Luke’s murderous intent
July 31, 2009
Reading Luke these days.
There is a theory floating somewhere out there that Luke and Acts were intended as some sort of a two-volume legal brief compiled in defense of Paul. These works, the theory goes, might have been presented to the Emperor to show that Christianity was not a threat to the well-being of the Empire and that Paul, as such, was a faithful citizen falsely charged with causing civil upheaval.
I think Luke-Acts would’ve made a nice legal brief if Luke wanted to see Paul dead.
Consider the Annunciation narrative (Luke 1.26-38) for instance. First, we are told that the Archangel Gabriel said this about Mary’s child and Paul’s Lord:
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High;
and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob for ever;
and of his kingdom there will be no end. (vv. 32-33)
One can’t really miss the message: this babe’s going to be one heckuva king. As if that isn’t enough, the Messenger also calls the child-to-be “the Son of God” (v. 35), making him a rival to one of Caesar’s most grandiose titles.
Imagine: Paul, a servant and herald for a Jewish king who, as Luke’s “evidence” shows, is destined to reign for ever and of whose kingdom “there will be no end”. Problem is, there is already a lord and king over the world and he is, as the Roman propaganda goes, Caesar.
If Jesus is shown by Luke to be Caesar’s contender, what would that make Paul?
Not much a defense, I think.
By persuasion, and not by compulsion
July 31, 2009
And was [Christ's] coming, as a man might suppose, in power, in terror, and in dread? Not so; it was in gentleness and humility. As a king sending his royal son, so [the Father] sent him; He sent him as God; He sent him as Man to men; and that because He wanted to save us by persuasion, and not by compulsion–for there is no compulsion found with God. His mission was no pursuit or hounding of us; it was an invitation to us; it was in love, not in judgment that He sent him (though one day He will indeed send him to judge us, and then who shall abide the day of his coming?).
Letter to Diognetus, 7.3-4
Beautiful letdowns
July 19, 2009
It was a beautiful letdown
When I crashed and burned,
When I found myself alone, unknown and hurt.
It was a beautiful letdown
The day I knew
That all the riches this world had to offer me
Would never do.
Switchfoot, “Beautiful Letdown”
Today while driving to church for confession I wondered if all repentance begins with the experience of disappointment—the kind that comes from the realization that one has been duped by an illusion, a phantom, a mirage.
Take the so-called Prodigal Son for example. While craving for the slop meant for the pigs he was hired to feed, it suddenly occurred to him that he had chased his own dream into that very rut. What he once perceived as freedom, independence, wealth, turned out to be alienation, loneliness, hunger. Then the humiliating but sober deduction: “How many of my father’s hired servants have bread enough and to spare, but I perish with hunger!” A beautiful letdown.
This morning I found these words in the Saphro prayers for Saturday:
O you martyrs, why did you despise this passing world which all men love? “Because we saw that it is deceitful in its pleasures, and that it has hated from the beginning to the end those who love it.”
It has hated from the beginning to the end those who love it. How many of my dreams—of “living comfortably”, of “a bright future”, of “happiness”—are shaped not so much by God’s Word but rather by hope (and I mean an intense, eschatological kind of hope) in the gaudy possibilities laid out by the world?
Too many.
The martyrs called the bluff on the world. What set them apart was their ability to grasp a truth the multitudes so often miss: the world “has hated from the beginning to the end those who love it”. The rest of us, it seems to me, appear to be quite all right with loving this thing that secretly hates us. Sounds like a spiritual version of the Stockholm Syndrome to me.
Once again, Sunday comes, and to the Physician I go, deluded, limping, hands half-clenched, half-opened to receive the medicine of immortality. It’s a good thing He understands.
On July 21st, 1996, Fr. Anthony Chan On Dong baptized me and confirmed me in the Catholic faith.
Last Saturday I received news that he died earlier that morning after a long and intense battle with cancer. In our last conversation several months before, he had told me how grateful he was that God had given him a sign of his imminent death: a growing lump on his shoulder which his doctor said indicated the final stages of cancer. “Many people leave suddenly, without preparation,” he said his thick Chinese accent, “but God has given me this sign so that I can prepare for death. I am so blessed.”
Everyone who has faith of some degree cannot escape the realization that we owe that to someone. At the wake yesterday and the funeral Mass today I became more aware than ever of the great debt of faith which I owe to Fr. Anthony. Had it not been for him, I might never have found the apostolic faith—or kept it. In an earlier post several months ago I recalled perhaps the most important lesson I learned from this priest:
Several weeks before my baptism, Fr. Anthony requested a brief meeting with me. During our time together, he asked me why I wished to be baptized. I gave the standard catechumen’s answer.
“Because I want to follow Jesus Christ and do what He has commanded,” I said a bit sheepishly, wondering I’d said the correct words in the correct order.
He smiled, and said to me, “Good. Then it is for Jesus Christ that you are doing this. There will come a day when someone in the Church will disappoint you, or perhaps even hurt you. Maybe it’ll even be me. Maybe I’ll run off with some woman and leave the priesthood. But you must remember your answer. You are doing this for Jesus Christ, and while everyone else in the Church might disappoint you, He won’t. So don’t leave Him.”
The picture albums that were set out during the wake and the packed church at his funeral Mass today were powerful reminders to me of the fruitfulness of a life lived for others. Even in his old age, he would go places in his scooter to visit parishioners and administer the sacraments. Having left his homeland of China as a young seminarian, he frequently expressed his wish to return to his village to celebrate Mass and give alms there—a dream which his friends helped him realize at the end of last year. The video footage showed him, all smiles, giving out ang pows (red packets filled with money) to dozens of people at a dinner he’d organized for them. Even on his deathbed, Fr. Anthony told my godfather that there were people he wished he could see so he could talk to them about Jesus Christ.
A life lived in Christ for others. This, it seems to me, is how Fr. Anthony’s life should be summed up. And what a crucial and refreshing contrast this pattern is against the frenetic quest for self-actualization and self-fulfillment that has become staple for our world and, unfortunately, for us Christians.
“Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies….” Fr. Anthony died to so much while he was alive, and because he did I owe him this life I have in Christ. Now that he has passed through the veil into the Age to Come, I count on his prayers more than ever before and hope to receive at least a fraction of that life-giving generosity that so marked his days with us.
Reactivation and Sisoes
July 6, 2009
My European adventure ended last week, and I apologize for having left this blog dormant without notice for so long. Don’t have much to say these days but perhaps soon I’ll post a little piece I’m submitting for a newsletter.
For today, since it is the feast of one of my favorite Desert Fathers, St. Sisoes the Great, I’ll share this word:
Abba Sisoes expressed himself freely one day, saying, ‘Have confidence: for thirty years I have not prayed to God about my faults, but I have made this prayer to him: “Lord Jesus, save me from my tongue,” and until now every day, I fall because of it, and commit sin.’ (The Sayings of the Desert Fathers: The Alphabetical Collection, trans. Benedicta Ward, SLG, Sisoes §4)
And lastly, a picture I took one evening in Bad Dürkheim, where my aunt and her family generously hosted me for a total of 6 weeks:
