Eucharistic celebration demands a self-examination

Raymund Schwager writes on the drama of the Christian Life in his book, Jesus in the Drama of Salvation (pp 228-229)

Whoever eats of the bread and drinks of the cup unworthily will be guilty of the Lord's body and blood. Let everyone examine himself, and only then eat of the bread and drink of the cup. For whoever eats and drinks without discerning the body of the Lord, that person eats and drinks judgment upon himself. Because of this some among you are weak and ill, and not a few have passed away. But if we judged ourselves, then we would not be judged. (1 Cor. 11:27-31)

The eucharistic celebration demands a self-examination. If this is not carried out in sufficient depth, then there necessarily results an involuntary process of self-judgment, which according to Paul reaches even into a person's bodily existence. The liturgy is, then, not only the performance of a drama; as effective representation it releases a process of judgment and provokes decisions which reach into the inmost depths of the participants.

What Apocalypse? - MSM

Jim Rutenberg of the NYT thinks that all those critics of Big-O are hemming and hawing now that the man is in direct line for the Oval Office, with a few notable exceptions promising ”intense” oversight.

The truly interesting feat to be carried out by the smarmy MSM will be how aptly they will paint the continued fraying of western civilization at its ragged edges and sizable tears. It will resemble, in my humble opinion, the jaunty adventures of the denizens of Terry Gilliams' prescient Brazil (1985), with its exurbite mavens ignoring a nearby terrorist bomb explosion a few tables away while they're "enjoying" their lunch.

I think I'll curl up with Walker Percy's Love in the Ruins. Wake me when 2012 comes round...

This Ain't Hobbiton

The worst of this election's absurd nonsense is that people near and dear to me are so taken by this Pied Piper of the Culture of Death, Barack Obama. He has promised to sign the Freedom (sic.) of Choice Act first and foremost after becoming President of the United States.

They see in him no earthly man, but a symbol, a non-George W. Bush, an archetype. I see in him an internal mediator who pulls on his trousers one leg at a time - regardless of his promises to "change the world" - who will disappoint his followers for a plethora of reasons, as the inevitable enantiadromia after his gutterish triumphal entry turns ugly.

I do not pity the man. He doesn't have an epistemological or ontological leg on which to stand. I do, however, pity those, as I say, whom I love who are blind to the mythopoeia that swirls about him. And I am angry; angry at what this nation is about, legally, to become. The United States of America will face consequential judgment, and well deserved.

So where is a hobbit to find a piece of land, some freedom(s), and a place to worship and raise a family in peace?