Reflections on Turkey Part II

I had intended on addressing this issue in a later post, but an experience today caused me to raise the issue now. Today I visited my son's first grade class to give them a short presentation about Turkey. I showed them some pictures, as well as some items I brought back from Turkey: some Turkish coins, some marble, a stone from a 4,500 year old wall, a sea shell, and a leather sombrero. The kids loved the pictures and the items and they asked a lot of questions. One question in particular took me aback: "Mr. Huntz, were people in Turkey trying to kill you?"

I politely answered no, and explained how friendly the people of Turkey were, but I thought for a long time about that question and what might have prompted it from a seven year old child. As the day progressed, however, I was drawn to a conversation we pilgrims had at the last night of our pilgrimage. Fr. Davis asked us to think about what we learned and loved about Turkey. Ron Jenko, a pilgrim from Jacksonville, FL, made the observation that he had a particular view or bias about Muslims that was completely shattered by the pilgrimage experience. The Muslim people of Turkey were very friendly, and freedom of religion was quite evident in the country, as evidenced by our ability to visit churches and attend Mass daily.

We also had the opportunity to talk with priests, sisters, and lay Catholics about their experience of living in Turkey as a minority. In every instance we heard about the collaboration between the Catholic community, the Jewish community, and the majority Muslim community on works of charity and interfaith dialogue. We heard about the fact that the Catholic community is growing because it is the only religious institution that uses modern Turkish in the liturgy as opposed to Arabic and other ancient languages no longer spoken by most people. The churches in Turkey were well attended, and one of the shrines we visited, Mary's House in Ephesus, is a place where Muslims, Jews, and Christians come to pray and make pilgrimage. In fact we saw that very dynamic the day we visited.

In the United States we've been condition to view Islam with suspicion and disdain by our media and certain political and religious leaders. That conditioning no doubt led this young boy to ask the question he did, and he can't be faulted for that. However, we can and should question the news sources we receive in our country, sources that have just as much bias as those of other nations we would apply the same label of bias towards.

The experience of waking up each morning to the Muslim call to prayer was refreshing, and it was equally powerful to hear that prayer call throughout the day. We might well reflect on our own culture and commitmet to prayer individually and collectively. We might also reflect on what contributes to radical fundamentalism around the world. Western materialism, pornography, abortion, and permissiveness are repugnant to any person of faith, particularly in nations where such things are only now being introduced. Perhaps the presence of such things is more an indictment on the state of Christianity in the West than it is an indictment of the Muslim world that reacts strongly against such things. This is not to condone fundamentalism and violence as those are inappropriate responses, but equally inappropriate is our indifference to such things in our own country.

This visit to Turkey taught us a lot about the faith of other peoples, and it caused us to reflect on our own faith as well.

Reflections on Turkey - Part 1

Note: On November 2nd, 32 pilgrims from various parts of the United States embarked on a 15 day pilgrimage to Turkey in order to visit the sites of the New Testament and early Christianity. The following is the first installment of my reflections on the trip.

Turkey is the modern day nation that was formerly known at Asia Minor in the ancient world. The earliest settlers of the area were the Hittites, a group of people mentioned several times in the Old Testament who were expert ceramic and pottery makers. We had the opportunity to see the remains of their civilization and see people today still making pottery in the same way. As time went by the Greeks came to dominate the region after the invasions of Alexander the Great, at which time the area developed a Greek name - Anatolia. It was during this time that many of the great cities of the area were founded: Antioch, Smyrna, Byzantium, and many others. Many of these cities were founded on already existing settlements, as we saw in many of the archaeological digs we visited. For example, the city of Troy, the site of the famous war romanticized by Homer's two epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey, had nine different city layers that have been discovered.

Eventually the Romans came to dominate the region as they conquered the entire Mediterranean region, and it was their legacy that still remains throughout modern day Turkey. We saw well preserved amphitheatres, baths, an ancient cistern, roads, and the remains of shops, temples, agoras, gymnasia, and other important buildings. The genius of Roman architects still astounds us today.

It was during the time of Roman occupation that Christianity came to birth in the region. In Antioch, Christians were first given their name, and the city boasts of St. Peter's founding of their Christian heritage, as well as the site of St. Ignatius of Antioch's ministry and the great church father St. John Chrysostom. In Antioch we saw the cave church of St. Peter, and we had Mass at the church of St. Ignatius, the site of the present day Catholic community in Antioch. While there we met three men from Austria who were themselves on a pilgrimage: they were walking from Austria to Bethlehem, hoping to arrive on Christmas. Their witness was a powerful affirmation of faith for us.

Many ancient sites of the Christian church still exist: the remains of the basilica of St. John in Ephesus, the cave churches and monasteries in Cappadocia, the Hagia Sophia Church and council building where the two councils of Nicaea were held, and the great Hagia Sophia basilica in Istanbul. These sites came into existence when Christianity was legalized by the Roman empire and then nurtured during the Byzantine empire. With the coming of the Crusades and the loss of the area to the Ottoman Empire in the 15th Century, the Christian community became smaller, yet continues to exist even to this day in present day Turkey. Islam brought with it many developments to the region: magnificent mosques, palaces of the sultans, and an array of academic centers. Many of these sites remain as well.

My intent in this post was to provide a general overview of our trip, its scope and breadth. In subsequent posts I will provide some of my own learnings and reflections on what we experienced. Enjoy the pictures along the way! These four pictures are as follows from left to right: the Hagia Sophia Church in ancient Nicaea, a Roman Council chamber in Ephesus, the cave church of St. Peter in Antioch, and our pilgrim community celebrating Mass in a cave church in Cappadocia.

The Rule of Justice - 33rd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

When I was in middle school I played on our Catholic school baseball team. It happened one Saturday that we were scheduled to play a game at 11am against my cousin's team, but it had rained for a few days prior. Our coach called us the night before the game, asking us to be at the field at 8am to prepare the field for the game because the grounds crew did not do so. Upon arriving at the field we saw standing water in the dirt infield and we asked our coach how we were going to fix the problem. He ordered us to step back, and he took a can of gasoline, poured it over the dirt infield, then set it ablaze. The field dried almost instantly, and we resumed our work in preparing the field for the game, which we wound up winning 11-1.

That event from my childhood came to mind as I reflected on the first and second reading. In many ways we could have said to our coach that it wasn't fair for him to expect us to work for two hours preparing the field, then play a seven inning baseball game and win. Yet, he did expect it of us and we did it. In burning that field it seemed like the stubble of the fields burned away by the justice of God so that only good soil would remain for new growth to take place. Paul's injunction to work was certainly evident in our coach's expectation of us to be both the grounds staff and the time that will win the game on the field we prepped. Neither the game itself nor the victory we achieved would have been possible without our work to prepare the field for play.

The responsorial Psalm provides us with the theme for today's Mass, a theme I learned on that ball field twenty eight years ago: The Lord comes to rule the earth with justice. Justice is not fairness because fairness is subjective in nature. It wasn't fair that we had to prepare that field, but it was a just deed we performed. In the same way the purveyors of iniquity will say that it isn't fair that God will punish them for oppressing the poor and acting selfishly, but it will be just because everyone deserves a share in the fruits of the earth.

One might argue that the Gospel text does not deal with justice, but we must pay attention to the setting of the story: people were marvelling at the wealth of the Temple and the majesty of the sacrificial rites. Jesus then reminds his audience that none of this opulence matters. All of it will be destroyed, and indeed it all was destroyed by the Roman invasion of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. What matters in our lives isn't the adornments and ceremonies of religion but rather it is performing the justice of God in our lives that is important.

In our own day the "liturgical wars" have taken their toll on the casualty count of the faith community. The liturgy of the Church is a means to an end, not an end itself. The rites of the Church are designed to effect what they signify in those who participate in them, for in each of them there is the fundamental call to serve God and neighbor in our everyday lives. If we are not becoming more just and loving servants of the Lord Jesus then perhaps the fault lies not in the liturgy itself but rather in our outlook on the liturgy. Do we come with clipboard ready to critique the liturgical celebration and see nothing beyond the rite itself? Or, do we approach the liturgy with the attitude of the humble student ready to learn what the Church provides for us in the liturgical celebration - in the prayers, scripture texts, and gestures of the worshipping community? As in the parable of the Pharisee and Publican, the latter will go away justified.

My baseball coach used the work and fire to teach us a valuable life lesson. Jesus uses the stark image of the destruction of the Temple to remind his audience what is really important - what is really the justice of God. We pray for the grace to ever seek the justice of God in our lives and in our world: "Father in heaven, ever-living source of all that is good, from the beginning of time you promised man salvation through the future coming of your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Help us to drink of his truth and expand our hearts with the joy of his promises, so that we may serve you in faith and in love and know forever the joy of your presence. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen." (Opening Prayer)

To Whom Are We Wed? - 32nd Sunday in Ordinary Time Year C

The Gospel text for this weekend certainly presents its challenges, the first of which being the perennial question as to whether we will be united with our spouses in heaven. Theological opinion certainly runs the gamut as to an answer, and the Gospel text certainly presents the absurdity of the question pressed to its logical conclusion. Overlooked in this quagmire is the larger theological question: to whom are we wed? Where are our allegiances in the realm of faith? These are the real questions for us to consider in the readings for this Sunday.

The first reading presents the case in stark terms. It relates the story of seven brothers who are arrested for maintaining fidelity to the law of God against the oppressive Greek occupiers. Each one is offered the choice of rejecting God and his law or suffering torture and death. The brothers all choose loyalty to God in the face of great torment and consequently provide us with an example to follow in our own lives. Would our loyalty to God and his truth be such that we would be able to endure a similar fate?

In the United States this question is largely hypothetical and theoretical, but we have to remember that this scenario was a very real one for the early Christian church. We might well ask ourselves whether this disparity is the result of our modern predisposition to acquiece to the demands of the culture rather than adopt a position that might run contrary to prevailing opinion. In almost every category of current issues we find Catholics preferring popular opinion rather than the position of the Church: abortion, same sex marriage, respect and care for immigrants, capital punishment, the immorality of nuclear weapons, and a host of other issues.

Pope John Paul II stressed that each position the Church takes has its roots in the dignity of the human person. He states that "each and every person has been included in the mystery of the Redemption, and with each one Christ has united himself forever through this mystery. Every person comes into the world through being conceived in his mother's womb and being born of his mother, and precisely on account of the mystery of the Redemption is entrusted to the solicitude of the Church. Her solicitude is about the whole person and is focused on each person in an altogether special manner. The object of her care is the person in their unique and unrepeatable human reality, which keeps intact the image and likeness of God himself." (Pope John Paul II, Redemptor Hominis, #11)

The Sadducees in the Gospel reading rejected the transcendent dimension of the human person. By denying the resurrection of the dead they reduced the human person to merely an earthly reality, and thus there could be no reason why anyone should remain faithful to God and the law. The Sadducees were one group who allied themselves with the Roman occupiers who exploited the populace. Hence, the first reading provides us with the proper contrast to their infidelity in recalling the story of these heroic men who, like St. Thomas More, died the king's good servants, but God's first.

In the end we face a challenge of vocation, one that asks us to determine where our allegiances lie and to whom we love above all things. The spiritual life is often referred to as a marriage union between a person and God, a relationship of perpetual obligation. Yet, the obligation is not merely one of external observance; in the end it is love alone that can transform our weakness into strong fidelity to God, profound service to our neighbor, and selflessness to the point of death. God will always be faithful as Paul reminds us in the second reading. We therefore pray with the Church in the opening pray for today's Mass for the grace of being faithful to God in all things: "Let us pray that our prayer rise like incense in the presence of God. Almighty Father, strong is your justice and great is your mercy. Protect us in the burdens and challenges of life. Shield our minds from the distortion of pride and enfold our desire with the beauty of truth. Help us to become more aware of your loving design so that we may more willingly give our lives in service to all. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen."