On this date in 1945, the Empire of Japan formally signed the terms of surrender, officially ending the bloodiest war in human history.
VJ Day Remembered
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Category Archives: Musings
The Passion of John the Baptist
Today the Church celebrates the Passion of St. John the Baptist. This is not simply a martyr’s death or the tragic execution of an important biblical figure. His death marks the completion of his prophetic vocation. From the question posed in Luke’s gospel at his birth: “What, then, will this child be?” – this scene completes a life of fidelity to the truth during which John prepared the way for Christ not only through his preaching and baptism, but ultimately by giving his life. It is a celebration with several layers.
John dies as a prophet. The immediate reason for John’s imprisonment and death is striking. He isn’t executed because he proclaimed Jesus as Messiah. He is imprisoned because he tells Herod Antipas: “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” (Mk 6:18). John refuses to adjust God’s truth to accommodate the powerful. That places him squarely in the tradition of Israel’s prophets. Elijah confronted Ahab. Nathan confronted David. Jeremiah confronted kings and religious leaders. John does the same and pays the price often associated with prophetic fidelity. At this layer, the feast celebrates the cost of speaking truth when truth is inconvenient.
John prepares the way for Jesus even in death. There is also a remarkable parallel between John’s Passion and Christ’s Passion. Consider that both are innocent and are arrested by political authorities who are reluctant to execute them. Herod recognizes John as righteous; Pilate recognizes Jesus’ innocence. Both rulers nevertheless surrender to pressure rather than doing what they know is right. Both of their deaths reveal the point where God’s Kingdom and worldly powers collide.
John is the herald and forerunner of Christ in preaching, suffering and even in death. His whole life says what he had earlier said about Jesus: “He must increase; I must decrease.” (Jn 3:30) His martyrdom is the final and most radical form of that decreasing.
Why call it the “Passion”? Ordinarily we speak of the martyrdom of saints. The Church traditionally calls August 29 the Passion or Beheading of John the Baptist. “Passion” emphasizes his suffering and deliberately invites comparison with Christ’s Passion. John isn’t another redeemer; Christ alone accomplishes redemption. But John’s death has a distinctive relationship to Christ’s because the entire purpose of John’s life is to point beyond himself toward Jesus.
Still, I am often asked why celebrate such a gruesome event? We are celebrating a most radical example of fidelity. Think of the contrasts: Herod appears powerful. John appears powerless. Herod has the palace, soldiers, wealth, and authority. John is sitting in a prison cell. And yet there is a radical reversal. Herod is actually captive to his reputation, an oath he made is a moment of inebriated passion, the opinion of his guests, and to Herodias. He is captive to his unwillingness to admit that he has made a terrible promise.
John, meanwhile, is physically imprisoned but morally free.
“What, then, will this child be?” (Lk 1:66)
Today’s celebration answers that question. This child will become a man so completely given to God’s call that he will not abandon it even when fidelity costs him his life. He became a faithful witness.
And I think that is ultimately why the Church keeps this rather unsettling feast. John did what he had done throughout his entire life: he pointed toward Christ. At the Jordan he did it with his hand and his voice—“Behold, the Lamb of God.” At Herod’s court he did it by telling the truth. And finally, in prison, he did it by remaining faithful when speaking that truth had become terribly costly.
The Passion of John the Baptist celebrates a life in which the message and the messenger finally became inseparable.
Image credit: St. John the Baptist Rebuking King Herod | Giovanni Fattori, 1856 | Galleria dell’Accademia, Florence | PD-US
Under the fig tree
Today we have a reading from the Gospel of John in which Jesus encounters Nathaniel under a fig tree. It is only at the end of the reading that angels get a mention: “you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.” (John 1:51) Otherwise, Jesus is involved in the calling of the disciples, having found Peter, Andrew and Philip at work. He finds Nathaniel sitting under a fig tree. Micah 4:3-4 and Zechariah 3:10 suggest that “under a fig tree” may be a place of contemplation. It may be that Nathanael was a “thinker”. He wouldn’t accept anything at face value, but he would question and contemplate everything until he was sure of its truthfulness. On the other hand, sitting in the shade, eating the free figs, might indicate that he was just a lazy bum.
I think that we need more fig trees — at least in a figurative sense. They can be quite messy when the unpicked, over-ripe fruit falls to the ground and attracts all kinds of birds and bugs. What I mean is that we need more places and time to be contemplative — time to be quiet and think. We need more “fig trees” in church — places and times to stop working, to stop doing the business, and to sit and reflect. Perhaps we might become more Christian with less busyness in our own lives and more time to ask the simple question to ourselves: how was I a disciple of Christ.
Perhaps we would be a better church if we could stop and contemplate our place in this world we are called to evangelize. We might find things quite messy: unpicked, over-ripe fruit on the ground. A harvest wasted.
In my last assignment, the Franciscans had just taken up pastoral leadership of a parish almost 150 years old. There was a lot of focus on the past, a church caught in the Newtonian mechanics of an object at rest. We can learn from the past, but we also have to consider the now, and then contemplate a new future of a church not at rest, but a restless church.
Same is true of each one of us as individuals, members of a family, and all the other roles we have in life.
Where is your fig tree? Find it and may the messengers of God, the angels, bring you divine food for thought.
Nathaniel under the fig tree | James Tissot, ca. 1890 | Brooklyn Museum | PD
Things were so much better
From St. Augustine’s Sermo Calillus-Saint Yves 2, he offers us some advice
And yet you hear people complaining about this present day and age because things were so much better in former time. I wonder what would happen if they could be taken back to the days of their ancestors – would we not still hear them complaining? You may think past ages were good, but it is only because you are not living in them.
Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary
The Assumption was defined as dogma only in the 1950. In our Catholic Church ‘dogma” is defined as a truth revealed by God, which the magisterium of the Church declared as binding upon all Catholics. The term Dogma Catholicum was first used by Vincent of Lérins (450), referring to “what all, everywhere and always believed” – with the emphasis on katholica meaning universal. The term dogma derived from the Greek dogma (δόγμα) meaning literally “that which one thinks is true” and the verb dokein, “to seem good.”
On 1 November 1950, in the Apostolic Constitution Munificentissimus Deus Pope Pius XII declared the Assumption of Mary as a dogma:
By the authority of our Lord Jesus Christ, of the Blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, and by our own authority, we pronounce, declare, and define it to be a divinely revealed dogma: that the Immaculate Mother of God, the ever Virgin Mary, having completed the course of her earthly life, was assumed body and soul into heavenly glory
Pope Pius XII deliberately left open the question of whether Mary died before her Assumption.
On the same day, the Eastern Orthodox and Eastern Catholics celebrate the Dormition of the Mother of God (or Dormition of the Theotokos, the falling asleep of the Mother of God). Eastern Christians believe that Mary died a natural death, that her soul was received by Christ upon death, and that her body was resurrected on the third day after her death and that she was taken up into heaven bodily in anticipation of the general resurrection. Her tomb was found empty on the third day.
Orthodox tradition is clear in regard to the central point of the Dormition: the Holy Virgin underwent, as did her Son, a physical death, but her body – like His – was afterwards raised from the dead and she was taken up into heaven, in her body as well as in her soul. She has passed beyond death and judgement and lives wholly in life eternal.
Many western Catholics also believe that Mary first died before being assumed, but they believe that she was miraculously resurrected before being assumed. Others believe she was assumed bodily into Heaven without first dying. Either understanding may be legitimately held by Latin and Eastern Catholics.
In parallel to the theological discussion – actually, well before the theologians got into the mix, the Assumption had a rich history of writings and liturgical celebrations. The earliest known Reference is “The Book of Mary’s Repose” which survives in an Ethiopic translation. It is understood as being a 3rd century writing. Also, quite early is a book titled, “The Six Books” a collection of Dormition narratives dating to the 4th century.
In some versions of the narrative, the Assumption is said to have taken place in Ephesus, in the House of the Virgin Mary. Comparatively, that is a later and localized tradition – especially in Ephesus. The earliest written traditions say that Mary’s life ended in Jerusalem located in the Kidron Valley – at the foot of Mount of Olives. What is interesting is that since the 5th century all rulers over Jerusalem have honored the tomb of Mary as being in that location. The Muslim rulers may have destroyed the church atop the tomb but the crypt was left untouched, as for Muslims it is the burial place of the mother of prophet Isa (Jesus)
By the 7th century, a variation of the narrative emerged, according to which one of the apostles, often identified as St Thomas, was not present at the death of Mary but his late arrival precipitates a reopening of Mary’s tomb, which is found to be empty except for her grave clothes.
The liturgical celebrations (transitus celebrations) of the Assumption were well established in the East by the 5th century and began widespread celebration in the West by the 9th century.
Clare of Assisi – audaciously following Christ
August 11th is the Feast of St. Clare of Assisi – in many ways considered a “second founder” of the Franciscan orders of men and women because of the influence her life, example, and spirituality have upon the religious orders of men and women that carry the name “Franciscan.” In honor of these celebrations, let us look at The Legend of St. Clare (1255) in which we read of Clare’s decision to follow Francis’ way of life.
“The Solemnity of the Day of Palms was at hand when the young girl went with a fervent heart to the man of God, asking [him] about her conversion and how it should be carried out. The father Francis told her that on the day of the feast, she should go, dressed and adorned, together with the crowd of people, to [receive] a palm, and, on the following night, leaving the camp she should turn her worldly joy into mourning the Lord’s passion.
Continue readingJust saying….
In 2024 the Chicago White Sox set a record for the most losses in modern Major League Baseball history. One month into the 2025 season, things were about the same. The were firmly in control of last place in the AL Central Division and home game attendance was dismal at best. And then miracles of miracles.
Cardinal Robert Prevost, a lifelong White Sox fan, was selected as Pope. Since then the White Sox have had “miraculous” turnaround. They are now in first place in their division. And yes, they have added new pitching and hitting, but I think we know what is the deeper more relevant change.
June 26th, the White Sox catcher, Drew Roman (…appropriately a Catholic!) while being interviewed in the dugout for broadcast TV, implored Pope Leo: “If you’re watching this game right now, say a quick prayer for a Jacob Gonzalez homer right now.” Seconds later Gonzalez knocked it out of the park.
Just saying…
“Ukranianization” of the Gulf
In a previous post I discussed the development of Ukraine from a nation dependent on foreign military supplies to a nation on the leading edge of an evolving age of battle space engagement with what Brig Gen de Czege called the “Second Precision Revolution.” I noted that Ukraine signed a 10-year agreement with Gulf State countries for joint production of battlefield innovations developed during the war with Russia. That naturally leads to the question of were Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, and Oman to acquire genuinely Ukraine-like capabilities what would become of the Persian Gulf region?
With Ukrainian technology, innovation, and experience – coupled with Gulf States funding, the Persian Gulf would become one of the world’s most densely observed, electronically contested, and difficult operating environments. Virtually a transparent battlespace.
Continue readingAbout prayer…
“Prayer is nothing else but union with God…In this intimate union, God and the soul are fused together like two bits of wax that no one can ever pull apart…Your hearts are small, but prayer stretches them and makes them capable of loving God.”
from the Catechetical Instructions by St. John Vianney, Cure d’Ars
Battlefield Logistics
There is an old saying: soldiers win battles, logistics wins wars. A while back I posted about the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 30.8. It was a sea-going “conveyer belt” that connected U.S. industrial might and capacity to the Army-Navy-Marine Corp forces in the Pacific during World War II. The movement of U.S. industry from the depression era to military industrial behemoth is a fascinating story. If you are interested in such things, I can recommend two books: Maruy Klein’s magisterial work,“A Call to Arms: Mobilizing America for World War II” and the much shorter “Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II” by Arthur Herman…. If you are interested in such things. Big picture: the U.S. demonstrated that industrial capacity could decide wars. Detroit, Pittsburgh, and American shipyards became strategic weapons in themselves.
Ukraine is demonstrating something different: innovation capacity, that is, the ability to learn, redesign, manufacture, and field improvements faster than an adversary. In the 21st century that may be just as decisive as industrial capacity. Europe’s growing partnerships with Ukrainian firms suggest that many governments have reached the same conclusion.
In 2022 at the start of the war with Russia, the U.S. and Europe provided critical weapons and aid. Western military assistance focused primarily on helping the country survive Russia’s invasion. Supporting countries supplied thousands of anti-tank weapons such as Javelin and NLAW missiles, Stinger anti-aircraft missiles, artillery systems including the M777 howitzer, ammunition, armored vehicles, counter-battery radars, secure communications equipment, intelligence support, medical supplies, and humanitarian assistance. The character of aid in 2022 was defensive, incremental, and cautious. In time offensive weapons were supplied: advanced air defenses, tanks, long-range strike capabilities, F-16 fighters, HIMARS rocket launchers and various air-defense systems. Ukraine was often required to come “hat in hand” to Western nations for supply and resupply. The images of the U.S. leadership famously berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during a contentious Oval Office (February 28, 2025) are an extreme example of the dynamic. What the White House did not realize was the change was already afoot.
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