Elijah and the Widow

The daily Mass readings currently feature the prophet Elijah, legendary founder of the Carmelite order and my favorite Old Testament figure.

Here is a link to today's readings.

I always hear readings involving prophets as if from the shoes of the prophet. A lot strikes me about this exchange between Elijah and the widow. First off, of course one could look at God's provision, but think about it: Elijah faces death from drought, but God has a plan! An extremely poor woman (read: with no ability to economically support herself or anyone else) is going to provide for his needs! It's almost funny if you can hear the humor in it. The point is that the prophet must rely completely on God, and put no trust in "the normal way things work."

And not only that. Elijah also has to convince the widow of this. Yeah, lady, so you have nothing, and you are afraid of death. Well, God promises you provision. (Wait, I thought it was Elijah who had to believe that. I guess now we know why: he's supposed to call others to faith, too.) And she is so poor that she has nothing to lose, and she acts in faith. I'll bet Elijah was relieved. But the audacity of that request! Sure, you have a young son to care for, but hey, take care of me first! Why does acting on the Word of the Lord make the prophet appear like such a jerk? He was not egotistical; rather he knew that her response to him was her response to the Lord. And the Lord wants that total surrender because He wants to give Himself totally. He teaches Elijah this by demonstrating it in double layers to both him and the widow.

Meditations on the Pentecost Sequence

I'm putting into one place my novena's worth of meditations I wrote on the Pentecost sequence, Veni Sancte Spiritus. Here are the links, in order:

Come, O Father of the Poor
Sweet, Comforting, Refreshing Guest
Labor, Heat and Woe
Fearing the Light of the Holy Spirit
Nothing Without You
Wanting to "Look Good" for God
Scary Changes
Why Ask for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit
Give Us Virtue's Sure Reward

In short, what I've gleaned from reflecting on this Sequence is this: The entrance of the Holy Spirit gives light, but that light reveals sin, disorder, attachments, things that need healing and purification, further enlightenment, and an even greater need for the Holy Spirit's work. (Once upon a time I thought it was all about spiritual bling.)

The Holy Spirit's role is to transform us into other Christs. This is not only about inner purification, but also about real fruit born in ministry. But, it is also not only about outward fruit and ministry, but also about inner purification.

I have more to muse on regarding all this, but I'll save it for a future post.

Give us Virtue's Sure Reward

The final piece of the Pentecost sequence:

Give us virtue's sure reward

Give us your salvation, Lord

Give us joys that never end.

Amen. Alleluia.

Da virtutis meritum

Da salutis exitum

Da perenne gaudium

Amen. Alleluia.

Give reward of virtue, give us salvation at our passing on, give us eternal joy. Amen. Alleluia.

Just based on the feeling of words, I like that the word used for virtue (virtutis) is so close to the word for miracles (vertutis). I also like how the "Amen. Alleluia" is sung in chant so much that I've typed it three times. (Actually, four!) Some prayers are just so awesome that you can't conclude them any other way.

This prayer ends with the ultimate cry of faith. If we live in step with the Holy Spirit, undergoing purgings, prunings, choosing against selfishness and for love, choosing spiritual poverty and not living for sense gratification, I think we come to a point where we either rethink it all and revert to living in and for the flesh, or we bet everything on the way of Christ. And these concluding words are what is in the heart of those who have bet all. Sometimes we experience no evidence at all that choosing for God has a reward. But we are promised it. So we have hope for it. We cannot see what is on the other side of death, but we have come to know and love the One who has gone there. So we have faith in Him. And ultimately after living in Him we can imagine no other joy than to be with Him. That love will finally reach its pure fulfillment when we see His face in eternity.

These are the things that sustain martyrs and witnesses to the daily Yes to God. And when you and I add our Yes to their resounding chorus of Yeses, this is how the Church moves forward to our ultimate home.

Like I said, AMEN, ALLELUIA!

Why Ask for the Gifts of the Holy Spirit?

Today's piece of the Pentecost sequence:

On the faithful who adore

And confess you evermore

In your sevenfold gift descend

Da tuis fidelibus

In te confidentibus

Sacrum septenarium

Give to the faithful who trust in you the sacred sevenfold gifts.

This puts me in mind of a very basic truth of Christianity that was lost on me as a Protestant. I mean, I had been taught the concept, but I found too many (theo)logical loopholes in the rest of what I was taught so that this truth had no ability to grip my heart and convince my life. And that is simply that the point of living on earth as Christians is to live as Jesus did.

In fact, just a few days before I met the people who were to become instrumental in my experiencing the Holy Spirit in His charismatic dimension, I wrote a song called "We See But Darkly." And in the song I asked the question that plagued me in those days:  "If Jesus is my Lord, and God my Father/Why should I have to even bother with this earthly life?/Why can't I just go to heaven now?/What difference would it make, anyhow?"

The answer to that question is in what we beg for in this piece of the sequence.

We beg for the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit primarily because our life in Christ before entering heaven is about practicing love, and getting used to Divine Love. That entails being sanctified. Being sanctified has to do with embracing God's will, so that all of our energies are trained on what God most desires for us: Love of God and love of neighbor.

When wisdom, understanding, counsel, knowledge, fortitude, piety and the fear of the Lord fill us, we are true to our name: Christian. Jesus is the Christ, the Anointed One, because He is in perfect union with the Holy Spirit, making visible the invisible God. We as His Body are called to do the same: make visible the invisible God.

God forms a people to live in the world and make Him known. That's what I missed as a Protestant, and that's why we ask for these gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Scary Changes

Today's piece of the Pentecost sequence:

Bend the stubborn heart and will

Melt the frozen, warm the chill

Guide the steps that go astray

Flecte quod est rigidum

Fove quod est frigidum

Rege quod est devium

So, sorta like this: Bend that which is rigid, warm that which is cold, make true that which has gone wrong.


I don't know about you, but I have been Queen of Rigid, Cold and Wrong. Empress, really.

Sometimes there is nothing scarier than the Holy Spirit bending you when you are rigid. Because really and truly, if you are actually able to discern that it is the Holy Spirit who is acting, you really think He is completely messing up your life. That rigidity is security. It's a standard. It feels so righteous. Well, except for the joyless, pained and isolated parts. Butthosearesoeasytoignore! Because, security!

When we trade our humanity for security, we are in big trouble.

And when God warms us? Another potential for confusion! Warmness entails nearness, and, dear me, nearness activates all sorts of puritanical fears. Too much warmness, and there might be a fire! We might really get purified!

What if our steps leave the path we are used to, even if our normal is just a weenzie bit wrong? Heck, we could end up anywhere if we open up to course correction. See earlier complaint about security.

But in this prayer we beg for the changes we might not even recognize we need. For Jesus to be Lord of my life means that I put my life at the disposal of the Holy Spirit to be refashioned until I look like Jesus. That will require a lifetime of course corrections, meltings and bendings. This is where trust come in. We've got to trust God's perspective. This is also where meditating on Scripture comes in! We need to know what Jesus looks like, so that shock of what the Holy Spirit sets out to do doesn't blow us out of the water. This is also where prayer comes in, so we can discuss with the Lord all the anxiety that sanctification provokes.

Wanting to "Look Good" for God

Today, I want to think about this piece of the Pentecost Sequence:

Heal our wounds, our strength renew

On our dryness, pour your dew

Wash the stains of guilt away

Lava quod est sordidum

Riga quod est aridum

Sana quod est saucium

The Latin is a bit more blunt: wash that which is dirty, water that which is dry, heal that which is wounded. I like that, perhaps because with use, the English has lost some of its punch for me in these lines. Jesus did not come for the (self-) righteous, but for sinners, and the better grasp we have on our need for God's mercy, the better shape we are in for receiving it. I'm not sure where we get this goofy religious idea that we have to try to "dress up nice" to present ourselves to God so that we will be acceptable to Him. Where's the logic there? God knows all (or He wouldn't be God) and can see through me and understand me better than I know myself. If I were perfect without God, I would be God myself. And last I checked, I am not uncaused being.

Quite often, when I am in the communion procession at Mass, I think of the hymn "Just As I Am."

Just as I am, without one plea
But that Thy blood was shed for me
And that Thou biddst me come to Thee
O Lamb of God, I come....

I come to Jesus because He asks me to come. He desires me to come. It isn't because I have something He needs or because He's going to put me in a line-up to choose someone who is good enough to be in His company. He wants me to come to Him because that is who He is.

And this bit of the Pentecost sequence reminds me of who I am: wounded, parched (unable to sustain or produce anything of life), and stained by my sin. But the Holy Spirit, Lord and Giver of Life, who binds Father and Son and sends the Son into the world, desires to come to me and change me into the very image of Christ: Whole and healing, with a stream of living water that brings life wherever it goes, made pure and bringing purity.

That's awesome.

Nothing Without You

Today's bit of the Pentecost sequence:

Where you are not, we have naught

Nothing good in deed or thought

Nothing free from taint of ill

Sine tuo numine

Nihil est in homine

Nihil est innoxium

Here, the Latin is much simpler and the English has to dance around with a bit more flair to fill the same syllable count. Remember of course that the Church sings her prayers, which in itself reflects the holy nature of prayer, of superfluous beauty spent for God's glory.

The Latin really just says, "Without you [oh deity], nothing is in man, nothing is freely innocent." The paradox is that God who is omnipresent can be excluded from souls by the very will given to the souls by the omnipotent God.

It seems that the root sin of humanity is pride: we think we are something when we are nothing. And this prayer says it plainly: we are nothing without the presence, the life breathed by the Holy Spirit. I'm not much of a linguist, nor am I much of a philosopher, but it strikes me as interesting to meditate on the phrase "nihil est in homine" -- nothing is in man. "Is" generally refers to the existence of something, while "nothing" of course is about the lack of something. Perhaps this drives at the God-shaped hole we all have within us, this having-been-created-for which we need to discover so that our calling out to God means something to us. It's this sense that I don't know who I am without You. And an existence that doesn't make sense to myself is unbearable, so I must seek so that I have peace.

We are designed for communion with God. In that communion, we experience the flow of freedom and innocence through us, which is the Spirit of God living through us. So today's chunk of this prayer expresses awareness of the depth of our need. Our human identity depends on our union with the Holy Spirit.

Fearing the Light of the Holy Spirit

Today I want to think about this bit of the Pentecost sequence:

Oh most Blessed Light Divine

Shine within these hearts of thine

And our inmost being fill

O lux beatissima

Reple cordis intima

Tuorum fidelium

To be filled with light connotes to me a complete lack of any need for fear, for suspicion, for lack of trust. Nothing evil can hide; everything is plain.

The irony is of course that we do fear the light. The whole contest between light and darkness in Scripture (especially from St. John) demonstrates clearly that sin is comfortable with darkness and fears light. So light can actually be a very threatening thing to our sinful status quo. Praying for an influx of the Holy Spirit is not for the faint of heart. As C. S. Lewis tells us about Aslan, he is wild, but he is good.

Even though the light of the Holy Spirit is pure goodness, we are likely to experience it as pain because of our impurities, St. John of the Cross reminds us: "The soul, because of its impurity, suffers immensely at the time this divine light truly assails it." (The Dark Night, Bk. 2 Ch. 5.5)

So this prayer is really one of deep surrender. When we know that God's ways and plans and desires for us are higher than our own, we can trust Him to do within us whatever He wants. But fasten your seatbelt. God answers all sincere invitations.

Labor, Heat and Woe

Today's bit of the Pentecost Sequence:

In  our labor, rest most sweet

Grateful coolness in the heat

Solace in the midst of woe

In labore requies

In aestu temperies

In fletu solatium

This puts me in mind of St. Teresa of Avila's analogy on prayer about the different ways a garden gets watered. Sometimes we need to carry those buckets of water and manually dump it out on each plant. That is when prayer takes mental effort to get cranking. There's also the water-wheel where some effort constructs a system that waters more automatically. But then there are the times when the rain comes directly and no effort is involved at all. This prayer is a gift given by the Holy Spirit. Teresa calls it contemplation.

A more tangible thing this puts me in mind of is something I find happened a lot with my daughter when she was younger. I would always find her at productive peace when I was busy working, doing something she could see, like cleaning or cooking. My quiet presence registered with her quiet presence as peace, security and stability. Quiet people really appreciate this kind of flow! But if I was doing think-work (or wasting my time on the computer), she would start to feel agitated and would get clingy. In those moments, if I got up to clean, it would bring neither of us peace. I couldn't drag her into a place of peace by flipping a switch into "work = peace" mode.

The parallel I'm drawing is that we can't command the graces of the Holy Spirit. We can only discover them active while we are going about what God has given us to do. When we don't feel particularly inspired to pray, we pray out of discipline. Inspiration may or may not come later. Sometimes God leads us through moments of woe on purpose, and we need to walk through them on purpose. Eventually we will see that the Holy Spirit meets us there and brings consolation.

The labor, the heat, the woe are just normal aspects of Christian life. We are not to fear them, be surprised at them or try to avoid them, but rather keep an eye gazing heaven-ward, expecting the Holy Spirit whom we implore to meet us when the moment is right.