Coming home Catholic: Rediscovering my Catholic faith in the Episcopal Church

What does it mean to be catholic? Some would say that it means being Roman Catholic, being in communion with the Bishop of Rome. Others would say it means holding onto the apostolic tradition of orthodoxy. The word catholic is derived from the Greek word katholikos, which means universal. How can you call yourself universal if you deny people access to the sacraments? How can you call yourself universal if you deny that people have a call to ministry just because they are gay, married, or a woman? How can you call yourself universal when you are disconnected with the laity, with the people of God, with your flock? The answer is that you can’t call yourself universal very well. What in essence happens is that you claim to be universal, but on your terms. Universal means including all people, and inviting all people to ministry and the sacraments. It is inviting everyday people to be involved in the decision-making processes of the church. It means accepting all people as the Body of Christ

Today I have been received into the one holy, catholic, and apostolic church. Instantly people would think I am refereeing to the Roman Catholic Church, but I am not. Instead, I speak of the Episcopal Church. This church claims the mantle of catholic, and I have found it to be an institution that represents the catholic Church.

I grew up Roman Catholic. Though from an early age, I was endlessly fascinated with Church history, theology, and faith, I never really had the best of connections with the Roman Catholic Church. After a long period of apathy ending with the Archdiocese of San Francisco’s involvement in Prop 8, I turned from the church. I believed that the hierarchy was hypocritical and unable to recognize the harm that they cause to people.

After a period of time, I started attending evangelical churches. I enjoyed it at first, but I found the services to be distant and not really connecting to anything. I never connected with the four songs and a sermon method of worship. After being made to feel unwelcome in the churches that I attended. With no place to turn, I started attending an Episcopal Church.

When I was there, I felt as if I had come home. The warmth of the congregation, the vibrancy of the liturgy, the invitation for all to the altar, it all made me realize that this was what it meant to be universal, to be Catholic. I can never be more thankful for the priest there, and all that she did for me in those few months I was there.

In my time in Thailand, I grew to depend on the Book of Common Prayer app I had for my iPod in order to find any sense of fulfillment and discipline in my prayer life.

When I returned to Hawaii, I started attending an Episcopal Church near my home. There too did I find a sense of belonging, even though I spent a short period of time there. I am grateful for the priest there, and all she has done to make me feel like I have a home when I am there.

During my time working and worshiping at an Episcopal church, I fully embraced being catholic. They showed me that you can be catholic without Rome. And they have challenged my theology in new and interesting ways. I am gratified for the opportunities that the priests there have given me.

In this past year of attending the Episcopal Church, I have learned many things, but one thing stands out is that Jesus loves everyone, Jesus accepts everyone. Our response to this is to do the same: love everyone and accept everyone.

There is a point in the liturgy that sums up everything, the Law, the Baptismal Covenant, the creeds, everything:

“Hear what our Lord Jesus Christ saith: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”

To follow this means we are living out the commands of our faith. To follow this means we are living out orthodoxy. To follow this means to be catholic.

We invite all people to the Baptismal font, for we are all invited to share into the death and resurrection of Christ. We invite all people to the altar because we are all invited to be the body of Christ. We are a living faith, for we are in a living Body of Christ, it means that we will grow, and change, and move more and more to that ideal of God, of the Church, and of what it means to be universal.

We sometimes fall short, we sometimes fail, we often disagree, but we still work more and more towards the ideal that Christ set forth. We recognize that compromises are necessary for unity, but that if we sacrifice people in the sake of unity, we deny our greater unity. Doctrine and theology are important, but not so important that we deny people access to the love and grace of Christ just to maintain our sense of “purity.” The Episcopal Church has made many mistakes, but it keeps moving forward knowing that: “There is one Body and one Spirit; There is one hope in God's call to us; One Lord, one Faith, one Baptism; One God and Father of all.”

We are all the children of God; we are all in the family of God. And we have a responsibility to love one another. That is what it means to be catholic, to love one another, without condition. When we love one another, we love God, for as Jesus says “Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” It is one and the same thing. We fulfill the catholic mantle when we do this.

And so I walk forward once again into a new beginning, into the family of the catholic Church.

An April Fools’ Palm Sunday

I cannot help but say I had a lot of fun today. This Palm Sunday was quite possibly the most joyous and exciting experiences I have had in church; perhaps in someway it reflects the excitement and joy that people had when Christ entered Jerusalem. The procession with the hymn All glory, laud, and honor set the mood for the day. And you know what, it was, dare I say, fun. And I am not just saying this because I am trumping my church’s horn; I had to keep a straight face while singing and suppressing a smile while in the procession (lest I look to happy in Christ Church). There is one thing that struck me today, today is not just Palm Sunday, but it is also April Fools’ Day. There is something to be said about that, that at the end of Lent, and in the sadness of the days to come in Holy Week, there is foolish defiance of the powers of the world in Palm Sunday that is but a foretaste of the Resurrection of Christ.

Over the Passover in Jerusalem in Jesus’s time, it is likely that the Roman Governor, Pontius Pilate, requested more troops to enter the city to maintain order. Jerusalem was packed with pilgrims for the feast, a feast that celebrates the freedom of the Jewish people from enslavement by another empire long ago, a feast celebrated by a people that were somewhat defiant of Roman rule. So there was probably a concern that in the atmosphere of celebrating liberation, an uprising may occur.

These troops probably would have entered in with standard military procedures and ceremony complete with pomp and circumstance, and with there commanding officers on horseback, displaying the full power of Rome. Around the same time a backwater hick from Galilee named Jesus enters in on a donkey. The donkey is nowhere near as majestic as a horse, and an animal that is known for being stubborn. Yet here he is in the midst of what must be a foolish image, a grown man riding a donkey that probably does not want to be bothered, being proclaimed King of Israel, the Son of David. The crowds lay their robes and cut palms to lay in the street and shout Hosanna in the highest! His entry into Jerusalem almost seems laughably defiant towards the powers that be; and yet his entry into Jerusalem begins to call into foolishness the powers of the world.

And yet, it almost seems foolish that Jesus is entering into the very den of those seeking to kill him. Nevertheless, he rides on. Not on a warhorse or a steed like the Romans, but on a donkey.

The foolishness of his entry seemingly becomes apparent. After his arrest, we see the crowds turn on him, people proclaiming him king soon call for his crucifixion, possibly in hopes that if they scream the loudest, no one would know they were there laying palms before his path. The foolishness of our fears is revealed. We don’t want to be seen as defiant, because defiance means scorn and derision, and in Jesus’s case, death. To soothe our fears, we call ourselves foolish for even thinking such thoughts as to challenge the status quo. We call foolish those seeking to challenge the powers of the world, and we dismiss too quickly their work, and go about our business as if nothing is wrong.

But even upon the cross, bearing the world’s pain, sorrows, sins, oppression, injustice, and evils, Christ overcomes the darkness of the world. Death could not take him, Hell and the grave could not contain him, and thus the foolishness of Hell and Death are revealed, and now are no more. What started as a foolhardy, joyous, and defiant entry into Jerusalem becomes the salvation of the world.

And so, may you all have a blessed and happy April Fools’ Day.

St...Charles Stuart?

So generally speaking, Charles Stuart is an unusual person to be considered a Saint. None of the Stuarts are memorable for being good Kings. Particularly after Queen Elizabeth, King James and King Charles had big boots to fill. And after the Interregnum of Oliver Cromwell, King Charles II dissolved Parliament and ruled as an absolutist, and King James II was driven from England by a Dutch Invasion, and never had his throne restored to him. The Stuarts were not the best of kings.

Looking at Charles specifically, he sought to rule as an absolutist monarch, he was considered to be widely unpopular among his people, he interfered with the Church of Scotland, attempted to negate the powers of the Scottish and English parliaments, continued to oppress Ireland and he presided over the English Civil War in which he ultimately lost and was beheaded on charges of tyranny.

When we look at these things, it seems on paper that to have Charles be considered saintly. Especially when we put him into the company of people like Mother Teresa, St Francis, or anyone we first think of as saints.

There has been a long history of veneration of figures within Christianity of royalty that may or may not have been the best of people. Emperor Constantine XI (Byzantine Empire), Emperor Nicolas II (Russian Empire), King Kamehameha IV (Kingdom of Hawaii), King Dagobert II (Merovingian France), and Emperor Henry II (Holy Roman Empire). Some are declared saints, others (either for political reasons or because of when and where they lived) are only remembered and venerated in prayer. These kings were remembered for their faith, but they were also made mistakes. And in the end they died, some in battle, others executed, or quietly and slowly forgotten.

History will often follow the lives of leaders, royal or otherwise, because they are visible. And because of that, more attention is given to their lives, both good and bad. For kings, there are fewer myths and more criticisms within history, particularly as history has developed to be a more critical study. But things do not exist in a vacuum, a person’s legacy far outlives them, and even more so for a king. We all make mistakes, and the magnitude of the mistakes a king can make is far greater than that of a normal person. But the magnitude of good can also be greater than a normal person as well.

So why should we remember and venerate Charles Stuart as a Saint? That is a hard question. To be sure, his legacy endures because the Church of England never adopted the Puritanical reforms of Oliver Cromwell, namely a Presbyterian polity. A Catholic character remained in Anglicanism, and it was grown by the Oxford Movement to really encapsulate the whole of Anglicanism. But all of these things, Charles did not do. They all happened after his execution. His attempts in his life to do what he wanted ultimately drove England apart.

His legacy begins with the choices he made. He was offered the chance to retain his throne and life if he abolished the episcopate, and he refused. For that, he died. It was seemingly for naught since Cromwell went and abolished it any way. And though the episcopate suffered during the Commonwealth, it survived and was able to establish itself once more during the restoration. A small minority in England and Ireland resisted Cromwell, and suffered for it. And though Charles did a lot that was wrong, it was in the moment of truth that he showed his convictions and faith.

This is where martyrdom, sainthood, and faith all converge, in the moment. Many saints lived lives that were questionable. St. Paul, St. Genesius, and others lived terrible lives, made mistakes, hurt others, and though may have done good as well, they chose at the moment of truth to stand by faith and God. Charles was not perfect, he was not a very good king, Monty Python laughs about how ‎"The most interesting thing about King Charles the First is that he was five foot six inches tall at the start of his reign, but only four foot eight inches tall at the end of it," and that "in spite of his intelligence and cultivation, Charles was curiously inept in his contacts with human beings. Socially, he was tactless and diffident, and his manner was not helped by his stutter and thick Scottish accent, while in public he was seldom able to make a happy impression." Despite that, Archbishop William Laud describes him as "A mild and gracious prince who knew not how to be, or how to be made, great." And maybe, just maybe, that humility was what helped him say yes when the question came to him.

Thus, St. Charles Stuart, King and Martyr, lives on and reminds us that even though we are imperfect, we are still capable of saying yes to God.

Storytelling and Worship

Today I was working on the bulletins for the Candlemas service for Christ Church on February 2^. Candlemas celebrates the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. As I was placing the Gospel reading into the bulletin, something dawned on me. When I was reading the story of the infant Jesus in the arms of the Simeon in the temple, and his proclamation of “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word; for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people, To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel,” I pictured in my head an elderly man, holding the infant, and seeing the baby’s story unfold before his eyes, and being at peace with the end of his story. It is all very human, so simple, so mundane, and yet so profound—the Son of God, in the form of a man, being held lovingly like any other child in the world.

It has been almost a year since I started attending services at Episcopal Churches, and in that time I have started to understand the Liturgy. Within it is something so profound and yet beyond comprehension. And though I had the Liturgy as a part of my life while growing up Roman Catholic, it has only been recently that I seen what it means to “worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness” and how we are called to “offer and present unto thee, O Lord, our selves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee.”

I studied history while in college, and in it I learned of the many ways to view history. One particular methodology that I have adopted in my writing is the narrative school. Stories have power, we respond to stories, we tell stories, and indeed we communicate our stories in everything we do. I believe at the heart of Christianity is storytelling. The Bible is a collection of stories, Jesus taught oftentimes in parables, and the heart of evangelism is storytelling. And that is what the Liturgy is, it is a story: it is the story of God, of humanity, of us—both our individual stories and collective stories. It begins with the sharing of stories of what once was and moves to what is where it reaches its climax in the sacrament of the Eucharist where we not only tell the story of Christ’s death and resurrection, but also call upon God to transform simple bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ. The story ends by pointing us to the future and tells us where we are going. And then, should the Last Gospel be read, the entire Liturgy arcs back to the very creation of the Earth, and the story starts anew, again, again, and again. Every Mass, every Liturgy calls us through the narrative to partake in God’s redemptive work by drawing us to the altar, to God’s table, to experience the wonder of the Holy Sacrament.

All that we do, all that we are called to be, and all that we hope for begins and flows from the altar like a river from its glacial source in the mountains. As it flows, it nourishes everything it touches on the mountain. And from there, it flows out to the world.

I think at the heart of being Catholic is the melding together of our individual story into a collective story. In that call to the altar, we are not only encountering God, we are called to be with one another. All people, and all their stories are welcome to meld and merge and become the great story of God that continues to flow in the world and replenishes, renews, and restores this world.

10 Years after, reflections of 9/11

The wheel of time turns, all things begin, and all things end. To the end of the beginning we return, and when we look back, what have we learned.

What lessons have we learned, are we better for it?

When 9/11 happened, I was staying home ill. Early in the morning, I received a phone call from my Dad, he was in Hawai’i on a business trip (this was when I was still living in California) he asked to speak to my Mom, and when I told him she was still asleep, he told me to wake her up. I awoke my Mother, handed her the phone, and began to walk away. She snapped awake with the news that had happened. For the rest of the day, the television was on with news about the coverage of the attacks, the fall of the Twin Towers, the attack at the Pentagon, and Flight 93. These events have now been scarred into the National consciousness. For America, the world would be a different place.

A time for mourning, a time of sorrow, and a time to grieve.

For a time, there was a sense of national unity, a coming together in our common grief. But even in the first few days of the attack, the voices of wrath began to emerge:

“The nation has been invaded by a fanatical, murderous cult. And we welcome them. We are so good and so pure we would never engage in discriminatory racial or ‘religious’ profiling. People who want our country destroyed live here, work for our airlines, and are submitted to the exact same airport shakedown as a lumberman from Idaho. This would be like having the Wehrmacht immigrate to America and work for our airlines during World War II. Except the Wehrmacht was not so bloodthirsty…Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.”

When this was uttered on September 13, 2001, few knew the implications of such a statement. Soon after, we went to war, first in Afghanistan, and then Iraq. The Afghan war expanded into Pakistan, we have bombed Yemen, and there has been seemingly unending rumors of the possibility of war with Iran. We set up prisons for “enemy combatants” in Guantanamo Bay and in Europe, and we shipped other “enemy combatants” to other countries to be interrogated with “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Muslims in America have had violence done against them. All the while, people on various points of the political spectrum invoke 9/11 in some way or another to justify a policy.

The violence began.

Often I have heard that we are a Christian Nation. What does that mean? Do we forgive others, give help to the poor, comfort the lonely, visit prisoners, feeding the hungry, and loving one another. A Christian Nation ought to be a reflection of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s realm. But we actually do very little of that, for ourselves, and for each other. It doesn’t happen at the local, state, or national level either. Can we love our enemies, can we forgive the wrong wrought on us, can we pray for those who hurt us, can we love one another, can we recognize that each person is a child of God, can we see someone who isn’t like us and behold them as our brother and sister, can we work towards justice and peace without dropping a single bomb, firing a bullet, or using violence, and can we make Heaven a place on Earth and usher in a new creation? If we do this, then we can move forward into the future knowing that the memory of those who have died, not only on 9/11 but all those who have died in response to it, friend and foe alike, has not been tarnished by wrath and fear. Someone far wiser than I said this:

“Anger and wrath, these also are abominations, yet a sinner holds on to them. The vengeful will face the Lord’s vengeance, for he keeps a strict account of their sins. Forgive your neighbor the wrong he has done, and then your sins will be pardoned when you pray. Does anyone harbor anger against another, and expect healing from the Lord? If someone has no mercy towards another like himself, can he then seek pardon for his own sins? If a mere mortal harbors wrath, who will make an atoning sacrifice for his sins? Remember the end of your life, and set enmity aside; remember corruption and death, and be true to the commandments. Remember the commandments, and do not be angry with your neighbor; remember the covenant of the Most High, and overlook faults.” (Ecclesiasticus 27:30-28:7)

Let us be united in love, and move forth in forgiveness. Let us remember our sorrows, our pain, and our loss, and use those memories to fulfill the highest call possible, forgiveness and reconciliation. Can we love our enemies as ourselves? Can we love one another? All of this is truly possible if we forgive others.

New Haven Beginnings

Arrival

So I have been here in New Haven, CT for a few days. I got here after a long day of travel on 13 August. Though I was exhausted, I continued through the day, and got to meet and spend time with some really awesome people. We are slowly bonding and getting to know one another. We are in the midst of orientation, and it has been hectic and fun.

During the school year, I applied to the Episcopal Service Corps, an urban ministry program run by the Episcopal Church. I was accepted into New Haven and have been appointed as the intern at Christ Church in New Haven, CT.

The purpose of this blog will be for me to post reflections and thoughts that I have regarding life in New Haven. There is much on my mind, but I wanted to get this blog rolling. Life here is going well. I will talk soon about Christ Church, and its eccentricities.