A Man of Deep Love

I have little enough to add to my words of last year upon this date, December the 22nd, the feast of my patron and namesake, Blessed Jacopone da Todi.  (If you would like to read those words, you may find them here.)

Although there is so much I might reflect upon from the greatness of this man I know best through his poetry, now does not seem the time.  Therefore I shall simply share with you a poem I wrote in the spring of 2012 as I sat beside his tomb in the peaceful stillness—a poem that is also a prayer.

The tomb of Blessed Jacopone da Todi

To Blessed Jacopone at his tomb

To pray and go—should be enough;

Yet still I linger here and wait

For what I do not know. Perhaps

I hope some miracle will appear—

Some sign of grace to take my heart

And convert it to His love.

Pray for me—that is enough

To ask. Pray for me that I may bow

My will to His and serve not myself

But Him alone in those I meet—

Through His power then may my heart

Witness to the world of His love.

O Blessed Jacopone, is this enough?

To lay my prayers before thy tomb,

That what I cannot do alone I may yet

Accomplish through thy prayers for me,

For His grace poured out upon my heart

To convert all to His love.

Beyond Our Hopes

"...our works never attain the scope of our desires."

Pedro Calderón de la Barca

When I ran across this quotation again the other day, I began to reflect upon how vastly differently I understood it in light of all the experiences that have come after that discovery of a frustrated college student studying theatre and failing to achieve desired perfection.  For then I understood it only as poetic expression of another failed perfectionist.  There was a certain encouragement in these words of dissatisfaction coming from one who has become a noted figure in Spanish theatre and certainly a significant playwright.

Now, however, although I still see that meaning I originally understood, I see another one as well.  Perhaps there may even be more meanings I have yet to comprehend.

My new understanding arises from an experience with my latest theatrical venture.  It was meant to be simple: I would get together a group of artists of various sorts and see what I could help them put together as a meditation on beauty for Advent.

At our first meeting I said I wouldn't write a script.  There were other things later I said I wouldn't do: act and direct, for instance, or dance.  When working for the Lord one must be careful about saying one won't do something it seems, for as the weeks progressed, I gradually took on more and more until I was doing everything I had said I wouldn't do, as if He intended to prove me wrong on every score....

The joy of it was that the reason I had intended not to do all of these things was partly humility.  Those who humble themselves will be exalted....

I certainly had a taste of that.  I felt as if the Holy Spirit were guiding the entire way: He was directing and I merely following.  I found myself doing things I never would have imagined I could.  Together with the wonderful talent and dedication of my fellow artists and musicians (and the support of our tech crew of one), I created a work of art that did not attain the scope of my desires simply because it surpassed it.  Give something to God and He will do amazing things with it: that is what I learned once more.  I also learned that I can set my expectations smaller than what He intends.

That is a beautiful thought to ponder in this season of Advent.  For do we not often set the scope of our desires too low in our spiritual journey?

Advent is a time of sacrifice, of preparation, and of waiting.  It is a time for growth.  We are to prepare our hearts to receive the King of Kings and Lord of Lords in the coming celebration of Christmas.

What better way than to humble ourselves before Him and give everything to Him?  Weak creatures that we are, we find a greater joy and confidence in our surrender when we know that good fruit will come from it.  And it will.  Because He has the power to transform even the smallest action into a salvific work.  For He is God and we are not, He is all-powerful and we merely mortals stumbling along in this dark vale of tears....

A Prayer for the Weary

I want to share with you a beautiful prayer I ran across somewhere in my research for my latest theatrical project.  As I find myself awash now in the weariness following the intensity of preparing for said project, these words credited to the great Saint Augustine lift my heart a little.  May they lift yours also in your journey, especially if feel your steps dragging with reluctance as you go forward in the great battle of life.  Here is his prayer:

"God of our life, there are days when the burdens we carry chafe our shoulders and weigh us down; when the road seems dreary and endless, the skies gray and threatening; when our lives have no music in them, and our hearts are lonely, and our souls have lost their courage. Flood the path with light, run our eyes to where the skies are full of promise; tune our hearts to brave music; give us the sense of comradeship with heroes and saints of every age; and so quicken our spirits that we may be able to encourage the souls of all who journey with us on the road of life, to your honor and glory."

And may Saint Nicholas of Myra intercede for us upon his feastday today!

The Crux of the Matter

"It is true, and even tautological,
to say that the cross
is the crux of the whole matter." ~G.K. Chesterton

So it is as we walk through this weary vale of tears: the Cross stands ever before us.  No matter how we flee it, dashing through the numberless pleasures that society advertises and thrusts upon us, no matter how we turn our backs and pretend we can live without it, no matter how we pursue the right course and seek the perfect solution to every problem, we cannot ever escape it.

Our failure to wipe it from our vision is as simple as its existence is omnipresent.  We may think we can close our eyes to the tortured body of Love upon it.

Yet we cannot escape its form.  So many times I catch myself half-consciously tracing its form in patterns on the floor or on a wall while my mind wanders elsewhere.  Wherever we look, it stares back at us, for it is the very basis of architectural structures that we take so much for granted.

Whenever we stare through old windows, it greets us, framing the landscape with inescapable significance: life is suffering—life is bound by the Cross.

We cannot escape its reality any more than we can escape death and taxes.  Whether we flee or turn to face it in the great trials or petty annoyances of our lives, whether we carry it willingly or drag it like a chain behind us, whether we are crushed beneath it or let it lift us up to the heavens, we will feel the weight of its rough wood.

What matters then is how we will face it.  When we come to the end of our lives will we be able to say that we have let it mark our steps with love and courage?

We have the choice before us in every moment of every day.  We may not be called to give our lives in military service (as the above graves attest) or die as martyrs, but of course we can die to ourselves in little ways at every moment of every day.  We can give up making sacrifices to our idols and turn instead to the God of love whose Cross lies in the very form of our bodies.

When you see the Cross like a dragon rear its ugly head before you, what will you do?  Will you let it remain only the means of your cruel execution or will you be transformed by it into a beautiful new creation?

It is your choice and your choice alone.

The Way to the Heart

Today I find myself with few words, but I found a reflection I had recorded from a book I ran across somewhere by Henri Nouwen.  It offers a beautiful perspective on the little things of life that are so important even when they seem so trivial:

Small signs of friendliness can create much joy, and small disturbances between people much sadness, while the "great events" of the day often do not touch us so deeply.  An unexpected note from a friend or the passing remark from a neighbor can make or break my day emotionally, while inflation and recession, war and oppression do not touch my emotions directly.  A distant catastrophe has less effect than a nearby mishap, and an interpersonal tiff raises more hackles than a world-wide calamity....

But how little do we use this knowledge?  What is easier than writing a thank-you note, than sending a card "just to say hello," or to give a call "just to see how things have been."  But how seldom do I do this?  Still, I realize that every time someone says, "I liked your talk" or "I appreciated your remark" or "Your note really helped" or "You really seem to feel at home here"--I feel my inner life being lifted up and the day seems brighter, the grass greener, and the snow whiter than before.  Indeed, the great mystery is that a small, often quite immaterial gesture can change my heart so much.  The way to the heart always seems to be a quiet, gentle way.

-Mornings with Henri J.M. Nouwen: Readings and Reflections

Speak, Lord, Your Servant Is Listening

Thus said Samuel according the advice of the priest Eli: "Speak, Lord, Your servant is listening."

It is such a simple and powerful prayer.  It is also a prayer of vulnerability.

We mortal creatures don't like vulnerability.  We flee it like the proverbial plague.  Of course we say we want to hear the voice of the Lord, but we rarely allow ourselves to wait in silence and darkness to truly hear what He might say.

The story of Samuel has great comic potential.  It follows the formula for a comedic routine: he hears someone calling his name and immediately hops up to go ask Eli why he called him, but Eli tells him he must be imagining it and sends him back to bed.  The same exact thing happens the second time.  There you have your context set up.  The third time when it happens, it starts out the same way, but all of a sudden Eli realizes that God is calling Samuel.  If it weren't such a serious matter (and we hadn't heard the story a few too many times), we would laugh uproariously at this sudden upturning of our expectations.

It is easy to laugh at Samuel for not knowing that God was calling him because of course it is obvious to us.  Somehow, though, it doesn't seem that obvious in our everyday lives.

Perhaps we don't follow the Rule of Three in our lives, but I daresay there is enough material for humor there nonetheless.  We say we want to hear God's voice and so we start telling Him everything we need Him to do for us and how He ought to answer us and what our requirements and needs are and so on.  Then, before we have bothered to so much as ask Him what He thinks of all that, we hurry on to our duties and responsibilities and get all weighed down by what He isn't making clear for us.

Do you see the comic potential?

Never Give Up!

"The greater the struggle,
the more glorious the triumph!"

-Mr. Mendez

Have you ever felt like giving up?  No matter what your struggle, no matter what your pain, I hope these words will inspire you to rise above the petty circumstances of your daily monotony or the anguish that weighs you down.  I pray that you will learn to soar like a butterfly above all that wearies you.

Of course doubts and difficulties will never cease to trouble you entirely, but neither need they prevent you from being the shining light you were made to be.  Light a candle in this dark world!

If you do not recognize the above quotation from Mr. Mendez, then you must see the short film, Butterfly Circus.  One of the most inspiring and encouraging pieces of art I have ever encountered, it speaks powerfully against the lies of the enemy that seek to bring us down and make us hide our light under the proverbial bushel basket.

Let it speak to your heart also....

You Are Necessary For His Purpose

Somehow I am necessary for His purposes...

I have a part in this great work;

I am a link in a chain,

a bond of connection between persons.

These words come from the beautiful meditation by Blessed John Henry Newman whose feastday we celebrate today.  If you would like to read the full meditation, you can find it here.

Do you ever think of yourself as being necessary to God?  It is a strange thought to ponder: that the eternal God who is Being Itself should deign to need us for His great work of salvation.  Yet so He does out of love.  He wants us to work with Him, to be one with Him.  He desires it so much that He gives us a part in His cross that we may carry it with Him in order to free ourselves and others from the meaningless chains to which we bind ourselves by our sins.

We may not understand what lies behind each small piece of the puzzle, but He does.  He allows nothing that He cannot bring to its perfect end, like a director of a play who takes the contributions of all the actors and designers and tech team and weaves it all together into one beautiful work of art.

Therefore I will trust Him.

Whatever, wherever I am,
I can never be thrown away...
My sickness, or perplexity, or sorrow may be
necessary causes of some great end,
which is quite beyond us.

The more we trust, the more we allow Him to work.  It is where we doubt or try to force things to meet our expectations that we stand in His way.

Therefore, we may in trust surrender all to our Lord who loves us so dearly:

Let me be Thy blind instrument. I ask not to see—
I ask not to know—I ask simply to be used.

Blessed John Henry Newman, pray for us!

Eight Years Ago Today

It is rather surreal to think that eight years have passed since that feast of Saint Francis when I set out with only one comrade upon a pilgrimage of about two months and three hundred miles.  I marvel at the faith and daring I had then.  I wonder if I would still have that much courage and trust were I to feel the call pull at my heart now.

Many thoughts and feelings still surface as I reflect upon that time.  I am sure it was a time of much grace, but it was also full of so much difficulty and darkness—full of the cross.

For a long time afterward I found it painful to think of the pilgrimage despite the moments of beauty.  Yet time and grace have healed the wounds of things not turning out as I expected and the suffering caused by less-than-pure intentions, bringing me face to face with the mercy and providence of God.

Many times I wondered whether I had chosen wrongly.  It is so easy to think of our efforts being soiled by our pride, selfishness, vainglory, or other sins, and to therefore turn away from action.  That is true especially for those of us inclined toward perfectionism.  We see that we have acted for ourselves and not for God alone and consequently begin to imagine that we can never do anything good or that all our efforts are in vain, but there the enemy trips us up in the age-old lie of pride disguised so falsely as humility.

Peace comes when we unmask that lie.  We can rest serene in the arms of Providence when we know that we are not in control—that He is God and we are not.

We try to love in order to receive the results we desire or to help people to make ourselves feel better.  We try to witness to our faith or support some political agenda in order to strengthen our self-esteem.  So many things we do right for the wrong reasons. Yet whatever our flaws, whatever our sins, He is stronger.

If God can bring good out of something so horrible as the crucifixion, why should we doubt His power to bring good out of our good actions done with flawed intentions?  He does all the time.  We only have to surrender yet again, falling humbly on our knees before Him and letting Him work.

So I try to do now as I continue forward, step by step, day by day, going on into eternity, carrying the burden of my cross forged of my own sins.

I do not remember only the darkness or only the sinfulness.  I remember also the joys, the trust, the abandonment to Divine Providence.  I remember how He provided for us all along the way, often with overwhelming and delightful surprises.

Much has changed since then and much remains the same.  So it ever seems to be.

On pilgrimage 2009

On pilgrimage 2017

I am on a different pilgrimage now.  It is interior more than external, but it is a pilgrimage all the same.  With each passing day, I feel the power and weight of that immense decision made that day that feels so long ago.  I continue on buoyed by faith as I carry you and your intentions in my heart....

The Battle Is Not Yours

Conflict.  Pain.  Hurt.  Heartbreak.  Betrayal.

These tear us from within, gripping us in endless knots, shattering our self-wrought pretensions of security and confidence.  They challenge our perception that all is well and all will be well.

Sometimes it is worse when these things happen to those we love.  When we suffer we are so busy grappling with the raw emotions that we have little time to think or reflect.  In those moments, we struggle for control of ourselves or the situation, our desperation aimed toward some hoped-for goal.

If we see others in pain, we have no control.  We have no choices.  We are even more powerless than when we suffer.

That is why it is so hard to see those we love hurt.  In some ways, it strikes deeper to see wounds struck that we can never hope to heal, to see decisions made in anger, to see misunderstandings and pain erupt into a chasm of broken relationships that we cannot bridge.  We see the evils and we want to take them away, to soothe the burning heat, to wave away the stain of sins past that tinges every fresh choice and every perceived affront.  But we can do nothing.

Still we search desperately for some way that we can become the savior of the situation.  We encourage those who feel alone to rely upon us, we seek solutions to illness, we advise counseling or medication, we pray continuously for healing and conversion, we try to make others see the light because if only they could then all would be well, and on and on and on....

We do not want to admit that we can do nothing.

Yet it is not about us and what we can do.  If we are to achieve true sanity, we must let go of our need to fix things.

When we admit that we can do nothing, we set ourselves free from guilt and expectations—expectations, which so often swamp our small vessels—and allow God to be God.  He allows nothing evil out of which He cannot bring a greater good.  Where we cannot save, He can.  He is our Savior.  Many times we need only step out of His way and allow Him to do what He alone knows how to do: to heal the broken heart.

That means we stand ourselves broken and powerless.  We feel the pain that signals to us that something must be done and we simply acknowledge its presence.  We choose not to fill that hole we cannot fill.  We embrace our weakness.

For in weakness is the power of Christ made perfect, as Saint Paul said.

Somehow that paradox is true, but only because of Christ.  Our inability to do anything surrendered to Him allows Him to work.

The path of life does not follow a barter system: we do not give x to get y.  If we do, we will regret giving x and resent others who have y.  Sometimes we must hit rock bottom before we recognize this truth.  Yet when we come to the crux of it all and feel our powerlessness, we know it is true.

Even our prayers and sacrifices when performed only as a manipulation of God to make Him give us what we want—however good that for which we ask may be—are vain.  That is not love, but only self-interest disguised.

If we can let go of what we hope to gain and simply give, we can find joy even in the depths of pain.  It is the joy that rejoices in the darkness because we trust in the Ruler of all.  That trust—that surrender—allows our Lord to transform deeds once done as manipulation into gifts of love, freely given.

And there is nothing greater than love.

Your Pain for the World

"I feel very powerless.  I want to do something.  I have to do something.... I have to act in any way possible to alleviate the pain I see.  But there is an even harder task: to carry my own cross, the cross of loneliness and isolation, the cross of the rejections I experience, the cross of my depression and inner anguish.  As long as I agonize over the pain of others far away but cannot carry the pain that is uniquely mine, I may become an activist, even a defender of humanity, but not a follower of Jesus.  Somehow my bond with those who suffer oppression is made real through my willingness to suffer my loneliness.  It is a burden I try to avoid, sometimes, by worrying about others.  But Jesus says: "Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest" (Mt 11:28).  I might think that there is an unbridgeable gap between myself and the Guatemalan wood carrier.  But Jesus carried his cross for both of us.  We belong together.  We must each take up our own cross and follow him, and so discover that we are truly brothers who learn from him who is humble and gentle of heart."

These words of Henri Nouwen, set under the heading "Willing to Suffer My Loneliness," which I copied down months ago, speak so powerfully to how I feel now as I think of the world around me.  There are the incomprehensible sufferings of all those losing homes and loved ones in natural disasters and genocides.  There are friends close to my heart struggling with loneliness and broken relationships.  So much pain.  So much heartache.

Then there is the pain in my own heart.  No matter how beautifully things fall into place, no matter how many meaningful conversations I have, no matter how much I accomplish, still it is there: the pain of separation.

For we are made for more than this.  In the words of Chesterton's Poet in The Surprise: "This is good, but something is better."

That longing for something better—that longing for union—pulls at our hearts.  Often we experience it as a deep chasm of loneliness.  We try in so many ways to fill that chasm.  We even go so far as to disguise our need to assuage our loneliness as love for others.  Yet God knows our hearts.  He knows—as do we, when we are honest with ourselves—whether we reach out to make ourselves feel better or to bring love—to bring Christ—to others.

Sometimes there is nothing we can do.  That is when the pain is greatest.

In those moments, perhaps then it is enough simply to embrace the cross that is so much ourselves and our own loneliness, our own powerlessness.  There in the bearing of that cross we can do more for the world than  could any humanitarian aid group or charitable organization, for we can unite our sufferings with Christ's passion.

As we are taught in math: what is greater than infinity?  Nothing.

God Himself is infinite.  If we unite ourselves with Him, then we are greater than anything we could sum up of our own selves.

Whatever it is then that you must suffer today, may you have the strength to bear it as your own particular cross.  For in the carrying of that cross, you can come to a mystical union with Christ and with His body, the Church spread throughout the world....

Open the Doors of Your Heart

"Beauty will save the world," said Dostoevsky.  His words may be taken in a general fashion or referring to the Creator Himself.  Either way, he speaks to a deep truth.

Gregory Wolfe supports the power of this statement in his beautiful essay titled "The Wound of Beauty" in which he defends the need for beauty.  He also writes of the power of beauty to strike us to the very depths of our being: "Beauty itself wounds us, pierces our hearts, opens us up."

If beauty wounds, then where shall we find healing?

Ultimately the source of our healing can only be found in the Incarnation.  For there the great rift between God and man is healed by the Creator becoming His own creation.

All of us are called to participate in that great work of healing through incarnating truth in our very selves.  Those of us called to be artists must take that incarnation a step further, revealing the depths of God through various mediums that reflect the core of our very selves.

Yet we artists are no less broken.

Unless we participate in the great work of redemption—the great work of healing—we fail in our vocation.  Our art becomes worthless, a merely shameful display of our talents and self-worth, an excuse for pride and vainglory.  Yet when we allow ourselves to collaborate in Christ's redemptive sacrifice, our handiwork has power beyond what we can imagine.

The question I would propose for you to ponder is this one: how does healing come through art?

I would argue that it comes through much the same way as when Christ healed.  He looked for an open heart—a heart of faith.  When He healed a man who was deaf and dumb, He said: "Ephpheta, which is, 'Be thou opened.'" (Mark 7:34)

It is through being open that we are healed.  Returning again to the theme of the wound of beauty, you can understand how it ties in here: the act of wounding is a means of making an openness.  Whether we allow that wound or whether beauty strikes us without our awareness, opening up our brokenness, we find ourselves in a perfect position to be healed because we have that openness—that vulnerability.  In so doing, we may find ourselves becoming channels of God's grace as well.

Sometimes I think our greatest challenge as artists is to embrace that vulnerability and not to flee from it.  We are often masters of flight.  We disguise our cowardice as perfectionism or scorn or pride or any manner of things.

In the end, when we allow ourselves to be powerless, we experience the freedom of true creation.  That is the paradox.  As Saint Paul said: when we are weak, then we are strong.

That experience of freedom—whether through creative work or through some other means—touches the very depths of our being.  It fills our restless hearts and we want nothing more.  For where we open ourselves to His working, we become one with Him, and He brings healing.

The presence of God hurts.  Beauty wounds.

Yet just as sometimes a bone must be re-broken to set aright or a wound opened to be drained, pain precedes healing—it opens the way.  So God sometimes hurts in order to heal.

All we need to do is open the door of our hearts.  When we have the support of those around us and see their own battle-wounds, we may find the courage to choose the glory of what feels to us like death.

For ultimately the battle for openness lies within the boundaries of our own hearts.  We must go into the desert there and wrestle with ourselves.

A seed must die to bring forth fruit.

The Liturgy: Boredom or Wellspring?

Sometimes the liturgy can seem boring or empty.  Maybe the music is dreadful, the people about us talking, the church architecture modern and ugly and meaningless, the words repetitive, or our minds merely distracted.

In response, many have tried to update it—to make it more exciting.  They shortened it, demanded our verbal participation, and cut out repetition.  Now they add drums and rock music.  Sometimes they diverge from the rubrics laid down for the liturgy, trying to make it more relaxed and inclusive, trying to make it more welcoming.

Yet do they succeed?

I think of theatre.  My professor often repeated this phrase: "If something is boring, slow it down."  It seems counter-intuitive, as he explained, but actually something is not necessarily boring because it is too slow.  It might be boring because it was shabbily done or because the important moments were skipped over.  Good acting requires slowing down in rehearsal to go back over each moment's transition and each moment's experience of crisis or choice.  The performance then will contain those crucial details even at a regular pace.  The audience may not catch each moment, but will certainly judge the performance by it, even though only at a subconscious level.

Theatre springs in some fashion from liturgy, so why should liturgy be any different?

If the priest leads us in the worship of God, taking into his hands God Himself, then how could it possibly be boring?  If we recognize that we are in the presence of God and we worship Him in each moment of our presence at the Mass, how could we be bored?  Is it because we have rushed over each moment of importance?

Before I leave you only with these questions to ponder, I would like to add one more thing: a beautiful paragraph on the living water that is the liturgy:

"The coming of the Word of life into our flesh and into the very abyss of our death alone deserves to be called an event, because due to it all the walls of death have collapsed, and life has sprung up in their place. The hour in which the Word with a loud cry handed over his Breath of love so that men might live is no longer in the past; it is, it abides, it lives on through history and sustains it. This unprecedented power that the river of life exercises in the humanity of the risen Christ - that is the liturgy! In it all the promises of the Father find their fulfillment. Since that moment the communion of the Blessed Trinity has ceaselessly been spreading throughout our world and flooding our time with its fullness. In the living Christ who 'is not here' but is risen and who fills all things and holds the keys of death, the heart of God and the heart of man are as it were the two heartbeats of the heart of history. There the wellspring flows." ~Father Jean Corbon, The Wellspring of Worship

Prayer Against Depression

On this feast of a most admirable man converted by reading of the saints before him, I would like to share with you one of his lesser-known prayers that I find very beautiful:

O Christ Jesus
When all is darkness

And we feel our weakness and helplessness,

Give us the sense of Your Presence,

Your Love and Your Strength.

Help us to have perfect trust

In Your protecting love

And strengthening power,

So that nothing may frighten or worry us,

For, living close to You,

We shall see Your Hand, Your Purpose,

Your Will through all things.

By Saint Ignatius of Loyola

May any who struggle with difficulties or challenges find in this prayer, and in the intercession of its author, new hope and strength.  He was a warrior of incomparable ability in the service of God and I pray that his example may inspire you to dedicate yourselves to that same life of sacrifice however our Lord may call you.

Ad majorem Dei gloriam! For the greater glory of God!

Fool for Christ

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

This quote resurfaced and I have no recollection of who spoke it or where I heard it.  That matters little enough, though.  It is the thought contained in the quotation and not the speaker to which I wish to draw your attention.

I will digress for a moment first, however.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on a spontaneous adventure with a couple of friends.  Having decided upon hiking in the forested park in the middle of the city, we had no expectations of unusual adventure; considering our limited time, it seemed reasonable to enjoy a tamer sort of adventure.  After a brief stop at another friend's house and a dishtowel prophecy—"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson—we continued on to the trailhead.

As we started hiking up the hill, we soon found ourselves scrambling up a ravine with a few pools and trickles of water left within it.  The trail lost its façade of officiality and turned into no more than a deer path.

We might have turned back to find the actual trailhead, but instead we continued on, scrambling over fallen trees and crawling through brush and ferns, following the rocky bed of the ravine in what seemed like a tropical adventure.  The faint trail grew fainter, twisting back and forth across the ravine, sometimes disappearing entirely.

In retrospect, it would have made much more sense to find the trail proper and likely we would not choose that path again knowing what it held.  Yet that makes us all the more grateful for the experience.

You can extrapolate from this story to the adventure of life.  So often we choose to follow the well-beaten trail.  We give in to the pressure of society or the expectations of our friends—or what we imagine them to be—and find ourselves trudging on doggedly, clamping our jaws in the face of the monotony that drags us down.

Let us return now to the quotation with which I began:

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

It speaks to the heart of what it means to be a fool for Christ.  When you fall so deeply in love with Him—when you learn to trust Him so entirely—you no longer care so much for the security the world offers.  You learn to leap out in faith, knowing that He will catch you.  You embrace every cross and every trial because you know that behind it lies the Providence of the One who loves you more than you love yourself.

Go my friends and be fools for Christ!

Faith is Easy When You Don't Need It

FAITH IS EASY WHEN YOU DON'T NEED IT

I passed this sign as I biked to Mass this morning.  It seemed particularly relevant in light of my recent experience.  Also its message is uncomfortably true.

When we see the winding paths of our lives wending into a straight course toward the heavens, we do not need faith, for we can see and recognize that God is at work.  We need faith in the darkness when we seem to have lost the path.

Yet sometimes in that darkness faith does not seem enough.  We can have faith certainly—indeed we must have faith—but we must also know how to act.

For example, I recently held auditions for a play to be performed in honor of the feastday of Saint Philomena.  I had been praying that Saint Philomena would bring the actors necessary and trusting that if she wanted it to happen she would indeed bring them.  So as I prepared to audition the fifteen or so people I needed along with my stage manager and designer there to support me, I found my expected cast reduced in the face of only one auditionee.

How would faith have me respond?  It seemed entirely unreasonable to have faith that the rest of the cast would miraculously appear.  Why would God make happen in extraordinary ways what He had chosen not to bring to fruition in the ordinary offered way?

Yet would faith have me turn back?  Certainly faith must be tested and tried and not give up when it meets the very first obstacle, no matter how great an obstacle it may seem.

Often through our lives we face this dilemma: faith gives no answer.  God's will seems muddied beneath our own efforts and desires.  We do not know whether to go on or to turn back.  Is it a roadblock that means we should take the detour or is it only a decoy put there by the enemy to make us lose hope?

So we stumble on in faith as best we can, step by step....

Life is a Storm

"Life is a storm, my young friend.  You will bask in the sunlight one moment,

be shattered on the rocks the next.  What makes you a man

is what you do when that storm comes."

~Edmond Dantés

This quotation comes from the protagonist of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.  It illustrates beautifully the tossing waves of our lives in this world and the peaks and valleys of our emotional experience.  Even more than, that, however, it points to our responsibility to respond to the storm.

Often we try to extend the sunlight as long as we can.  We seek to avoid at all cost begin shattered on the rocks.  Yet we cannot maintain that control.

Sooner or later the sun will be hidden by the dark storm clouds blown by heavy winds, threatening to swamp us and break our ship apart upon the rocks.  We take in sail and strain at the helm, but the current rushes us onward.

As Edmond Dantés said, what matters is not that these things happen, but what we do when we must face them.  Will we throw ourselves overboard to perish in despair?  Will we curse and blame those about us for our peril?  Will we jump into the lifeboat and row away with all our might in an attempt to save ourselves, leaving the rest to their fate?  Or will we entrust ourselves to the One who has power over the storm?

And Jesus saith to them: Why are you fearful, O ye of little faith?
Then rising up He commanded the winds, and the sea,
and there came a great calm. But the men wondered, saying:
What manner of man is this, for the winds and the sea obey Him?

Matthew 8:27

Is Jesus Following You?

There is an image of Christ that has been drawing my attention in various ways as I travel about.  One painting in particular—the one above—started the trend.

Since then, I have seen that painting and at least two others with a similar presentation.  In all of them, Jesus is holding out His heart and staring right at me, offering His heart with no conditions save that of acceptance.

In one of the images, He extends His hand, as if to say: "Here is My heart.  Will you give Me yours?"

On this Solemnity of the Sacred Heart, that is exactly what He is asking us, just as He does every day of our lives.  He longs so much for our love that He has given Himself to the last drop.  Now He asks the same of us.

Will you give Him your heart?

Powerlessness

So many times we question God.  Either we want to know why He allowed something to happen or why He did not do something in response to our prayers.

We ask why because we feel helpless.  We feel powerless.

Of course we do not like this feeling, so we try to gain control in any way we can, scrambling in search of something that will give us security.  We build up facades, collect things and friends, and so on, all to counter that loss of control.

Still, in the end, we cannot seize control, but only a deceptive shadow of it.  Only God has the power to rule the universe.

Ultimately our condition is one of powerlessness.  We may experience it when we feel our own lives spinning out of control.  Or we may see a friend struggling and desire to lift him up out of that darkness, to win by our own prayers his release.  Yet God does not grant light.  He allows us and our friends to suffer.

For both of us, that is an experience of complete helplessness.  It may even be the proverbial rock bottom.

God brings us there that He may win our surrender.  It is often only when we cannot trust even ourselves that we learn to trust Him.  If we have nowhere else to turn, we will go to Him.  So He remains silent until we are brought to His feet and know that He alone is King.

Coinciding of Celebrations

Today's coinciding of the secular celebration of Fathers' Day and the solemnity of Corpus Christi leads me to reflect upon the beautiful gift of spiritual fatherhood—of the priesthood in particular.  I am so grateful for all the wonderful priests who have touched by life.

These are the men who have reflected not only the light of Christ, but the image of the Father.  They have helped me to understand in a deeper way how much our Father in heaven loves us, how much He provides for us in giving us priests to stand before us with the very human love we desire, to meet us face to face as He cannot do until we finish our time of purification and come before Him at last.

Our own fathers reflect that same image of the Father.  For they too are priests in a sense—by their baptismal priesthood—and carry out their vocation of fatherhood in the domestic church of the family.

I think today also of those who have never had an example of a good father and whose ideas of God the Father have therefore been skewed.  I pray that they will find the Father they seek.

May our Lord bless abundantly all those who reflect His image of fatherhood!  I carry in my heart today in a special way all the priests who have touched my life, particularly as I go to approach the altar and to receive the Body and Blood of Christ on this blessed solemnity.  I pray that all priests may remain faithful to the voice of the Father within them that He may continue to speak through them and to transform them ever more into His face upon this earth.

Come Holy Spirit!

Joining friends in prayer for the Pentecost vigil stirred up for me so many thoughts and feelings about this pilgrimage that is the spiritual life.  It is amazing to me how powerful and yet how intangible is that interior battle.

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh weak." - Matthew 26:41

Sometimes it seems incredibly tempting to turn away from the battle and follow the easier path of doing my own will since I seem to keep trying to do that anyway even when I disguise it as trying to surrender to God's will.  I hear that those who choose to follow that path do not have to face temptations.  After all, if they are already doing what the enemy wants, why would he bother with them?

I used to think that once one followed the path of holiness, it would become easier to choose the right.  Yet the opposite seems true: those who choose to face that battle find it grow harder day by day.

As my grandma has reminded me, the closer we go to the light, the deeper are the shadows.

Although the battle grows harder day by day and the shadows deeper, there is no surrender, however dearly-bought, that does not allow the Lord to work.  Opening one's heart in surrender and trying to empty out the desire for anything but Him alone may allow the enemy to attack with all manner of doubts and the heart to rise up in rebellion, but grace remains.

"For the flesh has desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh; these are opposed to each other, so that you may not do what you want." - Galatians 5:17

Saint Paul was a man of great wisdom, as is my friend who gave me this scripture verse in answer to my questioning about this interior battle and the heart's rebellion.  I tend to think that any sin—or even resistance to God—spoils the good that I wish to do.  Yet I must realize that is the attitude of pride: it comes from the self who wishes to be perfect and to do great things for its own glory.

The sword of truth cuts deep.  It must, for it must pierce between our illusions and the reality of God.

So long as we form our own ideas of God and what it means to please Him and belong to Him, we rush toward a fearsome precipice.  This is to build our own idols in the place of God.  We may find ourselves creating schemes of grandeur for our service in His sight also that we may find our worth, but our true value lies in belonging to Him alone.

We are already His.  We need to prove nothing to become the children of God.  For He has already purchased us with the price of His blood.  All we need to do is learn to accept that reality and open our hearts to being His in all our apparent weakness and uselessness.

Otherwise, we risk losing our very selves.  In the words of Father Thomas Merton (shared providentially today by another good friend):

"Every one of us is shadowed by an illusory person: a false self.

"This is the man that I want myself to be but who cannot exist, because God does not know anything about him. And to be unknown of God is altogether too much privacy.

"My false and private self is the one who wants to exist outside the reach of God's will and God's love - outside of reality and outside of life. And such a self cannot help but be an illusion.

"We are not very good at recognizing illusions, least of all the ones we cherish about ourselves - the ones we are born with and which feed the roots of sin. For most of the people of the world, there is no great subjective reality than this false self of theirs, which cannot exist. A life devoted to the cult of this shadow is what is called a life of sin.

"All sin starts from the assumption that my false self, the self that exists only in my own egocentric desires, is the fundamental reality of life to which everything else in the universe is ordered. Thus I use up my life in the desire for pleasures and the thirst for experiences, for power, honor, knowledge, and love, to clothe this false self and construct its nothingness into something objectively real. And I wind experiences around myself and cover myself with pleasures and glory like bandages in order to make myself perceptible to myself and to the world, as if I were an invisible body that could only become visible when something visible covered its surface.

"But there is no substance under the things with which I am clothed. I am hollow, and my structure of pleasures and ambitions has no foundation. I am objectified in them. But they are all destined by their very contingency to be destroyed. And when they are gone there will be nothing left of me but my own nakedness and emptiness and hollowness, to tell me that I am my own mistake."

In that void—when we are emptied of all our illusions—we come to the feet of our Lord and Master.  There we begin to receive true love: the love that counters all the deceits of the enemy and reveals how irreplaceable we are in the eyes of Christ, who longs for our friendship more than we can ever imagine.  When we allow that love to fill us, then our emptiness becomes transformed into something beautiful.

May the Holy Spirit bring us to that emptiness, and to the shores of mercy, by our own consent!

Veni Sancte Spiritus!

Offer It Up

Have you ever been told to offer something up? Chances are, if you are like most Americans, your immediate response is resentment at being told what to do and a mental block against the idea—especially if it came from one of your parents.  It matters little whether you may have told others precisely the same thing when you had nothing to suffer.

Well, despite whatever emotional baggage you may carry regarding this idea of offering something up, it does have the power to transform your life. But the enemy will do his best to prevent your realizing it.

“Offer it up,” is such a vague thing to say anyway. We humans do not deal well in vagueness, even when it presents universal truth. We need the concrete specifics that turn that universal truth from something out there into something that penetrates to the deepest recesses of our hearts.

As I mentioned in my last post, sacrifice is a part of our baptismal priesthood. That means that we are called to offer sacrifice to the Father on behalf of others. Unlike the ministerial priest who offers the sacrifice of Christ upon the cross through His role in persona Christi, acting in the person of Christ, we have only the substance of our lives to offer in sacrifice. However, there is certainly enough substance there and it too may be transformed by Christ, if not transubstantiated.

In the sacrifice of the Mass, the priest has the tradition of centuries behind the weight of his words directed toward a specific offering. We need that same specificity in our lives. Although we can simply sacrifice in general for souls or for the world, unless we have a burning zeal like the great saints, we will soon grow lukewarm in our efforts.

We need specific intentions. We need to pray for particular people, for particular situations, for particular healings.  If I say in a moment of suffering that it is for my friend who is struggling, for my godmother, for someone who is going through surgery, or for anyone else for whom I have promised to pray, I have somewhere to direct my pain.  Instead of struggling within myself and wanting to escape, I have a means to bring fruit from my suffering because it is for another.

Even when the suffering seems impossible to offer up because it is too much to endure, we can make that effort of the will.  Then offering it up means transforming it into a prayer moment by moment. Instead of an obstacle to remove, it becomes a sacrifice of love as we lift up to the Lord the name of a loved one, repeating again and again that the suffering is for that one so dear to us.