Fr. Josh's Blog

"This teaching is not a body of abstract truths.
It is the communication of the living mystery of God."
-St. John Paul II

Welcome to Fr. Josh's blog! Check here often for Fr. Josh's monthly newsletter articles as well as other items of interest as they come around! Happy reading!

September 2018

What the Hidden Christianity of A. A. Milne Can Teach Us
by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

This summer I took the family to see the new Disney movie, Christopher Robin. I’m a pretty serious Winnie-the-Pooh fan as you know, so I made the whole family tag along. I’m glad my kids enjoyed it, but I was there, really, for myself. I wanted to see it.

This latest addition to the mythology of Winnie-the-Pooh is as profound as it’s delightful, answering what so many have been asking for more than 80 years: what had become of the boy, Christopher Robin, that child both imaginary and real. It’s easy to imagine it’s how A. A. Milne himself would’ve continued the story, likely as a play, the story of Christopher Robin all grown-up.

Beginning brilliantly where Milne left it, the movie begins in that “enchanted place,” that beautiful liminal green atop the Hundred Acre Wood described at the end of The House at Pooh Corner where Christopher Robin bid his sad farewell to Pooh. Soon to school, Christopher Robin was to give up doing “Nothing,” which he so much enjoyed. “They don’t let you,” he told Pooh, anxious and pensive, as only a child leaving childhood behind could say it.

The film’s beauty is that it begins and ends there, in that enchanted place where wonderfully “Nothing” is done, and that it draws Christopher Robin, his family, and the audience there too. It’s a commentary on the freneticism of modern parenting, our over-scheduled lives, too much sports, on living to work instead of working to live. At the heart of it is an invitation to conversion to a life less planned and less overworked, a life better lived.

And there is, of course, something deeply Christian about the film, and also about a great deal of A. A. Milne’s work, especially his children’s writing. Which is something I’ve always thought interesting given Milne’s own lack of religious belief.

For instance, the movie recommends the virtues of simplicity, of a father rediscovering his family and the joy of childhood, obviously akin to the teaching of Jesus about children, the childlike, and the kingdom of heaven (Mk. 10:15).

Of Milne’s original stories, in Winnie-the-Pooh, there’s the one of Pooh wedged in “Great Tightness” in the door of Rabbit’s house. All that could be done, of course, was to “get thin again,” to fast from his beloved honey while Christopher Robin stayed with him, keeping him company, reading a “Sustaining Book.” It’s as wonderful a story of sin, ascesis, and friendship, I think, as ever written.

And then, of course, there’s the story of Piglet giving his house to Owl in The House at Pooh Corner, a story of the beauty of spontaneous sacrifice, born of love and community, and of the ripple-effect of such an act. Piglet’s sacrifice is rewarded by Pooh’s own hospitality, welcoming Piglet into his home, friends hand in hand: “Thank you, Pooh, I should love to.” It’s a story untellable without the gospel, a story in substance that is the gospel itself.

And it’s this clear Christianity of Winnie-the-Pooh I find so interesting, as I said, because of Milne’s own religious views, or lack of them. “I cannot say what my God is,” Milne once wrote. As far as I can tell, aside from a wandering assortment of spiritual inklings, he never held any traditional religious beliefs, associating religion and its tenets with the “establishment,” which he always deeply despised, thinking it all hypocritical and compromised. A view for which it’s hard to blame him.

Which is the point for we Christians and Catholics, we preachers, priests, and bishops—that, hopefully, we mustn’t tire of looking for the Christianity still so present in our culture, albeit sometimes hidden and unconnected to the Church. But also, self-critically, that we need to acknowledge why so many, like Milne and millions of others, fail to associate the truth of the gospel with the Church to which the truth belongs, about why someone like Milne could be such a deeply Christian writer but never see it.

It’s something we Christians should reflect upon in this so-called post-faith world, about the truth still at work and of the quality of our service to it. Something, like Pooh, about which we should “think, think.”
 

Fr. Josh's column for Aleteia: "How to preach in pain amid scandal."

Fr. Josh's Op-ed in the Dallas Morning News
about recent scandals in the Church

August 2018

The Gospel of John, Chapter 6
by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

All through the August, the Church asks us to focus on a single chapter from the Gospel of John. John 6, one of the longest chapters in all of the Gospels, is also one of the most important for understanding the unique truth of the Catholic faith. Below are a series of talks on the Gospel of John, Chapter 6, given by Fr. Joshua several years ago. With these talks you can walk through this chapter verse-by-verse and learn why it's so foundational to our Catholic faith in the Eucharist. Enjoy!

John 6, Part 1
John 6, Part 2
John 6, Part 3
John 6, Part 4
John 6, Part 5
John 6, Part 6

 

February 2018
 

Simple Christian Radical Forgiveness
by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

We don’t get how radical it is.

Usually, after a brutal war of words or a fight, after we’ve been mistreated or attacked, we don’t immediately think about forgiveness. If we’ve been wronged particularly grievously, we may not think forgiveness a possibility at all. We may say, “I’ll never forget that so-and-so as long as I live!” Or if we’re not as offended as that, we may think about forgiving the other person, but only after certain conditions are met. We’ll often say something like, “As soon as that so-and-so apologizes!” We may entertain the possibility of forgiveness, but we treat forgiveness as if it’s a goal, as if it’s something that is achieved only at the end of a long process of apologies and righting wrongs. We treat forgiveness as if it’s some great moral achievement reached only after hard work. We’re proud of ourselves when, after a long moral struggle, we finally bring ourselves to the point of forgiving someone. “Finally,” we think, “I can forgive.” And we congratulate ourselves.

But, of course, this isn’t Christian at all.

To put it bluntly, God doesn’t tell us to try to forgive or to work toward forgiving our enemies. He just says, “Forgive.” Jesus doesn’t get very complicated here. He simply says, “forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Lk. 6:37). Paul taught that since God forgave us, we should forgive each other (Col. 3:13). Christian teaching is simple and to the point here. We must forgive. Yet we immediately put forward conditions and reasons that hinder forgiveness. We say, “That’s well and good, but...” Or we say, “These circumstances are different.” We offer complications to avoid the radical teaching of Jesus. And so we depart from Christianity.

The early Church understood this radical teaching, though. Repeatedly, in early martyr accounts, for example, when those who suffered for the faith were returned to the jails filled with their brothers and sisters, the first thing they did was forgive those who had faltered and failed. Of the martyrs of Lyons it was written, “Nor did they gloat over those who had fallen; rather, they gave of their own abundance...shedding many tears on their behalf before the Father” (2.6). They forgave them immediately, and those who first failed were restored by the “infinite mercy of Christ” (1.45).

What is unique about Christianity is that there is an imperative to forgive. We just do it, in imitation of God. We forgive first and ask questions later. Saint Maximus the Confessor teaches this beautifully in his Centuries on Love: “Do not be overcome with hate but overcome hate with love...Pray for him to God, accept his apology, or else come up with an apology for him yourself...” (4.22).

Come up with an apology ourselves? Surely not! Yet, this is Christian teaching. To forgive one’s enemies, even when they remain enemies, is the true mark of Christian mercy. Because it’s what God did, loving a rebellious world, dying for it on the cross. Argue with it all you want, but this is the plain blunt truth of Christian love and mercy.

Radical, as I said.
 

January 2018

A Meditation:
On the Gift of Life and the War of Heaven
by Fr. Joshua J. Whitfield

After my first child was born, I’ve come to think that a newborn baby is the most persuasive thing there is about God.

As a matter of theology, I learned long ago that God and human life were intimately intertwined, that God’s knowledge and love for us precedes even our formation in the womb (Jer. 1:4). As a young man, I learned from Saint John Paul II that my life was a gift and not entirely my own; that my life, and indeed all life, should be seen and cherished as a gift invested with rights inseparable from the will of God and not some late theory of autonomous subjectivity, some hidden will-to-power.

Intellectually, I knew this, but when my wife and I failed for years to conceive a child, month after month weeping over what wasn’t happening as readily as we expected, some sort of anger and tender sadness invaded our souls, and we began to see the gift of life as something frighteningly sublime, something we couldn’t control or command. All we could do was pray with Hannah-like sadness. “See my humiliation!” (1 Sam.1:11) was our prayer those many years, bitter prayer some of you may know. Desire and pain now marked what had previously been but an academic view of life. We desperately wanted life, and in failing to conceive life we discovered how false was the notion of completely controlling it, of calling it forth and disposing of it upon command, how sinister such an illusion.

Graciously, though, in the fullness of our time, Magdalene was born. Nothing is more religious, outside of the most tremendous sacraments of our faith, than the birth of a child. My wife, at once more frightened and more strong than she had ever been in her life, gave to this world a beautiful human being, one divine gift among trillions, but more precious to me than anything else. At this moment, bitter lament gave way to unearthly joy, and thenceforward my view of life became something more visceral than intellectual. Now I could recognize the emotion, anger, love, and invitation of Evangelium Vitae. I understood the sainted Holy Father’s anger and passion against the “conspiracy against life” (EV 12). I knew what he meant.

In my meditation I sometimes imagine heaven.

Beautiful, of course, heaven must be, but in my vision it’s also stark and silent surrounded by the eerie horizons of war. I see the Blessed Mother, regal and resplendent, but her eyes are red and her face is dry, pale, and worn by too much crying. She stares forward silently. Attending angels look with her, each aghast at the sight—some even jostling to wage the final holy war of heaven. The singing of Ave has stopped, and her countless children are silent, like children shocked out of their playful joy. Among them, a few begin to cry. Heaven sees the holocaust of her children, and our violence stills the joy of angels.

These are things I just see and know in the same way I know and love my children, four now. I’m convinced by them, completely vanquished by my love for them that just is—love given in the sacraments of their smiles. I know now in a way I didn’t know before that life is from God, a gift invoking all the jealousy of heaven. Thus, especially now, I am mystified by Catholics who see the good of abortion under any circumstance. I’m mystified even by those who do not share the anger of heaven. Give me your reasons, and I will give you inexplicable love and the face of a little girl. There is no excuse. It is evil. I am mystified by such Catholics, more heartbroken. I think of what Jesus must’ve felt—his sunken heart and breathless tears, turning to receive the false kiss in Gethsemane. One of his own brought the instruments of death to bear upon the innocent. I think I know what he must’ve felt.

I give you no rational arguments. I make no appeals to natural law. I just beg you to see. Look at the persuasive beauty of life. Pray to see. Don’t arm yourself with your alleged common sense.

Again, I imagine heaven: The Lamb that was slain steps forward. Those crying, now pray, and the Blessed Mother speaks. “Look!” she says to the Lamb. “Say it again!” she begs. “Say it again! Forbid them not! Rebuke them again! Call your children! Forbid them not!” Her prayers are perfect. The Lamb does speak. “Let the children come to me,” he says (Mk. 10:14).

And so, the eternal verdict is given, and all earthly tribunals stand judged.