Of Seders and Sancto

I had promised myself that I wouldn't rant on here--- well, at least not rant when furious-- about things that pass through my facebook feed anymore, but this little gem was too good to let go. Also it's Thursday, so it must be time for theology Thursdays. So, here goes...

Years ago, frustrated by the lack of solid preaching to be found readily available in the Catholic-sphere, I was told to check out a website called audiosancto.
It consists of anonymous homilies posted regularly on different topics.

You see, as a protestant, I had become quite accustomed to being preached to.... In fact, I had become used to doing most things with a sermon going in the background. I was mystified by this percieved lack of preaching in the Catholic Church. (I figured out later that I had access to history's BEST preaching 24/7 as a Catholic, and also that there was something to be said for reading instead of getting emotionally manipulated or hollered at. But... that's another story.)

So anyways, in search of some hard core down-home  pa-REACHin' I gave audiosancto a whirl.
It was OK! There was some good stuff! It wasn't like--- edge of my seat, blow-my-mind, hug-my-Bible good, but it was good.
It wasn't great, though, and after a while I lost interest, and moved on.

Until today, when a friend I deeply love sent me a seasonally-relevant homily to check out, knowing that it would touch a nerve, and possibly that it would keep me from holding a passover seder this year, which I'm pretty sure would make his day.

You see, the homily was called: "Seder Meals Violate the 1st Commandment."
Yep, you heard me right.

Now, my friend sent this to me in the same way that somebody shoves an elbow in their good friend's ribcage.... because he knows I'm a lover of all things Jew-y, and it drives him a little bit nuts.

He knows that every Friday night in my house there is Shabbat goodness to be had and that every year my kids build some Sukkahs and that apples and honey pass through their lips with wishes for a good new start. Yes, it's true, we start and end each day with the Shema and my kids probably know the dreidel song better than the words to the Stabat Mater. All true! But that doesn't make this family any less Catholic, and it certainly doesn't--- as the priest who posted this little piece of work claims--- put us in a state of mortal sin. Now let me tell you why.

Unlike in a lot of Christian homes where random Jewishness abounds--- there is no theological weirdness here. We don't think we "need" to do these things, Hebrew or not,  and we acknowledge that we just want to. We want to because we love the Jews, because we are grateful for what they have brought to the table, because if we do not, their identity-- the things which make them Jewish-- will vanish from the earth. And with it the deepest of our roots, for our Bible says that Salvation is from the Jews.(John 4:22)

Most importantly, we understand full well that the Sacrifice of the Mass is for us what the passover was created to prepare us for. Because we know, believe, and understand that Jesus is The Christ, the Messiah, the promised One.

The Jews don't believe that. They don't understand it. And many of them have studied the question themselves and reject it with all their might. This difference is fundamental-- it's what makes the wide divide between us.

Now before I go any further, I encourage you to listen to the homily. Because there is a chance-- and it's a big one--- that you might be the kind of person he is talking to. In fact, in a sense, I'm glad he said what he did because I meet these people every day:

"OH, you're holding a Seder??! That is SO COOL! I've been wanting to do this to learn all about the Jewish roots of our faith!"

I hear that all the time. And I want to tell people right away: If you want to learn about the Jewish roots of our faith, you don't START with the Seder. You go to mass. That's where you begin to wrap your idea around the fact that our faith lives and breathes its Judaic roots. More importantly, it isn't until you are completely immersed in your Christian faith and in divine liturgy that you can go to a Jewish service and have any kind of a revelatory experience about the identity of Jesus Christ. If you go for the Judaism without first grounding yourself in your Catholicism, you've not only missed the mark but you're far more likely to go off the deep end and into the crazy place.

You know the place--- Where people who aren't Jewish are carrying themselves around on makeshift thrones holding weird, garishly decorated Torah scrolls and dancing allegedly Davidic dances brandishing tambourines, gyrating in frantic circles while a large screen flashes pictures of lions interspersed with poorly translated Hebrew "worship songs."

May you be spared the experience! Which, incidentally, would horrify any self-respecting Jew.

For that reason, this priest is right on-- in every single sense.
Except for one.... that he completely omits the group of people my family falls into: those who understand everthing he is saying, and still do it. And why?

For what reason could he possibly omit the category of people my family falls into other than to make some sort of all-encompassing statement about the Jews and those who pay special attention to their rites and spirituality? After all, there is a long running current of anti-Jewish sentiment flowing through most rad-trad circles.  Now, I'm not going to go so far as to call this guy an anti-semite, but I think my husband says it best:

It's full of great stuff. BUT... it's a strawman. It would not be a strawman IF he had not seemingly intentionally failed to address the real, actual reason why we are told to participate in Seders by the bishops. I just want to restate that virtually everything he said is right. It's not so much error in what was said; it's error by omission. And here is the fine point of it: There is absolutely nothing wrong with celebrating a Seder, not even ecumenically so with Jews in a synagogue, IF we do so as a commemoration of God's plan of salvation for us (acknowledging Jesus Christ) and NOT as an actual practice of the law requiring all the implicit and explicit affirmations he spoke of (in which case everything he warned about would be the case.)

 You see, the US Bishops have addressed this issue very clearly.

Precisely because there are all sorts of crazinesses going on out there around Passover, this issue needs to be addressed. But not the way he has done it, because he has-- in my view-- done a great disservice to his Catholic faith by condemning the practice outright.

You see, the Seder has the potential to be one of those unifying, Holy Spirit things that really blows minds open and fills them up with Truth with a capital T. That's one of the reasons I hold one each year and also try to help anyone around me with a little bit of interest do the same in their own homes. It is a mind boggling experience. But precisely because of this potential, Satan has been hard at work over the years turning this issue into a nice, big, chaotic mess.

I first got a taste of this question a few years ago, when a friend of mine was telling me -- a recent revert-- about how she observed the triduum each year. She told me that her family held a seder meal every Holy Thursday, but they purposely avoided many of the rituals inherent in the actual Passover Seder, precisely because they were concerned that they were imitating the mass in their homes.
Their seder meal was more like a regular Sunday dinner with a really long prayer in the beginning.

Over the years, I've also interacted with many Messianics and Protestants and even Catholics who, conversely, fully embrace the ritual as it is written for the Jews, enthusiastically seder-ing away regardless of its' connections to the liturgy of the Eucharist, with one pretty big twist: They acknowledge Jesus Christ by name as Messiah and Lord in additional prayers they've made up to incorporate into the Seder.

I've tried it both ways, and I'm here to tell you that neither method ever left me as fulfilled as simply participating in a Seder with friends and family as it is celebrated by Jews (not "Messianic" Jews) throughout the world.

In accordance with the statement put out by the US Bishops which you have heard me quote many times before, "baptizing" the Passover Seder by adding in little Christianisms throughout completely misses the point of this exercise.

Indeed, it is both an insult to the Jews, whose rites these are, and to the Catholic Church, who has her own rites, to make things up that add to the Seder in order to bring Jesus into it more fully.

Instead, the Bishops recommend, and I agree, that you attend or hold a seder meal AS IS, written for the Jews, by the Jews, and TO the Jews. In fact, that you do so with the Jews, whenever possible.
They discourage parishes from holding seder meals and in that same vein discourage individuals from doing so outside of the context which I've just provided. And rightly so.....for all the reasons expressed in this audiosancto homily.

But just to be clear, don't let this priest, or anyone, discourage you from participating in a Seder meal this Pesach. Do it for the right reasons, and do it respectfully--- with respect for Salvation History as it was written and preserved by the Church and by the witness of the Jewish presence in the world, with respect for the Church who taught it to you, but most importantly, with respect for the Jews, to whom belongs this divine right and responsibility of being a sign in the world that God is one, blessed be the name of His glorious kingdom for ever and ever.

Also, for those of us involved in the movement. under the mentorship of the Holy Spirit and mediated by Archbishop Raymond Burke, to fight for the cause of the Jews within the Church who desire to maintain their identity as the means by which they preserve their most sacred of cultures, it is doubly important that the work of the Association of Hebrew Catholics to discuss these very topics continue on with the full support of the whole Church, to include the priests who speak on audiosancto. For that reason above all others, I have to condemn this homily and publicly speak out against it.

Those priests who desire to speak on this subject, especially now as the Holy Spirit is beginning to gather Jews, Christians of all denominations, Messianics, etc under the banner of the Church and with the election of our new and most humble and holy of Popes, need to maintain a far more docile and sensitive stance on this issue than this homily exhibits. Do not forget what my beloved Pope Benedict XVI said: "Whenever you encounter Jesus Christ, you encounter Judaism"

When he said that, he  meant Judaism-- not quasi-protestant charismatic Jewish-flavored evangelicalism.

Do not be confused-- Jesus Christ was a Jew -- a Jew who we believe was the Son of God-- who established a Church, and whose Church still stands today, endowed with all the rights and authority and responsibilities He Himself gave to it. That Church has it's own rites because it has a new covenant, but to remember the old covenant is a wise and beautiful thing, especially when we can, in doing so, acknowledge and celebrate with the people who God Himself has chosen to be a sign and a wonder and a warning to the entire world.

To encounter Judaism, one must place oneself in the midst of these people, the Jews, and to see who they are in their own words, and to hear their cries for justice and a future and a hope in their own words, and to hear them remember, in their own words, God's great gifts to their people. No where is this better expressed than through Jewish rites and rituals and prayers. There is no sin in standing alongside these Jews in sacred remembrance, allowing them their own words and their own feelings.

The sin involved in participating in a Seder, for a Catholic, is simple... and the types of Seders our Bishops and this sermon seek to warn us against are filled to the brim with temptations to sin in the following ways.

1. Do not commit idolatry. Whether you are a Jew or a Catholic, this rule is simple--- God is One, and He alone is God. When people begin to make idols out of rites, rituals, or the Jewish people themselves, they sin.

2. Do not cause another to sin. Whether you are a Jew or a Catholic, this rule is also simple. We are called to be instruments of healing and reconciliation in this world. Do not cause undue offense to the people present at your Seder, and avoid every semblance of offense to those who do not understand why you are commemorating the passover. If you are a Catholic, do not offend the Jews by changing or altering their rite. Do not offend other Catholics by forcing them to understand or participate. 

3. Remain faithful to the deposit of faith. If you are Jew, your conscience dictates that this deposit ended with the Old Testament and we Catholics respect your freedom of religious conscience. If you are a Catholic, you have been given the established Church as guide through the Holy Spirit. Examine clearly your reasons for participation, the method you choose to participate, and take care that your participation does not supercede the Rites of Divine Liturgy established by your Church so that your participation in the new covenant is the highest form of your worship and the focal point of your spirituality.

Outside of those three things, my greatest hope is that you will indeed take the time to at least learn about the Passover and not fear it, as this talk would have you do, and not feel haughty and prideful about your need not to celebrate it, as this talk would have you do.
Instead, my greatest hope is that you would remember it...
For you were once slaves, and now you are free.

So, chag Pesach sameach, my dear Catholics and my dear Jews, and l'chaim!
May the end of lent bring you peace in the hope of the resurrection!