A Spiritual Meditation

 

A Spiritual Meditation

With Easter approaching, it can be useful in a spiritual way to meditate on the passion and death of Jesus Christ. I propose to do so by posing a question and suggesting an answer. Neither approval of the question nor agreement with the suggested answer are required. The sole purpose is to get you to meditate on the issues raised.

Here is the question: What should impress us more about the passion of Christ, the suffering or the death?

I know what you are thinking: Grow up fella. This isn’t an either-or question. I don’t have to choose. You are correct. Having conceded as much, I now invite you to enter into the spirit of the meditation and answer the question anyway.

Here is my suggested answer: I think that the suffering should impress us more than the death.

I am by no means suggesting that Christ’s death was unimportant. Everything about his passion was extremely important. Relative importance is not the issue. The issue is: As a believer (or an unbiased unbeliever), which impresses you more: the suffering or the death?

Christ had some interesting things to say about death. One the one hand he advised that you should not be concerned about the person who can kill your body, but rather about the person who can kill your soul. Bodily death was relatively unimportant in the big scheme of things. Then again, he also said that no one can demonstrate greater love than by laying down his/her (bodily) life for another.

What has always impressed me about the death relative to the suffering was that Christ knew for a certainty that his death was not the end. He had the power to overcome bodily death, as demonstrated several times during his ministry, and he predicted in advance that he himself would rise from the dead. The rest of us should be so confident. The point is that there is no reason to think that Christ was concerned about his death.

The same cannot be said for his suffering. Christ was so concerned about his impending suffering that he sweat blood thinking about it on the eve of his passion. He even asked his father if there was any way he could avoid that suffering. But he correctly concluded that there was no way that he could take a pass on the suffering. As he also predicted in advance, the Son of Man MUST suffer. There was no other way that the debt incurred by the sins of human kind could be cancelled out. Perfect justice demanded that the perfectly innocent Christ must suffer.

Christ was correct to dread his impending suffering. Crucifixion and the events that typically preceded it represent one of the most barbaric means ever devised by humans to torture and kill their fellow humans.

I will now say some things that may be disagreeable to those of a sensitive nature. I apologize in advance. Feel free to skip the next few paragraphs if you are squeamish.

Prior to crucifixion, Christ is scourged and crowned with thorns. The scourging is done with leather thongs embedded with small lead balls and pieces of bone. As the blows continue, the skin is flayed open and blood flows freely. The custom was to stop at 39 strokes, but there is no guarantee that the Roman legionaries stopped at that number. Sometimes they went too far and killed the prisoner on the spot. The great majority of condemned prisoners were scourged before crucifixion. What was unique to Christ’s case is that after the scourging, when he is already greatly weakened by loss of blood, he is then crowned with thorns. The crown is not a circlet, as is often depicted, but a cap that covers the entire scalp. The torturers beat down on Christ’s head with sticks and reeds, driving the thorns into his scalp. The scalp is highly vascularized, so there is an abundant flow of new blood.

The “chastised” Christ is now brought out before the people, and Pilate offers to release him. But the crowd wants blood. Pilate, worried that he might get into trouble with the Roman emperor if he makes the wrong move, literally washes his hands of the whole affair, and turns Christ over to the soldiers for crucifixion. It is only about 600-700 yards from the praetorium where the “trial” took place to Golgotha, just outside the city gates, where the vertical beams of three crosses have already been implanted in the ground. The horizontal beam of his cross is placed on Christ’s shoulders, and the procession begins. But Christ falls three times, and there is serious doubt that he can make it to the place of execution given his extensive loss of blood. So, the soldiers commandeer a passerby to carry the cross beam.

At Golgotha, the soldiers strip Christ of his clothing, lay him down against the horizontal cross beam, and drive in the nails. Each nail is about a third of an inch thick near its large head. The nails are driven in through the wrist to prevent the body from falling off the cross. Each nail goes through one of the median nerves, producing two immediate effects. First the thumb violently contracts into the palm of the hand, and at the same time an excruciating jolt of pain travels up the arm into the brain. After being nailed to the horizontal beam, Christ is hauled to his feet and hoisted up onto the cross where the horizontal beam is affixed to the top of the vertical beam of the cross. Finally, one last nail is driven through both feet into the vertical beam of the cross in a way that allows the knees to be flexed forward.

Now the real torture begins.

The greatly weakened victim sags down on the cross, the knees becoming more flexed and the arms forming a sharper acute angle with the vertical. This sagging also necessitates a rotational motion of the wrists around the nails, further irritating the median nerve and causing great agony. At the bottom of the sag, the arms are so positioned as to make it difficult to expel air from the lungs. Asphyxia begins to develop. To escape the unpleasant sensation of smothering, the victim struggles to straighten his knees and hoist himself higher on the cross. More pain from the nails. But at least the victim can breathe temporarily. Soon exhaustion causes the body to begin sagging again. And so, the cycle continues, up and down on the cross with all the attendant agonies, over and over and over, until at last the victim is so exhausted that he cannot hoist himself back up on the cross any longer. Death follows soon thereafter, from asphyxia, heart failure, or both.

I have not given a complete account of the physical sufferings of Christ during his crucifixion, but what I have given should be more than enough. And Christ knew in advance every last torture that he would suffer. Is it any wonder that he shrank from his impending suffering? And is it any wonder that I think his suffering should impress us more than his death?

Feel free to disagree. It’s just my opinion.

Reference

Barbet, Pierre. (1963). A Doctor at Calvary. Garden City, New York: Image Books.

Popes

 

The following evaluation comes from a long-time pope watcher whose bias will be evident:

Popes

There have been two great popes in my lifetime and two not-so-great ones.

My personal history of popism goes back to Pius XII in the 1950s. Counting the current pope, Leo XIV, that’s a total of eight popes.

The two great popes were John XXIII and Francis. The two not-so-great ones were
Paul VI and John Paul II. The others did not stand out from the background. This is admittedly not fair to John Paul I and Leo. John Paul I held the office for only thirty days and by all accounts might have been a great one had he lived. Leo is too new and is taking great pains not to make any waves, so it’s not clear how he will turn out. Benedict was a clone of John Paul II. Pius XII is a dim memory, shrouded in the mists of history.

The two great popes were great because they were revolutionary. They made significant changes in a positive direction. John XXIII initiated the Second Vatican Council which fundamentally changed the way the Catholic Church does business. The Spirit he set loose on the world will be reverberating for long time to come despite concerted attempts to quash it. He rightly belongs near the top of the list of great popes. In his own way, Francis was also revolutionary. A doctrinal conservative (no one is perfect), he nonetheless significantly changed pastoral practice for the better. Using traditional doctrine and applying his “much mercy” approach, Francis made it clear that the American hierarchy’s obsession with sexual sins was misguided. He clearly stated that sexual sins were no better and no worse than any other sins. At first glance, one might overlook just how revolutionary that papal declaration was. If sexual sins are no better or worse than other sins, and everyone (including Francis) agrees that most other sins are venial, then it follows that sexual sins are also typical venial. Take it from an old-timer, that’s not the way it was before Vatican II. Sexual sins were all mortal, and damned you to hell for all eternity if not formally forgiven, and that threat was yielded with alacrity by Catholic clergy, alienating whole generations of church goers who abstained from the eucharist while practicing so-called “artificial” contraception. Francis changed all that officially. He was the culmination of a tidal wave unintentionally launched by Paul VI (see below).

Which brings us to the two not-so-great popes. Both are in this category because they tried (thankfully, with limited success) to constrain what they saw as the excesses emanating from Vatican II. Paul VI will be remembered for one thing: Humana Vitae. Caving to a small cadre of conservative cardinals who convinced him that changing the teaching on contraception would make it look like the Church had previously been wrong, he threw Catholic married couples under the bus and reasserted the traditional teaching. The reaction was swift and exactly the opposite of what he intended: Insurrection from within. Lay Catholics were forced to grow up, and they did. In the spirit of Vatican II and encouraged (for the most part) by local bishops, they opted to follow their own consciences and dissented overwhelmingly. Paul’s legacy was to preside over the diminishment of the moral authority of the papacy. John Paul II was a rabid reactionary. He attempted to stifle every liberal tendency and wasn’t shy about using papal muscle to accomplish that goal. He and his enforcer, the future Pope Benedict, ran their own inquisition and crushed internal dissent wherever they thought they saw it. He “purified” the clergy but fortunately had little leverage over the laity. He attempted, unsuccessfully, to expand the doctrine of papal infallibility. He also dragged his feet throughout the sexual-abuse crisis. All in all, in his quarter-century reign, JP probably set the church back about 200 years. Ironically, after his death, he was fast-tracked to sainthood and given the honorary title “John Paul the Great” by his conservative cult following. Such is life.

In fairness, I should make it clear that the two popes I have criticized may have been entirely right in everything they did and I may be the misguided one for criticizing. Further, regardless of who is right, I am quite certain that God was pleased with their faithful service and has rewarded them accordingly.

If this brief commentary illustrates anything, it is that the church, through the office of the papacy, is malleable. If there is any hope for the future, that is it.

 

Confessions of a Film-Music Addict

Confessions of a Film-Music Addict

A chilling account from a gentleman in the Midwest:

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This is the story of how an innocent(?) teenager became an addict. Specifically, a film-music addict. I offer it as a sober warning to today’s young people.

It happened in the summer of 1959. That is to say, back in pre-history. It was a simpler time, with simple people living simple lives. The air was clear, people had dogs named Taffy, and they watched “I Love Lucy.” Rock n’ Roll ruled the music universe. Male moviegoers lusted after Marilyn Monroe; females preferred Rock Hudson. (They didn’t know his secret.)

I had just completed my junior year in high school. Our high school operated on a fairly well-defined caste system. I belonged to the “serious students” or “college prep” caste, otherwise known as nerds. We were expected to master the classical academic disciplines and then ascend into the rarified atmosphere of higher education. The most popular caste by far were the “jocks.” Universally admired and worshipped, they were considered the luckiest s.o.b.s on the planet. Cheerleaders with names like Sherry and Jackie belonged to the “beautiful people” caste, otherwise known as hotties. Most of us silently yearned euphemistically after them, knowing we had no chance. Status seekers to a fault, they only had time for the jocks. Males lacking the brain power to crack the “serious students” caste and forced thereby to learn some sort of trade to make a living were in the “shop students” caste. Females who couldn’t inveigle their way into either the “serious students” or “beautiful people” castes were relegated to the “home-ec” caste. They learned to make brownies. At least I wasn’t a “greaser,” with slicked-back hair and a perpetual sneer on my face.

I remember well the specific incident that triggered my descent into addiction. As is so often the case when we are young, my parents were at fault. They went and bought the latest amenity that every status-conscious household had to have. They bought a stereophonic portable record player. For those who haven’t had the pleasure, it consisted of three pieces. A central unit housed the turntable and the electronics. Two detachable speakers were wired into the central unit and could be positioned on either side of it at distances that maximized the listening experience.

You must have lived in the era of monaural sound to truly appreciate the impact that the advent of stereophonic sound had. In that era, all sound from a movie emanated from the center of the screen. In the early years of stereo, we all flocked to the movie theater to see the first movie in cinemascope and stereophonic sound, a biblical epic entitled “The Robe,” based on a novel by Lloyd Douglas. It was a real novelty. The screen was so wide that you could have a character on the right conversing with one on the left who was in the next county. Not only that, the voice of the character on the right came from the right side of the screen, and the voice of the character on the left came from the left side. Oh, the novelty of it! You told your neighbors all about it when you got home. And the music, well that was something else. The clarity of the sound and the separation of the instruments in space, mind boggling. Alfred Newman’s marvelous score probably prepped me for my descent into addiction several years later.

Meanwhile, back at home, you could get the same thing with your popular music because of that new stereo record player. The catch was that your records had to have been recorded in stereo. Oops. We didn’t have any. Your mono records still sounded like mono, that is, like the singers and the orchestras were encased in bubble wrap and shut up in a closet with the door closed. There was nothing for it. If you wanted to hear stereo sound from your record player, you had to buy stereo records.

The stage is now set. Off I go, with my modest disposable income, to the record store in the nearest shopping mall with the intent of bringing home something worthy of that stereo record player. And having now attended several cinemascope movies over the years, I have a fair idea of what that might be. It should be some full symphonic orchestral thing that maximizes the listening experience. In other words, I’m ripe for the kill. I might as well have exposed my neck and voluntarily placed it on the chopping block.

So, there I am, thumbing through the various LP vinyl albums in their categorical bins, searching for the holy grail, when I stumble, not entirely by accident I suspect, on the movie soundtrack category. And I am thumbing, thumbing, thumbing, when suddenly my thumbs are arrested by a sight that caused my eyes to dilate and my breathing to cease momentarily.

You have to remember that LP vinyl albums were big, not like the teeny tiny cassettes and CDs that succeeded them. (Check your nearest retro record store if you feel a need to verify.) The sleeves or thicker containers in which they were held measured 12.375 inches square. You could fit some really impressive artwork on the cover. And what I was looking at was impressive.

It depicted a chariot pulled by four white steeds, with a driver in the carriage behind them, and they were galloping pell-mell straight toward you. At that speed, they would be on you in seconds. Behind them, chiseled in granite, dwarfing the chariot and everything else were the gigantic letters: BEN-HUR. Roman statuary was at either end of the letters. Yes, that was impressive.

But what about the music? I check the track listing: Prelude; Roman March; Love Theme; Burning Desert; Naval Battle; Victory Parade; Mother’s Love; Miracle & Finale. This really looks promising. So, I take the plunge. I buy it.

And I take it home. And I mount it on the spindle of that stereophonic record player. And I turn the thing on. And I poise the needle over the first track. And I watch all atingle while it lowers itself into the groove by the first track. And then, and then, a fraction of a second later, …

I am blown away by the first bars of Miklos Rozsa’s epic Oscar-winning score.

You don’t have many transformative moments in your life. That was one of mine. From that moment, I became a film-music addict.

I can honestly say that I subjected my household to that soundtrack approximately 4,328 times that summer. Oh, how my parents must have regretted the day they bought that record player! (Possibly also the day they were born.) To be fair, I must say that, having seen the change that music wrought in me (the change from endlessly listening to rock n’ roll and pop music to what must have sounded very classical) they suffered pretty much in silence. Only the occasional “Not again!” Actually, they were saints.

Very soon I added “King of Kings” and “El Cid” to my nascent collection, and I was on my way. In the following decades, I discovered Jerry Goldsmith (Star Trek, Sleeping with the Enemy, Powder, Medicine Man, The Shadow), James Horner (Cocoon, Willow, Glory, Apollo 13, Titanic, A Beautiful Mind, Avatar), and the all-time leader at nabbing Oscars and nominations, John Williams (Star Wars, E. T., Close Encounters, Superman, Harry Potter, Artificial Intelligence). Right up to this day, picking up Danny Elfman (Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Alice in Wonderland), Micheal Giacchino (Cloverfield, Up, Star Trek reboot), and Alexandre Desplat (Girl with a Pearl Earring, Grand Budapest Hottel, Shape of Water), to name a few. My soundtrack collection now occupies two CD cabinets, and that just includes the ones I have on CDs. There are other ways I cannot go into to obtain film music.

I am, in other words, besotted, bewitched, seduced, enchanted, entranced, enslaved, and hopelessly addicted to film music.

So, if you are thinking of taking up an addiction, consider my story and beware.

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On second thought:

After sober reflection, I feel that I may have overstated the case. Not all addictions are so terrible that they lead to inevitable destruction. If you are addicted to candy corn, it won’t kill you. In fact, there is a good chance that in the normal course of events you will overcome it and be on your way. The ones to worry about are those that are harmful and, in some cases, lethal. In fairness, addictions ought to be judged by their potential for harm, as is the case for other possible dangers. Most would agree that addictions to alcohol, tobacco, hard drugs, pornography, violence, and the like carry a high risk for harm, even death. But film music? Where’s the harm? A sense of proportion seems called for.

Well, I must bid you farewell now. There is something I need to listen to. “Need” is perhaps too strong a word. I would like to listen to it. I want to listen to it. I have a strong desire to listen to it. But I am not compelled to listen to it. I could NOT listen to it. I am the captain of my ship.

Goodbye. I’m going to go listen to it.

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Need anything more be said?