Should We Do the Works of Jesus? Really?

Today's Mass gospel reading brought my childhood to mind.

On leaving the synagogueJesus entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.Simon's mother-in-law lay sick with a fever.They immediately told him about her.He approached, grasped her hand, and helped her up.Then the fever left her and she waited on them.
When it was evening, after sunset,they brought to him all who were ill or possessed by demons.The whole town was gathered at the door.He cured many who were sick with various diseases,and he drove out many demons,not permitting them to speak because they knew him.
Rising very early before dawn, he left and went off to a deserted place, where he prayed.Simon and those who were with him pursued himand on finding him said, "Everyone is looking for you."He told them, "Let us go on to the nearby villagesthat I may preach there also.For this purpose have I come."So he went into their synagogues, preaching and driving out demons throughout the whole of Galilee.   (Mark 1:29-39)

 It is not that my childhood was filled with miraculous ministry. That's not the connection.

When I was a child, the message that I gleaned from my Protestant church was that when Jesus said things like "Love your enemies," "Sell all you have and give to the poor," and "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect," He didn't really mean what He said. He was setting a standard, an ideal, a new law. But we are sinners and can't do that stuff. He didn't mean it. Just be glad God forgives you. We are weak. It's basically wrong to think you should do what He said.

The primary theological difference between my faith then and my faith now is the reality of grace. The Catholic Church does not teach me that grace is about positional status change. It is not a legal fiction God creates in order to declare sinners not guilty. The Church does teach me that grace actually transforms the human soul, changing our very nature, giving us the very life of God alive inside of us. Therefore, it is not only possible to love (which is radical enough in itself). We are actually called to sanctity -- total and thorough soaking transformation by grace of our nature, so that we are "divinized" as 2 Peter 1:4 has it.

I wonder, though. How many Catholics hear gospels like today's in the way I heard most of Jesus' teachings as a child? Oh, Jesus healed the sick and cast out demons, but He did that because He is God. We can't imitate that. Can you heal the sick? Of course not. We're not God. He didn't mean for us to be like Him. If we think this way, we have to come to the conclusion that Jesus was modeling something other than God the Father's will in His life. Or, we are simply unaware that Jesus commanded his disciples to do the works He had been doing. Or, we think the era of miracles has passed. (Let me tug you aside and discuss transubstantiation, in that case.)

Theologically, if miracles are not part and parcel of Christian life, Catholicism has zero leg to stand on. Could it be that it is Christ's followers who have lost touch with the reality of what grace really is?

Could it be that now is the time, when talk is so cheap and lying so prevalent and trust so destroyed -- that now is the time that God wants to demonstrate the power of His love through people who know He is good, strong, loving, and wise?

If you think perhaps the answer is yes, I'd invite you to carve out 75 minutes to watch this video. Tell me what you think.

What Just Happened Here?: Onething 2016 and the Catholic Ecumenical Track

What I'm writing here is a spiritual first draft. That means that while thoughts and inspirations have passed through my heart and soul about my topic, I haven't explored them yet. This is writing of discovery.

If you don't know what the Onething conference is, look at this, and if you don't know about the little history of the Catholic Track and MajorChange, then go here. I'm not going to spend time explaining the event from a technical perspective.

And suddenly, just as I sat down to write, my clear entry into my thoughts is not clear any more. But this is part of the process.

I remember the spot where I stood, in a kitchen in Japan about 20 years ago, when I realized that to evangelize means to tell someone the reality of who they are. To be evangelized means to have revealed to one the truth of who they are. And in this regard, we need to be regularly evangelized. It simply means to have God's truth about us spoken over us. God's truth is incredibly good news, and it is also a call, and it is also a challenge.

This, I think, strikes at the core of how I experienced the last several days at Onething. On a simple level, we spent a lot of time meditating in various ways over what is contained in the chorus:

You're a good, good Father -- it's who You are, it's who You are, it's who You are
And I'm loved by You -- it's who I am, it's who I am, it's who I am

This is meditation on truth. This is healing to our minds and souls, and doing this, especially in the wide context of Scripture meditation, prayer, praise, Eucharist, and fellowship with the saints, this meditation becomes a river of revelation through which we invite and "free" the Holy Spirit to bring all sorts of goods to us. Our attention, heart, and desire, focused on God, tunes us in to that which He has patiently waited to pour out to us. Part, I think, is our lack of interest (reason for not otherwise receiving his outpouring), but part of it is that God does this sort of thing when His people gather. And when they gather to seek Him. St. Teresa of Avila knew that "God withholds Himself from no one who perseveres," and if we want God to move among us as a Church, we need to persevere together, which involves gathering and seeking. We also spur one another on to love and good deeds. Yes, we need to encourage our own hearts in God (this is actually incredibly vital), but we can't do without gathering for mutual encouragement.

Ok, so. During the 18 months that I spent post-conversion, on my way into the Catholic Church, God spoke to me a lot about the importance of being myself. This is another way of saying, about knowing who I am in Him. And not just about the category of self-knowledge in the spiritual life. I mean, about me being me. Because all these great principles have to get applied and lived in each one of us. I believe it takes incredible faith and courage, and grace, to do this. The Christian life in totality is supernatural, you see. This was another central message. From many corners the message came that now is a time that God wants signs and wonders carried out by His people, in order to reach the lost and dying with salvation and hope. People need to see Christ. Christ healed, delivered, raised the dead, and miraculously provided. People need to see Christ. This is not about anything but love, obedience, and purity, and responding to God. Because that is Who Christ is, and it is what He came to earth to do.

The daily supernatural activity I am called to is to be myself. This is also about love, obedience, purity, and responding to God. Of course, to respond to God, I need to be in constant contact with God by prayer, Scriptural meditation, Eucharist, and the fellowship with the saints. And, I need to live in reality, because this is where God is ALWAYS found.

Personal observations.
During the first segment of the Catholic Track, people from Columbus, Ohio talked about how God is leading them to start seeing supernatural manifestations in ministry of praying for healing and words of knowledge, and they led us in practicing this. (They are doing some kind of something-school-of-this in the fall, and I am already there in my heart.) As I prayed with a woman, I could see immediately how normal this is and I could identify the interior issues I need to address: namely that I put myself under pressure, feeling a need to rush along instead of staying comfortable with God at God's pace when another person is in the mix. Also, I realize I have a tremendous need for physical silence, which may not be a problem at all, just something I personally need to learn how to address.

And then folks prayed for folks for an impartation of grace. I indentified myself to the man who prayed for me as a Carmelite, and told him I sensed God wanting more for me to give, basically. He said he saw me walking up Mount Carmel with a backpack, but God wanted to trade what I want in that pack for His pack and the more He wants in it. Completely agreed, we prayed. Well, a few nights later, when Bill Johnson was speaking and again praying prayers of impartation and commissioning for this very thing of bringing God's signs and wonders, and I prayed, offering myself for those I always pray and offer myself, I felt my back burning -- burning -- essentially in the shape of a backpack.

The next morning (I hadn't really seen this chronology before), during the Catholic Track, we gathered for worship and prayer. We had done this one other time (truly, the days and events blur together when so much happens), when some folks were asking for prayer, and Iwona was inviting people to come and pray for others, if they felt like they should pray for others. And here is where this practical stuff about being myself came into play. I have a very strong pull to be a dutiful person. I also have a strong sense of submission and response to what is asked. But this, I realize, is where discernment is needed between the difference of what God asks of me, and what someone asks of me, even if it is someone I know and love and generally would always want to respond to. I knew that one of the big but general differences for me this year from Onething 2015 is that last year, I felt that I had to dutifully stay with every single last thing from every single last speaker, every last worship song, keep my heart attuned to them, respond with my energy to the people involved. And for that reason, I think I felt more dragged out. I did not feel the freedom (or the wisdom) to simply say, "What's going on here right now, that's not for me. It's not my duty." So. There I was at the aforementioned time of prayer in the Catholic Track, and while I am a prayerful type, and I don't have a problem praying with or over other people, I simply felt that wasn't for me. And I didn't. I felt the need to pray for the whole room.

So now, let's make our way back to where I started the last paragraph, that Saturday morning of worship and prayer. I settled into the worship, again, not doing exactly what other people were doing. I wasn't singing what other people were singing. I can't always put my mind into meditation mode, because God takes me somewhere else. And at first, where He took me was a meditation on my Carmelite name, the name I chose back a few years ago. We were singing John 1, and my name is Elijah Benedicta of the Incarnate Word. I chose this, in part (there are many parts) because for years I have known that God is after my mouth. He is after my use of words. God was dealing with my heart about who I am. How I am Elijah Benedicta of the Incarnate Word. In part, the profound impact here was that, I know that as a Carmelite and as an intercessor I am basically a hidden part of the Body. And a huge part of my story, personally and in terms of my theological and mental formation, has been countering the lie that my life and my actions essentially have no significance and no importance at all. And essentially God showed me my significance and my importance. And then, in this communion, I began to pray. This is something I cannot explain apart from faith and the experience, but as I prayed things forth, I saw them happen. Again, and again, and again. It is all essentially about living the reality of God being with me.

And then I stood up and gave a 40 minute talk on intercession that was supposed to be some vague plan of a conversation with a group and a priest who ended up not showing up because of illness. I had nothing planned (zip!) but I asked God on my way to the bathroom what it was I should lead with, and two things came immediately to mind, and there it was. And afterwards a woman who heard me asked if she could talk with me, and we talked for hours and she found hope, we prayed, and we understood each other very well.

And the biggest problem in the Church at large is that we are not in love with Jesus. We don't need to be emotionally hyped; that is largely an attempt to hide and cover, I think. Being in love is something else. It makes you want to study, to discover, to spend time, to think about, to be with, to work with, to give to. It absolutely absorbs all of your emotions, but it makes you more yourself, not less. Is there a love potion to make people fall in love? I need that answer.
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People who see other people who are in love can feel deeply judged, rejected, and hated, and it can make them come out swinging, and/or plunge them into depression. It sometimes surfaces nasty crap in others because they start to feel what they lack. But the healing is in the revealing.

Still I think seeing people who are in love can melt hearts who don't even know they are isolated from love. Love is a call to self-giving. First, to awakening.

I want the Grand Theater in my town to become a place where people gather to pray and worship something like they do at IHOP.

I also want people to understand Mary's prophetic role.

Mostly I want more people to fall in love with Jesus.

I want to be myself and clearly recognize what choices I need to be get firm about to walk that way. I want to live every day with Jesus, with prayer, meditating on Scripture, the Eucharist, and the fellowship of the saints.

Yep.

Onething2015: My Initial, Personal Report

I have just returned from the Onething2015 conference where for the first time ever there was a Catholic track. And here I am in my very own verbal workspace to try to start to share what is in my heart about this. This may not turn out neatly.


So, I was there to intercede and to gather intercessors. During the course of conversations before the event, I realized that I had an aversion to going basically because I have an aversion to suffering. From the promo ad copy I had my sense that there was something about this I just wouldn't like. And I can't say I was mistaken. It wasn't a dislike in the sense of "oooh, bad," just in the sense of "this really isn't my personal preference." I don't like loud music that I feel in my chest (for more than about three minutes). I don't like my ears to ring and I don't find that particularly healthy. And as much as I love music and I love to sing and as much as worshipping God in song is central to my life, I just don't like praise music that much anymore. I used to love it, love it, love it and found myself instantly at a fountain of overflowing healing. And I just don't, anymore. That was actually something I began to find happening just a bit when I first left my non-denom fellowship. It began to be the sort of thing were I had to fix my mind to really dig into the words being sung to meditate and suck the marrow out of them, and often it felt I was sucking dry bones. Sometimes it could be easier, especially if it was a song I knew and had developed a "meditative history" with. But I realized I have as much difficulty really praying with praise music as others do praying with the rosary and its repetitions.

I was also reminded, before and during, of things I experienced in my exodus from the charismatic fellowship world into the Catholic Church. I remembered how shocked I was when I first started attending daily Mass, which lasted 20-30 minutes, when I had been used to a 3 or 3.5 hour service. On the one hand, I realized I had to walk in to Mass ready to concentrate and pay attention to everything. Before, I was used to a lot of "warm up" time and a generally less intense approach. But on the other hand, I was stunned and amazed in those days, day after day, of how efficient God could be. Like a laser beam, He penetrated my soul with far deeper spiritual experiences in this short time than I had ever experienced in those long church services (although I had lots of powerful and needed emotional experiences in the former days, and these required more time. Sometimes I really needed to cry through 75 minutes of worship music.) So when at Onething, the sessions or preaching went on for hours, I sometimes longed for them to discover this efficient nature of God. :)

But the important lesson in all of this for me is that I do not live for myself. Sometimes I really want to. But if I live for God, I must also live for His people. Jesus lived for His people by serving them, not to expect to be served. Sometimes serving someone means to relent and do it their way, when it is really a matter of preference. Preferences can become passions pretty easily, and we start to think we can't live without our passions being fulfilled, that our passions are really divine urgings, when really they are just our desires with a strong upper hand in our soul's functioning. And sometimes that putting to death of our passions is exactly the type of service, and living for God and neighbor that God asks of an intercessor who feels interior things deeply. I was a little surprised at the intensity of the death and the struggle and the temptation I felt surrounding all this. Which shows me how weak and inexperienced I am at serving this way.

So, there was this big huge thing that happened about unity. I mean, it was big and huge on a spiritual level. I kept saying to our host friends how this type of gathering with Catholics just probably wouldn't have happened back in my charismatic days, at least not in the circles I moved in. My evangelism training had a slide that depicted non-Christian groups like Jehovah's Witnesses and Mormons, and there was a significant point made about how the guy just couldn't decide whether to add Roman Catholics to that list, and his hesitation about it seemed almost scandalously generous to some people. That was my world. So for Catholics to be welcomed as equal Christians, and for one speaker to publicly (though he didn't use the name Catholic) apologize for past statements of arrogance to a particular Catholic present, it was profound. And there were other profundities.

I know I experienced something of a personal call, although I can't articulate all of it, or maybe even much of it, in any meaningful way right now. The first order of the day is in my own family. The second order of the day has to do with me being a Carmelite. Each day I always ask my prayer team of saints to intercede for me, and one morning I had forgotten to do so until a certain point during one of the sessions. Immediately I remembered, as if St. Teresa spoke it to me, "Four centuries ago I sat in my convent and prayed for a return of the 'Lutherans' to the Church. Yes, of course you are called." (See the very end of The Interior Castle).

From my young childhood, even what I count as my pre-following-Jesus childhood I have had a sense that my life is oriented towards a Church that would become pure and serious.

When I was a brand new Catholic, I had a profound blow-me-away experience of being called by God into His plan to raise Catholics, and me with them, from the dead. Read it here: When Confirmation Received Me. When you read it, you see this experience had to do with John Michael Talbot. A few years ago during a new season in my life I went to a mission of his in Pittsburgh. Now, JMT has very piercing eyes. And as he preached through the crowd, his piercing eyes made contact with mind as he said "Fan into flame the gift God has given you." BAM. It resurrected the earlier experience and, though I couldn't understand it at the time, that moment alerted me to the fact that I was stepping forward in this plan. Now, just when that thing from years ago makes some sense, I have this new thing that is just as persistently urgent and just as inscrutable. I guess I really aught to get used to this and realize that not knowing is part of how I get to know things.

So, there you have it. I have returned from Onething2015 with a heart full of something I can't explain or understand, and I know that today and tomorrow I need to pray and live faithfully, just like every day, but I also need to intentionally forsake the vast tracts of selfishness and misery I yet find within.

All the Way My Savior Leads Me

I was baptized as an infant, had an early childhood of religious indifference, and after a short flirtation with threatening God I'd become a satanist, I gave my life to the Lord at age 10. I was once an anti-Catholic Protestant, and currently I am becoming a lay member of the Carmelites, an ancient order of the Catholic church, devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary and dedicated to prayer and the mystical life. How does that happen, you ask? By the grace and mercy of God, I've had to learn to recognize the difference between my sin and God's holiness, and to seek Him alone.

First, let me summarize for you how I see the core of what God is teaching me today. Then let me try to trace out for you some of how I arrived at this conviction.

I firmly believe that the Christian life means living a continual state of conversion unto Jesus Christ, after we have accepted the salvation He won for us, until we reach perfect union with God. This work of conversion is a work entirely of grace, entirely a gift, but it is a grace and a gift with which a soul can and must cooperate. We have to say yes to God and do what is ours to do. This perfect union with God is something that we can and should enter into during this lifetime, but not all the saved do. We enter into it by a gift of God I'll call purgation. Scripture tells us that nothing impure can enter heaven (Rev. 21:27) and that our works will be tried by fire to remove what is worthless (1 Cor.  3:15). But we can't control or command our own purgation; God has to do it. We can either let Him do it as He wills in the course of our earthly lives, or we will have to experience it after this life is done and before we enter heaven. People call that purgatory. Everything I want is summed up in seeing the face of Jesus in heaven. Everything I hope for on earth has to do with living out the fruits of purgation and the holiness God works in me. Nothing is worth anything in comparison with the glory of being united, with all the holy ones, with the Blessed Trinity for all eternity. And the quest for eternal glory has already begun now. So Lord, whatever it takes, with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, I give you my yes.

Now, every church I have belonged to has been somewhere on the scale from diametrically opposed to what I just wrote, to uncomfortable and uncertain about how to teach it and train believers in living it. And I've been right there in the midst with them.

My first religious formation, after first giving my life to the Lord as a child, was in an ultra-conservative Lutheran setting. Here I learned to honor the Bible as the Word of God, to read and to memorize it. While I did this, though, I had a lot of sin in my life. I've always been an interior-oriented person, so these sins were the seething sort, like hatred, bitterness, pride, arrogance, judgment, grudges, and the like. The Lutheran teaching on sin did not help me repent or be cleansed of these sins. The emphasis was that all we do is like filthy rags, but that the Father imputes Jesus' righteousness to us. Sin was all handled in the eternal perspective and we simply lived with our inevitable corruption while in heaven God had a clean tally sheet with our name on it, our bill paid by Jesus. And I went on hating, being bitter, and so on. Occasionally in those days, Bible verses such as 1 Jn. 4:20 ("Whoever claims to love God but hates his brother is a liar") jumped out and startled me. But the conflicting theology left me more confused than convicted.

One summer during college, I met Christians who witnessed to me that the Holy Spirit could personally enter my life and empower me with Himself. They called this being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Once I cautiously read through all of the Scriptures and decided that they had the Bible on their side, for the first time I had to face down this entirely passive notion I had that God did everything for me. When I was convinced from Scripture that God would baptize me in the Holy Spirit, I simply got depressed that apparently He hadn't. I figured it must mean He didn't love me or I wasn't important enough. I sadly moaned prayers in the self-pitying and despairing style that was common to me. Then, a revolutionary thought came to mind: Ask Him. Maybe you don't have because you don't ask. I had to make an elaborate ritual of it that included meticulously finishing all of my schoolwork, buying a book and setting aside an entire evening to read it, but I accomplished all that within 8 hours of this revolutionary thought that I could ask God, and I asked. And when I asked, BAM, the floodgates opened, and I had a powerful encounter with the Holy Spirit.

Immediately I sought out a new church to be among people who could help me understand what happened to me. The primary grace I experienced here was the release of years and years of hurt and sin during praise and worship. I learned to open my heart to God in the midst of other people, and I also began to be aware that God would speak to my heart. Gradually I learned to recognize the difference between His leading and my own confusion. This was something I could not do when I was isolated.

While still in a Lutheran college and attending that charismatic fellowship, God planted a seed that has had far-reaching effect. I had to write a paper for a very difficult class that was to count for 50% of my grade, and I had no idea what to do. The class was on Medieval and Renaissance philosophy. One day I paced the library stacks and begged God for some insight as to a topic. He answered with one word: "mysticism." I responded happily, "Ok, Lord! But, what is that?"

I researched St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Hugh of St. Victor, the Cloud of Unknowing, and others. I was captivated. Yes, I was a bit put off that these were Catholic authors because everything I'd ever learned about Catholicism concerned how it was wrong.  But these people... they wrote from an experience of loving God that left me with a pounding heart and breathless. At one point I just dropped my book on the library table and told the Lord, "If there is anyone left on the face of the earth who knows you and loves you like these people did, Lord, that is who I want to be with."

A few years later, the memory of that day in the library was the only thing that kept me from losing it as I talked with a friend I had deeply respected who had shocked me by becoming Catholic. I later had to face lots of ugly judgments, pride, and arrogance as I finally admitted to myself I had never once in my life read anything about Catholic doctrine written by a Catholic. My friend told me, yes, there are indeed people who love God like St. Teresa of Avila. They are called Carmelites. He gave me a little book about how to pray like a Carmelite. And I was amazed all over again.

I became a Catholic in 1993 in order to enter the world of mystics and saints, and I found the world of bingo, indifference, and sometimes outright scandal. Jesus had called me, though. The first time I had gone to Mass to actually be open to Him, He stunned me, shocked me, overwhelmed me, by revealing His presence to me in the Holy Eucharist. I knew I could not walk away from the Catholic Church without walking away from Jesus. He also spoke to me the promise that He is the Resurrection and the Life, and that all who believe in Him, though they die, yet shall they live. I wanted mystics and saints, but felt nothing but death in me and around me. But Jesus promised me life.

In the last two decades I've known purgations both slow and steady, and sharp and painful. God has also blessed me beyond belief with joy and the utter certainty of His love for me, and I've always seen Him provide everything I need, especially when I hardly realized what I needed. Together we have broken open and laid flat my hard crust of a heart, and He has indeed given me a heart of flesh.

It takes six years to become a Carmelite secular, and I have three years remaining in my initial formation. Part of the mission of a secular Carmelite is to teach God's people the wisdom of the saints I've mentioned, to help ourselves and others to grow in holiness and unto union with Christ. Every day I renew to God my desire to become His instrument, that He may teach His people holiness both through our words and hidden prayer. What other response can I have but to give all that I am to Him who has given me everything?


This post also appeared at MajorChange as Draw Me After You...