If Jesus Came in the Days of Covid-19....

N.B.: The following passages represent re-imagined moments from Scripture to speak to our present situation living with the repercussions of covid-19 and are meant primarily for the sake of humor.  No irreverence is intended.  The same cannot be said, however, for satire.

Jesus healed a woman who had been infirm for eighteen years and was criticized for it by the authorities who were afraid because He challenged the authority of their medical practice.  He then said to them:

"To what shall I compare the kingdom of God?  It is like to a coronavirus, which men took and released into the world, and it grew and spread through all the world and none could wipe it out, and wherever people went there were remembrances of it and it was the thought on everyone's mind and the first topic of every conversation." (cf. Luke 13:18-19)

Another time, Jesus was speaking to His disciples, instructing them that they must be prepared for scandals to come, but urging them not to scandalize anyone and to forgive everyone even should someone repeat the same sin seven times a day against them.  The disciples, not liking the hard work of virtue this would require, pretended to accept its reality and said to Him:

"Increase our faith."

He, however, recognizing how His words would lead to an explosion of virtue signaling as all began to speak of how they would forgive anyone without touching the forgiveness they indeed needed to offer, spoke again to bring their minds back to the true realities:

"If you had faith the size of a coronavirus, you might say to this skyscraper: 'Be lifted up and be transported into the desert,' and so it would happen." (cf. Luke 17:6)

Then as Jesus gathered for His last party with His disciples before He would suffer and be put to death and after giving them His body and blood under the form of bread and wine, He gave them instructions on how to live so they would not need to turn to self-help manuals.  He urged them not to seek positions of power and elected offices, but rather to be of no more regard than the homeless on the street, serving others and not thinking of themselves.

Seeing Simon Peter bursting with ideas for social reform and protests in favor of justice, Jesus said to him:

"Simon, Simon, behold Satan desires to have you that he may sift you all as with the testing for covid-19.  But I have prayed for you that your faith should not turn to fear of what may happen in this world and you, when you have been converted, must turn and strengthen your brethren." (Luke 22: 31-32)

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

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."

Mirror of the Soul

In honor of a certain obscure Franciscan dear to my heart whose feastday happens to fall today, my patron Blessed Jacopone da Todi (to learn the story there read the post from two years ago here and for last year's post go here), I want to share with you a few stanzas from one of his poems:

HOW THE LIFE OF JESUS IS THE MIRROR OF THE SOUL
(Lauda xxxix)

Life of Jesus Christ!
Mirror of Verity!
Mine own deformity
I see in that clear Light.

Somewhat, methought, I was;
Somewhat, methought, I seemed;
The Self of which I dreamed
I gladly did survey.
But gazing on that Glass,
The light thenceforth that streamed
On my true nature gleamed:—
Down in the depths it lay!
Needs must I weep and pray;
For, far as earth from skies,
Seeing from Being lies—
Distant as day from night.
…

O false esteem of self!
How couldst thou dare to bring,
As offerings to thy King,
These worthless works of thine?
Thy nature, all deformed,—
Ah, what an evil thing
To urge it, tottering,
Before that Light Divine!
These errors that are mine,
Must loose me from their sway;
Disorder must away,
Ere God with man unite.

...

I cannot be re-born
Till mine own self be dead;
My life out-poured, out-shed,
Sheer essence to renew: 
On glorious Nothingness
He only can be fed,
Whom God Himself hath led;—
Here man hath naught to do.
O glorious state and true!
In Nothingness to cease.
Desire and mind at peace
In calmness infinite.

May that light of Christ be mirrored in your own soul as you prepare for the celebration of His coming only a few days from now!

Come Hell or High Water

Of course we don't usually have such a clear conversation with God about what He is doing in our lives (or not doing), partly because everything is obscured by the mist of lies, and partly because the conversation happens rather in our actions than our words.  However, a writer must needs put into words such experiences, as for example when we face great trials and tribulations in our lives.  Also, it can help to illumine further truths about our journey by looking at reality bluntly expressed in the words of an ordinary conversation:

---

Me: I'm going to do it come hell or high water.

Jesus: All right, if that's really what you want.

(He lets there be a little hell or high water, proverbially speaking:)

Me: Oh, Lord, take it away! I can't go on like this!

Jesus (gently): That's not what you said in the beginning. You could have said: "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

Me: Isn't that what I meant?

Jesus: Is it?

Me: Well...

Jesus: Or did you mean: "I've got this under control and I want to win the victory all by myself."

Me: ...

Jesus: I am with you always, but I will never force Myself on you.

VIII. Jesus Consoles the Women of Jerusalem

And there followed him a great multitude of people, and of women, who bewailed and lamented him. But Jesus turning to them, said: Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me; but weep for yourselves, and for your children. Luke 23:27-28

The title of this station has always struck me. Of course it is often rendered in another less confusing fashion, but it is the strangeness of this particular title that draws my attention, and therefore my reflection.  How is it that Jesus consoles the women by telling them to weep for themselves and their children?  For surely that would not be cause for consolation, but rather desolation.  How could He intend to console them by telling them to weep at all?

So often He overturns our expectations.  We want Him to tell us that everything will be okay and by okay we mean that we and our loved ones will not have to suffer.

Yet He does not tell us that.  Rather, He tells us to weep for ourselves and for our children—He tells us we may grieve for the sins that we commit and will commit, lament our failings, and even mourn our losses.

The women did not need to weep for Him.  He knew perfectly well why He suffered: to bring us salvation.  It is only we who do not know why we suffer that deserve such pity. We deserve those loving women's tears—and our own tears—because we have no concept of the numinous quality of suffering and cannot grasp its salvific effect.  Only He could truly understand such a mystery.  Only He could bear all our sins in the cross, carrying us to the Father and pouring out the last drop of His blood for us.

Let us take consolation in that love then.  For that is the only place where we can find true consolation, especially when the way before us seems dark and those about us struggle mightily with sufferings that seem beyond their strength to bear.

We may weep for them and for ourselves.  Yet let those tears not be in vain: let our weeping be united with His sacrifice that they may bear fruit in abundance.

My Jesus, laden with sorrows, I weep for the offences I have committed against Thee, because of the pains they have deserved, and still more because of the displeasure they have caused Thee, who hast loved me so much.  It is Thy love, more than the fear of hell, which causes me to weep for my sins.  My Jesus, I love Thee more than myself; I repent of having offended Thee.  Never permit me to offend 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.)

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.)