AUGUST 25/26, 2018
4:30 PM (SAT), 7:30 AM, 9:00 AM ORDINARY FORM (ENGLISH) MASSES
Mystery fiction is a genre of writing that revolves around a death or crime that is to be solved. The suspects are all known, and each has a motive and an opportunity to have committed the crime. The protagonist is usually a detective who over the course of the story ends up solving the mystery by logical deduction from the same facts revealed to the reader.
Mystery fiction is a relatively new form of writing – arising in the early 19th century with such notable works as, The Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyles’ Sherlock Holmes stories; as well as stories by Agatha Christi, and the children’s books Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys in the early 20th century.
Theorists consider that mystery fiction didn’t necessarily exist before the early 1800s due to the general absence of police forces and the development of criminal science or criminology. In the latter half of the 20th century the genre of mystery fiction moved to pulp magazines, board games, movies, radio, and television.
Mystery fiction began with the simple “who done it” style and has spawned many other forms of fiction such as legal thrillers, police procedurals, medical thrillers, among many others.
Today is the Twenty First Sunday in Ordinary Time.
St. Paul gives us a solid summary point at the end of the fifth chapter of his Letter to the Ephesians, in talking about husband and wife he says:
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.Sadly, the preceding text has been used to subjugate wives to husbands – which I must say is a blatant misreading of the text which begins:
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.That is, there is a mutuality at work here. In my own reading of this text, the husband is to follow the example of Christ – which if you look around at the 14 Stations of the Cross, means a lot of self-sacrifice, suffering, and pain.
So, guys, before you start demanding subordination from your spouse – man up and start your own solitary and bloody journey to Calvary.
In other news, the Church is receiving a black eye for the actions of a few … well, let’s just call it what it is … criminal idiots. The abuse scandal is back in the press, and this time its at the top of the hierarchy.
My personal take on this – and please, show me I’m wrong – is that is comes from what Pope St. John Paul II called “the mystery of iniquity.”
I guess the official response appears to be to point out that it was “sinful,” and that we’re all sinners.
Sure. Whatever.
It is indeed sinful. But it is also horrific, corrupt, and criminal. And while we all may be sinners, I hope that we aren’t all horrific, corrupt, criminal sinners.
At it’s root, it involves entitlement. A person thinking they can do whatever they want despite the appropriate moral and legal boundaries that help us live in a civilized society.
It also involves exploitation. We’re seeing exploitation of children, people, assets, power, and just about anything and everything that there is that can be exploited.
The worst part, is that these people are priests, bishops, archbishops, and cardinals.
Priests take vows, but the vow that’s being broken isn’t only chaste celibacy … rather, priests also promise to celebrate “the mysteries of Christ faithfully and religiously” as well as to “hold the mystery of the faith with a clear conscience” … to care for “the Lord’s flock,” to sanctify “Christ’s people,” and to unite ourselves “to Christ the High Priest . . . [in offering] to the Father . . . a perfect sacrifice.”
On May 18, 1986, Pope St. John Paul II uses the phrase “mystery of iniquity” three times in his Encyclical “Dominum et Vivificantem: On the Holy Spirit in the Life of the Church and the World.”
In the first mention, he points out that sin is more than breaking a rule. Sin reveals “the evil that sin contains.” That is, evil is real. And sin is evil. Second, he points out that sin is opposed, not by a stasis of not sinning or avoiding sin, but by embracing piety and holiness; to love God to the point of forgetting oneself. And finally, he points out that the end-game is conversion, in which we are to destroy “every fetter by which sin binds [us] to the whole of the mystery of iniquity.”
In the middle of the First Reading, Joshua proclaims:
As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD.And that is the choice we all must make each and every day. Whom will we serve?
Certainly not the horrific, corrupt, criminal sinners … the entitled idiots who have exploited the treasures of our Faith.
Let us choose to serve Christ . . . and Christ alone. He Who came to us in the Magnum Mysterium – the Great Mystery – of His incarnation, and He Who left us the “mystÃrio ton mystirÃon” – the Sacrament of Sacraments – the Most Blessed Sacrament – His Body and Blood, Soul and Divinity.
Pray for me, as I pray for you. And let us resolve to sever every connection which would bind us to the mystery of iniquity. And let us continue to choose Christ . . . embracing the Great Mystery . . . and despite the darkness of sin . . . let us bring that light of Christ to the World.
