Therese J. Borchard: 'Beyond Blue' By John Feister


THERE WAS A MOMENT in Therese Borchard’s life when she found herself crouched in a closet, terrified, with her kids in front of the TV in the other room. The bouts of depression and anxiety she had fought since she was a teenager—the same depression that had led her aunt-godmother to suicide—had become unbearable to her.

Eric, her husband of 10 years, persuaded Therese to allow him to take her to the hospital for help. That trip to Johns Hopkins in Baltimore was the beginning of a journey that led Therese to become one of this nation’s leading advocates for people with manic depression. You sometimes can find her books Beyond Blue or The Pocket Therapist on the racks at stores nationally; she’s been interviewed for Psychology Today, among other magazines, and has been a guest on national television shows.

But she is most known on the Internet, at a Web site of many religions called www.beliefnet.com, where she blogs and interacts with online visitors. Hers is an advocacy of caring.

“It was my Catholic faith that saved me,” Therese says unabashedly, as Eric helps two children up the stairs toward bed. At home in Annapolis, Maryland, Therese shares her story of faith, struggle, how she found a way to cope and how she now helps others. Faith is clearly at the heart of her story.
 
 
Too Catholic?

Bipolar disorder, the more accurate name for what has been called manic depression, is now known as a “spectrum disorder,” one that exists in all sorts of severity. It can be a mild cycle of ups and downs, looking more like grumpiness or sadness contrasted with superstar performance. It’s usually worse than that, going as far as days in bed contrasted with hallucinations and requiring hospitalization. In Therese’s case, it is a severe, disabling disorder, though hers is kept at bay through a combination of medical help and self-management.

For 40-year-old Therese, it started at a young age in Kettering, Ohio, where she grew up as Therese Johnson. What was masked as an exceptional childhood devotion to Catholicism was actually the beginnings of a medical condition. “When I was a little girl, I would have these anxiety spells,” she recalls. Observing her mother’s piety in the face of an alcoholic husband, who was gone by the time Therese reached 12, Therese devoted herself to religious expression. But for Therese, there was more than faith at work.

“Catholicism is the best religion for the mentally ill,” this devout Catholic says half-jokingly (she is humorous). She is speaking of a compulsive, unhealthy piety. “It can mask behaviors so that the counselor doesn’t get called.” That’s what happened in her case. The godmother she had so loved had taught Therese prayers and devotions, and Therese lost herself in them, kneeling in her room, saying “extra prayers,” doing all of the devotions a few extra times. Everyone around saw in her a profound holiness (to this day she remains devout, but less extreme).

But with her teenage years came depression. She drank heavily for the fun of it, or so she thought at first. She actually was “self-medicating” a serious depressive illness. And she had what now would be called an eating disorder—she was not eating enough.

Smart young Therese could see a problem. Her lack of freedom with alcohol was her first clue: “After giving it up for Lent for three years and being unsuccessful, I knew that moderation was just not going to work,” she recalls. She really did not want to fall into her alcoholic father’s footsteps. “I stopped drinking senior year of high school.”

But her problems persisted. At St. Mary’s College in South Bend, Indiana, she sought a counselor’s help, first to find a local Alcoholics Anonymous group. The counselor sensed other troubles and ultimately helped Therese find medical help for what she learned was bipolar disorder.

After college she went to work in Chicago for a short while, pursuing her dream to be a journalist. It wasn’t working, though. During that time, providentially, she now knows, she met Eric Borchard. They married and eventually moved to his hometown, Annapolis, to start a family.

Throughout, she clung to her faith. Her bouts with depression followed by manic energy were sometimes managed, sometimes not. She went from doctor to doctor, to no avail. She experimented with family-recommended alternative treatment approaches (meditation, yoga and so on), but they didn’t work either. Her faith could console her but couldn’t fix her: Her illness had become overwhelming.


A Helping Hand

The day Eric took Therese to the hospital was the day Therese’s life began to turn around. Receiving treatment in the coming years, she learned about bipolar disorder. She learned that it is hereditary; that alcohol is often used for self-medication of mood swings (it doesn’t work); that stress can make things worse; that certain stressors are triggers for bipolar episodes; and that with a careful diet, hearty exercise daily and doctor-supervised medication, it can be managed.

People with bipolar disorder—once they understand the illness and receive medical help—can live relatively normal and healthy lives. Ask Therese Borchard!

Her passion—in addition to being a wife and mother—has become telling the world about bipolar disorder and reaching out a helping hand to those with the disease. Bipolar disease is relatively rare—affecting about 2.6 percent of the U.S. population, according to the National Institute of Mental Health. But that’s no small number, about 5.7 million adult Americans.

Therese got involved with Beliefnet in 2006, not long after her stay at Johns Hopkins. About a month after she left the hospital, there was a politician, Douglas M. Duncan, who left the Maryland gubernatorial race because he had been diagnosed with clinical depression. “I was so empowered by that,” Therese says, speaking of the public, open way that Duncan talked about his disorder. She decided to do likewise. She wrote a piece about Duncan’s openness that wound up at Catholic News Service, which feeds news to Catholic media outlets across the continent. Someone at Beliefnet, where Therese had contributed before, read the piece and liked it. Beliefnet’s research showed that many of the site’s readers suffered from depression, so editors invited Therese to write a column about that.

“I hesitated at first, because going public with your story about depression is just—it’s really a deal-breaker,” she says with a laugh. “But I thought about the people who had really saved my life, and some of my heroes who suffered depression,” she says, citing Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill, who didn’t let depression keep them from doing important work. “I needed to tell those people before me that they weren’t going insane and that there was life after depression, life after anxiety, life after hospitalization.

“Plus, I lost my godmother. She took her own life. And I thought, If I can save one person, then who cares if I ever can’t get a job because my name’s out there? That is an issue now, but I still believe I did the right thing.”

Her pages at Beliefnet are accessed by about 200,000 visitors per month, at this writing, and that number is continuing to grow, she reports. “The letters and comments I get are really amazing!” says Therese. “Whenever I think that I don’t have the energy to keep it up, I get a letter—like the one from this woman from Switzerland. She said that for two years I’ve kept her alive. Whenever she feels frightened [fearing suicide], she goes on to YouTube to watch my videos.”

Recently, Therese became associate editor of another online resource, www.PsychCentral.com, a site devoted more to medicine than to religion. She keeps up her “Beyond Blue” column at Beliefnet, though, which she still considers her favorite work.

If suicidal people contact her for help, Therese refers them to hotlines. Crisis intervention is beyond the kind of help she can give. “I need to be careful about that: I’m not a therapist,” she cautions.

The hardest parts about being so public with her illness are the “crackpots” and overly critical visitors, she says. “It’s so hard when you take a risk and put yourself out there and hear people complain, ‘You’re so obsessed, so selfindulgent.’ Or ‘There are hungry people in China, if you think you have problems!’ But you just try not to take those so personally. If I can save a life, or two, then it’s worth it.”

Therese longs for the day when, as with diabetes, arthritis or cancer, people will be able to talk about mental illnesses more freely. That’s what removes the social stigma.


Four Theresas

Therese is fueled in her advocacy through devotion to her faith. She and her family are regular parishioners at nearby St. Mary’s, where she serves as a lector and where her children attend elementary school. She prays each morning (“I really do,” she insists) because it centers her. “If you’re not centered on God and peace, and that sense of stillness, then I think you’re getting off to a rough start!” she says, laughing.

But Therese has a special devotion, as she says, to three Theresas. First is Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, with whom Therese spent a volunteer week just out of college. (“I met her!” she exclaims.) Mother Teresa’s letters, which document her own struggles with darkness, are an inspiration to Borchard. She’s quick to add that Mother Teresa’s darkness is not to be confused with clinical depression—Mother Teresa was able to keep on with her life and work; clinically depressed people can’t do that as they turn in on themselves.

St. Teresa of Avila, a Carmelite, is a source of inspiration for Therese’s mystical side—Borchard certainly believes in a very real and present transcendence. And St. Thérèse of Lisieux, Borchard’s patroness, has played an important role in her recovery.

For years our Therese carried around a St. Thérèse medal given to her by her best friend. Through thick and thin she kept that medal close at hand during the year and a half when she felt suicidal. “It was my token of hope,” she says. As her sickness progressed, though, she came dangerously close to taking her life.

These were the days before her Johns Hopkins treatment. After six weeks of outpatient therapy was deemed a failure by her health-care provider, she sat in her driveway, considering taking all of the failed prescription pills in her house. “It was probably my lowest point,” she quietly recalls. “I thought, If I’ve gone through seven doctors and a hospitalization program and six weeks of outpatient and they say that they can’t help me, then there’s obviously nothing I can do, so I’m just going to take my life and get out of here.” She pleaded for—or, more accurately, demanded—a sign from God.

On her way into the house, she reflexively picked up her mail, and noticed a piece from a woman she’d met at a conference. “In the mail there was another medal, like the one that I had been hanging on to, from a woman named Rose, and she said that she had said a novena in my name—talk about a sign!”

So, she concludes, “All of the T(h)eresas are important to me!”

 
Heroic Husband

In a more practical way, Therese depends upon those around her. She would not be in the place she is without Eric, she gratefully admits. “The thing he does best is to suspend his judgment and just listen. That’s the best thing you can do for anyone who is in pain, especially if you have different ‘health philosophies.’”

It was difficult for the two of them to sort out. “I never realized how many different health philosophies there were until I started to hit bottom. There were so many judgments—if I ate organically, if I did this or that.

“Self-educating and listening are the two most important things” for those close to people with bipolar disorder, she insists. “Eric got on the Internet and just studied.” The more he understood, she says, the less likely he was to think this was something Therese could control without medical help. And the more he understood, “the less scared he was.”

From today’s perspective, she can laugh: “I sort of have to stay with him no matter what he does, after him going through that!”

It was Eric who loved her, who stood with her during impossibly hard times, seeking one method after another to treat her, who didn’t throw in the towel. It was Eric who knelt on one knee before Therese in the closet that day, imploring her to put aside fear and go to a hospital. “We can’t go on this way,” he had pleaded.

It was with Eric, too, at Johns Hopkins, walking into the lobby, that Therese found the spiritual succor that would lead to healing. The two stood before the large wooden statue of Jesus that greets all who come in the main lobby with an inscription, “Come, all you weary, and I will give you rest.”

“I just cried when I read that,” she recalls. “I was so tired.”

She says she felt like the hemorrhaging woman of the Gospels (see Luke 8:43-48). “All she wanted to do was just to touch the robe. I felt like her. And I just said, ‘I believe, Jesus, I believe.’” Then she and Eric went into the elevator together and began rebuilding her life.

 
How Hospitable Are You?

One of the biggest challenges to families dealing with bipolar disorder—or practically any mental illness—is the social stigma, even in local parishes. There are ways, though, that we can be more sensitive and welcoming. Some suggestions from Therese’s blog at PsychCentral.comare adapted here with Therese’s permission.

Learn about it. Therese recommends starting on the Web, with mental-health Web sites such as PsychCentral.com, MentalHealth.com, WebMD.com, RevolutionHealth.comand EverydayHealth.com; checking out nonprofit groups such as NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) or DBSA (Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance). You can also tune in to one of the top 10 psychology videos found on YouTube. These all can be augmented by the public library, lectures and talking to local mental-health professionals.

Talk about it. This advice is for preachers: Find ways to bring mental-health themes—understanding, compassion, solidarity—into homilies and other parish worship or presentations.

Pray about it. Praying together is a powerful affirmation to families that they are not going it alone, and that they have nothing to hide. Ask the parish liturgy committee if a Mass or other liturgy might be planned. Encourage parish prayer groups to be open to families affected by mental illness. Bring these needs into your family and personal prayer.



John Feister is editor-in-chief of this publication. He has master’s degrees in humanities and theology from Xavier University, Cincinnati.
 
http://www.americancatholic.org/samo/Feature.aspx?articleid=28&IssueID=24

Press Release- June 27, 2001.

WASHINGTON, DC – Washington Theological Union (WTU), a Roman Catholic graduate school of theology and ministry in Washington, DC, announced today that it does not have the financial resources to be able to continue offering its academic services to the Church and the community beyond the 2012 - 2013 academic year.

In recent years, WTU, like many other seminaries and religious schools, has been navigating multiple financial challenges with the recent economic downturn, decline in the number of religious vocations and a national decrease in private funding for religious initiatives. Earlier this month, the Board of Trustees, in consideration of these challenges and a declining endowment, decided to close enrollment to new students after September 2011. Classes will then continue to be held to allow current students the opportunity to complete their degrees in the time remaining before the end of the 2012 - 2013 academic year.

“This was a difficult decision for us, not least because of the excellence of the education and formation our students are receiving,” said Very Rev. James Greenfield, OSFS, and Chair of the Board of Trustees. “We remain proud of all we’ve accomplished as a community, and of the many successes and contributions our students, faculty, staff and alumni are making to the Church.”

All efforts will now be focused on working with currently enrolled students to complete their studies by the 2012 - 2013 academic year. WTU, long a host to nationally recognized conferences and workshops, will continue to operate its conference center and offer lectures and programs for the Church community during this time period.

“Let this be a time to celebrate the Union's contribution to the Church, to honor the various constituencies that made it possible, and to reaffirm the Union's values, still much needed .We will enter this final phase with dignity, a sense of accomplishment, and gratitude to God," said Very Rev. John Welch, O.Carm., Provincial of the Chicago Carmelite Province and Board of Trustees member.

WTU, which boasts over 1400 religious and lay alumni throughout Archdioceses and parishes across the nation and worldwide, has educated men and women for ministry to the Church for over 40 years. Its graduates include bishops, theologians, presidents of universities, missionaries in every part of the world, pastors and lay associates. Its faculty has included world renowned scholars, homilists, pastors, pastoral counselors, spiritual masters and directors.

Media Contact: Kerry Ann Turner
Office: 202-541-5235
Email: kturner@wtu.edu

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Catholic Bishops’ Conference welcomed the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed standards for mercury and air toxics produced by power plants, according to a June 20 comment filed with the Environmental Protection Agency, by Bishop Stephen Blaire, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.


“Such standards should protect the health and welfare of all people, especially the most vulnerable members of our society, including unborn and other young children, from harmful exposure to toxic air pollution emitted from power plants,” said Bishop Blaire.

Bishop Blaire cited Catholic teaching on the protection of the environment and the need to protect human life and dignity at all stages. “Children, inside and outside the womb, are uniquely vulnerable to environmental hazards and exposure to toxic pollutants in the environment,” he said. “Their bodies, behaviors and size leave them more exposed than adults to such health hazards. Furthermore, since children are exposed to environmental hazards at an early age, they have more extended time to develop slowly-progressing environmentally triggered illnesses.”

Bishop Blaire also urged the EPA to take steps to not disproportionally impact the poor and vulnerable in the implementation of this rule. He noted that “[w]hile there are short-term costs involved in implementing this standard, the health benefits of such a rule outweigh these costs.”

The Domestic Justice Committee chairman stressed the urgency of acting on this health and environment priority. He called upon “leaders in government and industry to act responsibly, justly and rapidly to implement such a standard” to significantly reduce toxic air pollution.

Full text of Bishop Blaire’s comment is available online: http://www.usccb.org/ogc/2011-usccb-letter-to-lisa-jackson.pdf.

In a similar letter to the EPA, the Catholic Health Association of the United States (CHA) also expressed support for mercury and air toxics standards to reduce harmful pollution and its health effects. The CHA’s letter is posted on their website: http://www.chausa.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=4294968373

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Keywords: EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, emissions, standards, regulations, environment, Bishop Stephen E. Blaire, Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
 
http://www.usccb.org/comm/archives/2011/11-130.shtml

From Catholic San Francisco:
June 8th, 2011
By Lida Wasowicz


Where others see murderers, rapists and gangsters, Jesuit Father George Williams, the new Catholic chaplain of San Quentin State Prison in Marin County, beholds Jesus.

He sees Christ in the Hell’s Angel shouting a greeting, “Hey, from one angel to another, how’s it going?” He sees Christ in the shackled inmate seeking freedom from sin through baptism, in the convict with devil’s horns tattooed on his shaved head asking to be confirmed.

And he sees Christ in the lifers who are studying theology. These inmates, on occasion, stump him with their insightful questions and surprise him with their knowledge of church teaching, which, he admits, at times surpasses his own.

“God jumps out at you when you least expect it,” said Father Williams, who served 15 years in prison ministries in Massachusetts before being appointed to his “dream job” by San Francisco Archbishop George Niederauer, at California’s oldest penitentiary in January.

Walking to death row for the first time, he looked up through the razor wire to the rafters and spotted a dozen red-winged blackbirds.

“They sang all day long, a reminder that even in all this oppression and darkness, God is here,” Father Williams said.

That’s the message he spreads at the 159-year-old facility that houses nearly 6,000 prisoners, including some 750 on the nation’s largest death row. About a quarter of them are Catholic, and they keep him busy.

He’s in charge of a full sacramental calendar: three baptisms at Easter; confirmations; confessions, which are significant for their healing and forgiving; the Eucharist; and anointing of the sick. Not included are weddings and ordinations, although Father Williams says he knows inmates who would make wonderful priests and points out that St. Paul “had blood on his hands” and that prisons have a built-in monastic structure.

He makes cell calls, entering when invited as he walks the prison blocks. He says three death row Masses weekly and hopes to increase the frequency so the 50 high-security felons who usually go can do so more than once a month. At most, five are allowed to congregate at a time, so only 15 can attend a week.

Coming from a state without a death penalty, Father Williams was taken aback by San Quentin’s harsh conditions and security measures that make him the only priest in his community to wear a bulletproof vest to work. He was pleasantly surprised by the plethora of programs, beautiful Catholic chapel and hordes of volunteers who bring “a humanness here I didn’t expect.”

Passionate about his work, the priest will be encouraging students to get involved in prison ministry when he starts teaching at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, his current home.

“You see the Gospel in a totally different light in prison,” Father Williams said. “The early Christians were no strangers to prison and execution, including Jesus.”

He wants to have the same impact as the Jesuit brothers who changed his life.

Inspired by a parish priest in New Haven, Conn., Father Williams felt God’s calling as a child but was turned off to his faith when his family forbade any questioning of it as he grew older.

He sought answers in other religions — at Syracuse University in New York where he majored in political science and planned a career in the diplomatic corps, and in the Air Force, which he joined as a second lieutenant.

He started seeing the light on a mission to Alaska.

“I remember very clearly being on top of a mountain with 30 men 200 miles from anywhere,” he said, “wondering, ‘What am I doing here?’ and asking, ‘God, what do you want me to do?’”

He got the answer through an Air Force chaplain, who introduced him to a group of Jesuits working in remote Alaskan villages.

“I discovered you can be Catholic and think and have an open mind and a sense of humor,” Father Williams said. “These real missionaries on the edge got me interested in the Society of Jesus.”

In 1987, at age 30, he entered the Jesuit novitiate. As part of a prayer exercise, he was to picture himself in Gospel stories. He could easily visualize the stories but never the face of Jesus. His superior advised him to ask Jesus the reason. He did.

“I heard a voice saying, ‘I’ll show you my face in the people you will work with,’” Father Williams recalled. “The first day at the Massachusetts state prison at Norfolk, I encountered God, vividly seeing Christ in the prisoners — an image that has been with me ever since.”

The inmates urged Brother Williams to become Father Williams. He was ordained in 2004 by Cardinal Sean O’Malley in Boston.

As a Jesuit priest, his mission is to go where the need is greatest, Father Williams said.

“Nowhere is there a greater need than in the prison system that holds more than 2 million mostly poor and often disenfranchised people,” he said. “I feel a call to respond to that need.”



From the June 10, 2011, issue of Catholic San Francisco.
http://catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=23&id=58635

Let us Pray

[to the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
that our lives may bear witness to our faith]
Father,
you sent your Word
to bring us truth
and your Spirit to make us holy.

Through them we come to know
the mystery of your life.

Help us to worship you,
one God in three Persons,
by proclaiming and living our faith in you.

We ask you this, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, true and living, for ever and ever.  Amen.


http://www.churchyear.net/trinityprayers.html

Qualities of leadership exhibited by postgraduate volunteers are increasingly recognized by employers. The goal of this week-long certificate program is to offer tools and resources to help leaders transition from volunteering to employment. The certificate program is open to anyone who has completed a year or more of full-time community service within the past 12 months (since June 2010). The certificate program will be held at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana during the week of July 31–August 5, 2011. A $25 application fee is required; otherwise the program is free and includes a $150 stipend to help cover travel and food. Free on-campus housing is available.


The Leaders In Transition Certificate Program in Career Management is presented by the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business Master of Nonprofit Administration Program in collaboration with the Center for Social Concerns, Alumni Association, and The Career Center.

For more information about this opportunity and to apply, please click the following link: http://socialconcerns.nd.edu/postgraduate/leaders_transition.shtml

By Deacon Mike Murphy


From Catholic San Francisco:

“And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” — John 20

One of the things I like to do at my school is coach. Actually, “coach” may be a bit strong. Rather, I show up at the scheduled game and practice times and try to manage the chaos. My fervent hope at the end of each day is that everybody’s smiling and nobody’s gotten hurt. Bruce Bochy and Bill Walsh, I’m not.

I work, though, with a fellow who is an absolutely fabulous coach. His players have fun, learn a lot and win most of their games. They would literally run through walls for him.

What I really love watching is how he works with his players. He treats them all as individuals, maximizing their strengths, working on their weaknesses. During a single practice, he may be a quiet teacher, a firm disciplinarian, a shoulder to cry on. He’s always there for his players, in exactly the way they need him. Because he’s been their coach, they become better players; more important, they often become better people.

I thought of him as I looked at the readings for Pentecost and the various ways in which the Holy Spirit enters the lives of the apostles. At different times, the Holy Spirit comes as tongues of fire, a strong driving wind and through the gentle breath of Jesus. These are utterly different descriptions. Yet, like my friend the coach, the Spirit in each instance touches the apostles in exactly the way they need, just when they need it. The Spirit acts with power and force, giving the virtues of courage and strength. He enters quietly, bringing to bear his calming presence. Each time, we see the same Spirit that’s present today, changing lives, forming community, bringing peace to the earth.

We turn to God for many reasons. Yet we see this week that no matter the reason, the Holy Spirit will be there, ready to make a difference. The face that the Holy Spirit will show to us each time will be the face of God that we so need at that moment.

Perhaps some young parents have been overextended and their nerves are a bit frayed. They would do anything if they could just take a nap or have a quiet cup of coffee. In that instant, the Holy Spirit might appear as a calming word from Scripture, a couple minutes of blessed silence, or even better, an understanding grandparent. That’s God, that’s the Holy Spirit, working and present in our lives, entering the world like the peaceful breath of Jesus.

At other times, the Holy Spirit might be much more forceful and directed. Maybe we witness an injustice. We might want nothing more than to just close our eyes and hope it all goes away. Yet in this case, the Holy Spirit won’t let us rest, but instead will give us the courage and strength to go into action. We’ll be amazed at what we’re able to do, the difference we’re able to make. That’s also God, that’s also the Holy Spirit, working and present in our lives, entering the world like a strong and driving wind.

Our challenge this week is twofold: To recognize that the Holy Spirit is always with us, and to then live our lives with the peace and courage that knowledge gives us. Knowing we are not alone, we can be confident he will give us the necessary graces to be good, holy, and loving people. At very different places and very different times in our lives, we may need the Spirit in very different ways. But he will be there, just when we need Him, exactly how we need him. Pentecost promises us that.

Reflection questions:
How do we need the Holy Spirit at this moment in our lives?
Are we open to recognizing the Spirit making a difference in our lives?


Mike Murphy is a permanent deacon serving at St. Charles Parish in San Carlos. He teaches religion at Sacred Heart Schools, Atherton.
http://www.catholic-sf.org/news_select.php?newsid=21&id=58664

From America Magazine:

Posted at: Monday, June 06, 2011
Author: John W. Martens

"One of the great beauties of the Church is the liturgical calendar and the eternal rhythms to which one becomes attuned. One of the realities of writing with the Church’s calendar is that soon you have written on almost every feast day. It is a wonderful thing to turn one’s mind to writing about the Ascension of the Lord, but should one have something new to say about the Ascension every year, or can you rely on, if not exactly the eternal rhythms of the calendar, the tried and true cut and paste from last year’s musing on the Ascension, or perhaps the year prior to that? This is a combination of posts from the last three years, dating back to Ascension 2008, which I offer today because they reflect the eternal significance of the Ascension and, in some cases, current and recent concerns.
 
The Ascension is not a time to be gazing skyward or backward. St. Augustine gets to the ground of this reality in The City of God Book XVIII, Chapter 53, when he says of the Parousia, citing Acts 1:6f, “it is usual to ask at this point, ‘When will this happen?’ But this question is entirely inappropriate. For had it been of profit to us to know the answer to it, who better to tell us than the Master, God himself, when the disciples asked him? For they were not silent on this matter when they were with Him; on the contrary, they asked Him directly, saying, ‘Lord, wilt thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?’ But He said, ‘It is not for you to know the times or the seasons, which the Father has put in His own power.’” Augustine goes on to say, “in vain, therefore, do we strive to compute and define the number of years that remain in this world”; it might be an intriguing past-time, but pulls us away from the many tasks of the Church at hand.


On the other hand, Augustine returns to this passage in Book XX, Chapter 30, on the last page of his massive tome, as he considers the reality of Christ’s return – without calculating dates! – as “prefiguring the eternal rest not only of the Spirit, but of the body also.” Augustine speaks specifically of our bodily reality, but it is true also of Jesus, “who will return in the same way.” This bodily reality of Jesus, which the disciples gaze at in the Ascension narrative at the beginning of Acts, prefigures the bodily return of Jesus.

There is a very real and continuing physicality of Jesus Christ. The ascension is the celebration of Jesus’ enthronement as Lord, but also a sign of his continuing existence in the flesh, albeit the resurrected body. It has also been, in many ways, a marginalized teaching of the Church, perhaps because of its very physicality which can tend to embarrass modern or postmodern sensibilities. Where is the Risen Lord? Luke reports that “as they were looking on, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him from their sight. While they were looking intently at the sky as he was going, suddenly two men dressed in white garments stood beside them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why are you standing there looking at the sky? This Jesus who has been taken up from you into heaven will return in the same way as you have seen him going into heaven” (1:9-11). Ephesians states that God has seated Christ “at his right hand in the heavens, far above every principality, authority, power, and dominion, and every name that is named not only in this age but also in the one to come” (1:20-21). The cosmology reported in these two New Testament writings is so very foreign to us, as Jesus seems to “float” into his home in the sky. On the other hand, the bodily existence of Jesus is real and so we cannot simply revert to the body-soul split of the ancient Greeks and even many modern thinkers.

How do we retain the core of our faith, the resurrection and the ascension of the Lord, while embedded in an ancient cosmology which we no longer share? It was Douglas Farrow’s book, Ascension and Ecclesia (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1999), which made clear to me how significant the doctrine of the ascension was, not only within the New Testament, but to the Church today. While we may reject the ancient cosmologies which describe Jesus flying into the ether, if we reject the particularity of Jesus we lose not only his bodiliness, but our own and are prone to fall into the trap of Gnosticism. The ascension is essential for the Church. Farrow writes, “to take seriously the fact that Christ has ascended to the Father is not to say he is everywhere, or nowhere, or somewhere else, but that he is with us in this twofold way: He is there, in first-century Palestine, and there again, at the parousia. Because he is with the Father, he is before us and after us; only so is he with us. He is with us precisely as a question put to our very existence, so that we too must decide with Pilate – and under essentially the same circumstances – ‘What shall I do with Jesus, who is called the Christ?’” (Ascension and Ecclesia, 225).

We must focus on the particularity of the Risen Lord. This seems such a significant point to me, that we serve and await not a cosmic or universalized principle, but the Risen Lord, who is present to us in the Scriptures, the Church and the Eucharist. Our task as Christians seems that much more grounded in light of the Ascension. T.F. Torrance in Royal Priesthood writes, “to demythologize the ascension (which means of course that it must first of all be mythologised) is to dehumanize Christ, and to dehumanize Christ is to make the Gospel of no relevance to humanity, but to turn it into an inhospitable and inhuman abstraction” (cited in Ascension and Ecclesia, 265). Jesus is not an abstraction; he has ascended to the Lord, as Ephesians 1:17-23 stresses. Our task is here on earth, again as a passage from Ephesians, 4:12, notes: “for building up the body of Christ.” We work “with all humility and gentleness” (Ephes. 4:2), according to the gifts we have been given. We are a part of the body of Christ here on earth because he is, indeed, our heavenly Lord. But we await the return of Jesus and we know that he will return, the one who shared in our humanity in every way but sin, and who models for us the life in the glory of the resurrected body."


http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=1&entry_id=4281

Helping Catholic Students Remain Catholic in a Setting of Nietzsche and Beer Pong

By SAMUEL G. FREEDMAN

Published: May 20, 2011

As for Ms. Leya, she expects to attend her last Mass as a Yalie on Sunday. The chaplains have already asked that she lead the worshipers in a reading from Peter. In it, the apostle asks of the believers what Esteem has asked of her, to “let yourselves be built into a spiritual house.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/us/21religion.html?_r=1