Saintly Avengers: The Seven Champions of Christendom

“The Christian and the hero are inseparable.”
~ Samuel Johnson

Read more…

___________________________________

St. Stephen of Sweden: Of Odin, Evangelism, and the Ascension

“The blood of Christians is seed.”
~ Tertullian

We re-watched Thor: Ragnarok (2017) the other night. What a fun ride – lots of laughs, lots of fun amid the wreckage and (bloodless) carnage. It’s representative of the best in superhero films – the ones that don’t take themselves too seriously, and their characters don’t either. Thor and his movies are particularly enjoyable, however, because of the cognitive dissonance: You’d expect a guy named “Ant-Man” to be self-deprecating and goofy; you wouldn’t expect the Norse god of thunder to be so.

Not that there aren’t darker moments in Ragnarok – like when Odin, a preeminent deity and Thor’s dad, fades away (or dies, or its equivalent – you’re never quite sure in the Marvel universe). In a sense, though, Odin is still very much with us: We commemorate his legacy the middle of every week, for Wednesday (that is, Woden’s day) is named in his honor.

Did you know that? Yes, the days of our modern week are residual shout-outs to ancient pagan gods and their associated planets. Sun-day and moon-day, plus Thor’s day and Saturn’s day, and the rest. Yet, if the worship of Odin and his crew was so entrenched in the past that we’d still be remembering them every day of the week today, how is it that they and their followers have disappeared – just like Odin did in Ragnarok?

We can credit the likes of St. Stephen of Sweden for that, and this happens to be his feast (June 2). Stephen was an 11^th-century monk of Saxony’s New Corbie (or Corvey) Abbey. “From its cloisters went forth a stream of missionaries who evangelised Northern Europe,” reads the Catholic Encyclopedia, and Stephen was among them.

He was consecrated a missionary bishop and dispatched to Sweden where paganism stubbornly held sway. Apparently St. Stephen was tremendously successful in his efforts to preach the Gospel, for conversions were rife. So much so that Swedish devotees of Odin decided the good bishop needed to be silenced, and they murdered him in a murky forest around the year 1075.

Now, there are some historians who say that Stephen of Sweden never existed, and that he was an amalgam figure concocted via folk traditions to account for a variety of secular cultural practices – namely festivals and horse racing and other mid-winter rioting on and about December 26, St. Stephen’s day (but that other St. Stephen, the deacon and protomartyr from Acts 7). Maybe, but these kinds of tricky historical conundrums are hard to sort out a thousand years later.

In any case, there’s no question that somebody like St. Stephen got in there and starting mixing it up with the Odin-worshippers around that time. “Norse beliefs persisted until the 12th century, and Sweden was the last Scandinavian country to be Christianised by Catholic missionaries,” reports the country’s official website. “In 1164, it became a so-called ecclesiastical province of the Catholic Church and Catholicism became firmly established.”

In addition to St. Stephen’s feast, today is also Ascension Sunday for most U.S. Catholics, and we heard in the Gospel the Lord telling the Apostles that they’d be his witnesses everywhere. “Behold I am sending the promise of my Father upon you,” Jesus tells them before he ascended, “but stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.”

He’s talking about the power of Pentecost, and it’s the power that St. Stephen and his ilk must’ve drawn on when they fearlessly proclaimed Christ throughout pagan Scandanavia. Such actions may have cost them their lives, as it did the Apostles, but their drawing on that power nonetheless made it possible for the Church to take root there and flourish.

We could use some of that power today. Come Holy Spirit.
_________________________________

Compression of Character: The Two-Hour Test

“Two hours of life are always two hours. A great many things may turn up in even as little a while as that.”
 ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

“Did you hear that Stan Lee died?”

“Stanley who?”

I wasn’t present for that exchange, but I have it on good authority that it happened. The uninformed respondent was my wife, Nancy, who clearly isn’t tapped into the Marvel Cinematic Universe the way the rest of the country (the world?) has.

Which is why she rarely joins me and our kids in taking in the latest installments of the MCU canon at the theaters, and she’s even less inclined to sit down to watch our favorites with us at home. She can tolerate Captain America and Tom Holland’s adolescent Spider-Man, but Iron Man? X-Men? All the Avengers drama, especially at the end of “Infinity War” (2018)? Marvel just hasn’t been Nancy’s cup of tea. Her tastes run more along the Jane line – Jane Eyre, Jane Austen, you get what I mean.

Enter Ant-Man. “C’mon, honey,” I told her as we were popping the “Ant-Man and the Wasp” (2018) DVD into the machine, “I really think you’ll like it.” Nick and Kath, our youngest, added their voices to the chorus, and she relented.

And you know what? She kinda liked it! A couple nights later we convinced her to watch the “Ant-Man” (2015) origin story, and she liked that even more. The clumsy goofiness of Ant-Man’s Scott Lang (Paul Rudd) appealed to her, and his obvious commitment to be a good dad – despite his divorce, despite his shortcomings and failings – won her over.

Dare I say that she’s a fan now? Well, that might be a stretch, but she’s definitely come around to the MCU camp – at least the Ant-Man corner of it.

But how’d that happen? What transpired to bump Nancy over the speed bump of her comic-book misgivings to give Ant-Man a chance – especially after such a relatively diminutive (pun intended) cinematic exposure?

Chalk it up to the magic of filmmaking. In a couple hours on average, filmmakers patch together images, dialogue, and music in such a way – such an artful, subtle way (yes, even MCU filmmakers) – that audiences connect with the characters on the screen, come to care about them and their stories, and leave theaters changed by the encounter. At least that’s what’s supposed to happen. It doesn’t always work, but when it does, it’s marvelous (pun intended again).

Nancy’s two-hour Ant-Man conversion was fresh in my consciousness when I chanced upon Robert Louis Stevenson’s short story, “The Sire de Malétroit’s Door” (1877). The narrative takes place during the Hundred Years War in a town dually occupied by English and Burgundian forces. Denis de Beaulieu, a dashing and cocky young cavalier is returning home late at night and gets lost. When his movements are detected by hostile sentries, he retreats to the dark portico of an imposing mansion and draws his sword to defend his life.

As he leans back on a door to steady himself for the fight, he finds that it gives way to a pitch-black interior. Denis, grateful for this seemingly providential boon, slips inside and the door slams shut – almost as if by design.

Although safe now from his enemies without, Denis finds himself trapped within, and so he turns into the strange room and spots a sliver of light at the top of some stairs. When he reaches the light, he enters a room and comes face to face with the mansion’s owner, Alain, Sire de Malétroit. “Pray step in,” he tells Denis. “I have been expecting you all the evening.”

It quickly becomes evident, at least to Monsieur de Beaulieu (and the reader), that there’s been a mistake. The Sire had set the door-trap for an unknown suitor who’d been sending love letters to Blanche, de Malétroit’s niece and ward. De Beaulieu denies any knowledge of the affair, and he is backed up by Blanche when they finally meet. “That is not the man!” she cries out. “My uncle, that is not the man!”

The cruel, exacting de Malétroit, determined to undo the purported dishonor Blanche’s romance has brought to the family name, dismisses the couple’s entreaties and offers them a choice: Marry, on the spot, or Denis will be hanged. The distressed Blanche, of course, is horrified. It was bad enough that she was to be forced to marry a man she was in love with; now she was to be compelled to marry a stranger.

And Denis? He nobly demurs, and, while paying Blanche every courtesy and compliment, suggests an alternative avenue of resolution. “I believe there are other ways of settling such imbroglios among gentlemen,” he nobly tells the Sire. “You wear a sword, and I hear you have used it with distinction.”

Alas, the Sire had anticipated such a reaction, and he reveals to Denis that a large party of armed men are ready to impose their master’s will. Nonetheless, de Malétroit is not totally unreasonable in his demands. “As the bridegroom is to have a voice in the matter, I will give him two hours to make up for lost time before we proceed with the ceremony.”

Two hours – two measly hours to find out about another’s character and worldview, virtues and weaknesses, history and aspirations. Not only that, but to do so with an eye toward making a lifelong commitment, or forfeiting life itself. Now, I’m not about to spoil this excellent story for anybody by divulging its conclusion – although you might have some idea of where it’s headed. Regardless, if you haven’t read it, I urge you to do so – here’s a link to the text if you don’t have a copy ready at hand.

The point at issue is that two hours. Apparently, it’s enough time for filmmakers to help us get to know and like (or dislike) their characters. Is it enough time for real people to get to know each other? Put another way, if I really did only have two hours to sum up who I am, how would I do it? What would I say? Better yet, what would I do? And if I only had that much time to get to know someone else, what would I ask? What would I look for?

Take it further: What if I had even less time – say, a half hour instead of two, or maybe even just two minutes flat (like a movie trailer). The stakes are rarely so high as they were for Blanche and Denis, but aren’t most of our encounters with strangers more along such briefer lines? What impressions do I make? Do I look into people’s eyes with curiosity and compassion? Do I listen to them? Am I present to them?

That is, how do I conduct myself when I only have two minutes with another? Is the me I reveal who I want it to be?

Thomas Merton once commented that “the saint preaches sermons by the way he walks, and the way he stands and the way he sits down and the way he picks things up and holds them in his hand.” It stands to reason that sinners preach in a similar way. What kinds of sermons am I preaching in my chance encounters? I want my life to preach holiness – I want to be a saint.

“It is never too late to begin,” says de Malétroit in Stevenson’s story. He meant it as a challenge to the cornered Monsieur de Beaulieu. I’ll take it as a word of Advent hope.
_______________________________________

God’s Digit

“This is the finger of God” (Ex 8.19). 

Last week, my teenage daughter and I went to see Avengers: Infinity War, and, lo and behold, there was Peter Quill/Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), reprising the obscene gesture he featured in the first Guardians of the Galaxy (2014). Then, just last night, my kids and I watched the old X-Men (2000) origins flick, and we saw Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) raise a metallic middle blade in defiance of Cyclops, his rival. Cyclops just laughed it off and turned away.

Increasingly, we’re all just laughing off the middle finger wherever it turns up (and it’s turning up plenty), which means that “giving the finger” doesn’t quite pack the same punch it once did. This was clearly evident when I brought my middle-schoolers to see Black Panther a month or so ago. On the way home, we were talking about our favorite characters, our favorite scenes. “My favorite was Shuri,” said Katharine from the back seat, referring to Wakanda’s young princess. “Especially when she was walking away from the king and she raised her finger up – funny.”

“Yeah,” I said, “but do you know what that means?”

“Well, I know it means something bad,” she replied. “Very bad.”

True enough, and it’s been bad a long time. The ancient Romans knew it well, and they even had a name for it: digitus impudicus. It’s always been considered an extremely rude gesture (look it up), and pretty much everybody knows that today – even if they don’t know exactly why it’s so rude (like my young ones, thank heavens). But, like so much else these days, what used to be universally shunned is now commonplace – and tame. “Because it’s so prevalent,” said sportsmanship educator John McCarthy of the middle finger, “the shock value has gone from it.” No longer can one count on a single digit to communicate absolute defiance. Rebels and radicals have to rely on other tokens of insubordination. Flipping people off is so ho-hum nowadays.

On the other hand (pun alert), we have God’s finger, which Scripture highlights as something particularly pointed (pun again) and powerful – and without any trace of lewd associations. This contrast between today’s ubiquitous indecent gesticulation and the comparable Biblical deific sign came to mind at daily Mass shortly after I saw Black Panther. “Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute,” Luke tells us, “and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.” However, some in those crowds were unwilling to attribute the miracle to benevolent forces, and they accused the Lord of partnering with Beelzebub, “the prince of demons,” in order to exorcise and heal.

Jesus countered that it could be just as easily be posited that anyone who drove out demons was in league with Beelzebub. What’s more, it didn’t make sense that the Prince of Demons would be driving out his own minions. “But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons,” Jesus finally challenged his detractors, “then the Kingdom of God has come upon you” (Lk 11.20).

The implication here is that Jesus has more power in his little finger than anything Satan could send his way – or ours for that matter. This is literally true, since Jesus, the incarnate Word, shares in his human fingers the very same potency in operation on Mt. Sinai during the Exodus, when Moses received “the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Ex 31.18).

The Gospel reading from Luke concludes with Jesus’ admonition that “whoever is not with me is against me, and whoever does not gather with me scatters.” This is the opposite of the modern single-finger sign, which is meant to scatter and drive away. The finger of the God-man, in contrast, bespeaks wholeness and restoration. And there’s no shame in that at all. In fact, it’s a sure sign of hope.
____________________________