Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.
And so I say to you, you are Peter,and upon this rock I will build my Church,
and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it.
I will give you the keys to the Kingdom of heaven.
Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.”

I’ve noted previously I think how much I like that Jesus re-names Peter.

And I like Peter, generally, a lot, a whole lot, because he seems like such a fuckup so much of the time. He gets scared and can’t walk on the water. He wants to stop the Passion even before it begins (earning him the “Get thee behind me, Satan” rebuke). He falls asleep at Gethsemane.

And, of course, he denies Christ three times.

But he does all right in the end. And in today’s first reading he says, ” Tend the flock of God in your midst, overseeing not by constraint but willingly, as God would have it, not for shameful profit but eagerly.”

Dawn and I attended the 11:30 Mass on Sunday. I had volunteered to be at the Faith Formation table after that Mass for the Parish Council Ministries & Committees Fair, being that I’m a member of the Adult Formation Committee. Since the Mass was in English, I had the usual orans dilemma.

Usually we’re at the Latin Mass, and I have to hold the book during the Pater Noster. So there’s not really any option for holding out my arms in the orans posture. But, during the English liturgy, I’m not holding any book. And Dawn says we’re really supposed to adopt orans, although she usually forgets until about halfway through. I never forget, but I usually wait for her to see if she does it. But I never really want to do it, but I feel guilty because I feel like I’m supposed to do it. I felt a little better last week when I looked over at all the nuns in church and specifically noted only one or two of them using the orans.

So today I did some Googling during my lunch hour. And I’ve got good news.
The bishops of the Church in the U.S. are members of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The USCCB is itself a member of the International Commission on English in the Liturgy.

So apparently, according to Adoremus, the Society for the Renewal of the Sacred Liturgy, in 1995 the USCCB’s committee on the liturgy, the BCL, debated the ICEL’s proposed revision of the Sacramentary, the prayers for the Catholic Mass. Among many, many other things of course, the BCL considered recommending that the entire congregation adopt the orans posture during the Lord’s Prayer. After some debate, with some bishops objecting to the laity adopting the orans posture rather than reserving it for the clergy, the BCL made the orans a “permissible option” for the congregation.

The ICEL then in 1999 sent their proposed revision to the Sacramentary, including the orans for the members of the assembly, to the Holy See for approval. In the meantime, the BCL posted on their website that, while it was not yet approved, soon the Sacramentary would provide for the orans gesture.

His Holiness Pope John Paul II approved in 2000, and the Holy See issued in 2002, the new edition of the Roman Missal, after having rejected the ICEL revision regarding the orans.
The USCCB now simply says: No position is prescribed in the present Sacramentary for an assembly gesture during the Lord’s Prayer.

So officially it’s okay to hold hands, but I’d really rather not. And I find the orans posture personally distracting. With my hands clasped in front of me I feel like I’m praying; in orans, I feel like I’m holding my hands out. So now I know I don’t have to it. Hooray!

The OT reading is from Leviticus and is heartbreaking. The Lord requires that the leper be cast out.

As long as the sore is on him he shall declare himself unclean,
since he is in fact unclean.
He shall dwell apart, making his abode outside the camp.

I’ve thought it was understood that so much of the rules of the ancients that to us today seem weirdly arbitrary are in fact rooted in commonsensical ideas for their time. Mostly I’ve thought this is terms of the Jewish dietary laws, what makes certain things kosher or not kosher. Similar the halal as well. Prohibitions against eating certain foods or requirements that foods be prepared a certain way — to us today merely quaint, charming, arbitrary — were in ancient times quite necessary to avoid serious illness and death.

Clearly related to this then are, as described above, laws relating to the cleanliness or uncleanliness not of food but of people. The Lord says that the leper will be brought before the priest, and the priest shall declare the leper unclean. And the leper must rend his garments and cry out that he is unclean, to warn away others. So, again, it’s understood that in order to protect the public health from an otherwise not understood physical affliction, both contagious and horribly disfiguring, the religious orthodoxy states that God himself declares that those with the disease are to be cast out. Basic triage and sensible public health policy. But how heart-wrenchingly sad for the afflicted.

So, happily, the Gospel of Mark, where the leper is not dragged before the priest, but comes to Jesus on his own. And Jesus very simply cures him.

Moved with pity, Jesus stretched out his hand,
touched him, and said to him,
“I do will it. Be made clean.”

I love the beauty and poetry of this passage, so very different from the dry rulemaking of Leviticus.

And how different too is pretty much everything now that the Messiah has arrived. Here we see him even breaking the law, out of pity and kindness. So much for all those dry rules. Hey, from now on, let’s just go with loving God and loving our neighbor. Even the outcast. Heck, especially the outcasts.

We didn’t have the Latin Mass today. Instead we had Bishop Francisco González leading the celebration of the Jubilee Mass for Religious. Bishop González himself was celebrating fifty years of religious life, as were many nuns in attendance. Others were celebrating forty years. I think they said one priest was celebrating seventy years as a priest. My goodness.

Bishop González spoke of having enterered the seminary at the tender age of eleven. He also said that all of the children in his family, himself and his brother and sister, all entered religious life. He didn’t recommend that for all Catholic families, though.

Appropriately enough, the Gospel today is from St. Mark, and I think it says something about religous life.

(Jesus is off praying in a deserted place)

Simon and those who were with him pursued him
and on finding him said, “Everyone is looking for you.”
He told them, “Let us go on to the nearby villages
that I may preach there also.
For this purpose have I come.”

Simon and the others come searching, looking for guidance, looking for God, looking to God. And to that Jesus says, well okay then, let’s go. That’s why I’ve come.

And that’s what Bishop González emphasized, about himself and all his religious brothers and sisters, that they were called, and they said yes. They said, well okay then, let’s go.

Um, don’t get married? Is that what you mean?

Today’s second reading is from St. Paul, (duh), from First Corinthians.

An unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord,
how he may please the Lord.
But a married man is anxious about the things of the world,
how he may please his wife, and he is divided.

We have to remember I suppose two things about Paul. First, he was overly zealous in his persecution of Christians before his conversion, so therefore afterwords he was like … you know, how ex-smokers are like the most avid kind of anti-smokers?

And secondly, tied in with that, is how St. Paul expected Christ to return in his (Paul’s) lifetime. So why get married, why do anything to distract you from the imminent return of the Lord.

So of course it’s been a couple thousand years since then. Lots of marrying going on since then. Good thing, too.

But then lets take his point as well. Let’s try not to worry, not too much, anyway. Monsignor’s homily was all about worry. Worry is pretty pointless, in the end.

Problem is, I worry. I worry a lot. I’m a worrier.

So Monsignor suggests prayer, rather than worry. So I’m going to try more of that. I mean, sure, I’ve got your basic Our Father and Hail Mary, and I have special prayers to St. Agnes. But pray instead of worry? That’s hard.

I’ll have to pray for help on that.

How funny, the second reading, from Corinthians, chapter seven, how much that Rilke poem is like it.

I tell you, brothers and sisters, the time is running out.
From now on, let those having wives act as not having them,
those weeping as not weeping,
those rejoicing as not rejoicing,
those buying as not owning,
those using the world as not using it fully.
For the world in its present form is passing away.

And for the Gospel, we hear St. Mark’s version of how Peter meets Jesus. Remember last week we heard St. John tell how John the Baptist pointed out Jesus to Andrew, then Andrew followed and met Jesus, and then he told his brother Simon. According to St. Mark, Jesus found Andrew and Simon fishing, and told them to follow him.

Mark specifically puts this after John the Baptist has been arrested. But, then again, thinking about it, St. Mark doesn’t say that this is the first time he has spoken to Andrew and Simon Peter. In fact, it probably makes sense that they have met before, since St. Mark describes Christ’s invitation as a simple and terse, “Follow me.” Jesus isn’t just some strange dude wandering by with his Hey guys come along with me. They know him. His invitation isn’t a surprise.

Maureen sent an email to say that Barbara Kuhn passed away last night, Monday, January 2, 2006, around 6:30 p.m.

We had been praying for Barbara during petitions at Mass the last couple of weeks, so we knew that she was near the end. She had been so very private during her illness, seeing hardly anyone, not even long-time friends.

She and Michael Winters traded weeks with Will and Bridget during inquiry in the summer of 2002. She as much as anyone is responsible for the formation of my faith. I’ll always remember her, how she preferred to think of the Lord’s Prayer as ending with “Leave us not in temptation,” rather than “lead.”

Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum. Et vitam venturi saeculi. Amen.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

And happy (solemn) feast day of the Blessed Virgin.

I have to admit, to my great shame, that I’ve always thought the statue of her in Our Lady’s Chapel at St. Matt’s was kind of silly. She’s in such an odd, stretched pose. Sort of like she’s bowling. “Our Lady of the Ten Pins,” I’ve called it.

Well, for such a day, after Mass, Dawn and I knelt at the altar in the chapel to say a special Hail Mary to her on her day. And how powerful and beautiful she is from that spot! Clearly I had never properly knelt in that chapel, beneath her there, with her reaching down to us. How better to venerate her and beg for her prayers below her, as she stretches down to receive and help and comfort.

What a special treat of a discovery.