It’s been a long time, but Contemplative in the Mud is coming back. Same mission, new era. A lot has happened in the intervening years, and I’m sure some of that will come out in future posts. But this isn’t a biographical blog, so never will I enter into details just for the sake of it.

As I prepare for this new phase in CitM’s life, I’ve been working on a few things, which I’d like to share first:

• We now have a useful presence on Instagram and Twitter in addition to the pre-existing Facebook page. I’ve been providing some picture-quotes on those platforms, using the vast catalogue that I’ve scrapped together here over the years. This has been a bit of a “soft relaunch” before we get to the main thing here on the blog, and I plan to continue this use of social media, in parallel to the blog itself. Please feel free to follow on the linked-to social media platforms.
• Obviously the site looks different. I’ve done a makeover so as to modernize things a bit. The new logo is a stylistic refashioning of the little walking guy that’s been with us since the beginning. You can see him in this graphic that gives CitM’s mission:

  

  Now, however, the little guy’s body is basically made up of a C I T and M (if you squint your eyes, concentrate really hard, and look closely enough).

  

  Can you see it? Hopefully. Maybe not.
• I’ve been working on a book! It’s about 98% finished in terms of word count for a first draft, but I’m not entirely sure where this will take me from here; I’ve not done this before. What I’ve written is very “Contemplative in the Mud” but definitely part of the Pope Francis era of the Church—which hadn’t yet begun when this blog began. The doorways opened by the Holy Father’s apostolic exhortations in particular have let me see some ways I can contribute something a bit more. In the coming weeks and months, some of this material will find its way onto the blog, for sure, with emphases that reflect the format here. Stay tuned.

Now, the question remains: Why relaunch today? In fact, I don’t have much prepared yet in terms of content (I was always well prepared in advance for content in the previous phase of CitM!). So, this is not the reason. In fact, I think that if a relaunch is going to take place around this time of year, now’s a pretty good day in the Church’s calendar: the Memorial of Saints Martha, Mary, and Lazarus.

Hosts of the Lord

If we associate the Martha, Mary, and Lazarus of John’s Gospel (Jn 11:1–44; 12:1–2, 9–10, 17) with the Martha and Mary of Luke’s Gospel (Lk 10:38–42), as Catholic tradition does, the relevance of today for this blog is obvious. The Lukan story is the famous incident of one sister who hosts the Lord by preparing everything for him, while the other sister sits at his feet and listens to him.

Obviously this is a passage rich in meaning, which no human writing could ever exhaust, let alone a little post about reviving a blog that had long slumbered. What I want to draw out is just a little reflection from Saint Augustine. In the Breviary today, the first service of the day invites us to read from the saint’s Sermon 103. This sermon does not rehash questions about action and contemplation as such, nor which is better.¹ The task is to show that the two have a common aim: Jesus the Christ himself.

Augustine says,

No one of you should say: “Blessed are they who have deserved to receive Christ into their homes!” Do not grieve or complain that you were born in a time when you can no longer see God in the flesh. He did not in fact take this privilege from you. As he says: “Whatever you have done to the least of my brothers, you did to me” [Mt 25:40].

In other words, we can do to the poor, the needy, the vulnerable exactly what was done to Jesus by Martha (and Mary). The actions are eschatologically equivalent. We feed the poor: we feed Jesus. We visit them: we visit Jesus. We tend to them: we tend to Jesus.

This, however, touches on contemplation. As I have always insisted on this blog (and as Pope Francis has repeatedly exhorted Catholics—on which I will give plenty of commentary in future posts), this isn’t just action. It entails wanting to see something. Seeing is a code here for contemplation. We contemplate the presence, whether realized or even if not, of Christ in others. We penetrate with the eyes of faith and charity into a mystery: “the whole Christ,” Head and members. To be sure, the eschatological promise given in the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel doesn’t say you have to see. But you can be pretty sure that, “seeing Jesus,” we’ll do a whole lot more “doing to Jesus.” That is the thrust of a famous quote of Saint Charles de Foucauld (canonized in May of last year, in another of the major developments since this blog went for a lengthy nap):

We must stand up for the rights of our neighbour who is suffering from injustice. We must defend them all the more vigorously because we see Jesus present in them.²

This brings us to the other side of the coin, the one that Charles de Foucauld emphasizes with the language of seeing and Pope Francis insists on with his repeated use of the vocabulary of contemplation (of the mystery of God at work in others). Augustine, for his part, in the reading in the Breviary today, touches on the same:

But when you come to the heavenly homeland will you find a traveller to welcome, someone hungry to feed, or thirsty to whom you may give drink, someone ill whom you could visit, or quarrelling whom you could reconcile, or dead whom you could bury? No, there will be none of these tasks there. What you will find there is what Mary chose. There we shall not feed others, we ourselves shall be fed. Thus what Mary chose in this life will be realized there in all its fullness; she was gathering fragments from that rich banquet, the Word of God.

At the Banquet at the very end of the age, the hosts of the Lord will become his guests. To be sure, some of that happens here below. Mary (and Martha) contemplate the Lord. We can too. We serve with Martha, but we receive him with Mary. We are both guest and host, and Christ too is both guest and host. This aspect of Christian life has always been the focus on Contemplative in the Mud—and will continue to be throughout this relaunch. Stay tuned for more content.

Lazarus, come forth!

The other main reason for choosing today to restart the blog is that given in the Gospel reading at Mass (in the Latin Rite at least). This is the story of the resurrection of Lazarus. He doesn’t rise to the new life that Jesus does. This isn’t a transformation of the kind of living that happens in the Kingdom in its full reality. But it is a resurrection. Lazarus was dead—or rather, “asleep” (Jn 11:11)—and he comes back. That’s where we are here.

I certainly don’t expect the buzz of interest, both positive and plotting, that the Gospel records as a response (cf. Jn 12:1–2, 9–10, 17). But I do hope that “Lazarus” will continue to live on in this world, not yet the completely eschatological one, for a time, together with his sisters Martha and Mary, hosts of the Lord.

Footnotes

1. Perhaps Augustine hints at the “betterness” in the criterion of “more eschatological,” but even the lens of Christian eschatology has applications to both Martha and Mary. ↩︎
2. I think this is from a latter to Dom Martin, dated 7 February 1902, but this needs verification. ↩︎