Sealed with the Gift, Part 3: Prophet, Priest, and King

Elijah, Aaron, and David, Anointed Ones of the Old Testament

In my previous post in this series, I looked at how the story of Noah’s Ark informs my understanding of the sacrament of confirmation. Today I’d like to explore some better-known territory, namely the significance of anointing in the Bible.

One of the first places we see anointing with oil in Scripture is in the book of Leviticus, chapter 8:

Taking the anointing oil, Moses anointed and consecrated the tabernacle and all that was in it. Then he sprinkled some of the oil seven times on the altar, and anointed the altar, with all its utensils, and the laver, with its base, to consecrate them. He also poured some of the anointing oil on Aaron’s head and anointed him, to consecrate him.

The rite of anointing is how Moses consecrates—sets apart, makes holy—the tabernacle or tent, the altar itself, and Aaron as the first High Priest. The oil marks the instruments and the person as sacred, set apart for divine worship.

Jesus Christ, the Eternal High Priest

Much later in the story of Israel, we find our second significant Anointed One: King David. After the prophet Samuel passes over Jesse’s oldest seven sons, Jesse finally sends for the youngest, David, who is out minding the sheep:

Jesse had the young man brought to them. He was ruddy, a youth with beautiful eyes, and good looking. The Lord said: There—anoint him, for this is the one! Then Samuel, with the horn of oil in hand, anointed him in the midst of his brothers, and from that day on, the spirit of the Lord rushed upon David.

Here the connection between the “spirit of the Lord” and the anointing with oil is even tighter, one happening right after the other.

Jesus Christ, King of the Universe

So there you have the anointing of the priest and of the king. But what about the prophet?

I was frustrated to discover that nowhere in the Old Testament is a prophet anointed with oil. What we do find, however, is the same word for anointing, maschach, used in reference to the prophets. For example, God commands Elijah to anoint Elisha as his successor, which Elijah accomplishes by throwing his own mantle over Elisha’s shoulders. And in the book of Isaiah, the prophet writes that “the Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me”. Here the connection between the Spirit and anointing is so tight that the two are almost synonymous, and the anointing comes straight from God Himself.

Christ the Prophet, with Moses and Elijah at the Transfiguration

Students of biblical languages are already seeing the connections here: the word “Messiah” means, precisely, “Anointed”, which in Greek is “Christos”.

Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One. He is prophet, priest, and king.

Prophet, as he himself announces, anointed “to bring good news to the poor” (Luke 4:18).

Priest, because he “serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord” (Hebrews 8:1-2).

King, and not just king, but “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” (Revelation 19:16).

The sacrament of confirmation, marked by anointing, is a sharing in this triple office of Christ.

How is a Christian, as one who shares in the body of Christ, a prophet, priest, and king? A few thoughts come to mind:

A Christian is a prophet because she shares in prophetic mission of Jesus. She has been anointed to “bring glad tidings to the poor [ . . . ] to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord” (Luke 4:18-19). The prophet goes out and speaks the truth about God’s dreams for the world. She not only speaks, she also enacts that dream and makes it real through concrete action. Her life is a kind of “proof” of the Gospel message, a sign that points to truth, to the heavens, to God himself.

A Christian is a priest because she offers her life to God in worship. Just as Aaron was anointed along with the tabernacle and the altar as sacred and set apart, so the Christian offers herself to the Lord as a “living sacrifice” (Rom. 12:1), eternally aflame with the love of God. Like the burning bush, she is always burning with love for God and neighbor, but she is never consumed. Like Jesus, the great High Priest, she enters into God’s presence and makes intercession on behalf of the world, and like Jesus, she forgives those who trespass against her, enacting God’s forgiveness in the world. Her whole life is a sacrifice to God, united to the atoning sacrifice of Jesus on the cross.

A Christian is a king (or queen, if you like) because she exercises dominion over the created order as was commanded to Adam and Eve in the garden. This is not, however, a dominion like that of earthly rulers. Jesus instead shows his followers that a Christian “rules” precisely through loving service to others in his name. “Whoever wishes to be great among you shall be your servant; whoever wishes to be first among you shall be your slave. Just so, the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Matthew 20:26-28). The royalty of the Christian, her authority, derives from her willingness to humble herself in service to others.

That’s a good stopping point for now. In my next post, I’d like to look at some connections between the consecration of the tabernacle at the end of Exodus and the coming of the Spirit at Pentecost, and see how the two events might inform my understanding of what happened at my confirmation last weekend.

(Yes, it happened last weekend! I’ll write a more personal post soon, I promise.)

Sealed with the Gift, Part 2: Proof, Promise, and Peace

In my previous post about the sacrament of confirmation, I looked briefly at how the rite both recalls and re-enacts the story of Pentecost in Acts 2. Today I’d like to look a little at another passage, a bit less obvious of a choice: the story of Noah’s Ark.

When I was in high school I read a lot of books on “apologetics”, many by evangelical writers who wanted to defend the historicity of stories like Noah’s Ark. In that stage of my faith it seemed important to me that stories like this one were literally and factually true—that is, that they actually happened. And there’s a lot of literature out there by evangelical archaeologists who try to lay out a case for there having been a worldwide flood.

But I’m not much interested in that anymore. Why? The New Testament is pretty plainly more interested in the story of Noah’s Ark as a “type” or “prefiguring” of baptism, rather than as a historical event. From 1 Peter 3:

[I]n the days of Noah during the building of the ark [ . . . ] a few persons, eight in all, were saved through water. This prefigured baptism, which saves you now.

What does St. Peter mean by “prefigured”? Just as Noah and his family were saved from death by water on the wood of the ark, so the Christian family are saved from death by the water of baptism, which unites us to the wood of the cross. Water, salvation, wood, resurrection. We find all of these elements in both the story of Noah and the story of Jesus—and, by extension, in the story of each individual baptism. The story of Noah is instructive not merely as a historical event or as a fable, but as a way of better understanding of the story of Jesus and the sacrament of baptism.

When I was thinking about this, I was surprised to remember how, just as Pentecost comes after Good Friday and Easter, just as the dove descends on Jesus after his baptism, the Holy Spirit also makes an appearance after the “baptism” of Noah. Here it is in Genesis (slightly redacted for clarity):

At the end of forty days Noah opened the hatch of the ark that he had made. He released a dove, to see if the waters had lessened on the earth. In the evening the dove came back to him, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf!

You can see again a “type” here, this time of Pentecost in the arrival of the dove. The dove and the olive are both symbols of the Holy Spirit, whom, you’ll recall, descended on Jesus after his baptism in the form of a dove, and whom I’ll receive sacramentally, through the olive oil, at my confirmation on Pentecost.

I’d like to close by teasing three different implications of all of this for the significance of confirmation.

First, it shows that confirmation is proof that God keeps his promises. Just as the dove brings an olive branch as proof that God has kept his promise to Noah, so Pentecost proves that Jesus has kept his promise to his disciples to send the Holy Spirit to them in Jerusalem. This is the same Spirit, also, that is given at confirmation. The Spirit is proof that God is faithful and does what he sets out to do.

Second, it shows that confirmation is a promise of the life to come. Just as the dove bears the olive branch as a way of showing that yes, the waters are receding, and that there is a new life emerging for Noah and his family after the ark, so the Holy Spirit comes as a promise of eternal life for the Christian family. The Spirit anticipates a new life on the other side of death. In the Spirit we receive, here and now, the promise of the life to come.

Finally, as someone who was brought up in the faith very close the Quaker tradition, I have to note too that the dove and the olive branch are both symbols of peace, which is one of the gifts of the Spirit: peace between God, the human family, and all creation. So out of respect for my Quaker roots, that’s how I’ll be thinking of my confirmation, too. The Spirit brings us the gift of peace.

In my next post I’d like to look at the symbolism of anointing with oil in the Old Testament, but I’ll have to do a little more digging before I’m ready to write.

You’re Inside the Castle Now

Recently I found the time to pray the morning office from the Liturgy of the Hours, something that’s proven difficult recently between working nights and taking care of a sick baby. Something funny happened while I was praying this passage, from Psalm 48:

Walk through Zion, walk all round it;
count the number of its towers.
Review all its ramparts,
examine its castles.

The psalmist is praising God for the security and prosperity of the city of Jerusalem (Zion), a sign of God’s favor and blessing. Every time I’ve prayed this psalm before, I’ve imagined myself looking at Zion from the outside, admiring how impressive its walls are, how safe and secure it is, how happy its people, and so on.

But today the Spirit corrected my imagination, in a way, by saying, simply:

“You’re inside the castle now.”

What a simple but profound change that was! With a word I imagined myself walking through the city, walking along the ramparts, looking at the city from the inside. My prior feelings of admiration and respect were replaced by a profound sense of belonging, security, and happiness. I was home!

For me, this was a wonderful signpost on my way toward entering the Catholic Church. For so long I’ve been admiring her from the outside, impressed by her many walls and ramparts and castles, but still feeling myself exposed and en route. Now, with my confirmation less than three weeks away, my sense of things has changed. No longer am I an outsider; I am enjoying and surveying the city of Zion from within.

I’m inside the castle now.

Sealed with the Gift: Part 1, Why I Asked for Pentecost Sunday

What, exactly, will happen to me at my confirmation?

I will stand before the gathered community of believers and profess the Church’s baptismal vows, proclaim my faith as outlined in the Apostles’ Creed. The priest will lay his hands on me and the other confirmand, and anoint our foreheads with holy oil, making the sign of the cross, and saying, “Michael, be sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit.”

That’s the basic outline of the rite, but since I’ve never seen this done before, I’d like to explore some of the themes around confirmation over a series of short posts, using a few different texts from the Old and New Testaments. This, I hope, will deepen my own understanding of what will take place in just a couple of weeks.

The starting point, rightly, is the coming of the Holy Spirit on the nascent Christian community at Pentecost. From Acts 2:

When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled, they were all in one place together. And suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind, and it filled the entire house in which they were. Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire, which parted and came to rest on each one of them. And they were all filled with the holy Spirit and began to speak in different tongues, as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim.

Similar to the way that Baptism is a “re-enactment” of Jesus’ death and resurrection, the sacrament of Confirmation is a “re-enactment” of the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. There’s a link between the anointing and the laying on of hands that happens during confirmation and the coming of the Spirit as a “tongue of fire” here in Acts 2.

The Catechism is explicit on this point:

It is evident from its celebration that the effect of the sacrament of Confirmation is the special outpouring of the Holy Spirit as once granted to the apostles on the day of Pentecost.

Note that this is not just a symbolic gesture! What is happening is more than just a symbol, though obviously the rite is full of symbolism. The rite of confirmation also effects the thing it symbolizes.

Which to say, at confirmation I will receive the Holy Spirit just as the gathered community did on Pentecost all those years ago.

While I’ve never seen anyone get confirmed before, I knew enough to understand the link between confirmation and the coming of the Holy Spirit as outlined above. So you can probably guess why, when I was thinking about what would be an appropriate date to get confirmed, liturgically speaking, Pentecost Sunday felt like the obvious choice. I’m thrilled that the parish where I’m under formation agreed—and I’m also happy that another candidate is ready to move forward as well, so I won’t be the only one receiving confirmation on Pentecost Eve.

In my next post I’d like to look at another “type” of Pentecost in the Old Testament, one which might not spring to mind right away: the story of Noah’s Ark.

RCIA Journal: It’s Happening!

I’m really pleased to announce that I am finally going to receive confirmation!

The ceremony will be this Pentecost Eve at Our Lady of Guadalupe parish in Seattle. This will be at the 5:30 Mass on Saturday, May 22nd.

Since I have already been baptized, confirmation is what marks my full entry into the Catholic Church. After receiving confirmation, I’ll also be receiving first communion. This sharing in the body and blood of Christ marks the culmination of what has been a years-long journey, one I’ve been attempting to share with my friends and family through this blog.

If you’re a first time visitor and want to read more, I’d recommend reading my first post (click here), where I tried to give an account of the moment I knew I would become Catholic.

You can also find a table of contents by clicking here.

A “map” of the blog with a few highlighted posts is here. There you can read some of my more personal posts about RCIA, or look at some of the ways I thought through major differences between Protestant and Catholic doctrines, or just check out some of my favorite parts of the Catholic faith.

If you’ve been following this blog and would like to witness my confirmation, it will be available via livestream here.

To Enlarge the Whole Horizon of Our Love

St Aelred, abbot, in this morning’s Office of Readings, talks at length about Jesus’ love for his enemies, as demonstrated in his prayer from the cross, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!” Jesus’ enemy-love is twofold, says Aelred: first, it prays that God would forgive them, and second, it readily makes excuses for them.

We might also think of this morning’s Gospel reading, where Jesus commands us not to even think contemptuous thoughts about our brothers and sisters.

Enemy-hate—or if not hate, then a more low-level contempt–is a natural inclination for those who have suffered at the hands of another. When I think of my “enemies” I have more than one face come to mind, and they are men who have caused me to suffer through their violence or through their negligence. How am I to treat these people as Jesus did? How can I overcome my feelings of contempt for them—let alone love them?

This morning’s reading concludes with a recommendation: I must “enlarge the whole horizon of my love” and contemplate the “serene patience” of Jesus on the cross. Jesus has not merely given me a command of enemy-love, but also an example of it:

If someone wishes to resist the promptings of his sinful nature he must enlarge the whole horizon of his love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord. Furthermore, if he wishes to savor the joy of brotherly love, he must extend even to his enemies the embrace of true love.

But if he wishes to prevent this fire of divine love from growing cold because of injuries received, let him keep the eyes of his soul always fixed on the serene patience of his beloved Lord and Savior.

That last line, about love growing cold because of injuries received, is perfect. The injuries others cause me in life carry with them a temptation to resent, or even hate, the offender. Yet if I succumb to resentment, it is certain that the fire of divine love will grow cold.

The three medicines prescribed by Aelred, then, against resentment and hatred: first, to pray God will forgive them and welcome them into the kingdom; second, to think of every possible excuse for their bad behavior; and third, to meditate on Jesus’ suffering, forgiving, patient love, even for those who hated him.

RCIA Journal: Stuck and Shutdown

How do I put this? I feel a little bit stuck in limbo.

In a normal year (I am so tired of thinking about this, but here we are again), RCIA would be in-person. We’d have the class once a week, and then afterwards if people wanted we could go out for drinks and discuss, or at least chat in the parking lot before heading home for the night. It’s easier to wrestle that way, and it’s easier to engage when you’re “offline”, outside of the formal time of learning. We’d also see each other at Mass on Sundays, and maybe we’d double back after the benediction to talk more, discuss more. Everything would be woven together into the fabric of life.

On a zoom call, the discussion is over as soon as you click the little red button. It’s very abrupt.

There’s something anti-sacramental, really, about Zoom meetings. They take us further from reality rather than deeper into it. And the whole draw of this Catholic thing is the sacraments. If we’re not here for those, what are we here for? The water, the bread, the wine, the oil—pictures of them, words about them, are no substitute at all for receiving them.

The senses matter in Catholicism; the body matters.

And besides that, we can’t go to Mass—at least, not yet. And that’s been a major handicap to experiencing what the Church does and believes. Lex orandi lex credendi is a handy Latin phrase which means, roughly, that the Church “believes what it prays”. But how to believe with the Church when we’re not praying with the Church? So much is expressed in the Church’s liturgy, architecture, dress, song, incense, and so on. When all we have is talk, language, something is lost.

I’m tired of talking about it; I just want to do it.

This basic frustration has led the three of us to a sort of exhaustion. I’m not even sure what RCIA is about right now. What are we doing here?

Cora Evans, Santa Cruz’s Mountain Mystic

Ever since the 60s, the Santa Cruz mountains have been full of would-be mystics, chasing enlightenment through crystals, yoga, and herbal medicine. But Cora Evans was the real deal.

If you’ve ever been to the Santa Cruz mountains, you’ll agree: it is the perfect place for a hidden mystic. Giant redwoods tower over every home and hillside. A mysterious fog rolls in off the bay many evenings, and clings to the woods well into the morning. By day, the forest teems with birdsong; at night, it is haunted by the voices of owls.

I can picture her perfectly, falling into ecstasy on a perfect summer morning, then again amid a thunderous downpour one winter’s night. I can imagine easily the scent of heaven’s roses mingling with the bay laurel on a warm autumn evening. I can hear the low tinkling of her washing the dishes, or the clack of her typewriter as she records her latest vision.

Cora Evans was born into a Mormon family in Utah, in 1904. She had her first mystical experience at only three years old, when a beautiful woman appeared to her in a vision. At the time she did not recognize her, but the experience stayed with her throughout her life, and she later realized that she was none other than Mother Mary.

A major turning point came when she and her husband were married in 1924 in the famous Mormon temple in Salt Lake City. Mormon weddings, like all their temple rites, are shrouded in secrecy. The couple was deeply unsettled by the experience and became disillusioned with Mormonism generally. They began a ten-year journey of soul-searching, which must have been quite difficult in the heart of Mormon country, and Cora’s search for truth remained unfulfilled for a long time.

Relief came in 1934, when Cora was sick in bed listening to the radio. A Catholic radio program started up. She had already dismissed Catholicism for all the usual reasons but, feeling too sick to get up and turn the dial, she ended up listening to the program all the way through. What she heard contradicted all of the stereotypes she had heard about Catholicism, and soon afterward she found herself at her local Catholic parish, wanting to learn more. Four months later, on March 30th, 1945, she was baptized into the Catholic Church.

In July of 1938, she had an intense mystical experience, an event she later called her “vow day”, in which she completely committed her life to God and felt herself to be intimately united with him.

After their conversion to Catholicism (her husband and children entered the Church not long after her), Cora’s husband soon found it difficult to find and hold down a job in a predominantly Mormon community. So they made the difficult decision to move to Los Angeles, far from friends and family. It was here that Cora’s mystical experiences began to grow in frequency and intensity. She spoke directly with various saints and with Mary. She spoke with God in Aramaic, Jesus’ native tongue. She also received the stigmata, a mystical sign of her suffering with Christ.

As her visions intensified, she eventually sought the counsel of the local Jesuits, who assigned her a spiritual director to help guide her journey.

Outside of these visions and the work of recording what she had seen, Cora lived a humble, ordinary life. While certain friends and clergy knew of her visions, they were not widely publicized before her death. She lived at home while her husband supported the family through various odd jobs. One of her friends, in a recent interview, reported noticing the wound in her hand while she was washing the dishes. When he asked her if it hurt, she merely shrugged and answered, “I have to wash the dishes.”

Cora died in 1957, in Boulder Creek, after suffering a long time from stomach cancer. She offered her sufferings to God for the conversion of Mormons, whom she always considered to be her people. Her writings were extensive and are still undergoing review and publication, but are known for their deep theological insight and complexity—astonishing, given that she only had a middle school education.

Her cause for canonization was approved by the Vatican in 2013. If canonized, she would become California’s second saint.

It was easy to keep the mystics at a distance before I shared a forest with one. There’s something weird and, in a way, horrifying about them. In all of the signs which mark their holiness—the stigmata, the foreign tongues, the scent of roses—our everyday reality is torn open to reveal the divine mystery. I’ve read about other mystics like Cora, but they were safely in the distant past, or oceans away. Cora lived only 7 miles up the road from where I lived, and only 50 years prior. The trees in Santa Cruz live a long time; their presence there with Cora turns them into a kind of relic.

The same redwoods that watched over me, only a year ago, once saw the stigmata of Cora Evans in ecstasy.

I wonder if she was praying for me while I lived among her trees.

I wonder if she haunts the redwoods, like the morning mist.

Candlemas and the Strengthening of the Sun

Today is Candlemas, a nearly-forgotten feast day in the Catholic calendar, but one worth recovering.

Officially called “Presentation of the Lord”, today’s feast commemorates the events found in Luke 2:22-38. In this oft-overlooked passage from Jesus’ infancy, Mary and Joseph take Jesus to Jerusalem in order to fulfill two mandates of Torah, the Law of Moses: to present Mary’s firstborn son to the Lord (thus the title of the feast), and also to make an offering of two turtledoves for Mary’s purification 40 days after bearing a son. This was a routine act of worship in that time and place.

While at the Temple fulfilling their obligations, a very old man named Simeon approaches them “in the Spirit” and delivers a prophecy about the child Jesus. The Lord had promised Simeon that he would not die before seeing the Messiah; as his advanced age makes apparent, he had been waiting a very long time. When he sees the Christ-child, he takes him into his arms and blesses the Lord, saying:

Now, Master, you may let your servant go [that is, die] in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you prepared in the sight of all the peoples, a. light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.

After Simeon finishes his prophecy, out of the masonry comes a prophetess named Anna, who the Bible tells us is 84 years old (almost unheard of in those days), who also gives thanks to God for the child and speaks about him to everyone who is awaiting Israel’s redemption.

We have evidence for a feast in honor of this event going back to the fourth century in Jerusalem. It makes sense that the festival would have started here, since proximity to the Temple Mount would make it easy to remember and celebrate properly. The date for the festival makes good sense, too: in accordance with Torah, the Holy Family enters the temple 40 days after Jesus’ birth, and February 2nd is exactly 40 days after Christmas.

From Jerusalem, the feast eventually spread throughout the West, and by the Middle Ages it had become quite popular. The name “Candlemas” comes from the medieval tradition of bringing your candles to Mass on this day to have them blessed by a priest. It’s still a popular holiday in Latin America, Spain, France, Belgium, and a few other Catholic-majority countries.

It’s possible that Candlemas, much like other Christian holy days, incorporated traditions from pagan antecedents. The ancient Celtic holiday of Imbolc was (and is) also celebrated on February 2nd, which is about the halfway mark between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Imbolc is a celebration of the returning strength of the sun. And it’s true: the days have begun to lengthen noticeably since Christmas and the winter solstice, and while spring hasn’t arrived here in the Pacific Northwest just yet, it’s certainly coming into view. On a bright and soft February day, I might even start to feel a sense of hope.

Here, I think, we might note together some overlapping themes between the time of year and the biblical story underlying Candlemas. Simeon and Anna, both advanced in age, are like the winter, a symbol of death, which is itself dying away to the oncoming spring. Similarly, with the entrance of the Christ-child into the temple, the Sun of Justice begins to shine a little brighter. The promise of spring, of newness of life, is being kept; the Messiah, though still hidden in infancy, has indeed come to Israel.

Here in the Pacific Northwest, January and February are the most difficult months of the year to get through. The festivity of Christmas and New Year’s has long faded from memory, and it feels like we’re facing down two or three more months of cold, wet, and dark. Yet by February 2nd, it’s true, you can feel the sun regaining its vigor. I wonder if Candlemas might be re-adopted here as a way of remembering that the long dark days are nearly done, that just as the sun is sure to return, so God is sure to make good on his promises. His redemption is at hand!

Today we celebrated our first Candlemas as a family. I made crepes in the morning, a Old World tradition. The crepes were gold and round and hot, like the returning sun. We filled our family altar with little candles and put up Our Lady of the Sign. It’s a decent start—like the holiday itself, a reminder that brighter days are coming, and that even a life that is now very small will soon grow into maturity.

The view from one of our daily walks this week.

St Francis de Sales: Don’t Mind Your Haters

One of the saints I’ve been getting to know recently is Francis de Sales, who was Bishop of Geneva from 1602-1622. As a young man, he heard a lecture about double predestination (one of Calvin’s doctrines) in Paris; certain that he was among the damned, he fell into a deep depression. What saved him was a realization that, since “God is love”, as the Bible says, surely he was not destined for hell.

Providentially, de Sales was later consecrated as bishop of the Calvinist headquarters of Geneva; because of this, he never entered the city itself, instead residing at nearby Annecy. As bishop he was known for his loving and gentle approach toward the Reformation—he was convinced that you could “attract more bees with a spoonful of honey than with a barrel of vinegar”—and for his talent for spiritual direction.

Anyhow, I’m swimming through what is probably his most famous work, called Introduction to the Devout Life. In this section, he writes about how anyone who undertakes the Christian life is bound to be met with criticism no matter what she does:

Philothea, all of this is foolish and empty babbling. These people aren’t interested in your health or welfare. ‘If you were of the world, the world would love what is its own but because you are not of the world, the world hates you,’ says the Savior. Does anyone fail to see that the world is an unjust judge, gracious and well-disposed to its own children but harsh and rigorous toward the children of God?

We can never please the world unless we lose ourselves together with it. It is so demanding that it cannot be satisfied. If we are ready to laugh, play cards, or dance with the world in order to please it, it will be scandalized at us, and if we don’t, it will accuse us of hypocrisy or melancholy. If we dress well, it will attribute it to some plan that we have, and if we neglect our dress, it will accuse us of being cheap and stingy. Good humor will be called frivolity and mortification sullenness. Thus the world looks at us with an evil eye and we can never please it.

Whatever we do, the world will wage war on us. If we stay a long time in the confessional, it will wonder how we can have so much to say; if we stay only a short time, it will say we haven’t told everything. It will watch all our actions and at a single little angry word it will protest that we can’t get along with anyone. To take care of our own interests will look like avarice, while meekness will look like folly.

As for the children of this world, their anger is called being blunt, their avarice economy, their intimate conversations lawful discussions. Spiders always spoil the good work of the bees.

Let us give up this blind world, Philothea. Let it cry out at us as long as it pleases, like a cat that cries out to frighten birds in the daytime. Let us be firm in our purposes and unwavering in our resolutions.

The world holds us to be fools; let us hold it to be mad.

Haters gonna hate, I guess.