Incarnation

Carved wooden altar—wood of manger;

Gold glimmers tabernacle—golden straw.

Stare anew: the sight becomes a stranger

As the piercing star the shepherds saw.

Breath of oxen—breath of God's own life

Exhaled in layers of dust and grime—

There daily work and pain and strife

Did long await His bursting into time.

His two bright eyes stare, imploring

Hearts sheltered, cold, and dim,

Even as we come to kneel, adoring

God in flesh—blind to sight of Him

Who comes to break our shroud of fears,

Of dreams too small, to catch our tears

In tiny hands outstretched. He smiles

To see those weighted down with trials

Stop for one brief moment, darkly gaze

With blank stare at the brightest blaze

Hid in swaddling clothes, flesh to give

To all: to teach us, newborn, to live.

 

Flesh to Flesh

In the afterglow of that great solemnity of the Annunciation in which we celebrate the singular most important event in the whole course of history, the Incarnation, it is the flesh that provides food to ponder (no pun intended).  For it is to our mortal flesh that Christ draws our attention by the hypostatic union—God uniting Himself with mankind.

It is so easy to forget what a good thing the flesh is.  However, when God created the world, what He said of it was that it was good.

Yet we experience such suffering in our flesh that we forget its goodness.  Whether we suffer the emotional pain of the loss of someone dear to us, the physical aches of growing old, the daily weariness of our monotonous work, or simply a seemingly source-less depression, we naturally fall back on a response of hope.  We are made to be creatures of hope.  Thus we long for the day when we shall no longer suffer these things.  We may thereby begin to look condescendingly on this mortal coil that keeps us from the glories of heaven, especially if we struggle with the concupiscence of the flesh.

Despite a hatred of the body that can arise subconsciously in a thousand different ways, one startling fact remains: God waits for us physically in the Blessed Sacrament.  We may forget the great privilege of that Presence with us when we cannot see Him face to face as we long to.  Yet so blessed is that Sacrament that the angels envy us for being able to receive It.

God didn't become man so that He could fill the gap between now and heaven.  He became man because He wants to be united with us now, today, through our bodies and His body given up for us upon the cross, but first given to us through the Eucharist at the Last Supper.

Henri Nouwen speaks beautifully of our desire for that meeting of God through our flesh: 

You are looking for ways to meet Jesus.  You are trying to meet him not only in your mind but also in your body.  You seek his affection, and you know that this affection involves his body as well as yours.  He became flesh for you so that you could encounter him in the flesh and receive his love in the flesh.

Somehow I am finding this message come to me in so many different ways lately. Its ubiquity inclines me to consider its importance for a society so pleasure-oriented as ours, for pleasure is focused ultimately on satisfying the needs of the body. Of course no pleasure satisfies. Always we need more. The desire remains and grows for more and more and more and more.... Because the desire is for something deeper. The desire is for God. It is a desire to meet Him in our flesh.

But something remains in you that prevents this meeting, Henri Nouwen continues. Somehow there is always something that keeps us back. We throw up all sorts of walls to avoid that encounter.

Several weeks ago, I went with a friend to an empowering workshop for prayer leaders. The workshop leader demonstrated the power of intercessory prayer by asking someone to come forward who wanted healing. A man came forward who had one leg shorter than the other. As they prayed over him at first nothing happened. Then it was that the leader asked whether there was something that might prevent him from receiving that healing and so they prayed for his intentions for spiritual healing of pride for which he had asked initially. Then—I heard, although I did not see it with my own eyes—his leg became as long as the other.

So often we want healing. We go to doctors wanting to be cured, trying every treatment. Even if we come to the Divine Physician we may not receive the healing we desire. The question is always: why?

I found an answer at that workshop. I can't say that it is always true, but it may very well be so. For we mortal creatures are not mere bodies like cars to be fixed at the mechanic but a complex union of body and soul with the physical and psychological impacting the spiritual and vice versa. Every act has its effect for better or for worse.

There is so much to say on this subject, but I will end with a simple injunction from Nouwen:

Do not despair, thinking that you cannot change yourself after so many years. Simply enter into the presence of Jesus as you are and ask him to give you a fearless heart where he can be with you. You cannot make yourself different. Jesus came to give you a new heart, a new spirit, a new mind, and a new body. Let him transform you by his love and so enable you to receive his affection in your whole being.

The Best April Fools

For every April Fools' Day joke played successfully this day someone must be full of confusion or annoyance or some similar sentiment.  Imagine then the apostles, who had just undergone the most brutally cruel crashing of their expectations in the death of their Lord only to have Him rise again three days later as if to say, "April Fools.  You thought I was dead and this was the end of all things, but look, now I am alive."

Of course He never said that.  First of all, they had not yet invented this delightful celebration called April Fools Day.  Even if they had, Christ's resurrection would not have fallen on that day.

Still, there is a perennial truth in this year's coinciding of celebrations as much as there was in that of Valentine's Day and Ash Wednesday.  It is a truth deeper than we might dare admit.  Sometimes we can grow so comfortable with the darkness and pain and our own grieving that we do not want to admit the light.  It is uncomfortable, just like the prank of April Fools, to find ourselves faced suddenly with the overturning of our expectations.  How can we be demanded suddenly to accept as necessary the most horrific of circumstances?  Yet is that not what the resurrection demands?  For how could there be resurrection without first the crucifixion?

Christ appears like a child, eager in His glory to welcome us into the Kingdom of Heaven, a kingdom that has dawned through the trampling of death by death.  That child-like love, however, runs up against grieving hearts who had just undergone the most tragic experience of their lives.  How could they be prepared to go from pain to joy?

We too are called to be children.  We are called to let loose our own expectations and rejoice with the reappearance of Him who was dead.

He is alive!

Do those words not strike the mind with more comprehension than to say that He was dead?  For death we all understand.  It comes for all those we love and we know it will come one day for us.  It is, according to folk wisdom, one of the only sure things in life other than taxes.

Yet resurrection?  Of that we have no experience.  How then can we comprehend something so amazing, so heartbreakingly beautiful, so true?

We cannot.

Still, by the power of Christ within us, perhaps we may catch some glimmer of what this awesome mystery portends.  Perhaps He send the Holy Spirit to enlighten our earth-trod minds, to awaken us from the weary monotony of our self-wrought circles of madness, and to breathe in the fresh air of a new joy, a new hope, a new life that might just as well be the April Fools joke.  For to embrace such a mystery seems folly to the world, and even to our mortal minds.

Let us then embrace the folly of this joke that is no mere joke, although it makes the heavens ring with the laughter of joy.  On this day, let us become fools for Him!

Christ is risen from the dead,
trampling down death by death,
and on those in the tombs
lavishing life!

XII. Jesus Dies on the Cross

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

When Nietzsche wrote, "God is dead," doubtless he intended it to be a startling statement, but surely it is far more startling to say that "God has died."  Even more powerful is to say: "God has died the most excruciating death to show you how much He loves you and wants you to live with Him forever, freed from the pain and suffering you inflict upon yourself by your sins."

Death cleaves soul from body, but also destroys all earthly hopes for glory and power.  In the light of death none of these paltry things to which we cling so strongly mean more than the dust that covers the earth.

Our Beloved Savior knew better than we what truly matters.  He knew that in the end all that remains is love.

It was love that carried Him through the torturous journey that brought Him to the place of execution.  It was love that filled His heart with every breath He took—every painful breath to draw in voice to speak His last words of love upon His enemies and those close to Him alike.

O my dying Jesus, I kiss devoutly the Cross on which Thou didst die for love of me. I have merited by my sins to die a miserable death; but Thy death is my hope. Ah, by the merits of Thy death, give me grace to die, embracing Thy feet, and burning with love for Thee. I yield my soul into Thy hands. I love Thee with my whole heart; I repent of ever 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.)

And every word He spoke while He hung upon that cross carries such a weight of love:

"Father, forgive them, for they know not what we do."  For we never know what we do: we never know how deeply we offend Him not just by our sinning, but by failing to turn to Him with the loving tenderness in each moment that He deserves for His goodness to us.

"Truly I say to you, today you shall be with Me in Paradise."  All it took to gain Saint Dismas this promise was one act of love.  How overwhelmingly our Lord responds to any act made for love of Him!

"Woman, behold your son.  Son, behold your mother."  He wanted even to share His Mother with us, to share her pure and loving heart with us, knowing that she would intercede for us with all the power of her being.

"My God, My God, why hast Thou abandoned Me?"  Crying out in union with our torment, He shows us that He too knows the depths of despair that sometimes threatens our hearts' peace.

"I thirst."   How greatly He thirsts for our love!

"It is finished."  When He had reached the end of His strength, He knew that His sacrifice was complete, ready as if a gift to be wrapped and handed to those He loves.

"Into Thy hands, I commend My spirit."  In the end He gave Himself back into the hands of His Father whose Providence had guided each moment of His earthly life and which directs also each moment of ours.

Three hours of agony it cost Him before He had expended all the strength of His mortal body in an outpouring of love.  Even then He had more to give: when the soldiers pierced His side, blood and water flowed forth like an ocean of mercy for the whole world, preparing the way for the most beautiful prayer given to Saint Faustina and known as the Divine Mercy chaplet and which begins thus:

You expired, Jesus, but the source of life gushed forth for souls, and the ocean of mercy opened up for the whole world. O Fount of Life, unfathomable Divine Mercy, envelop the whole world and empty Yourself out upon us.

XI. Jesus is Nailed to the Cross

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.
R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

Why should God have chosen the cross as the means for our salvation?

Think of it: Christ was nailed to the cross, the large nails boring through His hands and His feet.  Not only must it have been excruciatingly painful, but they also left wounds there that He would later show to His apostles.

Why did He choose to allow Himself to be thus marked?  Why did He want His wounds to be visible even in His glorified body?

Was it not for our sake?  For He wanted to remind us at every moment of how much He loves us.  Even more than that, He wants us to know that we are not alone in our suffering.  If we are nailed to our cross (so often ourselves or whatever suffering we bear) then we are not alone: He still bears His wounds, displaying them openly that we might remember that it was through sufferings that our salvation was won.

Sometimes we are afraid of pain, of illness, of suffering in any form because we think that it will shatter us.  Yet these things united to Him have a great power and if they remain burned in our flesh it is only that we might have some means of unity with our Blessed Savior.

My Jesus! loaded with contempt, nail my heart to Thy feet, that it may ever remain there, to love Thee, and never quit Thee again. 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.)

IV. Jesus Meets His Mother

V. We adore Thee, O Christ, and we bless Thee.

R. Because by Thy holy Cross, Thou hast redeemed the world.

How could our Lady bear to see her Son suffer so dreadfully?  Every mother's heart aches for her children and she longs to be able to take those pains herself so that sometimes she offers a greater sacrifice by seeing others suffer than by suffering herself.  Mothers hate to feel powerless, for they must reach out to serve, to love, to lift up: it is their very nature.

Yet Mary, the Mother of God, did not try to take away her Son's suffering as she followed Him on the way to the cross.  Her willingness to suffer with Him by seeing Him suffer united her loving heart with His.

When finally she broke through the crowd to meet Him face to face, the tears must have streamed down her wordless face that saw His face so disfigured.  She must have longed to take Him into her arms to comfort Him as she had when He had been a little child, but she could not, for that would have renewed His pains a thousand-fold.

Perhaps she reached out to touch Him gently, her fingertips softly caressing His cheek in the only place still unhurt.  In that touch, He who had felt power flow out of Him so many times to heal must also have felt power flow into Him: the power of His mother's love, a constant love that embraced the will of the Father in all its unpleasant manifestations.  So too in the meeting of their gaze must love have flowed.  In that moment, the God of the universe drew strength from His dear creation.

In our sufferings, may we look to our Blessed Mother, knowing that she longs to take away our pain and grief, but knowing also that she bears to see us suffer out of love.  She knows that what our Lord allows to happen to us out of His most abundant Providence will transform us, transfiguring the muck of our lives into a brilliant pearl to offer Him.

My most loving Jesus, by the sorrow Thou didst experience in this meeting, grant me the grace of a truly devoted love for Thy most holy Mother. And thou, my Queen, who wast overwhelmed with sorrow, obtain for me by thy intercession a continual and tender remembrance of the Passion of thy Son. I love Thee, Jesus my love; I repent of ever 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.)

Never Give Up!

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

-Mr. Mendez

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

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

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

Let it speak to your heart also....

Eight Years Ago Today

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On pilgrimage 2009

On pilgrimage 2017

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

The Battle Is Not Yours

Conflict.  Pain.  Hurt.  Heartbreak.  Betrayal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And there is nothing greater than love.

Your Pain for the World

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open the Doors of Your Heart

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

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

If beauty wounds, then where shall we find healing?

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

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

Yet we artists are no less broken.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The presence of God hurts.  Beauty wounds.

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

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

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

A seed must die to bring forth fruit.

Offer It Up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have You Been Transfigured?

Throughout our lives we face joys and sorrows, moments of great enlightenment and times of deep darkness, the toss and swell of waves in the sea of life.  Although we long to taste the pleasures without the pains, these opposites reflect and complement one another, working together into a pattern that one day we shall know in its fullness.

At times we may feel such elation in the face of some joyful experience that we feel we shall never taste sorrow again.  Love in particular may produce such fruit.

Then death or pain comes and we wonder how we shall ever taste joy again.

Yet ever we step forward, day by day, toward our resurrection, from joy to sorrow and then to joy again.  We are able to continue forward because of our transfiguration experiences.

The apostles standing at the Transfiguration saw Christ revealed in His glory with Moses and Elijah beside Him, talking with Him of the Crucifixion, the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets.  For in that Transfiguration the apostles were given an experience of the glory shrouded in the Crucifixion that they might not despair when the time came.  Yet they wanted only to build tents there that the experience might never end.

It is ever so.  We wish to cling to those moments of transfiguration.  We do not understand—or do not wish to believe—that they are lights given us to carry us through our own crucifixions to the Resurrection.

Everything Leads to Goodbye

A while ago I had the opportunity to view a film of a theatrical production of Kiss the Moon, Kiss the Sun and one thing in particular that struck me was the phrase, "Everything leads to goodbye."  That reflected the experience of a disabled man, a major character in a quite beautiful story, but I will say no more about it so as to avoid any spoilers for those who may wish to experience the story for themselves.

Everything leads to goodbye.

That phrase has continued to echo in my mind these past months.  How much it reflects our experience of this life!

So many times people comment that they hate goodbyes.  Then they refuse to say goodbye and just say, "See you later," or some other trite phrase.  (Which in my opinion is a trifle silly, as the origin of goodbye is simply "God be with you," a beautiful wish for anyone, and implies no end, but thus the corruption of language.)

How silly we are sometimes to try to hold on so hard.  We try to preserve the past with hordes of pictures and memorabilia that we scarcely ever bother to look back at and then we complain prodigiously about the amounts of stuff we have.  We are always trying to perpetuate the goods of the current moment, just as the apostles at the Transfiguration wanted to build tents that Christ might remain there with Moses and Elijah always.  We do not want anything we perceive as good to pass away.  So we become slaves to the past.

It is not only things we hold onto, but people too.  We try to retain the relationships we had whether people die or drift out of our lives.

I used to think that everything would work out and that all the tangled web of relationships lost or strained would be straightened out if only I sought love and trusted in God.  I thought I would understand why those goodbyes had to come and why those things happened that led up to the necessity of breaking or loosening ties.

Yet as time goes on and the ache of those broken relationships goes on, I doubt I will find the happy endings I once looked for.  Perhaps I read too much as a child, for my mind seems to have been trained to believe that everything will tie up neatly and reach its wrapped-up end within a short and reasonable time.  Or perhaps that is merely human nature.

In any case, I know now that when I expect those perfect conclusions, I place all the emphasis on events resolving outside of myself.  (To put it in dramatic terms, I focus on plot instead of on character.)  In other words, I let go of my own responsibility.

Reality does not reflect my desires.  Instead of finding the warped threads of scattered paths coming together into one clear line, I am seeing the threads diverge more and more across the dark wood before me.

Yet my heart knows the Presence that remains still no matter how broken and empty it is.  The more I let go, the more I become aware of that great and awesome Presence waiting.

My heart is beginning to understand a deeper reality: it is not those ecstatic moments of joy and heart-felt connection to which we must cling.  Indeed, we must cling to nothing.  We must let go, adrift on the dark flowing waters as the moon and stars shine down upon us.  We can smile up at that night sky because our hearts are set free—because we are okay with goodbyes even if they last until forever.

Life is Pain

"Life is pain, Highness; anyone who says differently is selling something."

-Westley in The Princess Bride

These days nearly everyone is selling something.  Whether it is engagement jewelry or cheap soda, vacation home timeshares or the latest technological gadget, our society centers around consumerism.  Our economy improves primarily based upon how many unnecessary bits of paraphernalia you, the consumer, will purchase, even if you must rack up thousands of dollars in debt to do so.

Clearly—if you will believe the advertisements thrust upon you from every quarter—you must own a desktop computer, laptop computer, mp3 player, iPad, iPod, iPhone, new car, new house, stereo system, barbeque grill, printer, scanner, Ninja blender, ride-on lawn mower, golf cart, 4-wheeler, motorcycle, moped, DVD player, CD player, 62GB USB stick, digital camera, telescope, binoculars, electronic keyboard, LED lights, water skis, etc., etc.  You need caffeine, alcohol, drugs, and fifteen different kinds of painkillers.  In short, you need anything that increases your pleasure and decreases your pain.

Consequently, we ought to be the happiest people in all history.  Yet are we?

Depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses continue to increase dramatically.  Current statistics state that one in five adults in the U.S. suffer from a mental illness each year.  Yes, a fifth of our adult population is struggling, not to mention the prevalence of mental issues among children and teens.  And the number of suicides only continues to rise.

Why is this?

When we listen to the voices of the world and believe that we are not smart enough, strong enough, or beautiful enough, we shrink in our own estimation.  When we are told we have the wrong hair color, skin color, body type, or gender, how are we supposed to be happy?

By changing our exteriors?  Then we only build up layer upon layer of mask behind which to hide.  And we know very well how to hide.

Yet there is another course.  Theatre teaches us how great is the value of vulnerability: in laying bare our very selves and refusing to flee the pain, we find a deep inner strength.  By coming to know ourselves and accepting who we are, we discover the unique perspective we alone can offer the world.

How do we find the strength to face that pain?

Leaving aside the facts, let me speak personally for a moment: I find it daily in the love I receive from my family and my friends who love me because of who I am with all of my eccentricities.  I have found the greatest happiness in my life not by trying to change myself to fit the pressures of the world and become someone else, but by learning to love myself as I am and to become daily more myself.

Sometimes the pain returns when relationships fail.  Caught up as others are in their own pain and hectic lives, they do not see our need for love and support.  Nor do they understand how much their love bridges the chasm of loneliness.

Yet even there we can stand strong in the face of agony, for there is One who never fails.  Looking back upon my life, I see that my Lord has always been there for me.  Even when all around me may seem to fail me, He is there, carrying me along my way, in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad....