Science and Religion

I have been struggling these past few weeks with the relationship between science and religion (not that they are mutually exclusive as persons on both sides would contend).  Obviously reason has a role to play within the life of faith and religion.  We don't park our brains at the door.  However, as last week's Gospel reading reveals (from S. Luke where Jesus appears to the disciples after the resurrection and passes through the locked door while at the same time was touchable and desirous of food) there is still a great mystery surrounding God that cannot (and perhaps should not) be explained by science as it has developed.

I say science "as it has developed" because like any discipline, science and scientific thought is not free of either progress nor subjective interpretation.  I have done statistics and I can tell you, one can make numbers say whatever they want to get funding.  But also, just because something is repeatable does not mean it is necessarily "true" since it might not occur the next time in the same way with the same results.  Yes, the sun generally has come up every morning, but what happens when - as science tells us - it finally explodes.  Is then the expression, "The sun always rises" true or false?

I do think that there is an arrogance within modern science with respect to its predecessors that belies its self-righteousness.  This arrogance lies within all of human development - it is the assumption that anything new is better than that which came before; that progress automatically equals smarter- such that the modern scientific approach, which is quite new and heavily reliant on the philosophy of the enlightenment, is somehow better and truer than its ancient Greek and Arabic ancestors which pursued scientific thought from an observational and philosophical perspectives.

I believe science, at its best, has the purpose of expanding the heart, empowering the human spirit and bettering the human condition.  This is why theology was called the Queen of the Sciences - what better for the human spirit and condition than thoughtfulness around the love of God shown forth in the mysteries of the incarnation and resurrection, which have revealed the love that permeates the universe.  Of course these are not realities that are measurable in a lab by the post-modern inquisitor for God and truth cannot be brewed in a vial under objective  conditions - like those exist, see Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.  But neither is love quantifiable.  Neither will two people listening to the same piece of great classical music necessarily experience the same repeatable emotions. So are their experiences then somehow untrue because they cannot present reliable and exactly reproducible data?  Should the music be heard in only one specific way?  Of course not.  Their experiences are certainly true.  Just they are subjectively true, which doesn't mean what they are experiencing is unreliable.  It doesn't mean the music they are listening to doesn't exist.

Their feelings exist in reality as soon as they feel them are are more than juts the physiological workings of their brain...for what they experience and how they experience it says something to their heart and soul.  Has a meaning the brain only facilitates.  The music is at once resounding within the psyche and externally within the cosmos  for it is greater than my own interpretation and observation.  This is how the truth of a piece of music or the incarnation and resurrection can bring meaning to the heart, hope to the doubting and peace to the fearful - at once experiential and yet beyond experience.

Now I am no scientist - before this vocation I studied physiological psychology (and  to the chagrin of the so called "real" scientists, my studies only confirmed my suspicions about a greater intelligence in the universe than my own) so perhaps I have no legs to stand on here.  But as a priest I have seen enough "coincidences" in my time to stop and question the framework I was given by a school system that seems too frightened to even consider possibilities it cannot control - and perhaps there is the rub.

I end with three quotes:

The first is from Dr. Matthew Stanbrook who works for the Canadian Medical Association and appeared on The Agenda with Steve Paikin.  The show title "Bad Science"  (which can be found at http://ww3.tvo.org/video/162450/bad-science) was not about science versus religion, but rather scientific results and their use or abuse in the media and fraudulent reporting.  But I found one of his comments interesting: "The reality of science that is known by people in it, but not perhaps widely known by people outside it it's not the same as truth.  It's our best method for arriving at the truth, and has an objectivity that no other field has, and therefore we put that foremost.  But it is not the truth."

The second comes from John Henry Newman in his Apologia Pro Vita Sua: "And I hold this still: I am a Catholic by virtue of my believing in a God; and if I am asked why I believe in a God, I answer that it is because I believe in myself, for I feel it impossible to believe in my own existence (and of that fact I am quite sure) without believing also in the existence of Him, who lives as a Personal, All-seeing, All-judging, Being in my conscience."

Finally, and perhaps this one sums it all up, is from Albert Einstein: ""I want to know how God created this world, I am not interested in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to know His thoughts, the rest are details...Religion without science is lame, science without religion is blind."

Father Rylan Montgomery, The Feast of S. Mark the Evangelist

We Wish to See Jesus

"Sir, we wish to see Jesus." Today's gospel begins with unnamed Greeks, who want to see (to meet) Jesus. They approach his disciple, Philip, asking for an introduction.

How often does this happen to a modern Christian? How often does someone approach you and ask to meet Jesus? My guess is that, unless you're doing chaplaincy at CAMH, the answer would be, "Not often," or "Never." I know it never happens to me on the street. It happens all too infrequently among my parishioners, for that matter.

Why? As a former atheist, I can tell you why I never asked to meet Jesus. It was because I thought I knew about Him already. I had Him and His followers all figured out. Despite the vociferous denial of Dawkins and Hitchens, Christianity forms the bedrock of western thought, up to and into the modern era at least, and its essential precepts are all so familiar. They're second nature. My guess is that the reason nobody wants to meet Jesus isn't because He's totally foreign and strange. It's because He's too well-known.

Or, rather, a cartoon version of Him. As I discovered when I returned to the Church (drawn in by the architecture, so don't ever tell me that the buildings aren't important) Jesus has a lot more depth and grit than the pastel version I'd perceived. Buddy Jesus wasn't the one I met in bread and wine, Body and Blood. Easy, cheap grace - believe with your head and you're saved, no matter what your heart and body do - was not on display. What I found was hard, bitter, biting, grinding, challenging. I found a master, not a pal, and that master called me to be better than I'd been and to be more than I'd been. I'm still wrestling to accomplish that, but it has already taken me to a new vocation in a new country.

Meanwhile, most of the church worries and frets that the bar is set too high. "How can we make it easier for people to come to church?" Cripes, how easy can it get? The Church no longer asks her members to fast, not on fast days nor before receiving Communion. We certainly don't ask people to dress properly any more - jeans and a t-shirt will do - and we don't require confirmation in order to receive Communion. If some of the sermons I've heard are any indication, we don't even require our clergy to believe in the divinity of Jesus, or the resurrection of the dead, or much of anything beyond Buddy Jesus. As a friend of mine, not a priest and not a churchgoer, said recently, "Anglicanism just keeps getting easier, doesn't it?"

And now the Church, or a part thereof, wants to make Communion open to people who aren't baptised. They'll tell you it's about "radical hospitality" or that Jesus didn't refuse to feed anyone or that it's a "justice issue." (That's the silver bullet designed to shut down all argument, because who wants to be unjust?) Radical hospitality? Justice? When have we turned anyone away from baptism? The church will baptise any person, admit anyone into the Church's life, into the very Body of Christ. We will graft any person who asks into the divine life of Christ..how radical can you get?

Claiming that Jesus didn't refuse to feed anyone at the Last Supper sort of misses the point...He was in the upper room with his disciples, His close followers. He had already narrowed the group to those who had demonstrated commitment to Him. Sure, Jesus fed the five thousand, but that was a normal meal. Our parish delivers food to people every week - a box of groceries for the asking, no proof of need or paperwork required - and we open the door to the world when we host a dinner or reception or even coffee hour. We'll feed anyone...but the Lord's Supper is a different kind of meal.

Communion without baptism isn't really the point, it's just a symptom...though it is a ditch that I'd die in. The point is that a life of faith ought not be easy. It should be hard. It should require something of us. Left to our own devices, humans tend to be like water - we seek the easiest path, heading for lower ground and, by our own passage, carving the way more and more open for those upstream. Hence my friend's comment that Anglicanism keeps getting easier. Following God, though, should lead us upward, not downward. It should challenge us to strive harder, work more, be more.

So when our unnamed Greeks asked to see Jesus, and His disciples told Him, His response wasn't to rush out and find them, or invite them in for a coffee, or to sign them up for the newsletter. His response was to announce that the hour had arrived for his crucifixion. "They want to follow me? Fine. Let them follow me to the cross. The servant who goes there will be with me in glory."

Is Christianity too hard? Is faith too challenging? Is loving God too inconvenient? Well, it was no easy thing for Our Lord, now was it? He walked the hardest road, to the cross, and walked there alone. And we balk when we're asked to fast or pray or attend church regularly...or even bother to get baptised.

"The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." – G. K. Chesterton

So perhaps nobody is going to ask us about Jesus. Fine, they think they know Him already. Maybe Christians should stop seeking the easy path and start living faith as the challenging, uphill road that it is. Maybe we should pray more, fast during seasons of penance, even - gasp - attend church more regularly. Maybe we should volunteer more, reach out to our neighbours more, love people more without expecting recompense or return. Maybe we should practice the vows of our own baptism.

Then maybe people will ask...not to see Jesus, but to know what it is that makes us walk this way. The answer will be Jesus, and it will probably surprise them.

Great God, I Ask Thee for No Meaner Pelf

Great God, I ask for no meaner pelf
Than that I may not disappoint myself,
That in my action I may soar as high
As I can now discern with this clear eye.

And next in value, which thy kindness lends,
That I may greatly disappoint my friends,
Howe'er they think or hope that it may be,
They may not dream how thou'st distinguished me.

That my weak hand may equal my firm faith
And my life practice what my tongue saith
That my low conduct may not show
Nor my relenting lines
That I thy purpose did not know
Or overrated thy designs.

-Henry David Thoreau

Corpus Christi Homily

In the Name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This past Thursday we celebrated Corpus Christi, which is Latin for “Body of Christ”. Corpus Christi is the day the Church sets aside for honouring Christ who comes to us in his sacramental reality; a time when we praise Christ for his sacrifice by venerating his Body and Blood given on the Cross and which is once again made real in the Eucharist.

But today we are celebrating more than just the mystical presence of Christ in the elements as important as this truth is. And it is critical as has been attested to by Scripture, the Church’s holy tradition and the experience of Christians over the centuries. All of them revealing to us that the same Jesus who died and rose again appearing to his apostles is really and corporally present to you and me in the bread and wine.

But still deeper than this the Eucharist confronts us again with the mystery of the incarnation, for it is the incarnation which makes our belief in Christ’s presence in the Eucharist plausible. For a God who would put on the flesh and blood of mortality in the womb of Mary, putting on bread and wine should not be surprising to us.

As in his nativity so also in the Sacrament, God is revealed as one who chooses to enter into the mundane and ordinary. Like in his nativity when Christ stood with us in our death to free us from its binds, so in the Eucharist Christ empties himself of his splendour and glory so that our bodies may be nourished by the heavenly manna of his body and our souls washed through his most precious blood, as the prayer of humble access states.

Here is where Christianity differs from all other religions. Ours is not solely a spiritualist enterprise; one more quasi self-help program to inner peace. Rather, being incarnational, Christianity reveals a God who is present to his people both spiritually and corporally, a God who enters the mess with humanity and becomes graspable. God amongst us, God within us, God surrounding us, God consumed by us and by the working of the Spirit unites us in the holy communion of Father and Son.

This is why the Sacrament of Christ’s Body and Blood also reveals the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God into this world. This altar is a thin place where that which lies beyond the veil can been seen piercing the fabric of time and space and where the voice of the Church, unbounded by these limitations, sings in harmony to praise the glory of him who is present to us in this holy Sacrifice.

This is what we celebrate when we gather to give thanks. It is this sacrifice of Christ in which we also are taken, blessed, broken and offered to the Father along with the Lamb of God that renews the pledge of our redemption, pointing to the promised end for all who are in Christ.

Though we struggle to understand this truth intellectually – how grain and grape are transformed into Body and Blood – we are more importantly called to simply perceive it by faith and in perceiving fall upon our knees in adoration and wonder at a God so merciful, so near – who allows us to cradle him in our hands just as his blessed Mother did at Bethlehem.

These hands which have the capacity for gentleness and violence, for tender acts of love and for hurt, which can communicate welcome and friendship and in the next instant dish out shame and condemnation are the cradle by which the eternal Son of God still chooses to be borne, willingly giving himself to us in vulnerability. All so that we may be borne into the intimate embrace of the Holy Trinity.

Such a gift of love and selflessness moved St. Francis of Assisi to rejoice saying:

The whole world should tremble and heavens rejoice, when Christ, the Son of the living God, is present on the altar in the hands of the priest. What wonderful majesty! What stupendous condescension! O sublime humility! O humble sublimity! That the Lord of the whole universe, God and the Son of God, should humble himself like this and hide under the form of bread for our salvation. Look at God’s condescension...humble yourselves that you may be exalted by him....Keep nothing for yourselves so that he who has given himself wholly to you may receive you wholly.

Such an act of vulnerability reveals the depth of God’s love for his creation, a love that comes to us despite our frailty, who comes to us despite our brokenness and our poverty. St. Alphonsus Liguori, put it beautifully: “If [Christ] had chosen some rare or costly food, the poor would have been deprived of this, of him. No, Jesus would come under the form of bread, which costs little and can be found everywhere, so that he would be most accessible to all.”

As I said earlier, the key to perceiving Jesus in the sacrament is faith. This is not to say that the sacraments depend on our faith. They do not. The power of the sacraments comes from the Holy Spirit given at Christ’s behest. They communicate the presence of Christ solely because Christ chooses to incarnate himself and his grace by their medium.

Their efficacy therefore is not dependent upon anything else – the faith of the recipient, the priest, the context and so on. Whether someone believes or not, the sacraments effect a change within us. However, the fruit of the sacraments is dependent upon faith. To enjoy the fullness of a sacrament it must be received with belief.

It’s like standing in darkness when someone opens a door to a light-filled room. Upon opening the darkness in which we stand becomes flooded with light and we can see. It falls upon our feet, but does not consume us unless we walk through the door. The door is the sacrament and when it is enacted the light from beyond shines into the darkness bringing comfort and relief and revealing the path upon which to walk safely. The very act of opening the door affords some benefit.

But it is only partial. To experience the full effect of the benefits the light has to offer one must walk through the door. This is where faith comes in. This is where our response is required.

Jesus’ offer of his Body and Blood demands a similar sacrificial offering of the self in return, for the Eucharistic life is about discipleship and discipleship is about a journey of growing discernment and holiness – one which is undertaken by a willed decision, a decision which begins at in Baptism. Thus the natural movement of faith is from font to altar.

Christ very publically displayed his love for us and his commitment to us and he likewise demands an equal display of fealty and love toward him on our part. For it is only in the risk of belief that the eyes of the heart can perceive the things of the spirit.

The Eucharist follows from Baptism because it is a marriage feast, a meal for the committed ones, those who have consciously engaged with Jesus; who have said to the world, “I am for Jesus. I want to live and grow in him. I want to be changed by him. In a sense, I am wedded to Christ.”

A colleague of mine, in words not so eloquent, once said that to receive the Eucharist without baptism is like a one-night stand – it affords all the benefits of communion with Christ without any of the annoying obligations. Crass, but it drives the point home.

Faith gives us eyes to see beyond the pale. It opens our hearts to perceive that which the world finds ridiculous, unsophisticated simple and perhaps even barbaric. By faith, what is simply bread and wine to the world is, to our eyes, the most holy Body and Blood of the Son of God.

By faith, what is a simplistic, silly ritual to the world is for us God in our midst; God within us, God consumed by us as we are consumed by Him. Someone once asked me to define the priesthood – the institutional one that is. I said, “I am ordained a priest in order to give you folks a tiny wafer, so that in turn you may go out and proclaim the Gospel, feed the hungry, tend the sick, convert the sinner – which is your priestly ministry of the Spirit.”

That is simply what priests do. Your priestly role, your lay apostolate, is often times greater and more difficult. But without me, you won’t receive the nourishment of Christ’s Body and Blood and without you I would have no one to feed. So in the end, it seems we need each other. Amen.