"A house divided against itself..."

"...cannot stand."

So also a nation.

I am saddened by how divisive politics have become (although perhaps they have always been so) and how much people resort to riots and personal attack rather than truth and love.  Let us not tolerate it, for it is never right to tolerate great evil, even if it may at times be necessary to tolerate lesser evils for fear that seeking to eradicate them should wreak greater evils.

Instead let us rise up in opposition.  Let there be revolution!  Not a revolution of blood and violence, but a revolution of our hearts, a revolution of love.

It is easier to demand that others change.  It is more comfortable to blame others and to cling to our views as the only right path.  Is it only fear then—and the ever-present pride—that prevents us from looking into the mirror of our own hearts?

I say let us dare to face it.  Let us dare to ask ourselves where we are wrong, where we have failed, where our need to prove ourselves has obstructed the path of love, and let us not shrink from whatever evil we may find even within our own hearts.  Only when we purify our intentions can we truly do good for others and for the cause of truth.

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

when tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

when tomorrow comes...

Tomorrow comes!

Silence

The other day a dear friend of mine spoke of serving at a feast day Mass with a description so profound and yet so simple: "There was such a silence."

Silence.

The word rings out so beautifully and so fruitfully.  Yet how many people go to prayer and say they feel nothing or hear nothing and grow discouraged when they do not see the miracles in their lives that they desire?  Or perhaps the question is rather how many of us do not?

Often we find in prayer only silence, at least when we quit talking long enough to listen.  It is a powerful silence—a silence full of awe and even fearsome to us.

In my journey, I am learning more and more how powerful is that silence.  It is not the silence of a manmade idol that cannot heed our prayers, but rather the silence of a Being so great that our senses cannot fathom His greatness, so wise that our minds cannot understand His wisdom, and so loving that our hearts cannot contain His love.

He could work miracles so amazing that we would fall down in awe before them.  Yet how often are we distracted by the miracles and forget the miracle-worker?

Instead of miracles, He comes in silence.  He humbles Himself to become powerless in the depths of our hearts that we might open the door and accept Him into our lives.  Only once we have learned to find Him in the silence and seeming-emptiness does He reveal Himself.

Walk Humbly with Your God

We have been told again and again that the Infinite God wishes to inhabit our lives and dwell in our hearts. He became Man, being born as a little helpless babe, that He might come to know us in a deeply personal manner. Then He gave us His very flesh to eat under the form of bread that we might take Him into ourselves and be subsumed into Him. As if this were not enough, He seeks constantly to speak through us—to make of us His instruments that we may bring His love to others.

Sometimes we have the benefit of catching a glimpse of how He works. We may see how reaching out to those struggling breathes hope back into their eyes or we may find that He gives us the words to speak directly to another's heart.

However it happens, I always find myself awed by this happening. So well aware of my flaws and sinfulness, I can hardly believe that my Lord deigns to work through me.

There is a deep spiritual joy in that experience: a well of life that springs up in a shower of grace, cascading over the soul as it confirms the truth that we are children of God, that we are made great by communion with Him.  For He has called us His friends rather than the slaves we deserve to be for our sinfulness.

When I see my Lord speaking to others through my words, written or spoken, I feel incredibly humbled.  Not only do I feel as if I am the humble servant of the Holy Spirit, but I also feel fully alive, as if I am becoming who I am meant to be, as if I am most deeply who I am.

“The glory of God is man fully alive.” ~Saint Irenaeus

The experience of being fully alive makes me want to give myself wholly in that way, to sacrifice my pride and selfish will for the glory of God and the good of others. For there I taste freedom, which my heart desires above all else.

The Ordinary Epiphany

Could an epiphany come in the form of a pair of size 10 ice skates marked at $4.88 lying on a rack in a thrift store?

It was for me.

Epiphany means manifestation or revelation.  We use the term relatively freely these days, but not perhaps as freely as we might.

Let me illustrate with a simple story: on the traditional date of the celebration of the Epiphany, January 6th, I happened to have a few minutes to run down to the thrift store to look for skates while my family ran an errand.  We had already discovered that some seasonal ponds in the nearby park were frozen solid and would hold our weight—an unusual event in the Northwest—so ice skating was the obvious next step, save one problem: we had no ice skates.

As I approached the thrift store, I asked my Lord to provide skates, telling Him that I knew He could provide if He wished us to go ice skating.  I walked up and down the aisle of sports equipment, searching for skates that might have escaped my attention but saw nothing.  Just as I was resigning myself to the fact that it was clearly not God's will, I saw on the other side of the rack a pair of skates at least three sizes too big.  They seemed, however, to be the narrowest size 10 skates ever made.  In short, they fit.  (Also, I had plenty of room to wiggle my toes—just like my childhood heroine Pippi Longstocking.)

That moment of discovery—and also the experience of gliding across the frozen ponds while my siblings had fun sliding about on the ice—was an epiphany for me.  It was one more epiphany in a long chain of endless epiphanies revealing God's love.

As fallen creatures, we find ourselves happy mostly when we get precisely what we want.  Even little children, with all their innocence and joyful discovery of life, throw fits when they do not get what they want and are given what is good for them instead.  We are no different.  We beg God to do our will while mouthing dutifully the words, "Thy will be done."  We might go so far as to say, "Jesus, I trust in Thee," but really we more often mean that we are putting our trust in Him to do what we ask of Him.

Our Lord really does wish to give us all that we ask of Him, but He must give us what is good for us.  Sometimes He says yes and gives us the ice skates we desire.  Sometimes He gives us migraines or autoimmune disorders.

What is our response?  We thank Him for what we asked for and the other things we perceive as good and we shake our fist at the heavens and feel as if He has abandoned us when the bad things come.  We want pleasure and comfort, not challenge and growth.  We want our will, not His.  We want to be god unto ourselves.

Yet what if we were to thank Him for the bad things too?  What if we accepted them as gifts?

This approach is one facet of what De Caussade, the author of Abandonment to Divine Providence, calls the "philosopher's stone."

Historically, the philosopher's stone was sought for turning everything into gold, and even for extending life.  So when De Caussade refers to abandonment to Divine Providence by this title, he means that here is the secret key to turning everything into a source of joy and transforming our ordinary lives into labyrinths of miracles, giving us life more abundantly. (See John 10:10.)

His assertion is true because it opens us to receiving the revelation of God's love.  For the

nature of God is love, which is self-giving, and because He is perfect that means He is constantly giving Himself, endlessly manifesting Himself through even the most ordinary situations.  We cannot receive that love if we stamp our feet and fold our arms and insist upon receiving the thing we want like a spoiled toddler.

It is amazing to me how my Lord provides for me in the smallest ways when I place my trust in Him (the skates are merely the proverbial tip of the iceberg; I have countless more stories I could share).  Now that does not mean He gives me everything I want.  What it does mean is this: when I put Him first and commit myself to a daily relationship because of who He is and not what He gives me, continually (in the sporadic fashion of a human creature) abandoning myself to Him, I am awed at how frequently He provides what I need and even that for which I have not dared to ask but my heart desires.

Then when He gives me what I do not want, I can thank Him because I believe deeply in His love for me, although my mind and body may cry out to the contrary in the face of suffering.  For I know that I can trust His words:

Ask, and it shall be given you:
seek, and you shall find:
knock, and it shall be opened to you.

Matthew 7:7

I know that He will answer according to His love for me, which is greater than the love I bear myself.

It's a Wonderful Life

The other day—the very eve of the current year to be precise—I suggested casually to my family that we spend the evening watching It's a Wonderful Life and eating cheese because that seemed to be our New Year's Eve tradition insofar as we have one.  It was a casual suggestion I say with plenty of room for anyone to propose an alternative—though none came.

When I suggested the film, I had not the least idea how much it would speak to me.  I was neither depressed nor frustrated with my life, but rather quite the opposite: hopeful for the future and eager for some current projects in the works to come to fruition.  Still it hit home.

Somehow we all need to hear its message.  It is an integral part of our wounded human nature to question our existence in the world, to feel as if we do not belong, as if it might have been better if we had not existed, to feel that all we do brings ruin upon ourselves or others, that all our decisions are faulty, and that we are failures.  The enemy subtly weaves that web of deceit to catch us even in our most joyous moments.  Always that dark doubt lingers, undercutting the good that we might do.

Yet the truth is so powerful.  The good that we do ripples out through the world in ways that we will never understand, much like the scientific principle known as the butterfly effect.  Merely a smile might change the whole course of a stranger's life.  And when it comes to those whose lives we touch on a daily basis: think of what fruit our love for them can bring forth!

The world needs you.  For you can touch people in a way that no other can.

Of course I cannot help but think of the corollary: not only does the good we do affect others, but also the evil.  If we speak negatively of others, if we complain, if we avoid contact with others, if we speak impatiently...

Sometimes I find myself weighted down beneath the thought of what those little seemingly-insignificant deeds might do.  I feel so powerless.  I wonder if I can ever love enough to make up for all the evil that I might unwittingly have done.  How can it possibly be true that the good I do can outweigh the negative?

Yet it can.

...for charity covereth a multitude of sins.

1 Peter 4:8

Somehow, miraculously, our deeds of love can make up for a multitude of evil.  So much hope lies in that truth.  Let us choose then to step forward each day of this new year with hearts open to others, with arms reaching out to those around us, and with courage to risk loving at the expense of hurt!

Be not afraid that it may be too little.  I will leave you now with words from Saint Andre Bessette: “It is with the smallest brushes that the Artist paints the best paintings.”

"He that is proud eats up himself..." ~Shakespeare

Yesterday I began reading, in honor of the feast of Saint Thomas Becket, the epic verse drama by T.S. Eliot known as Murder in the Cathedral.  As I read, reflecting upon how deeply Eliot captured the struggle of the human heart, one question struck me in particular:

THOMAS

Is there no way in my soul's sickness,

Does not lead to damnation in pride?

Is not that the question of our lives?  Pride—that first sin, that greatest sin, that sin that makes good evil—plagues our pilgrim paths.  At the very moment when we think to achieve victory for God, we find ourselves working for our own glory and not His, surrendered to ourselves and not after all to Him.

I have heard that once one manages to conquer all the sins in the flesh—gluttony, anger, envy, lust, sloth, covetousness, and even pride—that one must then face these on a spiritual level.  The deeper one goes into God, the more the devil tries to bring him down.

What greater tool of destruction could there be than pride?  For if holiness is the presence of God within and union with Him, then the sin that chooses to exalt self on the altar of one's heart must of necessity shrivel holiness.  Yet how subtly it works!  It sneaks in so silently that we do not realize how much we have begun to rely upon ourselves, to glorify our own work rather than the will of God.

Especially when one like Saint Thomas Becket must choose to serve God rather than men, the temptation of pride comes.  The devil likes to turn back upon us all the good that we would do.  He wants us to act for God only out of our need to be great and at the same time to believe that we only act from our own pride and therefore are worth nothing before God.  What contradiction there!  Yet how many times have you found yourself caught up in similarly contradictory thoughts prompted by the evil one?

Sometimes it seems that wherever we turn, we see pride rear its ugly head.  It seems folly to resist and therefore can even bring us to the edge of the chasm of despair.

One time in prayer as I wrestled with that despair of freeing myself from pride, my Lord brought to my heart a beautiful and humbling thought: rather than fight pride by trying to destroy it, I must instead turn to Him, for pride will always be there.  In fighting it, we make it grow stronger.  Yet if we choose the good—and choose to turn to God—we will find that the dragon of pride begins to lose its power because we let God fight the battle and He always wins the victory.

Beato Jacopone da Todi, prega per noi!

Todi, Italy

Today I celebrate—I say I for the mere fact that most people remain unaware of today's significance other than as Christmas Eve Eve Eve and therefore nigh to Christmas—the feast of Blessed Jacopone da Todi who has become my dear patron.  I first discovered him quite by accident in a way.  Of course all earthly accidents—coincidences one might say—are merely manifestations of the hidden power of God at work, but from an earthly standpoint it was an accident, as I was searching for a Saint Jack whom I expected did not exist.  That search led me to Blessed Jacopone.

Street in Todi

When I discovered that Blessed Jacopone was credited with writing the Stabat Mater everything began to come together in my mind.  I realized how long ago my Lord had prepared me for this discovery of his existence, for one of my earliest memories of being at church is of praying the Stations of the Cross and singing the Stabat Mater whose haunting melody and words have ever tugged at my heart.  How could I help but rejoice in friendship with the author of that hymn?

By the tomb of Blessed Jacopone

An amazing poet, Blessed Jacopone captures the struggle at the heart of our lives in much of his poetry: he writes of the burning desire for God and yet the pain of that encounter and even the rebellion that rises in our hearts against the Sea of Love.  He reminds me of Jacob who wrestled with God.  (And indeed the name Jacopone is derived also from the name Jacob.)

In memory of Blessed Jacopone

I was blessed to be able to visit Todi and the Church of San Fortunato where the tomb of Blessed Jacopone resides in the crypt.  The curator must have thought me odd as I sat or knelt on the cold stone in prayer or the writing of poetry.  There was such peace in being there, however, beside the final resting place of my dear patron.

San Fortunato in Todi

In honor of his feast today (sometimes alternately listed on Christmas Day), I would like to share with you one of his poems that speaks so powerfully of love:

The Soul's Over-Ardent Love

Love, that art Charity,

Why has Thou hurt me so?

My heart is smote in two,

And burns with ardent love,

Glowing and flaming; refuge finding none,

My heart is fettered fast, it cannot flee;

It is consumed, like wax set in the sun;

Living, yet dying, swooning passionately,

It prays for strength a little way to run,

Yet in this furnace must it bide and be:

Where am I led, ah me!

I once could speak, but now my lips are dumb;

My eyes are blind, although I once could see:

In this abyss my soul is stark and numb,

Silent I speak; cling, yet am held by Thee:

Falling, I rise; I go, and yet I come;

Pursue, and am pursued; I am bound yet free;

O Love that whelmeth me!

Maddened I cry:

'Why must I die,

They fiery strength to prove?'

Love, Love, of naught but Love my tongue can sing,

Thy wounded Hand hath pierced my heart so deep:

Love, Love, with Thee made one, to Thee I cling,

Upon Thy breast, let me sleep;

Love, Love, with Love my heart is perishing;

Love, like an Eagle snatching me Thy sleep,

For Thee I swoon, I weep,

Love, let me be,

By courtesy,

Thine own in death. . .

Also, I have only just now discovered one more amazing fact about Blessed Jacopone that makes him even more fitting as my patron (if Wikipedia may be believed, as I have not time to do further research at present): "He was an early pioneer in Italian theatre, being one of the earliest scholars who dramatised Gospel subjects."

Oh Jacopone, I look forward to meeting you in heaven one day!