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

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.

 

'Til Death Do Us Part

“Because our expression is imperfect
we need friendship to fill up the imperfections.”
~G.K. Chesterton (Illustrated London News, June 6, 1931)

Friendship remains one of the deepest longings of our hearts.  Shallow permutations thereof seem to arise more and more with the rapid advances of virtual technology, but none of these can satisfy that deep longing.

In this virtual world, I find myself pondering my old-fashioned views of friendship.  Those views I might summarize in one simple expression: 'Til death do us part.  Although that phrase comes directly from the marriage vow, it can reflect a similar truth for platonic friendships.  Those of us with an absolute sense of loyalty believe that once we give our hearts in friendship, it truly is until death.

I think of a homily I heard a while back where the priest spoke about this very idea of friendship, expressing so beautifully my own perspective on it.  In that context, he mentioned the three musketeers and their motto: All for one and one for all.  How beautiful a description of faithful friendship that is, not to mention the delightful imagery of swords drawn in defense of one another....

The priest also spoke of another phrase I had never heard before: Friends to the altar of God.  One might take this in several ways.  For instance, it might describe the division that arises from differing beliefs, as it does seem nearly impossible to be close friends with one whose heart does not adore at the same altar.  That is a sad and painful reality that we may have to face.  Yet even if we cannot be true heart-friends because of differing beliefs, it does not mean that we cannot still accompany one another in friendship through our lives; nor does it mean that we should allow our differences to drive us apart, as our nation becomes more and more divided on this score.

The other way to look at that phrase would be to consider it in light of the purpose of friendship: to lead our friends to the altar of God.  Just as the Greek word for "until" implies nothing about what happens afterward, so too it does not mean that our friendship ceases at the altar of God.

Indeed, there we find true friendship.  For where we will one another's good we become truer friends through the power of grace.

There also we find a God who has stepped down to earth because He longs so much to be our friend.  There we find the One who never ceases to give Himself in love, whose loyalty surpasses even my own ideals, whose desire transcends all that I can imagine.  Each moment He waits for us to come to Him, to speak to Him in deepest confidence, and to open our hearts to a love He can scarcely contain.

"Greater love than this no man hath,
that a man lay down his life for his friends." 
~John 15:13

My Will Be Done

"There is so much unbelief in the world, for too many people speak of God unworthily and never stop finding fault with His activities in a manner they would never dare use toward the most incompetent workman.  What we really want to do is restrict His work so that it conforms to the rules and boundaries that our limited reason considers suitable.  We try to improve and do nothing but complain and grumble.  Yet we are surprised at the way the Jews treated Jesus Christ!  Ah! when I think of God's love, His adorable will, His unerring acts, I cannot believe how He is treated.  How can the will of God be unreasonable?  How can it ever be wrong?  Yet we say: "There's this bit of business of mine.  I need this.  What I want has been taken from me.  My neighbor is hindering the good works I want to do.  Now, isn't this quite unreasonable?  And, on top of it all, I fall ill just when I should be fit...."

Thus the words I read this morning from Abandonment to Divine Providence, words that seem altogether fitting as I struggle with a cold that seems to have sucked away all my strength.  I have so little time at home these days that I think I ought to feel well so I can accomplish all that must be done.  Yet apparently my Lord wills otherwise.

How much I find myself falling into the trap of willing what He wills only so long as it fits within the breadth of what I wish.  I begin to float along, thinking I have abandoned myself, and then all of a sudden I come up abruptly against some great wall before me that halts me at once, preventing me from following my desired course and forcing me to follow another.  Sometimes I think He allows such things just to remind me that I must want His will because it is His will and not merely because it pleases me.

Yes, I must will as He wills, unite my will to His.  Nothing else matters.  Nothing else is important.  In the words of de Caussade:

"...Now let me tell you that the will of God is all that is necessary, and what it does not give you is of no use to you at all.  My friends, you lack nothing.  You would be very ashamed if you know what the experiences you call setbacks, upheavals, pointless disturbances, and tedious annoyances really are.  You would realize that your complaints about them are nothing more nor less than blasphemies—though that will never occur to you.  Nothing happens to you except by the will of God, and yet His beloved children curse it because they do not know it for what it is."

How true!  We do not know that His will is His love.  We are still spoiled children who think that love is giving us exactly what we want.

It came to my heart that He must love me very much to deprive me of what I so greatly desire and to allow to happen to me what I find unpleasant.  For who does not desire to give that child, no matter how spoiled, exactly what he wishes?  Even more must my Lord desire to give me that for which I ask and that for which I dare not ask.  Yet one thing restrains Him: His love for me alone.  For He loves me not only enough to suffer in my place, but He loves me enough to let me suffer.  That is surely true love.

Fundamental Joy

"Man is more himself...when joy is the fundamental thing in him...."

The other day I had the privilege of seeing two friends at the most joyful peak of their lives thus far—and bearing what seemed the most radiantly-happy beaming faces I have ever seen.  It was a glimpse of true love.  In that joy they seemed all the more themselves, as if the joy arose from their evangelical descent into the truth, shedding away all layers of falsity and pretention and leaving only their bright shining souls.

My heart rose in answer to their joy.  I wanted to be so gloriously, unashamedly myself.

Their joy seemed too deep for words, as if it must burst forth from them in acts of self-giving love.  For these two dear young women were taking the next step in their new mission of service, taking new names for each to encapsulate her individual mission as she ventured further into the heart of Christ.

I also have no more words: merely joy and awe and gratitude to have attended the Mass where these two Sisters received their habit and took their new names.  God's blessings be upon you, dear Sisters!

Now I will leave you with the full quotation of which I gave you a glimpse above, taken from Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton:

"Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul. Pessimism is at best an emotional half-holiday; joy is the uproarious labour by which all things live…. The vault above us is not deaf because the universe is an idiot; the silence is not the heartless silence of an endless and aimless world. Rather the silence around us is a small and pitiful stillness like the prompt stillness in a sick-room. We are perhaps permitted tragedy as a sort of merciful comedy: because the frantic energy of divine things would knock us down like a drunken farce. We can take our own tears more lightly than we could take the tremendous levities of the angels. So we sit perhaps in a starry chamber of silence, while the laughter of the heavens is too loud for us to hear."

True Love

[Caveat emptor: if you are not a fan of The Princess Bride, you may not appreciate fully what follows.]

Have you accepted Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior?

All right, so that is the stereotypical mainstream evangelical question that—to put it quite bluntly—leaves out two whole persons of the Trinity.  I have no intention of making a theological statement on that point (at least not right now), but the reason I bring up this question is because it serves as a means to point to one particular word in relation to God: personal.

As I look back on my growing relationship with my Lord, I see that it is becoming more and more personal.  It is less about abstract ideas of perfectionism disguised as sanctity and more about opening myself up amidst the mess of reality and letting God enter in so I can have a real relationship with Him.

Let me illustrate my point: the other day I was so ill I did not feel like eating and for one who typically has to eat every three hours or so that is a clear indication of being sick.  I had also come mighty near passing out, along with having other typical flu symptoms.  Yet despite my illness I had to work and somehow—by the grace of God—I got through setting up for the show and had time to rest.  So I used that precious time to nap.  When I woke, I did not want to rise from my bed even though I knew I had to.  As I lay there, urging myself with duty and finding duty insufficient motivation, I asked myself what could possibly be enough to make me rise from the bed.

All of a sudden it came to me: true love.

I knew at that moment that it was in truth the only thing that could compel me to rise.  So I said to my Lord: "But, then again...perhaps I have the strength after all," and rose slowly, feeling something as if I had been mostly dead all day.

I bet He laughed at our little joke.  After all, don't you think He had some part in inspiring that idea?