God Does Strange Things

Edward Pfizenmaier. Wollman Rink, Central Park, New York, 1954

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“Compassion is not sentiment but is making justice and doing works of mercy. Compassion is not a moral commandment but a flow and overflow of the fullest human and divine energies.
—Matthew Fox”

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A Poem For Sunday

From the final two sections of “For the Time Being: A Christmas Oratorio” by W.H. Auden:

Well, so that is that.
Now we must dismantle the tree,
Putting the decorations back into their cardboard boxes -
Some have got broken – and carrying them up to the attic.
The holly and the mistletoe must be taken down and burnt,
And the children got ready for school. There are enough
Left-overs to do, warmed-up, for the rest of the week -
Not that we have much appetite, having drunk such a lot,
Stayed up so late, attempted – quite unsuccessfully -
To love all of our relatives, and in general
Grossly overestimated our powers. Once again
As in previous years we have seen the actual Vision and failed
To do more than entertain it as an agreeable
Possibility, once again we have sent Him away,
Begging though to remain His disobedient servant,
The promising child who cannot keep His word for long.

The poem continues.

(Photo: A Christmas ornament reflects St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City before the lighing of the Christmas tree. By Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images)

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Walker Percy Interviews Himself

A reflection on faith on the day we commemmorate the birth of Jesus:

Q: What kind of Catholic are you?

A. Bad.

Q: Are you a dogmatic Catholic or an open-minded Catholic?

A: I don’t know what that means … . Do you mean do I believe the dogma that the Catholic Church proposes for belief?

Q: Yes.

A: Yes.

Q: How is such a belief possible in this day and age?

A: What else is there?

Q: What do you mean, what else is there? There is humanism, atheism, agnosticism, Marxism, behaviorism, materialism, Buddhism, Muhammadanism, Sufism, astrology, occultism, theosophy.

A: That’s what I mean.

Q: I don’t understand. Would you exclude, for example, scientific humanism as a rational and honorable alternative?

A: Yes.

Q: Why?

A: It’s not good enough.

Q: Why not?

A: This life is too much trouble, far too strange, to arrive at the end of it and then to be asked what you make of it and have to answer “Scientific humanism.” That won’t do. A poor show. Life is a mystery, love is a delight. Therefore I take it as axiomatic that one should settle for nothing less than the infinite mystery and the infinite delight, i.e., God. In fact I demand it. I refuse to settle for anything less.

I don’t see why anyone should settle for less than Jacob, who actually grabbed aholt of God and would not let go until God identified himself and blessed him.

Q: Grabbed aholt?

A: A Louisiana expression.

Q: But isn’t the Catholic Church in a mess these days, badly split, its liturgy barbarized, vocations declining?

A: Sure. That’s a sign of its divine origins, that it survives these periodic disasters.

Q: You don’t act or talk like a Christian. Aren’t they supposed to love one another and do good works?

A: Yes.

Q: You don’t seem to have much use for your fellowman or do many good works.

A: That’s true. I haven’t done a good work in years.

Q: In fact, if I may be frank, you strike me as being rather negative in your attitude, cold-blooded, aloof, derisive, self-indulgent, more fond of the beautiful things of this world than of God.

A: That’s true.

Q: You even seem to take certain satisfaction in the disasters of the twentieth-century and to savor the imminence of world catastrophe rather than world peace, which all religions seek.

A: That’s true.

Q: You don’t seem to have much use for your fellow Christians, to say nothing of Ku Kluxers, ACLU’ers, northerners, southerners, fem-libbers, anti-fem-libbers, homosexuals, anti-homosexuals, Republicans, Democrats, hippies, anti-hippies, senior citizens.

A: That’s true – though taken as individuals they turn out to be more or less like oneself, i.e., sinners, and we get along fine.

Q: Even Ku Kluxers?

A: Sure.

Q: How do you account for your belief?

A: I can only account for it as a gift from God.

Q: Why would God make you such a gift when there are others who seem more deserving, that is, serve their fellowman?

A: I don’t know. God does strange things… .

Q: But shouldn’t one’s faith bear some relation to the truth, facts?

A: Yes. That’s what attracted me, Christianity’s rather insolent claim to be true, with the implication that other religions are more or less false.

Q: You believe that?

A: Of course.

(Photo: Detail from the side facing the apse of the so-called “Sarcofago di Stilicone” (“Stilicho’s sarcophagus”), an Ancient Roman christian sarcophagus dating from the 4th century. It is preserved beneath the pulpit of Sant’Ambrogio basilica in Milan, Italy. Picture by Giovanni Dall’Orto, April 25 2007.)

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“The word within a word, unable to speak a word,
Swaddled with darkness.”

—	T. S. Eliot, from “Gerontion