Love Is Come Again

I want to share with you a beautiful French carol for Easter that happened across my path a while back called "Love Is Come Again" or alternately "Now the Green Blade Riseth."  I wanted to create a perfect arrangement of it first, but, as I reflected upon the fact that it might never happen due to the other projects on my proverbial plate, there came to my mind the phrase oft-repeated by my drama professors

"Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

So this version is by no means perfect.  I hope at least you will find it good.  And I hope you will enjoy this beautiful and moving hymn as much as I do.

Love Is Come Again

1. Now the green blade riseth, from the buried grain,

Wheat that in dark earth many days has lain; 

Love lives again, that with the dead has been: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

2. In the grave they laid Him, Love who had been slain, 

Thinking that He never would awake again, 

Laid in the earth like grain that sleeps unseen: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

3. Forth He came at Easter, like the risen grain,

Jesus who for three days in the grave had lain; 

Quick from the dead the risen One is seen: 

Love is come again like wheat that springeth green. 

4. When our hearts are wintry, grieving, or in pain,
Jesus' touch can call us back to life again,
Fields of our hearts that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springeth green.

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.

The Spirit is Willing but the Body's a Mess

“When I feel better, then I will be able to...”

Have you ever caught yourself saying something like that? Or perhaps you have repeated such phrases countless times without being aware of how foolish it sounds from an eternal perspective.

After all, if you gave a cursory glance across the list of canonized saints you might well believe that all it requires to become a saint is to get tuberculosis and die at a young age. You can bet your buttons none of them were going around planning for all the things they would do once they got better.

Although you may take my comments on the saints and tuberculosis merely as a joke (and I hope they at least make you smile), they contain an important truth as well: the reality of suffering in a life of sanctity. I think I can safely say that all of the saints suffered—some of them more than others certainly. Suffering, after all, is a part of the human condition. It is also a part of becoming holy.

So, as we put one foot in front of the other on the slow path to sanctity that we all follow, we pilgrims toward the Heavenly Jerusalem must learn to transform our perspective. Instead of seeing our pains and suffering as an obstacle to all the good that we might do, we must see them as the forging of our holiness. Pain gives us the opportunity to develop virtues such as patience. It is in suffering that we are tested like silver and have all our impurities burned away.

Yet this clear light of truth that shines upon the reality of suffering breaks apart into shadows and deception when it comes to the mind. It is one thing to endure pain of the body from some physical illness or even emotional pain such as the hurt of being misunderstood or rejected by others or any such suffering where your intellect functions as it was meant to do. However, when the body is such a mess that the mind is seriously affected—call it insanity, mental illness, or what you will—and it is no longer possible to reason acceptance of suffering against the sea of dark and self-condemnatory thoughts, what is one to do? How can any good fruit come of enduring an inability to love oneself or others?

I must maintain that in that dark place God remains. That is all I know.

What mysteries He works within those shadows and labyrinths of deception I cannot fathom, but I must believe that He does. For if He is all good and makes all things work together for good, then His power must be enough to transform these seeming evils into bright gems that one day will reflect the light.

Still, how are we poor mortals struggling along to handle those moments when the body is such a mess that the mind and will no longer strive for good?

It seems callous to say offer it up or that we must abandon ourselves to it as part of God's Providence. Yet what else is there to say? If suffering truly matters and if we are to sacrifice our lives according to the nature of our baptismal priesthood, then why should we shy away when it becomes difficult or even when it seems impossible?

Christ on the road to Calvary fell many times in His weakness. His body must have been the worst mess ever. We can only imagine how that must have affected His mind and will. Yet He got up and went on.

So we also can do even when the body is a mess and the brain feels like a refuse pit. If rising in the morning seems an insurmountable obstacle and it takes ninety-nine attempts before achieving success, or if it requires three hours to draw up the energy necessary to look someone in the face, there is merit there. If prayer becomes impossible and all external acts of charity and virtue cease to exist, God is still working.

Those little things that so many of us take for granted may be someone else's battleground. It is there in that epic tussle with the minutiae of daily life that some of us will achieve that ultimate union with God. Although the dragons may seem to gain the victory with their lies and oppression, their dominion will not last forever: all that is not of God will cease to exist. Then His light will shine fully upon His faithful warriors, revealing all their wounds and scars that tell of countless battles fought for love of Him—battles that may have been lost in order to win the war.

Santa Chiara, prega per noi!

Since I am staying tonight at a convent of Franciscan sisters in the guest apartment in a room named after Saint Clare, it seemed fitting to reflect on some of her words.  These were the ones God provided:

"We become what we love and who we love shapes what we become.  If we love things, we become a thing.  If we love nothing, we become nothing.  Imitation is not a literal mimicking of Christ, rather it means becoming the image of the beloved, an image disclosed through transformation.  This means we are to become vessels of God's compassionate love for others."

All I can think of tonight is how impossible her words seem—how impossible it seems to ever become a vessel of God's love for others.  For always the time comes when the forces of daily life grind us down and the enemy's subtle whispers drag us into the depths of our own murky pond.  In those moments any good seems impossible.

Exhaustion is bound to come upon us all sooner or later.  Frustration, failure, and regret for the past will have their way also.

Yet despite all these things, we still can become that image of Christ, not by our own power, but by His.  No matter our weakness, no matter our sinfulness, if only we turn to Him in humility, He will raise us up from the dust.

"We are our own aptest deceiver." - Goethe

"...he forgot for the while what experience had taught him—
that no human being can really understand another,
and no one can arrange another's happiness."

The Heart of the Matter
by Graham Greene

Those last two phrases in particular sound out in bold ringing tones, like a bell struck hard in an old abandoned church tower that grates out a harsh unused and funereal tone, scattering pigeons into flight and drawing the gaze of those working nearby in the fields.  So it might catch us, striking us out of the stolid comfort of our own assurance.

Sometimes we get caught up in thinking we can make others happy.  That desire often places upon us an undue burden, leading to pain or mental illness.  We may despair because of the impossibility of even understanding what will produce another's happiness.

In the sense of the above quotation, trying to arrange happiness becomes a sort of manipulation.  All too often that is exactly what our love is: an attempt to control others.  Thus even what is good—namely love, which is willing the good of the other—has become corrupt.  We may not realize how deep is the decay of our intentions.  We continue to deceive ourselves in focusing on doing the other good, but it is a good that ultimately seeks to give us a sort of power over them.

Similarly, the desire to please others leads us into the trap of manipulation.  The logic in our heads is as follows: if we do what others wish, they will be happy.  It is good logic.  The problem is in the premises; after all, receiving precisely what we want does not make us happy, ridiculous as that fact is.

Furthermore, as long as we are trying to force a result, we are manipulating, controlling, dominating.  We are not free to give and receive.  Henri Nouwen expresses this idea perfectly in his book called The Inner Voice of Love: A Journey Through Anguish to Freedom:

"A lot of giving and receiving has a violent quality, because the givers and receivers act more out of need than out of trust.  What looks like generosity is actually manipulation, and what looks like love is really a cry for affection or support."

How many times have we gone to others looking for love, begging for them to fulfil our needs while trying to hide from them the fact that we were in need at all?  So many times we reach out in hope that another will fill the void within.  Sometimes we dare not even risk that much vulnerability and turn to pleasures instead.

Yet there is a way to break out of this crippling circle of insanity.  As Nouwen himself puts it, we must first experience love in the depths of our being:

"When you know yourself as fully loved, you will be able to give according to the other's capacity to receive, and you will be able to receive according to the other's capacity to give.  You will be grateful for what is given to you without clinging to it, and joyful for what you can give without bragging about it.  You will be a free person, free to love."

That is the key to achieving the liberty of being able to love generously: we must set others free from our desires for them and accept the fruit of our efforts and offerings made out of love, no matter whether we achieve success or failure.  We must do our duty and leave the rest to the One who is All-Powerful.

Yes, we must surrender our wills.  We must surrender everything to the Creator and Healer of our souls.

Yet if it is love we desire, how could we do better then to lay ourselves in whole-hearted surrender at the feet of the One who is Love?  It is hard many times to receive love from One so intangible.  It seems impossible to entrust ourselves to One so hidden.  How can we reasonably expect One so unseen to care for us?  And yet He does.  And He does so according to our capacity to receive, according to our surrender.

In the end, He is not after all so invisible.  It is we who are blind.

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.”