Byline: Elizabeth Scalia

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Scripture

Jesus’ Secrecy In The Gospel

Elizabeth Scalia

March 22, 2019 10:25 am March 22, 2019

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It has always puzzled me, in the Gospels, to find Jesus urging secrecy upon those He has healed. On the other hand, it never surprises me that the beneficiaries of…

It has always puzzled me, in the Gospels, to find Jesus urging secrecy upon those He has healed.

On the other hand, it never surprises me that the beneficiaries of his favor, like the two blind men in Matthew, ignore him and go off telling everyone about the wonderful thing that has happened to them. Their behavior seems wholly human, doesn’t it? It strikes me that Jesus was asking a lot of these men — to return to their families and friends with perfect sight and no explanation of how this had come about.

Jesus does it again, in the Gospel of Mark, when He heals a deaf man, and said to him, “Ephphatha!” (“Be opened!”). Immediately, the man’s ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. Jesus ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more He ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.

This time He orders not just the object of His healing, but the people with Him, to keep quiet about His miraculous favor. In fact, the text suggests that Jesus several times asked them to pipe down about it, but to no avail.

When something great has happened in our lives, we want to share it with others, and this Jesus acknowledged in Luke’s Gospel, when He spoke about the woman who had lost her coin: “Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost’” (Lk 15:8-9).

This makes more sense. Something lost and then found is worth exclaiming over, and we are called to be witnesses to the Good News — to tell the great workings of God in our lives.

A few months ago, I made a general confession. It took over three hours, during which time I experienced such an abundance of genuine healing — at one point, I could literally feel a heaviness that had resided upon my chest for decades simply depart — that I urged anyone who would listen to do the same. I had swept my house and discovered something I had lost, and I wanted everyone to “rejoice with me.” Jesus would understand my behavior.

For that matter, Jesus himself acknowledged that keeping secrets is eventually a futile undertaking: “For there is nothing hidden that will not become visible, and nothing secret that will not be known and come to light” (Lk 8:17).

Perhaps the first chapter of Mark sheds some light on Jesus’ reticence; Jesus heals a leper, and urges him to tell no one, but to show himself to the priests. The leper spread the report abroad so that it was impossible for Jesus to enter a town openly. He remained outside, in deserted places, and people kept coming to Him from everywhere.

There it is.

We’ve read stories of lottery winners who find themselves besieged by long-lost friends and family members seeking to benefit from the windfall. Those they help often come back for more assistance — all expectation, with little appreciation.

The “lucky” winner begins to feel like little more than a walking ATM, his humanity undervalued, his personhood no longer seen by people who have become blind to everything but what he can provide, until the cash runs out.

Jesus’ healing gifts could never run out, but perhaps He was trying to prevent needy crowds from seeing Him only as a means to an immediate end, devaluing His humanity and completely missing His message. Such behavior kept Jesus from entering “a town openly. He remained outside” (Mk 1:45).

Urging people to tell no one was a futile wish on Jesus’ part. He knew humanity too well to count on it. All He wanted, though, was to be able to walk openly among the people He meant to redeem, and to not be forced to remain outside, away from us.

A need for secrecy is past. Let us bring Jesus openly into our cities and towns and families, telling what He has done for us.

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Sacraments

Sacrament of Anointing’s Power

Elizabeth Scalia

March 16, 2019 6:54 pm March 16, 2019

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A friend who has struggled all his life with weight issues recently showed up nearly 80 pounds lighter and was glowing. People could not stop commenting on the radiance of…

A friend who has struggled all his life with weight issues recently showed up nearly 80 pounds lighter and was glowing.

People could not stop commenting on the radiance of his face, which they attributed solely to his decreased girth, but when asked about his diet, my friend would quickly change the subject. Privately, he related to me the secret of his dramatic weight loss: “I got anointed,” he said. “I needed to be healed of the sin that was driving me to gluttony.” He meant the prison of concupiscence — the sin of serving cravings and instincts of the flesh, over the promptings of our better angels.

I was instantly tickled by his news, but also moderately scandalized. What amused me were visions of Oprah Winfrey gassing on about “anointing your way to good health” and late-night television ads hawking “New Bless and Smear! Be Saved and Svelte After One Anointing, Guaranteed!”

What scandalized me, because eventually even I can come to my senses, was the same thing: a recognition of the insta-levity my friend’s actions might inspire, and how that might reflect poorly on a sacrament of such powerful healing. I suddenly understood his polite refusal to discuss his “diet” among company, and interiorly a finger-wagging voice was hectoring me toward judgment, telling me that the use of a sacrament to address something as vanity serving as one’s weight was a frivolous abuse of Christ-gifted grace.

And yet, that inner voice could not quite convince me that my friend had been flighty, or shallow, in pursuing the sacrament. Very familiar with how seriously he lived his faith, I knew that my friend’s anointing was about more than mere weight loss, or the balance of earthly scales; it was — it would have to be — a desperately sought-out last rite for a soul who, in the midst of a grave spiritual examination, had identified the source of his crushing illness. His sinful surrender to concupiscence was killing him and a turning — a conversion — would be necessary if he was to continue to live, and work, and love.

Far from being a frivolity, his seeking out of the sacrament was, in fact, an act of deep humility; it was a supplication for healing over his entire life — another surrender, this time of self. It was a turning over to God the safe havens of anger and judgment into which he had withdrawn himself for too long, and a plea for deliverance from the bitter, unhealthy lashing out that was keeping him, and those he loved, entrapped in a hellish and unhappy place.

His weight loss was actually a side effect of the power of the anointing, a physical manifestation of the spiritual healing that came about when he set his entire body, his livelihood and his very mind and heart before the Lord and said, “If you will, you can heal me.”

And Jesus, praise Him always, said, “I do will it; be healed.” Yes, he was thinner, but the remarkable and lasting joy that radiated from my friend’s countenance had less to do with his shrunken cheeks and more to do with the settling of his formerly stormy spirit. During a moment of sacramental grace, his heart had been gentled; in his deep, pleading agony there had been bestowed upon him a peace beyond all understanding. He was like a man who, having endured decades in a torturous chamber, was released into sunlight — his every wound cleansed and treated with a balm of spicy, scented oil. “From the moment I was anointed,” he told me, “everything became different. I was set free.” Pondering the miraculous change in my friend — a healing so comprehensive no ad slogan could contain it — I wondered if an anointing might be the answer for my own weight issues. But I am a paradoxical lightweight, neither as prayerful nor as serious as he. My humility, if I could manage to find some, would lack his depth and possibly, as evidenced by the fast spoofery of my imagination, his sincerity. The Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick is often misunderstood, and sadly underused. It is a ready and powerful weapon for a soul doing battle against personal darkness.

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Sacramentals

The Scapular Is A Spiritual Nudge

Elizabeth Scalia

March 4, 2019 8:19 am March 4, 2019

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My husband noticed a brown cord peeking out from the neckline of my shirt and asked, “What is that?” Oops. Busted. “It’s a brown scapular,” I admitted. “That’s pretty hard-core,…

My husband noticed a brown cord peeking out from the neckline of my shirt and asked, “What is that?”

Oops. Busted. “It’s a brown scapular,” I admitted.

“That’s pretty hard-core, isn’t it?” he asked. “When did you take that up?”

As prejudiced as the question sounds, he was only being curious. My husband is a tolerant sort; if someone wants to practice devotions that he doesn’t feel particularly called to, that’s all right by him. In this case, however, I sensed a tinge of leeriness. After all, just prior to the appearance of the scapular, I had built an oratory, and had been exploring the use of head coverings at Mass. Now, suddenly, a brown scapular?

I confessed that I’d begun wearing the scapular, as a discipline; for penance and correction. “It’s my hair shirt,” I explained.

A Benedictine of my acquaintance has told me that scapulars began as a practicality — a protective covering for monastic robes; over time it took on a spiritual significance as a sign of one’s willingness to “take up the yoke” and learn from Christ. Pious laity eventually adapted much smaller counterparts to wear, both as a devotional and — in the case of professed laypersons — in solidarity with members of their scapular-wearing order. Lay Dominicans wear the largest, a white square of wool, perhaps 6 inches across. Benedictine Oblates like me generally wear a Jubilee Medal, but some also wear a postage-stamp-sized black scapular, reflecting the black scapular and habit. Carmelites, of course, will wear the brown scapular.

In my case, not having a black scapular, I recalled the brown scapular a priest friend had blessed and given to me as a gift. I’d never worn it, but I knew it was Mary-connected, and that the scratchy woolen thing was the closest approximation I would ever get to what I really believed I needed at the time — a proper hair shirt — to challenge me. As ever, my spirit was willing, but my flesh had an attitude.

I have worn the brown scapular ever since.

Calling it “the world’s tiniest hair shirt” is no exaggeration. The one currently between my shoulder blades is new, and itchy. It is uncomfortable, but I have come to love it, because when an itch breaks through to my awareness, or the thing rides up and needs adjusting, it reminds me (and always just when I need reminding) that I am weak and need help.

Well, good. I need to be made uncomfortable and annoyed; I need to be reminded of my shortcomings.

I began wearing the scapular during a difficult time in my life, when I was not dealing well with a situation meant to teach me what I resisted learning: patience, humility and enough discretion to just shut my mouth, sometimes, rather than let it run rash and reckless as usual.

I was like a dumb ox, in need of a yoke to get me in line; to guide me and help me to obey. The scapular is that yoke.

It is not heavy; as yokes go, it is light, and even “easy,” but it is still a discipline. When my impatience surges, that itch can restrain me, and the restraint is humbling. The resultant humility actually gentles me a bit. It reminds me that life is sometimes a hard row to hoe, requiring a supernatural assist. As my impatience ebbs, I am reminded that willingness is all that is required, and that slow growth is better than no growth.

So, this scratchy, abrasive little penance is a very useful spiritual nudge; it awakens me to the hushed grace notes that linger soul-deep, amidst all the superficial noise of my heart and head. It helps me to own that grace, in much the same way a musician finds music within the spaces between the notes.

The prompting to find and wear that first brown scapular was a hard-core gift that I could only receive when I was cracked enough to need such strings.

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4 min read

Sin

The Value of Conscience

Elizabeth Scalia

March 2, 2019 2:48 pm March 2, 2019

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The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of…

The memory still stings: there I was, age 7, the veteran of a splendidly moving and memorable first holy Communion and graced with an oddball love of the Sacrament of Confession in all of its velvet-curtained-sliding-screen ambiance, planning to steal a toy “ladies fan” from a candy store, simply to see if I could.

The fan was red, and I had always been — and still am — a sucker for all things red. It was airy, lacy and flamboyant, and I had the 10 cents the thing cost in my pocket.

But the toy display was on the other side of the cashier, and the devil was on my shoulder: “Take it,” he whispered. “I bet you could slip it into your pocket and no one would know.”

Petty theft, which I had never before aspired to, became suddenly a tantalizing challenge. And the fan was red. I took it. I cleverly slipped the thing into my sleeve and casually walked out the door. It was so easy. And so completely unsatisfying.

By the time I’d walked home, fanning myself all the way in a manner I was sure duplicated the graceful lines of a señorita, I had begun to feel a peculiar emptiness that was new, and throughout the day that feeling grew, until it threatened to become a black hole into which I could disappear. By eventide, I had thrown the fan away from me in disgust. It wasn’t mine; it was ill-gotten booty. I had sinned, and it was not good.

The next day was Saturday — confession day in our neighborhood, for in 1965 it was a rare Catholic who would receive Communion without first reconciling themselves to God. I frankly couldn’t wait to get the theft off my chest — and out of my heart and soul — and had barely gotten the “bless me father” off my tongue before the full story came pouring out. The priest, spending another glorious Saturday within a small, airless box and — at that hour — listening mostly to the piping sins of children, had given a grumpy acknowledgement that my sin was a biggie. “Stealing is mentioned in the Ten Commandments; it especially offends God,” he said, and I thought, “I know, I know, it’s been eating at me.”

Thank God for penance. A Rosary decade on my knees felt sufficiently arduous, and I emerged from church feeling like I’d done my piece. And yet . . . it couldn’t be that easy, could it? Where was the justice? The man at the candy store was still out his 10 cents.

Walking home, I fingered the quarter in my pocket, given me by my grandmother and designated for an orange drink I craved. My sense of justice wrestled with my thirst. I did dearly love my orange drink. But, finally, conscience won out; stepping into the candy store, I approached the counter, meaning to confess my crime, pay the dime and be done. But I couldn’t. Serving justice on a coward’s tray, I waited until the man’s attention was diverted, and quietly slid the quarter on his counter and quickly left the store.

It was not a perfectly balanced redemption; it left me cleansed, but out 15 cents. But I had not yet explored the vagaries of fairness. I was ignorant of all but the most elementary theology, and it would be many years before I could distinguish between the unsophisticated notion of “Catholic guilt” and the heavy grace of “a properly formed conscience,” but I felt better. My Catholic grounding had informed my sense of both justice and mercy. I had confessed regret to my God and made a generous, if anonymous, restitution, and the gaping mouth of emptiness so eager to swallow me had been resolutely snapped shut. The red fan was never again a pleasurable toy, but it became a favorite possession, a reminder that whenever God is pushed aside, only emptiness awaits.

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4 min read

Mary

Appreciating Mary’s Assumption

Elizabeth Scalia

January 27, 2019 8:55 pm January 27, 2019

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For most of my life, the assumption of Mary existed as little more, for me, than a head-scratcher of a dogma. I understood that Elijah and Enoch had been assumed…

For most of my life, the assumption of Mary existed as little more, for me, than a head-scratcher of a dogma.

I understood that Elijah and Enoch had been assumed into heaven, so if I considered Mary’s assumption at all, it was simply to shrug it off: “Mary was assumed into heaven. Sure, why not?” The whys and wherefores of the matter were so far above my paygrade that they didn’t seem worth pondering.

All of that changed for me when I took a class in anatomy and physiology. As marvelous as it was to learn about how “wonderfully and fearfully” we are made — what with blood cells forming and fading, and bones and tissue becoming oxygenated and cleansed via blood and breath — nothing presented in the class coaxed an audible reaction from me until we studied the process of microchimerism. As soon as the professor introduced the process, my Catholic bell was rung: “But that completely explains the Assumption!” I said aloud in the midst of my startled classmates. The professor stared at me for a moment with a puzzled expression and said, “Oka-a-ay, anyway, the thing about microchimerism…” The thing about microchimerism is that it so profoundly explains and justifies our dogma that it should be included in our Mariological catechesis, where people can both appreciate a demonstration of how science and religion can complement and complete each other, and marvel in awestruck wonder that our Church had reasoned out this reality long ago and without the aid of microscopes. In the simplest of terms, microchimerism is the process by which a smattering of cells live within a host body but are completely distinct from it. In human fetomaternal microchimerism (or “fetal cell microchimerism”), every child leaves within his mother a microscopic bit of himself — every pregnancy, brought to delivery or not, leaves a small amount of its own cells within the body of the mother — and those cells remain within her forever.

As the only practicing Catholic in the classroom mentioned above, can you blame me for my gratified outburst? Microchimerism explained for me the very whys and wherefores of a dogma that had previously seemed like little more than piety on a sentimental rampage, leaving me too cowed to care. Suddenly, it all made sense: A small amount of Christ Jesus’ cells remained within Mary, for the whole of her life. Where we Catholics have a limited experience of Christ’s flesh commingling within our own upon reception of the holy Eucharist, Mary was a true tabernacle within which the Divinity did continually reside.

In the Book of Psalms we read about how the Holy One will not undergo corruption (see 16:10). Christ’s divine body did not undergo corruption. It follows that His mother’s body, containing cellular traces of the Divinity (and a particle of God is God, entire) could not be permitted to decay, either. The science makes the theology accessible, because, suddenly, there is no need for guessing: at her Dormition, Our Lady’s body, holding Christ within it, could not remain on earth; of course, it would have to join itself to Christ in the heavenly dimension.

One could argue that microchimerism also assists in our understanding of the Immaculate Conception — once again, it gives the patina of science to a long-held, and very beautiful, dogma. The God who is All Good is also Purely God; the vessel through which He incarnated, then, must necessarily be pure. When we argue that Mary, as the Ark of the New Covenant, would have been spared the stain of original sin, the knowledge that Christ not only availed himself of her flesh, but would continually reside therein, only further supports that well-reasoned belief. Every August, since learning about the awesome scientific validation of a perhaps underappreciated dogma, I have at some point in the feast day found myself singing a line from Paul Simon: “I would not give you false hope / On this strange and mournful day / When the mother and child reunion / Is only a motion away.”

I love it when faith and reason can be woven together into such a beautiful whole.

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Christmas

Christmas and the Flight Into Egypt

Elizabeth Scalia

December 21, 2018 1:07 pm December 21, 2018

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A few years ago the U.S. Postal Service did something different with its religiously themed Christmas stamps. I’m not sure whether the change came about as a nod to non-Catholic…

A few years ago the U.S. Postal Service did something different with its religiously themed Christmas stamps. I’m not sure whether the change came about as a nod to non-Catholic Christians who were averse to using the images of the Madonna and Child offered each year, or simply because someone at the USPS felt bored and needed a change, but I loved the new stamp.

It featured a silhouette of the Holy Family against a bright orange sky and a dazzling star. Joseph is leading a donkey carrying Mary and what looks to be a sleeping bundle of newborn King in her arms.

I bought scores of the stamps so as to use them even after Christmas, and then was delighted to find them offered the next year and each year since. The stamp speaks to me in a different, more immediate way than the lovely Madonna/Child stamps, and I’ve wondered why. I think it may have to do with how much more “contemporary” the image feels. Even as it shows a traditional image, the stamp speaks to a relevance to our times and our headlines. Christ is born, and the family is making a hazardous trek through the desert and into Egypt, because it is not safe for them in Bethlehem, or Nazareth, or anywhere Herod reigns, and so they are migrating — they are refugees from terror.

The Holy Spirit often uses the most confounding means and methods to get our attention and open us to God’s instructive promptings, so perhaps we shouldn’t marvel that a few years before immigrants and refugees became the stuff of our daily headlines (and a source of considerable consternation for people inside and outside of the Church) the U.S. Postal Service was pulling our thoughts in that direction.

Yes, it speaks to our times. We see a family uprooted from everything they know, everything “normal,” comfortable and familiar. Not only are they unable to simply “go back” to the way things were, they are being led into something wholly different, with nothing to go on but trust: a man, a woman and a baby, moving against a whole world of uncertainty, injustice and danger.

There is much consolation in this lovely picture. In the crucifix we encounter “The God Who Knows” — the one who understands our feelings of fear, abandonment, betrayal, shame, thirst. Here we see “The God Who Knows” familial anxiety, too, and social separation, material deprivation and — perhaps again — thirst. His stepfather, obedient to something as ephemeral as a dream, places everything into the hands of Divine Providence and leads them through new terrain, seeking wells and watering holes as they travel for Mary to drink that the infant might be nourished. This is the God who has been part of a family unit that worked like a closed circuit of surety and continuance, and the God who also knew all of its stresses.

There is nothing going on in the world, or in our personal spheres, for which Scripture and the life of the Christ do not offer an instructive correlation, if only we bother to seek it out. This image is an invitation to the whole world to trust God, even amid blaring headlines, because He is always faithful. It says “Ephphatha, be open!” It says, “I know the plans I have for you.” It says, “Fear not, for I am with you.” It says, “Do not worry about tomorrow.”

At the absolute baseline of the life of faith, God asks us a question: Do you trust me? We are creatures who, since Eden, have willfully embraced the illusion that we are in control of everything, when, in fact, the only thing within our control is our decision to trust or to doubt, to be open or to be closed, to believe or not to believe.

The Flight into Egypt stamp is a powerful reminder of that truth, and it bears the word “Forever.” We are forever meant to surrender our illusion of control, forever meant to be opened, forever meant to trust in Divine Providence. Call it a coincidence if you like. I see the Holy Spirit giving necessary instruction to our time.

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