark when you arrive, and you may be there quite a while, so you dress in layers, wear warm boots (waterproof ones too, if you think you may be sloshing through a marsh) and a hat and gloves. And you stand there with your tripod set up and your camera at the ready while you wait for the sun to rise and "disperse the gloomy clouds of night." Once it begins, once the dawn starts, the waiting and the cold have all been worth it as you watch and photograph the splendid light show and the temperature gradually rises. Here I'm posting a "before" and an "after" photo from Lake Chocorua in New Hampshire, taken on a chilly October morning perhaps an hour apart.

    This must be how it is for those who "dwell in darkness and the shadow of death" and are calling on Christ the Radiant Dawn to come shine on them.  In other words, in one way or another, for each of us.  It takes patience, preparation, faith, and hope.  Waiting in joyful hope until the day the Dawn from on High gradually breaks upon us and we feel the warmth and see the light, and we can sing, "Hail, the sun of righteousness."

Advent Antiphon: O Key of David

"O come, thou Key of David, come and open wide our heav'nly home,

Make safe the way that leads on high, and close the path to misery."

The original O Antiphon text is a clear echo of the Canticle of Zechariah, or Benedictus, that Zechariah sings in Luke's Gospel to celebrate the birth of his son, John the Baptist. John, he declares, will be a prophet of God Most High, sent to prepare for the visit of the "dawn from on high" that will break upon us to free those who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death. Recall Isaiah, too, that magnificent passage proclaimed at Midnight Mass, about the people who dwell in darkness having seen a great light.

  What does it mean to dwell in darkness and in the shadow of death?  Any number of things, really.  Ignorance. Sin. A conviction that we are worthless. Very possibly not something within us, but a situation in which we find ourselves. An abusive, unloving family.  It's different for each one of us. What a wonderful time of year to reflect on that "dawn from on high" coming to visit us and shatter these chains of darkness: the days are short and light is precious. It's as if nature itself is giving us a visual to help us appreciate the coming of Jesus to "lead (his) captive people into freedom." 

Advent Antiphon: O Flower of Jesse's Stem

"O come, thou rod of Jesse's stem, from ev'ry foe deliver them

that trust thy mighty power to save, and give them vict'ry o'er the grave."

The images in today's O Antiphon text (read the original: the Magnificat antiphon for Evening Prayer) seem not so much to jostle one another as almost to clash. A tender flower that an ancient, once noble tree, ravaged and assaulted over the centuries so that nothing is left but a stump, manages to squeeze out as with its last drop of energy; raised up as a sign for all peoples; yet so mighty that kings stand silent in its presence while the nations bow down in worship. Can all of this really occupy the same space as one sole person?
And yet this is precisely so. This is Jesus, to whom the peoples call, "Come, let nothing keep you." Lord, come and save us. We trust in your mighty power to--to do what? Only each one of us knows for what it is that we need to trust in his mighty power. The power of a Lord so mighty that even kings are struck silent. The power of a tender flower budding forth from a withered stump, seemingly against all odds. That's what's so great about Advent. It's the season of the most amazing contradictions.

Advent Antiphon: O Sacred Lord

"O come, O come, thou Lord of might, who to thy tribes on Sinai's height

in ancient times didst give the Law, in cloud and majesty and awe."

Eighteenth-century aesthetic theory distinguished between the Beautiful and the Sublime. The Beautiful was -- well, beautiful. Harmonious, pleasing, restful. A well-landscaped park was beautiful. The Sublime, in contrast, was something that evoked awe, reverence, even fear. Mountains were sublime, not only because of their height and their uneven, often jagged appearance, but because it used to be thought that they were the abode of gods and other supernatural beings.
And so it was that the God of ancient Israel appeared in the burning bush on Sinai's peak to Moses to give him the Ten Commandments. And here the marvelous second verse of our Advent hymn, the second of the O Antiphons, identifies this "Lord of might" with Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah.
The text of the actual liturgical antiphon asks this "sacred Lord" to set us free -- that common Advent theme that invites each of us to consider what we need to be set free from.
Think of how Jesus at the Transfiguration appeared to his three friends "in cloud and majesty and awe." And think of the contrast between the descriptions of the Lord in these O Antiphons--because the sublimity is to be found in all of them, not just this one--and the tiny, helpless Baby that actually did appear on earth that first Christmas. It's one thing, that unexpected character, that makes the O Antiphons so stunning.  So -- awesome!

Advent Antiphon: O Wisdom

O come, thou Wisdom, from on high, Who ord'rest all things mightily;

to us the path of knowledge show, and teach us in her ways to go.

December 17, the first day of the beautiful and haunting O Antiphons! Among the most splendid poetry of the church, these ancient antiphons form the basis of the favorite Advent hymn "O come, O come, Emmanuel."  The church uses them in her liturgy as the Magnificat antiphon for Evening Prayer and also as the verse of the Gospel Acclamation at Mass. As you can see from the quotation above, the order of the O antiphons in the liturgy differs from that in the familiar hymn. The first one salutes Christ as Wisdom.

One of the psalms often used during Advent is Psalm 25, which asks God to teach us his ways and show us the path we must walk. This Advent antiphon, whether in the original text or in the hymn, succinctly and poetically sums up this request. Also, it follows the ancient Christian tradition of identifying Christ with the Wisdom of God. When you think of it, some of the greatest figures of ancient Israel prized wisdom and knew to ask God for this gift: King David in the great penitential Psalm 51, and of course, his son King Solomon, whose beautiful prayer for wisdom is found in the Book of Wisdom, chapter 9.  Chapter 8 of the same book contains a number of references that the Christian tradition applies to Jesus. Read it and you'll be amazed. And of course, read chapter 9 to pray for wisdom. Where do you need God's gift of wisdom in your life? Ask King Solomon to join you in prayer.

Advent Antiphon 6: "Tree hugger?"

Let all the trees of the forest sing a glad hymn,

for on this day they behold one of themselves, ...

being honored with kisses and embraces.

My sixth Antiphon and already I'm cheating? The above quote isn't from our Advent liturgy; it's from a Homily on the Cross by the great ninth-century Orthodox monk St. Theodore the Studite!  What's up?
Each year in November the radio news reports on some splendid tree having just been cut down to begin its journey to New York to be Rockefeller Center's famous Christmas tree for that year. And each year I start to cry when I hear of a venerable old tree ending its life this way. This year's tree was my neighbor--a fellow Hudson Valley resident. That's it in the photo, taken yesterday. It's 60 years old.
But when I see the huge throngs of people who crowd into that space at Rockefeller Center each day during the Christmas season to see that tree, admire it, photograph it, photograph themselves and their family and friends with the tree in the background, I think of what St. Theodore wrote about another famous tree -- the tree of the Cross, in the words above.  He speaks of the trees singing a glad hymn, just as our Advent texts depict the trees clapping their hands.
And then I see a parallel between the Cross and the Rockefeller Center Christmas tree.  The Christmas tree had to die in order to receive all that adulation from millions of people. And yet it will live, transformed into a new life: converted to timber to build a house.  Jesus had to die in order for the tree of the Cross to become an object of rejoicing by its fellow trees.  And Jesus, too, was transformed into a new, resurrected life.  Just as we will be. How is God transforming you right now?

Advent Antiphon 5: "Holy Highway"

"A highway will be there, called the holy way. It is for those with a journey to make.... Those whom the Lord ransomed will return and enter Zion singing."

When out on the trail, hikers often come to spots where a wooden path has been laid down for them to walk on instead of on the actual ground. It could be a couple of planks side by side or a full boardwalk, such as in this photo of an Audubon Refuge in Rhode Island. It could be a dozen yards long or much longer. The most dramatic I've ever seen is in the mountains of northern Sweden, stretching miles and miles ahead into the wilderness. The path's purpose could be to protect fragile plant life on the trail, or it could be to protect the hiker from falling into a swamp.
Whenever I walk on one of these paths I always think of this passage from Isaiah. Read the entire passage when you get the chance: Isa 35:1-10. It is THE Advent passage par excellence.  Full of hope, vindication, true joy that reaches into and wells up from deep within the heart and that no one can take away. Along that special highway you'll see streams bursting forth in the desert, gorgeous flowers blooming in impossible places. Somewhere on that holy highway the Lord has prepared a stunningly beautiful vista, just for you. Perhaps it will replace a view of ugliness, or perhaps it will be the beyond-wildest-dreams fulfillment of a hope you cherish. Only you know -- or maybe the Lord will entirely surprise you.

Advent Antiphon 4: "The dearest freshness"

A shoot shall sprout from the stump of Jesse,

and from his roots a bud shall blossom.

This  text from Isaiah is the basis for that exquisite Advent/Christmas carol "Lo, how a rose e'er blooming." It's about God being there, intervening in human history just when people thought the situation was impossible to salvage. The Davidic dynasty appeared to have gone irretrievably downhill with a succession of weak or downright corrupt kings. But God promised that all is not lost; David's royal line may have withered to a stump, but that stump still had a spark of life, and that life would blossom not just into another ordinary king but into into the King of Kings, the Savior of the world.
Another poetic verse comes to mind: "There lives the dearest freshness deep down things," from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem, "God's Grandeur." Hopkins was celebrating nature's unfailing capacity to renew itself after disaster and destruction. This Jesuit priest was a truly sacramental poet who saw God, and particularly Christ, reflected in the created world. Nature's capacity to renew itself: a reflection of what Isaiah sang about so many centuries earlier: the irrepressible vitality of God. Is there something in your life that needs a major revitalization by God?  Only you know the answer to that.

Advent Antiphon 3: Mountaintop Banquet

On this mountain the Lord will provide a feast of juicy, rich food

and pure, choice wines.

I once asked a colleague at work named Steve to read this entire passage from Isaiah 25 at a prayer service I organized. A self-proclaimed secular Jew, Steve read the passage with as much gusto as if he were doing a voiceover for an ad for one of New York's finest restaurants. You couldn't get more convincing!

The Advent liturgical readings are full of such passages describing and promising God's awesome, incredible bounty: Old Testament readings such as the above; Gospels about Jesus going into major overtime healing people. We each need to receive this news with as much enthusiasm as Steve when he read this passage. God, the generous Giver of the original "Free Gift." The mountaintop banquet promised by that most beautiful of prophets comes with some incomparable party favors: Death will be destroyed and every tear will be wiped away. Whatever has caused tears in your life--and only you know what that is--will be blotted out. Annihilated. God will come to save you, save all the people who have been looking out for him, and all will rejoice, "for the hand of the Lord will rest on this mountain."

Advent Antiphon 2: "In Radiant Beauty"

Your light will come, Jerusalem; the Lord will dawn on you in radiant beauty.

You will see his glory within you.

This beautiful text is the Responsory that follows the Scripture reading in the Liturgy of the Hours Morning Prayer for Advent weekdays. It speaks, no, it positively sings, of vindication. Of light and beauty following darkness and -- and what? That's for you to answer, because each of us has our own answer. Perhaps some injustice or lovelessness under which we live. Perhaps that light has come for us, or is in the process of dawning, or is yet to come. But it will come, because we've been promised it by the Lord. And at last we'll stand in the spotlight: not the sort of spotlight that "tags" us as in a Facebook photo and separates us from everything, but the radiant beauty of the Lord. Read the "Benedictus," the Canticle of Zechariah, and you'll find a God that keeps his promises. The Lord will dawn. In radiant beauty!

Advent Antiphon 1

"The mountains and hills will sing praise to God;

all the trees of the forest will clap their hands, for the Lord is coming."

Welcome to my occasional musings on the Advent and Christmas antiphons! Everyone knows the famous and beautiful O-Antiphons from the last week of Advent, but the entire season, as well as that of Christmas, is sprinkled through with these stunning bits of poetry -- sometimes in the Mass, sometimes in the Liturgy of Hours. It's because of them that Advent is my favorite liturgical season. I love the promise of vindication, the invitation to "lift up our heads," and of course I love the nature imagery. Strange, isn't it, that it should be not Lent but Advent, this time of year when nature is shutting down to sleep for a while, that has the most gorgeous nature imagery in its liturgy?

Anyway, these reflections are going to be quite brief (except for today's lengthy introduction!) and will be accompanied by one of my photos that seems to me to illustrate or enhance what I'm saying. The photo for today isn't exactly one of my masterpieces, but it does somehow convey the notion of trees clapping their hands. The Advent nature imagery is full of these elements of creation simply breaking into rejoicing at the thought of the Lord coming to earth. Coming with vindication and coming to free us -- free us from what? Only you yourself can answer that, because the answer is different for each one of us. We each have our own thing that the Lord comes to free us from.  And so we can join with the trees in clapping our hands that this is going to happen.  When the Lord comes, we can then open our arms to receive him. Later on, one of the trees will open its arms to receive him too -- on Calvary.

A Giant Goes to Heaven: Fr. Lawrence Boadt, CSP

To those who have known and loved and worked with him, it came as both a relief and as a very sad event. Paulist Father Larry Boadt died this morning after an incredibly courageous battle with terminal cancer. The Paulist Fathers' obituary says it all much better than I, so please read it there. 

I not only belong in all three of the above categories, I am also one of the untold thousands who, in their theology student days, could never have passed Old Testament without having used his magisterial book Reading the Old Testament. Also, I suppose I have the dubious distinction, as a photographer, of having been the last person to photograph him. Here are some images from the farewell party given for him only last month when he stepped down from the helm of Paulist Press, of which he had been CEO and Publisher since 1998. They show him in his typical way--always smiling and always glad to be around people. He may have been one of the greatest Old Testament scholars in the world, but he never stood on ceremony. Gracious humility was his style. In November 2009, as we were both returning from Montreal on the same flight after attending the American Academy of Religion Annual Meeting, he cheerfully guarded my luggage while I did some last-minute duty-free shopping and then drove me home from Newark Liberty Airport. This was typical of him.

As he lived, so he died. His colleague at Paulist Press, Fr. Mike Kerrigan, CSP, who devotedly looked after him during his illness, said that watching him go toward that inevitable meeting with his Creator was an inspiring and transforming experience.
R.I.P., Fr. Boadt. May not only the angels but also Fr. Isaac Hecker and the other early Paulist saints lead you into Paradise. I know St. Mary Magdalene will be on the welcoming committee--I already had a word with her.

A Garden Bursting into Life: Feast of St. Mary Magdalene

One thing I love about Mary Magdalene is that she dared to be exactly who she was: a generous, passionate, devoted and grateful person. Mary Magdalene was never, ever a cardboard copy of who she "thought" she should be. She acted out of her core, never out of a list of "shoulds" or "musts." 
    One of my favorite songs is "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol, and the line that always jumps out at me, loaded with layers of meaning, is "Show me a garden that's bursting into life." I dare say, that's Mary Magdalene's theme. Look at the Easter story in the Gospel of John, which we read on her feast. She goes to the tomb expecting to see a dead body to anoint with spices, and what does she find instead?  "A garden that's bursting into life"! And the person in charge is the Ultimate Gardener, Jesus. What a great and wonderful surprise, a gift from the God of the Unexpected.  Who was better able fully and completely to embrace this surprise and all it implied than Mary Magdalene, the "apostle to the apostles"?
    Happy feast day, St. Mary Madgalene.  Happy feast day to my friends among the Order of Preachers (Dominicans) and the Paulist Fathers, both of which hold Mary Magdalene in special regard as a patron saint.

In Awesome Wonder: Prophet Isaiah and the "Wow!" Moment

The Book of Isaiah chapter 6 contains that amazing, dramatic account of Isaiah's call by God to be a prophet. Isaiah sees a vision of the Temple with the Lord seated on his high and lofty throne, and the train of God's garment fills the Temple. Six-winged seraphim are in attendance, and the words they call out to one another are familiar to us from Mass: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God of hosts ... heaven and earth are filled with your glory."
    Isaiah believes he is surely doomed, because he has seen the Lord with his own eyes; the ancient Israelites believed no one could see God and live.
    I got to thinking about how those words--"Holy, holy, holy"--ended up in our Mass. They weren't put there at the decision of a Liturgical Commission. They've been there since the earliest times because the early Christians, gathered for worship at the eucharistic sacrifice, spontaneously felt the same awe that the Prophet Isaiah did during his vision. The Lord Jesus was descending among them, and for them this was a "Wow!" moment.
    What is this moment for us? All too often we recite these words "Holy, holy" as a prelude to kneeling down for the Eucharistic Prayer, or we sing them to (more often than not) banal music. How can we recapture that "Wow!"--whether it's the wonder of Isaiah as communicated to the early Christians, or its majestic expression in the "Sanctus" of J.S. Bach's B Minor Mass, or the quiet, reserved awe of Reginald Heber in his exquisite hymn "Holy, holy, holy, Lord God almighty"? Yes, that's right--a 17th-century Lutheran musician and a 19th-century Anglican vicar have something to teach 21st-century Catholics about the amazing event that takes place on our altars at each Mass.
    What happens to Isaiah after his "Wow!" moment? A seraph touches his lips with a burning ember and the Lord commissions Isaiah to go--to be the one sent to fulfill God's mission for him.
    Only after being bolstered by this "Wow! experience was he sent by God on his mission.  We, too, are called, called to live as Christians in an increasingly anti-Christian world. Faced with liturgies that so frequently exalt the ordinary and the banal, where do we get our "Wow!" moment?

Faith of Our Fathers

Many of us will remember a hymn that begins,
"Faith of our fathers, living still
In spite of dungeon, fire, and sword ..."
It came from the pen of Frederick William Faber, an evangelical-turned-Anglican-clergyman-turned-Catholic-priest who joined John Henry Newman's band of Oratorians but then broke away to form an Oratory in London -- the famous Brompton  Oratory. This was the era (mid nineteenth century) when Catholicism was enjoying a revival in England; the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act had removed many of the restrictions imposed on Catholics in the wake of the Reformation, and optimism ran high that England, which had once been so staunchly Catholic that it was known as "Mary's dowry," would regain its identity as a Catholic country.
    With the typical fervor of many new converts, Fr. Faber was "more Roman than Rome." The "faith" in his hymn was not some general Christianity but specifically Catholicism, and the "dungeon, fire, and sword" referred to the persecutions that followed the Protestant Reformation.
    The final stanza of the hymn, in Faber's original version, goes:
"Faith of our fathers, Mary's prayers
Shall win our country back to thee."
With the slight change of "back to" to "unto," it was the way we all learned it in Catholic school here in the USA.  The words otherwise are suitable for any Christian denomination, and in non-Catholic hymnals one often finds a version that eliminates the reference to Mary in this stanza. Fine.  But when attending Mass during an out-of-town trip this past weekend, I was dismayed to discover that the missalette (it happened that we sang this hymn), one produced by one of our premier liturgical publishers, contained one of the Mary-less versions instead of the original.
    We moan about how Catholic bashing is the last form of bigotry permitted in the world, and indeed that would seem to be the case.  But if we don't respect ourselves and what we believe and what we stand for, how can we expect others to respect us?  How far backward can we bend with misplaced political correctness?

The Prophet Amos Pulled No Punches

Hi, and welcome to "the thoughtfulcatholic" blog! I'll be using this blog to comment on various items and issues of interest to Catholics. The topics will be varied, though I expect that a number of them may refer to what I call (with, alas, very little hyperbole) liturgical atrocities. Anyhow, I want to start with the prophet Amos. Some of the liturgical readings for recent weekdays were from the Book of Amos.  In one of the readings Amos is doing what he does best--making The Establishment very uncomfortable--and The Establishment, in this case the priest Amaziah, tells Amos to get lost and take his prophecies elsewhere.
I've always found Amos' response somewhat poignant. He's no professional prophet, he says, but "a shepherd and a dresser of sycamores." In other words, "I have no advanced degree from an accredited Prophet College, no Prophet License, I'm just an amateur doing what the Lord sent me out to do."
Now, we know that God sometimes has an interesting way of choosing unlikely folks to do his bidding. But though they may appear unlikely to us, God obviously saw something "likely" in them. What was it about Amos? Why did God "take him from following the flock" and send him out to prophesy?
I like to think that it was because Amos had no fears about being outspoken. He pulled no punches, shot straight from the hip, said what had to be said, and used colorful language. Period. In our age of "political correctness" and exaggerated fears of offending anyone, Amos is an intriguing character. Let's face it, a lot of us wish we could be like Amos. Through him the Lord tells the hypocritical worshipers, "Spare me the din of your chanting!" How many pastors would love to say that to those responsible for what passes for music in their parishes?
And the lazy women who live for the food and drink their husbands can provide for them while the weak and oppressed go hungry, Amos isn't afraid to address them as "you cows of Bashan." Considering that the bulls of Bashan were animals renowned for their extraordinary size, this is a really strong insult! Colorful imagery, hits home, you can see why God was eager to harness this talent for his purposes.
Something I mentioned in passing about Amos bears further unpacking, but I'll save that for another blog.