Spiritual accompaniment

We are a resurrection people

March 29, 2025

“We are a resurrection people.”

This statement struck me when I recently started reading the book Guide for Celebrating Holy Week and The Triduum.

This statement resonates with what drives me to share with people about growing in faith.

We are indeed “A resurrection people,” a good phrase to discuss during this Lenten season.

Christ died for our salvation. We don’t celebrate Easter each year for the sole purpose of being mournful about Christ’s death. Yes, we look at Christ’s passion and our own sinful nature during Lent. That’s not all, though. Each Lenten season is an opportunity to celebrate that our redemption is made possible as a result of Christ’s death on the cross. There’s a redemptive joy possible through God’s ability to transfigure us – when we allow God to work in us – that motivates my continued prayer life (prayer is a relationship with God in which we rest in God’s presence and take joy in that transformative relationship, allowing God to turn us into the people we are meant to be. There is, too, everything else that prayer is – bringing all of our life to God, having a back-and-forth relationship). There’s both the opportunity for joy and a responsibility that comes with redemption.

When we fully enter into our Christian faith tradition, we have the opportunity to experience the “already” aspect of the “already but not yet” Kingdom of God. Specifically, Christ’s resurrection inaugurated the Kingdom of God, while, of course, the fullness of this is “yet to come” (as stated by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops: “The tension is often described in terms of “already but not yet”: i.e., we already live in the grace of the kingdom, but it is not yet the completed kingdom.”).

We have the opportunity to really do a deep dive into the fullness of Christianity. In doing so, God will bring us to the fullest measure of joy that we can experience in this life and to be a meaure of goodness in the lives of the people around us. Further, we have a responsibility to do this. Christ didn’t die on the cross so that we would bypass the opportunity to fully experience what we’re being offered.

Actively participating in Christianity provides a multitude of ways to “jump in to a life of faith with both feet.” Being of service, participating in faith development programs at church – there are so many ways to get involved….

Kim Burkhardt blogs at A Parish Catechis t (and is a member of the Association of Catholic Publishers). Blogging is sustainable via blog readership (i.e. readers/subscribers). If you are a new visitor, it would be great to have you subscribe to follow this blog (thank you!). If you know someone who would like this blog, please share it with them and invite them to subscribe (thank you!).

Already, but not yet…. Lenten lessons in faith

March 5, 2025

“Already, but not yet” – as is said about our experience of the Kingdom of God.

I enjoy the smell of bread rising when I pour water, salt, sugar, an egg, olive oil, bread flour, cinnamon, and yeast into my bread maker and turn it on. Part way through the bread-making process, I add raisins and sunflower seeds.

Recently, I was enjoying the yeast scent of baking, half-risen loaf of bread. Forget waiting for the bread to fully rise – I wanted to open the bread maker and experience the yeast-laden bread, impatiently wanting what was only half risen.

My thoughts turned to the Risen Christ. This year, as we enter the anticipatory season of Lent, we have 2,000 years of Christianity. As is said, the Kingdom of God is “already [here], but not yet.”

To the degree that we experience God’s love for us and express love toward other people, the Kingdom of God is already here. To the degree that we experience the frustrations of the human experience, we are reminded that the Kingdom of God is “not yet.”

Until “the not yet” comes, how do we live with our half-experience of the “already, but not yet?”

This Lenten season, we can again commit ourselves to deepening our faith within the “already.” If no yeast has yet been added to start one’s faith journey, yeast can now be added for a start to a faith journey. For those of us already on a faith journey, we often have at least some inkling of which aspects of our faith experience need to flourish more robustly. If our bread – faith – is rising but not rising well, Lent (anytime, really) is a good time to add the cinnamon, raisins, and sunflower seeds….

In my life, I actually have a hard time fasting. A problem with self-retraint, self-denial. For several years, I justified this during Lent: “I’m actively doing so many aspects of living a life of faith, who cares if I can’t fast?” We are so skilled at the nuance of making excuses… The fact that I lack the self-restraint to fast – to participate in this form of self-denial – actually indicates that there’s some lesson for me to learn with fasting. I’m certain that the lesson to learn has nothing to do with physical food….. I’m not sure yet what that lesson is, but I’m working toward finding out. I am going to trying fasting during Lent this year.

Lent Challenge: 1700th Anniversary of Council of Nicea

February 22, 2025

This year, 2025, marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea (the photo above shows architecture in Nicea that is still standing, was present in the days of the Council of Nicea).

So, what’s the big deal about that?

The apostles were expecting Jesus’ second coming during their generation. Also, Christ died at a time when the Jews were just starting to supplement their oral tradition with more written texts. Thus, it didn’t occur to the apostles and the early Christian communities to immediately, after Jesus’ death, write down the essentials of Christianity for future generations. Why write down the essentials of Jesus’ faith when Jesus was coming back soon?

Thus, It took several decades for the gospels to start to be written. The earliest church didn’t have the New Testament that we have today….

So, by the year 325, any number of things were being said to be Christian teachings that were theologically “all over the map.” The Council of Nicea (the council happened in the then-community of Nicea, in what is now Turkey) was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine to definitively settle “What we believe.” Bishops from both the Eastern and Western churches met over the summer to hammer out “What we believe” [between approximately 250 – 318 bishops attended. Bishops traveled to Nicea from across the Mediterranean, North Africa, Asia, Jerusalem, etc. without the benefits of automobiles or airplanes, though they did have ship travel).

Among the matters that came out of that Council was the Nicene Creed.

Today, 1,700 years later, we recite either the Nicene Creed or the Apostle’s Creed at every mass. That’s our big deal about the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea.

Have you taken time to reflect on our Creed? If we were to read the Creed with strictly modern sensibilities, there’s enough to give just about anyone heartburn. Jesus was born of a virgin? Physically rose from the dead?

I grew up believing in having a personal relationship with a monotheistic deity and I loved church ritual. I struggled with what I would later call “biological implausibilities” (virgin birth, the Assumption, etc.). It took me decades to work through these “implausibilities.” Now that I am largely on the other side of working through these matters, I have a faith that is richer and deeper. It turns out that developing a maturing faith requires that we really figure out how we personally relate to our Catholic faith.

1700 years into the Creed, have you reflected on the Creed? For Lent this year, maybe try writing a line-by-line explanation of what the Creed means (Lent starts on March 5^th this year) If you’d like resources to assist with this Lenten project, a book that I read in college might prove helpful – a book by Fr. John A. Hardon called ”Pocket Catholic Catechism.”

Book Review: Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies

February 20, 2025

Book: Introduction to Eastern Christian Liturgies

This is an interesting and broadly-written book for anyone interested in the what-and-how of religious services in the various Eastern Orthodox churches – Armenian, Byzantine, Coptic, Ethiopian, Syrian, and Maronite traditions.

This densely-written academic text dives into intricate and comparative detail of many aspects of church services for each of these traditions – including historical developments of each tradition.

In this book, the reader learns:

In the early Syrian rite, baptism was viewed as “rebirth to something new” rather than the western view of baptism being our “death, rebirth, and rising with Christ” (pages 21-22).
I was surprised to discover that in the early centuries of the Syrian Orthodox tradition, the Syrians considered the Holy Spirit to be “Mother Holy Spirit” – complete with references in liturgical prayers about the Holy Spirit acting as the “womb” of people’s faith (page 23).

This book is worth reading.

Book Review: Preaching the Just Word (Burghardt)

January 21, 2025

I recently stumbled upon this book, Preaching the Just Word by Walter J. Burghardt, S.J. (i.e., a Jesuit). I took an immediate interest in the book because of the author’s name. My last name is Burkhardt. I found out a couple years ago that my paternal grandfather was actually born Burghardt, he started spelling his name with a K instead of G in high school or in his early 20’s – possibly to differentiate himself from his father and/or siblings because there had been multiple levels of “falling out” within the family…. So when I found this book and learned that there had been a prominent theologian named Burghardt (not a common name!), I hoped that I might be distantly related to the author! As it turns out, Walter Burghardt’s parents came to the New York area directly from Poland or Austria in the early 1900’s, whereas my Burghardt relatives moved from Germany to a German enclave in Russia’s Volga River region in the late 1700’s before migrating to the U.S.’s midwest farming region…. So, any unlikely biological connection between me and this book’s author would be very remote. Yet, I decided to read this book.

I am finding this book to be a worthwhile read already, just a few pages in. I’ve always been attracted to the inner mystical aspects of faith (my story is told here). In recent years, I’ve pondered how to attract people to exploring the inner aspects of faith (such as contemplative prayer) in an era that encourages people to live a frenetically outer life and ignore or avoid inward reflection (i.e., “who wants to go inward when this ultimately requires us work through the inner emotional challenges that are an inherent to being human?”). An inner, prayerful relationship with God is necessary to fully and vibrantly being a person of faith – and joyous (“a peace that passeth all understanding!”). Yet, Walter J. Burghardt rightly points out at the beginning of this book that a solely inward faith is wrongly individualistic (a modern-day form of selfishness). A “faith” that is solely focused on a personal relationship with God isn’t fully faith – this would merely be naval-gazing.

Burghardt explains that the ultimate point of the Christian life on earth is to love one another as we love ourselves. We are called to take care of one another in a radically self-sacrificing manner. We are called to live as part of an interwoven web of caring, socially connected to one another.

There’s a balance for each of us to be a person of faith: a joy-filled inner prayer life in which God nurtures a personal relationship with us combined with the necessary and just manifestations of this inward prayerful relationship: we become the people God intends us to be and we radically love and serve the people around us.

From darkness to light

January 13, 2025

In the words of (Cardinal) Timothy Radcliffe, “We are all radically incomplete.”

In our incompleteness, each of us have areas of darkness. The fact, though, that all of us are radically incomplete provides comfort – we aren’t alone in experiencing the human condition (in Radcliffe’s statement that we are all radically incomplete, he immediately goes on to say “And we need each other”).

It is in the embrace of God’s love for us that we move from darkness to light.

It is because of all of this – such compelling aspects of our human experience (darkness, love, light) – that there are repeating threads of “from darkness to light” within the Christian faith tradition.

We celebrate the redeemer’s birth at the darkest time of the year (northern hemisphere) – the earthly appearance of the one who provides us with hope and light through the Resurrection (the Risen Christ).

We are now into January: each day is lighter and longer than the previous day. Joyousness. This is how I choose to look at the daily time of darkness and contrasting light at this time of year. In contrast, I met a person several years ago (2013?) who talked about – and focused on – “how short and dark the days are from October through February” (an accurate but dreary assessment!). I, on the other hand, choose to start counting in November who many weeks and then days there are until days start getting lighter and longer (i.e., counting toward the Winter Solstice). Then, I take joy each day after the solstice in having more light that day.

Days are getting longer now – for those of us in the northern hemisphere. When I drive to work in the early hours of the morning, I see the Seattle skyline in contrast to the night sky – a lovely image. I recently made a point of taking the photo of this Seattle skyline shown here before it gets too light in the early morning to take such a photo. In the midst of my dark drive to work, though, I also feel the joy of increasing light and God’s love for us.

A loving relationship with God does bring us from the darkest corners of our human experience to hope and love. Personally, I find the experience of this loving relationship in the stillness and deep surrender of contemplative prayer. And in being good to other people.

Monasteries of the Spirit (poetic ponderings)

January 8, 2025

Last year, I composed a poetic pondering about our human experience of faith. That blog post as well received, so I’m trying another poetic pondering with a look toward our personal faith engagement. (Note: I took the photo above at the centuries-old Clonmacnoise monastic ruins in Western Ireland.)

Monasteries of the Spirit

Monasteries of the Spirit are:

Grace-filled spaces, a place of rest and nourishment
Environments where we can encounter God’s love

Monasteries of the Spirit are also a space of last year’s poetic ponderings:

We move – seemingly unaware of the mechanics our own locomotion – through journeys of the soul prompted by the Holy Spirit
We sing with joy and weightlessness toward the upper mountain heights of God’s love
We wonder when happening upon liminal places

How do we be seek out Monasteries of the Spirit? Through an engaged faith journey:

Regular engaged participation in one’s faith tradition.

An active prayer life with attentiveness to – and surrender to – promptings of the Holy Spirit. These promptings nudge us toward an inner relationship with God through prayer.

May your faith journey be wonder-filled.

What Christians Believe

December 26, 2024

A woman I know started telling her co-workers that she attends church. She hadn’t told her co-workers about this in the two years she’d been working at her job. Her co-workers were surprised that a surprisingly normal and intelligent person such as her attends church. “So,” her co-workers would ask her, “Are you one of those Christians who believes that the Earth is only 3,000 – 6,000 years old?” and other such questions. “No,” she would reply, “Of course not.” She would point out in these conversations that The Big Bang Theory was formulated by a Catholic priest…..

So, what DO Christians believe? While some aspects of this question varies from one denomination to another, Christian leadership did come together in the year 325 in Nicea (a then-Greek city in what is now Iznek, Turkey) to specify precisely what Christian do believe. (I learned recently that ruins of some of the local Nicean architecture that existed at the time of the council in 325 still exists – I’d love to visit and see the remains of the architecture).

Christianity grew out of a historically oral tradition and Jesus’s followers thought in the decades following his death and resurrection that he was going to return in their lifetimes; thus, no one started writing what is now The New Testament for several decades. While it would be tempting to think now – 2,000 years later – that Christian belief in its’ current state has been statically known and accepted since the time Christ was alive, there was a lack of established Orthodoxy in the early days of Christianity. Thus, the need in the year 325 to communicate clearly what the Christian Church believes.

Join A Parish Catechist on Saturday, January 4th (8:00 am Pacific) or January 7th (7:00 pm Pacific) for a Zoom educational session about the specifics of “What Christians Believe” via the Nicene Creed. Sign up (register) here: https://www.signupgenius.com/go/10C084CA4A629A3F4C43-54130811-faith#/

Religious liturgical seasons and the faith experiences of individuals

December 14, 2024

With Christmas just around the corner, I have been pondering how to follow up on my previous post about the liturgical year and our faith journeys as individuals (the image above is a visual representation of Christianity’s liturgical seasons). In my last post, I wrote “On a personal level, Church seasons and religious holidays provide opportunities for us to journey deeper into our faith experience. When we truly engage in the processes provided in the Church’s liturgical calendar, what I have heard called ‘the genius of Christianity’s processes’ brings us into a deeper relationship with God. Our own inner workings are stirred in such a way that our spirituality broadens, deepens, and matures.”

There is a deep spiritual beauty in the flow of the church’s liturgical seasons that stirs us.

There’s also a question of whether one’s faith journey is expected to be organized around the liturgical seasons. Is Advent automatically when we should be prompted toward anticipatory hope (i.e., us looking forward to the Saviour’s birth)? While the established liturgical seasons offer rich faith development opportunities for us, each of us are also experiencing our faith journey at times and in ways that are specific to our own lives. For example, I’ve written about my re-conversion experience here; my re-conversion experience began unexpectedly in October, 2015 – during Ordinary Time. Similarly, I meet people who arrive at churches because they feel compelling faith stirrings that propel them into church pews. In the last couple of years, I have journeyed with several individuals who arrived at churches because they felt stirrings in which God was reorganizing their emotional lives in fruitful and amazing ways. They arrived in churches at times when they felt prompted by the workings of the Holy Spirit – not in accordance with a specific liturgical season.

Journeying with people whose inner lives are being transformed by the Holy Spirit is a blessed journey. Individuals having such experiences can’t be identified by looking for some outer clue (i.e., “look for the person where a specific color shirt standing at X location”). Rather, encountering people having such experiences requires talking with people – often, strangers – and listening to what they have to say (and, being attentive in looking for people having such experiences). People often want to talk about these experiences (I did!). Often, efforts to talk about such experiences can involve clunky or disjointed communication. We are all on our own journey toward a deeper relationship with God and it can be hard to articulate our own person encounter with the divine – especially if someone is new to such experiences. What I am finding is that there are ways to “talk around” such experiences – verbally acknowledge a person’s experience (“I recognize that you are having a profound inner experience”) and being present with the person. Reflectively find ways – even if the ways feel superficial – to compare notes on their and your faith journeys. Communicate joy that a person is experiencing a spiritual transformation.

What matters about liturgical seasons and our individual faith journeys? It matters that each of us be intentional about being on a faith journey. It matters that we respond to promptings of the Holy Spirit (those unexplainable inner promptings that come along occasionally). It matters that we be attentive to our inner experiences and look toward an ever deeper relationship with God (it can be tempting in today’s frenzied world to avoid one’s inner experiences). It matters that we learn to better love God and love our neighbor (putting faith into practical action in the aspects of our lives beyond our own internal experience). Engaging with religious liturgical seasons provides a communal structure for deepening our faith experience and for walking with each other in faith.

Accompanying you in your faith journey