The Rough Ice of Life

If God gives you ice, go ice skating.

Thus my paraphrase of the classic lemon phrase.  Allow me to pause there for a moment, however, and suggest that rather than make lemonade with one's lemons, it might be more suitable simply to drink them in hot water or tea, as that is an excellent remedy for fighting off colds, as a former Russian roommate of mine once taught me.  Hence, if life gives you lemons, it might just be that you need them as a remedy against illness.

In context of that, let me return to my paraphrase with ice.  The thought arose yesterday because once again freezing rain fell upon the Northwest.  Now previously, I had discovered the marvels of roads being turned into an excellent place to ice skate, so I was determined that should such weather return, I would certainly take advantage of it again.

Road conditions, however, as you may perhaps be able to discern from the above picture, differed substantially from the previous thick, smooth layer of solid ice that seemed designed for anyone who happened to have a pair of skates.  Snow had fallen first this year and melted irregularly, leaving rough layers in stripes across the road.  The ice had further been torn up by the chains of vehicles that had driven by already that morning.  Furthermore, many places had not frozen sufficiently, but remained more snow than ice.  It looked quite treacherous.

Stubbornly, I insisted upon venturing out, determined that I would once again ice skate.  As I did, it occurred to me that most people would have given up at once simply from looking at the state of the icy road.  Any who had failed to assess accurately might have been the less cautious sort and therefore found themselves fallen upon the ice, leading them to quickly abandon their eagerness.

I, however, took it slowly, learning how to work with the rough ice.  Much of the time I had only one skate on solid ice while the other broke through, still providing leverage forward.  Sometimes I had short bits of smooth ice where I could really skate.  Yet I always had to be on my guard for the next place where the tire tracks crisscrossed the road with ice pebbles.  I kept low, ready to flail my arms about to catch my balance when I hit a place with more friction.

Miraculously, I returned to the house without having fallen once.

While I skated, though, in this unconventional manner, I thought of some of my favorite lines of poetry from Robert Frost's "The Road Not Taken" that seemed to apply in a similar fashion:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

For I had taken that way less traveled (even though that is not in fact the point of the poem)—the way that few, if any, would have taken.  Yet that also seemed to me an analogy for the proper approach to life.  All too often in our lives we wait for the perfect smooth ice.  If I had done so, however, I would have missed a good morning of exercise and the excitement and adventure of doing what no one else would have done—and the story to tell of it afterward.

Love Is Not Loved

I love joking with friends about how saints have a habit of stalking us.  When a certain saint takes an interest in me—take Saint Therese of Lisieux for instance—I will find her appearing through holy cards or quotations from her that particularly strike my heart or someone mentioning something about her that catches my attention.  Somehow or other she makes her presence known.

So too with other saints.

Not so with my dear patron, however: Blessed Jacopone da Todi whose feast is today.  Because he is not so well known it is difficult to run across him in as many places as one can find a more popular saint such as Saint Therese.

Recently my heart was a bit sad as I thought of that, wishing that he would reach out to me but thinking it would not happen.  I forgot about it, though, as happens with so many of the little things that pass through our minds and hearts.

Then I was reading the words of the day from the Spiritual Diary, a book that was my Nonna's, on the Solemnity of All Saints and in it were these words:

Blessed Jacapone could not bear to see people giving themselves over to sin, especially during the days of Mardi Gras, and he would repeat: "Love is not loved!  Love is not loved because He is not known."

That was a beautiful gift as I remembered my almost-prayer of wanting Jacopone to reach out to me, for I felt like he had.

It seemed like he reached out to me a second time when I was researching for my paper through my studies on how to help people be receptive to the gifts of the Holy Spirit.  It seemed the most unlikely of places, as I read a book by a Mexican archbishop, Luis Martinez, on the Holy Spirit—a beautiful book called The Sanctifier.  There again I found those same words of Jacopone's:

"Love is not loved!"

Those words of my dear patron bring my mind back to the Baltimore question and the answer to what is the purpose of our lives: "To know, love, and serve God is this life and to be happy with Him in the next."

It is such a simple statement and yet so profound.  But why is it that we do not love Him who is love itself?

I would echo Jacopone's words: I believe that we do not love Him because we do not know Him.

Wherever we find doubt or fear or worry or anxiety or discouragement or any of those negative emotions within us blocking our relationship with God, it arises out of some wound or lie about who He is.  We do not truly know Him as the all-provident Father who can do nothing that is not for our greatest good and who can allow even the evil perpetuated by our free will in order to bring it to a good end.

I wish I had the courage to run through the streets and shout as Jacopone did about Love not being loved because He is not known.  I wish I had the courage to stand out there and offer to pray over any who would heed that message and wanted to allow the healing power of Love to transform them.

Yet in my little way I shall make that cry to the hearts of my friends and to my own heart.  Even more, I shall beg Love Himself to make Himself more fully known that He may be more fully loved.

Especially shall I beg Him, Emmanuel, God-With-Us, to make Himself known once again in our coming celebration of Christmas.  I will go to kneel at His feet, to adore the little Child who is King of Kings and the Lord of the universe, and I shall there beseech His mercy that He who is God may look with favor upon me who am not.  There too I will pray for you that you may be free in knowing your littleness before Him and rest with reckless, childlike abandon in the Father's arms.

When Everything Goes Wrong

The other day I finally listened to Bishop Robert Barron talking with Dr. Jordan Peterson on the latter's podcast.  There were several good things that struck me from it and I would certainly recommend listening to it (you can find the video here), but there is one thing in particular upon which I want to reflect at this moment: the idea of right praise.

Bishop Barron mentioned the liturgical nature of the writing of the creation account in the book of Genesis and the reason for its structure: "The end of a liturgical procession is the one who will lead the praise."  Of course it was man that was created last of all the animals.  Therefore, when God gives Adam and Eve dominion over all the creatures there is far more to it than most of us would think when we hear the word dominion.  The dominion indicated is a lordship over the animals, but in order to lead them to praise of the Creator.  "All of these things belong in a chorus of praise of the true God led by us," said Bishop Barron.  It is our duty to praise God.

When we fail in that duty, much as when the Israelites turned to idols, everything goes wrong.  They became enslaved and began to lose their battles and suffered plagues and droughts and so on.  It is little different for us.

Right praise is essential for our daily lives.  Christ taught us that in the prayer He gave us, praising our loving Father in heaven: "Hallowed be Thy name."

Our daily lives often teach us its necessity in other ways.  I have certainly found it so.

Praise began to become a necessary part of my daily life through indirect participation in the Charismatic Renewal.  Listening to praise and worship music taught me to raise my eyes above my own struggles to look toward God.  One of these songs in particular seized my heart in the midst of some personal darkness and confusion: the song Blessed Be Your Name, which beautifully proclaims a decision to praise God no matter whether things go well or ill from a human perspective and which references the book of Job.

I keep being reminded that the devil's tempting revolves around one primary tactic: to make us look at ourselves instead of at God.  Praise powerfully counters that temptation by turning our gaze away from ourselves and toward God.

When I become focused on my struggles, my failure to achieve anything worthwhile, my inability even to accomplish the little duties I see before me, and so on, it is easy to become discouraged.  It is easy to feel hopeless.  Yet such feelings merely reveal disorder in the hierarchy of my life.  I was created not to establish my own little safe world of accomplishments and perfect order, but to give God right praise.

If there are places in your life where you are struggling perhaps you might dare to ask yourself whether the cause is the same.  Are you looking at yourself or are you giving God right praise?

God's Providence allows all that is.  By His will, including His permissive will, He has brought everything to this moment exactly as it is.  Thus no matter how dark the moment it is part of His plan.  And we also are part of that plan.  We take our rightful role when we choose to fulfill our vocation of leading all creation in giving praise to God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Fire

"Amen I say to you, unless you be converted, and become as little children...."
~Matthew 18:3

Oil light flickers red warning.
Pressing the gas, I lose power.
Smoke billows behind the car.

Seeking safety on the highway's side
Leaves a rainbow trail of oil.
Fire flickers under the hood.

Alone, I know I am not alone.
Calm, I call for help, which comes
In flashing lights.  Fatherly firemen
Clamber down across the ivy.

My heart beats like that of a child
Excited at the moment, unworried,
For the Father has all in His hand.

His Providence pours out in my Dad
Who comes to rescue me and wait
For a tow, while I, wrapped in love,
Go home, lips moving to our Lady.

Two Sparrows

Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? and not one of them shall fall on the ground without your Father.
(Matthew 10:29)

It is particular fitting today, on this great Solemnity of All the Saints to ponder the above quotation, which speaks powerfully of the Providence of God.  So many great saints share a radical belief in that Providence and stand as examples for us.

The past decade has made it clearer and clearer to my mind and heart that I am called to live in radical abandonment to His Providence and to share that with the world.  Yet so we all are.

Modern life makes it so easy to forget that.  Everything around us—and indeed our own internal sense of responsibility and rightness—compels us to take care of ourselves.  We become fixated on taking care of everything from our health to our homes and properties.  Even our ministries and spiritual lives suffer from this reliance on our own capacities, our own knowledge, and our own vision of how things should be.

Yet we are called to more.  We are called to be saints.

To be a saint means not to be a great model or even to have heroic virtue, although saints often fulfill these qualifications.  In reality, to be a saint means to be completely reliant on the Providence of God poured out through everything and to be faithful to Him as He is calling us to serve Him in each moment.

It is the simplest and most difficult reality there could be, but also the most freeing.  Recently, I had an experience by His grace that brightly illuminated the latter reality for me.

I was traveling from the Toronto airport headed home.  I tried to allow more time at the airport than I needed, but little delays along the way added up and when I faced the long lines and the realization that I actually had to go through American customs there, my heart quailed a little within me.  Someone near me began fretting about missing her flight; she was told it was her lucky day and let through.  I wondered if I should worry.

In that moment, my Lord made it clear to me: I could worry, but worrying would gain me nothing, whereas the worst thing that could happen would be that I would miss my flight—not what I wanted in the least, but in the grand scheme of things fairly insignificant.  So I chose to accept that.  I told Him that He was in charge and that I would rely on His Providence.

From that moment on I had peace within me.  Any time the doubts or worries resurfaced, I merely gave them to Him again.

Well, when I walked up to the gate, handed the attendant my ticket, and then started walking toward the jet bridge, I heard the announcement for the last call for the flight.  As always, His timing was perfect.

As if that were not enough, I had to fly through Denver where He again showed me His Providence.  During my layover, I was sitting near my gate when two house sparrows alighted on the ground in front me.  My immediate thought was a negative one about this invasive species that had overtaken the country in some ridiculously short time after they were introduced from England.  (My resentment of the species stemmed from my fighting them to allow native birds to nest.  The house sparrows can be quite cruel, kicking out other birds and destroying their eggs and so on.)

Across the way from me sat a pilot who commented upon the birds, as did a couple of women a few seats down.  I spoke up, sharing that these were indeed male and female house sparrows (though restraining my resentment of that fact).  He then said they had made him think about a Scripture verse about the sparrow—a gentle rebuke to my own internal response.

We got talking and he mentioned something about Providence that led me to share with him the title of my favorite spiritual book I happened to have sitting on my lap, Abandonment to Divine Providence.  My description of it as the most eastern book of western spirituality I had read caught the attention of the two women down the way and one of them wanted to take a picture of the cover so she would remember it.  So I found myself a missionary of God's Providence once more.

The pilot and I continued our conversation.  I asked him of his journey to faith and then I shared mine with him.

When he left to go fly his plane, he said I had made his day—that God had made his day.

The meeting had clearly been orchestrated by God, and not just by sending the sparrows to us: the pilot had just happened to sit there rather than by the gate he would be flying out of and I had taken this flight which had not been my preference.  If either of us had done what made sense for us, we would not have met.  Yet somehow, without our intending it, we had allowed God once more to show His presence by our doing what we would not necessarily have chosen.

Fear not therefore: better are you than many sparrows. 
(Matthew 10:31)

We can never rely too much upon God our most loving Father.  Those who seem to rely too much upon God by refusing to act indeed trust not in Him but merely in their idea of Him, for He demands we give Him all in every moment.

Be not afraid to trust Him too much.

After all, He has everything in His hands. There is nothing He cannot do. It is only we who place limits upon what He will do by our need to be in control, our need to do things ourselves, like little children. And surely He smiles upon us, even when we run away from His Providence, for He knows that we run right into His arms....

XIII. Jesus is Taken Down from the Cross

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


What a terrifying experience it must have been to have stood beneath the cross on Calvary as the Savior of the world died, the earth quaked, and the veil of the temple was torn in two.  Then to receive His body....

Our Lady must have thought of the first time she held her Son in her arms when she held His broken body.  Then she must have marveled at how God could rest in the fragile flesh of an infant.  Now she grieved at the tortured body of that Son who had borne incomprehensible sufferings by taking on the sins of the whole world.

Her own heart had been pierced by the sword of sorrow foretold by Simeon in the temple.  Thus her suffering too became a well of love united with that of her Son, earning her the title Co-Redemptrix.

Although her heart must have broken as she pressed the body of her Son to her heart, still in the depths of her heart she uttered still that simple word of love: "Fiat."  Whatever she willed, she knew that God's will must be done.  She knew that no matter how cruel it seemed, no matter how dark the path that she must tread forward, that the Father's Providence would bring good out of evil.

Now by her prayers she seeks to obtain for us that same grace.

O Mother of sorrow, for the love of this Son, accept me for thy servant, and pray to Him for me. And Thou, my Redeemer, since Thou hast died for me, permit me to love Thee; for I wish but Thee, and nothing more. I love Thee, my Jesus, and 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.)

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.

VI. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

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

R. Because by Thy Holy Cross Thou hast redeemed the world.

Do you think Veronica knew what she would do when she stepped out of the crowd to come to Christ as He carried the cross, His face disfigured by blood and grime?  Why did she not hide behind the others, expecting someone else to do something if anything could be done?

Perhaps Christ Himself caught her eye.  Perhaps she saw in that look such a longing for her love that she no longer cared what others would think and no longer cared what would happen if she stepped out.  His love has given so many the courage to die as martyrs.  It certainly would have been enough to compel her toward Him, His look answering the longing in her own heart.

When she reached Him, she must have wanted desperately to do something for Him.  She had nothing to give Him, no way to save Him.  Surely she must have felt powerless and hopeless in the face of such suffering.

Yet she did not let her powerlessness stop her.  She took off her own veil to wipe His face.  She did not lament the fact that she could not do more or that she could not remove His suffering, but she contented herself with making her own small act of love by wiping His face.  With her love, she brought Him consolation and at the same time accepted the Providence of God and the sacrifice of Christ her Lord whom she could not yet have fully known.

She expected nothing in return, but He gave her the image of His face impressed upon her veil.  What a great gift for so little!

Is it not so in our own lives as well?  We have nothing to give.  We are like the widow who can only give two pence.  Yet when we give what we do have in all of our weakness we find that God repays us with unfathomable generosity.

How can He love us so much?  And all He asks is that we love Him, thereby opening our hearts to His love...

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.)

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.)

Oh Providence

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

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

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

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

Or we can go on.

Into the valley of death
Rode the six hundred.

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

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

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

What will He do with it?

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

When can their glory fade?

Fool for Christ

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

This quote resurfaced and I have no recollection of who spoke it or where I heard it.  That matters little enough, though.  It is the thought contained in the quotation and not the speaker to which I wish to draw your attention.

I will digress for a moment first, however.  Yesterday I had the opportunity to go on a spontaneous adventure with a couple of friends.  Having decided upon hiking in the forested park in the middle of the city, we had no expectations of unusual adventure; considering our limited time, it seemed reasonable to enjoy a tamer sort of adventure.  After a brief stop at another friend's house and a dishtowel prophecy—"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson—we continued on to the trailhead.

As we started hiking up the hill, we soon found ourselves scrambling up a ravine with a few pools and trickles of water left within it.  The trail lost its façade of officiality and turned into no more than a deer path.

We might have turned back to find the actual trailhead, but instead we continued on, scrambling over fallen trees and crawling through brush and ferns, following the rocky bed of the ravine in what seemed like a tropical adventure.  The faint trail grew fainter, twisting back and forth across the ravine, sometimes disappearing entirely.

In retrospect, it would have made much more sense to find the trail proper and likely we would not choose that path again knowing what it held.  Yet that makes us all the more grateful for the experience.

You can extrapolate from this story to the adventure of life.  So often we choose to follow the well-beaten trail.  We give in to the pressure of society or the expectations of our friends—or what we imagine them to be—and find ourselves trudging on doggedly, clamping our jaws in the face of the monotony that drags us down.

Let us return now to the quotation with which I began:

"Imagine if you were in love with goodness itself—what wacky things you would do."

It speaks to the heart of what it means to be a fool for Christ.  When you fall so deeply in love with Him—when you learn to trust Him so entirely—you no longer care so much for the security the world offers.  You learn to leap out in faith, knowing that He will catch you.  You embrace every cross and every trial because you know that behind it lies the Providence of the One who loves you more than you love yourself.

Go my friends and be fools for Christ!

Unless Ye Become Like a Little Child....

The other day at Mass I heard the voices of three young children rising in song behind me. The oldest of the three–a girl who could have been no more than seven–sung out with all her heart, her voice rising above the entire congregation.

It did not matter to her that she sang with more gusto than perfect tune. She did not care whether others thought she sang too loud or not well enough.

It is only we who grow older who lose that innocence of singing with all that is within us. We think more of fitting in, of not standing out, of not drawing attention to ourselves, of being who we ought to be and singing in perfect pitch and tone than of praising the Lord in all simplicity.

If only we could shed those perceptions and go back to that innocent childhood. Then we would find again that complete trust, which seems like utter folly to us, but which is a precious gift to our Lord, who waits only for us to give ourselves to Him without holding anything back. For then He can pour out His Providence in ways beyond our understanding or belief.

Again and again I find my inner doubts holding me back though I long to sing out in praise of my Lord's goodness. Perhaps one day you and I will open myself to that child's courage once more....

Coincidence

It never ceases to amaze me how coincidences happen constantly, demonstrating the Providence of our great Father in heaven.  It has become my practice to treat spiritual reading as an opportunity for that encounter, so I open to a random place in a spiritual book and read, taking from those pages whatever my Lord wishes to speak to my heart.  Today the page to which I opened in Lui et Moi, the book I mentioned before of our Lord's words to Gabrielle Bossis, happened to have today's date and also to have taken place in a year when that date fell within Passion week:

April 11th

Have faith.  Everything becomes simple then.  It will be simple to love Me, simple to serve Me, simple to be happy to suffer for Me.  Believing is almost the same as seeing.  To see Me!...  What progress, what riches to exploit, when you speak to Me, when you tell Me that you love Me.

The proof of your love for God is the affectionate care you take of your neighbor.  Be sure that you see Me in him, that you charm Me when you charm him.  This will keep you humble beside him.  Always be the smallest.  Think of the size of the Host.  Begin today to do your best to speak to Me when you speak to your neighbor.  I expect this of you this afternoon when you get together with your friends.  You would not want to refuse Me anything this week of My passion, would you?

May these words inspire your own journey this week as we enter into the commemoration of our Lord's passion and death!  I pray that all of us may have the humility to be small, to accept our weaknesses, and thereby to open the way for our Lord who is so great to descend into our nothingness and transform us by His presence.

I will leave you again with that last haunting question.  Think of it as our Lord speaking so gently and tenderly to your heart, for He longs more desperately for your love than you long for anything:

You would not want to refuse Me anything this week of My passion, would you?

Perfect Timing, Part II

After that lovely adventure the other day of everything working out just barely and perfectly on time for my flight (here if you missed it), I was not expecting the evening to go differently.  Yet we arrived to pick up our rental truck and the place was closed, as it had been for the past three hours.  There was nothing obvious to be done and we still had an hour's drive to the hotel.

Then a truck appeared and I thought perhaps here was the solution, but it was too small and the people driving it were not employees.  So that fizzled out.

We ended up going to a restaurant to get dinner and wait it out.

After reinvigorating ourselves with much-needed sustenance and exploring various options, there seemed only one reasonable possibility.  So we ended up taking a car service to our hotel and having it arranged that we would pick up a truck the next day from a different company.

Our Lord could have arranged it all differently.  He could have provided someone there at the service center who could have given us a truck for example.  For some obscure reasons, He did not.  Why He arranged it thus I have absolutely no idea.  Yet why should I consider this experience any less a matter of His perfect plan than my earlier experience of everything working out according to my idea of perfect timing when He is the one who knows all?

In Thy perfect timing, Lord.

Light of the World

I keep thinking that I need to plan to make things happen.  By nature I am a planner.  I understand that in order to make things happen one has to set goals and create a plan to reach those goals.  This fact makes perfect sense to me.

The ways of God do not.

He seems to keep trying to teach me not to plan, not to try to make things happen.  Perhaps that is because I tend to get so caught up in making what I want to happen come to pass that I do not always see what is right before me.  Perhaps it is only that He wants me to remember that He is God and He can bring things to fruition more perfectly than I ever could of my own volition.

I am the light of the world.

How brightly He shines in the darkness of this world!  How brilliantly do His works shine when we can glimpse them like rays of the sunrise I saw this morning, beaming out from beneath the clouds.

I was blind and now I see.

Duc in Altum

As I walk beside my friends on this path of life, I see more and more of them choosing to make leaps of faith, whether because circumstances impel them or for some other reason.  From the outside it is easier to see their choices as leaps of faith.  They may still be too caught up in the dreads and anxieties of being forced to choose between goods—or of worrying what might come to pass from their decisions—to see clearly the hand of Providence.

Yet as I see the pattern of Providence spread across these varied lives and places, I find my heart quicken within me.  It encourages me—excites me—to see the working of God in them.

It gives me courage for my own leap of faith as I prepare to launch myself into a new ministry.  However, it also sheds light even upon the little things, reminding me of His working even in my own daily grind.

Certainly it is easier to think of Providence and leaps of faith in reference to some great act or some weighty decision, but even in the lesser things it is possible to leap boldly with faith into the darkness of uncertainty.  For in that darkness we find the One who holds us in His hand.  The deeper we go, the more we discover of the loving gaze in which we may rest.

So let us put out into the deep and there find the great catch of fish awaiting us.  Duc in altum!

Ask and You Shall Receive

"Ask, and it shall be given you:
seek, and you shall find:
knock, and it shall be opened to you.
For every one that asketh, receiveth:
and he that seeketh, findeth:
and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened."

Matthew 7:7-8

After hearing that reading this morning at Mass, I was reflecting upon why it is we must ask when God knows all things before we ask.  He wants us to ask certainly, for He tells us so clearly.  Yet does He not know all things?

I think the reason has more to do with ourselves.  We do not need to ask for God's sake, but for our sake.

If we ask, we recognize that we are not gods unto ourselves, that we cannot do all things, that we must be dependent upon Him.  Whether He answers us yea or nay, whether He provides what we want or what He knows we need, our act of asking requires that we open our hearts.  The more we open them, the more we will receive, in abundance, flowing over.

St. Nicholas' Eve

Eight years ago, on this eve of the feast of Saint Nicholas, my life as a pilgrim began to take shape, although it did not begin in earnest until the following autumn.  In a few seemingly-insignificant moments of eager exchange between study partners there arose the seed of an idea that marked my life forever.  In many ways I am still grappling with its effects as the pattern of ripples echoes through each moment.

If I had to sum up that experience in one word it would be this one: Providence.

What I learned through all the weary days of marching along, sustaining myself with the rhythm of repeated rosaries and the certainty that God willed it, was that He would provide.  He always did.  Sometimes He provided people who generously took us into their homes and insisted upon serving us and hearing all about our journey.  Sometimes He provided a place for our tent on a cold and freezing night.  Once He provided someone who rebuked us for not planning ahead better and took us to a women's shelter where we barely slept and learned something of modern poverty.  More than not, we had good weather—amazingly good weather I realize now.

I could go on about various details of what He provided, but the details do not matter, even if they are helpful to illustrate my point.  For the details all point back to the one clear and definite thing that is more certain even than death and taxes: that God will provide.

Each day I know that truth more clearly as I seek to abandon myself more fully to the working of Divine Providence in my life.  In good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, God always provides all that we need.  Deep down I know this truth even when the weight of it all grows too much for my shoulders to bear and I cry out to Him from the depths of my pain: my God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?

He wants us to cry out to Him in our joys as much as in our pains.  He wants to pour Himself out for us, as He does in each moment, for He is Love and the nature of love is to keep giving itself again and again, constantly, until it has nothing left to give.  It is only we who are so small that we cannot receive all that He would give.

Let us open ourselves ever more, fellow pilgrims, to the great sea of love!  Come, let us encourage each other, walking side by side when the path grows dark...