The one correction in the introduction, I saw most of you doing the math. 1951 was the founding and the anniversary was 2001. Although I've been a little young to have been here in 51, although my interests in theological were already emerging by then. I'd like to thank Father Martin for the opportunity to return to my Savior. And I'm particularly grateful for the opportunity to speak on the occasion of an event which is named for Father Damasis. I knew Phi Thetanis' name for many years from my earliest interest in liturgical studies, which took me back really to my college days. So it's a privilege to be associated with this particular event.

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My title is Faith and Worship. I'd like to begin this presentation on personal note. if you'll indulge me for a moment. Sixty-five years ago on this date, May 6th, I received my first communion. I was six. The white letter triptych certificate I received from Senior Richard Kelly that Sunday morning declared in embossed gold letters that May 6, 1942 was the heaviest day of my life. The declaration puzzled me. I didn't really understand it because I hadn't had my life yet. But on that day, a grad scheme of earlier, I began a precocious yet lifelong quest to grow in faith and understanding and to worship in spirit and truth.

[02:10]

That leatherette memorial of my first reading sat on my dresser, its message confronting me daily until I went away to college. The questions that it raised for me in its claim about happiness is probably the seeds of my Benedict invocation and my life's work on theological reflection on sacraments and liturgy. In short, I've taken faith and worship with the utmost seriousness all my life. In all my life, I have resonated most readily with those believers and worshipers whose life-giving faith finds its truest expression in the absurd and the ironic. Faith is not faith if there's nothing incomprehensible, if there's nothing but what seems solid and rational. After the certain language of the Catechism, with its doctrines and creeds, there comes the full absurdity of believing it.

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After the assuring and reasonable words of the Church's most revered pastors and theologians, there comes the religious imagination and the incoherence of Christian mystics' writings. Katharine O'Connor wrote absurd stories, daring her readers to believe that God's redeeming grace flows across the world extravagantly and indiscriminately. The apostle Paul dared to speak absurdly about a God whose behavior was foolish, foolish enough to become like one of us. And Paul paid the price for his absurd faith. Salvadorian Archbishop Oscar Romero, too, played the fool, telling soldiers to lay down their guns to honor and obey the living God. The Archbishop there no better than Paul. So if we come then to our topic, faith and worship, I'm going to propose that you cling to, and must cling to seriously, two bits of observed Catholic faith.

[04:30]

If you wish to put full faith in the message of Easter and to worship in the Catholic tradition. First, dare to believe that Jesus is raised from the dead and still lives among us here on planet earth, here in New York state and out in Kansas too. That defies reasonable scientific thinking. Second, believe that all who are baptized into Christ are together becoming the body of Christ until that body has grown to full stature. That too violates common sense. Yet these are the matters I want to speak about, strange though these claims might seem when we are wearing our practical 21st century Christian bonnets. My point is not that our current generation... I'm getting a little bit of a huff.

[05:38]

Are you getting a huff? Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of a huff. I'm getting a little bit of a huff. Are you getting a huff? Yeah, I'm getting a little bit of a huff. [...] I'm getting a little bit of a huff My point is not that our current generation can't state the doctrines of the church. That may be the case, but I think rather I'd like to cite the poet T.S. Eliot, which says that we have learned the words, but we miss the meaning. I wanted to focus on baptism because baptism is, in my judgment, the most undervalued of the sacraments of the church in the 21st century. Forty years ago, the bishops of the Second Vatican Council set out to revalue the sacrament, which is the start of Christian life.

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They did so in several ways. First, they organized the Constitution on the church so that the doctrinal chapter on the church as the people of God, the community of the baptized, came before the chapter on the ordained. The editorial ordering affirm the church's belief that what church members have in common, our baptism into Christ, is prior to the things that distinguish us from one another. It is from the communities of the baptized the candidates for ordination are selected. And it is the communities of the baptized, local parishes, who give potential priests their first Christian formation, years before they cross the threshold in the synod. The Constitution reinforces the point about the centrality of baptism in chapter 6, chapters 3, 4, and 5.

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address in turn the ecclesial roles of the, and the responsibilities of the ordained. They talk about the identity and mission of the laity, and then the charisms of religious communities. But chapter six comes back to that notion of what we have in common, the universal call to holiness. Again, underscoring the point that what we have in common is of greater significance than what distinguishes us in our ecclesial roles. The conciliar emphasis on baptism was reinforced by the conciliar decision to restore the adult catechumenate so that newcomers to the people of God might experience Christian formation within the community of believers, that they might learn to pray within the church and to live according to the pattern of Jesus and his faithful disciples living in their own towns and neighborhoods. Now, Simple practical situation is that 40 years after the restoration of the adult Catholic community, the majority of Catholics in the United States are still baptized as infants and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

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But in some ways, that remains a mixed blessing, since it reinforces our adult Catholic thinking that baptism is somehow a sacrament for babes. Although the council sought to revalue baptism and to reaffirm the ecclesial identity of the laity, that revaluation is currently somewhat sold. We can lament the opportunity missed or perhaps see it as an opportunity squandered. We might even try to decide what's to blame or who's to blame for the situation. But I choose to reflect here on the possibility that we as baptized believers might yet come to a reevaluation of baptism in the name of Jesus and to wonder at the transforming implications of being washed in the spirit in the water. To speak of baptism, we must first look to faith in the church concerning the resurrection of Jesus.

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So that is the first of what I call incredible beliefs, an unbelievable belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus from the dead. This is the bedrock of the church. It is a belief that has generated centuries of scorn and ridicule for those who insist it's true. According to the Acts of the Apostles, when the Apostle Paul proclaimed the bodily resurrection of Jesus in Athens, He got a polite brush-off. Speaking of the Athenians, you remember Luther, when they heard of the resurrection, they scoffed at him. But others said, we will hear you again about this. In the 21st century in North America, really believing in the resurrection of Jesus is just as likely to be scoffed at or politely dismissed. In our culture of secular cynicism, the full Catholic faith can be seen as ludicrous in the public forum.

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We can internalize the message that such belief is at least embarrassing. But belief in the resurrection of Jesus is a matter of faith. While something that can be proved to those without faith, yet the Church teaches that belief in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead is reasonable. no matter how puzzling the language associated with resurrection is. Why would this be? Our minds resist. We say, how can something escape all effort to prove it, but yet be reasonable to believe? There is a way forward, and that is to put our trust, to trust ourselves, to the living traditions of faith and practice in the community of believers. You may recall from your school days, how the 17th century mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, made his wager of faith, reasoning that he had everything to gain by trusting in the God of Jesus Christ, and nothing to lose, really, if he lost the wager.

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Catholic biblical theologian Luke Timothy Johnston suggests a comparable wager is being made by each generation that learns Jesus by trusting itself to the tradition of living faith. It is only by standing fully within the tradition of an active and believing community that the mystery of resurrection can be known and trusted. How fortunate are those inquirers and those doubters will have the witness of the Indian communities to support them. Another personal side. At age 14, my questioning self began to think that the whole of the Catholic faith just might be a hoax. That seemed a not unreasonable possibility, although I wasn't quite ready to decide against faith. Still, on more than one dark morning, I stood at the city bus stop in Chicago en route to my Catholic girls' high school, wondering about the whole sector.

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Neither at school nor at home did I ever voice these doubts. Lest they be misunderstood and I be chastised, I kept my thoughts to myself. What finally resolved my adolescent uncertainty was more sociological than theological. With the intellectual acumen of 14 years, I decided it was an impossibility that millions and millions of saints and ordinary church goers over so many centuries could all have been duped. So there had to be something to the story of Jesus and the church. But what? That was much less clear. Since my family and many of our neighbors didn't seem to be bothered, I was content to trust myself to dwell within the Lutheran tradition. Even though I was also, with the wisdom of 14 years, ready to judge my teachers, I suspected that they simply repeated what they had been told, without any greater comprehension or amenity.

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about the mystery of resurrection and its unfolding in the church. Fortunately, there always has been a surer way than sociological analysis to learn about the mystery of Jesus and the church's faith in resurrection and its dwelling among us. Rather than counting the broad number of church doors, as I had done, Catholic faith begins in wonder about what God is doing in the world. even in the universe, if you will. The earliest generations of believers who proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus paid attention to the power and presence of God in their lives. They were awed by their attraction to the bearers of good news. They wondered as they experienced unexpected personal transformation. What led them to faith, to hope, to gratitude, to worship in the name of Jesus.

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They recognize a power for transformation at work in and through them, a power not their own. Their post-resurrection experience of Jesus is the basis of the one Catholic faith that still lives and grows through worship and mission. How did they and how do we experience the resurrection of Jesus? Let's turn to the world of the evangelists to remember how this amazing faith in the resurrection took shape. In the Gospel of Mark, the three women at the tomb are told by an unidentified young man, Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there's the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee.

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You will see him there, just as he told you. Look for the risen Jesus back in Galilee. Why not? Galilee was home to many of the first disciples, the place where there were still sick to be healed, sinners forgiven, prisoners freed, the poor to be served. The gospel of Mark locates the resurrected Christ's presence just where he had been as long as they had known him in the middle of their ordinary human lives. Where else would he be? Now, it is equally written that the risen and glorified Christ Jesus, the very one who had gone ahead to Galilee, had returned to his idol. The tradition proclaims it clearly. We have loose account in the Acts of the Apostles of the ascension of Jesus, a narrative testifying to Jesus' departure from the mundane existence he had shared with his disciples.

[18:03]

The scene, Jesus ascending in clouds of glory, has been painted dramatically on great canvases now hanging in world-renowned art museums for our viewing. Yet to latch onto that image alone, as if Jesus heavenly dwelling was the full extent of the story, is to miss the heart of the living faith in the Church. Fortunately, we don't have to choose between which of these accounts tells us the truth, waiting for us in Galilee or sitting beside the throne of God. The first believers accepted each affirmation as part of the one revelation that Jesus is alive, risen, glorified. Jesus was no longer with them as they had known him. He was truly present within the mystery of the Trinitarian communion with the Father and the Holy Spirit. as God's right hand, to use the scriptural metaphor for the royal throne. And yet the risen Christ was present.

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He appeared, they said, in his resurrection body in Galilee. He appeared also in Jerusalem, in Damascus, Corinth, and Rome. How could this definitive hearing be? except that his Holy Spirit had been poured out on those communities of believers whom he had chosen to continue his mission. What the Apostolic Generation discovered about themselves must be the discovery of every generation of worshiping believers. Luke Timothy Johnson states, in fact, in seven simple words, the church is the resurrected Lord's body. Thank you. Johnson continues, for reasons unknown to us, the Risen Lord has chosen this inadequate, frail, and all too fallible body as its most visible and sustained mode of presence in the church, in the world, I'm sorry.

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For reasons unknown to us, the Risen Lord has chosen this inadequate, frail, and all too fallible body as its most visible and sustained emotive presence in the world. We can all tell stories of Jesus' failures. I'm sorry. We can tell stories of the Church's failures from now until dawn tomorrow. We all know the dark side of the Church. The church's public face, it's often bruised and bloody, unseemly to look at, an embarrassment at times to those of us who want to be admired. Yet the church is truly the resurrected body. Believe it. If Pascal thought this was a safe bet, God continues to play the greater odds. Imagine God the gambler. putting all his chips on communities of baptized believers, betting that we can and will follow Christ, will participate in and complete his mission for the life of the world.

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Yet of God's extravagant love for the human race, the Holy Spirit of Jesus has been given to all who are baptized and is known unto his death so that we might continue his mission in the world. Why then do we often find loose narrative of the ascension of the risen Christ on clouds of glory, preferable to Mark's words about finding Jesus in Galilee, when we think about where Jesus is right now? Why are so many of us a bit more comfortable with the idea of the bodily absence of the risen Christ Jesus, at least until the second coming? Why didn't we affirm the real physical presence of Christ in the sacrament of the altar and hold back faith in the sacrament that is the church? Why is absence preferable to the revelation that Christ truly lives now in the church and it courses through human history?

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Both doctrines are absurd in the common sense world, but the revelation of God made in Jesus Christ calls us beyond common sense to awareness of mystery. What reasonable modern person can make sense of any of this? Consider the poem John Updike had several decades ago. We know John I. Guy primarily as a novelist, but at some point in his past, he was conscripted to write a poem for a local religious arts festival in New England. The poem is a good try at making a reasonable sense of the resurrection. Unfortunately, the poem gets the resurrection wrong, theologically. even though it is reported that Updike won $100 for a festive show for his son. What the poet describes is a scientifically credible resuscitation of a corpse.

[23:36]

But resuscitation is not the Apostolic faith about the risen Christ, nor is it faithful to the 2,000-year-old witness of his resurrection in the church. Let me read from the poem, Seven Stanzas at Easter. I typed in that not too long ago and found it on a website very easily. Somebody has posted it this past Easter. So if you're looking for Seven Stanzas at Easter, you can find the whole poem. The poem begins. Make no mistake. If he arose at all, it was as his body. If the cells dissolution did not reverse, if the molecules remit, the amino acids rekindle, the church will fall. It was not as the flowers each softened refined. It was not as through spirit in the mouths and fertilized in the 11 apostles.

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It was as if splashed hours. The same hinged thumbs and toes The same valved heart that pierced, died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring light, new strength to enclose. And it's not Bob Guy's metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendent. I just walked through the door. The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché, not a stone in a story. And if we will have an angel to tune, make it a real angel, real then spun on a definite mood. Let us not seek to make it less monstrous for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty. Lest awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle and crushed by the monstrance.

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So 7th Stands at Easter excerpted. Unfortunately, while the poem engages our imagination, actually it's one of my favorite poems. I like to read it often. Its goal is to make the bodily resurrection make sense. The poem's message is not the good news on which the church is grounded. We are not believers in Jesus' resuscitation. To paraphrase the poet himself, make no mistake, if all that happened was that the cells of dissolution reversed, the molecules remixed, and the amino acids rekindled, if all that happened was the resuscitation of the corpse, then the church is that hoax I worried about when I was a schoolgirl of 15 or 14. Turning the church's faith in the bodily resurrection of Christ down to a side that fits our common sense has been an occupation of Christians really from the beginning.

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The church at Corinth in the decade of the 50s had anticipated the 21st century churchgoer's desire to make faith in the bodily resurrection more sensible. After Paul had proclaimed to the Corinthians that Christ had been raised from the dead and called Christ the firstfruits of those who have died, he noted, someone will ask, how are the dead raised? What kind of body do they come from? What kind of body do they have? I have empathy for the Corinthians confused by Paul's teaching. I long found that the Paul of 1 Corinthians 15 was evasive, where he wrote of heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, noting that the glory of the heavenly body is one thing and that of the earthly is another. The Corinthians and we might not have been so confused if they and we paid better attention to what Paul had said in chapter 12 of his letter to them.

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Like the Corinthians, like John of Dyke, I had long wanted Paul to huff the chase. I wanted to know just exactly what the resurrected body of the Lord looked like. Yet earlier in that same letter, Paul had been as concrete as he could be about the bodily presence of Christ, the risen Christ, in the Trinity Quorum. He told the Corinthians in no uncertain terms that they were the body of Christ and individually members of it. In that context, Clawton also chided them for betraying their faith in Christ's resurrection. How had they betrayed faith? He pointed to their habit of celebrating the Lord's Supper in divisive ways. They were not online. When you come together, wait for one another. If you're hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation. Their failure to honor the body of Christ in the gathered assembly of the baptized was a failure to recognize the mystery of the church, was a failure to honor the one who is head of the living body, Jesus Christ.

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You might think, well, that was back in Corinth. They didn't understand. This is modern or postmodern America. And we might wonder who can be expected to believe that he appears. That is the reason Christ is present whenever the church was visible and openly worshiping in the way of Jesus. Well, we can and must believe this or the church will fall. Not because of scandals, but because of our lack of faith in God's plan for the world's healing and our failure to believe in our baptisms. perhaps the greater scandal than the scandals we have been living through. It's the scandal we're not really leading the message of our baptisms. The apostolic generation came to believe their own mystery solely. Solely they found evidence in their concrete experience that Jesus was alive among them.

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In the community called church, for example, Peter became a different person. Courageous, more docile, more humble, more open to new possibility, more ready to suffer for the truth. The early disciples' experience of their transformed lives needed interpretation. Just what was going on? Their answer was a response of faith to the mystery of resurrection. Either the living and life-giving Jesus was embodied in this community of disciples who were being filled with his spirit, or he is not risen at all. They came to recognize the incredible truth that they were his body, the only body he would have on earth until he comes again in glory. If the church came into existence as a post-resurrection people who are to be the body of Christ on earth, it's time to speak directly about baptism and the continuing process of making Christians generation after generation.

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An anecdote can illustrate the matter. Last weekend, five men and women became new oblates at my monastery. short autobiographies with photos appeared on a community board a week earlier. One candidate's autobiography began with a simple sentence, I was born a Catholic. Those of you who know your Tertullian might be registering his objection even at this moment. Tertullian reminded the church in the third century Christians are made, not born. Someone might be born a Jew according to the provisions of the law. Someone might be born with Chippewa or Cherokee tribe blood. But becoming Christian is another matter. Being made Christian is a slow process. But one open to those born into any and every cultural or religious identity, provided only that they wish to learn Jesus.

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Who makes Christians? God does. He does so through the Church in a way that is part of mystery. An admirer of Tertullian, the great priest-theologian Adolf H. R. Fischer, who taught at the Theological Institute in Trier in Germany, was famous for saying to his graduate students, Sheep make sheep. Shepherds don't make sheep. Brother Pierre, probably, for the rest of the time, has been a very prolific appearance of new sheep, and he didn't make them. Sheep make sheep. Shepherds don't make sheep. Fisher's point was that the shepherd's pastoral role is to guide and protect the flock, but increase comes through the flock. is the people's task to keep alive in their communities the parent of the wife of Jesus.

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Only the rich and varied living witness of baptized believers, the witness of the merciful, of the gentle, of the fiery prophets, only that witness has the power to draw the once born to be born again. The conversion stories of centuries repeat the point again and again. Believers who live from faith generate more believers. Monastics know the story of Poconius, the father of Senebitic or communal monastic life in Egypt. As a young man, Poconius was conscripted into the Roman army, a child soldier of sorts. The army was on a long horse march and had to provide for itself as it went. And so it raided and pillaged. The wife of Procopius reports he was profoundly touched one day when villagers came out voluntarily to offer provisions to the marchers.

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He asked someone, what made them do that? He was told, we are Christians. as though that were an obvious reason for their feeding arching soldiers. Years later, struck by the remembered witness of the shared meal, the coleus was baptized into Christ and became a Christian, a monk, and founder of communities of monks. Christian initiation follows the pattern of the baptism of Jesus. Jesus' baptism was not by water only, not a simple river bath. The Apostolic community testified to us that Jesus was bathed in the Spirit of God on that day and is being washed by the Spirit and the water, set him free to begin his mission. For us, it's a public event that publicly introduces God's chosen into the Christian flock.

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Christians are made just one way, through the spirit, the water, and the blood. The church initiates its Christian making activity, remembering and enacting the mystery of what happened at the baptism of Jesus. As babies, we ourselves did not recognize the pattern. Yet at every baptism, those who were once without faith are publicly adopted as God's children in the pattern of Jesus, the firstborn and only begotten son. Whenever a pastor has poured water over an infant, whether many years ago or just last Sunday, the Holy Spirit has breathed new life upon the infant to the life-giving breath of the gathered church. This happens every time, even when no more than two or three are gathered in Jesus' name. And the order of two is sparse. What the apostolic generation came to understand was how much had been revealed to them after the baptism of Jesus.

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In the simple New Testament accounts, the Gospel accounts of the baptism of Jesus. It was the Holy Spirit given to them as advocate to teach them all truth who showed them the mystery of what had happened and what was happening in their own lives. The church began to speak of the baptism of Jesus in terms of relationships publicly revealed. Identity deepened and a sense of life's purpose clarified. First, relationships. In the very brief accounts of the baptism of Jesus in the New Testament, key relationships were uncovered. In the earliest theologies of the Eastern Church, the baptism of Jesus came to be understood as the occasion upon which, or the occasion when, the divine nature of the Holy Spirit was revealed.

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That mysterious spirit had been reported all through the Old Testament empowering biblical prophets and kings. The Eastern Church saw in the narrative of Jesus' baptism a revelation of the divine nature of the Holy Spirit. The churches of the East also came to understand that with the disclosure of the divine nature of the Holy Spirit on Jordan's banks. The mystery of the Trinity, God as Trinitarian communion, was first fully unveiled. Jesus, truly human and truly divine, lived within the mysterious communion of his Abba and the Holy Spirit, and these relationships grounded his identity. These same relationships garner support and sustain the lives of all the baptized. Concerning identity, it cannot be surprising that Jesus drew his identity from the relationships just named.

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After the baptism, Jesus' sense of sonship led him again and again into solitude. All the Gospels bear witness to this. When the disciples went looking for him, he was often found praying to God, whom he called Abba, with greater and greater ease. In the intimacy of that relationship, Jesus came to understand what it would mean to be God's beloved. In the intimacy of that relationship, Jesus came to know what he was called to be and to do. In the intimacy of our own union with God, we too can hope to find our way. So we are brought to the question of the witness, not only of the water and the spirit, but also to the witness of the blood. The witness that completes the triad of the spirit, the water, and the blood, of which we read in the Golanite literature.

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Another anecdote. A neighbor's grandchild was named Christine. He attended Catholic school. One of our sisters taught music to his class. As they were learning lyrics for a communion hymn, the seven-year-old Christian rose from his seat and he came forward. And you have to whisper something. So sister leaned down and he whispered in her ear, Don't say blood when I'm around. It scares me. Isn't it wonderful? Doesn't everyone named Christian find themselves scared by the prospect of facing George Washington on the way home? Don't say blood around me. It scares me. He was certainly not the first or the last Christian to have fear of the blood.

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Even Jesus at Gethsemane was anguished at the prospect of his dying death. Yet being made a Christian, taking up a life in the pattern of Jesus, requires that we face the One. The joy is essential to the mystery of the Church of the Body of the Risen and Glorified Christ. The pattern of life in Jesus engulfs and embraces however reluctant of pain and suffering, of diminishment and death, as part of the package of being human and the beloved of God. The doctrine of the Church of the Second Vatican Council expressed this conviction about the witness of the blood most forcefully in the liturgical provision made for the restoration of the Eucharistic cup to all baptized. In 1969, the General Instruction on the Long Missile passage were told, the sign of communion is law-complete when given under both kinds.

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In that form, the sign of the Eucharistic meal appears more clearly. The intention of Christ that the new and eternal covenant be ratified in his life is better expressed in this way. as to the relation of the Eucharistic banquet to the heavenly banquet. Each subsequent edition of the General Instruction edited several times has affirmed the point of the sacramental significance of the Eucharistic cup. One commentary on developments in the General Instruction from 1969 to 2002 calls it noteworthy that the latest addition on the rise as the priest of something that had not been in any earlier editions to hold the host over the chalice as he invites the assembly. Previously, only the host was held up to the invitation. The provision is now that both the host and the cup are held up to the invitation. The biblically literate or well catechized can recognize in that gesture of the raised chalice the question Jesus asked to his still romantic disciples James and John.

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We read in the Gospel of Mark, they said to him, grant of us to sit one at your right hand and one at your left in your glory. But Jesus said to them, you do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup? while I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism I am to be baptized with?" They replied, we are able. Then Jesus said to them, the cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism of which I am baptized, you will be baptized. To take the cup of the new covenant is to overlook the suffering that life affords us as finite and mortal humans. In the Gospels, according to Matthew, we read, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass me. Not what I want, but what you want. We are called to be open to the suffering that is in our lives.

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We don't have to like it. Empty your hands, be open. The churches of the East Asian go regularly give the kapha on the occasion of baptism, even baptism of infants, and to infants and children as well as adults in the regular celebration of the liturgy. In doing so, they mean to honor the Lord's mandate to take and eat, take and drink, for this is my body, broken for you, my blood shed for you, the blood of the covenant. The Catholic Church of the West invited adults to drink the cup for 1,200 years before the practice declined and was then prohibited and now has only recently been restored. The liturgical pattern for the making of a Christian is people of God becoming the body of Christ through the Spirit, the water, and the blood. These three are witnesses to the relationships of the core of our identity and our mission as Church. When the Church makes Christians, the initiation process culminates not only in First Eucharist, First Communion, but in a lifetime of Sundays and sometimes even daily Eucharistic celebrations with the gathered community of believers, listening, praying, and then being sent.

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In regular Eucharistic worship, the Church publicly proclaims and celebrates the divine and divine human communion revealed in the baptism of Jesus. In Eucharistic worship, the Church publicly reclaims its deepest identity as the people of God becoming the body of Christ. The church withdraws for a while from the public marketplace, going apart from the din of the crowd to listen to the Holy Spirit and to pray in Jesus' name. Before it moves out to all the galleries everywhere to be good news for others and to proclaim the good news to them. Does this kind of faith seem too mystifying for 21st century Americans? Interestingly, the media are reporting this spring, and we'll see stories in the areas. It's almost as though, I don't know whether they're contagion or fever, but the media are reporting on the revival of belief on high school and college campuses in the spring of 2007.

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But as you read, you may find yourself wondering, well, what is it? that is the belief that is being stirred on the campuses. If those of us who grew up before it set in bed in council and those of us who lived through the council in its wake squander the tradition of living faith settled for less than the full faith of the church, if we find that the tradition of amazing grace is too much to deodor, we may be unwittingly cutting off the life breath on the young who are returning to faith or born into faith. Christians are made, not born. Catholic Christians breathe the breath of the Holy Spirit over one another, one generation to the next. So my hope is that we who are gathered at this monastery on May 6, 2007, dare to believe all we say.

[48:43]

My hope is that we dare to live within the mystery that we ourselves are the resurrected body of Christ on earth. Because the glorified Christ gives us his spirit. My hope is that we dare regularly to go aside to pray as Jesus did together with his disciples. For it is only when we distance ourselves from the den of the marketplace that we can hear what the Holy Spirit is saying to the church. Why focus that you dare to witness today and tomorrow to the truth Jesus is showing us about who we are, and by whom we are called and loved, and by whom we are sent to heal, to comfort, to encourage, and to love others into new life. Can you drink the cup that I drink? Don't say the word blood around me. It scares me. I was born Catholic. Christians are made to be born.

[49:45]

Thank you. Thank you very much. Does anyone have any questions? Observations or comments, also in order? You mentioned artistic expression, how over the years we've seen images of what the Renaissance people regarded as central idea of the resurrection.

[50:50]

And I'm just wondering how that fill of that sort of ideas and of the... how that can be done, a deeper understanding of the meaning of resurrection that you're dealing with. Artistic expression probably has a much more profound impact on us than, you know, text we read. And I think in some way that it's precisely because if it's a strong image and a good image, it is going to register. And our imaginations are powerful and they also are an important support for our coming to faith. But just as all of us have, in our minds and hearts, the image of the Last Supper, as though the da Vinci painting had been a true photo. And this is, we'll look at a lot of separate ones as well. I think that there are other images like that, that do that.

[51:51]

And I think that the, you know, the Resurrection and Ascension, they're powerful paintings and glorious paintings. But I, I think the point I was making, they only tell part of the story and we don't really see much art that is actually depicted, maybe because it's difficult to do, but depicted the reality of the power of the church as the body of Christ and the presence of Christ. And I think that because we haven't been fed by those kind of imaginary pictures, that even though you look at the text in the Doctrine of the Church, the words say it, but I think that that is not our ordinary common-sensory understanding. So I think that observation is good. Do you want to say anything more about it? No, I just thought you'd say that.

[52:53]

I don't think I'd go that direction, and the reason I wouldn't is because the church has been baptized from the beginning. But I think what probably does need to be, and this is going to be much harder to carry on, is the notion that those who are having infants baptized themselves really go through a process of reclaiming the meaning of the baptism of their children, and then take seriously, and need some helping, you know, taking seriously the responsibility of bringing that faith alive in their children. I remember at Lawrence Academy University, there was a sister from New Orleans who had finished teaching, she'd been a Hallmark teacher for years and so on, and she decided she wanted to change at the end of her life, and so she decided to come and study canon law. And after she started Canon Law, she came to the department which I chaired, and she asked, could she teach a course on Canon Law to undergraduates? And I'm thinking, what is this going to be?

[54:10]

But the head of the Canon Law department said, you know, really listen to her. So we let her put together a syllabus, and we offered it, and not surprisingly, there were students that wanted to learn Canon Law. But what she did was absolutely amazing. For example, Ken Moss' parents were the first teachers of their children. And out of her home ec background, I've heard this from the students, not from her, that the students were really excited because she pointed out to them all the ways they could do that. You know, you take the baby and you're going to put the baby in the crib or you're going to take the baby out of the crib, make sure there's a crucifix there. And from the time the baby infant you know, have the child touched the grass, you know, just take and trace the child. She thought all kinds of ways that they really could do that. And what was exciting is that the students were excited to discover how ordinary these things were. you know, the text that parents are the first teacher to their children sounds like drilling them on questions and answers.

[55:13]

And, you know, she was so fresh about what's involved. So it isn't that the problem is that, you know, whether the infant is the right subject, it's whether the adult church believes enough in the mystery of baptism and the fact that we breed the faith from one generation to the next. And because I think that we don't always have that sense that sheep make sheep and the shepherds make the sheep, that we're looking for, you know, the authorities to do something to fix this, when it is the increase comes from within the flock. I was very interested in what you said about the Eastern Church saying that baptism brought forth the Holy Spirit or made the Holy Spirit divine. Yes. I think that's something that we don't have. Can you enlarge on that? Well, all I can say is that, maybe just say a little bit more about what I said, but I think that what the Eastern Church developed

[56:21]

rich theology of the Holy Spirit, that the Western Church did not develop. And so the Western Church has really only been, it's not that the Western Church ever denied it, it's just that it wasn't, you know, amplified and developed for it. But the Eastern Church really saw in the narratives that while the spirit of God is spoken of in the stories of the prophets and it's mentioned in terms of the anointing of kings and so on, that spirit's identity was never totally, you know, made in the Old Testament as God, but in the, they saw it in the narrative of the story of Jesus, the revelation that the spirit coming from God and with Jesus speaking The image of Jesus as the Son of God, that in this there was a revelation of the divinity of the Holy Spirit and the revelation of the Trinity.

[57:25]

In that particular, and that of Jesus' communion in the Trinity and our communion in Jesus in baptism, being communion, our being drawn into the Trinity. So it's a very strong image of baptism and a very strong image of what is being revealed in those stories. I can't remember the ceremony of baptism, but is it mentioned in the formal baptismal way of receiving the Holy Spirit? There is that phrase, and that term isn't there, but there are prayers that indicate the presence of the Holy Spirit. But one of the things that has also happened is that, again, the Eastern Church, when it does the sacraments of initiation, either in the... in infancy or in adulthood, whenever they baptize. In a single baptism, there's the baptism, the anointing, and the Eucharist all in one event.

[58:32]

Whereas the Western Church, these things got separated after a while. And so we end up thinking that baptism is washing. Eucharist comes in. And then somehow or other, the Holy Spirit doesn't appear to confirmation. which of course is confusion that becomes very difficult to work with because it does, again, displace the mystery of baptism and the power of baptism and from the moment of our baptism spirit is being poured out and breathed from within the church on to the next generation. adult right of Christian initiation makes that clearer, but actually right now in the church we have a kind of a divided mind in the sense that when we, the laws call for if you baptize adults at the right of Christian initiation, for example, at Easter, then there is the full celebration of baptism, confirmation, and Eucharist.

[59:43]

But if you do it with children, you still do it in pieces. And our Lord, Baptism, Eucharist. Well actually, Baptism, Penance, Eucharist, and Confirmation. And so, again, I think that it's our practice that gives us... tends to downplay the power of the Baptism we want. I'm very struck by what you said. Thank you. Sister, one of the tax law questions in Parliament today, of course, which people in Greece are tasting, is whether to baptise a baby whose parents are not satisfied with the baby. would have been called marriage, like the church or whatever. Some priests are willing to do it and some priests refuse to baptize in that way. After what you said today, I was wondering if you would mind telling us how you weigh in on that question. I think... Actually, I got in a pastoral situation where I have to weigh in.

[60:48]

But as an academic, I would say that probably the best pastoral situation is case by case. And the reason I say that is that it may be the case that whatever the parental situation is, is complicated by a whole variety of things. Perhaps the child's born into a second marriage and was a remarriage, but the faith of the people is really an issue, but the relationship to church law and so on is a problem. But I think also you've got the issue of a supportive family. You know, it can't be that a couple could come in and say they want the lady baptized. They are in a position or their, you know, the laws of the church have, or their own choices have been, but they in fact have a family that is going to provide support for this child. So I think pastorally that it's probably necessary to understand the situation of those who are bringing the child forward.

[61:56]

I don't know. Chris, do you want to say something about that? You're speaking to me or not. Well, I'm so glad someone raised that question, because there is a situation, to push it to one pole, of here's a baby, and I'm not going to limbo now, I mean, there doesn't need to be baptized, it just needs to be loved, and it's the parents who bring the child to be baptized because some relative thinks it's a good idea. Now, if I've understood what you've been saying for the past hour, That's a bad idea. It is a bad idea. That's all that's going on. But I think that a conversation, you know, sometimes can lead to some kind of a gain of growth. Whereas if you simply have, you know, a post in the boards and something that says, don't bother to come and ask for baptism if such and such and such and such, you never have the conversations that might lead to some discovery that people are more open than they thought they were.

[62:58]

But I think you're right, now that limbo has been resolved and God's love and mercy is affirmed, for instance, then the question of, do we just need to bring the numbers in? It's a good question. Yes. What's your thought process on those people who are on this planet, who live a very Christ-like life, who've never been baptized or never will be baptized, who are receiving to be saved? How do you think of those, Tom? I think that it is the faith of the church and I think it's my faith that the Holy Spirit is free to believe where the Holy Spirit will. And so in a sense it's not my concern that I figure out how they're all caught in and connected.

[64:08]

I think that the concern I would have is helping us as church to understand how we are connected and to believe that the Holy Spirit is working. And we see this evident in people who lead wonderful, holy lives. And we see at the same time that even we who are baptized have not grasped the message of our baptism, and because of that, you know, can do things that are totally contrary to the Spirit of Jesus. One of the stories that touched me just most profoundly a number of years ago, I know she remembered that during the Rwanda crisis, that there was a lot of concern about complicity in the church and the death of hundreds of thousands of millions of people who were killed there.

[65:13]

And there were two Benedictine sisters that were arrested and tried and are in jails in Belgium. And sometime later I ran into a Belgian sister who was from Belgian community and she knew the sisters and knew the story and she said that her response was, you know, they were baptized and we are very proud as Belgians that we have baptized and converted all these people, but we didn't evangelize them. And she said, this young superior in this community, found herself leading, and I don't know whether she was Hutu or Tutsi, I don't remember what it was, but whatever she was, the community had members of both tribes in it. And when the trouble started, the community started pulling and dividing. And she sided with her own people. and got pulled into it, and the community split, and then she assisted some people who were involved in the murdering, and so I think she provided kerosene or something like that to set a fire or something.

[66:17]

But the notion, you know, what that sister said was, we forgot to evangelize them, that they had not understood the message of the gospel and were still operating like tribal loyalties. And she felt that, I mean, she thought it was a terrible tragedy because somehow or other those who had formed them and brought them to profession and brought them to, you know, even leadership in the church. had never done the task of really proclaiming the message of the gospel. There could be terrible breakdowns and tragedies because the faith of the church isn't handed on fully from generation to generation. And on the other hand, you can have people who are outside the church, as you say, who seem to have a full understanding. So it's not an automatic kind of thing. having to live within the tradition. And that's why I think that for the vitality of the church in the next generation, particularly in this country, that it's got to be believing communities who somehow or other are able to be witnessed in ways that are credible.

[67:33]

You have a broad definition of church. Well, I started with Catholic community, but I also, again, just formed by the Doctrine of Second Amendment and Council of the Church of the Churches. And interestingly, the Church's doctrine There is one Baptist, you know, we no longer re-baptize. If someone has been baptized, baptism is baptism. If Christians have been baptized. So in that sense, my sense of church is very broad. Anybody who has been baptized is church. Then we end up with, and that of course is why it's also important to say that what we have in common with baptism is more important than all the stuff that divides us, whether it's because of roles in the church or even that we are divided into different Christian communities. But before all the divisions and the role distinctions and so on, there is one baptism.

[68:36]

So yeah, I have a broad understanding of church and baptism. But I also have a very clear sense of the importance of the Catholic community's understanding of it. And Duke of Leeds Council said that there is a sense in which there is a fullness in the Catholic tradition, if we avail ourselves of it. I'm not sure that all of us who are availing ourselves of all that is in the tradition, but the tradition itself is full and rich. you mentioned before about the right of christian initiation of adults and the proper lineup of sacraments as you know back in the early 70s i believe the right was re-established and my question has to do i guess more research one how does this new right which is celebrated at the east of

[69:40]

and considering that in most parishes the East vigil is the least attended compared to, you know, maybe I want to see your experience of outside of the New York area. Also during the Lenten season there's the welcoming, there's the rite of election, there's the scrutiny that's supposed to take place at the Sunday Eucharist The ceremony was well-attended, the play was well-attended. Is it changing in any way the mindset of people about the importance of baptism? the various rituals, whether it's the rite of election, whether it's a scrutiny, and certainly to celebrate all those sacraments at the Easter vigil in a parish setting. Is that refreshing people? Is it a reminder of their own baptism? Has enough research been done to let us know how well it's going?

[70:42]

Let me say, first of all, that one of the things that has been being done is the Bishops' Conference is keeping statistics. There were lots of stories this spring about the, you know, such-and-such diocese had 40,000 people who were going to be received, and the diocese had 20,000 and so on. So the numbers are going, and I saw in the cabinet that the The Church of Great Britain was also, you know, looking, counting, and seeing the numbers were significant. But I think that the answer to your question is, does it really make a difference? It does only for those who participate in it. And so you talked about the weak link of the non-participation. And some of that I think is pastoral guidance and formation. One of my colleagues at Catholic University taught a course for undergraduates called Christian Feasts in the Ocean. She taught it in the spring because she wanted them to do something with the Easter season and the Easter Vigil, and so spring was the time to teach the course.

[71:55]

And they all had to, as part of their assignment, they had to go to the Easter Vigil in the parish. Now, for most of them, these are primarily East Coast kids, but they came from Louisville down to Florida. And she said if she ever wrote up an article on what the students reported on what was going on in the East Coast and all the way down to Florida, it was pretty spotty. I had one student tell me, for example, that she had that assignment and she had gone down to her aunt in Florida, and she convinced her aunt that she had to go to the East Divisional, so she ended up going to the East Divisional. And she said that the whole Easter vigil was over in 47 minutes. So you've got to have some sense that this was not a full experience. But I have also been at vigils where, you know, the church was packed, but my sense is that, again, it tends to be pastoral leadership, it tends to be... But you've got situations, for example, in terms of pastoral leadership, where you have priests now who are responsible particularly for the care issues, and so the question of how is all of this happening, because it takes a lot of pastoral care.

[73:10]

But I don't know that the... energy has actually been put into research, and it may be a little bit premature yet, but I know that they're looking at numbers, because the numbers are pretty high, and one of the things they're saying now is we really need to sort out those people who are baptized at Easter, and those who are coming as community church, because we tend to be putting them together and counting, but people who have already been baptized are really not going to baptize at least a vigil. And the church legislation on that says it shouldn't be done at least a vigil. except that it's an exception, it's allowed, but the exception has now become the rule. But the sense is, if they really are coming into full communion, that could be again in Sunday or feast day. There's no reason to turn it into a, you know, pastoral event if they've been baptized already. But we tend to put it all together, and so that confuses things also. Um, do you have a question?

[74:14]

it clarified to me something that I think you were saying about in fact, baptism by itself doesn't make a Christian. It's the Christian who makes the Christian. So that's, again, underneath, I think, why the Church intended them to baptize anyone who didn't go and attend the support, especially an infant who had no hope, you know, the education of parents or close relatives or grandparents or whoever. That if they can't be made Christian after they've gone through the initiation moment, then it isn't going to have any fruit unless divine intervention is miraculous or spectacular. It's hard to think of that the church would be so cruel. And I don't think any priest would let a situation like that go without trying to rectify it. That's what they tell you. I thought you have a friend who investigates everything before he would ever not baptize a child. Let me tell you another story though. The answer is the complexity of this thing.

[75:20]

A Benedictine monk from Ashton, Kansas was a missionary of Brazil. He became bishop of a missionary diocese in Brazil. It was one of the dioceses up in the poor northeastern part of Brazil. Very poor. He had a diocese the size of the city of Texas, and he had 11 priests in the diocese. Seven of whom were Travis's, who did do some, you know, work, but they didn't, they weren't out. petitioned Rome to be allowed to set up another alternate program for priestly formation, because he said that when the young people, you know, anybody identified and interested, there was no institution of higher education in his whole diocese. In order to go to the seminary, they had to have had, you know, study of philosophy.

[76:23]

But if he sent them out of the state to study, they almost never came back. You know, they just moved on. So he wanted to know if there was somebody and nobody at all wanted to answer that question because it simply didn't fit into the larger frame of how we do priestly formation. When he made his ad limina visit, three different times, that would be over a period of 15 years, and I haven't seen it now yet, but during the ad limina visit, he regularly reported on how many people they had baptized in the diocese because deacons and other pastor catechists were baptizing. He said 540 baptizing, I don't know, 20,000, 40,000 people a year, they will never have the opportunity in their lifetime to celebrate Eucharist, except very, very rarely, and they have very, very little opportunity for participation in any kind of ecclesial community because of this. And his question was, should we stop Eucharist?

[77:25]

And he reported that Gregorino's question was ignored. So, you know, once you start asking those questions, you begin to recognize that there's a whole other set of questions in the Church that really have to be addressed. And if you don't want to get into addressing them, it's probably better not to notice that the question was asked in an inoculant manner. I think we probably are at a point where we need to end. Thank you.

[78:01]

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