Advent 2012 Week 2

"I pray always with joy in my every prayer for all of you, because of your partnership for the gospel from the first day until now I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.
"And this is my prayer: that your love may increase ever more and more in knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value, so that you may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God." Philippians 1:4-6, 8-11.

In the first reading for the second Sunday of Advent, St. Paul 's message almost casually ambles into the theme of discernment raised by the Responsorial Psalm of last week. From knowing ourselves in humility we are directed to know what is important and what is not. It almost sounds like a platitude, but is another stiff challenge to us. We--teachers--like to think we are good at discernment.

After all, we read student papers, assign grades, prepare what we think are necessary and appropriate presentations, lectures and activities, and discuss and correct student behavior so that these young people might be shaped into knowledgeable, worthwhile and contributing adults. We create lesson plans, follow the assigned curriculum, work with our administrators and peers to help the school be worthy of its stated mission and worry about how all of this will serve the needs of today's student, about whose abilities, study habits and inclination to learn we often have serious doubts. All of these genuine concerns press on our consciences and cause us a degree of day-to-day stress. It's part of being a teacher who cares, but it's a burden to carry.

St. Paul seems completely aware that those to whom he is writing are in need of the prayers that he offers for us. We should be thankful! He knows perfectly well that God's good work is only just begun in us, or he would congratulate us on having achieved perfection. But he gives us some time to get it right: "until the day of Christ Jesus." We're in our grace period, maybe even our extended time, and we must honestly acknowledge that we genuinely need every minute to even begin to exercise Gospel charity for those in our care in the same manner that St. Paul cares for his apprentices, for whose good and whose presence he longs "with the affection of Jesus Christ."

St. Paul's community has something to learn and a goal to achieve if they will be worth something in their vocation as partners for the gospel. The content of the curriculum is "knowledge and every kind of perception, to discern what is of value." The goal of our teacher-formation program is to "be pure and blameless" and "filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ." Kierkegaard, the pastor's boy and an astute, if odd, reader of Saints Paul and Augustine, understood that the category of true Christians was a finite set of one: Jesus. (I know he wasn't Catholic, and so did not avail himself of Marian doctrine, etc.) The point is well taken. We need help.

Let's remember that Advent is the "grace period" par excellence. The Creator has extended our time and our expectation forward into the fulfillment of all history. Let's pray this Advent that we continue to receive St. Paul's prayers and that we be open to his teaching. Let's pray that we learn our calling and our craft better. Let's pray for perception--to find and acknowledge the person of Jesus newly born in every one of our students, because that is "what is of value" for each student and for each of us as well. Let's pray for discernment, that we receive the grace to speak of what is best in our students (and our peers) and know and live what is best in us. Finally, let's be encouraged that our teacher for this week, St. Paul, expresses "confidence ... that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."

Advent 2012 Week 1

Today's Psalm (25) is striking:

Your ways, O LORD, make known to me;
teach me your paths,
Guide me in your truth and teach me,
for you are God my savior,
and for you I wait all the day.

Good and upright is the LORD;
thus he shows sinners the way.
He guides the humble to justice,
and teaches the humble his way.

All the paths of the LORD are kindness and constancy
toward those who keep his covenant and his decrees.
The friendship of the LORD is with those who fear him,
and his covenant, for their instruction.

There ought to be a book about the "education Psalms." Certainly the whole trajectory of Scripture is aimed at the making explicit the content of the revealed truth that God is with us--by virtue of the primordial history of Genesis, the Patriarchs, the liberating events of the wondrous flight from Egypt, the desert wanderings, the up-and-down history of the Israelites, the powerful witness of the line of the Prophets, the endlessly fascinating mixture of the Writings, and the "new primordial history" of the first community of the Church. But there is contained here also an invitation to a reflective dimension describing how God teaches, in addition to what God teaches.

Our job, especially as teachers, is to consider what kind of students we are, to examine our readiness to learn, and to consider what kind of students God considers us to be. Do we examine ourselves with the same kind of clarity and compassion with which we see the young persons who assemble before us at each class period? How deeply do we consider that we are also learners as we expect the students to be. Think about it: God teaches not only the avid, friendly and hard-working souls. As the Gospels witness, God teaches and shows an infinite caring and adaptability facing the reluctant, closed-minded and hardly-working folk in the community of the Church as well.

Take it a little further: we say, as Thomas Aquinas does, that learning happens "according to the capacity of the receiver." Do we consider that God approaches us in deference to the style that is effective for us? Are we the readers, the doers, the actors, the can't-sit-down types, the shout-it-out types? If the attribution is correct, St. Francis' much-quoted advice must apply to us as well: "Preach always; if necessary, use words."

So I invite each of you, theologians, to use this first week of Advent as a mini-retreat to consider yourselves God's literal learners. We all must grow in self-awareness so that our pedagogy and our lives are more truly "with God."

Quotes 3

"If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing." --C. S. Lewis

Quotes 2

For everything that is not God is unable to fulfill my desires. It is you alone I seek, that I may have you. O Lord, open my heart. Jesus Christ, my Savior, the express image and character of your essence is that image and likeness I desire. --Blaise Pascal

A series of quotes, 1

The simple desire for God is already the beginning of faith. All of us have doubts. They are nothing to worry about. Our deepest desire is to listen to Christ, who whispers in our hearts. --Brother Roger of Taizé

A step backward in economic policy?

From a leading French business leader, discussing the new administration's proposals to tax corporate business activity and individual wealthy:

“The question is how to achieve these goals? There is no example, in modern economic history, of a country that has succeeded in reducing its deficits by bringing taxes to a confiscatory level. On the contrary, it leads to a decline in activity, and an increase in the deficits.”

(Link requires free registration.)

The Chief Justice's Gambit

My little machiavellian mind yesterday told me that John Roberts is far too smart to fall into some kind of naive ideological mistake and instantly forsake the idea of judicial restraint.  I also don't think he's in love with Obama.  Here's my theory:  He definitely seems to have taken a very "big picture" view of what's going on with the American political system.  I think he has in mind that the Court can't just keep being called on to absolve the politicians from their stupid actions.  Now the only solution is a political one.  If "the people" aren't attentive enough to the way the ACA tyranny has been foisted upon them, they deserve what they get.  Roberts has handed it to Romney.  The now-official definition that this bill is a new set of taxes of unprecedented proportions is the case that Mr. Romney has to develop, and I think he has smart enough people around him to seize the opportunity.  Roberts "called out" Obama's administration on their unceasing LIE about this during the approval process of this legislation.  That's what it boils down to, I think.  The very peculiar nature of this 4-4-1 decision contains a "poisoned pill."  The opposition needs to figure out how to get the electorate to administer the medicine.  Roberts saves the Court, saves the  political process, and plays big-time hardball. 

At any rate, I finally found someone who agrees:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/jun/28/curl-roberts-to-the-rescue-for-romney/

By the way, since it's a tax, the House of Reps is already working on using the spending authority vested in that chamber, according to Paul Ryan this morning.

And one more thing--he didn't have a seizure... and he didn't wake up to the horse's head in his bed.

So that we shouldn't forget

I'm saving this, because it has now returned to the news.  I hope other parties see fit to remind the voters of it during the campaign.

Speaking of which, the campaign ought to be a systematic analysis of those policies and legislative initiatives proposed or enacted--not to mention the "executive orders."  Just saying--there is no lack of material here, a great deal of which simply is odious to most voters.  Let's remind them, politely but firmly.  We've got months to work on this and get it right.

No excuses for failure!

Who would have thought....

....that on May 11th the Astros would have a better record than the Red Sox, and be higher in the standings.

Crossing paths

Gallup poll shows Romney now ahead, 48-43.  I think somehow this change in trends on the Gallup polling at this time marks a turning point.  Either the country's sense of what's going on has made a shift, or simply it's the realization that the battle is now on for real, and so there is some serious soul-searching going on.  It's a pretty dramatic move.