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Being Catholic Isn't An Excuse for Crap Writing: Lessons from a Journalist
If you've read my post about evangelization and cheese, you might not be surprised when I say that evangelistic efforts can't lack quality. Regardless of how true the Catholic faith is, if you can't communicate it effectively the truth will fall on deaf ears.
I'm not the greatest writer (shocker I know) and wanted some help in this area so I asked good friend Arleen Spencely to share some of her knowledge and experience as a writer, blogger, and journalist. Listen up!
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Five Blogging Tips from a Journalist - Arleen Spenceley
Lots of what I know about blogging is what I learned in a newsroom – what I learned at the first desk on the left side of a Tampa Bay Times bureau, where on July 23, 2007, I marveled at the privilege of my new reality: “I can’t believe I work here.”
That day – my first as a Times staff writer – I was a college kid, now with Pulitzer Prize-winning colleagues, a press badge and a dream come true. That semester, the summer before I graduated with my bachelor’s degree in journalism, I discovered what I never expected I would:
You learn a lot more in newsrooms than in classrooms.
I wrote in Times newsrooms until December 2012, when, after five years on staff, I resigned to finish my master’s degree. I look back with gratitude, for great memories and a skill set I still use. What I learned in newsrooms, I’ve discovered, transfers seamlessly to blogs. Here are the four lessons I use most:
If you’re gonna write, you’ve got to read. And you’ve got to read good writing. At the paper, I’d spend 20 minutes browsing Times archives for stories by better writers than I before beginning to write my own. I’d read stories by Pulitzer winners and nominees, riveted by the result of their talent and experience. Then, I’d emulate it (or try). This also works when you blog (but don’t just read blogs! Read books, good newspapers, and/or magazines.)
Talk to strangers. We are surrounded by the people who surround us for a reason. We are also surrounded by good stories. One morning, I parked outside a Tampa bureau of the Times and crossed paths with a handful of young cyclists, circling the lot on bikes. My gut said “talk to them.” So, I did. As it turns out, the cyclists were siblings (among them, the drummer from rock band Anberlin) preparing to train for a 5k with their grandfather – the last one he intended to run, because knee pain pushed him to retire from running. It became one of the favorite stories I wrote – and I only wrote it because I talked to strangers.
Your senses are your friends. Whether what you write reads well might depend on whether you use them. Without senses, the 9/11 first responder you write about couldn't see through smoke. With senses, “Pulverized debris settled like dust on the city. (He) breathed it in. His mouth tasted like metal, but he worked.” Facts are fabulous, but details – which we find by using our senses, or borrowing the senses of the people about whom we write – are better. If you aren’t there to see, smell, hear, taste, or touch it, ask your story’s subject what they saw, smelled, heard, tasted, or felt.
Writer’s block doesn't exist. One afternoon in a newsroom, I buried my face with my hands and shook my head in front of a blank screen. A seasoned colleague noticed. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “Writer’s block,” I said. “But writer’s block doesn't exist,” he said. If you’re a writer, you can write. When you feel like you can’t, it isn't because you can’t. It’s because you need more information. Gather it. Browse the web for blog fodder. Conduct a follow-up interview. Talk to strangers again. The ability you thought you lost will come back when you do.
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Arleen Spenceley is a Roman Catholic writer who primarily writes about love, chastity, and sex, and wrote for the Tampa Bay Times for five years. She blogs at arleenspenceley.com, tweets @ArleenSpenceley, and Facebooks (is that a word?) here. Click here to read the feature story about a 9/11 first responder she quoted above and wrote in 2011.
Pope Francis Search Engine-a-fide
You all need to know about the Pope Francis search engine put together by the same creator of the wonderful Catholic Cross Reference website that is home to search engines for the Catechism, the Summa, and Church Fathers.
The Pope Francis Search Engine, or PFSE for short, is updated daily and has a search bar so you can search words like "latin Mass", "SSPX", "same-sex marriage", "Bono", "my favorite flavor of gelato", "kittens and gelato", or I don't know whatever else you want to search.
Thanks for all the Catholic geeky goodies Jeffrey Pinyan! And a gentlemanly hat tip to Angela for bringing this to my attention.
Check out the Pope Francis search engine here.
By the way, we need a catchy nickname for our beloved pope. JPII and B16 had their own, its about time someone came up with one for our humble Pope. Any suggestions?
Photo by Abode of Chaos
How to Proclaim and Defend the Entire Catholic Faith
"...this book can be transformed from a silent instrument, like a valuable violin resting on a velvet cloth, into an instrument that sounds and rouses hearts." Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa 1st Advent Sermon to the Papal Household
So maybe you're one of those Catholics hipsters - hip young adult devoutly committed to Orthodoxy, sworn ally to the Pope, defender of Mother Church, reader of Chesterton and Percy, drinker of beer and wielder of apologetics.
Maybe you're not.
Either way, if you want to help spread the love of Christ, and fulfill Christ's not-so-optional Great Commission for all disciples (yes you too) then you have to spread the faith.
What faith?
What parts of the faith?
THE ENTIRE CATHOLIC FAITH.
Yes that's right. And I mean Catholic as in the deposit of faith as guarded and upheld by the Catholic Church in Sacred Scripture, Sacred Tradition, and the Magisterium.Right now there is a vast misunderstanding in our society, and even among some well-intentioned or self-professed Catholics, about what the Church actually teaches.
"Someone, somewhere in the Church founded by Christ must be in a position to tell the faithful, "this is true, and that is false;" or "this is morally good, and that is morally bad." Otherwise, the very existence of Christianity is in danger and the survival of the Catholic Church in any given country or locality is in jeopardy.
In many dioceses of America, attendance at Sunday Mass is down to some twenty-five percent of the professed Catholics in a diocese. Some Church officials are scrambling for a solution and recommending the most bizarre solutions. It never seems to dawn on these "experts" that the heart of the problem is the massive uncertainty in millions of Catholic minds about what is unchangeable doctrine in faith and moral principles." Fr. John Hardon
If you are striving to be a Catholic and defend the faith, then you must speak from the heart of the Church. You must be in a confident ability to charitably inform, or even sometimes correct, misunderstandings about the Catholic faith.
I mean the entire faith because the Catholic faith is not one long dainty necklace with doctrines and dogmas and pretty beliefs hanging separately and disjointed from one another.No, the faith is always entire and whole because the faith is unified and organic.
Our faith is more like a wheel. The center of the wheel being Christ, and the doctrines and beliefs being the spokes all in relation and connected to Christ - "the love that never ends".
The whole concern of doctrine and its teaching must be directed to the love that never ends. Whether something is proposed for belief, for hope or for action, the love of our Lord must always be made accessible, so that anyone can see that all the works of perfect Christian virtue spring from love and have no other objective than to arrive at love. Catechism Paragraph 25
Hold the whining. Its not as hard as you would imagine.
"We now have a one-volume reservoir of Catholic truth and practice for everyone who wants to bring others to Christ, if they are not yet Christians; to solidify the faith of those who have been baptized; to defend Roman Catholicism in a world in which the Church has been abandoned by so many once-believing Catholics and is being betrayed even by some of her ecclesiastical leaders." Fr. John Hardon
That's right my beloved Papists, the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The Catechism is our one-stop shop for evangelization.
The Catechism might sound like a less-than-spectacular remedy for the slings and arrows of our time, but that's because of our preconceived notions, not because the Catechism is anything less than a powerhouse for evangelization.
"This Catechism is of historic importance. Depending on how seriously we take it, the future of the Catholic Church will be shaped accordingly." says Fr. Hardon. He explains that the course of the Catholic Church will depend on whether or not we see the Catechism as an act of God. "He is providing us with the opportunity of helping to make the twenty-first century the most glorious since the coming of Christ, but on one condition: that we capitalize on the gift He is giving us in the Catechism of the Catholic Church."
Fr. John Hardon, in his article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church", proposed five ways to use the catechism to help Christ evangelize the masses and spread the liberating and life giving faith who is Jesus Christ.
Here are Fr. John Hardon's five suggestions for using the Catechism:
KNOW TRUST ADAPT LIVE SHARE
Below each are explained in Fr. John Hardon's own words...
Know the Catechism.
Our most fundamental duty is to know the Catechism. How do you come to know anything? By reading, by discussing, by hearing it explained by competent persons.
Speed reading of the Catechism would be self-defeating. If anything, the Catechism should be not only read but prayerfully meditated. Spend some time set aside for reflecting, in God's presence, what the Catechism teaches through more than 500 pages of print.
How much time people waste in reading fiction, or worse. Is it too much for Christ to expect us to spend a few hours a week in reading, alone or with others, what promises to be the food that feeds the soul on revealed truth?
Trust the Catechism.
Already, critics have appeared who discredit the Catechism on both sides of the spectrum.
• Some criticize it for being outmoded and out of touch with the times.
• Others criticize it for giving in to Modernism and therefore discredit what the Vicar of Christ is offering the believing faithful for their spiritual sustenance in a world that is dying out of hunger for the truth.
Pay no attention to these critics. To distrust the Catechism is to play into the hand of the devil, who fears nothing more than security of doctrine among the followers of Christ.
Adapt the Catechism.
The Catechism is not simple reading. But neither is it sophisticated and out-of-touch with the vocabulary of the people. In any case, the Catechism contains all the essentials for Catholic faith, morality, and divine worship.
In using the Catechism to teach others, adjust the language to the mentality of those you are teaching. Adapt the ideas, without watering them down. Accommodate what the Catechism says, to the mental and spiritual level of those with whom you are sharing God's truth.
Live the Catechism.
This is no pious platitude. Teaching the true faith is unlike any other form of pedagogy.
The purpose of teaching the Catholic faith is to enable those you are teaching to practice the virtues which Christ expects of His followers. Very well, but how do you enable those you teach to practice what they have learned? You don't! Only Christ can give them the grace they need to practice what they believe. So how do they get the grace they need? From Christ, of course. But through you, their teachers.
What are we saying? We are saying that God uses holy people as channels of His grace to others. In the measure of our own union with Him, He will communicate to those we teach the light and strength they need to live the Christian faith. God uses humble people to give others the gift of humility. He uses chaste people as conduits of His grace of chastity; patient people to inspire patience; prayerful people to make others prayerful.
In a word, if we live the Catechism, we become instruments of divine faith to everyone whose life we touch. This, we may say, is the law of spiritual generation. Sanctity is reproductive; holiness is procreative.
Share the Catechism.
One final point should be made: On the last day we shall be judged on our practice of charity. How we hope that when Christ appears, He will say to us, "Come, blessed of my Father, and possess the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. I was hungry, and you gave me to eat; thirsty and you gave me to drink; naked and you clothed me, sick and in prison and you visited me."
What does this have to do with the Catechism of the Catholic Church? Everything! This masterpiece of sacred wisdom provides us with all the resources we need to meet the spiritual needs of America. But we must be convinced that these needs are desperate, and that we have at hand the means of saving the soul of our society.
PRAYER
"Lord Jesus, you have given us the Catechism of the Catholic Church to bring light to those who are walking in darkness and supernatural life to those who are sitting in the shadow of death. "Enlighten our minds with your revealed truth and inspire our hearts with your divine love — so that by our courageous witness to your Name here on earth we may bring countless souls with us to that heavenly Kingdom for which we were made. Amen."
**This is an exerpt from Fr. John Hardon's excellent article "Understanding the Catechism of the Catholic Church"
“Say What?” Monday Catechism Series #11 - Pets, Animal Rights, and Experiments
I believe the Catechism is THE tool for the re-evangelizing of secular society and the renewal of Catholic culture. Every Monday this epic mini-series will share a gem from our Catechism of the Catholic Church that is interesting, relevant, or remarkable.
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This week's interesting catechism is about respecting creation. Do animals have rights? How should we respect God's creation? Are medical or scientific animal experiments morally acceptable?
2415 The seventh commandment enjoins respect for the integrity of creation. Animals, like plants and inanimate beings, are by nature destined for the common good of past, present, and future humanity.195 Use of the mineral, vegetable, and animal resources of the universe cannot be divorced from respect for moral imperatives. Man's dominion over inanimate and other living beings granted by the Creator is not absolute; it is limited by concern for the quality of life of his neighbor, including generations to come; it requires a religious respect for the integrity of creation.196
2416 Animals are God's creatures. He surrounds them with his providential care. By their mere existence they bless him and give him glory.197 Thus men owe them kindness. We should recall the gentleness with which saints like St. Francis of Assisi or St. Philip Neri treated animals.
2417 God entrusted animals to the stewardship of those whom he created in his own image.198 Hence it is legitimate to use animals for food and clothing. They may be domesticated to help man in his work and leisure. Medical and scientific experimentation on animals is a morally acceptable practice if it remains within reasonable limits and contributes to caring for or saving human lives.
2418 It is contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly. It is likewise unworthy to spend money on them that should as a priority go to the relief of human misery. One can love animals; one should not direct to them the affection due only to persons.
+JMJ
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Interview with "By Way of Beauty" Creator Matthew
If there is one Catholic website out there that, in my opinion, more people should be following and reading, it is By Way of Beauty. Matthew generously agreed to allow me to pick his brain, and he provided some great insights on culture, beauty, and evangelization.
I've been growing increasingly interested in culture and its ability to evangelize and engage our society, and By Way of Beauty is a great example of engaging the already existing culture in a profound way.
The greatest part is that it is evangelistic by its very nature and not preachy or contrived. Matthew and Wes sit by the streams of art and entertainment pointing out the underlying big questions and truths just below the surface. The resulting articles are hard to stop reading.
[I'm in bold, Matt's words are not bolded.]
Matt, can you tell us how By Way of Beauty was born into the internet world?
My brother Wes and I started the site in the summer of 2011 using Blogger. We didn’t know much about the blog world or read any blogs. What we did do, though, was talk a lot about art. Whenever we watched a movie together, we had a little tradition of talking about philosophical and theological ideas we found in it afterward over drinks. It was a sort of natural progression into writing articles. Eventually we decided to get on the Internet and share our jabbering with whoever wanted to read it, which was great because we could use video, pictures, and links. The response has been really spirited.
You write about all sorts of scandalous things: Rapper Kendrick Lamar, books like "A Wild Surge of Guilty Passion", and "The Mysognist", Television like Breaking Bad and Mad Men, movies like The Rum Diary and The Cabin in the Woods, yet you claim to be a man of faith. Defend yourself!
We’re both Catholic men, and we’re proud of our faith. I hope it shows through the writing. But we were raised to believe that Catholics shouldn’t be prudish and standoffish; that reflects a sort of Manichean temperament that the Church has always fought against.
Catholicism is earthy, without being worldly; and our sacramental view of the universe should make us more engaged and conversant with the world – and that includes the art world. Fr. Barron has been a great exemplar of this, in reviewing films by the Coen Brothers and Scorsese.
It doesn’t mean you have to endorse every idea you come across; just that you see things analogically, and put your ideas on the table in a more compelling, relatable way. If you can’t relate to everyday people and speak their language, how are you going to have a conversation? If you can’t have a conversation, how are you going to explain what the faith means? I think a real danger - online as much as offline - becomes insularity. The culture will just go on spinning around your comfort zone, your circuit of like minds, and you can't really reach it because you’ve talked about nothing it appreciates, relates to, or even understands. It tuned you out, a priori.
Pope Francis has really underscored that in his first weeks, I think. He's reminding us of the importance of breaking out, going where the people are, and making contact. Your presence alone can speak volumes.
The mission stated on the site references a secret novelist and the existential pursuit of truth. Could you explain the mission of the site and why you feel it is important?
Our mission is really just to talk about art and entertainment in a way that asks essential questions: Who am I? Why am I here? Why is life worth living? Does God exist? Who is He? Walker Percy emphasized the notion of “the search” in his work – that’s exactly what we’d like to emphasize. He’s a sort of patron saint for us.
Artists that we talk about regularly – Josh Garrels, Terrence Malick, Ron Hansen – draw these questions out, so we want to promote their work. But the real task is digging into the Kendrick Lamars and Breaking Bads, and finding jewels that people might take away from them.
So “By Way of Beauty” is kind of a misnomer, in retrospect. Benedict XVI’s writing on "via pulchritudinis" was a big motivation. But I think a lot of people come expecting the “finer things club” – Rembrandt, Vivaldi, Shakespeare. But it’s obviously not like that;we’re digging into both the highbrow and lowbrow stuff.
Is there a tension between a more Thomist approach to evangelization ("Here is an objective, deductive, and principled account of the truth.") and a inductive, subjective, and experiential approach more like that of hippie catechists of the 70's ("What do you think love is?")?
I think this reflects a long-standing tension: Platonic vs. Aristotlean, Augustinian vs. Thomistic, the dynamic “feeling” Church and the systematic “thinking” Church. I think the Church needs both modes to evangelize. It’s like John Paul II’s image of faith and reason: two wings of a dove that ascend to the contemplation of truth. Head and heart, intellect and passion, are the same way; they should go hand in hand.
Pope John Paul II seemed to have a balanced approach to evangelization ("Let me guide you to the truth and point it out by way of the subjective, inductive and experiential...") and By Way of Beauty seems similar in this regard. Do you think of your site as an evangelizing ministry or is that just a natural byproduct of what the site's main mission is?
I hope we can strike that balance, but I don’t think of By Way of Beauty at all in those terms. We don’t break the Bible or Catechism out, which has to be part of that. It’s important, of course, and there are some great people using the new media to do that: Brandon Vogt, Bad Catholic, and Catholic Memes are all doing great work. We’re coming from a Catholic perspective too, but our content is more neutral territory. If there is an evangelizing aspect, it’s our hope that non-believers become aware of these points of contact with Catholic thought, and are curious to look into things on their own they might not have otherwise.
The Catechism says the human person, "with his openness to truth and beauty", is a way we can come to know God. Truth and goodness seem to be lost on our culture. In an increasingly technological culture is it possible we are losing our openness to beauty as well? What do we do about it?
Von Balthasar had a great line, that if beauty is separated from her two sisters, she’ll take them with her in a mysterious act of vengeance. That's powerful. When we compartmentalize these things, we lose all of them. Art without truth and goodness stops being beautiful; and truth and goodness without beauty stops being compelling. That connection has been lost, and the first thing we should do is try to build it up again.
I think one of the best things we can do is do a better job of supporting artists and the arts in our private and professional lives, in our families and our communities. Film is an especially powerful and universal medium – look at what Peter Jackson did with Tolkien.
Peter Kreeft asked once: where’s our Dante? That’s a great question. Personally I hope that our Dante is a filmmaker, because the potential for film to impress ideas on us is tremendous.
How can people practically get in on this beauty/God action in their everyday lives? Whether it is for evangelization or for self-sanctification?
God is the supreme artist. There's a great line in a hip-hop song: God is a painter and the sky is his canvas, God is a poet and our lives are his stanzas. I love that. The world is charged with His presence and glory – we just need to open our eyes and receive it.
What is the first Walker Percy book I should read?
If you’re into fiction, go with The Moviegoer; if you’re more of a non-fiction reader, Lost in the Cosmos. But they’re all fantastic.
You can find Matt and his brother Wes talking to you about art and entertainment over a few drinks at ByWayofBeauty.com. I highly recommend keeping up with their site and sending some of their articles to your friends.
Check out some of these superb articles from By Way of Beauty: Fourteen Philosophical Films (That the Lists Missed) To Love Another Person - The Story of "Les Miserables" Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City - The Thirst of Kendrick Lamar Pascal in "The Rum Diary" Un-friending Silence A Good Man is Hard to Find
“Say What?” Monday Catechism Series #10 - Dead Men Walking?
I believe the Catechism is THE tool for the re-evangelizing of secular society and the renewal of Catholic culture. Every Monday this epic mini-series will share a gem from our Catechism of the Catholic Church that is interesting, relevant, or remarkable.
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This week's interesting catechism is related to the article of the Creed we profess at Mass "I believe in the Resurrection of the body." Do you know what that means? What does rising mean? Who will rise from the dead? (Spoiler: EVERYONE) How will we rise from the dead? When will this all go down?
This week's catechism is a chunk, but its a great one. The final paragraph wraps it all up in the Eucharist
How do the dead rise?
997 What is "rising"? In death, the separation of the soul from the body, the human body decays and the soul goes to meet God, while awaiting its reunion with its glorified body. God, in his almighty power, will definitively grant incorruptible life to our bodies by reuniting them with our souls, through the power of Jesus' Resurrection.
998 Who will rise? All the dead will rise, "those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment."552
999 How? Christ is raised with his own body: "See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself";553 but he did not return to an earthly life. So, in him, "all of them will rise again with their own bodies which they now bear," but Christ "will change our lowly body to be like his glorious body," into a "spiritual body":554But someone will ask, "How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?" You foolish man! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. And what you sow is not the body which is to be, but a bare kernel. ... What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. ... The dead will be raised imperishable. ... For this perishable nature must put on the imperishable, and this mortal nature must put on immortality.555
1001 When? Definitively "at the last day," "at the end of the world."557 Indeed, the resurrection of the dead is closely associated with Christ's Parousia:For the Lord himself will descend from heaven, with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first.558
+JMJ
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New Big Project Announcement...
...making sure this kid gets to Heaven. Two boys now! 12 more and we'll make a complete rugby team...
Dominic ? Mitchell Born on Holy Saturday at 12:24 a.m.
"The grace of our Lord has been abundant" 1 Tim 1:14
Any suggestions for a middle name?
“Say What?” Monday Catechism Series #9 - Ladies First
I believe the Catechism is THE tool for the re-evangelizing of secular society and the renewal of Catholic culture. Every Monday this epic mini-series will share a gem from our Catechism of the Catholic Church that is interesting, relevant, or remarkable.
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This week's interesting catechism is related to today's Gospel reading on the first Monday in the Octave of Easter. It is interesting to realize that just as a woman (Mary) is the first to hear of the good news of Christ's birth and mediate this message to the world, so a woman (or women) is the first to hear of Christ's Resurrection and mediate this good news to the Church (the Apostles).
Dem Catholics love women!
641 Mary Magdalene and the holy women who came to finish anointing the body of Jesus, which had been buried in haste because the Sabbath began on the evening of Good Friday, were the first to encounter the Risen One.498 Thus the women were the first messengers of Christ's Resurrection for the apostles themselves.499 They were the next to whom Jesus appears: first Peter, then the Twelve. Peter had been called to strengthen the faith of his brothers,500 and so sees the Risen One before them; it is on the basis of his testimony that the community exclaims: "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!"501
+JMJ
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Happy Easter! (Soundtrack)
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What Pilate Said One Midnight
Hello friends, I pray Good Friday is making you uncomfortable.
Here is an excerpt from an old sermon by Frederick Speakman called "What Pilate Said One Midnight". The first time I heard Ravi Zacharias read this I was spellbound. It is one of the few times a piece of literature gave me a chill and shook my soul. I included a link at the end if you feel compelled to read the full thing.
“It suddenly closed in on me Gaius, the impact of how trapped I was. The proud arm of Rome with all its boast of justice was to be but a dirty dagger in the pudgy hands of the priest. I was waiting in the room, Gaius, the one I use for court, officially enthroned with cloak and guard when they let this Jesus in. Well Gaius, don't smile at this, as you value your jaw, but I have had no peace since the day he walked into my judgment hall. It’s been years but these scenes I read from the back of my eyelids every night. You have seen Caesar haven't you? When he was young and strapping inspecting the legion. His arrogant manner was child like compared to that of the Nazarene. He didn't have to strut, you see. He walked toward my throne; arms bound but with a strident mastery and control that by its very audacity silenced the room for an instant and left me trembling with an insane desire to stand up and salute.
The clerk began reading the absurd list of charges. The priestly delegation punctuating these with palm rubbings and beard strokings and the eye rollings and the pious gutturals I had long-since learned to ignore. But I more felt it, Gaius, than heard it. I questioned him mechanically. He answered very little but what he said and the way he said it, it was as if his level gaze had pulled my naked soul right up into his eyes and was probing it there. It seemed like the man wasn’t even listening to the charges brought against him as a voice deep within me seemed to say `You are the one on trial, Pilate.' You would have sworn, Gaius, that he had just come in out of a friendly interest to see what was going to happen to me. The very pressure of his standing there had grown unbearable when a slave rushed in all a tremble, interrupting court to bring a message from Claudia. She had stabbed at the stylus in that childish way that she does when she is distraught. ‘Don't judge this amazing man, Pilate,’ she wrote. ‘I was haunted in dreams of him this night.’
Gaius, I tried to free him. From that moment on I tried and I always will think he knew it. He was a Galilean so I delivered him out of my jurisdiction, but the native King Herod discovered he was born in Judea and sent him right back to me. I appealed to the crowd that had gathered in the streets, hoping that they were his sympathizers, but Caiaphas had stationed agitators to whip up the beast that cry for blood and you know how any citizen here just after breakfast loves to cry for the blood of another. I had him beaten, Gaius, a thorough barracks room beating. I'm still not sure why. To appease the crowd, I guess. But do we Romans really need reasons for beating? Isn't that the code for anything we don't understand? Well, it didn't work, Gaius. The crowd roared like some slavering beast when I brought him back.
If only you could have watched him. They had thrown some rags of purple over his pulped and bleeding shoulders. They jammed a chaplet of thorns down on his forehead and it fit, it all fit! He stood there watching them from my balcony; lame from weakness by now but royal I tell you. Not just pain but pity shining from his eyes and I kept thinking somehow this is monstrous; this is all up-side-down. That purple is real, that crown is real, and somehow these animal noises the crowd is shrieking should be shouts of praise.
Then Caiaphas played his master stroke on me. He announced there in public that this Jesus claimed a crown and that this was treason to Caesar. And then the guards began to glance at each other and that mob of spineless filth began to shout, hail Caesar, hail Caesar. I knew I was beaten and that's when I gave the order. I couldn't look at him, Gaius. And then I did a childish thing. I called for water and there on the balcony I washed my hands of that whole wretched affair, but as they led him away I did look up and he turned and looked at me. No smile, no pity, he just glanced at my hands and I have felt the weight of his eyes upon them ever since.
But you’re yawning, Gaius, I've kept you up. And the fact of the matter is you are in need of some sleep and some holidays. Yes, sleep. Claudia will be asleep by now. Rows of lighted lamps line her couch. She can't sleep in the dark anymore. No, not since that afternoon you see, since the afternoon when the sun went out and my guards executed him. That's what I said, I don't know how or what or why—I only know that I was there and though it was the middle of the day it turned as black as the tunnels of hell in that miserable city and while I tried to compose Claudia and explain how I had been trapped she railed at me with her dream. She has had that dream ever since when she sleeps in the dark—or some form of it—that there was to be a new Caesar and that I had killed him.
Oh, Gaius we have been to Egypt to their seers and magicians. We have listened by the hour to the oracles in the musty temples of Greece chattering their inanities. We have called it an oriental curse that we are under and we have tried to break it a thousand ways, but there is no breaking it.
Do you know why I kept going, Gaius? Deep within the curse is the haunting, driving certainty that he is still somewhere near, that I still have some unfinished business with him, and that now and then as I walk by the lake he is following me and as much as that strikes terror I wonder if that isn't the only hope. You see, Gaius, if I could walk up to him this time and salute him and tell him that now I know that whoever else he was he was the only man worthy of his name in Judea that day. Tell him that I know I was entrapped—that I trapped myself. Tell him that here is one Roman that wishes he were Caesar. I believe that would do it wouldn't it Gaius? I believe he would listen and know I meant it and at last I would see him smile.
Quiet tonight isn't it Gaius? Not a breeze stirring by the lake. Yes, goodnight. You had better run along. Would you please waken the slave outside the door and tell him to bring me a cloak, my heavy one please. I believe I will walk by the lake. Yes, its dark there, Gaius but I won't be alone. I guess I really haven't been alone—not since that day. Yes goodnight, Gaius."
Read the full sermon here.