Contemplating the Angels

I have had angels on my radar screen of late. Ok, that sounds a bit weird. I think it began when a friend made a passing comment about how a choir, in the grand scheme of worship at Mass, acts in a way akin to "in persona chorus angelorum." As I contemplated that, I began to see all the references to angels that surround us in our Catholic life sort of highlighted in bright yellow as it were. And then more recently I re-read Volume Nine from Direction for our Times on angels, which you can download here. I've also read the book Send Me Your Guardian Angel about the ministry of St. (Padre) Pio and an currently working through two others which focus on patristic angelology.

There is no denying the reality of angels within Scripture, within Catholic teaching, within the lives and witness of the saints, and within the experiences of regular people. Still, there's this temptation to ignore them or relegate talk of angels to some theosophic, Christless spirituality. Coming up here in just a few days, the Church liturgically reminds us again of the Archangels, with their feast on September 29, and our Guardian Angels and their feast October 2. So, we need to counter the temptation to forgetfulness and listen to the witnesses who tell us of God's wonders.

Today I happened to attend a prayer meeting of the Lay Apostles (associated with Direction for our Times). The discussion was on, you guessed it, the angels. Of the fifteen or so people who attended, many spontaneously shared experiences of their own lives of asking for and receiving specific help and guidance from their guardian angels. These are the things we tend to think of as strange, isolated incidences in our lives, until we begin to share with others of the faithful and discover that while these are personal and sometimes private experiences, they are also as common as water.

I'll just share one personal experience that has happened in these last weeks since I've been paying more attention to my guardian angel. I was contemplating the fact that angels are pure intellect, with wisdom of exactly what God's will is for me at any given time. So I asked my guardian angel for help in making a good confession the last time I participated in that Sacrament. I had no flash of insight until I was in the midst of confessing my sins to God before the priest. Suddenly, I saw that everything I brought hinged together, and the difference between how I had made these various choices and what God's will for me actually is became very clear. I walked out of that confessional not only grateful to God for His grace, but with a deep respect for the ministry of my angel!

A Scripture that came to mind early on in this adventure that I mulled over was St. Paul's passing statement in 1 Corinthians 13 about speaking "in tongues of men and of angels." Years ago when I first encountered the baptism of the Holy Spirit (as we called it then) and speaking in tongues I had read many testimonies in which one person's prayer language was confirmed to be an actual spoken language that a native speaker could understand perfectly. But then there seemed to be many other people whose prayer language was not recognizable as such. I had never thought much about this little insertion of St. Paul's, apparently making a reference that was not necessary to explain to his readers, of the tongues of angels. I wondered if perhaps what God was giving with this gift was the possibility for human beings to ask for intercessions from the angels according to their perfect wisdom and understanding of God's will, in ways that the human intellect wouldn't conceive of asking. (Doesn't this just resonate wonderfully with the fact that everything God gives us is a grace, a gift? Nothing is of our own merit or labor, and yet we must give ourselves personally to God, with the exercise of our wills. Does not the Spirit pray for us with groans that words cannot express?)

Then, after contemplating this, I read of Padre Pio's ministry. At one point, in order to test him (and he was always having people test him), his superiors wrote to him in languages Pio could not understand. But he read the letter and responded naturally, saying that -- of course! -- his guardian angel translated the letter for him. Language is no barrier to heaven; only to us limited humans.

God never forces grace on us, and angels never force their help on us. But we can be more inclined to accept their ministry and if we ask, we receive. We can also intercede for others whose minds and hearts are far from focused on the Lord Jesus, asking for the specific helps their guardian angels are able to minister to be given to them. We each have a (usually) small but (always) vital part to play in the grand drama of the Kingdom that God had designed and that God sustains. It is a gift to us that He calls us to participate with Him, with heaven, to bring heaven to souls who need Him.

Thoughts on Waldstein's Talk: "Redeeming the Erotic: John Paul II's Reading of the Song of Songs."

The other night I has the opportunity to listen in on a live broadcast of a talk by Dr. Michael Waldstein entitled "Redeeming the Erotic: John Paul II's Reading of the Song of Songs." Because it was a live feed and not a recording, I am at the disadvantage of not being able to go back and listen to it again, nor can I quote from it as I was not taking notes of any sort at the time. But with that said, I was struck by one phrase that he developed regarding the character of the Bride in the Song of Songs. This was not from a line of Scripture per se but from John Paul II's discussion of her. It was this: She is the master of her own mystery.

The master of her own mystery.

The concept, of course, is that one can only give the gift of oneself if one possesses oneself.

The sort of related concept that Waldstein mentioned that pertains to the Lover in the Song of Songs is this notion that he calls the woman "My sister, my bride." He states that this shows that she is a person in her own right. She is not a commodity that he can grasp and take for himself as one might pick up a candy bar at the grocery store. In other words, the Lover knows that the woman is a person, not a thing.

And as a person, the woman is master of her own mystery. She chooses to make of herself a gift, which she bestows on her Lover, and he then receives her.

This struck a deep chord in me.

Then shortly afterwards, I came across a quote that I have been reflecting on for quite some time in a different context, weighing how this applies to various aspects of life: "He who makes himself his own master subjects himself to a fool for a master." -- St. Bernard of Clairvaux. (This, by the way, is one of the reasons I love Facebook. Where else can I be a part of little conversations here and there about the sayings of saints?!)

On the one hand we have John Paul II saying the Beloved is "the master of her own mystery," and on the other hand we have St. Bernard warning against being one's own master. What gives?

The discussion of the St. Bernard quote made it clear to me that the options here are a) Jesus is the master of my life or b) Jesus is not, and I am. So, what kind of Master is Jesus? If we lose our lives for His sake, we find them. If we give all to Him at His cross, He gives all back to us, redeemed, purified, sanctified and ready for life with Him in His kingdom, following Him. If I follow myself, I wander aimlessly, led by my animal desires.

So, how does the Bride get to be the master of her own mystery? From whence comes her mystery?! From the Lord. The enticement, the seduction, the beauty that is hers is only hers because it is truly His in origin. The Lord bestows to each, graces. Talents, as Matthew 25 has it. We are set as master over what God gives, and harsh words are reserved for the servant who did not act as master. But the image of the Bride in the Song of Songs is clearly a woman acts as master. "Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits" (SS 4:16). This is a woman who possesses herself so that she may make a free gift of herself to her Lover.

I am reminded what the Catechism of the Catholic Church has to say about self-mastery:

2339 Chastity includes an apprenticeship in self-mastery which is a training in human freedom. The alternative is clear: either man governs his passions and finds peace, or he lets himself be dominated by them and becomes unhappy. "Man's dignity therefore requires him to act out of conscious and free choice, as moved and drawn in a personal way from within, and not by blind impulses in himself or by mere external constraint. Man gains such dignity when, ridding himself of all slavery to the passions, he presses forward to his goal by freely choosing what is good and, by his diligence and skill, effectively secures for himself the means suited to this end."

2346 Charity is the form of all the virtues. Under its influence, chastity appears as a school of the gift of the person. Self-mastery is ordered to the gift of self. Chastity leads him who practices it to become a witness to his neighbor of God's fidelity and loving kindness.
2347 The virtue of chastity blossoms in friendship. It shows the disciple how to follow and imitate him who has chosen us as his friends, who has given himself totally to us and allows us to participate in his divine estate. Chastity is a promise of immortality.
Chastity is expressed notably in friendship with one's neighbor. Whether it develops between persons of the same or opposite sex, friendship represents a great good for all. It leads to spiritual communion. 

Not surprisingly, self-mastery is linked with the notion of chastity. At first blush, it seems that Eros and chastity have blessed little to do with each other except as some kind of opposites. It seems to me that this is because the word "chastity" gets used in an awkward, embarrassed way to mean "not all that dirty stuff." And what do we mean by "all that dirty stuff," anyway, if we are pressed for a definition? We usually mean "what we actually desire." This was Waldstein's first point: the Lover and the Beloved are both quite in tune with their desire. And this is where religious folk tend to get tripped up. We think that to be presentable to God we have to take all of our desires and stuff them under the couch cushions and into the closet, quick, before He sees them. Do you see how completely silly that is?!

The Lover and the Beloved are both very much in tune with their desires. If you read Song of Songs, you have to concur that it is erotic stuff. So, how is the erotic redeemed? Just like everything else that is a created good is redeemed: by the cross. 


If we take the Beloved as symbol of the Church for a moment, or at least if I take her as a symbol of myself as a woman, I need self-mastery to be able to give myself the way the Beloved does. This I know by my personal experience. The Beloved's got it; I'm working toward it! Again, the Catechism states: "Self-mastery is a long and exacting work. One can never consider it acquired once and for all. It presupposes renewed effort at all stages of life." (CCC 2342). It is a work of grace. Grace operates in our lives by bringing our human hearts, filled with their desires, to the cross. I can't surrender something to the Lord that I can first own as mine. And I can't receive back from the Lord something I haven't given over in the first place. The only place we have the "laudable exchange" with the Lord is the cross. I bring my sin, my unfulfilled longings, my powerlessness for good, my need, and I meet His inexhaustible love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, healing and meaning. I bring me; I meet Him.

So. Eros redeemed, then, is demonstrated by a "me" who has met "Him" and experienced the transformation into Him that this meeting brings. Looking back at the Catechism, Eros redeemed is demonstrated by a free and conscious gift of the self, given personally. I keep in mind my personhood: I am not a thing; and the personhood of the one to whom the gift is given: there is no acquisition going on. I am not purchasing the other with my gift. Only when I am giving myself this way, freely, personally, consciously, am I chaste. If I am just restrained by external pressures, I am not chaste.

As the catechism puts it, the virtue of chastity "blossoms" in friendship, of the sort that leads to spiritual communion and actually tutors us in how to follow the Lord. Now there's a beautiful image that I can relate to after a summer of gardening. The gift of self, the gift of Eros, the gift of the cross, the gift of friendship: it all brings us ultimately to know, love and serve God more and more deeply. There is a constant flow of grace as God gives to us and we give back to Him.

Need

My need is not my difficulty. My need, in its most pure form, will always lead me, pull me, draw me, to God, to fulfillment, to the One who fills my need.

My difficulty is in how I go about pursuing fulfillment to what I need. I have options. For example, I can think, worry, ponder. I can weigh all the factors I can think of. I can wallow in indecision and do nothing. I can bolt forth in pride, in the heat of my own passion, in the brilliance of my own ideas and plans. I can meekly follow what most other people do. I can comfortably follow how my friends think. I can automatically do whatever I feel like.

Or, I can in the first place consider that I am a creature, that I have been made a daughter of the Most High God in baptism and I have been made a member of His family. I can consider to Whom I belong. I can ask for help. I can be simple. I can take my fears, my thoughts, my passions, my plans, my worries, my loves, my self to the cross and acknowledge that what I need ultimately springs from that place. I can open my heart in trust to receive back from Him the fulfillment of all I bring, of all I need.

My biggest problem, I suppose, is not accepting that I need in the first place.

Maybe the way around that is to ask a simple question each day: What do I want? What am I looking for?

Instead of sighing and figuring happiness and love are impossible or out of reach, I can acknowledge that what I want, deep in my heart, only serves to point me to what I need.

Then, with God and all His heavenly court always cheering for me, I think I'll be just fine. How could I not be?

And With Your Spirit

Soon and very soon, Latin rite Catholic liturgy, prayed in English, will sound a bit different than it does right now. After several years of apparently necessary fuss and bother, a translation is coming down the pike that is more faithful to the normative Latin and less concerned with the flair of the particular incarnation of English most in use around the world. Being not only a lover of the Church and her liturgy, but a lover of words as well, I am very excited by this development. The translation, of course, is already set, but liturgical composers on the one hand and catechists on the other need to get their proverbial ducks in a row and then put them on parade effectively before the laity so that these changes don't hit us too much like rumble strips.

Then again, I've always found rumble strips sort of fun. Driving along the turnpike, hour after hour of highway, and suddenly you hit GADAGADAGADAGADA, and you wake up before you slam into the cars stopped at the toll booth, in case you missed all of the signs in the preceding ten miles indicating their impending presence.

Yesterday in the mail we got from our parish a nifty little pamphlet that like one of those signs. It outlined exactly which phrases in the liturgy which are prayed by the congregation will be changed. This isn't the first time I've read about these changes. And still, I was especially struck this time by the change most frequently repeated: Our response to the priest stating "The Lord be with you" changes from "And also with you" (which is my standard dry-humor response to church friends who wish me a good day or whatever, which I suppose will now sound "so early 21st century") to "and with your spirit. Oooh, thought I. I like that.

And with your spirit. I grew up saying that, or rather singing that, in the WELS Lutheran liturgy. And of course older Catholics grew up saying it in Latin. I don't know about anyone else, but for the most part I didn't really think about why we said "and with your spirit." I probably did simply presume this was a stilted churchy way of saying "and also with you," and so I probably would have been very sympathetic to those who wanted to get rid of Churchese and talk like normal folk. For the most part, I'm for that. However, the normative Latin specifies we are asking the Lord to be with the priest's spirit, so let's talk the way Mama teaches us.

Now, in the years since I've stopped singing "and with your spirit" I've learned about the tri-partite nature of man, as St. Paul describes it, of body, soul and spirit. There was a lot of talk about this in the charismatic fellowship that was my worship home for the five years before I became a Catholic. And recently, the Lord has brought this front-and-center to my attention again through the teachings of John Michael Talbot. He uses this body, soul, and spirit language from St. Paul (and modern charismatics) in a way that enables me to bridge the lingo gap very easily into the ancient monastic wisdom which he unpacks for us moderns and our spiritual formation.

Scripture speaks of the spirit and the flesh, or soul and spirit in many places. My own conjecture about why this language is not much understood and not much used is that it can only be used with meaning when discussing experience, precisely, spiritual experience of conversion, of change. Homilies often focus on  concrete things we can do, instead of the internal factors of how we respond to the Spirit of God, or what happens to us when we do. Perhaps this is more appropriate, or it is thought to be more appropriate, to spiritual direction than to homilies. Conversion is an individual matter, and yet it is to be the collective experience to which we can all relate. Really, I think this is the crux of the problem. Even when conversion is our collective experience, we don't seem to have the language to employ to talk about it. And what we can't discuss tends to drop away from our collective spiritual experience. That's just my conjecture on our modern Catholic Catch-22.

The liturgy, of course, is a key spiritual experience in the life of a Catholic Christian. So it seems very fitting to keep this word "spirit" constantly reverberating in our ears, bringing us back to clue in to the existence of something important. We can start by asking What's a spirit? And how does it differ from plain "me," or my soul?

John Michael Talbot has an audio teaching touching on this point which you can find on this site. Look for the cell group teaching dated July 13. He also talks about it in his book The Joy of Music Ministry in this way:

Using the anthropology of St. Paul, we can define the human being as having a spirit, soul, and body. Due to our current condition we usually think of these things the other way around, or body, soul, spirit. Body is our senses and emotions. Soul is the spiritual mind, or the ability to be cognitively aware of reality. Body and soul are the house of the spirit and are rightly engaged in the things of space and time. Spirit is the deepest reality of our being. It is pure spiritual intuition that is beyond senses, emotions, or thoughts, but builds on, complements, and completes them all. In union with God's Spirit, our spirit has a wonderful and unique capacity for eternity and infinity. It is present in eternity now and does all things even while body and soul are engaged in the matters of space and time.(p. 16)

But then, there's this matter of the fall into sin, in which we all participate!

It starts in the way we function with the basic body, soul and spirit "stuff" of which we are made. When the senses of the body lead the way, we become primarily concerned with sense gratification. Rather than being positively incarnational, we become "sensual" or "carnal." ... When we don't get what we want, we become angry and upset. When the emotions become clouded, the thoughts become conflicted, unfocused, and confused. The spirit gets totally ignored and covered up in this chaotic cacophony of discord. It is as if the spirit is asleep, or even dead....The spirit has to be awakened. (p. 19)

After conversion to Christ, it is in the Church that we come to see how He heals and transforms us:

It is here that the authenticity of our own reordering according to His teaching is really tested. If we let the Lord turn us right side up again, from body and soul with a sleeping spirit, to spirit, soul, and body, then we find a common union with all people and all creation by the very fact of this reorientation of living. When the spirit is really first in our lives, then we intuitively see and are united with this essence in all creation, animate and inanimate...From this position of awakening and rebirth we begin to unite with others in their own potential for this reality whether they actually see it or not!...This takes great faith and patience, but it can be done. We actually call forth the hidden Spirit of Jesus in others when we act as Jesus would with them. This helps to spread the Music of God through Christ. This sings the Divine Song. (p. 33-34)

So, yes, I'm rather excited about our having the word "spirit" on our lips more often so that we can be moved closer to contemplation of the realities of the design and function of the human spirit. And that's just one tiny aspect of the coming changes.

Something in me really loves rumble strips.

Like Throwing Leaves in a Stream...

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. 

September 1, 2010

 

Jesus

 

Be at peace in your day, dear apostles. Perhaps you are learning to move more slowly, and perhaps this has helped you to be more connected to My presence in your service. How blessed you are if this lesson has taken root in your life. Strive to achieve this way of life because you will have the greatest gifts available to you if you move methodically, with Me. Sometimes, people are unaware of the nature of My grace flowing into the day through their cooperation. This is best, dear apostles. Be like little children who throw many leaves from a bridge into a stream and then walk away. The impact of their action flows down the stream without any help from the child and the impact from your daily service flows into the greater stream of the Church without any further action on your part. Truly, your consistent service impacts the entire Church in some way, both in the day you are spending your time and in the future where you may not be spending time. Each of you serves as a result of the service of many people. You were formed and directed in your faith by the sacrifice of those who went before you in service. Be grateful for their sacrifice and then you, also, give willingly and generously for those around you and those who will come after you. Dear friends, I am sending formation through each of you that is very specific for this time. It is for this reason that I implore you to remain fixed on Me and all that I am asking you to do. I want you to be holy. I can bring the greatest amount of mercy into the world if My beloved friends help Me. Be disinterested when the enemy of unity brings you reasons to disagree with those around you. Be interested when your Jesus begs you to overlook the flaws of others and serve alongside them in harmony. Dear apostles, we have nothing without unity. Our campaign of love will only be successful if we concentrate on love. Love overcomes everything, even the most profound suffering. Because, when one of God’s children has nothing and he is bereft, the smallest bit of love is like the greatest feast. I, your Jesus, am now a beggar. I am begging you to love. Allow Me to see to justice because only I am equipped to pass judgement. You must see to loving, despite any wounds you have suffered. I am the greatest victim of injustice so I am the best consoler. Bring your suffering to Me and I will send you away with love, which you will then continue to distribute on My behalf. Be serious about My work, dear apostles. It is important.

Reconciling with Renunciation

Recently I re-read a short portion of John Michael Talbot's book The Joy of Music Ministry that struck me in a paradigm-shifting way. I suppose one could say what I read redeemed a paradigm I've lived with, or that it freed me to know that my understanding is limited, and that I can delight in knowing that there is more than one way for me to understand what God does in my life.

In a post last spring called The Human and the Holy I wrote about a classic example involved here: In my young 20s, I loved 60s music, especially the Monkees, but I was persuaded by preaching I heard that this music was worldly and that I should give it up. I did, rather dramatically. Later I became a Catholic, and I learned that being human and having human interests was the way God made me. It's that whole Incarnation idea, you know. It was a very deep aspect of my conversion that is still profound in my life.

But here's the thing. I have been hung up on how wrong it was for me to give up the music like I did. But here's what I read from John Michael Talbot:

Jesus attracted disciples... [He] called people to Himself and asked them to be initiated into discipleship. This initiation was through renunciation. Jesus called His first disciples to renounce all possessions, positions, and relationships in order to follow Him. This is radical, but also typical of all the religious and mystical masters. As Evagrios, the Christian monk and theologian said, we must, "renounce all to gain everything." Why is this so prominent?

I believe it all comes back to being able to hear and make God's music again with one's whole life. We have all fallen into patterns of orientation and behavior that are disordered. We have become part of the discord.... It's not that the things we use are always wrong. Sometimes we just use the right thing wrongly. This results in suffering and death. It results in discord and the death of God's harmony and peace....

Specifically, this means letting go of the senses and emotions of the body and the thoughts of the mind or soul, in order to break through to the spirit.... This is why the masters all demand complete renunciation at the beginning of conversion. Sometimes it is only for a time. Sometimes it is for life. But this renunciation of all enables us to be re-oriented towards a healthy use of our thoughts, emotions, and senses, with the spirit being unquestionably first in our life... even especially [in] the little things of mundane reality in our lives. When these little things become opportunities for the miracles of rebirth, then the big things can be approached without the danger of the old ego and self trying to sneak in. (p. 29-30)

This helped me to realize that the core of what I've struggled with is not the renunciation, but the dramatic and almost violent way in which I tend to approach renunciation. Perhaps I should use the word passionate rather than violent -- that word choice being an example of the very thing! I can appreciate how the music I loved took up God-shaped space in my heart and life. I can see how giving it up freed me to belong to Christ more fully. Yet, as a young 20-something, it was difficult for me to separate out the positive call to discipleship from Jesus from my gung-ho "Yes Lord" that had me straining my spiritual muscles to the point of pain. It's as if I valued the pain more than Christ, or mistook the pain for Christ. Pain is not foreign to discipleship, but I think the crux of the matter is differentiating a sharing in Christ's pain, borne of love, and a pain I undergo in a teeth-gritting, man-this-is-going-to-hurt-but-Jesus-asks kind of way. That goes back to this other post I wrote recently, about gouging out one's eye. Christ is no sadist; He does not love to see us in pain. He loves us to be with Him, and to be immersed in the fire of His passion, in the life of the Blessed Trinity, which is self-donating love.

I still am called to practice renunciations of various sorts from time to time. I believe that in general I have learned to be more gentle in it, but I see that I still have a ways to go before I always realize that real renunciation is always an act of love, of passion, of unity with Christ.

An Old Journal Tumbled Out at Me

Today as I was putting something away in my closet, and old journal of mine fell at my feet. I noticed that it covered the period during which I began my journey into the Catholic Church, so I sat reading for awhile. Of course, I have many memories of those days, but it was very interesting to read my first-hand experiences as I was living through them. The first year I waded through was before any inkling of where God was leading me had occurred to me. It was sometimes hard to read, because it was so evident to me that I kept ramming head first into the same wall again and again. Why could I not see it at the time, I wondered? I was so full of "God's hope" one day, when circumstances were happy, but the next day, or sometimes later that same day when circumstances changed, I figured God had changed, too.

It was interesting that I did not record some of the major internal conversations I remember, the catalysts. I realize that I was not very much in tune with what was truly significant and what wasn't. But there were some details that I recorded that I had truly forgotten about. One was about the neighbor downstairs. At one point I wrote about how he had come to talk with me. He was very sweet on me, and frankly he scared me because I didn't know how to make him leave me alone. He was a good 10 years older than myself, and a very soft-spoken, passionate, intense type. Now, at the time I was very much like a functionally-broken appliance -- you know, the kind whose knob only works if you jiggle it just the right way or apply a certain pressure in a certain direction on it. This conversation, which cost poor Randy significantly (I learned he, well, had a wagon and fell off it after I brushed him off), was like that kind of a patch-job courage boost for me. It emboldened me enough to have a conversation a few days later with my friend Keith about his new-found Catholic faith. Without Randy's expressed interest in me, I might not have had the courage to air my questions that opened me to reading about the Church. Seems perhaps I owe Randy some retroactive prayers, huh.

I was also amazed at how concrete and tangible grace became to me as I was drawn to the Church. Old patterns dried up and died off. I found myself experiencing security in my relationship with God like never before. God's direction to me as I gleaned from Scripture was consistent, insistent, filling me with courage and peace. And most significantly I began to see the importance of my humanity. I knew that this was a key theme that has stayed with me since those days, but it was interesting to see that I was aware of it and wrote about it in those terms.

I know that I was not without problems (at that time and later), but it was also clear to me to see that problems became excruciatingly more difficult for me the more isolated I felt from others. And that sense does not come to me simply from being alone, but from blockages in me making it difficult for me to open my heart. Even when it seemed to lead me nowhere in particular, Jesus was always impressing upon me to go with my heart.

My most overwhelming sense after reading that journal is sheer gratitude for what God has done for me. I've changed tremendously, mostly for the better, since those days. I'm glad a friend recommended journaling to me back in my late teens, because it has truly become my own record of God's wonderful works, a testimony to his faithfulness and my recurring needs.

Show others the happiness that comes with knowing you are loved and protected.

On the first of every month, our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service.
August 1, 2010

Jesus

Be at peace in your work, dear apostles. Neither hurry, nor delay. Do not pause in your service to heaven, wherever that service has taken you. We move at a steady pace if we are together. If you are working without Me, you may find yourself either hurrying or delaying. I do not hurry and I do not delay. Test yourself today. Determine your pace. If it is steady and you are calm, all is well. If your pace is hurried, and you are not calm, perhaps you have forgotten that it is My work you are doing, and not your own. If you have stopped working for heaven, because you are sad, frustrated or discouraged, then that is a sign that you need Me to renew you and restore your confidence in our togetherness. I speak to you of abandonment and I ask you to regard the outcome of your service as irrelevant in that you are not in control of the fruits of your day. Most days, you will not see the fruits. Most days, you will not be able to understand the fruits. This is because My beloved friends have a limited understanding of heaven’s power and heaven’s patience. If heaven has a goal to accomplish, heaven begins preparing early. Much of your service, My dear apostles, will be that of sowing seeds for future conversions. Dearest apostles, so close to Me, can you accept this? Will you trust Me? Many people contribute to the construction of a building on earth. Think of all that happens before the building is erected. All of the materials must be created and fashioned and then assembled and there must be a plan. The people producing the materials may never see the building that is erected through their cooperation. It is this way with the Kingdom of God. There are many hands at work in this world assembling materials for the construction of the edifice that the Father has willed for His Church on earth at this time. You are my diligent workers who cheerfully stand forward to serve the King. I thank you, dear friends. I urge you to trust, to patience and to lively participation in this plan, wherever I have placed you. Rejoice! Show others the happiness that comes with knowing you are loved and protected.

More about Putting to Death

So, today at Mass I heard this reading from Colossians:

Brothers and sisters: If you were raised with Christ, seek what is above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Think of what is above, not of what is on earth. For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ your life appears, then you too will appear with him in glory. Put to death, then, the parts of you that are earthly: immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and the greed that is idolatry. Stop lying to one another, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed, for knowledge, in the image of its creator. Here there is not Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all and in all. (Col. 3:1-5, 9-11)

I was struck by another reference to "putting to death," after just musing on this theme in my last post. This text, from Paul, is obviously written in a post-Easter, post-Pentecost context and understanding. His understanding of what it means to "put to death" is rooted in the fact that we are now in Christ, and raised with him (in baptism, cf. Rom 6:4-5). Paul tells us we have died, and therefore we put to death. This is like saying, you have been saved, so bring yourself into your salvation. This whole concept of the timeline of salvation and how we experience it is a key difference between Catholic Christian teaching and the variety of non-Catholic Christian teachings. I have been given Christ's life. His passion, death, resurrection and ascension accomplished in time the offer of new life to me and the rest of the world. My baptism imparted spiritually to me all of Christ's potential for my life. And my process of living, this gift of grace that I have called my life, has as its entire purpose the outworking into my experience of all that potential in and by the power of the Holy Spirit, transforming my will and making real, actual changes in who I am, so that in my unique individuality I am made to be like Him.

"Put to death" suddenly takes on a whole new meaning in this thorough-going Christian context. There is one death that means anything to me, and that is Christ's on the cross. When I "put to death," I bring my immorality, my impurity, my passion, and my evil desire (which means I first have to own it, not live in proud denial of my sinful reality) and render it up to Jesus on the cross. In practical terms, to me this means I bring the worst of me before the deepest, most passionate love of God expressed to me, which is Christ on the cross. And there, I find that love wins. Love is stronger than sin, stronger than death. In my most vulnerable I find not a kick in the gut, not rejection, not a entrance-exam-of-worth that I could never pass, not silence, but I find God's deepest passion... yearning ... for me.

And it occurred to me today that this is precisely what every single Mass is about. I am to bring my life just as it is, again to Calvary. I come to put death that which is impure, but not just that. I come to walk away with the gift of life in my body, having met my Lord in His deepest passion and received into me His life in exchange for my death.

I'm sure there's an applicable quotation from St. John of the Cross for this. I'll have to go searching.

Some Thoughts on this Matter of Gouging Out One's Eye

Recently in the midst of some off-hand chatter, a friend made reference to a Scripture in a way that was quite jarring to me, like the proverbial needle ripped off the record. I've been turning over in my mind just why it struck me that way.

You see, there are the "hard sayings" of Jesus, and then it seems there are the "weird sayings" of Jesus. And to me, what my friend referred to was one of these weirder ones:  "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell." (cf. Mt. 5:27-30)

I'll chalk it up to the fact that I'm not a man that I've not spent a lot of time meditating on this particular passage. But the way these words struck me put me in memory of the seasons in my life when I agonized over the meaning of "If anyone would follow me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me." (Lk. 9:23)

Let him deny himself. Gouge out your eye.

What in the world is wrong with Jesus, anyway? It sure sounds like He'd be quite pleased if we destroyed ourselves for His sake.

And you know what? I've tried that. I've tried a religion that was all about holding my stinky humanity at arm's length while I got out the gasoline and the torch, determined to get rid of the culprit, which was essentially me. I think of it now as simply a spiritualization of an emotional tendency I had some years earlier towards suicide. I think of it as the basic form of my struggle against grace, this idea that God made some sort of heinous mistake when He made me, and that to right the wrong He made, I should make myself go away. Salvation, Marie's way, is self-destruction.

Religion turns into a mess when I start with my own twisted self-evaluation and work from there towards making me right myself. This religion starts and ends with, and completely revolves around, me. Me, in all my wretchedness, still convinced I should be able to get myself happy. And always failing.

The ever-patient Blessed Trinity looks on, heart about to explode with love, waiting for me to just look upward toward heaven, where I think I'm propelling myself.

Let's go back to that eye gouging verse. I'm no Scripture scholar, but it seems to me that Jesus is trying to get folks to recognize the disconnect between a do-it-yourself, me-centered approach and a Father, madly in love with His creation who has sent the Second Person of the Trinity in the flesh to look them in those eyes and announce Himself to them and beg them to come home to Him. Note carefully to what Jesus says:  "If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out." If... your eye causes you to sin. Another time when the disciples just don't get it when he talks about the law and defilement, Jesus makes it pretty clear: "For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy." (Mt. 15:19) It's pretty clear that it isn't your eye that produces sin, it's your heart. You want a program to save yourself? the Lord says, I've got a logical one for you. Here's a knife. Have at it. If you can't see anything, your sin will be resolved, right? Reading this, it sure seems to me the hearers are supposed to recoil from his suggestion, and say No Way!

But then what? That's the question I think Jesus is begging by His presence, by His Incarnation. But if you want to get at the root of the issue, if you want peace(Mk. 10:17), then know your eyeball is not at fault, it is your heart. And I am here because I'm calling to your heart! (Jn. 7:37) I'm saying, Come, follow me (Jn. 1:38-39). That tug that you feel when you hear me preach, (Jn. 1:41) that amazement (Jn. 7:21) you experience when you see me heal someone (Mk. 7:37) -- that 's divine in origin (Jn. 10:37-38). Answer the tug! (Mt. 11:28) Give me your heart! You want your heart fixed?(Jn. 14:15) Well, I made it. Give it to me, run after me (Jn. 7:37-38). Together, we'll go Home.

And what about this whole matter of denying oneself?  It cannot mean that God's desire is that I hate, mutilate, destroy, or kill myself, literally, or just hate myself a bit seasonally, like during Lent. Jesus teaches us that it is the evil thief who "comes to steal, kill and destroy," but that Jesus comes that His flock "might have life and have it more abundantly" (John 10:10). It's not just that God doesn't want us dead. It's that He really, really wants us to be fully alive!

As I see it, to deny myself, as Christ teaches me, is to forsake my privately produced program for salvation. God, I've had so many. They're like potions. Take this much religious stuff, pick this group of people and figure out how to feel two steps morally superior to them, interact with people in a way that makes me feel all smug, mix well and take two gulps daily. Feel terrible in these prescribed ways. Ignore that reaction your heart has to all this; it doesn't matter. What does it know? Measure up against a standard you have decided, whether impossibly high or ridiculously low. On and on, ad nauseum.

It's all idolatry. It's all the deadly religion of me and has nothing to do with Christ. And Jesus says, deny it. Leave behind all your attempts to save yourself. It's all a bunch of shit.(Phil. 3:8) Follow Me! I'm the one who made your heart, who knows your heart, who loves your heart. If you want your heart back and you want to live from it, then come, follow me. That's what I want, too. I want you to be you, to be happy, to be whole, to be alive, to be human. With two eyes, to see My face!


Today I was listening to a teaching John Michael Talbot gave his community a couple of weeks ago. He said, “When you die to yourself, you are not going to become nothing. You are going to become something new.” This is the promise of Christianity, and we each have to test it with our lives. The process, of course, is not instantaneous. John Michael went on to talk about how the Potter goes about fixing us (remember, it's His way, not mine!). When we are cracked, in a wrong shape, the potter will re-wet the clay by His Holy Spirit, make us malleable again and then take us down to nothing. We become like a lump. And then, He reshapes us, resurrects us into something new, and (this is my favorite part) nothing is wasted. Every single bit of us that is from God gets put back into that new creation that He makes of us when we give our lives to Him. God did not make a heinous mistake in creating me who I am. I just need to let it all go into His hand, especially the bits I wish I didn't have to think about putting into His hand because I hate them so much. As I give it all over, He makes of it something of His glory. Then I live His life here, and share in His life for eternity.

If we do not live as if glory is real, are we not living as Christian agnostics, and missing all the good stuff?

Pontifical Council on the New Evangelization

This is a three-part series on the recent establishment of a brand-new Pontifical Council on the New Evangelization, published on the St. Catherine of Siena Institute blog, Intentional Disciples.

part one
part two
part three


This is exciting stuff to me.

Unfinished Thoughts on Worship

I wrote this a couple of weeks ago and never felt finished with it, but decided to post it as part of thoughts in process.
===========================================================
I've been thinking lately about what the word "worship" had meant to me in the various contexts of my life. I suppose most recently I've landed on Romans 12:1 as the baseline for how I normally think and speak this word: "...offer your bodies, as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God -- which is your spiritual worship." Worship is the offering of myself to God the Father, in union and only because of the offering Jesus Christ made to the Father, and because He has taken me up into Himself. As a Catholic then, the Eucharist is clearly the supreme act of worship from which all the rest derives.


Ok, I've got the theology student in me satisfied for the moment.

I speak more than one dialect of Christianese however, and this makes me happy.
              
In another dialect, "worship" gets paired with "praise," as in "Praise and Worship." Praise and Worship has a contextual meaning of a certain form of prayer that is generally done in singing, with instruments, and with the body. I have almost always experienced this kind of prayer in the company of people who have experienced pentecostal manifestations of spiritual gifts, but I understand that in some settings it is simply considered a musical taste toward the modern. So perhaps I will nuance my use of this term by specifying charismatic praise and worship as distinct from praise music.

I was thinking about these things while at Mass today. We sang some great praise songs, including one that I had learned many years ago at Risen Savior Fellowship before I became a Catholic. During communion we sang one of my very favorite worship songs, Take Lord, Receive, which is the prayer of St. Ignatius of Loyola. We closed with the Rich Mullins song Step by Step. And I thought, surely a Mass can be powerful and beautiful in the most rudimentary of settings, with the barest of liturgical flourish. Certainly priests have said Mass in dire conditions where they barely dared to speak above a whisper, if that. Certainly there is a very human element that comes into play in worship (for otherwise it would be no worship, just a form) and praise, and Praise and Worship.

God is not the one who needs our prayer. We are the ones who need to pray, who need to worship, who need to praise God, who need to find the way our heart can give itself and, for some, the way we can lead others into worship. Today I was musing on how I miss the way I used to praise God. Mind you, I still attend charismatic praise and worship now and then, but I have noticed that those who lead it (who are either younger or older than I) tend toward the gentle. Gentle is sometimes good; it is sometimes how the Spirit blows. But full-throated and energetic is also good. Sometimes gentle feels like timid, or unsure, and therefore hardly a stance that Christ has before the Father. Sometimes those of us with a melancholy bent need to simply "make a joyful noise unto the Lord" and dance and clap and all that. Now, I know it can get to be not much more than fun, and cease to really bring the heart before God, but let's be honest: so can any sort of worship. The most sublime liturgical celebration can seem like a boring routine, and lively praise music can feel like a bad concert. How do we pierce into the heart of it? How do we touch the heart of God in worship? Of course, we start with the desire to do so, the need, the Reality, and a heart that bows into the Reality.

Recently a friend of mine emailed me a link to this video. It presents very well the heart of the kind of charismatic praise and worship that I cut my teeth on some two decades ago, with all its associated strengths and weaknesses. To me it seems that both the strength and the weakness can be summarized in one word: submission. The strength I see is a tremendous desire on the part of these worshippers to submit themselves to the Word of God. The weakness I see is not the risk toward wild emotional expression, but rather the truncated understanding of the Word of God in the manifestation of word definitions in the original Hebrew. When one longs to submit (and I understand this desire from the inside out) sometimes one ends up submitted fully to something that is penultimate, or even not even close to penultimate, just plain old incomplete. I think the heart of a worshipper longs to give itself as a lover to the Beloved. But we must bear in mind that the One we long for is Transcendent, calling us out into the great realm of Mystery. God chose for the Old Testament to be written primarily in Hebrew, but as Scripture says, the highest heavens cannot contain the Lord, much less Hebrew words.

The Wrongness of Feeling Unworthy

Last night at a charismatic praise gathering I heard a talk given by a young neighbor of mine (young = early 20s) about this matter of feeling unworthy of the gifts God gives. The subsequent Scriptures and words shared all flowed into a theme of our need to embrace the reality of who we are in Christ.

I really appreciated his talk. He read from Psalm 8, "What is man that you are mindful of him?" but then boiled down the matter to this: Yes, ok, on the one hand, who am I that God should give me gifts, but more importantly, who am I to turn away from God the Father Almighty because I feel unworthy of His approach to me?

That nails it.

When God approaches a soul, all of the grace that is needed by that soul to stand before Him is made available. To turn aside is to refuse God's grace and cling to pride instead. Our self-absorption is revealed, brought to light. If, however, we acknowledge God's grace and praise Him for who He is (the One who approaches, Love, Light), then we can accept the gifts He brings -- not because of any evaluation of worthiness on our part (for that is not the economy in which God operates) -- but because clearly it is His will to bring a gift. To submit to God's will is to accept the embrace of His love which floods our hearts with joy and delight. This embrace cleanses us, purifies us, enables us to appropriately respond.

Then the question "Who am I, oh Lord, that you are mindful of me" becomes not one of self-reproach or even of trying to coax oneself into believing that one is acceptable by God. It becomes a question of wonder. The wonder originates with God. I am nothing spectacular, nor are you, per se. There are billions of humans pretty much just like us. And yet the wonder arises because of the One who has made you. His love makes you, in His mind at least, unrepeatable, captivating, priceless, precious.

So accept what He brings you.

What Does "Poverty" Mean?

One of the things I love about social media like blogs and Facebook is coming across quotations that friends (or strangers) share. I come across several that I like, and every once in a while I come across a treasure that really lends itself to contemplation or further reading.

I came across one such quotation last week, from Lewis Mumford, a 20th century thinker of whom I'd never heard before:

A day spent without the sight or sound of beauty, the contemplation of mystery, or the search of truth or perfection is a poverty-stricken day; and a succession of such days is fatal to human life.

I think this quote struck me for several reasons, but where I plunge my thought most deeply in this short sentence is into the phrase "poverty-stricken day."

Poverty.

I have thought about that word often, but never did so much before encountering the Catholic Church. It was something I noticed quickly when I started attending Mass in Milwaukee; there was much more use of this word poverty than in the churches I had belonged to previously. Regardless of how it was used, I had a hard time getting comfortable with the word, with figuring out how to incorporate this word into my new Catholic vocabulary. I got that there was a spiritual dimension to poverty. But mostly I observed middle class suburbanites talking about the terrible plight of other people -- those in poverty. Something in the equation seemed off. At the time, I was living in what a co-worker had described (with some shock when we had discussed my plans to move there) as poverty-level housing. And I guess it was. But I could afford it, and I loved it there. I've never cared what things look like.

In fact, my whole relationship to economic prosperity has always been rather indifferent. With the possible exception of my time in Japan, where I earned far more money than I was expecting to (I went with the understanding that I was a volunteer receiving room and board), I've never lived with lots of means. But I have felt oftentimes like a material glutton, that I have much more than I need. I spent a short time doing mission work in Jamaica in my young 20s and witnessed families who lived in tin shacks the size of a closet and who drew water whenever the pump happened to be working that week. It was laughable for me to think of my "poverty-level housing" as any sort of deprivation after that.


Again this idea of poverty comes to mind these days because we've been living without my husband having a job for a couple of months. Lots of families are in this boat right now. It has been useful for me to shift out what truly we need and what we do not. I have struggled in the past with simply shifting into a "get tough" mode where I refuse to need anything. This is a self-martyrdom problem where I think I will make everything better my killing myself off. I see that this stance does not demonstrate trust in God nor respect for His love for me.

So, what of this thing of poverty? Mumford strikes it on the head. Poverty consists in being deprived of the sight or sound of beauty. Poverty consists in forsaking the contemplation of mystery. Poverty consists in giving up the search for truth and perfection. Beauty, Goodness, Truth. The Catholic Catechism states: "God created the world to show forth and communicate his glory. That his creatures should share in his truth, goodness and beauty - this is the glory for which God created them" (CCC 319). Sharing in the glory of God is all the riches the soul actually needs and desires. A life spent in this pursuit is rich, it is pleasing, it is life-giving. If we lack these things, as Mumford points out, especially chronically, we risk a fatality, the demise of our humanity, our souls.

The deceiver of our souls would convince us that Beauty is ugly, or meaningless, or superfluous -- to be sacrificed. He would convince us that there is no Goodness, there is only expedience, there is only what makes the opportunity before worth grabbing, despite what it means for my own soul or for another. He would convince us that the only Truth is what brings me momentary satisfaction. Got my goodie, gonna get my next goodie; there ain't no more to it than that.

It truly doesn't matter whether we have lots of money or little; either way we can live in poverty. Ironically I think it can be dreadfully hard to alert those in affluent poverty to the state of their souls. It sounds like a bunch of hippie nonsense to tell people their souls are dead. So maybe that's not the approach. Perhaps the approach is to pray folks into a wrestling match. Truth? Beauty? Goodness? Does it matter which facet grabs us, which of our lacks, which of our longings stabs out of our hearts and refuses to shut up? God knows the embrace each of our souls most needs today. Let us pray for each other that we will not shout down God's approach, not drown it, not turn Him aside, not try to stay "comfortable". Not try to stay in poverty. Allow Him who became poor for our sakes to make us rich.

"Experience each day the grace that you are urging others to accept."

On the first of every month, Our Lord gives Anne a new message about His call to service. 

July 1, 2010 

Jesus

My beloved apostles, I send many graces into the world through your commitment to Me. You do not see the graces but sometimes you see the effect of the graces. When you see the effect of the graces I send through you, rejoice. Thank Me. Your gratitude expressed to Me gives Me consolation. Also, your gratitude expressed to Me, gives you a disposition that is joyful. I want you to be joyful, dear apostles, because I am giving you so much. You are cooperating with Me and working hard, it is true, but you are also benefiting because My heart is so grateful to you for your fidelity that I hasten to answer your prayers, both for your loved ones and for the whole world. When a traveller goes a short distance, he can become a little tired. When a traveller goes a greater distance, he can become a little more tired. When a traveller travels a distance that stretches out for the remainder of his time on earth, as in your case, that traveller understands that fatigue will be his companion. This companionship should accomplish two things. One, it should provide a bond between the saved and the Saviour because I, too, experienced fatigue and I, too, devoted My life to the Kingdom. The other thing fatigue should provide for you is a compelling need to adapt your service to My pace which is a steady pace, as opposed to a hurried pace. I ask for steady service. I do not want hesitation in My service, no, but neither do I want irresponsible treatment of either your physical wellness or your spiritual wellness. If you are standing next to a well and do not drink, you will become dehydrated, regardless of your proximity to the well. Drink, dear apostles. Experience each day the grace that you are urging others to accept. I am with you and I feed you steadily. You have the grace for today. You will have to return to Me tomorrow to accept the grace for that day. I want My beloved apostles to be sustained and I offer them sustenance. Dear friends, all is well. You are working hard as I worked hard but you will be given all that you need. I am so grateful to you. I am so pleased with you. Believe Me when I say this. It is very important for the world that you accept My gratitude because if you do not accept My gratitude, truly, the world will not understand Me and the world will not understand service to Me. People must look at you and see that service to Me brings blessings. I am with you and My gratitude to you will be evident for eternity.