Happy Mothers' Day!

Dedication: to all the mothers, physical and spiritual.

Mother Mary, pray for us!

The Dominican perspective has recently brought my attention to the connection of the word mother in Latin to the word matter and hence to the presentation of an intellectual argument for the consideration of mother earth which defends not only the sanctity of our physical nature, but also its revelation in a profound way of God's presence through His gift of motherhood.  While the gift of fatherhood involves a certain distance and separation from and hence image of the transcendence of God, the gift of motherhood that reveals God's presence in a particular way through the body because of giving life through her body presents to us the immanence of God.  He is not only transcendent, but immanent, closer to us than we are to ourselves as Saint Catherine of Siena would say.

 

Often the Gnostic error creeps in by one way or another that the natural and physical is bad while the supernatural and spiritual is good, but both are necessary for us to be a complete human person and both are good.  Saint Thomas Aquinas points us to how the order of nature and the order of grace work together in his much-quoted and often mistranslated phrase: "Grace perfects nature."  We do not need to disdain the natural world and all that is created, but to allow grace to perfect it.  We can never destroy our physical nature and become like the angels, for that would be to lose something precious to our very being--so precious that Christ Himself chose to make a marriage of mankind to God by taking on human flesh through a Mother.  Hence in a particular way the gift of motherhood, a natural gift, perfected by grace, becomes elevated to the most perfect icon of God's love for His creation, as evidenced by the glory of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Full of Grace.

 

Prayer, then, for a mother flows naturally from her physical being--her being for the other that takes so much of her attention and her faculties to be focused upon nourishing her little ones and guiding them in growing into the depths of the spiritual life through their contact with her love poured out for them in all the many little sacrifices that remain hidden in the soil of her being.  While men need to go up to the mountaintop to encounter God, mothers find that the Lord comes to them right where they are, touching them gently with the outpouring of His grace and love, showing them moment by moment how to be united with Him in the total sacrifice of themselves just as Christ gave up His life on the Cross.

 

Blessed are you who lay down your lives for your children--and above all for Christ whom you nourish in your children.  Blessed are you who offer the immolation of your body as a holocaust of love to the Father.  Blessed are you who sorrow for those who have strayed or for fear that one day your children may stray from the Faith.  Blessed are you who long so much for the holiness of your children and direct all your efforts toward it.  Your reward will be great in Heaven.

 

May Christ today through His Blessed Mother pour out upon you an abundance of grace and joy to sustain you in your vocation of motherhood!

Put on the Armor of the Holy Trinity

In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul told us to put on the armor of God (6:10-20).  Saint Patrick, whose feast we celebrate today, sublimated beneath the celebration of Passion Week (on the old Roman rite calendar), gave us a beautiful prayer called his Lorica, the Latin word for breastplate.  His prayer is indeed a fitting spiritual breastplate, for it is putting on the power of God.  There is no greater power than Christ.  Let us place Him today then upon us, praying with Saint Patrick through an invocation of the Holy Trinity.

Seven years ago, I shared a bit of that prayer through the version in my hymnal and reflected upon how this prayer was written in imitation of the invocations of the druids: In Honor of Saint Patrick.  Today I want to share with you all the verses to the best of my ability, sung for you as a prayer for His protection upon you.

There Is No Condemnation

The idea of needing to earn God's love keeps rousing its ugly head here and there in various ways, revealing an insidious monster that penetrates souls and prevents them from receiving the abundant life Christ promised.  Of course, spoken in such clear fashion, the idea is laughable.  Who could really believe they needed to earn God's love?  If you ask people, likely most if not all would know in their heads the right answer.  Yet, as the prophet Jeremiah put it, "more torturous than all else is the human heart" (17:9).

This false belief that we need to earn God's love appears beneath the visage of everything from scrupulosity and perfectionism to affected piety and hypocrisy.  In each case you can trace back the problem to the root sin of pride.

Diagnosing pride's sinfulness in this case, however, merely returns us to the need to be humble enough to receive God's love and hence back to the beginning of the vicious cycle of needing to earn God's love.  Yet, as Saint Paul said: "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus" (Rom 8:1).  Also, Jesus Himself says: "Is there no one who condemns you?  Neither do I condemn you" (see John 8:10-11).

Certainly pride exists within our hearts, but let us look beyond this sin to other forces at work in our subconscious minds and hearts.  As Americans, we live in a country founded on a principle often known as the "Protestant work ethic."  That idea essentially amounts to the need to work hard that we might achieve everything by our own efforts (and hence extends easily to spirituality with the idea of needing to earn even God's approval and love).

Furthermore, American ideals arose out of the principles of the Enlightenment whose thinkers essentially eschewed Christianity for Secular Humanism.  Instead of God being responsible for all that was good and the sole arbiter of goodness, mankind took that role for these thinkers who believed in the supremacy of reason and science.  Isn't it ironic that such a perspective would then invade Catholicism itself which Enlightenment thinkers had rejected?  Yet to me it seems it has: we have somehow absorbed this false idea that we of our own power must achieve human perfection.  Yes, that is what it means to believe that we must earn God's love: it means to believe that we are responsible for our own sanctification rather than merely accepting His free gift to us.  Take that to its logical extreme and it means that we believe we do not need God; we essentially make ourselves our own god.

Before you find my perspective too cynical, however, let us look even deeper into the human psyche.  As intelligent beings, we naturally seek the cause for every effect.  Consequently, when some negative emotion assaults our hearts, we immediately want to know the purpose.  If we feel bad, we want to know why.  We want to know whose fault it is.  We are not content to remain ignorant.  Hence we either look outward for a scapegoat, blaming someone or something else, or we look inward, blaming ourselves.

The latter perspective, seen in the light of religious tradition, becomes that much-referenced catholic guilt.  The phrase is suitable because of the meaning of the word catholic: universal: we all feel guilt when we know we have transgressed our moral code.

One common response to that guilt is to lower one's standards to the point at which one can no longer transgress them and thus cannot experience that negative emotion.  For this reason, many believe that we ought to repudiate religion, and specifically Catholicism, because it causes people to feel guilty, which leads to a vicious cycle of psychologically-unhealthy responses to spirituality.  Now I would argue that by that same logic we ought to outlaw food because it causes people to feel cravings, which lead them to overindulge and become gluttonous.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, someone might become so focused on pious practices as to be rigidly bound up in them and demand that all others abide by the same rules.  Everyone else thus must be wrong in order to preserve that fragile shell of security formed by legalism.

As Aristotle so aptly pointed out, the virtue must lie between the two extremes.  What, then, is the answer?

Love.

Perhaps that might seem too simple an answer.  Let me put it another way:

God.

Yes.  God is Love.  Therefore, we can say also that Love is God.

Consequently, if your encounter with the Truth has been anything less than an encounter with Love than you have not truly found God.  Furthermore, I'll wager a guess that if you find within yourself on some level the belief that you must earn God's love that it is because you believe also that you are unlovable.

Do you recognize that lie within yourself?

That is the lie masked by the belief that you must earn God's love along with all its various permutations.  If you believe that you must do something in order to be loved, whether by God or by anyone else, then you believe that you are lovable based upon what you do rather than who you are.

Modern psychology will happily point out to you the importance of your childhood development for the formation of your image of God.  Now before you happily blame your parents so you don't have to feel guilty about having a false idea of God (as you do if you believe you must earn His love), let me point out to you that they could not give you what they themselves had never received.  How could they show you that you were loved unconditionally if they had not themselves believed in and received unconditional love?  In this fallen world few of us have received that love.  Perhaps we flee it because it is too much for us.  Perhaps we flee it because we are afraid.

Fear.

If you look again at those two responses to guilt, you might see fear operating beneath them both.  The same is true for the idea that we must earn God's love: for if we can earn it, then we are in control of it, and it is far more comfortable to think of being in control than of facing the infinite God who is the Unknown who yet stoops down to us that we might know Him.

 "Perfect love casts out fear." (1 John 4:18)

Only God's infinite and unconditional love can cast the fear out from our hearts, but we must let Him, and that letting Him seems to be a life-long process.  It seems to take so much to unravel the knots we tie about ourselves.  Sometimes perhaps it may seem futile and we may wonder why He allows us to tangle ourselves so deeply in the lies of the enemy, but there we are left with the mystery of iniquity, the mystery proclaimed in the Easter Exultet as "O Happy Fault!"  Only a God of infinite love could bring good out of the dark shadow that sin and shame cast over our hearts.

Take courage, then, in whatever darkness you walk and listen to the wisdom of Saint John Paul II whose feast day we celebrate today: "I plead with you — never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged.  Be not afraid."

It takes great courage to open your heart to God and to allow yourself to be vulnerable enough to encounter Him in the depths of your being where He speaks love through His silent presence, imperceptible to your senses.

Will you let yourself be loved?  Sometimes I think that is the most difficult thing in all the world.

Thus I leave you with the resounding words of Saint John Paul II, taken from Christ's own words in Scripture:

"Duc in altum!  Put out into the deep!  Be not afraid."

To a Soul Steeped in Shame

Dear Soul,

Is there some weight upon you?  Are you ashamed of something from your past that keeps resurfacing to drag you down into the depths of hopelessness?  Or perhaps something about who you are causes you shame?

Shame is a heavy burden to carry.  You are not meant to carry it.

Think of the woman condemned for adultery.  Jesus bent down and wrote in the dust—tradition says He wrote the sins of those who wished to stone her—and told her accusers that the one without sin should cast the first stone.  Each knew the burden of his own sin and departed, leaving her alone with Jesus.  He rose and looked at her with love, saying to her: "Neither do I condemn you." (John 8:11)

Jesus says the same thing to you today.

Saint Paul reiterates that point in his letter to the Romans: "There is no condemnation in Christ Jesus." (Romans 8:1)

Who is it then who condemns you?

Another name for Satan is the accuser.  What your enemy wants is that you focus on yourself and your sin rather than looking to Christ and His mercy.  Every sin is the same old story: it begins with temptation, a draw toward the pleasure and immediate gratification, but as soon as you have given in, the devil turns on you, asking how you could possibly have been so stupid as to fall into that sin.  Frankly, he hates you and wants your destruction.  It is so easy to believe those lies of condemnation.

Think of the story of the man who had been lying near the pool of Bethsaida.  For thirty-eight years he had lain there, paralyzed, hoping someone would carry him to the pool when it was stirred up that he might be healed.

When Jesus comes to the man, He asks: "Do you want to be healed?"

Why does He ask that?  It seems obvious that a paralytic man lying near a pool of healing wants to be healed.  He has spent thirty-eight years of his life lying there hoping for that very thing.

Or has he?

It is easy to want healing, but not be willing to pay the price.  That paralytic said he had no one to carry him down to the water.  Could he have asked a complete stranger?  Was it only his pride that kept him from receiving what he needed?  Scripture does not tell us, but the question of Jesus makes me wonder.

All the paralytic does in response to that question is to make excuses.  Yet Jesus merely tells him to pick up his mat and walk. (John 5)

Similarly, He tells us: "Deny yourself, take up your cross daily, and follow Me." (Luke 9:23)

Sometimes—more often than not I would say—that cross is ourselves with our sins and flaws and imperfections.  We desire so much to be good—to be perfect.  We want to make ourselves holy, as if we could achieve heaven by our own effort.

Stated in such explicit fashion that idea is clearly folly.  Yet it hides within us beneath layers of lies woven by our clever enemy, especially the lie that says our mistakes have ruined the plan God had for us.

Do you truly believe you are that powerful?  Could you, a mere mortal, possibly interfere with the plan of an all-knowing, all-good, all-powerful God who is Being Itself?

I sincerely doubt it.

If you have ever believed that your life is ruined because of any action or sin of yours, you may have fallen for that subtle lie of believing in a weak and powerless god who is certainly not the God who came down from heaven and died on the Cross to set you free.  When you choose to believe in His sacrifice for you—when you accept Him as your Savior—that truth will set you free. (John 8:32)

Often something stops us from truly believing and accepting that truth, however.  Often that obstacle is our own pride, disguised perhaps from our own eyes.

For many years, my idea of holiness was of being perfect.  Reading about saints who were perfect from a young age (at least according to their biographers, for they would never have described themselves thus) further cemented an idea forged in my own inner vicious cycle of believing that I had to be perfect to be loved.  In terms of relationship with God that would mean that my relationship with Him would depend upon what I did--i.e. what I call NeoPelagianism, or the idea that I could earn my way to heaven without grace.  Clearly untrue.

My intellect absolutely knows its falsity.  To convince my heart of that fact, however, is an entirely different matter.  Is it the same for you?

Consider the following phrase: "There is nothing you can do that will ever make God love you any less or any more."

Do you believe that?

It is true in a more profound way than you will ever know in this life.  It speaks to the mystery of God's overwhelming love for you.  Yes, His love for you, not merely for the you-that-does-the-good-things or the you-that-you-wish-you-were or even the you-that-you-will-be-someday-if-you-can-ever-get-your-life-together.  He loves you just as you are.

He loves your brokenness even.  Can you love it?

Whatever you have done, whatever you regret, He has allowed.

Think about that for a moment.

It can be a hard truth to accept.  It is far easier to embrace the active part of God's will: the part that wills good things and works miracles and brings healing.  It is far harder to embrace the passive part of His will: the part that allowed the Crucifixion and that permits all the sin and suffering in the world and in your own life.

Believing in the Crucifixion necessitates believing in the Resurrection.  So too does belief in the sin and suffering in your life demand belief in Divine Providence.

God allowed the Crucifixion to conquer sin and death that we might share in His divinity and one day see Him face to face in the glory of Heaven.  Saint Paul says that "eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of man, what things God hath prepared for them that love Him." (1 Corinthians 2:9)  The greatest evil possible—that men should kill God—leads to an unimaginable good.

If He can do that, He can surely bring great goods out of your situation, whatever it may be, beyond your imagination.  Trust means choosing to believe that truth.

Surrender to God and accepting His will often requires us most to embrace our own selves with all of our flaws and mistakes and sins.  Can these separate us from the love of God?  Only if they lead us to pride and self-sufficiency—to a rejection of God.  If they lead us instead to repentance and we cry out for God's mercy, we become more able to love.

Do you remember what Christ said about the woman who anointed His feet and wept over them and whom the Pharisees condemned?  He said that she loved much because she had been forgiven much and that if she had been forgiven less--—i.e. if she had sinned less—she would have loved less.

Have you ever considered that your sins might be the price for being able to love?

"O happy fault!  O necessary sin of Adam, which gained for us so great a Redeemer!" we pray in the Exultet at the Easter Vigil Liturgy.  Those words speak of the fruit that came from God's response to original sin: Christ becoming Man to be our Savior.

What if each of us could take those words to heart after we have been reconciled to the Lord?  "O happy fault that has led me to the foot of the Cross!  O necessary sin that has purified my heart of self-love, washed away my pride, and opened my heart to the mercy of so great a Redeemer whose love is poured out into my heart?"

I pray that you are able to believe these words.  I pray that they can be the foundation of a new understanding of who you are in the sight of the Lord.

This truth shall indeed set you free.  Then the path that you are on will bear fruit, for your vocation is love.  And what is love except what Christ has shown us in letting Himself be nailed to the Cross and giving Himself breath by breath to bring us to life?

Whatever path you have left behind no longer matters.  Your loving Father calls you to respond to the new and changing reality before you.  His love meets you not on the roads you have not taken, but on the one you walk.  It is there He is doing something new.  The Lord says to you now, as He said through the prophet Isaiah:

"Remember not former things, and look not on things of old. Behold I do new things, and now they shall spring forth, verily you shall know them: I will make a way in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert. The beast of the field shall glorify me, the dragons and the ostriches: because I have given waters in the wilderness, rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, to my chosen." (Isaiah 43:18-20)

You are His chosen one.  Out of all the pain—out of all the darkness—He shall bring you to life again.

Be not afraid!

You have His promise:

"Behold I am with you all days,
even to the consummation of the world."

(Matthew 28:20) 

and

"Behold I make all things new." 

(Revelation 21:5)

Our Lady too is with you on your journey.  As you give to the Lord your fiat, receiving Him in His miraculous fullness given to you in every moment, she is interceding for you, obtaining for you all the grace that you need to hope in the Lord and in His promises.

Love and prayers,

+Jac

Broken

It used to bother me that my statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary—which is quite lovely for being made of plastic—has part of the mantle chipped off on one side of her head.

It never bothered me as a child when my mom first gave me the statue to grace my little altar on my nightstand.  At least I have no recollection of it bothering me then.  It was only in more recent years that I found that imperfection annoying and considered finding a better statue.  Perhaps if money had been in greater abundance I would have done so; or perhaps it was more for sentimental reasons that I never sought another.  Either way, I kept the statue.

Then I ended up with a crucifix with Christ's left hand broken off.  I think the idea was that I might find a way to fix the fingers.

I never did.

Instead, the conjunction of the two broken religious items turned my mind reflecting upon my own brokenness.  Facing my imperfections has also left me frustrated.  Somehow I have an expectation that I must be perfect.

Scripture doesn't exactly help in that regard: "Be you therefore perfect, as also your heavenly Father is perfect." (Matthew 5:48)

Yet there lies the problem with translation.  If we read the text in Greek we would understand from the word τέλειος (teleios) the sort of perfection that means essentially achieving its proper end.  Therefore we are called not to lack brokenness (as we wish we could; at least I do and something tells me you shan't mind my including you in that statement), but rather through it to achieve the end for which we have been created: to know, love, and serve God in this life and be happy with Him in the next to use the words of the Baltimore Catechism.

So the two broken items remain as a constant reminder to me of that fact.  Both still serve their purpose of reminding me of Christ's death and of our Lady present there at the foot of the Cross.

Were their imperfections gone they could not do more to achieve that purpose.  Yet because of their brokenness they have given me a deeper reflection on the nature of reality and through this profound insight drawn me deeper into the mystery of God's love and providence in the most ordinary of circumstances.

The "Little" Way

It always leaves me a little miffed when I find some reference to the little way of Saint Therese that suggests that she left us this easy way that we can all become saints.  My response is somewhat similar to the writing in many modern spiritual books meant to be relatable that sound to me rather flippant.

In my opinion, these things cheapen the reality.  They seem fake.

I was reflecting upon this matter yesterday as we celebrated Saint Therese's feast day.  Despite my reaction to those who would uphold her as a model—and consequently despite my reaction to the saint herself—she has consistently been working her way into my friendship.  In one way or another I keep bumping into her, one might say, as if she is trying to be my friend.  Most recently it was through a novena called "Joy in Suffering" that drew me deeper.

My favorite story, though, in her reaching out to me involves my family's kitten, Bella.  One day, Bella decided to play on my bookshelves and so she jumped up on top of the books and, as if intending to do so, kicked one out upon the floor.  It turned out to be the letters between Saint Therese and Brother Maurice which gave me deeper insight into our dear saint's life.

Now, before I give the wrong impression, I am not arguing against Saint Therese's model of the little way for all of us.  We are certainly called to follow her in sanctifying each moment of our lives.

My quarrel is with those who try to pawn off this path as easy.  "Stuff and nonsense!" I say to anyone who would try to propose that.  It is not in the least easy.  It would be far easier to allow oneself to be martyred in one fell swoop than to constantly choose what one does not want for the sake of God.  Even simply accepting with joy all the suffering that is our lot in this life can often prove quite the contrary to easy.

(Of course if any of you reading my words here truly believe it is easy, then by all means tell me your secret.)

Yet we are not called to the easy life.  Despite what our modern society (and our own concupiscence) would have us believe, we are called to the battle and not to lie at ease in our homes and stuff ourselves with comforts.  We are called to become warriors, to don our spiritual armor and fight for our Captain who leads us to the Cross.

That is the path that Saint Therese followed.  We can look to her not just as an inspiring example, but also as a friend who can aid us in the fight, for she has promised to help us:

"I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth.” 

Our guardian angels also shall aid us, day by day, in the battle, for they can see far more clearly than we ever could.

Are You Looking for Healing?

There are so many ways we need healing.  Our bodies are a mess, our minds are in chaos, our souls are in tumult.  As Saint Paul put it: "For I do not that good which I will; but the evil which I hate, that I do." (Romans 7:15)

So we look for healing.  We go to doctors, try to fix ourselves by eating the right foods and avoiding the wrong ones, and by taking a cornucopia of vitamins and medications and whatnot.  We go to therapy and psychologists and read self-help books and obsess over wounds from our past and ways we have been victimized.  We may even go to every retreat and healing prayer service and beg God to heal us.  When none of these paths work, it is easy to grow discouraged.

Now I would never denigrate the necessary taking care of oneself body, mind, and soul.  I would never deny the goods offered in the practice of medicine, psychology, and healing prayer.

Yet sometimes we need to look deeper.  Sometimes we need to question our motives.

I am reminded again and again how the devil's tactics turn us back towards ourselves.  The devil wants us to look at what we are doing, whether it is our virtues or our sins, and not at what God is doing.

Healing can become as much a part of those battle tactics as anything else.  We can get so focused on trying to achieve healing that we forget the purpose of it all.  After all, we are called to know, love, and serve God in this life and to be happy with Him in the next.  How important is it that we receive the healing we desire in order to be able to do that?  We can certainly fulfill this vocation to the fullness of our capacity regardless of how much healing we receive.

Now you can argue that it would be easier to love and serve God if you were healed.  However, if it were easier, would you grow as great in virtue?  Also, if healing increases your capacity to love and serve Him, then there is the old truth: the greater the capacity, the greater the responsibility.  Do you really want that much responsibility?

You can also argue that your lack of healing causes you to act in unhelpful patterns or even to sin.  Now clearly I would not argue that these are goods, but what if God allows these evils that you see in order to prevent you from giving into worse sins?

Certainly God wants you to be healed.  He wants it more than you do yourself, for He loves you more than you love yourself.

Therefore, if He has not yet healed you, there must be a reason—perhaps many reasons.  Or perhaps He simply is healing you, but not in the way that you expect.

Or perhaps your focus on healing may even be part of what is preventing Him from healing you.

So today I want to propose to you a question to ponder, a question that I hope you may allow to shake you to your core: what if you stopped looking for healing and looked for Christ instead?

"Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matthew 6:33)

What if you forgot about trying to heal yourself and sought Christ instead?

It is a radical question not because it means throwing health practices out of the window, but rather because it means shifting your mind, referred to in the Greek as metanoia, or in English as conversion.  You could abandon every doctor and medication and healthy practice in your life and still be looking for healing and not for Christ.  Or you could carry on with each good duty to care for yourself body, mind, and soul and there look for the presence of Christ, who is with you.  That would be a true transformation—a true conversion.

So again I ask you: what might happen if you turned your mind from seeking healing to seeking Christ?

Are You Clinging to Your Teddy Bear?

Have you ever seen the above image or one like it?

It is quite a good illustration for how God works in our lives.  Although sometimes it seems like He is not quite so gentlemanly about asking us to give Him whatever teddy bear of comfort we are clinging to in our lives.  Sometimes He simply takes things away from us, leaving us in confusion and doubt.  Then we feel lost and abandoned.

He could of course show us the bigger teddy bear first to win our confidence.  Yet He rarely does.  In fact, He rarely even gives us the greater gift immediately after taking something from us.  Perhaps He gives it sooner if we surrender readily to Him whatever pleasure or security He is asking us to give Him.  Perhaps it is only because He is forced to take away the teddy bear that has become a danger to our spiritual health that He waits for us to turn to Him before He gives us the bigger one lest it should become an idol as well.

So many times I find myself wondering why He seems to deprive those dear to me (and myself as well) of things that seem necessary.  Surely if He truly wanted us to live life more abundantly He would provide us with the support and healing we need in order to be able to do so?

It is easy to allow the enemy to work here—so easy to believe the devil's dastardly lies that seem so much more consonant with the reality we experience and to believe them in such subtle ways that we scarcely even realize it.  We end up relying on our own strength.  We believe that God does not wish to answer our prayers and therefore we must accept His will—a truth certainly, but one that so easily becomes rather a lie lived in bitterness because it taints our view of the Father's love and goodness rather than uniting us with the passion of Christ.

"God alone suffices," said Saint Teresa of Avila.

Is that not the only answer to the taking of our teddy bears?

We think we need them.  We think we need to hold something to give us comfort and security and we can't bear the thought of facing Him with empty hands.

Yet His hands were empty as they hung on the cross for us, as He poured out His love for us, a love that would soon be transformed into glory in His resurrection.  He had no teddy bears.  Everything had been taken away from Him by the Father's will to which He surrendered absolutely.

God alone sufficed for Him as Man because He wanted us to know that it is true for us as well.  He really will give us everything we need.

Of course it may mean we need to change our hearts.  We may need to change our prayers.  We may need to quit telling God what He needs to do and asking Him what we need to do and how we can fix things and simply enter into His presence open to receive His love.  Why not come before Him with empty hands and empty hearts and say to Him: "Lord, here I am; I come to do Your will.  Heal me in whatever way you wish."

Arise from the Dead!

"Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead."

These words come from an ancient homily for Holy Saturday read as part of the Office of Readings on Holy Saturday morning.  This beautiful homily that comes from some great unknown preacher pierces with the sword of truth, weaving out in poetic language the Paschal Mystery we celebrate, demanding a response from our own hearts.

It also seems to demand my response as a writer.  I might speak to it in a thousand different ways so rich is it in content, but I will give you one of them for what it is worth.

If you wish first to read the homily, or to read it after you have read my own poor words, you can find it here.


Although I emphasized the reading's use for Holy Saturday, it provides fitting fodder for meditation at any time, perhaps especially in our celebration of Easter when our fallen nature prevents us from delving fully into the Paschal Mystery.  We base our faith on the fact that Christ has risen from the dead, but do we understand what that means?  Certainly we understand suffering.  We understand at least the reality of death.  We understand life.  But how can we understand that which transcends even life?

So often we lie dead within.  We need Christ to descend into the depths of our own hell and to call to us to arise from sleep.

"I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld.  Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead.  Arise, O man, work of My hands, arise, you who were fashioned in My image.  Rise, let us go hence; for you in Me and I in you, together we are one undivided person."

Not only does He call us to life and to life in Him, but He makes us one with Him.  The eternal King, the Creator of the universe, our God who is existence itself invites us to union.

"But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven."

Although He speaks to Adam specifically, He also speaks to us as descendants of Adam, promising us a joy above that of the Garden of Eden which we, in our fallen state, often lament having been lost.  It is not enough for Him simply to give us the good that we lost, but He must give us a greater good.  Rather than restore us to the Eden, He will bring us to Heaven where we may see Him face to face.

These words apply equally to our struggle through this pilgrimage of life.  We look back at good times in our lives lost, seeing an angel with a flaming sword guarding us from returning to that which we desire, and we lament.  We sink down with deadened hearts.

Yet Christ calls to us to arise and go forward, not to lament that which lies behind, but to go forward toward that which is yet to be.  Always when He takes away that which we hold dear, He offers us a greater good, even if He calls us to walk through the shadow of death for a while before we glimpse it appear before us like the rising sun.

Let Us Become Like Palms and Olive Branches

Chanting the Liturgy of the Hours must be the most beautiful way to enter into Holy Week.  I am much grateful for that gift Luke is sharing with our parish.  Because of it, I found myself reflecting on the second reading in today's Office of Readings which comes from a sermon by Saint Andrew of Crete.  Its words struck deeply into my heart, reflecting there some thoughts stirring there of late.  I want to share some of them with you:

"Let us go together to meet Christ on the Mount of Olives.  Today He returns from Bethany and proceeds of His own free will toward His holy and blessed passion, to consummate the mystery of our salvation."

What a beautiful phrase: to consummate the mystery of our salvation of His own free will.  Yes, His own free will.

Sometimes perhaps we forget—or merely do not understand—how willingly He goes into the suffering of His passion. It is easier to think that He did it because He had to do it. For who could possibly choose to suffer so much pain by His own free will? Who would choose to embrace the Cross? Surely only the One who loves more deeply than we can understand—who loves more deeply than we can bear.

How then do we respond?

"Let us run to accompany Him as He hastens toward Jerusalem, and imitate those who met Him then, not by covering His path with garments, olive branches or palms, but by doing all we can to prostrate ourselves before Him by being humble and by trying to live as He would wish.  Then we shall be able to receive the Word at His coming, and God, whom no limits can contain, will be within us.

"In His humility Christ entered the dark regions of our fallen world and He is glad that He became so humble for our sake...."

Humility.

It is the foundation of all the virtues, the foundation of freedom, and the foundation of joy.  Yet somehow it is the most difficult of the virtues to embrace in more than mind's intellectual assent.

Why?

I think it is because we fear our own vulnerability—our own woundedness.  We try in every way possible to shore ourselves up lest we fall crashing to the ground, lest we become a hopeless mess, lest we do what we would never wish....

Vulnerability.  It is a word that has haunted me whatever path I have taken: it drew me to theatre, to charismatic prayer, to friendship, to psychology, and again to prayer....

Yet still the word looms like an insurmountable tower, its gates impregnable against my weak-willed assault.  I gaze at it like a puzzle, wondering how to unlock it.  Yet in truth I am made ungainly by my own weighty mail with all its interwoven rings of steel, my own walls of protection stacked stone upon stone over the years, and cannot grasp with my armored claws something so soft and simple and small.

Of course we need our gates and walls to keep out the evils of the world.  The problem is mainly that we forget to let down the drawbridge when the King comes knocking, especially because He comes without fine array, riding on a donkey.

"So let us spread before His feet not garments or soulless olive branches, which delight the eye for a few hours and then wither, but ourselves, clothed in His grace, or rather, clothed completely in Him.  We who have been baptized into Christ must ourselves be the garments that we spread before Him."

When we admit our own vulnerability—that we are naked before Him—then we know that we must be clothed in His grace and in His very self.  That humility allows us to throw ourselves before Him to tread upon as He enters the heavenly Jerusalem in glory where one day—after our own journey to Calvary—He will raise us up to reign with Him and to enjoy our own resurrection.

Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!  Hosanna in the highest!

Why Don't We See More Miracles?

Perhaps sometimes as we hear of Christ giving sight to the blind, healing the lepers, and even raising the dead, we wonder why He rarely works such miracles today.  More often, though, we merely accept that miracles are a thing of the past and not of the present.  By our own lack of faith we confirm their absence from our lives.

Take a moment to ask yourself this question: do you really want to see miracles in your life?

It might seem easy to answer yes right away, but if so then I would dare to say that it may arise from a failure to understand the demands that a miracle makes upon you.  For a miracle requires metanoia—conversion of mind—conversion of heart.

In a talk my friend Josh gave a while back, he spoke directly to this reality: "Miracles happen when God tells us what to do and we do it."

If we deeply examine our own hearts and minds we may find the opposite reality existing: we want to tell God what to do and have Him do it.  That is the miracle we hope for.  We want to see the sufferings in our lives—or in the lives of those we love—removed.  We want to rejoice in the glory of the healing power of the Divine Physician right now.  We want to be restored to the fullness of life that we may live more abundantly as has been promised.  We want to be fully alive because we feel so far from it.

Yet those good desires leading us to Christ often drag along with them a reluctance to give up whatever is keeping us from union with Him.  We end up clinging to patterns that prevent us from receiving the grace He wishes to give us.  Merciful God that He is, He allows that.  He never takes away the suffering we see as evil when it saves us from worse evil or gives us a crutch to rely upon in our own brokenness that we are not yet ready to give up.

Moving out of that brokenness means letting go of our own victimhood.  However, as my friend Joseph reminded me recently, so few are willing to do that.  Whether we realize it or not, we often like to see ourselves as the injured party.  It's a safe place to be.  For who can fault the victim?

Instinctively we know that if we remain as victims before the face of a cruel world we can't blame ourselves for our fate.  Where we have failed again and again, we can become martyrs of circumstance  and therefore save ourselves from the heavy burden of guilt.  When everything seems against us and we want to hide in our beds, we can assure ourselves that after all it isn't our fault and that if God had wanted us to do more He could have made it possible.

It is far harder to embrace all the failures and sufferings as part of our reality without accepting also the crushing condemnation that certainly is not of God.  For to do so means to stand vulnerable as Christ did before Pilate—silent and without defense.

Yet think of what Christ said finally in answer to Pilate's questioning:

"You would have no power over me if it were not given you from above."

Nothing has power over us except by the will of our Heavenly Father.  Nothing can harm us against His most loving will.

Yet just as Job wrestled with his sufferings, as everything he held dear was taken away from him, we too wrestle with our own pain, the worst of which may be our own failure to live up to our own expectations of ourselves or seeing how our brokenness hurts those we love.  In that darkness and confusion, we can rebel against our situation without yet being willing to open ourselves to God's love.  We can fall into self-hatred and despondency, forgetting that the Creator of the Universe rules our lives.

Why should we not see miracles?  Why not expect God to transform our lives radically even where we struggle most?

The only reason I can see is because we go to Him with outlined expectations, limiting Him to the finite box we have prepared for His working, instead of going to Him with open hands and open hearts.  What might happen if we began to listen?  Would we hear God's voice if we let our inner selves fall silent in adoration before Him?

"Miracles happen when God tells us what to do and we do it."

What Is God's Will?

“If God would just tell me what His will was, I would do it.”

Would you, though?

That question of itself could make an entire meditation.  However, look again at this phrase in another form:

“What does God want me to do?”

If I had the proverbial penny for every time this phrase had been asked or spoken, I would be rich indeed.  Even the number of times I have heard it in my own life would make a weighty pile (and that of course includes its origin in my own mind or mouth).

Take a third look at it:

“I don't understand why God won't just tell me what He wants me to do. I keep asking Him and asking Him.”

As with most aspects of our lives, there are two movements at work here.  The first is good: we turn toward God and ask Him what He wants, so there is a stirring of our hearts for God and a desire to be open to His will.

The second, however, often undermines the first.  Because we are so focused upon asking God what He wants of us, we fail to recognize what He is actually telling us through what is happening to us in each moment and what He is speaking through the silence in our hearts. Our failure originates from a misconception about what God's will means.  We think of it as something we do.  In becoming focused on God's will as something we do, we are looking for, in modern business parlance, “action items.”  Now that sort of perspective lies not too far off from the approach of Pelagianism which places salvation within the reach of our own actions instead of as our acceptance of unmerited grace given freely by our loving God.

Thus, like every other temptation it focuses us on ourselves instead of on God.  We become fixated on wanting to do the exact right thing and fearing that if we fail we will ruin God's plan for our lives.

Do you really think you have the power to ruin the plans of the OMNIPOTENT GOD?

I somehow doubt it.

Why then do we look outward?  Why do we seek the will of God in anything other than what He is giving us in the present moment?

In some sense it is because we are not happy in the moment.  We feel unable to bear whatever suffering happens to be our lot, either sickness of ourselves or loved ones, the loss of a job or work that makes us miserable, our plans falling apart, friends failing or betraying us, the death of someone we hold dear, a loved one following the wrong path....  The list could go on and on.

In all these things, we experience inner conflict because we know that things are not as they should be—as they were meant to be.  In short, because it is not yet heaven.

Consequently, we flee from these struggles, seeking solutions everywhere but in the depths of our hearts where God resides—where heaven begins to sprout like the mustard tree.  Saint Augustine put it so well in his much-quoted words: “Our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”

The path of abandoning oneself to God's Providence offers the pathway to that rest.

Now often when people begin to think of abandoning themselves to God and accepting His will in every moment, they understand a sort of resignation or giving up on doing anything.  There enter cynicism.

Perhaps the best way to look at it is to understand our own will as a reflection of God's will since we were after all created in His image and likeness.  When we speak of His will, we can refer to His passive will and to His active will.  The latter means what He directly wills, as for example His creation of the world or the working of miracles.  The former encompasses all that He allows to happen without directly willing it, including any of the evils in the world, and which He permits in order to bring about a greater good, as He did with the Crucifixion.

In our own lives it is much the same.  We actively will certain things, seeking to do what is good and to grow in virtue.  That is easy enough to understand.

What about our passive will, however?

Certainly it is harder to understand—and harder to live—but ultimately it is where we become most united with God, for HE IS.  Remember He called Himself I-AM-WHO-AM, for He is being itself, existence itself.  Thus accepting what is means accepting His presence in each moment.

There is a piece of folk wisdom that says that one first has to admit to having a problem in order to begin to be able to change it.  Similarly, when we accept our current situation as it is things often do begin to change.  Even if the external situation remains the same, our hearts become transformed within us, our minds become converted.

Therefore, let us accept whatever is in our lives not in order to become bitter and resigned and stoic about it, but because we thereby choose to believe that our Beloved Father will bring about a greater good through it, that Christ is present with us through it, and that the Holy Spirit works our salvation through it.  Let us embrace everything that happens to us then in order to become one with the Holy Trinity at work in that moment.

Behold the Handmaid of the Lord

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding."

I like to imagine it might have been early in the morning and dark when our Lady crept outside, following a silent prompting in her heart to come out and pray as she stared up at the beauty of the stars fading with the first light of dawn.  Then, in that darkness just before the dawn, the light of the angel Gabriel burst upon her like the rising of the sun.

"Hail, full of grace, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women."

Called by name, she could not doubt that it was to her the angel spoke.  The message was for her and none other.

Who would not tremble at such a grace-filled message?  The words must have spoken to the depths of her heart and to her vocation, touching her soul in a way that only the truth of the Lord spoken to our hearts can do.

"Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found grace with God."

First, the injunction not to fear, a call to trust, to commit all doubts and uncertainty into God's providential love.

Then words of such power:

"Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a Son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus.  He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the most High; and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David His father; and He shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever.  And of His kingdom there shall be no end."

For where God works there is ever clarity and strength, slicing through our own expectations with the sword of truth.  And He ever calls us to transform our perspective.

"How shall this be done, because I know not man?"

Tradition holds that Mary had taken a vow of perpetual virginity and that Joseph had done so as well.  Her question makes most sense in light of this view, which certainly precludes any possibility or expectation for a child in the picture.  I wonder whether she questioned in that moment her certainty regarding her vow of virginity.  Did she ask in her heart if God wished her to tread a different path?

"The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.  And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she also hath conceived a son in her old age; and this is the sixth month with her that is called barren: Because no word shall be impossible with God."

Although Mary must have known then that God confirmed her in her vow of virginity, nevertheless the message must have transformed how she saw the entire rest of her life.  She could have questioned further, she could have resisted, she could have clung to what she wanted.

Yet she said only: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done to me according to thy word." 

She could scarcely have uttered a more beautiful surrender of her expectations for her life.  All that she must have seen as necessary she laid down, accepting instead the power of God at work.

My prayer today is that we will have the courage to do the same, to surrender anything that we think is necessary for ourselves or others, to lay our expectations at the foot of the angel Gabriel, and speak with Mary: Behold the Lord's servant always, ready to fulfill all that He desires.

I wonder too about those moments after Gabriel departed.  Did the world seem dark and dreary?  Did her heart ache within her even with the joy of receiving God's message?  Perhaps the devil too crept in to tempt her not to trust in the Lord's plan and in His messenger, for if he could undermine her trust, he would have a foothold to drag her away from her obedience.

Yet Mary arose with haste, never heeding such tactics, and went to bring Christ to her cousin, to share with her the glory of God's word.

For her it was necessary only to attend to the duty of the moment and not to worry about the future.  She went to be present where she could draw closer in her service to the Lord and did not fret about what must come or what to do about it or how.

Here I am, Lord; I come to do Your will.