IGF009 In Good Faith with Father James Bacik, PhD, recorded live on May 5, 2011. Produced by aNunsLife.org ministry. The nuns talk with Father Jim about finding God in everyday life, prayer, Christian spirituality, theologian Karl Rahner, and more!
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Guest: Father James Bacik

Father James Bacik, a priest of the Diocese of Toledo, is the pastor of Corpus Christi University Parish in Toledo, Ohio and serves as a campus minister and adjunct professor of humanities at the University of Toledo. His doctorate in theology is from the University of Oxford in England. His many articles, chapters and books include Apologetics and the Eclipse of Mystery; Contemporary Theologians; Catholic Spirituality, Its History and Challenge and most recently A Light Unto My Path, a book on preaching he wrote with psychologist Kevin Anderson. He has lectured throughout the United States as well as in China, Latin America, Japan and Russia. Father Bacik combines the academic study of theology with the pastoral work he has been doing for many years.

Show Notes:

• Father Jim’s intersecting roles — pastor, theologian, academician
• Father Jim’s intersecting roles — pastor, theologian, academician
• Encounters with theologian Karl Rahner
• The Method of Correlation — bringing the scriptures and Christian tradition to bear on people’s everyday concerns
• The human orientation to Holy Mystery, Gracious Mystery
• “Jesus, the ‘P.S.’ at the end of a long letter of service”
• Contemporary Catholic apologists and the long tradition of Christian apologetics
• Mystagogy
• Even sin can be revelatory of God’s mercy and love
• Prayer as “truth-telling”
• The increasing diversity within the Catholic Church
• Father Jim’s current work on the issue of Catholic identity

In Good Faith is a conversation exploring God’s call in everyday life hosted by A Nun’s Life Sisters Maxine and Julie. Our monthly program features guests who are nationally known for their ministry in spirituality, religious life, and discernment. We’ll look at how our guests understand their own life as a calling and discuss a variety of perspectives on living faith and call in everyday life. The program is broadcast live from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Central Time. Tune in at www.aNunsLife.org/LIVE.

Happy feast of All Saints. In honor of today’s holy day, I want to share with you a reflection on All Saints from my mentor, the great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner, SJ. Rahner asks, what mystery, what “word peculiar to itself … has been spoken by God into the Church and is intended through it to reach into our hearts” this day?

When we celebrate All Saints we have in mind chiefly those saints who are anonymous, the unknown saints who have not made any general impact in the Church and are not mentioned in her praises….

We celebrate in our hearts the fact that we can say: “there are some who actually have arrived, who are perfected, who are already in a state of blessedness, who have attained their due measure of perfection and have not wasted their lives, [persons] to whom something improbable has happened: to be drawn out of and beyond themselves in love, persons in whom one does not find emptiness and hidden egoism when they are stripped bare and exposed to view, persons who have not wept in vain, who have found life through death and the eternal kingdom through loss, persons who by the everyday conduct of their ordinary lives have achieved a dimension of life which is to an undreamt of extent absolute and of such value … ‘once for all’, and that it is worthy never more to perish for all eternity….

We might add, therefore, as a further message which this festival has for us, that God can make all into saints, into miracles and masterpieces so full of unexpected blessedness that one’s heart can be transfixed with delight at them a whole eternity through….

Certainly we celebrate All Saints sub una veneratione, and therefore the unknown saints as well, those who lived quietly in the land, the poor and the little ones who were great only in God’s eyes, those who go unacclaimed in any of the rolls of honour belonging to the Church or to world history … those nameless saints who are consecrated in silence and upon the private altars of our own hearts….

In the praise of All Saints, however, we are celebrating the Church herself, who, even though she is made up of ourselves, and therefore remains the Church of sinners, of the poor and insignificant, of the despondent and exasperated sinners, is still the Church of the saints, the Church which is so beloved by Christ with a love unto death — almost, one might say, a fierce love — that she can no longer escape this love. In all the saints we praise the power of that grace which, so to say, makes use of [people] in order to bring about our salvation, which gives what it demands, which sets us free for that liberty in which we are the freed and the blessed.

Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, Vol. VIII: Further Theology of the Spiritual Life 2. Trans. by David Bourke (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1971) pp. 24-29.

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Summer is here and that means bicycle riding for me. Having grown up with bikes, taken bike day trips with my family, commuted by bike, ridden mountain bike trails and long stretches of open road, I feel very much at home on a bike.

I got an inside view of the world of bikes when I worked at a bike shop early in my nun life. Yes, I worked at a bike shop as a Catholic sister! It’s an interesting story and the short version is that I had done my MA in theology on the theologian Karl Rahner, SJ, whose fundamental belief is that we can directly experience God at any time, any place. At the time, I was in need of a part-time ministry and so I reasoned that if God is in all things, then surely God is in a bike shop. Why not do ministry there? I loved bikes, and I loved working with mechanics (my dad and brother are engineers), and I wanted to interact with ordinary folks in ordinary moments. So after consulting with my nuns, I applied for a summer job and managed to beat out the competition (a handful of high school boys). It was one of my best experiences of formation — learning how to be with people, to minister with them outside the ordinary or obvious places of church ministry.

In the bike shop, you meet a lot — I mean a lot — of characters from every economic bracket, educational level, age, culture, etc. Each person has a story, and when you see them that way, you find there are so many opportunities for being present to them. And often, a bike marks a significant moment in their life. Why? Because ultimately, it’s not about the bike, as Lance Armstrong noted. A new bike or a repair to a bike is often loaded with meaning. One guy lost his job and couldn’t afford to drive so he needed a bike to get around. A mom and dad bought their child’s first bike. A woman’s husband was emotionally abusive (we saw it first hand in the store) and she wanted a bike to get out of the house more often. A young woman bought a road bike for her first triathlon marking her journey to feel better about herself.

My bike is also a marker of significant moments in my life. It is priceless because of the stories attached to it — both good times and bad. I am highly protective of it and take good care of it. When I first moved to Chicago I went through at least 4 different bike shops until I found On The Route Bicycles, bike guys whose expertise I trusted and who showed care about “the story” that people have with their bike or bike riding.

What significant moments does your bike (or similar thing) hold for you?

Today is Divine Mercy Sunday, a Catholic feast day that originated with Saint Faustina Kowalska. Saint Faustina was a Catholic nun belonging to the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy. She experienced visions Jesus Christ including a message about spreading the word about God’s mercy to the whole world. When Pope John Paul II canonized Sister Faustina, he made Divine Mercy Sunday part of the church’s liturgical calendar.

The scripture readings today are beautiful and offer a kind of “action plan” for our Christian journey. Visit the blog From the Pews in the Back to read my guest post A Divine Action Plan, a short reflections on the readings for Divine Mercy Sunday.

Since today is a day to celebrate Divine Mercy Sunday, I want to explore a bit more what “mercy” means. It’s one of those words that is fairly ordinary and unassuming, yet loaded with meaning. It is simple yet it is life-changing.

Mercy.

My first research destination: Merriam-Webster dictionary

Etymology: Middle English, from Anglo-French merci, from Medieval Latin merced-, merces, from Latin, price paid, wages, from merc-, merx merchandise

1 a: compassion or forbearance shown especially to an offender or to one subject to one’s power; also: lenient or compassionate treatment b: imprisonment rather than death imposed as penalty for first-degree murder

2 a: a blessing that is an act of divine favor or compassion b: a fortunate circumstance

3: compassionate treatment of those in distress

My next stop: Theological Dictionary (Rahner and Vorgrimler)

Mercy. Readiness to help those in need. The Old Testament expresses God’s mercy chiefly by the verbs meaning to “be motherly” and to “bend down”. Throughout the Old Testament, assurances of God’s mercy, graciousness, and fidelity to his covenant outbalance all references … to the wrath of God; these qualities dominate the New Testament conception of God….

Human mercy, according to Scripture, is not measured by any display of feeling but by concrete proofs.

Which brings me to my final research destination: The Works of Mercy

The Corporal Works of Mercy

• feed the hungry
• shelter the homeless
• clothe the naked
• visit the sick and imprisoned
• bury the dead
• give alms to the poor

The Spiritual Works of Mercy

• instruct
• advise
• console
• comfort
• forgive
• bear wrongs patiently

What does mercy mean to you? Which word or phrase above resonates with you, draws you, calls for some kind of response from you?