A Parish Catechist

Book Review: Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs

April 17, 2024

There was a time when I would have read this reference book from cover to cover (I am among the readers who believe that when I read a book, I should read the entire book…..).

This is a useful, scholarly book to have on one’s bookshelf as a reference to inform one’s study of any number of topics. I am reading some of it now and plan to refer to it on occasion as the reference book it is intended to be.

Christianity is 2,000 years old. In 2024, the majority of us – with the possible exception of those Biblical scholars who specialize in Early Christian Literature – are not going to be familiar with the ins and outs of the topics discussed in the early church. Nor are most of us current on the etymology of what every word meant 2,000 years ago (“dictionary definitions” of words and the cultural context of vocabulary changes over time…).

“Sure,” some will say, “We know what early Christians were talking about. They were talking about Jesus, the resurrection, the gospels, and how to be Christian.” Yes, that’s true. But how exactly did those conversations unfold in Palestine, Greece, Turkey, etc. in, say, the year 75, 125, or 300 AD?

The gospels weren’t written down until several decades after Christ’s death. Jesus said during his lifetime that he would return during “this generation;” thus, it initially seemed unnecessary to Jesus’ contemporaries to write down his life and teachings for future generations…. Eventually, it started to become clear that he wasn’t coming back imminently, so his narrative began to be written for posterity. It then took time for the early church to decide which gospels – from among the gospels that were written down – are canonical (accepted as church doctrine). It wasn’t immediately clear to the early church that “the Bible” was going to include (and only include) Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

Likewise, it took time for the early church to develop and “come together” on any number of topics that we recognize today as “Christianity.”

So, precisely which “Christian topics” were under discussion in the early days of Christianity? This book – A Dictionary of Early Christian Beliefs – provides useful insights in to this question. Having this reference on one’s bookshelf can inform our understanding in any number of settings – when studying Sunday’s readings at church, when we want to learn more about a specific aspect of Christianity, when studying church history, etc.

A sampling of several topical entries in this 704-page resource include:

Christ, Divinity (how the early church came to understand this one topic gets 25 pages!)
Descent into Hades
Gifts of the spirit
“Keys of the Kingdom”
Patriarchs
Paul, apostle
Prayer
Rapture
Schism
At the end of the book, there are “Quotable quotes from the Early Christians.”

I appreciate having this book on my bookshelf.

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechist and The Books of the Ages (and a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them (thank you!). You can also support this blog by clicking here when you are going to shop on Amazon (that lands A Parish Catechist a commission on Amazon sales).

Rumi: Live where you fear to live

April 10, 2024

“Run from what’s comfortable. Forget safety. Live where you fear to live.” Rumi

Too often, we make decisions based on fear. “I couldn’t possibly travel alone. How would I navigate the travel experience on my own?” “I couldn’t live alone as a single person. (Because…..).” “I couldn’t (fill in the blank).”

Okay, I cheated. The fears I listed above are fears that I don’t experience. I have my own list of fears – sometimes making decisions in reaction to those fears. In some ways, people view me as living a fearless life – I simply never learned how to have some of the fears that many people have. In some other aspects of my life, I don’t live fearfully because I was taught growing up to be pragmatic about living my life as I see fit – a good skill in the sense that I learned a healthy dose of independence (perhaps not enough interdependence and cooperation). In other ways, I am occasionally immobilized by aspects of life that don’t seem to phase other people. We are each living our own experience….

When we make decisions based on fear, we spend our time trapped in self-constructed prisons rather than fulling living.

God does not want us to live partial lives, self-restricted due to fear-imposed limitations. Jesus came “…That you may have life and live it to the full” (John 10:10). Making decisions based on fear is not being trustful in God, nor are we – by so doing – living the lives God wants for us. Not living the lives God wants for us is shortchanging the God who gave us life and the lives we are given. We are not truly being people of faith when we make decisions based on fear.

Really, one cannot be both faithful and allow fear to limit any aspect of our lives. We all have fears of one sort or another. A full and abundant life is one in which we live anyway, living without allowing fears to hold us back, allowing fear to define what we are going to do or how we are going to live…..Rumi: “Live where you fear to live.”

There is also the truism that perfect love casts out fear (1 John 4:18). To the degree that we live in fear, fear is diminished to the degree that we learn to live in loving connections with God and the people in our lives. Not sure that there’s a correlative force between increased love and decreased levels of fear in our lives? On a macro scale, people living in war zones will be living in fear (not love). On an individual level, the same principle applies. Give it a try.

Faith Reading challenge: The Brothers Karamazov

March 25, 2024

I took a literature class in college in which we read Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

I attended a state university and we read The Brothers Karamazov as secular literature. While we read the book as secular literature, I do remember our instructor posing a question about a particular point for one of the books’ characters. I found myself responding as seeing the character as analagous to a friend of mine who was serving as a spiritual guide for me at the time. My instructor and classmates found this odd and laughed as such. It was an awkward moment.

Since then, I have periodically heard reference to “The Brothers K” as being a book – in part – about faith. Goodreads (an online book portal) says of the book, “Through the gripping events of their story, Dostoevsky portrays the whole of Russian life, is social and spiritual striving, in what was both the golden age and a tragic turning point in Russian culture.”

Because I have repeatedly heard of the book as having spirituality dimensions, I am planning to read “The Brothers K” again, after I finish reading another book (a long book that I’m reading rather slowly). This time, I will read “The Brothers K” through the lens of spirituality. I invite each of you to join me in reading the book to consider its’ faith dimensions; we can then discuss the faith ideas in book.

Put May 1 on your calendar as the date to start reading The Brothers Karamazov through the lens of faith. I will post dates to begin discussing the book.

Surrender – a perennial need

March 23, 2024

I wrote a post in July titled Surrender in Prayer. In that post, I wrote “Despite our western ideas about individual autonomy and self-agency, us permitting God’s agency to mold and shape us is liberating. God loves us, wants good for us and our world, and and has capacity for transformational good beyond our comprehension. There is no room for a negative outcome when we allow God to work within and through us.”

Surrendering to God’s will needs to be ongoing. The people who can stay in a perpetual state of surrender to God’ work in their lives – well, some of them are saints! They get the ongoing joy found in Acts 17:28: “For it is in him that we live and move and have our being.”

I live at times in Acts 17:28 – sometimes longer periods of time, sometimes shorter. Then, there are times when I get caught up in life’s challenges, fears, etc. It happened again yesterday. I arrived home in an emotional fit about one of life’s challenges. A few weeks ago, I spoke to a priest (who reads this blog) and mentioned some kind of discomfort about another challenge – he told me that I need to follow my own advice that I write about in this blog! Hmf!! ….I was then awake at 1:30 this morning fretting about the current life challenge. Embarrassingly, it took me until 5:00 am to come back to “surrender this in prayer.”

God loves us. When we surrender, God provides us with strength and turns us into better people. “I can do al things through Christ who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

I see ways in which God has made me a better person in recent years. I look forward to God continuing to transform how I live in the world – (re) surrender required on my part.

Pondering Judas, Job, and the Prodigal Son

March 18, 2024

Every year. we hear the salvation story at Easter . God loved us so much that he sent his only son to die for our sins.

Our salvation involved Jesus’ death, so his death was predestined. So, someone – some human – had to somehow be complicit in Jesus’ death?

When Judas came to realize what he had done – that he had betrayed Jesus such that this betrayal was to involved in the circumstances of Jesus’ death – he took his own life.

Given that it seems that one of us – some human – had to somehow be complicit in Jesus’s death…. Hmmm…. This raises difficult questions about the circumstances involvingJudas.

It’s fine for God to decide to die for our sake. But to necessitate that some human(s) be complicit? Have some human(s) end up with Jesus’ betrayal on their conscience? How fair is that?

When I raised this for discussion with someone recently, I heard it argued that Judas had free will. He didn’t have to betray Jesus. Further, Judas repented to the chief priests and elders when he realized the consequences of what he had done (that Jesus was to be crucified). But, somehow someone had to be complicit in Jesus’ death (betrayal, hanging Christ on the cross)? So, someone was going to have this on their conscience – somehow? I also heard it said that free will means that Judas didn’t have to take his own life. He could have asked God for forgiveness (in fact, he did go so far as repenting to the chief priests – Matthew 27: 1 – 10).

What would you or I have done if we saw that we had betrayed Jesus toward death? Would we give in to despair the same way Judas did and take our own lives? Would we request forgiveness? Become bitter? Or??? It feels to me that such a burden would be worse than being Job.

Is there a way that Christ could have died for us without any individual humans ending up with a burden heavier than Job?

It didn’t occur to me until this week – when pondering Judas’ perspective – that Judas had the option of asking God’s forgiveness rather than giving into despair to the point of taking his own life. Requesting such forgiveness would have been amazingly difficult to do!!!! It took some effort to wrap my head around this. If Judas had the option of asking for God’s forgiveness – “The Prodigal Son on a much grander scale” – then what of us?

When we fall into despair – whether because of challenging circumstances seemingly beyond our control or because of difficult results of our own choices – how well do we turn to God and accept God’s love – and redemption, when necessary – in our lives? Compared to Judas [“Anguish beyond that of (of course, innocent rather than guilty] Job!” is my new phrase to contemplate guilty Judas), what’s so impossible in our circumstances that we can’t turn to God…. and to enter into a healing relationship with God in whatever form is necessary (forgiveness, redemption, allowing God to love us toward wellness, etc.)?

“We are all radically incomplete”

March 13, 2024

The assertion that “we are all radically incomplete” – a statement quoted by Timothy Radcliffe – is the what I’ve grabbed onto from his series of opening reflections for the synod meetings in Rome last October (and, he said, “we all need each other”)..

Many of us are aware of our own inadequacies. We only need to read the news and reflect on our own selves to see that “we are all radically incomplete.”

In response to this, society would have us increase our life skills and “build up our self-esteem.” “I am enough.” In Christianity:

We acknowledge being radically incomplete as a fundamental aspect of our humanity.
We recognize that it is in God that “we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).

God is complete. We are God’s daughters and sons. God loves us. When we allow God to live in us – “It is no longer I but God who lives in me” (Galatians 2:20) – we experience the rest of Galatians 2:20: “The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

It is in allowing God to “live and move within us” that God’s completeness – coupled with God’s love – heals us and makes us whole. This is beautiful.

Death and new life

March 6, 2024

This image of an empty bird’s nest in a winter tree – with spring approaching – speaks visually to nature’s annual cycles of death and the anticipation of new life.

Seattle – where I live – is in the midst of a cold snap after a period of relative winter warmth. Many of us are ready for the increasing warmth and life that comes with the pending spring.

When I saw this empty bird’s nest and the similar-or-contrasting lack of leaves on the tree, I immediately thought of our own spiritual death, rebirth, and – for many people – the perpetual hope of new life. In Christianity, we learn to die to self. Christ died and rose again – for our salvation. Bird nests are often used year after year for the next year’s new baby birds. Annual cycles of new life. Soon, new leaves – another year of life (the color green of leaves symbolizes vibrancy) – will also begin to spring forth on this winter-cold, bare tree.

When I first tried to photograph this bird’s nest, I zoomed in with my camera in an attempt to photograph the bird’s nest and leaf-less tree branches – without the electrical and phone wires that are also visible when photographing the entire tree (i.e., the photo above).

I then realized that there is also value in photographing the broader tree showing the phone and electrical wires showing (see the photo below). Too often, we desire the vibrant new life that comes from dying to the darkest parts of ourselves…. Yet we let the wires in our lives – those distractions that prevent us from allowing God to rejuvenate new life in us – to prevent new vibrancy of life to emerge in us. Sticking to such distractions serves no good in our lives. How stubborn we can be in refusing to let go of that which keeps us bound to the darkness in and around us.

During this Lenten season, we anticipate the anniversary of Christ’s death and resurrection at Easter. Let us – during this Lenten season – allow God into our hearts to clean out that in each of us that needs to be cleansed. Welcome in new life of the spirit.

Allowing God to transform us into new life requires surrender. We give up control. We give up autonomy. In a sense, we give up whatever sense of “self” we cling to (“I may not like all of me, but ‘me’ is what I’ve got”). In today’s society, many of us must also begin to give up rampant individualism – an individualism that isolates us – to join the community of people around and among us. We are meant to live amongst one another.

Easter is coming.

Third Sunday in Lent: Reading Reflection

March 3, 2024

This Sunday, we hear the Gospel reading of the woman at the well.

Jesus offered “living water” to the woman at the well. The Samaritan – who was viewed by Jews as “the other” – accepted Jesus’ offer of “living water.”

Jesus also offers us “The Living Water.”

How well do we – of the Christian faith – drink of “The Living Water?”

Do we come to the well? If we come to the well – Christ’s offer of vibrancy of life in faith – do we just skirt around the edges of the well (such as simply sitting in a pew on Sunday morning), or do we open our hearts to drink freely of what is offered?

To “drink of the living water,” there are times of grace when the water flows freely. Those moments of grace are like a river flowing through our lives. Beyond those moments, we have to surrender to allow God into our lives. Such surrender can seem a high price to pay. In recent years, I most fully surrendered my very being to “being changed” following one of those periods of grace in 2016 (that grace began at a Catholic mass in the Irish language followed by a broken ankle). Since then, I find that I periodically have to surrender again, in varying degrees (depending on how much I have un-surrendered at any given time). The sense that I am somehow autonomous creeps (often slowly) back into me thinking that I have “sense of independent self-hood” – that I am “my own person.” This false idea of independent self-hood separates me from God.

There comes a level when it becomes clear that the false idea of independent self-hood has re-asserted in my day-to-day way-of-being. I get too busy. My chronic pain disorder rears its’ ugly head again. My physical skin begins to feel again like a wall separating me from other people (actual physical tension like a wall becomes present). Prayer begins to become rote rather than an interactive no-need-for-human-words relationship between me and God. Life’s challenges become overly burdensome again. The Living Water trickles to mere drips of water rather than a free-ish flow of water. Time to surrender again to allow God to roam my existence freely (“It is no longer I, but God who lives in me” Galatians 2:20).

Book Review: Martin Laird’s ‘Into the Silent Land’

February 28, 2024

I was recently given a copy of Martin Laird’s Into the Silent Land: Christian Practice of Contemplation.

As a contemplative pray-er, I find this book refreshing. Rather than only being a how-to book on the mechanics of how to pray contemplatively, this is the type of contemplative prayer book I look for: a description of what happens when we do a deep dive into contemplative prayer. It is – to paraphrase a speaker I heard once – the “poetry of our lives” that demonstrates the animation of one’s prayer life when prays contemplatively. Such poetry – it seems to me – helps lead readers into the experience of contemplative prayer via surrender into what we read in the books’ text.

A few “poetry of our prayer lives” excerpts:

“Silence is an urgent necessity for us: silence is necessary if we are to hear God speaking in eternal silence; our own silence is necessary if God is to hear us” (page 2).
“This book…proceeds from an ancient Christian view that the foundation of every land is silence (Ws 18:24), where God simply and perpetually gives himself” (page 6).
“…the grace of Christian wholeness that flowers in silence….dispels (the) illusion of separation [from God]” (page 16).

This is a short book, but it takes a long time to read – its’ contents are contemplated rather than merely read. It contributes meaningfully to one’s prayer life. This is a book I will keep.

Second Sunday in Lent: Reading Reflection

February 25, 2024

James Tissot's painting of Jesus praying

Many of Christianity’s denominations read the same Bible readings each Sunday – the three-year cycle of weekend readings decided upon by the Catholic church after Vatican II.

This Sunday, we hear in the First Reading of Abraham following God’s orders by going to a mountaintop to sacrifice his only son – the son he was given later in life to be the son who God had said would provide Abraham with countless descendants. At the last moment – when Abraham had demonstrated his willingness to follow God’s instructions – he was told not to sacrifice his son.

In the second reading (Romans 8:31-34), we hear reference to God not saving his own son – a son biologically descended from Abraham – from death.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus goes to a mountaintop – just as Abraham had gone to a mountaintop in the first reading (the readings each weekend are paired based upon shared topics or themes) – and is transfigured in dazzling white, having discourse with two prophets of old, all before three of Jesus’ apostles.

When we surrender to allow God to work in our lives, we are also transformed. To the degree that we allow God to work in our hearts, we become the people God meant for us to be. When we give up the false perception of being in control of our lives, it can be tempting to think that we are surrendering our independence and self-determination. How well is independence and self-determination working in today’s increasingly lonely, socially-distanced, and broken world? The people we are meant to be are people who are daughters and sons of God – daughters and sons who live in relationship with God and who are transformed through God’s love for us. We subsequently find ourselves transformed into living the two commandments Christ said are the two greatest: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. Transformed into a life of joy that passes all understanding. In surrender, a new life is given to us.

Championing adult faith formation and contemplative reflection