Every Ending is a Beginning

My heart is full. Today was the major ending of my Spiritual Direction Formation Program. There are a few more minor endings; two more things to hand in, two more meetings. Then finalizing of grades in September and the graduation pilgrimage in October. But today was the last time for meeting as the large group online. The last formation sessions. The first goodbyes.

And one theme of the day was how every ending is a beginning. 

And like the program has been, consistently, there was the structured theme and the theme that bubbled up during the discussions. So much gratitude. So many reports of how the course has absolutely transformed lives and has ran parallel to huge life upheavals.

During these two years (26 months, if you count from the time of my initial interview for joining), I've experienced a lot of endings and beginnings, none of which I saw coming. As I've been saying to my cohort for the last few months, there has been the formation course, and then there's been the Lord's formation work. Today I heard that this was a common experience for many. In May of 2024 I would not have believed that my journey would have taken the path that it has. But for both the sorrows and joys of it, I am extremely grateful. The Lord looked at my life and smiled and set about a process of transformation that I could not have dreamed up, even though I see all of my dreams reflected in it. For me it has been proof that He knows me, that He is good, that He is all powerful, and that He sees the burdens I have struggled to carry without yielding to His help for way, way, way too long. 

One thing stated today that more or less cinched up everything for me was this statement about what Carmelite spiritual direction is: It isn't about helping someone figure out which path to take. It is about unveiling the One who leads. Once you see the One who leads, you don't need the map. You trust the One who is leading. 

And that is where I am. Spatially, on the map of my life, to be honest, there's plenty I don't see about exactly where I am going. But I know Who is leading the way. And my job is to sing along with the Sister Act choir -- I Will Follow Him. No matter where He goes. No matter what it asks of me. No matter what anyone else thinks of it. I Will Follow Him. That is true freedom. And that is the only way to accompany people, because that frees me to walk with anyone the Lord brings to me in whatever way He is leading them. 

To journey with people from all over the world, under the leadership of an incredibly faith-filled group of Carmelite friars has been a particular gift. I love my adopted hometown of Steubenville, but it has been a real growth opportunity to have imput from outside of this Catholic bubble. It is wonderful to know that for as long as I've lived in my neighborhood, most of my neighbors have been Catholic and would pray for me in any need. But it is also a joy and a deep, cleansing breath to know that the Holy Spirit is so much bigger than the Us Four and No More feeling a local community can become over the course of years. It has reminded me that the presence of God is not dependent on only certain people or relationships. 

It is easy for me to grieve endings rather than see them as beginnings of a new stage. Life has taught me that. But God has taught me that hope is a theological virtue -- a supernatural gift of God oriented towards what He has in store. A vulnerable stance before new life, in new vistas. "Now to him who is able to accomplish far more than we can ask or imagine, by the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen." (Eph. 3:20-21) 

Submission Revisited

This morning, let's say it was by the time Mass ended, I realized I now have a refined understanding of submission. 

Sometimes spiritual insights just click, becn ause a grace God gives grabs hold of words that are spoken, and both goes to a place of past experiences, and then it all elevates, it changes key, and something new is perceptible. 

And this happened today regarding the reality of what it means to be in submission.

Fr. Mike Schmitz was addressing this in recent episodes of Catechism in a Year, because the topic has been the Sacrament of Matrimony. He was discussing the verses in Ephesians that tell wives to be submissive to their husbands, and husbands and wives to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Now, I've heard any number of takes on Christian submission, but how it landed in my mind was that submission means saying yes to what someone with valid authority tells you to do. I wrote a blogpost about this way back in 2007. Fr. Mike's definition of submission (CIAY, Day 224) is "to place yourself under the mission of the other person."

And I think those words just sunk in and hit a very deep part of my awareness today.

It's the Feast of the Assumption of Mary. Now, Mary was totally submitted to the mission, the plan, of the Blessed Trinity. She was totally on-board with the salvation of the world, the sanctification of the world, and bringing total glory to God in and through her every breath. She was also totally submitted to the mission of Joseph, who was specifically made Guardian of the Redeemer. He, in turn was totally submitted to Mary's mission as Mother of the Redeemer. Their marriage was a partnership in the mission God had entrusted to each of them. They were submitted to one another out of reverence for Christ, literally. 

And so it has to be with us. Our lives are about the mission: the Great Commission, to call to bring all souls to life in God through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit. 

Ok, so even as I'm writing this, I'm coming up a sense of well, duh. 

The changed key, the newly perceptible truth stems from an interior shift. How can I struggle this out into words...

In the aforementioned blogpost, I gave the example of how I might respond to the Bishop saying he was closing my parish. I said it would hurt, but I'd go with it. And that was pretty much my take on submission. Responding to something that happened. But if I place myself under the mission of Jesus Christ, or more concretely if I place myself under the mission of a particular human being, then I am going to employ all of my energies, all of my creativity, all of my resources into furthering that mission, that aim, that goal. This is how the dynamic of my life has been leaning for some years now, but today it clicked. This employing of my energies -- that is submission. It is not passive. I don't sit and wait for orders. I'm not a harem member that waits to be summoned. To waste my energies -- to spend them all on myself or my entertainment, or to fret myself away in anxiety or nitpicking, instead of love -- that's not submission. To chase after financial security or a name or success -- that's not submission. 

I would posit that spouses submitting to each other is not about each other; ultimately, it is also about Christ. It is about serving God, the common good, and learning where each other fits within that (because God always makes space for us). And it definitely is not about simply saying, "Yes, dear" and doing what the other person selfishly says or wants. It might keep peace, but it is not a way to grow holiness. If there's no mutual discernment of a virtuous path and an active desire to seek the Lord's will and way, then trouble ensues.

Several years ago, I had the strange experience of being contacted by an acquaintance who was leaving society to join a monastery. He had a few months as he transitioned into his new life, and just during this time he challenged me to write a song every week. He asked if I'd be willing to take it as a formal challenge and submit the new songs to him every week, and then he'd give me a new tweak in the challenge for the next week. I was intrigued, so I said yes. I had not written new music in a long time, but during that time I cranked out several new songs. I was very aware that I needed that piece of being called forth. Then he abruptly had to cut off communication, and that was that. I stopped writing, because I no longer had a mission to place myself under. That experience stayed with me a long time, and I didn't know what to call that powerful impetus. I think it is the power of submission. And I think one of my central life frustrations has been to rarely find a healthy person with a Christ-focused ability to say, I have this mission; join it. Well, I know now I am a Carmelite and I do have a mission there, but even there, we are still figuring out how to respond. Why are we so slow to live this reality in the Church? Why is it so unclear to engage the mission of Christ with our whole selves? Is it because we are not in possession of our whole selves? 

A Gift of Grace

Six years ago today, something profound happened. In fact, it was so profound that six years later I know I'm only beginning to take it in and live by its truth. 

At the time, I wrote about it here, surrounding the main event in lots of context. By the sheer grace of God, I had the rare presence of mind to take a short video while this striking thing was happening. You won't see what happened, because it was interior, (you won't see much of anything due to camera and videographer quality) but you will hear something lovely:

This was captured on my last full day in Poland, after a month-long pilgrimage during World Youth Day in the Year of Mercy. Personally, it came at the end of a stormy period of several years where God was teaching me my vocation to love and purifying my heart in some really painful and humbling ways. It was during this juncture that I started formation as a Secular Carmelite.

I wrote a lot about the whole trip in a blog called A Pilgrim in Poland, which is pretty good. As I have begun re-reading, I've learned some things. I recommend it. 𝨾 

I think the most profound things are not "new truths," but the grace to believe truth.
Looking back, here are the graces I have received:
I know that God is Love.
I know that God loves me.

I know that His love is immense, powerful, personal, intimate, insistent, edifying, knowledgable, big, deep, wide, unconditionally available to every living being, fiery, awesome, desireable, healing. 

I know that His love is pain-inducing to the degree that we resist being love-shaped, to the degree we grip our fists, try to possess out of fear of loss, try to feed our addictions and our brokenness. 

I know that He is bigger than our wounds, and that we all have wounds. 

I know all human beings are made not only to belong to God, but to belong to each other.

I know we need not only God to be holy, we need each other. God made it that way. He makes us secondary causes of holiness for each other.

I know He has called me to Carmel to learn to be Love in the heart of the Church. To live in God, and God in me, on this earth, immersing everyone into the ocean of God's mercy and love (which is His heart, the Holy Eucharist, the Blessed Sacrament).

And while there were years leading up to being able to receive this, and while I am still working it out (and it will remain my life's task until I die), I know that on this day, six years ago, there was a significant grace deposit made, where in a prolonged instant, God gave me this.

Here's a secret. One of the songs the quartet played was Blue Moon. It was actually a pinacle moment of personally receiving this. It is why, on the rare occasion when I go to a restaurant and order beer, I order a Blue Moon. It is also one of the many graced musical moments in my life that make me a devoted non-stickler when it comes to the question of what kind of music God can use to minister life.

The only possible fitting thanks I can think of is to give my entire life to Him, trusting the Lord totally to take care of everything. Amen.

Formation of a Prophet

Frieze of Prophets, East Wall. John Singer Sargent (1856-1925)
Boston Public Library.
Depicts Micah, Haggai, Malachi and Zechariah

For several weeks, I've had this passage from First Kings reverberating within me:

Acting on the word of the Lord, one of the guild prophets said to his companion, "Strike me." But he refused to strike him. Then he said to him, "Since you did not obey the voice of the Lord, a lion will attack you when you leave me." When he left him, a lion came and attacked him. Then the prophet met another man and said, "Strike me." The man struck him a blow and wounded him. The prophet went on and waited for the king on the road...    

 1 Kings 20:35-38

It goes on to say that the prophet who was struck essentially needed to appear before the king he was to meet in a wounded fashion in order for his message to be complete.

The wisdom to draw from this passage pertains to the prophetic dimension of Christian life, what it looks like, and how we are formed in it.

Step one is always God's word coming first. Prophets don't act prophetically because they come up with a creative idea that they want to try out on someone. They act prophetically in response to the word of the Lord. Perceiving the word of the Lord has to be by faith, so there is this element of being willing to make mistakes and to look like a fool. Prophets need to be able to take themselves lightly.

Prophets' sense of personal belonging within a group of other prophets is a tricky thing. When someone shares in your mission and you both get the delight that this brings, it can be a temptation to get attached to being in the other person's good graces, or honoring them in a way that builds monuments to them in your mind that God has not commissioned. Keeping your distance physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually isn't a viable option, either, if the community of prophets is to thrive. Therefore, clear speaking of one's mind is in order, so that everyone's mind may be brought continually into the light, purged and purified is necessary. It is also necessary that everyone remained fixed beyond themselves to the One whom they serve, which is the Word of God.

The prophet who refused to strike the other prophet probably thought, "Oh, good Abba, I could never raise my hand in violence against one who has taught me so much of the Lord." And the good Abba probably thought, "Oh, crap. He really hasn't learned much yet, has he." The lion refocused the second prophet's attention on what was ultimate: obey the Word of the Lord, regardless of even feeling you are wrong, or making life hard for someone else. Detachment is needed here. If you really so greatly and legitimately honor that prophet you don't want to hit, it will be because of God -- you know he hears accurately from God and walks in His way. But if you believed this, you wouldn't refuse when the demands went against your grain. Therefore, you aren't refusing to strike him because of how holy he is or how holy you are; you are refusing to obey because you are rebellious and full of yourself.

But that prophet did teach the rest of the community a lesson, and so he served them well, after all. (Sometimes we succeed most in teaching others because of, not in spite of, our failures.) The Lord, He is God. They all knew, or were learning, what it was to experience the word of the Lord coming to them. God's supernatural presence is real. They were learning to walk in relationship with His power and become transformed into partners with Him.

Don't you think that the prophet who requested to be struck and the prophet who struck him formed a bond over this experience? Both were valuing the Word that had come among them more than their own comfort. Together, they advanced God's mission. The wounds were temporary; the bond lasted their lives. The first prophet knew he was no lone ranger; he could not wound his own face. He needed this offensive ministry from his brother prophet.

What Pilgrimage Made Grow: I didn't see this coming

One of the outcroppings of my pilgrimage which I did not at all see coming while I was in Poland was a certain practical shifting in my prayer focus. It continues to surprise me, though "surprise" isn't exactly the right word for something that I find having taken root in my soul.

Because it is the Year of Mercy, works of mercy came through as a theme at various World Youth Day events. And during that time, the spiritual works of mercy in particular sort of hummed with an attention-getting sort of resonance with me. But upon returning home, I found myself drawn powerfully to pray specifically for those in addictions, for those working in sex trafficking (pimps and prostitutes), and for those suffering violent abuse, whether physical or emotional.

It isn't that I have never prayed before for these needs, but since returning from Poland,

Read the Rest

(Cross-posted from my blog "A Pilgrim in Poland".)

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.

The Words we Speak, and the Silences We Keep

Over the last four days, I participated in the 2015 OCDS Congress in Milwaukee. I took copious notes, but now is the moment where I go back over them to see if I can translate them into consumable language so that others can catch at least the gist of the talks that I did, if not the actual intent of the speaker.

The talk that hit me the hardest was by Fr. Marc Foley, O.C.D., so I'm going to start there with transcription. The title he was given was:

Mary and Martha

Carmel: Contemplative and Apostolic

Personal Transformation and Society Change

 but he kind of ditched that and went for a laser-focus instead on the apostolic weight of the words we speak and the silences we keep.

The following is what I captured:

Mary is a symbol of attentive listening. The inflow of God into the soul instructs us in the perfection of love. Peaceful attentiveness to God is contemplation.

St. Therese said that Jesus teaches without words, and that we have no absolute need of teachers and books.

The most important place of this attentive listening is not even so much in our set times of prayer as during our daily occupations.

We have two forms of choice: the words we speak, and the silences we keep. These are deeply significant in our response to God. Essentially all of life can be understood within these two choices. Listening to God's voice and speaking forth what we hear is the core of the apostolic intention.

We tend to think of apostolic activity as answering the question "What do you do?" Do you do parish work? Do you work in a soup kitchen? Do you protest injustice? If you are called to do these, by all means, do them. But the most apostolic of actions is what we hear God instructing us to say. When there is congruence between what we hear God instructing us in and what we do, then Mary and Martha are working together.

When our speech is rooted in the indwelling presence of God, then the Word becomes flesh.

Contemplation and apostolic action in St. Teresa's focal gospel, the first gospel choice for her feast day, the woman at the well: "Spring of water gushing up to eternal life." There are two words here in the Greek. The "well" is man-made. "Spring" is underground, and natural. In the optional gospel, we have Jesus saying, "I am not the source of my words." And this raises in us the question, What is the source of my words? Is it the cistern of my ego, or the wellspring of God's Spirit?

D. W. Winnicott, a psychotherapist, stated that he knew freedom when he no longer had the need to be clever for his clients. This is freedom from self-absorption. No longer needing that psychologically astute response was freedom.

St. Teresa writes in her Meditations on the Song of Songs that "Martha and Mary never fail to work together in a soul in the state of union. When the soul is working interiorly, active work arises that is like lovely and fragrant flowers, spreading from the tree of God's love. No self-interest. Fragrance for the benefit of many, lasts, and has great effect.

When the soul is working interiorly, there is a congruence between what we hear and what we say.

As St. Therese lay dying, a door and a window had been left open in her room, creating a draft. Mother Gonzaga came in and insisted she tell her who did this. Therese knew it had been the infirmarian. And as she was speaking to tell Mother, she said it came to her mind a more charitable way to tell the truth she knew. She followed that way and was rewarded with great peace. Is anything more important, more apostolic, than following such inspirations?

St. John of the Cross teaches that the first movements toward sin and the first movements of inspirations come to the conscious mind, and so we must be alert to them with vigilance as we stand at that threshhold. What will be born into this world?

What is the heart of Carmel? Inner language and outer speech. And yes, it is hard to speak. It is hard to be silent. Our pride, envy, anger, etc want to rise. But this is where detachment and purification comes in.

Writing in a spiritual discipline (it is the speaker's gift, and also something that has made him realize his egotism). It is all a practice of detachment, allowing God to edit our speech. It is necessary for spiritual growth and for fruitfulness.

St. Teresa's words again: If words arise from the deep spiritual root, fragrance spreads, lasts, and has effect. We all ask this question, especially as we get older: Will my life have mattered?

In Night Prayer, we ask that our work may bear fruit for eternal life. This is what we mean.

St. John of the Cross says that for a preacher to benefit people (and, more broadly, one who speaks), it is a spiritual practice and not a vocal one. And it comes in conflict with our fears, with our desires to manipulate, please, or flatter others. We may preach with the intention for spiritual benefit for others, but still have no detachment from pleasing people. And this need to please or flatter can influence what we say and don't say. The need to flatter gives people power over us. When we have detachment, we don't need them.

Silence and its impact on spiritual growth and fruitfulness. Chapter 15 of the Way of Perfection

Being silent in the face of criticism, but with discretion, in the bounds of common sense (would my silence cause anger, guilt, scandal? then don't be silent).

No desire to be held in esteem. Release from fear of what people think of us. Time will be witness of the benefit you see of this silence in yourself. Come to the point where you don't care if people say good things or evil about you. Hear people's talk as if it is another person's affair (with that much detachment). Be present to what is said, but no enmeshed in the emotions. Then you can respond, and then you have PEACE.

From the Councils of St. John of the Cross:  You will be chiseled by people's words, deeds, or temperament. You ought to suffer the mortifications with patience being silent for the love of God.

Essentially, don't over react.

If I don't practice being patient, what will happen? St. John says, profoundly, "They do not get along well with others!" This is huge. People are our world. We become nuclear reactors. People won't want to deal with us. Patience, on the other hand, brings us peace and connects us to others.

Romans 12: "Do not repay evil for evil. Do not avenge yourself but leave room for the wrath of God. Feed and give drink to your enemies, and in so doing heap burning coals on their head." What is this leaving room for the wrath of God? You give opportunity, create enough psychic space for the person to hear their own words. Don't fire back. Allow their own words to echo in their own mind. When they hear what they've said, a work of grace can happen, a moment of revelation.

The silence of pure innocence persuades when words fail.

Words are the most powerful things we possess. God creates by words, and when we speak, there are consequences. Words of kindness heal, and words of hate and evil wound.

St. Edith Stein says (in Vol 5 Essays on Women, The Problem of Women's Education, pp. 231-232). When one has grasped the importance of speech, it brings a responsibility upon oneself. Words reveal the soul. It's inner activity is revealed. Thoughtless speech reveals superficial dealings. Speech has repercussions on others souls: they can guide, or leave injury, cause retreat, or leave a deadly mark.

Milton attempted to show what the world would have been like in the world before sin. He states that paradise is where all language is pure and innocent.

What would the world be if all speech was pure, if all speech and silence came from the tree of God's love?

The Little Charismatic Way

This is a thinking post, not a thought-out post. I'm writing so that I understand.

Yesterday I posted about having finished the book Everything Is Grace. It helped me grasp not only the spirituality of Therese, but also the spiritual culture that was dominant at the time, for which her spirituality was a corrective. Her Little Way emphasizes simple, empty, confident trust in God's boundless love and mercy with which He longs to embrace sinners in their misery and lift them up. It emphasizes willingness -- God's willingness calling forth our own -- rather than human efforts to go through great labors to be heroic, to embrace harsh ascetic practices, and thereby to attempt spiritual self-perfection. (That was the Jansenistic flavor that religious, even Carmelite, life had in Therese's time.)

Schmidt's book made me see the connection others have pointed out to me between Therese's spirituality and the "nada" of St. John of the Cross. St. Therese went through plenty of dying to self, as she chronicles in Story of a Soul. It had been hard for me to relate to her saintly family and her exceptionally pious and religious formation as a child, but I can relate to her emotional attachments and her need to let go of the dynamism that drove her, which in her case was her need to please other people in order to feel secure. Schmidt recounts that even as she was dying she apologized in advance to her blood sisters with her in Carmel that she would cast her dying glance toward the superior and not one of them (she apologized because she did not wish them to feel hurt). Even to the moment of her death she was aware of the feelings of others, but free of the violence of a less-than-genuine love that is more about establishing one's own security than simply giving love.

The "nada" means one renounces everything from which one seeks to establish one's own security. Complete detachment. This is not even something we can produce for ourselves. This kind of deep detachment is something we can only be open to, willing for, and receive from God who gives it in trial. Or rather, maybe it is not so much that we have to be in suffering to receive it as receiving it is a suffering, because it brings light where we have darkness, but it feels like darkness where once was light.

Back to the post title: The Little Charismatic Way. What does Therese have to do with the modern charismatic movement?

I have considered myself a charismatic since 1987. I wrote some of my testimony about that here. I've had different thoughts and anti-thoughts about what that means to me now, as a Catholic. And to be honest, I have not in these 20 Catholic years had much in the way of intimate contact with other charismatics, living out and discussing what this dimension of faith means, although every year or two I have gone through a season of asking questions along these lines either of others or of myself or of Church documents.

And now St. Therese steps into these questions. Maybe it simply is my current moment in Carmelite formation, but I'll be danged if she doesn't seem to simply speak clarity both into my questions and into my experiences.

Here's what's helpful:

1. God is love. Be open, completely open to Him.
2. God is big. I am little. I never control or determine what He does. That's not only silly, it's warped.
3. God has a mission. He wants souls to be with Him in heaven, but with heaven starting now. He can do that.
4. God chooses and graces His children to work with Him. He makes it happen, with our willingness.

And since the Holy Spirit is God, all of these things are true specifically of the charismatic graces of the Holy Spirit. Maybe I could call living according to these points to be the Little Charismatic Way.

There are some issues, of course.

1. The charismatic graces of the Holy Spirit as described in the New Testament and lived since that time are not always taught about, and people have difficulty responding to something about which they have no teaching or exposure.
2. The way people initially get exposure to operating charismatic graces often stirs up all manner of things we need "nada"ed out of us. And this is true both of the one who receives and operates in these graces as well as those who witness it or hear about it.

Right now I'm particularly thinking about this latter point as regards any action of God that prompts us to decision, change, or a deeper conversion. People seem OK with God as long as they can control the relationship. I can pay as much attention to Him as I want or don't want. I can keep it in the realm of either the intellect or the feeling, whichever keeps me comfortable. I can accept all of His basic rules that make no significant demands on me to stand out, or I can console myself with being better than others who don't want to stand out in the ways I want to. And really, I don't have to bother so much with God Himself. I'll just stay in the company of those I consider His people.

But all of this is religion on a human level, and none of it strikes me as being of worship. There's no death here; there's no abandonment, there's no giving it all away. There's no love affair. It is all very controlled.

But we are designed as humans to worship God.

So being religious in this way can really get in the way of meeting God in the Little Way, and encountering the working of the Holy Spirit in the Church in what I'm calling the Little Charismatic Way. (I'm sorry, Therese. I'm really just turning this around in my mind. Forgive my presumption, here!)

The book of Acts gives lots of fascinating insights into how people react to this experience of the new covenant in Christ as it began to be lived in Jerusalem. We see, for example that the religious leaders were jealous of the apostles. For some, this went well and brought them to seek and enter into faith in the Messiah for themselves. For others, it moved them to violence and sins because they really couldn't overcome the irritation of being less significant than the apostles to the people.

This makes me think about those things that get stirred up in people when they experience something supernatural. It can make them curious and simply move them to want God. I've seen people have that response. It can also kick up feelings of rivalry (they have that; I'll have to prove myself to God to get something better, since I don't really believe He loves me), competitiveness (who do those jack-asses think they are, since they obviously are claiming to be better than me?), defeat (I'm less-than. God might love me, but obviously not as much as He loves them), deprivation (I can't trust God to give me good things like that), despair (God has forgotten me. I'm doomed.), or people pleasing (Wow! That's great for you! I on the other hand don't really exist. Don't mind me.) All of these problems are essentially ways that we do not believe in God's love and as a result we close ourselves off from Him.

The opposite of our littleness is the vast array of pride that comes with associating with experiences of power. Pride is so insidious and pervasive that one can hardly begin to list all the ways it poisons both the human exercise of religion and the experience of the supernatural. Essentially, pride is connected to "having." And this is why, when we "have" our experiences of God, we are so prone to being obnoxious to others. And this is exactly why God's work in us is to detach us from everything, even, in Therese's case, any consolation of the thought of heaven. He brings us to utter darkness so that we cling to him purely in faith, and not through delight and consolation. It is ironic to say that God wants souls in heaven with Him, starting now, and that the way there is through this bleak, forsaken-feeling darkness. But this is exactly what St. John of the Cross teaches. We need to be thoroughly purged from not only sin, but also attachment to everything that is not God.

God's mission of redemption was fully accomplished in Christ, but His mission for the rescue of souls continues in space and time through the Body of Christ, the Church, and through each one called to join that Body. As we are open, humble, and purified, God accomplishes His purposes through us, through our willingness, through our small actions rendered to Him in worship. I say small actions... certainly Therese's months of gradually suffocating from tuberculosis without pain medication and with so much serenity and sweet concern for others that many of her Sisters in Carmel doubted she was seriously ill, all that in the midst of a dark night that left her with zero feelings of assurance that there was any heaven after death at all -- surely all that is not a small action.

I am reminded of an experience I wrote about here, about a teaching from the mystic Anne to the effect that God can move graces through us even if all we have to offer him is cleaning the house and making peanut butter sandwiches all day. It truly is not the things we offer God as the love with which we offer them. Different actions call us to exercise different virtues, but all these are grace. The worship we offer God is truly God crowning His own gifts in us. God gives to us; we give back to Him. This is to remain constant regardless of how it feels to us.

Yes, this is a long post! But I am seeing how, if we can simply grasp and follow these principles, understanding what God's way is and allowing Him to have it with us, not getting sidetracked by our wounded, unbelieving hearts, our pride, and especially understanding detachment from sin and self, and grasping that Christ's mission continues through faithfulness in His Body, the Church... All of these things put us in the position where God can accomplish His will through us.

The glorification of Therese in the life of the church, particularly among the little ones longing for God, as well as among all those seeking enlightenment, peace, and love, is the resounding affirmation of the truth that the measureless desires of the human heart are ultimately from God and for God. That glorification is also but a shadow of Therese's full glory and of what awaits all the poor in spirit who desire God and are willing to reciprocate divine love in their lives through works of peace and charity. The respect and honor extended to Therese from within the church and beyond are a testimony to the truth that union with God is possible to anyone who is open to the Holy Spirit, always available in the ordinary experiences of human life.

-- Everything is Grace, p. 330, italics in the original

The Problem with Catholics

This has been rattling around in my heart for a long time but has recently struck me with pristine clarity: American Catholic Christians are deeply confused about who we are because we have lost touch with Christ's mission to save souls.

To some, that might be so baldly obvious that it hardly bears repeating. To others, it might provoke great defensive argument. (And of course others won't care at all.)

The liturgical cycle teaches us everything we need to know, and worship gives us all the sanctity we need. We need to live as saints, and specifically, each of us needs to become the particular saint God intends us to be. It really is that easy, and it certainly is nothing new. We can wring our hands and write books and strategize and give conferences but it really is this basic.

We have lost sight of our liturgical celebrations and liturgical seasons as having a launching dynamism. We have utterly forgotten the dramatic climax of Scripture (hint: it's supposed to be where we still live). We have made of Christ an idol to bow before, to whom we pay reverence while ignoring the mission He died to inaugurate.

How can we claim to love Christ and remain unconcerned with the desires of His heart? Yes, it is true that He desires that we ourselves be saved and grow in virtue. But if we have limited the scope of our spiritual concern to keeping ourselves out of hell, we suffer horrible myopic vision.

God prepared a people for a few thousand years through promises and covenants, and in the fullness of time sent His Son to establish the lasting covenant, and then prepared a new people in the Upper Room and unleashed them with His own power to go to the highways and byways of the entire world and call everyone to Himself. He provided a huge array of gifts, always changing to meet the need and to face the inevitable human and spiritual backlash.

There has been sin and division, and there has been sanctity and glory. But never has there been another plan announced from heaven about what Christ's Church essentially is: the presence of Jesus Christ in time and space.

And how can we know who we are if we don't know who Christ is?

Christ is the Messiah of Israel: the people God formed through His actions, His laws, His covenants, His prophets, and through their tremendous suffering. Christ opened up God's plan for a universal covenant of salvation for all people, Jew and Gentile. Christ gifted this covenant with human guardians whom He Himself guarantees. In the same way, He empowers with the Holy Spirit all who enter Him through this covenant. These gifts, when activated in and through faith, mutually upbuild the whole structure that is the Church. And the whole purpose of that Church is to continue bearing witness to Christ's resurrection, His life, His reality, His call, His power, His love, His truth.

We exist to announce to the world: come and join us in our mission of announcing and demonstrating the power and love of God, of rescuing souls from self-destruction and despair. It is not ourselves we preach, but Christ, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake.

It is time Catholics step out of our confusion by the simple step of daily self-offering, nurtured by liturgical prayer and silence. Give God permission and space to act, expect Him to act, and respond as He speaks. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 "Oh Lord, I am yours. Remove from my life those things that hinder me from you. Plant firmly in my life the people with whom you desire to form me. Teach me, guide me,  and make me the believer you have created me to be."

Available

I am constantly just beginning to learn things about the spiritual life.

Last night as I was tired earlier than usual I pulled St. Faustina's Diary Divine Mercy In My Soul off my bedside shelf and began to read parts I had underlined during previous readings. Among other things, in three different parts of the large book I noted where she said that responding to inspirations from the Holy Spirit calls forth greater graces. I was glad to not be the only one to whom God seemed to present the same lessons over and over again and each time it seems like a strikingly new revelation. But I hadn't opened the book with any particular agenda, and I knew there were a lot of things that I could have pulled out of it, so I made a mental note that was what registered with me.

This afternoon I was out grocery shopping at Aldi. When it came time to check out, I noticed the checker was rubbing her hands to warm them, so we made small talk about the cold. She seemed to open up with unusual readiness after a brief exchange, and she made a comment about how she was truly miserable, as the next customer's order came along.

And then as I was bagging my stuff I was struck with the thought to give her a miraculous medal. (I often have more of these than change in my wallet.) And that thought from St. Faustina was there. Obey promptings, and greater graces flow.

Now, I have stood right there in front of a prompting like that many, many times since I was young. Many times, I would start to reason What good would that possibly do? Isn't that almost superstitious? What if she gets offended? What if she throws it away? What if I just look weird? What if this just me, and not the Holy Spirit? What if .... 

And more often than not, if the prompting had to do with me interacting with another person, I'd skip it. Then I would beat myself up for not doing it for hours or days. I'd design myself some kind of punishment to make up for my lack of courage. Or I'd just tell myself to stop paying so much attention to every dang thought in my head and just live, because how could it matter.

But I realize that I don't have to understand what it "means" for in the other person's life, or concern myself with what happens because of it. I don't have to "be sure" it is the Holy Spirit's personal bullhorn up against my head. But I can simply be aware of another person, desire their good, and take the chance that I'm the silliest person on the face of the earth, and just do it. Just respond to the internal inspiration. Take the chance that maybe grace is in this equation somewhere.

And today, I did. I gave her the miraculous medal. I wished her "a better day" and told her the medal was for a necklace. She beamed a really bright smile and thanked me.

It seems to me that the way to move towards seriously being involved in God's work is to stop taking myself so seriously. Be open, yes. Be loving, yes. Intend the other person's good, yes. Second-guess myself tortuously, no. The less self-consciousness and the more freedom I have, the better I can simply be available to Jesus.

Yeah, Basically my Life has Always Been this Weird.

Memories can provoke a whole assortment of responses. Bad memories can depress or frighten and good memories can bring comfort and a smile. Then there's that category of mysterious memories. Today one of these broke to the surface while I was praying and I was moved to an equally mysterious sense of gratitude for God's presence in my life.

The story: as I remember it, it was a warm time of the year, and given how I remember my visual perspective at our side door I imagine I was about 4 or 5 years old. So, we're talking early 1970s. My brother (who would have been about 8 or 9) was playing outside. Now, we lived on one of the busiest roads in our city of 140,000, so there was always all sorts of traffic, including pedestrians. As my brother played, a young man stopped and talked to him and (my brother told me later) asked him if there were anyone else at home with him. He told the man yes, that I was home too. He fetched me, and we stood outside on the sidewalk. In my mind's eye I remember this young man as looking like a hippie. He had longish curly hair, and he was dressed in white or light clothes. I don't remember anything at all the man said, but he prayed with us. And then he walked on by, and my brother went back to playing, and I stood there for some moments, watching the young man walk on down the street.

There have been moments when I've wondered if he hadn't been an angel. It's more likely that he was a "Jesus Freak" as they were called in those days, those who were saved from the hippie culture and wandered about as spiritual troubadours. But it always struck me that he came to my house and basically sought for me to pray for me.

Right around that time, my mother was divorcing my alcoholic father, and the life that lay ahead of me for the next few years was not to be filled with happy memories. But throughout my life God has driven these pegs of awareness that people I did not know prayed for me. As if, you know, God had a hand in it or something.

And now, as a Carmelite in formation, I am learning to pray as God leads. May I never discount the odd one-off prayer here and there for a stranger or for someone God brings to mind. A humble act offered in love God can use to fulfill plans that we cannot begin to comprehend.

Vocation: the Call of God

The Scriptures the liturgy proposes to us today focus on the call of God. There is the boy, Samuel, whom God calls but who does not recognize at first that it is indeed God. There is the experience of Andrew and John as John the Baptist points out Jesus to them, and they go after Him. There is the teaching from St. Paul about how to honor God with our bodies and our deepest selves.

When I heard all of this today, I was reminded of what we read in our family devotion last night from Oswald Chambers. It was such a clear exposition of the Catholic concept of vocation, and yet it was so strikingly different from most of what I've heard actual Catholic people say about the subject. It really speaks clarity into the existential confusion that I think is present in the hearts of many Catholics who really want to do God's will. And so, I'll quote here, generously:

The call of God is not a call to serve Him in any particular way. My contact with the nature of God will shape my understanding of His call and will help me realize what I truly desire to do for Him. The call of God is an expression of His nature; the service which results in my life is suited to me and is an expression of my nature...

Service is the overflow which pours a life filled with love and devotion. But strictly speaking, there is no call to that. Service is what I bring to the relationship and is the reflection of my identification with the nature of God. Service becomes a natural part of my life. God brings me into proper relationship with Himself so that I can understand His call, and then I serve Him on my own out of a motivation of absolute love. Service to God is the deliberate love-gift of a nature that has heard the call of God. Service is an expression of my nature, and God's call is an expression of His nature. Therefore, when I receive His nature and hear His call, His divine voice resounds throughout His nature and mine and the two become one in service. The Son of God reveals Himself in me, and out of devotion to Him service becomes my everyday way of life.

--- from My Utmost for His Highest, Oswald Chambers, "The Call of the Natural Life," entry for January 17.

The account of Samuel teaches us that we have to learn to know God's nature, presence, and ways, and we have to know ourselves. Part of knowing ourselves is being in relationship with others, because we all have a certain social dimension of our natures that isn't activated apart from the relational aspect of reality. And it seems that part of how God teaches us about Himself and ourselves is that He allows us to be mistaken for a time. It purifies us. God called; Samuel answered Eli. Samuel was mistaken, but clearly Samuel had a natural and healthy attachment going with Eli, so going to Eli was the clearest, most logical way for Samuel to respond to God. The second time God called, Samuel could have ignored Him, or responded in fear or mistrust about bothering Eli again. But the call prompted enough urgency for Samuel to try his best to figure out what was being asked of him. (This is Samuel learning who he is.) By this time, Eli is probably a tad frustrated, because he is mixed up in something that doesn't seem to have a thing to do with him, and maybe he just wants a peaceful night's sleep. The third time, Samuel has to really want badly enough to remain in integrity. He knows something is happening, but he doesn't really get it, and the one he relies on as his guiding companion seems clueless and maybe irritated. So he really needs courage this time to keep trying his best. This is the essence of discernment. Something is urging me; but I don't get it, and neither does my companion. So, I'll keep pursuing an answer by seeking with my actions.

And then Samuel gets direction. Maybe this comes because Eli is irritated enough to stop thinking only about his desire to sleep. He understands that his young charge needs help. So, he gives direction, and then goes back to sleep. And God takes that moment to reward Samuel's courage and humility, and the path of Samuel's vocation opens out before him. All the seeds present in this reading grow to full stature in the rest of the Scriptural accounts of Samuel's life.

Sure, if I heard God's voice calling me, telling me what to do, it would be so easy, you might say. But in reality the fact that God exists, when you really think about it, is also the fact that I am called. God is the Creator; I am the creature. God made me; I am His. I find my real self by knowing Him. I not only owe God my service out of the justice of giving God what is His due, I also seek my own highest good (and so "owe it to myself," if you will) to give my utmost for His highest (to borrow Chambers' title). It's just a matter of figuring out what really fits my nature, or another way to put it is to notice what is in my hand to give.

It is goofiness to wait for some angelic visitation to direct me. Actually, it is a bad case of insecurity: about myself, or God's reality or His love for me, or all of the above. It is a bad case of seeing myself as an object that God uses rather than a person God loves. It is a bad case of envisioning myself as a slave instead of a son. Or it is a bad case of never having heard the explicit gospel call to leave the things, the attractions of the world, the baubles, the power-lust, and to bring instead your real treasure which is your heart, and to follow Christ.

Where There is no Love, Put Love; and so Draw Out Love

St. John of the Cross famously said, "Where there is no love, put love, and you will draw out love."

I've learned something about this maxim. It involves a leap of faith and moments of something between awkwardness and crucifixion. There's also often a bonus feature of purification involved for the lover.

There's a situation in which I learned some of this almost by mistake. Several times a month I frequent a certain business in town, and I interact with a rotating but small group of employees. One day I approached the employee du jour in the effervescent manner that I tend to reserve for those few moments a day when I am interacting with strangers. I chatted to said employee happily about something or another, animatedly paid for my business, wished her well, and left. And all the while she stared at me, expressionless and business-like.

I left, feeling ever-so-slightly awkward. Because there is something disconcerting to me about using my little bit of effervescence and watching it be met in that stoney way.

But a funny thing happened when several weeks later I was there again, with the same woman. By now I was realizing she is simply reserved, and reserved people are often mistaken for being grumpy in general or upset with given individuals. But this new day on which I approached her, she made a welcoming gesture and spoke in not exactly a bubbly way, but in a comfortable and friendly way. And I realized that almost by mistake, I proved St. John's maxim true: when you invest with love, you will find love available to draw back out.

We all just need help in different ways and to different degrees.

There's also that moment where one's motives in loving are treated as suspicious, when a soul is not able to trust for whatever reasons. I am reminded of the sorts of people who insist on hugging people at a greeting (when it isn't culturally mandated). While this may please that person's sense of herself as loving, it does not always respect the sense of the person who may not be interested in or open to that hug. There is little that is more distressing to a loving heart than watching a gesture of love be rejected, but God does this with us all the time. His offers of love are rejected and ignored by His own children over and over. He insists our love response be free, and so He does not force His way. But He does wait for that cracking open of our hearts, that moment of vulnerability we offer His love.

If we go about with acts of love like children who throw leaves or flowers into a stream, enjoying the flinging part and not too concerned with the where-they-end-up part, God can do many things. With a morning offering prayer, we make each day like a handful of these leaves or flowers. We can present God with the normal sorts of human means He likes to use to bring His supernatural graces to hearts that are dying for His touch.

And This is Why I Love Epiphany

God frequently seems to use the liturgy and liturgical feasts to teach me personal things. Sometimes the nature of how this works is that something significant will happen in conjunction with a liturgical celebration of a feast day, but the significance of it will only dawn on me several years down the road. My initial conversion to Catholicism at a Christmas Eve midnight Mass is the most obvious example.

And another such thing is connected to the Epiphany.

The liturgy of the hours for Epiphany preserves the tradition that it has, in the past, encompassed the Visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Jesus, and the Wedding at Cana: the Illuminatio, Manifestatio, and Declaratio. The message is clear: Jesus is on the scene with power and He's changing things.

It took me quite a long time to realize how that applied to this thing that happened to me six years ago tomorrow, on Epiphany Sunday.

That would have been one of those moments that if I had been able to see into the future, I probably would have turned and run away as fast as I could.

I'm glad I didn't. I think.

No, no: I'm sure. And I have the scars to prove it. 

It had been a quiet life for Jesus, Mary and Joseph (as long has he lasted) until the time of Jesus' public manifestation and His first miracle. I can only imagine Mary's heart at the moment when she knew it was time for Him to move on. We make a lot of her request that moved Him to His first public miracle. I'm convinced it was not a giddy moment for her, but one of surrender to the Father. Her statement "Do whatever He tells you," besides the other volumes it speaks, I believe was her fiat to the Messiah's mission which any student of the prophecies must have known would lead to His death.


The rest of us see these glory moments and think Cool! Dude, I want in on this! She realizes that the glory of God comes at the price of suffering and death. Which hearkens back to celebrating martyrs right smack after Christmas Day. Did the Church make some awful blunder in scheduling St. Stephen and the Holy Innocents? Of course not. We make the blunder in forgetting that Christmas flows into Epiphany which flows into Lent which flows into Holy Week, Easter, Ascension and Pentecost. Jesus' birth is the beginning of the pascal mystery.

Christmas is often presented as a sugar-coated fairy tale. But God is born into a world where there is also a great deal of suffering and misery. -- Pope Francis 

And God came to live that suffering and misery with us, as one of us.

And, you know, in my book, when there's suffering and misery and God shows up, that suffering and misery suddenly get changed. Where God is, there is delight. Even when the glory points to a cross, which points to glory.

Funny. Seems like I wandered far away from the purpose I started writing with, which was to remember that Epiphany six years ago when God used the liturgy to show me something I didn't understand yet.

But this is how it works. And that's all I've been talking about.

St Thérèse and the Terrifying Joy of Vulnerability

It is no secret that I was a devout non-fan of St. Thérèse for many of my Catholic years. Everyone was all "St. Thérèse this" and "St. Thérèse that," and I just simply could not warm up to her. In fact, she was the only saint that I felt a particular aversion towards.


My aversion was rooted in my ignorance, and my ignorance was fed by the tiny bit of knowledge I had about her. She was sweet, humble, simple, joyful, trusting.... and childlike.

Ok, let's be honest. Another factor in my aversion is that I really thought she simply was these things naturally. And, the heart of all my aversion was that I knew I am not those things.

But of course no saint comes by her virtues naturally. Not every saint goes through the dregs of sin, but no saint comes by virtue except by walking the way of the cross. I missed that about St. Thérèse.

But now, I have to admit, I am beginning to grasp St. Thérèse's profundity and why she is a Doctor of the Church, and perhaps some of why she was given to our age. And, particularly, why I need her so dang much.

St. Thérèse was the one who famously summarized her vocation, the Carmelite vocation, thus: "In the heart of the Church, I shall be love." She knew that love encompassed everything that she wanted to be -- Carmelite, spouse, mother, warrior, priest, apostle, doctor, martyr -- because love is the essence of all these things.

God is love, and the love of the Father is made manifest in Christ. If you want to see the ultimate in love, behold the Crucified One.

It is true, what Freud says. We are never so vulnerable as when we love. St. Thérèse embraced this call to be love, as she says, with "delirious joy." But vulnerability like that of the Crucified One is no weakling's task, nor it is anything akin to natural to any mere human.

St. Thérèse had made of herself an oblation to Divine Love, asking that all the pent-up mercy of God's heart be poured out upon her. Mercy is for misery. It seems to me that there is a connection between this offering and the fact of her tremendous spiritual and physical suffering she endured in the last phase of her life, offered all for the conversion of sinners. For example, she had no feeling of certainty that there was a heaven, or anything beyond death except nothingness. She desired to experience this type of suffering for the conversion of atheists and all manner of souls who had separated themselves from God. This is heavy-duty, tough-slogging intercession.

The essence of what I could never appreciate about St. Thérèse earlier is that I did not understand what it takes for the human heart to be made child-like, vulnerable, loving, and sweetly self-giving. It takes the cross. It takes death to self. It takes the spiritual night, where the light faith gives becomes like darkness. The mystery of the cross is in that moment where Christ cries out "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" There is something so child-like in this mystery of experiencing being deeply alone when in reality, we are not.

In my experience, vulnerability is terrifying, but then it is freeing. The experience of the cross is terrifying, and then it is freeing. The terror comes from our darkness being purged from us, from losing that which binds us, like the young men in the fiery furnace. But instead of knowing our bondage as bondage, we tend to think it is what is "keeping us together."

The joy and childlike abandon of St. Thérèse is not a natural state. It is the fruit of the cross going deep. When I look at her now, I realize that in Christ there is hope for me, a newcomer to joy, innocence, and trust. The more I open myself to God's mercy, the more I too can become little and know how fiercely I am loved.

The Gift of Vulnerability

"[God] will not find us at the center of our certainties. That is not where the Lord looks. He will find us on the margins, in our sins, in our mistakes, in our need for spiritual healing, for salvation; that is where the Lord will find us”.

This quote from Pope Francis is one to which the preacher on my recent silent retreat referred several times.

The "margins" of our hearts are the places where we stand in need of God's mercy, and we know it, but dang, we don't really like it.

Ironically, these are the places most people expend enormous energy in order to hide from others, from their own meditation, or hope they can hide from God. Our sorry stock of shame is exactly where God is attracted, exactly where He is hoping most to be admitted. It's where we are most painfully in need.

The margins of our hearts are where we are vulnerable.

I've had an interesting and varied relationship with vulnerability in my almost-47 years. But currently I realize that I have both a natural propensity for it, and I've also exercised it to the point where I am OK with being vulnerable. What is most interesting to me is that I have only now realized that this not something to hate about myself; is a gift, and something to be desired for growth in the spiritual life.


I've certainly spent a lot of time hating myself for getting in vulnerable situations and feeling needy. Of course, it hasn't helped that a lot of normal things make me feel that way! I have beaten myself up over how much it seems everything in my life has required courage. Everything! It has always seemed that things that came so easily to everyone else made me feel so terribly vulnerable.

A few decades ago I lived in an old apartment building that grew gigantic icicles in the winter. One day I watched one of these glisten on my fire escape: snow, melting from heat escaping from the poorly insulated roof, dripped down the icicle's side and hovered at the tip and froze there. I mused that its point of greatest vulnerability to breaking was also where it was growing and becoming what it was.

We are people, though, not icicles. The only way vulnerability can become a moment of growth is when you choose to step forward into that vulnerable state and find that not only are you not crushed, but you are safe. Completely safe. And the only way to step forward, I have found, is a combination of trust or faith in God (more-or-less specifically) or in the goodness inherent in the unknown factors involved. There is also something to be said simply for cumulative experiences of risk-taking. You leap across a rickety bridge, and each sure step gives you the courage to take another that you hope will also support you long enough to keep hopping.

And you know what? There are times when one steps out in faith into a vulnerable position and you free fall for a little bit. It doesn't feel safe at all. You have to seriously consider whether you just made a terrible, awful mistake. There is no immediate reward of a sense of safety. There is only faith, and the assurance faith gives you can be like a vaguely flickering light. This might last for weeks, months, or years. It kinda sucks.

But then the pieces come together, the lights come on, and you see all the risk and faith was perfectly reasonable.

I think if I were to watch my life like a movie running from God's perspective, I might see the action  differently. I think I would see the Holy Spirit orchestrating opportunity after opportunity to answer my desire to be drawn close to God. To God, the lights are always on. And He constantly sends the message: Trust Me. Be brave. Step forward. Yes, you feel all a mess because, in places, you are a mess. But I madly love you, and want to enter all that mess, all those margins, with My mercy. And then you can go and be My mercy to others so they might receive it, too.

When we feel accompanied in a place of our vulnerability, our hearts open wide. God's mercy is able to enter, and tremendous things result. Old pains are healed. We realize we are lovable and we can start to bask in being loved. Our thinking and our actions change as a result. We experience conversion.

But something else can happen when third parties witness experiences of vulnerability in others. This stirs up their own sense of vulnerability, from which they are busy hiding themselves. When these people start to feel their vulnerability, instead of feeling accompanied by witnessing God's mercy to a soul, they feel alone and left out. They shut down. They harden. They hunker down in their position of rejecting God's mercy and love or snap themselves out of any faint stirrings they felt towards openness and receiving. They push others away with layers of whatever they protect themselves with. They may resort to expressions of hatred, ridicule, and violence, or more respectable responses like indifference, eye-rolling, or the pursuit of distractions. Anything but the courage to believe that God's mercy is for them, too.

Sometimes I struggle to respect the delicate space where others hide their vulnerability. I have exercised so much courage, sometimes rather gruffly, for myself, that I forget that I cannot come ramming at full steam into the heart and life of another. And perhaps more often than not, fear of my own "full steam" will cause me to stall out before I get to the place where I can actually be of help to someone who desires it from me.

Because surely God has not tutored me with this bizarre gift that I railed against and rejected for so long just for the fun of it. Everything God gives to each one is for everyone.

So show me, Lord, how you gave me this for someone else. Or, at least make it a benefit for someone else, whether I see it or not.

My Word in Silence: Apostolic Love

This last weekend I was on a silent retreat whose theme was mercy. This was a genuine experience of God's grace for everyone I spoke with (and there were about 60 of us there). There is much that I will be able to bask in and meditate on and practice with for months to come. But I also came away with a word, a phrase really, that wasn't so much a part of the theme or the preaching, but it was simply from God for me. Really, yes, it has everything to do with God's mercy for me.

There is a reality that I have experienced and grown in for years, and have been able to identify, to feel, to mourn the lack of, to long for, to be called to -- and yet I never had a word for it. It wasn't, I think, because I lacked the creativity or the intelligence to know what to call it. It was more like God wanted it to stay in the realm of the ineffable for me. So it could do its work in me without my being able to communicate about it with any precision. But now He has given me the word.

And the word is this: apostolic love.

No, not Christian love; not spiritual love; not spiritual friendship; not apostolic zeal.

But apostolic love.

This is a love that is born from the cross of Christ in the hearts of those who share in it. It is a love that wants to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and move out into the world to bring Christ's love to those who do not know Christ's love. It inspires risk and work and joy and pain. It creates a bond that is not about cementing people to each other, but about a common drawing to the cross of Christ, which is the freeing unity of becoming His bond-slaves. It means giving one's life for Christ by giving it to Christ's people. It is the bond of unity in the Holy Spirit -- the person's unity with Christ and unity with fellow-Christian.

It takes incredible faith to move into this, because there is tremendous personal cost involved. This experience of unity with Christ and other souls requires the experience of Christ's cross.

It is what the Bishop-martyrs testify to: St. Ignatius of Antioch, St. John Chrysostom, St. Paul with the Ephesians in Acts 20.

When Christian life is calculated on the basis of intellectual assent to dogmatic or moral norms and lame "moral choices" made while ensconced on the comfortable couch of one's luxuries, all this zealous vigor of apostolic love gets drained and we are left with lifeless, fruitless, motionless religiosity that, I believe, is the essence of what made Jesus want to spew the Laodiceans out of his mouth.

When Confirmation Received Me

I was received into the Catholic Church and confirmed when I was 25 years old. Did infant baptism as a Lutheran, and spent five highly formative years in a charismatic fellowship right before crossing the Tiber. My pentecostal friends found it weird that I thought I needed a Catholic sacrament to make the Holy Spirit real in my life.

The weird thing I discovered was what I actually needed to make the sacrament of Confirmation come alive in my life.

My RCIA was, in a word, lame. It was taught as a class and really didn't meet any of my needs or even allow me to discover what my needs were. I was thrilled to become a Catholic, but RCIA was to me mostly a season to be endured.

However, a long time before I got that far, I made an inspired commitment to go on pilgrimage to the Holy Land. It was something God stirred up in my heart, I promised Him I would do it "someday," and then the opportunity to do it opened up when I heard John Michael Talbot speak of a group he would lead there. I'm not even sure I knew I would become Catholic when I made the decision to go. But the trip ended up being my "Catholic honeymoon," taking place roughly two weeks after I entered the Church.

Our pilgrimage group met in New York and we bonded rather quickly. My spot in our tour bus was right behind John Michael, and he and the others got to know me as "the brand new Catholic." This was my very first experience of spending any kind of extended time with Catholics with any degree of spiritual exchange. All I had known before this was my own personal prayer, sporadic discussions of theological topics with one or two Catholic friends, and my lame RCIA.

After a few days, these pilgrimage Catholics were freaking me out. I came from a land where everything spiritual was invisible. I was surrounded by people with medals and beads who thought sacramentally about blessings and places and objects and prayers in common. My roommate loved Mary to an extent that made me panic, speaking of her like the Virgin was a part of her life. John Michael gave a talk about the sacramentality of geography, and of seeing the actual places Jesus walked. People couldn't wait to touch things in all the holy places. And I could not take it in at all. My heart and brain were on full tilt.

One night we prayed in the Church of the Garden of Gethsemane. I felt so lonely and frightened that Catholicism -- or at least life among Catholics -- was a terrible mistake. I believed the Church belonged to Jesus and somewhere was hiding rich mystical treasure, but I felt like I was stuck in a dead church where people were caught up in a bunch of stupid, meaningless trappings.

As we left the church that night, our priest companion said to us, "Be sure to come up here and touch the rock before you go" (supposedly the rock where Jesus had prayed). That was the last straw for me. Interiorly I screamed, "Lord, I don't want to touch some stupid, dead rock. I want to touch you!"

The next morning as I trudged to the next holy site from our hotel I prayed a good "agnostic's prayer" about all this. I told God I didn't believe anything about holy places and things having special graces, but if He wanted to prove me wrong, He could go ahead and do it.

Our Mass that day was in the Church of the Tomb of Lazarus, and we used the readings and Mass proper to that place. With the readings I began tearing up, and as the Eucharistic prayer began I was weeping, practically wailing. I had no idea what has happening to me (as everyone around me showered me with tissues), but I remember barely being able to bring myself into the communion procession, so tiny did I feel, so peeled to the core. The words roared through my spirit "He that believes in me, though he were dead, YET SHALL HE LIVE." The Lord was telling me He knew all about my deadness and all about everyone else's deadness, but that He had brought me into the Church and commissioned me that His life would go forth both in me and through me. My mission was clear. Be alive. Bring God's life everywhere I would be sent.

John Michael spoke during the communion meditation about how even though we can come into the Church and receive the sacraments at one point, sometimes it is at another point that the Church and the sacraments "come into" us. I probably didn't realize at the time he was talking to me. And I didn't really realize that my Confirmation, my commissioning by God, was exploding into activation at that moment.

And after I cleared the snot out of me after Mass I sat down to collect myself. I felt the Lord ask me, "Um, Marie, by the way.... where are you?" And then I realized. "Oh. The church of the Tomb of Lazarus. Ok, Lord," I admitted, "I guess holy places do have special graces."

And all of this I was able to realize not only because I was in the Holy Land, but because I was experiencing being with Catholics in a sharing-life, community way. When I was without a lived experience of faith with others, I spared myself a lot of pain, but I also "spared" myself the glory of God revealed. That community experience was as temporary as it was real, but it awakened a hunger and a seeking that has only intensified over the last 21 years.

Let us be brave to face the pain and the glory, and not allow ourselves to be satisfied with our utter dissatisfaction.

I Am Coming to Move Among Them

This morning as Jesus was exposed upon our church altar for adoration, this is what occurred to me.

I am this girl:

I am a beggar before God.
And I live among beggars.

There is no shame in this. It is simply our status before God the creator of all. He is incredibly good.

Beggars are not always incredibly good. Mostly we are incredibly needy. And most of us don't like that at all.

Some of us don't like it so much that we start to hurt each other and become very bad. Our need and pain makes us merciless.

I know Jesus loves us so much. I come and tell Him, "Lord, they don't know You, and they are hurting each other!"

And suddenly I am overwhelmed by the compassion erupting in Jesus' heart in answer to this summons. "I am coming to move among them."

That, my friends, is His promise to the world and His call to the Church.

Epiphany and Mission

Lutherans have two things over Catholics when it comes to liturgy: 1) The Sundays Catholics call "ordinary time" after Christmas and before Lent Lutherans call "1st, 2nd, etc. Sunday of Epiphany." 2) The Sundays Catholics call "ordinary time after Easter and before Advent, Lutherans call "nth Sunday of Pentecost" (or actually Whitsunday in my old Lutheran hymnal, which loses the effect somewhat.

I like that so much better. Another way to deal with this is to realize (as I wrote once before) that Pentecost is our ordinary. I would also add of course that Epiphany is our ordinary. And in the last few years I am coming to a growing appreciation of what that means.

It took me awhile to realize that the feast of Epiphany has been trying to get my attention for years. I wrote this last year, this in 2010 (as well as this, apparently before I learned to spell the word), and then of course there was that whole "joining the choir" story which happened on Epiphany Sunday of 2009 that I feel like I have told to death. Well, I see that the Church would have us reflect on Epiphany as Jesus' entering into his earthly ministry, and therefore we should think of our entering into His ministry also. Hence, the connection with Pentecost/ordinary time. The "ordinary" thing is that we live the supernatural ministry of Christ on earth in time and space in and through the power of the Holy Spirit.

Living the liturgical year makes me want to stagger with the beauty of it all. We grow; it moves us onward. It moves us onward; we grow. We don't cycle through "the same old thing" every year any more than lovers experience "the same old thing" in being together day after day.

Epiphany, like Pentecost, needs to be understood and experienced subjectively. God personally empowers because He personally calls. He calls me to fulfill a certain mission that is mine within Christ's all encompassing mission of the salvation of souls. Serving Christ means serving His mission to bring His love home to roost in more and more souls. His love is the power of salvation, the power to heal, to make whole, to make right, to restore, to raise up in royal splendor, to share His own life. To bring people into union with Him.

How does anyone really do that? I mean, try as I might, there ain't nothin' I can do to make another person love God or know God. Only God can really do that.

I see that my call is to love God with all my heart, which doesn't so much mean having a certain set of feelings or going through a checklist of behaviors. It means giving myself to Him as a gift. For me, it seems to mean saying, "Here I am, Lord" and then simply remaining there. It's that whole Carmelite idea of emptying oneself, making room for the God who fills. I can't fill myself; I can make nothing of the sort happen. But I can offer myself. I can die to myself by giving myself in love and service to the people in my life. I can desire God, and love others to demonstrate that desire. I can long. The longing, the giving, the being-open, the emptying -- these are all really evidences of the God Who is there, making all of that possible. No human could do these things merely hoping the universe is not an empty, heartless mechanistic cipher.

That's a weird mission. Maybe. But it really is only the presence of God that draws souls into union with Him, and therefore it is only through souls who know this surrender that God can draw souls into union with Him, because that whole Church thing is God's plan. Oh, I would also say that simply by baptismal grace God is present through us; we don't need to be some weird mystic freak to draw people (though it seems to help). No, I take that back. In reality, the definition of a Christian actually is "weird mystic freak," if one must put it that way. God's divine life present in a human being by grace brings the mystery of God into human experience, and that is the essence of Christianity. Without that dimension we just have a set of moral guidelines and good people trying to carry them out.

Epiphany is not through with me yet. I'm sure we've only just begun...