Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 31-32 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 29)

Isaiah 31 – Those who go down to Egypt to seek help there and build their hope “on cavalry” will be in trouble. “The Egyptian is a man, not a god, his horses are flesh, not spirit” (31:3). Eventually, “Assyria will fall by a sword that is not man’s, will be devoured by a sword that is more than human” (31:8).

Isaiah 32 – Kings “reign by integrity and princes rule by law” (32:1).  They are like shelters, like “shade of a great rock in a thirsty land” (32:2). A time of happiness will come.

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 29

Sacramental spirituality, in my estimation, is based on a better understanding of our human nature and ultimately on a better understanding of the wisdom of Scripture. It reflects the reality that we are part of the creation; that our comprehension of God is mixed up in a complex and mysterious way with the physical world that we are grounded in. We enter the dimension of spirit through physical doors. It is from behind these doors that our creator calls to us. We tap around these doors like blind men looking for him. It is our nature to tap and explore around them, God’s grace working in us. If we are responsive to his call and persist in our seeking, the doors will start to open, revealing the deep truths that lie behind them, truths that give human life its meaning. At such moments we may be tempted to relegate the doors we passed through to something not so vital, to something that blocked or obscured the truths we now see more fully or more inwardly; but the doors we pass through are an essential part of the process of discovery. The sacraments are doors like this. They are physical but not solely physical. They are vehicles of that grace from God, who invites us to come through them to him.

Is it possible for us to get caught up in the outward appearances and to forget that the doors must be gone through? I think it is. This is one of the dangers sacramental spirituality entails, but it is a danger we cannot obviate by doing away with sacraments. The shepherds who understand the power behind each door must take very seriously the task of keeping the sheep from thinking that the door is the ultimate goal. It is the proper place of the prophet to badger both sheep and shepherds, to scold them and maybe even sometimes threaten them so that they remain awake and moving spiritually. Life is short, and the rewards of coming through the door are much too great to give up on people.

The other question we must ask is this: Is what lies beyond the door always exactly the same for every person who enters? If I experience my foretaste of God’s kingdom as an intense intellectual pleasure at seeing the many parts of God’s plan finding their fulfillment in Christ or in experiencing an almost excruciating sense of God’s healing and redeeming love for his creation, or if I experience it in seeing my moral life transformed—not to perfection, but to a much higher state than my own will and my own understanding were ever able to effect in me—these are my experiences of God’s saving power. Other people may experience God’s reign over their lives differently. They may feel an overwhelming love and desire to emulate the life of Jesus without knowing much about how he fulfilled the promises made throughout the earlier stages of God’s work in the shaping of the Jewish people. They may not have the capacity or the inclination to understand anything about doctrine or sacramentalism, and yet be filled with a kindness that has been shaped by God’s love in a way I cannot understand. We ought not to have too narrow a sense of how God’s saving power and love might be experienced by a person.

Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 30 and My Own Book "Leadings: A Catholic's Journey Through Quakerism" (Part 28)

Isaiah 30 – Isaiah speaks out against the efforts of those who are looking to Egypt to help them. “Pharaoh’s protection will be your shame” (30:3). God instructs the prophet to inscribe this oracle on a tablet so “in the time to come it may serve as a witness for ever” (30:8). “Since you . . . prefer to trust in wile and guile . . . your guilt will prove to be for you a breach on the point of collapse” (30:13). “Your salvation lay in conversion and tranquility, your strength, in complete trust; and you would have none of it” (30:15).

Yahweh assures them that He is “waiting to be gracious to you, to rise and take pity on you, for Yahweh is a just God” (30:18). Prosperity will come and the Lord will comfort you. “He will be gracious to you when he hears your cry; when he hears he will answer. When the Lord has given you the bread of suffering and the water of distress, he who is your teacher will hide no longer, and you will see your teacher with your own eyes” (30:20). You will hear his voice saying, “This is the way, follow it” (30:21).

From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through Quakerism

Part 28

Skipping back a ways – I went over all of the particular Quaker Testimonies I found appealing and had gotten to the part where I felt called to return to the Catholic Church. Then I realized I hadn’t explained why I had ever joined the church the first time in 1964. So now I have gone over that and then why I fell away and what is was that drew me to Quakers in the early 80s. I joined the Religious Society of Friends in 1982 and was an active Friend until the late around 1990. Then I felt myself called back – not because I was disenchanted with Friends so much as that I thought I need both.

First the similarities I found in Catholicism and Quakerism: Both the Catholic church and earthly Quakers believed that Christ was and is really and completely present in his Church and among his people. He promised us that he would be “with us always, even until the very end of time” (Matt. 28:20), and he has kept his promise. For Friends, however, the Christ we can know and be joined with is only Spirit; but for Catholics he is also miraculously and mysteriously present in the sacramental dimension of the Church’s existence—in the bread that is broken at Mass, in the priests who break the bread, in the Holy Father who tends the sheep and encourages the brethren, and in many other ways. I do not see why one necessarily excludes the other. Perhaps I am just not an “either/or” sort of person, but instead a “both/and” sort. This is the richness of the Trinitarian God we worship. He is Creator God, Christ, and Spirit, and each is an opening into the other, so there is no reason why he should be present to us only inwardly or only in sacrament or only in and through nature. He is in all of these. He is before us, beyond us, in us, in our church, in the bread he breaks for us, in the love he manifests to us in all these things. And when we join ourselves to him, we see him everywhere—in all these things and others besides.

His gift of himself in our communion bread is a very corporate presence; his gift of himself to us in our minds and hearts is very individual and personal. The relationship between inward and outward is infinitely complex—the outward stimulating and shaping the inward, the inward recognizing and infusing the outward with power far beyond what is there alone. If we were angels—beings whose essential nature was not tied to the physical creation but were in some way we cannot imagine purely spiritual—then perhaps the substance of the gospel could be that spiritual, “unclothed” essence some modern Friends take it to be, not bound up with time, history, concrete physical reality. But we are not angels. Our essential nature is bound to physicality, time, history, concrete, mediating forms that are our ways into the world of spirit. When we try to pretend we are like angels, that we don’t “need” outward things to mediate spiritual truth, we pull away from truth, come unmoored from the forms through which we came to the measure of truth were capable of possessing.

Job 40-42 and Epistle of Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans 8-10

Job 40 – Now God asks Job for some reply. And Job is brought low. “See, I am of small worth; what can I answer You? I clap my hand to my mouth” (40:4).

And God responds to him: “Gird your loins like a man; I will ask, and you will inform Me. Will you prove me in the wrong? Will you condemn me that you may be justified? Have you an arm like God, and can you thunder with a voice like his?” (40:7-9).

The powers of man are second only to those of God. He can grow food, keep the brook from rushing and rest in the shade of plants.

Job 41 – God continues – So if you cannot tame Leviathan, how can you stand up against God. The strengths of Leviathan are reviewed at length.

Job 42 – Job then replies to his God. “I know that You can do everything, that nothing you propose is impossible for You. . . . I spoke without understanding” (42:2-3).  But the main thing is now Job can say, “I see you with my eyes; therefore, I recant and relent, being but dust and ashes” (42:5-6).

After Job relents, the Lord expresses His anger at the three “friends” and tells them they must offer sacrifice. God’s anger against Job is gone, and He restores Job’s prosperity – gives him “twice” what he had before.

 “So Job died old and contented” (42:17).

Ignatius to the Smyrnaeans

8 – Ignatius urges everyone to “[a]bjure all factions, for they are the beginning of evils” (103). Maintain unity by following your bishop “as Jesus Christ followed the Father” (103). “Make sure that no step affecting the church is ever taken by anyone without the bishop’s sanction” (103).

They should not go to a Eucharistic celebration if it is not led by a bishop or a person authorized by him. “Where the bishop is to be seen, there let all his people be; just as wherever Jesus Christ is present, we have the catholic Church” (103).

All the celebrations of the church – baptisms and agape meals – must have the sanction of the bishop. “This is the way to make certain of the soundness and validity of anything you do” (103).

9 – Ignatius prays that it is not to late to get things back in order. It all seems to him to depend on submitting in all things to the bishops.

He thanks them for their support of him. “Absent or present, I have had your love; and may God reward you for it. Do but endure all things for His sake, and you will attain to Him in the end” (103).

10 – He praises them for welcoming the men who have been accompanying him (Ignatius) on his trip to Rome. “My life is a humble offering for you; and so are these chains of mine, for which you never showed the least contempt or shame. Neither will Jesus Christ in His perfect loyalty show Himself ashamed of you” (103).