Shalom, Shalom

Today was one of those rare Sundays when I had no liturgical role but to worship. Coming off of the Holy Week, Easter Week, Divine Mercy cycle I have been more than tired; I've been rather liturgically fatigued. I've been rehearsing to myself often that true prayer is not rooted in feeling but in faith. Sometimes it has seemed I've had so much less than feeling going on that I'm more at the level of consciousness. To lead music, I do normally have to tap into the foundation of sanctified autopilot I have, which I've learned to trust more than my mind. Call it liturgical instinct. But the proper balance of that seems to always have just a hint of adrenaline mixed in, not just simply turning on the machine before the opening hymn and then turning it back off again after the closing hymn, like the sound system.

Anyway, today was none of that. 

Today instead I was able to soak in the Mass (and the music) and feel life return.

The first line that snagged me was in the Psalm: 

As soon as I lie down, I fall peacefully asleep, for you alone, O Lord, bring security to my dwelling.

That line, crescendoed in the word, security, gently pierced me. And then, nicely enough, the homily basically picked up on this theme of peace, and Jesus' presence with us which makes it possible to have inner peace. And this weird reminder: how Jesus says "peace be with you," and then, as a by the way, "do you have anything to eat?" Both of these lines have always struck me as bizarre, said into the faces of apostles who were hiding and scared out of their wits and feeling very unreconciled in themselves, between themselves, and with Jesus, without a doubt. What they had just finished experiencing had pulled all their stuffing out and left them raw, vulnerable messes. 

And Jesus is hungry. At least for their fellowship.

Yeah, and this is piercing all over again.

How is Jesus' hunger resonating in me? I learned from the Carmelites some years ago that the way to go is to invite Jesus to love through me, live through me, minister through me, etc. First, because that's the Christian plan, but especially because my natural capacity -- anyone's natural capacity -- isn't the Christian plan, because it is so tiny and finite. "Christ in me, the hope of glory." 

So how about Jesus being hungry through me? 

It sends me right back to the refrain so common to me when I started grappling with becoming Catholic. What kind of God in His right mind relies so much on human beings, loves them, calls them, endures them, wants them? 

I guess it's the kind of God who is not innately like me, guarded, invulnerable, untouchable, cowardly in the face of my own desires. 

Ok, I've lost track of where I started. Shalom, shalom. The peace that Jesus gives is wholeness, entirety; it gives security to my dwelling. I don't have to guard myself. I can un-do the hypervigilance. I guess I can breathe and be brave in the face of my own desires. Selah.

Union of Wills: A Lenten Breakthrough

This morning's gospel and the homily I heard on it helped turn on some lights for me to see and name a problem I have danced with for most of my life. The passage at issue was Jesus saying, "I do nothing on my own, but I say only what the Father taught me" (John 8:28). 

The homily's emphasis was on how Jesus models for us -- even though He is the incarnate Son of God -- submission to and union with the Father's will, as opposed to Him just doing what was right in his own eyes, the way humans tend to do (Judges 21:25). 

The lights that turned on showed me this: For decades, when I have heard exhortations to do "not your own will, but God's," or even when I have exhorted myself, there was a piece missing, and a wrong piece present. I generally heard it this way.

Random Person: You should not choose your way; you should choose God's will. 

Me: Ok, that's right.

Random Person: And now I'm going to tell you what God's will is.

Me: Ok, I'm sure you're right

The direction that followed was a flood of all sorts of things: Unmarried women should live at home under their parents' authority until they are married. You should never complain about any injustice done to yourself. Your husband is always going to be right, and even if he isn't, it is your Christian responsibility to be on his side. Woman, you shouldn't pursue serving in the church or community. If you become Catholic you are worthy of rejection. Pleasure is wrong. The teachings of the Church need to be re-written by people who use their imagination in prayer. You need to be on hand whenever I need you to feel better about myself. You must never step out with initiative. All you really need to do is keep going to church on Sunday, and don't become an atheist. It doesn't matter. Here's my dress code and rules of conduct that shows that you really love God. Here are the rules to being a good person.

And on. And on. And on. 

Whether these were significant relationships with lots of strings attached or teaching purported to be infallible truth, I have unwittingly collected a swarming brood of voices telling me what God's will is. 

The missing piece absent was the agency of my own will to choose a course of action and to have my own relationship with God in prayer. That wrong piece present made it clear I was to be directed by someone who was going to inform me. Lo and behold, whatever I was given to drink tasted an awful lot like the vessel and not the Water of Life.

But what Jesus was talking about was union with the Father. What St. Teresa of Jesus and St. John of the Cross point me to is union with the Father. What my Carmelite practice trains me toward is union with the Father. What God Himself has been calling me to, woven in between all of these distorted messages that I then believed I needed and sought out, was a partnership of union of wills with Him. 

So along my path towards union with God, I have needed to learn how to identify and exercise myself in what I actually want. And I mean, on the level of acknowledging my needs on every level -- food and water, for example! It means giving up the violence I've done to myself by handing over my will to others. It means feeling, as an adult, the very real pain of wanting formation and direction as a young child, but having the Gen-X experience of raising myself. 

It now makes sense to me that for years and years, when I have prayed, what God impressed upon me was "to serve me, simply be yourself." When I first heard this, frankly it terrified me because I had no idea how to do it. I didn't know that I had a self, with whom God wished to engage, by which I would excerise self-mastery. To be fully a human being is to bring our wills into union with His, not to crush and destroy our own identity and call that service to God.

This is big. I linked to just a few of the blog posts above where I see I have been grappling with this for decades. Thanks be to God.

Unless you Forgive

I gently employed the same prayer approach today at Mass as Sunday, looking for the Lord's gaze at me through the Scriptures. It was then that I recognized a little whisper I had heard a few days before regarding my need to forgive a certain person. Today's gospel reading, and the homily that I heard that unpacked it, were of the walloping sort. Forgive or go to hell. Not exactly an episode of Gentle Jesus, Meek and Mild. But I heard something else in this, other than what can feel like a frightening threat.

Here's the gospel (Mt. 18:21-35):

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison
until he paid back the debt.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

So, what happens with this being commanded to forgive? When I went back to read the Scripture again after Mass, what I noticed was Jesus says there's a king, who is settling accounts, a debtor, and the debtor's master. It isn't entirely clear to me anymore that the king is the debtor's direct master. Rather, it seems like the king is the one who is now hearing about the conduct of the debtor, the master, and the debtor's fellow servants who complained about the injustice they witnessed. I'm not sure this matters, other than the fact that it would make much more clear that the judgment that God extends is directly about humans interactions with each other, rather than with some abstract moral code that is represented by the king. It would sound like the king is hearing the case pleaded by the master about the debtor's injustice. I'll leave the biblical exegetes to deal with that.

Another question: what is forgiveness, anyway? What is being commanded here? Fr. Drake mentioned in his homily that the Greek text makes it clear that the amount of money owned by the debtor would have taken multiple lifetimes of daily wages to pay off. In other words, it was an impossible, unpayable debt. This clearly represents the human standing before God. We are broken, we fall so far short of divine standing, and we start life out this way. Through the mystery of sin, we simply are not fit by nature for relationship with God, and nothing we can do can get us there. Nada. 

So the first movement we see in this story is that the debtor is forgiven his debt. The master of the debtor takes this debt into himself, and takes it away, freeing the debtor and his family from being sold into slavery. In the Old Testament, too, God had a system for forgiving sins. He had prescriptions for offerings, symbolic deaths, symbolic gifts, brought to a symbolic place with symbolic people who offered prayers to wipe out offences. All of this was to point to the one who was to come, was to point to some amazing promise of fulfillment that God would one day send to His faithful people. Israel had a very mixed-bag track record of staying faithful to this type of worship, of all the laws that were to prevent the sins in the first place, and the hope that was to sustain them that God would come as their redeemer. 

But Jesus takes it one step further in the story. The forgiven debtor was supposed to, now, have within him the same nature, the same lifeforce that allowed for the unforgiveable debt to be forgiven him. He was to operate with other people the way that God forgave through sacrifice. Yikes! Something stronger than the Old Covenant had to come into play here. Jesus is here expecting that the debtor act like God, not live out of brokenness but live with the divine nature actually present within, to act like God! Wow, Jesus, that's impossible, isn't it? 

The heart of the gospel isn't only that God has forgiven us and so we are off the hook and our sins don't matter anymore. The heart of the gospel is that God's divine nature comes to take up residence in us, transforming us, and causing his own life to be active in us and through us. We are made sons in the Son. We are called to live in union with God, like the flame totally consumes the wood.

If that is the Christian call, what does this gospel say about forgiveness? That priest who just was convicted of grossly abusing a vulnerable woman for years with basically spiritual torture -- is she, are we all, just supposed to say "you are forgiven, it's erased, done; you are free"? I actually had a man in my life at one point whose only exposure to Christianity was listening to a few sermons on the radio. He actually suggested to me that I should allow him to sexually violate me, because I was a Christian, and Christians are supposed to forgive everything. Is that what this is?

No, thank the Lord, the command to Christians to forgive is not the command that we provide a pass for violation to romp unchecked. Quite the opposite. We need to know righteous from unrighteous as God knows it.

Note the pattern in the latter portion of the gospel: The forgiven debtor perpetrates violence against one of his equals, overpowers him, and takes up an arrogant position against him, putting him in debtor's prison. The fellow servants are deeply disturbed and report it. The master responds to the deeply distubed report. He declares the wickedness of the arrogant one and declares pity for the fellow servant. 

The master has ears for the one who has been sinned against. The master takes it in hand.

I see two things here. First: from experience I know that sometimes it is difficult for a person who has been violated to say, That was wrong for you to do to me. An injustice was done to me. Righteousness would have looked different, this was not it. 

I wish parsing righteousness from unrighteousness were never difficult, but at times it is. Consider, for example, a person placed for adoption as a baby. She may have loved her adoptive parents so dearly and exercised so much gratitude for the fact that she was born and cared for, that she may feel grossly disloyal and guilty for acknowledging the feelings surrounding "I had the right to be raised by the mother and father who created me." Consider someone who, at the cost of losing the only scraps of feeling loved they know, cannot admit that the relationship partner has wronged them, or is continually doing so.

Second: when the deeply disturbed report reaches the master's ears, not only forgiveness, but healing is unleashed. We don't hear that debtor #2 was released from prison, but we hear that debtor #1 owed him pity. 

Jesus's punchline is that each of us needs to forgive his brother from his heart. How I hear it is not that we say, "that thing you did doesn't matter." It is that we admit, "that thing that you did violated me. I'm punched in the gut." First, our thinking gets corrected about the nature of what happened (righteousness vs unrighteousness). Then, because we are in a community of equals, those around us see, and are deeply disturbed. We experience the healing love and intercession of those to whom we reveal this brokenness. We experience intercession: someone takes my hot mess before God, who responds. Healing pours out. 

Because we are all equals, and because each of us needs to be in this process, we are formed as a people who, because we have the very nature of God poured into us in baptism, are constantly being built up in the grace of the Holy Spirit. We are all in varying stages and places of hurting, forgiving, repenting, being forgiven, receiving healing, calling out injustice, interceding. But the one who tramples another faces the king's judgment.

This is Jesus telling us how the new covenant people of God will act.

I'm reminded of John's reminder of sins you pray about so that the other will be forgiven, and sins that lead to death, that you don't just pray about (1 Jn. 5:16-17). 

It takes tremendous courage to open up our brokenness, especially those things that happened to us as children or in a particularly vulnerable time. It takes the courage of knowing and trusting that we are loved, by God and by people. These things are not healed immediately, but the power of God absolutely does heal them. The new covenant people of God, the Church, is to be this place where God's healing is unleashed through us, to the world. That is why Jesus begins with "the kingdom of heaven may be likened to..."

Ascension, the Kingdom, and Scampering off, Stage-Right

The Feast of the Ascension penetrated my mind in a new-feeling way today. God was gracing me to take things in. I can actually share with you the homily I heard, how about that:

The Kingdom of God is Jesus reigning in heaven, through the Church, the continuation of his ministry throughout time and space, the fullness of Him who fills everything in every way. We live now in the kingdom, because Jesus has ascended into heaven in his human body, opening it to us, going there ahead of us, promising us all we need for Him to pull the rest of his mystical body through. When we say yes to Him, yes to his church, we are agreeing to all of the purgation and purification necessary. We basically have no idea what we are really saying yes to (gee, kinda like marriage...) but we say yes, and we keep saying yes, and he brings us through. That's the promise of the Ascension for the believer. When we pray "Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as in heaven," we say yes again to the whole mess. Yes, Lord, come and rearrange anything you want; you are the Lord; I will adjust. 

It makes me think of all the brokenness we have and continue to live in, even while we also have the power of the Holy Spirit resident in us, but it might not look like it, hardly ever. Or maybe it does. We still have the brokenness, and this is what Jesus continually heals and refines (gee, kinda like marriage).

But then there was this beautiful moment at the end of Mass (not pictured in the video). We did our May Crowning right before the end of Mass. The little children brought their flowers, tried to stuff them into a vase, while the music ministry, perhaps not knowing this was going to happen, did an early rendition of the closing hymn (which then got repeated moments later). What caught my attention was the last two little girls. The younger of the two sisters went first, directed by her slightly older sister. She shoved her flower in, but then went running in little tittering steps back to her seat. The slightly older girl (I'm guessing maybe 5 or 6) suddenly became aware that she was the last child in line, and was now all alone. She shoved the flower in and ran back to her parents also. 

What struck me was what it takes to be one little person, alone, publicly rendering honor or publicly giving testimony. I thought of my tiny little mystical self, apart from Carmel. When you are the only one, and you do not consciously know yourself as part of something bigger, caught up in something that is not about you, when you suddenly lose your nerve. You feel your lack of your people. You feel away from where you belong. You run for cover. And I realized that being part of Carmel is, for me, and has been, this knowledge not only that I'm not alone, and that there are other people called just as I am, but that my life truly is not about me. My life is part of something bigger, and that is to bear witness, sometimes in a very solitary and odd-feeling way, to the experience of God. And that if I do "walk alone," I am only alone in one perspective. Personally, I know I am walking with Teresa. I know I am walking with Elijah. But seeing that little girl scamper off also made me realize this isn't just a psychological reality, it is a spiritual reality. 

The Prodigal, The Fatherless, and St. Joseph

This morning's Mass has shaken loose quite a bit of useful thought fodder, so here I am to sort it all out.

The gospel reading was the parable of the Prodigal Son, famous of course for the son who squanders wealth, the father who compassionately welcomes him back after long expectation, and the brother who resents both of them. 

The homily I heard, though, was one of those ripping the needle off the record moments that backhandedly spoke into my personal situation and also has me pondering this year of St. Joseph.

Father mentioned, reminiscent of the writer to the Hebrews, that "we have all had that moment where we did something wrong, and we awaited that moment of how our fathers were going to deal with us about it." As Hebrews 12:9-10 puts it, "we have all had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respect them...they disciplined us for a short time at their pleasure, but [God] disciplines us for our good..."

The needle ripped off the record because, no, I don't have any childhood memories like that. In fact, the first thing I thought of was my experience of being corrected for singing harmonies out of turn when I joined our parish choir. I was ... 41 at the time. 

What felt so odd was to have this discussed as a universal human experience from which we all learned something about God. I went to that same category interiorly, and came up empty. That's not to say that God hasn't abundantly compensated that emptiness for me, because He has.

 My second thought went to the 23% of American households with children that are currently headed by single parents. And the divorce rate in the era of the childhoods of my generation (1970s and 1980s) that was at nearly 50%. And the trend, also prevalent within my generation of what Dr. Jonice Webb calls Childhood Emotional Neglect, where even physically present parents can be emotionally absent to their children. All of this is so much a given in my awareness of life around me that frankly Father's comments struck me like data from a different planet.

But my concern is not really with sociological trends, nor with Family Privilege, my personal experience or anyone else's per se. The direction these thoughts have taken me have been about human formation, and how that impacts spiritual formation.

I love what my Secular Carmelite Constitutions have to say about this: 

Both initial and ongoing formation in the teachings of Teresa and John of the Cross, help to develop in the Carmelite Secular a human, Christian and spiritual maturity for service to the Church. Human formation develops the ability for interpersonal dialogue, mutual respect and tolerance, the possibility of being corrected and correcting with serenity, and the capacity to persevere commitments. (OCDS Constitutions, No. 34)

Pope Francis has been insistent on reminding us that God meets us with His great spiritual riches on the peripheries of society and on the peripheries of our own hearts. The more clearly we see our poverty, our need, our lack, our misery, the more immediately God bestows His abundant grace. This is exactly why I say God has abundantly compensated me for the empty category I have felt in my human formation; though it did not always feel a blessing, I realize I have been tremendously blessed in being solidly in touch with my misery and crying out to God over it. It has taken me a few decades, but here I am!

I am now vigorously curious to learn how to help others in their human formation in this regard. Human formation happens when my human experience butts up against your human experience, and we both act with the graces God has given us. There is plentious room for correction and being corrected, for learning respect, to learn to tolerate persons and accept them as they are, not as we want them to be. The end result is to be that we both learn to persevere in our baptismal commitments, having been refined by the other. Multiply this by many people, many human experiences, much grace. This is an element that dare not be missing from spiritual formation (entailing learning Scriptural, doctrinal and spiritual truths). For dry bones to live we need both spirit and flesh to take part in resurrection.

And then my thoughts went to Our Lord Jesus. At the beginning of his life, he went straight for our vulnerable edges, in the persons of Mary and Joseph. Biblical scholars still debate over the nature of their legal and moral status at the time of Jesus' conception. They were betrothed but had not lived together as husband and wife; did this mean that Jesus' birth was legitimate or illegitimate? Regardless of how the eyes of the law looked upon them, or what people thought of Mary and Joseph, I can't imagine that Joseph avoided a dark night of faith. He knew that Jesus was not his child. Scripture clearly says he was of a mind to divorce Mary quietly. Some scholars say this was only because Joseph knew he was not worthy to be the father of the Son of God, and not that he doubted Mary or didn't know or believe that she was the mother of the Messiah until this was revealed by the angel (as if human Joseph having merely human thoughts somehow detracts from his holiness or vocation.) Mary also had to have needed to exercise dark faith in what the angel told her. I remember those early weeks of pregnancy where, in my case, I was sure I had lost my baby because I felt absolutely nothing. Mary had no advantage of seeing the blue line show up on her pregnancy test. In this very intimate, unprecidented and singular event of the pregnancy with the Son of God, both Mary and Joseph were pressed to the human limits of faith that God's word is to be believed above all else, including the entire natural order. I highly doubt that there were not intense conversations during that time that shaped and prepared them to live in their society in a radically, profoundly different way from anyone else. Their bond had to be a profound solitude that God transformed with every manner of compassion, wisdom, worship, and strength.

Jesus did not come to remove troubles by sanitizing humanity. He came to sanctify us by redeeming our broken humanity, and making sons of those whom sin had completely alienated. He entered into our human experience, sharing everything but sin, in order to drink the dregs and fill all with his healing and powerful presence, to make of us a people who witness to his presence in a broken world. As he raises us up to share in his divine nature, he fulfills through human beings what he promised in Psalm 10:18, "to vindicate the fatherless and the oppressed, that the men of the earth may strike terror no more."

Blessed Be God Who Filled My Soul With Fire!

The title of this post was the Psalm response from today's Mass. I don't recall it from years past. It's my new favorite.

The homily I heard today focused on fraternal correction -- that we need to give it, and how, and the humility to requires to receive it. We were encouraged to ask for the grace to give and receive, according to God's will.

A salient point was omitted about the nature of fraternal correction, though, something I was taught some years ago. When you boil down fraternal correction, its essence is this: You have forgotten how ardently and jealously loved you are.

When we sin, when we are stuck in screw-up mode, or are chronically deficient in virtue and character, what we suffer from is not a lack of being nit-picked by people who know the rules, the definitions, the logical progressions, the historical development, etc of virtue and right. What we suffer from is a deficiency of the inflow of Love. We have walls in the depths of our beings against God and reality. We have put up defenses to keep us away from Truth, for fear of what Truth is.

Fraternal correction says, "You are loved. You have value. You are better than that."

Oh, I know terms like love and value are worn out and they become white noise against our interior realities. This is why fraternal correction also requires being known, and taking the time to know another before presuming to correct them.

That reminds me of an experience I had in my 20s. I was coming to daily Mass but had not yet been received into the Church. I wore a sweatshirt to Mass one day that says in bold white-on-black letters "Carpe Diem". After Mass, a gentleman approached and instructed me that the phrase on my shirt represented hedonism and an immoral approach to life that excluded love and trust in God. He wasn't mean about it, but neither did he ask me anything about myself, or extend to me any other invitation into the community or anything better than what he perceived me to be a part of. Had he asked me, I would have told him I bought the shirt because of a lifelong struggle with passivity and to help me with my fears of stepping forward and living my life, which included at that time entering the Catholic Church.

And guess what? I still have that sweatshirt. :)

So what the man said did not remind me that I was deeply loved by God; he merely reacted to something he saw. That wasn't fraternal correction; it was being a busybody. It might have been very nice had he introduced himself and asked me about my shirt. Generally if people ask me "why" questions, I have ready answers, and you will meet my soul.

Look what happened when Jesus told and showed people how profoundly they are loved. The woman caught in adultery. The woman who anointed Jesus' feet at Simon's house. Lazarus. Things things set off firestorms of indignation from those who felt God was their personal possession. That is how you know you have real love making real waves into real hearts: some people melt and repent, others see and become furious.

It takes courage to love. It takes courage to open yourself to God to allow Him to love through you. We are not our own; we are bought at a price. His love bonds us to Him and our souls are filled with His fire. 

His Hour

At the Holy Thursday Mass, I had one of those moments where the Scriptures exploded in my head in multiple directions at once.

It was that first line of the gospel reading: Before the feast of Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to pass from this world to the Father.   

Just a couple of weeks ago at the Sonshine Bible Club I had been teaching my kids about the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana, where Jesus tells his mother "My hour is not yet come." One of the things I have been impressing on these kids every week with every gospel story is that Jesus had his mind constantly set on fulfilling his Father's will that he lay down his life for us. His love focused him on the mission for which he was born, which was to be the atoning sacrifice for our salvation.

So, when I heard these, where Jesus knew that finally, his hour had come, and knowing all that his Passion would entail, my mind shot back again to that moment at the wedding feast. I know that account is rich with layers of spiritual meaning, especially because of how the wedding feast prefigures the marriage supper of the Lamb which Jesus would bring about when his hour did finally come. But what struck me at that moment was on a much more human level. And also, it was born of a time of prayer several years ago where I felt greatly consoled by the Blessed Virgin in the understanding of her grief when Jesus left her in Nazareth to head out into his ministry. This moment of the wedding feast happened probably very shortly afterwards, a brief hiatus in their separation. 

What struck me Thursday night was how it must have affected the human heart of Jesus, also, not only to leave his mother in Nazareth, but to cast his gaze ahead to the day when his hour would come, and he would suffer this kind of separation from her, and the pain of her pain. I think of Jesus in Gethsemane. He wanted his disciples to stay awake and pray. We know he was in anguish. We should not dismiss the pain his humanity endured in being left alone by everyone he loved in that moment -- including his mother. 

Why is it that we go through these moments on earth with no sense of consolation at all, no experience or feeling of love? God allows these moments; at some point, it is his way. In them, we face our misery, brokenness, and need, and we know that without the Father, we are nothing. So Jesus, too, reveals himself to us in this very place. 

In fact, Jesus calls us to himself in this desolate place, and bids us have the courage to meet him there, and love him there, and to know that even there in that place of immense human suffering, he is filled with nothing but love and longing for us.

And because love calls forth love, it can be very disturbing to hear that call unless you are prepared to also lay down all consolation, and the experience of the love of your closest ones, and embrace the desolation that is his in his moment of determination to love us to the end.

From The Heart

This morning at Mass I was struck by hearing the gospel highlighted in a markedly different way than past hearings.

Peter approached Jesus and asked him,
“Lord, if my brother sins against me,
how often must I forgive him?
As many as seven times?”
Jesus answered, “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.
That is why the Kingdom of heaven may be likened to a king
who decided to settle accounts with his servants.
When he began the accounting,
a debtor was brought before him who owed him a huge amount.
Since he had no way of paying it back,
his master ordered him to be sold,
along with his wife, his children, and all his property,
in payment of the debt.
At that, the servant fell down, did him homage, and said,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back in full.’
Moved with compassion the master of that servant
let him go and forgave him the loan.
When that servant had left, he found one of his fellow servants
who owed him a much smaller amount.
He seized him and started to choke him, demanding,
‘Pay back what you owe.’
Falling to his knees, his fellow servant begged him,
‘Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.’
But he refused.
Instead, he had him put in prison
until he paid back the debt.
Now when his fellow servants saw what had happened,
they were deeply disturbed, and went to their master
and reported the whole affair.
His master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant!
I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to.
Should you not have had pity on your fellow servant,
as I had pity on you?’
Then in anger his master handed him over to the torturers
until he should pay back the whole debt.
So will my heavenly Father do to you,
unless each of you forgives your brother from your heart.”

That's Matthew 18:21-35.

The first thing that stood out was "the servant fell down, did him homage, and said..." And then, the master's response, "moved with compassion, the master of that servant let him go."

Then after the report of this man throttling a peer, he tells him he is wicked and says "I forgave you your entire debt because you begged me to." And Jesus summarizes the point of the parable as the need to forgive from the heart.

Now, God is speaking to me the same way He speaks to any of us, and that is in the midst of my own circumstances. And my circumstances, my tutelage from God in this stage of Lent seems to be focused on getting in touch with the well-spring of human feeling that arises from my heart. To really notice what goes on in my emotions. I'm becoming aware of how frequently I am unaware of my emotions, due to long-time habit and conditioning.

So I found myself being able to relate to the experience of this guy who receives mercy and then throttles his peer. He falls down at the master's feet and begs for patience from him. And the master is moved with compassion. As a result, he gives far more than patience; he forgives the whole debt. That shows that the master's heart can experience the servant's vulnerability and respond from his moved heart, from his aroused emotions. And while the servant took the news, he did not receive the compassion. He couldn't, and he proves it by not being moved by hearing the same plea from someone else. His heart could not be moved with compassion, because compassion had never registered with him. When he met vulnerability, even just a little bit, he lacked the heart to respond. He could have cultivated it by meditating on his own pitiful state, or at least at the state of his wife and children who were going to become slaves. He could have faced it, had his emotional center torn by it, and then when he was offered compassion, it would have filled him with mercy. Instead, he went through mechanical motions.

The homily I heard mentioned the rabbinic tradition of offering forgiveness to someone who offended you three times. And Peter thought he was being generous by stretching the rabbinic limit to be more liberal. Jesus was trying to move Peter out of notions of liberal mechanics out into a life lived from a changed heart. To be moved with compassion at the suffering of another and to give mercy is really a fruit of the cross. It is not logical justice. It is not what someone is "entitled to." It is the echo of God's way.

In order to really understand what mercy is, you need a visceral experience of your wretchedness. And you need to not turn away from the sight for any reason, including boredom, indifference, shame, fright, despair. Look at it. Then see Jesus on the cross, sharing it. Then know he shares it because of irrevocable love for you. That's the moment when mercy breaks in.

How Do I Meet You?

This morning at Mass, I was thinking about the different ways we can meet each other. The priest gave a very simple but profoundly true homily about how we need to encounter the Lord in the same way we encounter the people around us: we "rub elbows" with them, experience them, get to know the by the things we do together. He talked about how we can come to communion every single day and receive Jesus sacramentally, but he raised the question of whether we are really allowing Jesus into our private territory. Because Jesus doesn't just go there without being asked.

It was basic and profoundly true.

How often to we meet people in ways that actually allow them into our private territory? Do we even know how to do that? Do we even frequent our own private territory? I'm convinced that many people avoid their souls and seek distraction in order to keep avoiding their souls.

I wrote yesterday about our need to entrust our dignity to others and experience it being honored. We do this in ways big and small, and of course what we can control is not the response we get, but the ability to entrust ourselves. It takes some wisdom and learning how and when and how much to do that.


There are many different ways that hearts can range from closed to open, with a lot of thoughtlessness mixed in, and with emotions that range from fiery to dull to absent. When people are always dull or absent, engaging them is like pulling teeth. Fiery emotions meeting head-on can be extremely difficult in a different way, but at least there is something to work with.

But there is that moment where one heart can meet another and truly entrust its dignity to the other and experience being honored, appreciated, cared for, valued. When that happens, I think there is a permanent shift in the fabric of the universe, because God makes His mark. Ubi caritas et amor Deus ibi est. To have this experience ruins one for life, you might say. It is not so much the experience of a person, because that same person might turn around and mar and betray, or die. But God speaks, God acts, and God transforms. Even if I then turn away from Him, that will stand for the rest of my life as evidence God has deposited with me. He will always call me by that truth, and I can always remember and choose again to believe.

To experience this is a gift and a grace. But there are so many hindrances to meeting others on this level, as I alluded to earlier. Thinking those through is for another time.

On Second Thought, Maybe this was a Good Day

Today was our first snow fall of the season: not a lot, just enough to say it snowed. The house feels cold, the sky is grey, and my children and I were exceptionally unmotivated to do much that required a great outlay of energy.

Some days are like that, and I'm ok with it.

And somehow this seems to fit with a little flash of insight I had when praying this morning. It fits with, or rather follows on from, the post I wrote yesterday.

It was after one of the most unscintillating times of prayer I've had in recent days that I had this thought about the value of reason as governor of my choices and actions. It fits with yesterday's post because so often in the midst of those intensely formative moments of experiencing God's calling me forward, when all the emotions and passions are getting riled up in me, those can get the upper hand. Even if it is the most intense emotion in the world that inspires me to say or act or commit to something, this is not automatically good unless it also conforms with reason. Reason asks questions like, "What does the moral law say about this? How is this going to affect the commitments I already have in place? Am I conveniently avoiding any truth, here?" and etc.

No, this isn't rocket science. But subjectively, if I were to always operate this way in the case of really riled up schnee* in me, it would be a huge movement of grace at work.


Because, you see, I have often tended to be ruled by my own impossibly high standards of perfection, all of which tend to grow out of or get wrapped around said soulish excess to the point where it seemed I didn't know who I was or what to do without requiring my soul to be puking out chaotic, pressure-filled demands.

This is how people get driven through life by ideology, or by ideology cloaked as theology or spirituality, which is probably far more toxic.

But today I thought, "I'm tired, it's cold, it's gray and snowy; we have these books to read, this outing to do. It's ok if I don't pushpushpush for a lot of unreasonable accomplishments and spend the day getting angry that we aren't all meeting some stupid, made-up, and impossible standard that says now our behavior is acceptable."

Yes. I like this. And I think my inkling is starting to unfurl.





*"Schnee," by the way, is a family word I borrowed from a co-worker many years ago, which basically means what it sounds like you are trying not to say.

Hi. Let Me Re-Write Your Homily (again)

So, today's gospel was the one about the man who hired the guys standing around in the market place all at different times of the day, but paid each one the "regular daily wage." And the homily was basically: God is generous, and we don't get judged on a bell curve.

The second point was what really struck me as I listened to the gospel, but like always, what I drew from it was almost the opposite from what was preached. It was "You aren't John Paul II, and you aren't Mother Theresa. They had their lives and their circumstances, and you have yours. We aren't expected to be them. Just be the best you you can be."

And that's right and good. Just too conciliatory for my need today.

But what I really needed to hear was "You see Joe Schmoe over there, or Jane Schmane. Who cares about what they are doing. You might compare yourself to them and say 'Heck, I'm doing as well as they are. Everything's fine. We're all happy and comfy together, and after all, we're not perfect.' But no. God has given you gifts, and you are the only you He has made. You have an obligation to fulfill what God has given you to do, and you are never going to realize what that is by looking around at everyone else. Don't give one thought to how you compare to others, or get comfy because you feel like you fit and look like those around you. Maybe I want you to be the only orange crayon in your bin. You'll never understand how to be a perfect orange if all you look at is yellow and green."

Come to think of it, I've written a bunch of songs with this exact theme.

For some reason I crave hearing an exhortation to courage. Perhaps I want preachers to realize how much this moment in human history calls for it. Or, as St. Teresa of Avila says, how much courage it takes to pursue holiness, at any point in history.

Natural Law, Marriage, and the Normality of Ignorance

I almost interjected myself into a homily yesterday.

It wasn't actually in response to the homily itself, but in response to the reaction of the congregation.

Let me start the story at the beginning.

It was the 4th of July, and I was attending Mass at Once-In-a-Blue-Moon parish. The deacon there preached along the lines of the closing of the Fortnight for Freedom. His basic theme was on understanding and addressing well the cultural times in which we live.

He told a story of speaking with a 30-something woman about sexual morality. She dismissed his rejection of sex outside of marriage as being merely a product of his toeing the Catholic line. He explained that one could passionately hold this position based purely on reason, with no reference to faith or religion. And then he detailed how:

When a man and woman engage in sex, he explained, it often happens that a child is conceived. It is justice for this child to be born and raised into a stable, peaceful environment. The biggest part of that stability comes through a relationship with its parents which remains constant and reliable throughout the childhood and further, throughout life. The best way to accomplish that is for these parents to be already committed to each other for life before the child comes on the scene.

Then the deacon went on to say that this woman with whom he was talking responded with: "That's a compelling argument. I've never heard anyone explain it like that to me before."

And at that point, I heard audible gasps from people seated behind me.

In the next breath, the deacon made reference to how this woman's rejection of Catholic teaching had come from her ignorance. Then I heard, on the other side of me, audible chuckling, as if to say "Boy howdy, that's right. Ignorant."

That was when I fought the urge to stand up and turn this into a round table discussion. (As you can see, I opted for a blog post.)

Much of what I'm going to say has to do with a generational divide, as the people I was surrounded with were a few decades my senior.

First, to respond to the gaspers. Normally I feel like the most naive person in any group, but I just cannot wrap my head around someone being shocked that the natural law view on marriage is entirely absent from the landscape of the mind. I am on the older end of Gen-X, but it seems that anyone of my generation or younger has had this common sense view of marriage either blotted out or made murky by either personal or sympathetic experience, and by consistent cultural messaging.

Sex equals babies? Says who. Since when. Certainly not since the 60s! In April, 1967, seven months before I was born, the first law was passed in the US to legalize abortion in some cases. And three decades before that contraception went from illegal to holding a prominent place in medical training.

And what about a two-parent family being an aspect of justice to children? Divorce rates shot through the roof in the late 60s as well. How many 30-somethings can you even find who were born and have lived their whole lives with their parents married to each other? When you have entire generations riddled through with divorced or separated parents, with many of these offspring able to reason that their lives were better off that way, how do you expect the same people to have any concept of the justice that was actually due them? Are not people more likely to assure themselves that they turned out OK, despite their parents' problems?

You can only possess what you experience. When you grow up in an environment where parents did not self-sacrificially lay down their lives for one another and give themselves to provide stability for their own vulnerable offspring, how the hell do kids learn that this is even how life should work?

They don't.

The only hope is if they see it happening that way for other people. That's called the witness of Christian family. (In reality, it takes more than tacit witness. The witness needs to be wedded to words of testimony of encountering Christ and an explicit call to likewise follow Him in conversion.)

I can remember as a late teen meeting the family of a Lutheran pastor I knew. My friend and I knew his son, and one day we had lunch with them after church on Sunday. I wanted to stay there all day and suck in their life. It was so wonderful. Two parents, kids, a dining room table, a meal together, everyone talked and joked. The poor pastor had to actually hand me a map with driving directions back home as a hint to get me to leave. I didn't even know, really, what I was hungry for, but I saw that these folks had it.

From my childhood into my adult years, I misunderstood marriage as not a means for partnering with a man to give life to the vulnerable among us, but as finally finding someone who loved me. As a kid I met a friend of my grandmother's who told me she had been married at age 15. I thought that was perfect. I also wanted to have 12 kids. Then, surely, I would finally be loved. Oh, I didn't think about it explicitly that way, but I realize now that's what it meant to me. The older I got (more and more frantic that I was "old" and single), the Lord had to reveal to me that my desire for "marriage" was actually at cross purposes with my following Him. I was a very hard sell when it came to believing that His love was the love I needed. Somehow I thought that meant no human being would ever love me. I had no idea that I couldn't give love to anyone unless I let His love flood me first. You can only possess what you experience, and you can only give what you possess.

All human beings are essentially walking, gaping needs-for-love. But perhaps my generation (and younger) experiences this more starkly than the folks who were raised in a time and place when natural law values and basic decency and love were more common.

Now to address that chuckler: Yes, the woman the deacon spoke of is ignorant. But this sort of ignorance of heart should make us double over in pain and weep. On a broad scale, we no longer understand what it means to be human, in the image and likeness of God. Marriage is thought of now as a source of pleasure for people, in whatever way and for whatever duration they agree to. This ignorance is deeply rooted in the family experience of most young people. This was my ignorance, too, but I was able to abide in a moral straitjacket that kept me from debauchery, even though I didn't understand God's loving purpose in natural law restrictions. God was gracious and merciful to me, but I can tell you that straitjackets are not comfortable. As the ignorance of the culture becomes deeper, I doubt that many would endure them for long.

We who call ourselves Christians have a dire responsibility to live dripping with God's love. That means we need to seriously turn our hearts to God on a daily basis and expand our relationship with Him to the extent that His love and His way, His disciplines, fill our hearts and lives. Forget brownie points. God wants YOU. Then, we have a responsibility to live the nitty gritty of our relationships with the determined action to do good. That's what love is. Open your heart and put it into the way you serve your family, your friends, the people in your life. We also need to repent of how we have been selfish, self-centered, unwilling to work, unwilling to give ourselves to others, unwilling to follow disciplines of prayer and spiritual growth.

We are the signs of God's reality to our culture. Let us be wise, courageous, and clear about who we are.

Surprised by Hope

This morning, our deacon preached on how today's readings bespeak hope. He talked about how we all have dead places in us, like Abraham and Sarah who were too old to have children, like the leper who was not only terminally ill but cut off from the community. These "point of no return" places leave us with no hope for change. The only exception is if there is divine intervention.

Divine intervention is all over Scripture.

And it isn't about people magically getting their wishes, or attitude adjustment that merely sees good in a bad situation.

Divine intervention is about making the impossible possible. Christianity is divine intervention in the human race, making it possible for all of us broken, sinful, self-absorbed human beings to come into union with the creative, holy, self-donating Love that is God -- and to live there, as apprentices, and eventually as masters. All by His gift, offered by Him and awaiting our response.

That mention of the hopeless case of Abraham and Sarah's infertility struck home. Deacon Steve referred to how hopelessness sometimes has to reach utter despair and desperation before it flings itself out with a request like the one made to Jesus today, "Lord, if you wish, you can make me clean." It is the acknowledgment of our own utter powerlessness to change ourselves. I want to be clean, but I have no power to make it happen.

With my own flesh and blood I've written my own story of fading hope and utter despair when it comes to infertility. There's a struggle with one's very purpose, one's sense of worthiness of blessing, of fulfillment. Sometimes there is much grinding that occurs before even being blessed with a sense of climax of reaching desperation, if you know what I mean. I've experienced this in other aspects of life as well. It really is a blessing to reach a breaking point, even though it doesn't feel like it at the time. It's like the blessed release of death. On the other side there is acceptance, learning, and a new kind of life-giving potential. But none of that is evident for some time, only pain.

(I don't wonder that folks sometimes want that breaking point so badly that they make our daily sagging hope worse than it might otherwise be. Like Redd Foxx on Sanford and Son, they are constantly proclaiming, "This is the big one!" A breaking point is a gift of grace, not something we can conjure for ourselves. We need to be patient with the suffering of each day, in all its painful hum drum, hard work, lack of glory.)

I realized today that one result in having written these stories of despair in my own life is that hope strikes me as a demand of reality. My daughter is a concrete person whom I can touch. I am bound, obligated, by my experience of God to hope in the face of these other situations where I have experienced hopelessness. Life is not random. God speaks through everything I experience, and He is not haphazard in His lessons. He is not teaching me to rely on some magical power by which I satiate my passing pleasures. He is teaching me to live in union with Him, which is ultimate, cosmic happiness. That entails laying aside the penultimate for the ultimate, and of course learning to discern between the two in the nitty gritty of daily life.

I discovered hope, in its deep green vigor, like a surprise in my life. Just as the plants in my garden are practically doubling in size over the course of a few days, all of a sudden I realize how powerfully hope has gripped my life.

That really is quite marvelous.

Let it Shake You

This morning I heard someone make a passing reference that I can't let go by without calling it forth, picking it apart, and throwing it in the garbage heap.

Ostensibly it was made in connection with the Supreme Court decisions on marriage yesterday, although it was not in a discussion of that. It was a general comment that the Christian Church has faced challenges throughout history, and some general references were made, including to today's issues of abortion and the sanctity of marriage. And the comment was "We shouldn't let it [the fact that the Church is challenged] shake our faith."

Personal note of my own spiritual formation: I'm learning to articulate a reality that has often confused me. When I heard this I had an immediate red flag, but it wasn't about the logic, nor the historical record nor any objective doctrinal or personal disagreement with the speaker, nor any imagined fault on his part. It wasn't about the words themselves, but the spirit behind the words. (I hate it, though, when I get a rock solid sure sense of something that seems that intangible. I'm still learning.)

Now I'll pick apart.

You see, the enemy of our souls wants "Don't let it shake your faith" to translate in our experience as "Don't let it upset your complacency." "Our faith" sometimes really is simply our smug self-satisfaction at how we've arranged a sense of moral and religious decency -- nothing too drastic, just an arrangement we are comfortable with. Something that serves us to get along reasonably. This way of operating doesn't have squat to do with Jesus Christ or Christianity. And the enemy of our souls loves it.

So then comes some big challenge. You were all comfortable with your "faith" and then boom: your husband is sleeping around, or your adult child enters a shocking lifestyle, or you are given six months to live, or you lose your job and your home. How do you respond? You were complacent. You were "happy." And now what? Well, you feel like the floor fell out under you, because what was under you was only your self-managed sense of decency. And it is shifting sand that the rains wash away, leaving you with everything in shambles.

Christianity, Jesus Christ active in time and space through His Church, comes to mercifully shake the hell out of us. Do let the trial shake your faith, by all means! Shaking is the only way we stop relying on our totally lame efforts to prop up our own lives with our smugness and our decency and our comforts. In His mercy Christ shakes us until all that crap can fall away. The call to follow Jesus means to build our lives on Him, not on ourselves and our own decency.

Only after we've gotten the shifting sands out of the picture am I able to build on reality, on love that is certain, on God's eternal faithfulness. Then those same winds and storms will blow -- they never leave the scene! -- but we will be secure. We are tested repeatedly and so we reaffirm repeatedly that our only security comes in how deeply we are loved by God. And with each test, we are purified.

So, let the challenges shake your faith. Let them rip your complacency to shreds and send it back to hell where it came from. And get down on your knees, or stand up with arms outstretched, whatever, and give thanks, praise and glory to God who has treated you with such great mercy as to let you be purified by the great gift of a raging storm. Stay with Him and He will absolutely prove His faithfulness.

Possessions Vs. Knowing and Believing in Love

I'm reflecting on Pope Francis' homily for today, Monday of the 8th week in Ordinary time.

When heard the gospel proclaimed at Mass, it hit me in the same way this gospel always tends to:  “'You are lacking in one thing. Go, sell what you have, and give to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.' At that statement, his face fell, and he went away sad, for he had many possessions."


The Holy Father focused on the sense of economic well-being that makes us uncourageous , lazy and selfish. He also mentions the fascination for the temporary. He says "We want to be masters of time, we live for the moment." He speaks of a contrast to these provisionally-minded people: those who have left their homes to become missionaries, and those who have committed themselves to a life-long marriage.

I have many possessions. I wrote about this in January, about attachments. This weekend I have faced a painful revisiting of this problem, this need for healing. I'm just now trying to sort out in writing the light I'm being given from these Scriptures, from the Pope's simple teaching, from my life experience.

The possessions I'm talking about don't have to do with material things. I have plenty of them, but I am not what most Americans would call wealthy. We will in a poor region on one income, but with God's blessing we manage to be comfortable.

The things that hold me back, that make me stumble, have to do with emotional certainties. When I look at my life objectively, I know this is folly. When I live my life subjectively, I struggle often. I grew up with what I realize now was an chronic insecurity about my emotional well-being and about whether I was welcomed on planet earth. I couldn't have said it at the time; I didn't know I was insecure. Or rather, I didn't know what security was. I didn't know there was any other way to be.

So as soon as I became an adult and headed into life on my own, my first quest was to figure out if I was loved or not. It is with good reason that St. John writes "We have come to know and to believe in the love God has for us" (1 Jn. 4:16). We have to believe in love; there has to be a movement of faith.

I'm mishmoshing my thoughts all together here because I'm not telling stories like I need to in order to make sense of things. Sort version of childhood: Born into turmoil, alcoholism, mental illness. Then divorce, diaspora of siblings, grossly hobbled communication and role reversal about who was the nurturer and who was the nurtured. All under the veneer of a relatively "normal" life. A Gen-Xer growing up in the 70s. Conversion to Christ during that childhood, though without any spiritual mentors for the first nine years. Then in young adulthood, I was ravenously hungry for spiritual things, and took in everything Christian I could find. God protected me from so much, especially from myself and my tendency to leave myself over-vulnerable.

So, there I was, a young adult, learning to believe God loves me. There has got to be little that is more pastorally frustrating than "trying" to get someone to believe in God's love. It has to be a work of grace. There is probably more damage done than we realize by well-meaning Christians who are zealous for souls to know God's love. In my experience, attempts to "love one another" can be so devastating. And yet we must learn to do it.

Let me not ramble away from those possessions.

You see, I did learn to believe in God's love. Layer by layer, I have learned. I lived in Japan as a new Catholic for 30 months, which was a poorly discerned decision on my part, but I can back wiser. I had all my romantic notions about following God beaten out of me during that time. I came back knowing myself on an equal footing with all children of God, yes, but all sinners too. I came back knowing I need people. It was easy, before that, for my insecurity to push me away from people, not even understanding that I was undermining myself. I was naively proud enough to think I was better off without all those "other" messed up people. When I arrived in Steubenville (where I moved immediately after my return Stateside), I took the Lord up on a promise I had felt He made me some years earlier, that He wanted to be the one responsible for choosing what people would be part of my life. Mix my people-naivete with my lack of trust, and just having a sense that God would provide people for me was the greatest weight off my mind. It was the beginning of a sense that my life was partnered with God. For some people, meeting others comes as naturally as breathing, but to me it involved all manner of terror.

Within a few days of arriving in town, I met the man I eventually married (although I had no inkling of it at first). I have always said that my husband is my stability. Since meeting him, my life has known a secure foundation. This is really what attracted me to him, because he is very predictable and is slow to change, not erratic, not a flyer-off-the-handle. Childhood insecurity can train the brain to worry and to anticipate weird things like sudden abandonment. Marriage has re-trained my brain to anticipate continuity, peace, and certainty.

All that is beautiful. All that goes right along with the Pope's comments about take Jesus up on His definitive proposals, that stuff that says "put your whole life right here. That's how you follow me."

But, ok, great. I'm married. But gosh dang, if it ain't true that during that long haul, we get lots of opportunities to revisit all those needs for healing and all those calls to recommit and to understand deeper, and all that.

So it's no great wonder that as a fully grown adult, married for a bunch of years, I get to revisit whether I believe I am loved or not. We get these things, like gifts, to trip over, to wake us up, to force the question. First it was why we weren't having babies. God gives life; why wasn't He doing it for us? Am I loved? Do I believe?

Then God started calling me to pour out my life and my heart to people. That isn't something that flowed in real ways for me in the past. My naivete has been a blessing and a curse. I am interiorly compelled to pour everything out, but I make mistakes and sometimes even when I'm not making mistakes I learn that that kind of vulnerability welcomes incredible pain.

Dang it! Following Jesus means welcoming incredible pain! It's not about staying comfortable! He really meant all that stuff about the cross!

What did the Pope say: our riches "anesthetize" us. Wellbeing is an anaesthetic. And what does an anaesthetic do? It deadens us to pain. It also deadens us to pleasure. It simply deadens us. And I decided some time ago that I do not wish to live that way.

But I am forced to reconsider that decision occasionally. Like now. Do I still believe in pouring my heart out to people? Can I accept the reality of the people in my life -- that those who could not nurture still can't? That most people to whom I pour out my heart will not be moved? That none of them are God, and while I am called to love God in them and through them, no human love will ever move my heart like divine love will? That God's love for me, that constant, unrelenting, driving, powerful force in my life, is completely outside my control -- I cannot produce it nor command it nor tailor it to suit my moment? That You are my Sovereign God?

Oh God, you are such a seductive Lover! You force me out of myself, then leave me looking for You. You leave me no romantic notions of what it means to follow after You, and yet I cannot turn back, despite the cross, after seeing a glimpse of Your all-embracing love. Oh God, do not leave me alone or I fear I will turn back away from You. And yet You are only hidden from my sight because of Your incredible closeness.

Teach me, Lord, this ironic necessity to stop trying to possess love. Let me know and believe that You are the one who possesses me.

Wrestling Out What I Want

Pope Francis strikes again.

Our deacon asked a simple question in his homily today. Basically it was "what do you want from the Lord?" and the challenge to bring that to Him as we received the Eucharist. I was not feeling that great this morning for various physical and non-physical reasons, and so it took me more than an instant to have all my thoughts tumble toward that very basic question.

And long after Mass ended and I was home, I remained pondering that question, trying to make my answer presentable to the Lord. Then I thought, heck, since when have I gone back to trying to package my heart to make it look presentable to the Lord? After all, it really isn't Him I'm trying to tidy up for, it's me. I'm the one who generally can't handle the raw state of my heart. The Lord knows it already, before I assemble any packaging.

But I've also learned that what I blurt out to the Lord in prayer as the raw state of my heart is sometimes not nearly as awful as I first feel it is. If you're not a vegetarian at least, a raw lump of meat might look unappetizing, while a nicely cooked steak might be very enticing. Same thing, only different level of preparation.

So as I lay there, trying to will my head to stop hurting, my phone alerted me to some incoming message, and I read this quote from Pope Francis: "Jesus wants to establish a relationship with his friends that is a reflection of His relationship with the Father, a relationship of mutual belonging in full trust, in intimate communion."

And I thought, well, isn't that nifty. Just take out the word "Jesus" (and His) and replace it with "Marie," and there you have it. That's exactly what I wanted to say to the Lord this morning in communion.

Have I mentioned I'm not having the greatest of days? I should create named-categories for not-great days, because this one certainly isn't a terrible not-great day. It's more like a 4 or 5 on a scale of 1 to 10. And for that I am grateful.

Tomorrow I have a meeting which will hopefully have a significant impact on the evangelization of my town. It's a convergence point for several spiritual developments that have been happening in and through not only my life, but the lives of several others. Many people's prayers are accompanying me into that meeting. Just before the last meeting like this, something that doesn't seem directly connected (but, duh, it's all God-stuff) blew up at me and I immediately wanted to respond, "oh, forget all this evangelization stuff." The thing that blew up actually served to help the cause along. It was an obvious temptation.

And what I'm muddling through today seems an obvious sort of down-pulling too.

See, I couldn't help but think that I can't ask the Lord for anything any more, at least not for me, because I only seem to want impossible things. Just give up. Stop praying. Listen to people who tell me it is all hopeless. Focus on all the sin, the problems, the never-ending weakness/mistake/imperfection muck that we all live in and around. Seems the only thing I could think of that would make me happy is being in heaven. Even that, in my head, I know is a prideful cop-out. 

Was just having one of those oh crap, I'm so sick of it all waves.

And then I read this thing the Pope said today. Probably is homily in tweet form again, like last week. "Jesus wants to establish a relationship with his friends that is a reflection of His relationship with the Father, a relationship of mutual belonging in full trust, in intimate communion."

That really is what I want, too. I want relationships with people that reflect the Trinity. I know it is possible for mere humans. It only takes dying to oneself, and living through Christ. That's all. 

What other real fruit is there of evangelization? Because we are human beings, holy relationships mean that we all have to help each other. We are allowed imperfections, but we are not allowed to wallow in them. I want to be able to turn to someone and be corrected by them, with the same love that I correct them. I am allowed to bemoan my own weakness and cry out to God for help. We need to acknowledge to ourselves and to each other our need for God. If we can't do that, we stay fake and useless and prideful. But we also absolutely need to stop pretending that God hasn't bestowed His life and His gifts on us for the good of other people, even if we feel like crud. Believe what God says, not what you feel. It is crucial to me that you believe and bear witness to Christ. It is crucial to you that I believe and bear witness to Christ. Belonging to each other isn't some emotional luxury, some warm-n'-fuzzy. It is how we survive life. It is how they will know we are Christians. It is the only proof of God to the world that there is. God designed it that way. What a horrendous work of Satan when people run from opening their hearts in any meaningful way to the Lord, to their fellow Christians. Because if you think you are open to the Lord when you are closed to other people, I mean like unable to open yourself, you are living in delusion. 

So open wide the doors to Christ. May it be so in my life, in my parish, in my town, and despite the opposition.

The Glory of God is Scary

The priest whose homily I heard today made a passing comment about how the scientists were all whooping it up after the successful landing of Curiosity on Mars, and how he wondered if Peter, James and John maybe should have reacted similarly to the Transfiguration.

Now, I love this priest so I'm not being critical, but my immediate reaction was, "Oh, come on, Father. Even I know that one. No way!"

Think about the scene. Jesus knows what is coming; He's going to undergo horrific suffering which, in His humanity, had to strike hard at His heart. He also knows that even His closest disciples were almost totally clueless. But the Father had a plan. Like so many things God does, it wasn't going to make much sense at all to those disciples at the time. God seems to like to plant things in our lives that only make sense after all the pieces of His plan come together. He does this so that eventually we learn to have faith when we can only see part of something.

Jesus is on the mountain, Moses and Elijah appear, and suddenly He is revealed in His heavenly glory. And Peter, James and John witness it.

Mark's gospel has it that they were "exceedingly afraid." Matthew says they fell face down because they were overwhelmed by awe.

The glory of God appears, and the response is fear. It happens over and over again in the Bible. This is why the angels are always saying, when they appear to folks, "Fear not!"

Now, these days God's normal plan is not to send angels to manifest themselves visibly to people so that His glory can be known. No, His plan is even weirder than that. "All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit" (2 Cor. 3:18).

You see, Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again. And we are baptized into Him, and we receive and behold His glory, not as the Israelites did (and that was glorious enough, St. Paul tells us), but like that Mount of Transfiguration. We see with eyes of faith. Faith is not mere intellectual assent to what the Bible says or what the Catechism teaches. Faith is the head and heart in a union that says "Yes, it is true" and "Here I come!" as I fling my whole life into God's hand at His bidding.

Flinging ourselves, that is, real faith, is scary. The glory of God is scary. Seeing God revealed is scary. Hearing His call is scary. Witnessing Truth, Beauty, and Goodness alive and at work in our midst is scary.

I love Peter's reaction to this scary situation. He starts blurting stuff out. He must have been an extrovert. It is almost as if the words out of his mouth about building these booths were like a buffer he tried to throw up in order to protect his soul from the scariness, to keep it at a manageable distance from himself.

But he need not have worried, because the scary thing passed, and the disciples were left seeing Jesus only. And they were charged not to mention it until after Jesus rose from the dead. Talk about adding mystery on to scariness. I love that line in Mark's gospel after Jesus said this, "They discussed among themselves what 'rising from the dead' meant." They couldn't even get that, let alone why they weren't supposed to say anything about this bizarre experience that they couldn't begin to take in.

There was a work this experience had to do inside these men. They had to figure out how to respond to it. It had to eat away at them like some kind of a purification. Eventually, they needed to respond in faith. I wonder if Peter and John thought of this, or mentioned it to each other, as they were running to the tomb on Easter morning, or on the way back. "Hey, remember that day on Mt. Tabor? Remember how Jesus said we shouldn't tell anyone until He rose from the dead?" I wonder if perhaps John's response to Tabor was what helped him show up at the crucifixion. Eventually, though, all the pieces fit together, faith blossomed, the Holy Spirit empowered their understanding, and Peter, James and John each in their own way embraced their own share of the Lord's passion, and taught other believers to do the same.

Talk about needing to completely recalibrate one's life. The glory of God appearing has a way of making huge demands on us, because suddenly we have light and can see reality. We need to choose whether to stay with the gloriously terrifying light or to revert to the now-dissatisfying dismal murk of life in the world and the flesh. It is good for us that the glory of God is even more attractive than it is terrifying.


P.S.  One of my all-time favorite songs for good measure.

Dear Homilist

Dear Homilist,

I want you to tell me about Reality. Look into those readings and bring out for me what is most real, what connects these deepest realities to my life, or what can if I am open to it.

Colossians 2:17:  "Reality is found in Christ." By "that which is most real" I do not mean the concrete. I see these concrete realities. I live surrounded by them all the time. These are signs of things. They did not make themselves; they do not give themselves meaning. Ultimately, God is the Creator, and even though human beings do produce new things they themselves do not make themselves nor give themselves meaning. Reality is what comes from God alone and draws to God alone.

"Greater love has no man than this: that he lay down his life for his friends." Yes, a firefighter does this by running into a burning building to rescue a person and therefore we should pray for these heroes and be grateful for them. But the heart of the gospel is not to just admire some other schmuck somewhere who is actually doing what Jesus asked because, heck, I sure could never do that.

Dear Homilist, please teach me how to be "the firefighter" in reality. Teach me about prayer and fasting, teach me about witnessing to the work of God in my life, laying out for public consumption all that God has poured into me. Teach me how my spiritual offerings, in union with the grace of the Holy Spirit, pour out that love of which there is none greater -- the very love of God received by me and given again. That's what truly saves lives.

We have a mission. Jesus told us to make disciples and preach the gospel to every creature. I can't do that unless I learn about Reality, which is God's immense love poured out for me and through me for the salvation of souls. Dear Homilist, please take the mission seriously. It's your job to give us the equipment to save souls by handing on the Word of God, illuminated by the Paschal Mystery. The Word needs to go into your burning brazier of love, your heart, and be ministered unto our hearts like a lit coal touching other coals. Please, please, don't tell us to be nice. I can read a fortune cookie and get that. Stoke the fire of love in us, with all the sacrifice and risk and intentionality and selflessness and ardor (and everything else) that entails for our part.

We can all get caught up looking at mere shadows. Keep your eyes on Reality, and point us there.