A Lament of Hope

A friend pointed out that in my last post I did not talk about the victims of the current crisis within the hierarchy of the Church.  I noted it myself as I wrote it.

Yet what is there to say?

I know someone personally affected by some of these wolves in sheep's clothing.  He shared with me some of the impact it has had on his life, but I know that I have caught only a glimpse into the searing pain of it on his heart and soul.

Doubtless it is the same for the other victims.  For many, it is worse—much, much worse.  For my friend has his faith in God still and others have had theirs shaken.

In the face of this evil, there is only one thing I can say, even though I doubt whether I could speak it directly to any of those wounded by their sinful shepherds, for it takes a strong, strong faith to accept it.  In the end, though, there really is only one thing to say: God is greater.

We, with our finite minds, get caught up in the evils of the present age.  We see even our beloved Church being torn to shreds.  We see people leaving the Church, people losing faith in the priesthood, people aching with the pain of abuse and betrayal.  Then we begin to believe the lies of the enemy that these evils are irredeemable, that there is nothing we can do.  Subtly, our hearts become calloused and bitter.

Across the vast landscape of these evils, however, the Cross rises undeniable.  The Cross stands not for the condemnation it ought to represent, but for a sign of resurrection.

For there is no resurrection without death first.  There is no glory without passing through the valley of tears.

It is easy to say to others when we are experiencing prosperity that God will turn everything to good; it is much harder when we ourselves suffer.  Yet even then we barely give it lip service despite the promise of Scripture:

And we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good, to such as, according to His purpose, are called to be saints. (Romans 8:28)

Do we believe that?  Do we really believe that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-loving?  In short, do we really believe He is God?

If God is really who we believe He is, then He will fulfill that promise.  He will bring good out of the worst evil, as He brought our salvation out of the evil of being betrayed, condemned to death, abandoned by His friends, and dying the most horrific, painful death possible.

It is difficult to believe that those called to lead their flocks could so far lead them astray.  It is enough to make any question.

The worst of the current situation perhaps is that the victims are innocent.  Yet Christ too was innocent.

Only if we choose to believe that God really is the Lord of the universe can we find true solace in the midst of such incredible depravity.  Only if we accept His lordship over the world can we truly have hope that out of such corruption can be brought a greater good.  And how could an all-loving God allow such evil unless He could achieve through it a good beyond our imagining?

That is the hope we must choose to have.

"And where sin abounded..."

"...grace did more abound." (Romans 5:20)

My heart grieves the scandals that have recently come to light within the Church, but also for some of the responses that reveal a similar issue.  If the bishops have been remiss in not bringing sin to light and have tried to cover it up for the sake of what the world may think, the faithful may also care too much for the world's opinion and therefore attack vociferously those who stand in the place of Christ who have failed us.

We too fail.  We too are sinners.

It is easy to stand outside and say what must be done.  It is easy to believe that we would act rightly in their situation.  But would we?

There but for the grace of God go I.

How do we know until we have faced the pressures that have worn them down and twisted them into believing they did what they must?  For rarely do people act wrongly for reasons that they do not themselves perceive as good in some way, even if only by the twisting lies of the enemy.

He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone. (John 8:7)

By all means, let us call for an end of silence, but let it be without condemnation.  Our bishops are already under so much attack for their positions from within and without.  If the devil tries to come after us and turn us away from serving our Lord, how much more do you think he goes after those who shepherd so many souls?

Let us not forget in our outrage against the unthinkable evils committed that these were done by part of the Body of Christ.  I think of the words of Father John Corapi that touched my heart so deeply before he too wandered off the path: "Never abandon a fallen comrade." These men are our fallen comrades. They are our brothers. Let us never abandon them. Let us rather pray and sacrifice for them until they repent of their sins and turn back to God.

And when we call upon the Church's hierarchy to take a strong position against those who have committed these grave sins, let us not stand outside as an angry mob or treat them as merely worldly leaders who must fulfil administrative responsibilities.  Let us remember that this is a spiritual battle.  Let us assure them that we will stand with them in the brink.

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood; but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the world of this darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places. (Ephesians 6:12)

We must therefore fight with more than earthly means.  We must take to our side all the spiritual resources at our disposal and beg our Lord for the grace He wishes to bestow upon us.  Then we shall be more than conquerors, for:

...in all these things we overcome, because of Him that hath loved us.  For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor might, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:37-39)

The Ring of Power

"All we ever wanted was the illusion of control. But we have none, not really. And neither do the people around us who seem so intimidating in all their radiant perfection. Ultimately, we can all take comfort in the understanding that they're not actually perfect, and that none of us ever will be. We're not, as we've been promised, 'as gods.' On the contrary, we're animals but we think we're not animals. We're products of the mud."
 ~Will Storr, Selfie: How We Became So Self-Obsessed and What It's Doing to Us 

Now I would like to just leave those words there without further comment, as I think in many ways he has hit the proverbial nail on the head. However, since in doing so, he has bent the nail a bit sideways I feel it necessary not to remain silent and thereby express my consent.

We are not products of the mud. After all, if you multiply mud times mud I am quite sure you only get mud.  (Or maybe a mud square.)

Aside from the math jokes, we are in some sense from the mud: Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return. However, we are more than animals. We may not yet be like gods—or at least we may not feel like gods—but we do have immortal souls and therefore are far more than animals. Yet we are still animals, influenced very much by our fleshly existence and our genetics and sometimes so much so that it seems like we have no free will at all.

Despite whether we think we believe in free will or not, we constantly act out our belief in it on a daily basis. We try to seize control of our situations whether by understanding why we feel a certain way, trying to keep our houses clean, or starting businesses or ministries to change the world.

It is as if the Ring of Power lies before us and we strive with all our might to seize it.  We are ignorant of its true meaning: that if we do indeed place it upon our finger, we shall then be bound in slavery to our greatest enemy who wants only our destruction.

 

We want to be like God. We want that power, that control, that ability to make something out of nothing.

At the same time, however, we do know our weakness and brokenness. We know we have no real control, but somehow we seek it anyway. Somehow we are not yet willing to surrender it all to the One who loves us more than we love ourselves and who knows all that was and is and ever will be. We prefer to seize power for ourselves, even knowing that it will never satisfy, and that it is in the end no more than a mirage.  This is enough for us:

"All we ever wanted was the illusion of control. But we have none, not really. And neither do the people around us who seem so intimidating in all their radiant perfection."

There is much comfort in realizing that and in knowing that we are not perfect and never will be so long as we walk this earth. In some sense, it lets us off the proverbial hook, at least if we will let ourselves off of it instead of clinging yet again to another illusionary idea of control. For a desire for perfection can itself be a desire for power and therefore a two-edged sword that will turn against us.

That is why we must let go even of that last vestige of illusion if we want to seek reality. Yet we do not always prefer the truth. We choose instead the darkness:

And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil. (John 3:19)

Here it is we face the crux of our choice: we can will to descend into the darkness and surrender to the kingdom of evil or we can nail our will to the Cross, letting in the light and the Kingdom of God. Our will then is what matters and not our feelings of brokenness and inadequacy and hopelessness, for these are only feelings. Why they weigh us down, none can say, save the One who holds the universe in His hand and who stirs our hearts with longing for His presence, which alone can satisfy the deepest longings within us.

I. Jesus is Condemned to Death

One of my earliest memories associated with church (aside from lying under the chairs to benefit from someone's ability to make origami water bombs and singing "I Sing a Song of the Saints of God" with the rhyming words such as "beast" and "priest" switched) is the praying of the Stations of the Cross and the singing of the Stabat Mater.  That memory became all the more precious to me once I discovered that Blessed Jacopone da Todi is credited with writing that beautiful Marian hymn.

The Stations of the Cross remains one of my favorite devotions.  What power there is in this meditation on the suffering that we wish to flee at all costs and that our Lord took on solely out of His great love for us.

Because of my attraction to this devotion, and impelled to take up some small Lenten practice here on the Interweb that the Holy Spirit may work through these petty words I scatter about now and again, it seems right to look at each of the stations throughout Lent.  So accompany me, if you will, on this journey with our Lord to find whatever insights He will give through these ponderings.

The First Station

Jesus is Condemned to Death

And [Pilate] entered into the hall again, and he said to Jesus: Whence art thou? But Jesus gave him no answer.  Pilate therefore saith to him: Speakest thou not to me? knowest thou not that I have power to crucify thee, and I have power to release thee?  Jesus answered: Thou shouldst not have any power against me, unless it were given thee from above. Therefore, he that hath delivered me to thee, hath the greater sin.
John 19:9-11


The power of Christ shines so brightly through its human shroud in His words answering Pilate.  There are thousands of responses He might have made to Pilate, but the fact that He chose these words must draw our attention to what He means.  One phrase in particular stands out in bold assertion:

Thou shouldst not have had any power against Me, unless it were given thee from above.

He might have said to Pilate: "I am not afraid of you because I know that My Father has given this power into your hands and it is My will to accomplish all that He desires of Me."  He might have said: "The Father's Providence has taken even your small part into account."  He might have said it hundreds of different ways.  The meaning remains the same: God, the Almighty Father, gives power to men that they may choose to do the most cruel and evil things because through the suffering that results He will work the greatest good any could ever imagine.

So it is in our lives.  Many things say to us in one way or another: "Look at the power I have over you.  Aren't you going to do something about it?"

Of course we do.  We complain.  We look for a way out.  We try to justify an easier path.

If only we could respond as boldly as our Lord: "No, you have no power over me except what has been given from above.  Therefore I will trust in the Father's Providence to arrange for good to come from all the suffering and evil in my life that I have no power over.  If I have not the power, He does."

Jesus, give us this grace, we beg You!

My adorable Jesus, it was not Pilate, no, it was my sins that condemned Thee to die. I beseech Thee, by the merits of this sorrowful journey, to assist my soul in its journey towards eternity. I love Thee, my beloved Jesus; I repent with my whole heart for having offended Thee. Never permit me to separate myself from Thee again. Grant that I may love Thee always; and then do with me what Thou wilt. (From the Stations of the Cross according to Saint Alphonsus Liguori.)

Mirror of the Soul

Sometimes it is far too easy to question the purpose of being an artist.  Why put hours upon hours upon hours into creating some flawed piece of writing or theatre when there are so many people starving to death across the world?  Why should I expect spending years of my life on a novel about pirates to be worth anything if I could have spent that time helping the poverty-stricken?  Why would people come to see a play I've written and produced when those in other countries are dying from martyrdom or disease?

Blessed Albert Chmielowski struggled mightily with a similar question.  He ultimately decided in favor of poverty, living with the poor in order to show them that they were loved.

Karol Wojtyla found inspiration in Blessed Albert's decision for his own journey from the arts to the priesthood and even enshrined the memory of that holy brother in a beautiful play titled Our God's Brother.  His decision led him down the path to become the much-loved Pope John Paul II.

With such mighty giants striding before, is there not great precedent for abandoning the arts for a greater call?

Yet the Church has ever encouraged the arts throughout the centuries.  If there is reason for the Church's support of art then it must be more than mere frivolity.  It must have an essential purpose—a teleological reason for existing.

It may seem odd to turn to a man who proclaimed himself an atheist for many years and whose later belief in God—if belief it was—seemed a peculiar cross between his Protestant upbringing and a study of Eastern religions, but truth is often found in strange places.  One may see the light and speak the truth without yet knowing it fully.  Without further ado, a quote from the well-known playwright:

"You use a glass mirror to see your face;

you use works of art to see your soul."

~George Bernard Shaw

There Shaw succinctly describes the reason we need art.  If we are to come to know ourselves in order that we may come to know God—the very reason for our existence—we must find somewhere a mirror to reflect back to us our very souls.  For there is found the image of God.

The artist then must delve deep, deep, deep into the darkest depths of the human heart.  If he would produce that glass that tells no lies, then he must fear nothing as he searches out the wounds of his own heart, sweeping out all the pains and evils into the light of day, hiding nothing in his creative effort.  No coward would face the discomfort of unveiling the reality hidden there.  Only a brave soul can stand face to face with the Truth.

Oh Providence

There are a great number of people who have difficulty believing in a good God based upon the evils that happen to them or to the world at large.  On the other hand, there are a great number of people who believe in a good God because of the good things that happen to them and how everything works out well for them—adherents of the ol' Prosperity Gospel as it were.

I try not to fall into the latter category.  I try to trust that everything happens for a reason and that everything that God sends me is indeed a gift no matter how difficult to handle.

A beautiful approach to life as a passive recipient, however, can become a mind-crushing vice in taking action.  As usual, I can best find examples from my life to illustrate my meaning: in this case, I have set out to create a work of art in honor of the Epiphany.  For weeks I have trusted that it would all come together even though I was lacking certain necessary elements (i.e. actors).  Now it seems a bit as if everything is falling apart.  What do I do?

I begin to wonder if that will be the cry of my life.  Is that not the cry of all our lives?  What do we do when things don't go as we expect?  What do we do when God does not provide what we think we need? We could give up.  We could decide it wasn't God's will after all.  We could take it merely as disappointment and try to thank Him for that gift.

Or we can go on.

Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.

For some reason lines from Tennyson's poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade" often come to mind in these times of struggle and darkness.

Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.

It isn't our right to command, nor to control the destiny of our lives or the lives of others.  We could flee in terror, cowards that we often are.  Or we can hold our ground, we can advance, we can charge forward when it seems like folly, when it seems that all is lost.  That is trust.  That is faith.  And that is one of the hardest things we can ever do.

What will He do with it?

That remains still to be seen, but He will do something glorious with it.  That we must believe.

When can their glory fade?

"A house divided against itself..."

"...cannot stand."

So also a nation.

I am saddened by how divisive politics have become (although perhaps they have always been so) and how much people resort to riots and personal attack rather than truth and love.  Let us not tolerate it, for it is never right to tolerate great evil, even if it may at times be necessary to tolerate lesser evils for fear that seeking to eradicate them should wreak greater evils.

Instead let us rise up in opposition.  Let there be revolution!  Not a revolution of blood and violence, but a revolution of our hearts, a revolution of love.

It is easier to demand that others change.  It is more comfortable to blame others and to cling to our views as the only right path.  Is it only fear then—and the ever-present pride—that prevents us from looking into the mirror of our own hearts?

I say let us dare to face it.  Let us dare to ask ourselves where we are wrong, where we have failed, where our need to prove ourselves has obstructed the path of love, and let us not shrink from whatever evil we may find even within our own hearts.  Only when we purify our intentions can we truly do good for others and for the cause of truth.

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

when tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

when tomorrow comes...

Tomorrow comes!

The Ordinary Epiphany

Could an epiphany come in the form of a pair of size 10 ice skates marked at $4.88 lying on a rack in a thrift store?

It was for me.

Epiphany means manifestation or revelation.  We use the term relatively freely these days, but not perhaps as freely as we might.

Let me illustrate with a simple story: on the traditional date of the celebration of the Epiphany, January 6th, I happened to have a few minutes to run down to the thrift store to look for skates while my family ran an errand.  We had already discovered that some seasonal ponds in the nearby park were frozen solid and would hold our weight—an unusual event in the Northwest—so ice skating was the obvious next step, save one problem: we had no ice skates.

As I approached the thrift store, I asked my Lord to provide skates, telling Him that I knew He could provide if He wished us to go ice skating.  I walked up and down the aisle of sports equipment, searching for skates that might have escaped my attention but saw nothing.  Just as I was resigning myself to the fact that it was clearly not God's will, I saw on the other side of the rack a pair of skates at least three sizes too big.  They seemed, however, to be the narrowest size 10 skates ever made.  In short, they fit.  (Also, I had plenty of room to wiggle my toes—just like my childhood heroine Pippi Longstocking.)

That moment of discovery—and also the experience of gliding across the frozen ponds while my siblings had fun sliding about on the ice—was an epiphany for me.  It was one more epiphany in a long chain of endless epiphanies revealing God's love.

As fallen creatures, we find ourselves happy mostly when we get precisely what we want.  Even little children, with all their innocence and joyful discovery of life, throw fits when they do not get what they want and are given what is good for them instead.  We are no different.  We beg God to do our will while mouthing dutifully the words, "Thy will be done."  We might go so far as to say, "Jesus, I trust in Thee," but really we more often mean that we are putting our trust in Him to do what we ask of Him.

Our Lord really does wish to give us all that we ask of Him, but He must give us what is good for us.  Sometimes He says yes and gives us the ice skates we desire.  Sometimes He gives us migraines or autoimmune disorders.

What is our response?  We thank Him for what we asked for and the other things we perceive as good and we shake our fist at the heavens and feel as if He has abandoned us when the bad things come.  We want pleasure and comfort, not challenge and growth.  We want our will, not His.  We want to be god unto ourselves.

Yet what if we were to thank Him for the bad things too?  What if we accepted them as gifts?

This approach is one facet of what De Caussade, the author of Abandonment to Divine Providence, calls the "philosopher's stone."

Historically, the philosopher's stone was sought for turning everything into gold, and even for extending life.  So when De Caussade refers to abandonment to Divine Providence by this title, he means that here is the secret key to turning everything into a source of joy and transforming our ordinary lives into labyrinths of miracles, giving us life more abundantly. (See John 10:10.)

His assertion is true because it opens us to receiving the revelation of God's love.  For the

nature of God is love, which is self-giving, and because He is perfect that means He is constantly giving Himself, endlessly manifesting Himself through even the most ordinary situations.  We cannot receive that love if we stamp our feet and fold our arms and insist upon receiving the thing we want like a spoiled toddler.

It is amazing to me how my Lord provides for me in the smallest ways when I place my trust in Him (the skates are merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg; I have countless more stories I could share).  Now that does not mean He gives me everything I want.  What it does mean is this: when I put Him first and commit myself to a daily relationship because of who He is and not what He gives me, continually (in the sporadic fashion of a human creature) abandoning myself to Him, I am awed at how frequently He provides what I need and even that for which I have not dared to ask but my heart desires.

Then when He gives me what I do not want, I can thank Him because I believe deeply in His love for me, although my mind and body may cry out to the contrary in the face of suffering.  For I know that I can trust His words:

Ask, and it shall be given you:
seek, and you shall find:
knock, and it shall be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

I know that He will answer according to His love for me, which is greater than the love I bear myself.

It's a Wonderful Life

The other day—the very eve of the current year to be precise—I suggested casually to my family that we spend the evening watching It's a Wonderful Life and eating cheese because that seemed to be our New Year's Eve tradition insofar as we have one.  It was a casual suggestion I say with plenty of room for anyone to propose an alternative—though none came.

When I suggested the film, I had not the least idea how much it would speak to me.  I was neither depressed nor frustrated with my life, but rather quite the opposite: hopeful for the future and eager for some current projects in the works to come to fruition.  Still it hit home.

Somehow we all need to hear its message.  It is an integral part of our wounded human nature to question our existence in the world, to feel as if we do not belong, as if it might have been better if we had not existed, to feel that all we do brings ruin upon ourselves or others, that all our decisions are faulty, and that we are failures.  The enemy subtly weaves that web of deceit to catch us even in our most joyous moments.  Always that dark doubt lingers, undercutting the good that we might do.

Yet the truth is so powerful.  The good that we do ripples out through the world in ways that we will never understand, much like the scientific principle known as the butterfly effect.  Merely a smile might change the whole course of a stranger's life.  And when it comes to those whose lives we touch on a daily basis: think of what fruit our love for them can bring forth!

The world needs you.  For you can touch people in a way that no other can.

Of course I cannot help but think of the corollary: not only does the good we do affect others, but also the evil.  If we speak negatively of others, if we complain, if we avoid contact with others, if we speak impatiently...

Sometimes I find myself weighted down beneath the thought of what those little seemingly-insignificant deeds might do.  I feel so powerless.  I wonder if I can ever love enough to make up for all the evil that I might unwittingly have done.  How can it possibly be true that the good I do can outweigh the negative?

Yet it can.

...for charity covereth a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Somehow, miraculously, our deeds of love can make up for a multitude of evil.  So much hope lies in that truth.  Let us choose then to step forward each day of this new year with hearts open to others, with arms reaching out to those around us, and with courage to risk loving at the expense of hurt!

Be not afraid that it may be too little.  I will leave you now with words from Saint Andre Bessette: “It is with the smallest brushes that the Artist paints the best paintings.”