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Holy Spirit, Melt My Heart

8/8/2020

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      In the old Latin hymn "Veni Sancte Spiritus," we pray to the Holy Spirit to "Melt the frozen, warm the chill." What are we asking the Holy Spirit to do? Melt the frozen WHAT? Warm the chill WHAT?  I think this part of the prayer asks the Holy Spirit to melt our frozen hearts and warm our chill hearts. 
      A frozen heart is a heart incapable of feeling, incapable of compassion. A chill heart is well on the way to becoming frozen by picking and choosing  when and where to feel compassion. A totally frozen heart is - dead. We may think that we have warm, living, loving hearts, but, since none of us are perfect or perfectly holy or perfectly compassionate yet on this earth, all of us have some splinters of ice in our hearts that we may not even be aware of yet.
      There's talk these days of the End of the World coming soon, the Days of the Apocalypse. Speakers urge us to turn away from sin and embrace the Gospel. A frozen heart, a chill heart, a heart with splinters of ice are all sinful hearts.  Yet so often when we think of sin we think of the fires of hell, not of iciness. Bishop Barron gives us a different way of thinking as he speaks of the world of Jesus' time, which is also a picture of our world today:
      "In our pride, our rebellion, our cruelty, and above all in our fear, we human beings had changed ourselves into a dysfunctional family. Designed to soar into the fullness of God, we had turned ourselves tragically inward, locking ourselves into the cramped and icy space of sin."  (Bishop Barron's Daily Gospel Reflection for August 7.)
       We pray to turn away from icy sin to embrace the Gospel, and the Heart of the Gospel is the fiery Heart of God, a God Who is ongoing generosity, Who creates out of generosity, and then saves us from sin out of generosity by sending us God's own Heart in the Person of His Son. Jesus, Son of God and Son of Mary,  takes on human flesh, lives, and dies on the cross for us. The Heart of God is pierced for our offenses; the Heart of God is the pure Fire of Love! Barron continues:
      "When it appeared as though the human race were doomed to self-destruction, God sent not simply a prophet, a representative, or a plenipotentiary, but his own Self, his own heart. And this divine Son, incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, entered into the darkness and the tempest of human disorder. He went to the poor, the hungry, the self-righteous, those drunk on power and those with no power—to everyone languishing in the iciness of the far country—and he called them home."
      Only the pure fire of the generous and compassionate Heart of God can melt our frozen hearts! Our hearts are frozen in the cramped, icy spaces of sin, imprisoned in glaciers of pride, rebellion, cruelty, and fear.
      We humans are prideful because we don't want to admit that we have been created by God and belong to God's family.
      We humans are rebellious because we deny that we need God, and we lie to ourselves saying that we only need ourselves and that all our strength, intelligence, and gifts come from us and our own hard work on ourselves.
      We humans are cruel because we use and abuse each other, physically, sexually, and economically. We cruelly abuse each other through our indifference to each others' suffering.  We are cruel  because we act as if only our religious or ethnic or social group, only those with our color of skin, only those who have economically succeeded, only those without illness or disabilities, are "right with God."
      We humans are held captive to fear, because we fear others and their needs will take away from what WE need, and so others become our enemies, to be cast out or never allowed to enter our communities. We humans fear people who are different from us in any way. We humans fear ourselves most of all because we don't want to know the person we can become. We don't want to become all we can become through the Power of God. We refuse to allow the Fiery Spark of God present in our souls to  purify us and change our frozen hearts into new, transformed  Hearts set on fire with love. 
​       The iciness of sin turns each of us tragically inward, into emotional isolation, into spiritual separation from everyone and everything, so that we humans become a dysfunctional family. Communities and nations separate themselves from each other. Humans act as if the power they have over nature is power to use and abuse animals, insects, plants, soil, air, and water.
       But the fire of Grace, God's Life within us, does  the exact opposite to us and for us. For when, in daily prayer, we consciously ask God to unite our hearts to God's Heart, we begin to love through and with God's Fiery Heart of Love. And  we slowly discover that, when we are united to God, we are also united with everyone and everything. For while we live in God, God also dwells in all that God has made! Fr. Richard Rohr explains 
    "Indian-born teacher Eknath Easwaran (1910–1999) puts it in similar terms:    'Life’s real and highest goal . . . [is] to discover this spark of the divine that is in our hearts. . . . When we realize this goal, we discover simultaneously that the divinity within ourselves is one and the same in all—all individuals, all creatures, all of life."' ( Eknath Easwaran, Original Goodness: A Commentary on the Beatitudes (Nilgiri Press: 1989, 1996), 9.)
      To be a mystic is to be a person of prayer, a person who opens up to God, who allows God to change and transform him or her, who asks to love with a heart on fire with compassion. But we all have those little splinters of ice in our hearts, don't we? And our hearts rebel at the idea that God is both beyond everything created, an infinite God, and also a God Who dwells in everyone and everything that God has created. We rebel against the Truth  that everyone and everything is part of the family of God. This is where sin enters in.
      We rebel against the Truth that Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, and Jews are part of God's Family. We rebel against the Truth that Trumpers and people wearing Black Lives Matter tee shirts are part of God's Family.  We rebel against the Truth that people who kneel during the Pledge of Allegiance and people who wave Confederate flags are part of God's Family. We rebel against the Truth that people without jobs and people who own stocks are part of God's Family. We rebel against the Truth that straights and people with gay or lesbian orientations are part of God's Family. Our lives would be so much easier without them. Yet - sin is us says that if all these people didn't exist, there would no longer be targets for our fear and hatred. 
      Fr. Rohr shows us those icy splinters of sin in our hearts:
      "We like our distinctions! We don’t want to hear that we have the same soul as our enemies, not our personal ones and certainly not our cultural or global ones! We want to hate them, don’t we? And far too often our religion seemingly gives us permission to do so. But mystics don’t hate anyone. They simply can’t. They pray, as Jesus does on the cross, 'Father forgive them, they do not know what they are doing' (Luke 23:34). The mystic knows the other person doesn’t know. It’s not malice as much as ignorance and unawareness. And, of course, it’s a burden to know; it’s a responsibility to know, because once we know that God has inhabited all that God has created, then all of our distinctions are silly. They are just ways to create self-importance and superiority for ourselves and put down someone else. We’ve played this game since grade school!" (Fr. Richard Rohr's Meditation for August 7)
​       As we daily face the tumult, the darkness, of various political and even religious forces seeking to pull our families, our nation, apart, to divide us and turn us against each other, may we pray to discern how and where to seek for Truth, how and where to show Holy Compassion. May we daily pray for these spiritual Gifts of the Holy Spirit:
      Holy Trinity, have mercy on us! Holy Spirit, melt our frozen hearts, warm our chill hearts. Unite us to the Divine Heart of Pure, Fiery Compassion so that we discover our unity with everyone and everything You have made. May we weep with all those who weep, and rejoice with all those who rejoice across this planet. May we seek Divine Truth in every situation so that we can make wise decisions. May we pray with Jesus the Christ for You, Father,  to forgive those who wound us, especially  when it is hard for us to understand them or see Your Presence in them. May we daily, in prayer, turn from the iciness and isolation of sin and embrace the unifying Fire of Your Holy Word, Jesus the Christ, Who is calling all of us, without exception, to come Home to You. Amen.

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Let God Be God!

8/1/2020

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      Panic.  Right now, what so many Americans are experiencing is sheer panic. This panic is affecting their ability to think and act, for their good, and the good of the country, and the world.
      For some, panic is triggered by health issues: When and where should I wear a mask? Should I eat indoors at a restaurant if I have health issues? Should my children go to school or not? For them, America and the world seem to be in the throes of disease, death, and economic destruction.
      Others panic because of the protests in American cities which are being sabotaged and co-opted by extremists who resort to violence and destruction. People are fearful of chaos overturning the security of the nation.
      Still others are in the grip of despair because they fear that if politicians only emphasize law and order, the country will not unite to work for justice for poor and minority Americans who rightfully deserve economic stability, fair wages, clean air and water in their neighborhoods, and adequate health care.  
       But panic benefits no one, least of all ourselves.  Our panic doesn't benefit God and God's Will and Plan for us either. If our bodies and minds are paralyzed with panic, how can we hear God's Voice? Or be able to pick up on God's Signs for us in our daily lives? Or find the courage and compassion to reach out to others to work together for our mutual benefit and the benefit of our country and world!
      God and panic cannot co-exist in our souls. Why? Because God is always calling us to stay calm and move forward to take the next risk! When a storm raged and Jesus was asleep in the boat and the panic-stricken apostles woke him up, his first words were "Why are you afraid?" In other words, if God is in your boat, don't panic. Let God be God. Cut the ropes, set your sail, and wait for the Wind of the Holy Spirit to aid your travel towards new horizons. The only spiritual attitude, then, that conquers panic is the calm that envelops us if we have faith and trust in God. 
       It can be helpful to let history teach us lessons. On April 4, 1968, when Dr. Martin Luther King, Junior, was assassinated, his chief followers, although they were spiritual men who trusted God, panicked and momentarily lost hope. Among some of his other followers, this loss of hope degenerated into violence.  Urban rebellions erupted in the wake of King’s death in over one hundred cities, and violence  left sections of these cities smoldering and in ruins.
     The irony was that Dr. King had always preached non-violence and would have been aghast at the violent riots. He had said, "Violence as a way of achieving racial justice is both impractical and immoral. I am not unmindful of the fact that violence often brings about momentary results. Nations have frequently won their independence in battle. But in spite of temporary victories, violence never brings permanent peace.”
​      But King also believed that when injustice was imprisoning people, then good men and women of conscience had to speak and act NOW, take risks, trusting in God to lead them forward in their non-violent work for change: "There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right.”
      The Reverend Wyatt Tee Walker was one of King's closest friends and the main strategist for their non-violent protests which hopefully would lead to change. After KIng's death, he continued to urge King's followers to keep the faith and continue to take necessary risks.
     In a sermon to seminarians at Princeton Theological University, Walker cautioned his audience to not let panic and despair cause them to stop taking risks and cling to the status quo. Instead, Walker proclaimed, “Whatever dream of life it is we envision for our children, ourselves, our community, our church, we will never bring it to our fingertips unless it begins first with some initial risk.... The elemental character of life is one that is moving and dynamic."
      The desperate reality for African Americans at that moment in history could have held them in the chains of fear. But Walker urged them to break free of that fear and instead embrace hope-filled struggle, to take a risk of faith and build a new future for America. That meant, "doing, trying, moving toward things which have never been tried before. What I’m saying to you,” Walker declared, “is that I have the ultimate faith that we are going to find a tranquility with justice in this nation, in this world. We must! And it is conceivable it could happen in our time.”
      When Walker speaks about the character of life as one that is moving and dynamic, it conjures dreams for me of the moving and dynamic Holy Spirit - a bracing spiritual Wind at our backs, pushing us forward to risk again, and a Fire of dancing flames stirring up the coals of our near-dead optimism. The Holy Spirit will inspire each of us and each of our communities with the answers to our personal questions about how to live and move during this pandemic. 
      Walker speaks of "doing, trying, moving toward things which have never been tried before." And I think of our multitude of scientists, experimenting, testing, searching for new medicines, new vaccines, risking exploring new ideas as they learn more and more about this deadly virus. Surely the Holy Spirit is hovering over them, even if some in this country reject their work. The Holy Spirit strengthens their consciences to do the right thing NOW because they have a dream of a nation healed and restored to physical and economic health.
      And surely now, as in the 1960's, the riots will die down if other Americans step forward and risk saying that they want to understand, they want to dialogue, they want Americans of all skin colors and ethnic backgrounds to work together as one to move this country forward towards greater justice and unity.  Can we continue the dream of the Rev. Wyatt Tee Walker by saying with him "I have the ultimate faith that we are going to find a tranquility with justice in this nation, in this world. We must! And it is conceivable it could happen in our time.” The giants of his time achieved real change for good in this country.  We too need to desire that our ship of state will risk sailing towards new horizons of justice and peace by allowing God to be God of ALL people!
      Allowing God to be God can be acknowledging that God is not only moving the hearts and souls of white Americans but also the hearts and souls of black, brown, yellow, and red Americans. God is not only moving the hearts and souls of Christian Americans, but God is also moving the hearts and souls of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist Americans.
​      Dr. King, a Christian minister, spoke of this work of God in the hearts of people of all faiths. He knew God was at work because he read the signs of the times and saw that God Who is compassionate Love dwells at the heart of all faiths.
       In his 1967 address to the anti-war group Clergy and Laity Concerned, Dr. King said: 
         "When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality. This Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist belief about ultimate reality is beautifully summed up in the first epistle of Saint John: “Let us love one another; for love is God and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God” [1 John 4:7]."
    Fr. Richard Rohr explores the Buddhist approach to calming panic by waking up, which means becoming attentive to centering ourselves in love:
      "The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh (born 1926) is one of the world’s most influential spiritual teachers. During the Vietnam War, his work for peace brought him into friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Thomas Merton, and other Christians who shared his belief that peace must be who we are, not just something we demand. Thich Nhat Hanh teaches:
      "This capacity of waking up, of being aware of what is going on in your feelings, in your body, in your perceptions, in the world, is called Buddha nature, the capacity of understanding and loving. . . . It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.
      "Many of us worry about the world situation. We don’t know when the bombs will explode. We feel that we are on the edge of time. As individuals, we feel helpless, despairing. The situation is so dangerous, injustice is so widespread, the danger is so close. In this kind of situation, if we panic, things will only become worse. We need to remain calm, to see clearly. Meditation is to be aware, and to try to help.
      "I like to use the example of a small boat crossing the Gulf of Siam. In Vietnam, there are many people, called boat people, who leave the country in small boats. Often the boats are caught in rough seas or storms, the people may panic, and boats can sink. But if even one person aboard can remain calm, lucid, knowing what to do and what not to do, he or she can help the boat survive. His or her expression—face, voice—communicates clarity and calmness, and people have trust in that person. They will listen to what he or she says. One such person can save the lives of many.
     "Our world is something like a small boat. Compared with the cosmos, our planet is a very small boat. We are about to panic because our situation is no better than the situation of the small boat in the sea. . . . Humankind has become a very dangerous species. We need people who can sit still and be able to smile, who can walk peacefully. We need people like that in order to save us. Mahayana Buddhism says that you are that person. . . .
      "The root-word “budh” means to wake up, to know, to understand. A person who wakes up and understands is called a Buddha. It is as simple as that. The capacity to wake up, to understand, and to love is called Buddha nature. [Christians would call this Christ nature, the Christ self, or the mind of Christ.]" (Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation for Wed. July 29.)
     To allow God to be God in our own hearts and minds is to humbly recognize and acknowledge that WE HAVE NO IDEA OF HOW AND WHERE GOD ACTS! We can only humbly have faith and trust that God IS always acting and that God IS always calling us to stay calm have faith and trust in God, and to keep our own boat continually moving into new and uncharted waters. God is always saying to us, "You are that person whom I want and need to stay calm, to trust in Me, to try to understand others, and to take the risk to work for a better, more just, more tranquil neighborhood,  country, and world."
      Can we allow God into the boat of our own lives and into the boat of our country's life? Our world's life? Pope Francis urges us
      "Let us invite Jesus into the boats of our lives. Let us hand over our fears to him so that he can conquer them. Like the disciples, we will experience that with him on board there will be no shipwreck. Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.
” (Pope's Mission for August 1.)
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The Power of Your Life Story

7/26/2020

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      One of the most insidious ways that we sabotage ourselves is our tendency to compare ourselves - or our family - to others. From the outside, so many people or families may appear to be perfect, like those people in T.V. commercials who wear the right clothes, have perfect smiles, and live in perfectly loving, understanding relationships.
      But, behind closed doors, the truth is that every relationship and every family has to cope with the same emotions and problems: loneliness, jealousy, anger, stress, frustration, unhealthy competitiveness, dominance issues, arguments, "getting on each other's nerves," misunderstandings, different kinds of disabilities, and different amounts of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain. 
      We may look at these other seemingly Perfect People and feel very small indeed. But - we are all small, imperfect people leading small, imperfect lives. However that does not mean that God ignores us and considers us and our relationships insignificant. No, in God's Eyes and God's loving Heart,  every one of us and every one of our relationships has eternal significance.
    God is Love, and every one of us, made in God's Image, has this tremendous Divine power and capacity for Love, just waiting inside us to be set free.  Fr. Thomas Keating said, "We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence. So love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name. Love is all; not [love as] sentimentality, but love that is self-forgetful and free of self-interest." (Thomas Keating, Healing Our Violence through the Journey of Centering Prayer, disc 5, Franciscan Media: 2002), CD.) 
      The power of our life story lies in our power to love. Our capacity for love determines how our life story develops and how it ends. So often, our prayers seem to center on asking God to change other people, change circumstances in our lives. But our prayers should always begin with asking God to open our hearts enough that God can enter and work with us to change US. How often do we ask God: "How can I become more loving? How can my power and capacity to vibrate with Your Divine Love be purified and set free?"  
       To aid us in this ongoing self-work of becoming more loving, God has given us a Helper: the Holy Spirit. The Power of the Holy Spirit is a fire that God sets inside us as a tiny flame of courage. Every prayer of ours allows the Holy Spirit to breathe on that tiny flame of courage until it becomes a greater and greater fire. In the Light of this Fire of Courage, we can begin to look honestly at ourselves. As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Authentic spirituality is always first about you—about allowing your own heart and mind to be changed. It’s about getting your own who right." (Fr. Richard Rohr, Daily Meditations, July 26.)
       Strangely enough, we cannot begin to love anyone until we first can love ourselves. When, in the Fire and Light of the Holy Spirit, we begin to look honestly and courageously at ourselves, look past all of the self-deceptions we keep like masks upon our souls, our first reaction may be a violent dissatisfaction and disillusionment. We begin to see and grieve over all of the small or big ways that we fail at loving: how we try to manipulate others, or the ways in which we try to make ourselves look good by putting others down, how we always want to win an argument, or our endless impatience or secret selfishness, or even our constant passivity we fall back upon because it is easier than standing up for ourselves. We can see how often we let fear or self-pity overwhelm us so that we crawl into a self-protective shell.
      But mentally yelling at ourselves does no good. How can we even begin to understand, accept, and forgive others if we cannot first understand, accept, and forgive ourselves? How can we be impatient with our faults and failings when God is unendingly patient with us? How can we love God or love others if we first can't love ourselves? It's better to repent (every day, again and again) and ask for the courage to get up each morning and try again.
      In the Fiery Light of Courage which the Holy Spirit gives us, we can begin to see that every word and action of ours has eternal significance. In every word and act, we can have a goal of giving others loving encouragement and hope, or, in our casual neglect or even mocking cruelty, we can nudge others towards bitterness, isolation, and hatred or self-hate. Even our words on Facebook, in emails and texts, or on Twitter! 
      Once we are freer in spiritually sensing the ways in which we avoid loving, or are definitely UN-loving, we can begin loving FOR REAL: unselfishly, patiently, and without judgement.  Noting other people's flaws and limitations no longer leads to us automatically judging them harshly because we have already taken a long, good, honest look at our own similar flaws and limitations. If people ask us to do them a favor, we no longer automatically think about what's in it for us. 
​      Once we concentrate on Love as the most important Power in our life, we no longer let our particular life circumstances define us or overwhelm us.  Love teaches us that we and everyone else are always More than our circumstances. We ALL are, as Father Keating says, "localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence.... love is our very nature. Love is our first, middle, and last name."  Because of this tremendous Divine Power at work in us, and through us, our life story never has to end in the darkness of bitterness, self-induced isolation, self-pity, or despair. 
      This Power of God's Love sweeping into our lives may be gradual, it may have to patiently work to overcome our guilt, our grief, our anger, our self-loathing, our false pride. But once we allow the Fire of God's Love to go to work in us and shine through us, small - and sometimes large - miracles can begin to happen in our lives. Our Helper, the Holy Spirit, loves to make everyone and everything fresh and new. We can re-discover our original closeness to our husbands or wives. We can see our children through fresh eyes of understanding and appreciation. We can approach our jobs, our ministries, with new dedication and zest. No matter our circumstances, if we have become free enough to be an unselfishly loving and unique vibration of God's loving Presence, God's love is flowing through us towards others and towards all of creation in depths and directions we cannot even imagine or trace. 
      The power of your life story is the power of your capacity to unselfishly love as a unique vibration of God's Loving Presence. Your "smallness," your imperfections, do not bother God, and they should not bother you. After all, when God chose to enter this world, God became very small, a fragile, hungry human baby who needed frequent diaper changes. Compared to God's Infinite Love, each of us is a small "baby" in our ability to become God's luminous Presence for others, but we still have  incredible potential to change the lives of others for the good. In his July 19 Daily Gospel Reflection, Bishop Robert Barron says:
       "How does God tend to work? What does the building up of the kingdom typically look like? From the very small to the very great—and by a slow, gradual process. God tends to operate under the radar, on the edges of things, quietly, clandestinely, not drawing attention to himself. 
     "In the City of God, St. Augustine opined that the Church is like Noah’s ark, a small ship bouncing on the rough seas of history. As the great empires come and go, as the waves of history crash noisily against the shore, God’s kingdom is quietly advancing, unnoticed but inevitable.
    "One of my very favorite images from C.S. Lewis speaks to this principle. How, he asks, did God enter history? Quietly, in a forgotten corner of the Roman Empire—sneaking, as it were, behind enemy lines."
​      Some days, it seems as if you can see all the flaws in all your relationships and you pray asking God to change others, to change your circumstances. But  Love is the Divine Power operative in your life story, Love Who promises you that your life story need not continue or end in bitterness, self-pity, destructiveness, or despair.  But you have to choose love first, will your heart and soul to open to love, want to love unselfishly and without self-interest,  want to change. This is why your first prayer should always be: "How can I become more loving? How can my power and capacity to vibrate with Your Divine Love be purified and set free?"  As Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Authentic spirituality is always first about you—about allowing your own heart and mind to be changed. It’s about getting your own who right."
      You are small. Imperfect. But, always remember: Divine Love is your nature. Divine Love is your first, last, and middle name. You are a unique vibration of Divine Love in this world. As an individual you are a spiritual "baby," small, fragile, imperfect. As an instrument, a vibration, of God's Divine Love, your life story, your every word and action, has a power, a divine significance, an impact on this world that you will not understand until you come, with tears of gratitude, to full maturity in heaven. 
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To Seek the Face of God

7/14/2020

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  Father John Battista Giuliani is a Benedictine priest whose contemplative prayer, love of art, and love of icons has led him to paint icons of God, Mary, and the saints as Native Americans.
 In 1990 Giuliani, who has an undergraduate degree in art from New York's Pratt Institute, began a year-long study of Orthodox iconography with Russian icon master Vladislav Andreyev at the School of Sacred Art in Greenwich Village.  Having gleaned a working knowledge of the iconic process, he then struck out on his own artistic path and began painting modern icons with images of Native Americans as subjects.  
​  Father Giuliani notes that "even though I’m not Native American, I have a tremendous amount of respect for the varied indigenous cultures of this land.  Their understanding of the world of nature and of God, their emphasis on being caretakers rather than exploiters of the land—all that is wonderfully consonant with the best of Christian thought and tradition. In my work I try to celebrate a union of a common spiritual understanding, to show how a single mystery can be approached through diverse cultures" (Sojourners).  
    Father Giuliani has also said that "as a Catholic priest and son of Italian immigrants I bear the religious and ethnic burden of ancestral crimes perpetrated on the first inhabitants of the Americas.  Many have been converted to Christianity, but in doing so some find it difficult to retain their indigenous culture.  My intent, therefore, in depicting Christian saints as Native Americans is to honor them and to acknowledge their original spiritual presence on this land.  It is this original Native American spirituality that I attempt to celebrate in rendering the beauty and excellence of their craft as well as the dignity of their persons" (The Amalia & Nicola Giuliani Foundation for Religion and the Arts).
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 How do Native Americans respond to these icons? Fr. Giuliani says, "When the Lakota Sioux throughout the Dakotas, most of whom had been evangelized by Jesuit missionaries, first saw themselves depicted in my works as saints, they were ecstatic. Many of them contacted me, weeping even, and said, We have never before seen ourselves depicted as Mary, as Jesus, the saints. So the flood began. (See Mary and Jesus in this side icon.)
  "I met Bishop Charles Chaput of South Dakota whose mother is Potowatomi. He was totally supportive, and put me in touch with the Jesuits who were running a spiritual retreat in South Dakota. Father Hatcher asked me if I would paint a trinity because the Native Americans were having a hard time understanding, intellectually, the concept of the Trinity. They were visual people and if they could see the Trinity depicted, they would understand. I painted the Father as an aged wise man, and Jesus as the victorious warrior in his warrior jacket, and the Holy Spirit as a red-winged hawk, the sacred bird..." ​(Icon on top of page.) 
​      For many Native Americans, the choice has seemed to be an "either-or": either they can choose to be Catholic and abandon their culture, or they can choose their Native cultures and not be Catholic.  Fr. John's icons have affirmed to Native Americans that they can bring their cultures and spiritual values into the Church.  In other words, they can see, appreciate, and understand the Face of God portrayed in their own skin.
​      To seek the Face of God, to seek this transcendent personal encounter with God, is the ultimate goal of every human who seeks a spiritual life. Pope Francis says, "The face of God is our destination and the guiding star that helps us not to lose our way… This quest is fundamental for the life of every believer, for we have come to realize that our ultimate goal in life is the encounter with God.” (From Journey with the Pope, July 10.)
       Yet, how often, through the centuries, has a dominant white, colonizing culture visualized God as being white and portrayed God, Jesus, Mary, and the other saints with white skin and features, even as priests and ministers catechized black, brown, and indigenous peoples? We whites have also "whiticized"  the saints in our depictions of them. But God calls us to expand our hearts and discover that God's Presence lives as powerfully among and within Indigenous peoples as among and within whites and white culture.
​      St. Kateri Tekakwitha was a young Algonquin-Mohawk woman, yet some paintings give her white skin and features. A more realistic painting (below, as used by the St. Kateri Conservation Center)) portrays her with Indigenous features as well as the marks of the smallpox which scarred her and weakened her eyesight as a young girl, while taking the lives of her parents and young brother.
​      Kateri was a young woman who spent her life seeking the Face of God, first in her Mohawk faith, and then as a Catholic Christian. If we can gaze upon her Face and find the Face of God shining there, we can learn so many spiritual truths from her life. The First Nations people have been invisible to white America for too long. In saints like Kateri, we can see what richness they have to offer to us and the world. Understanding Kateri and her life, we can,  as the icon painter Fr. Giuliani says, "have a tremendous amount of respect for the varied indigenous cultures of this land.  Their understanding of the world of nature and of God, their emphasis on being caretakers rather than exploiters of the land—all that is wonderfully consonant with the best of Christian thought and tradition." 
      
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      The St. Kateri Conservation Center tells us: "Kateri Tekakwitha is popularly known as the patroness saint of Native American and First Nations Peoples, integral ecology, and the environment. Saint Kateri was born in 1656 and lived much of her life around the site of the present-day Saint Kateri National Shrine and Historic Site in Fonda, New York. Saint Kateri and the Indigenous Peoples had, and have, an extensive knowledge of the natural world, acquired over thousands of years of direct contact with nature. Saint Kateri is an eyewitness of the land before it would be drastically altered and damaged.
     "Kateri’s baptismal name is 'Catherine,' (after Saint Catherine of Siena) which in the Haudenosaunee (“Iroquois”) language is “Kateri.” Kateri’s Haudenosaunee name, 'Tekakwitha,' can be translated as 'One who places things in order' or 'To put all into place.' Other translations include, 'she pushes with her hands' and 'one who walks groping for her way' (because of her faulty eyesight).
      "Kateri was born in 1656 at the Kanienkehaka ('Mohawk') village of Ossernenon, which is near the present-day Shrine of Our Lady of Martyrs in Auriesville, New York.
      "Kateri’s father was a Kanienkehaka chief and her mother was an Algonquin Catholic. At the age of four, smallpox attacked Kateri’s village, taking the lives of her parents and baby brother, and leaving Kateri an orphan. Although forever weakened, scarred, and partially blind, Kateri survived. Kateri was adopted by her two aunts and her uncle, also a Kanienkehaka chief.
    "The brightness of the sun bothered Kateri’s eyes. She would often cover her head with a blanket, and would feel her way around as she walked.
      "After the smallpox outbreak subsided, Kateri and her people abandoned their village and built a new settlement called Caughnawaga, some five miles away, on the north bank of the Mohawk River, in the area of the present-day Saint Kateri National Shrine and Historic Site in Fonda, New York.
      "The Indigenous worldview involves relationships built on reciprocity, respect, and responsibility that extends to the entire natural world. It is a worldview of giving thanks daily for life and the world around us. 
      "The Haudenosaunee people have a deep connection with the fields, forests, rivers, and wildlife of their ancestral homeland. In Kateri’s time, and for thousands of years before then, the Haudenosaunee people carefully managed the natural world for food, shelter, and clothing. With the use of controlled fire, they managed the land for the benefit of people and all of nature, for which there was no separation. They hunted, fished, farmed, gathered, harvested, and traded for their material and spiritual needs, keenly aware of the rhythms of nature inscribed by our Creator. 
      "In many ways, Kateri’s life was the same as other young Indigenous girls. It entailed days filled with chores, spending happy times with other girls, and planning for her future. Kateri grew into a young woman with a gentle, loving personality. She helped her aunts work in the fields where they tended to the corn, beans, and squash, and took care of the traditional longhouse in which they lived. She went to the neighboring forest to pick the roots needed to prepare medicines and dye. She collected firewood in the forest and water from a stream. Despite her poor vision, Kateri became very skilled at beadwork. 
      "Kateri may have had fond memories of her prayerful Catholic mother and the stories of faith that her mother shared with her in early childhood. These would have remained indelibly impressed upon her mind and heart and were to give shape and direction to her life’s destiny. 
      "Kateri often went to the woods alone to speak to God and to listen to him in her heart and in the voice of nature.
     "When Kateri was eighteen years old, Father de Lamberville, a Jesuit missionary, came to Caughnawaga and established a chapel. Kateri was fascinated by the stories she heard about Jesus Christ. She wanted to learn more about him and to become a Christian. Father de Lamberville asked her uncle to allow Kateri to attend religious instructions. The following Easter of 1676, twenty-year-old Kateri was baptized. Today, Saint Kateri’s Spring, located at the Saint Kateri National Shrine and Historic Site in Fonda, NY, still flows with the sacred water used to baptize Kateri.
      "Not everyone in Kateri’s village accepted her choice to fully embrace Jesus, which for her meant refusing the marriage that had been planned for her. Kateri became a village outcast. Some members of her family refused her food on Sundays because she would not work. She suffered bullying, as some children would taunt her and throw stones. She was threatened by some with torture or death if she did not renounce her religion. Because of increasing hostility from some of her people, and because she wanted to be free to devote her life completely to Jesus, in July of 1677, Kateri left her village and traveled more than 200 miles through woods and rivers to the Catholic mission of St. Francis Xavier at Sault Saint-Louis, near Montreal, Canada. Kateri’s journey through the wilderness took more than two months. At the mission, Kateri lived with other Indigenous Catholics.
     "Because of her virtue, determination, and faith, Kateri was allowed to receive her First Holy Communion on Christmas Day in 1677. Although unable to read and write, Kateri led a life of prayer and penitential practices. She taught the young and helped those in the village who were poor or sick. People referred to her as the 'Holy Woman.' Kateri spoke words of kindness to everyone she encountered. 
      Kateri’s motto became, 'Who can tell me what is most pleasing to God that I may do it?' Kateri spent much of her time in prayer before the Blessed Sacrament, kneeling in the cold chapel for hours. When the winter hunting season took Kateri and many of the villagers away from the village, she made her own little chapel in the woods by making a wooden cross and spending time there in prayer, kneeling in the snow. Kateri loved the Rosary and carried it with her always.
    "Often people would ask, 'Kateri, tell us a story.' Kateri remembered everything she was told about the life of Jesus and his followers. People would listen for a long time. They enjoyed being with her because they felt the presence of God. One time a priest asked the people why they gathered around Kateri in church. They responded that they felt close to God when Kateri prayed. They said that her face changed when she was praying; it became full of beauty and peace, as if she were looking at God’s face.
      On March 25, 1679, Kateri made a vow of perpetual virginity, meaning that she would remain unmarried and totally devoted to Jesus for the rest of her life. Kateri hoped to start a convent for Native American sisters in Sault St. Louis, but her spiritual director, Father Pierre Cholonec, discouraged her. 
     Kateri’s health, which was never good, was deteriorating rapidly, likely due to her childhood illness and the penances she inflicted on herself. Father Cholonec encouraged Kateri to take better care of herself, but she continued with her 'acts of love.'
     "Kateri died on April 17, 1680, at the age of 24. Her last words were, 'Jesus, I love You.' ... Moments after dying, her scarred face miraculously cleared and was made beautiful by God. This miracle was witnessed by two Jesuit priests and all the others able to fit into the room. Many miracles were to follow.
Three people had visions of her in the week following her death.  A chapel was built near her grave, and soon pilgrims began to visit, coming to thank God for this Holy Woman.
      "Kateri is known as the 'Lily of the Mohawks' and the 'Beautiful Flower Among True Men.' She is recognized for her heroic faith, virtue, and love of Jesus, in the face of great adversity and rejection. 
    "Indigenous Catholics worked tirelessly for many years to have Kateri canonized by the Catholic Church. The Church declared Kateri venerable in 1943. She was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1980, and was canonized by Pope Benedict XVI on October 21, 2012, thus becoming the first female Native American and First Nations saint. 
     "Saint Kateri recognized the inherent dignity of all people, and thus offers a bridge of peace between European and other immigrants and the Indigenous Peoples; between people and all of creation, and between people and God.
Saint Kateri’s feast day is celebrated on July 14th in the United States and on April 17th in Canada. 
      St. Kateri is beloved by Native peoples across the country, Canada, and  South America  because she makes them visible to the rest of  the world,    loved, revered, as fellow children of God, and able to bear the Face of God.
    “I am no longer my own. I have given myself entirely to Jesus Christ.”+     Saint Kateri Tekakwitha 
     Protectress of Canada and the first Native American saint, we entrust to you the renewal of the faith in the First Nations and in all of North America! May God bless the First Nations!"
​      In the paintings of Native American icons by Fr. John Giuliani, and in the indigenous, luminous features of St. Kateri, can we see the Face of God, the One Whom we seek? With Kateri may we ask, "'Who can tell me what is most pleasing to God that I may do it?'
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​© 2009 R. Kakwirakeron Montour
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Sing A New Song to the Lord!

6/23/2020

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      Author and speaker Fr. Richard Rohr is a priest in his seventies, who looks back on his priestly ministry of fifty years with a sigh, a chuckle, and a fervent prayer of thanks to God. He remembers his ordination and ministry this way:
      "It was a beautiful ordination ceremony. I was young and excited; my hair was long (I had hair!), and I wore colorful vestments covered with flowers I’d probably be embarrassed to wear now.
    "This was during the great years after Vatican II—the inspired spiritual renewal that had put the Gospel back at the center of our lives, just as St. Francis tried to do.
      "After the ceremony people were waiting in line to congratulate me, and I was feeling very important and holy. A woman held up the receiving line to tell me a story. I was irritated; as many others were in line. She told me about the history of my parish church, and how it was built on the very spot where the Pentecostal movement began. “You’re going to be used by the Holy Spirit,” she said. I tried to hurry her along, but nevertheless she persisted. And by she, I mean both this particular woman and the Holy Spirit—who has never given up on me.
      "Five decades later I am humbled to think about how it has all played out. I’ve written more books than I care to admit, prayed alongside amazing leaders and spoken in front of countless wonderful people. Through it all the Spirit has persisted in her work despite my many personal limitations and times I passionately believed my own message while also denying it in practice.
      "God always uses unworthy instruments so we can never think that it is we who are accomplishing the work. The older I get, the more I think, “God, you were so patient with me! I didn’t do it right and you still did it right, you still used me.” (June 23's message from Fr. Richard Rohr from his Center for Contemplation and Action.)
​      When I look back on my own years of ministry, as a Director of Religious Education, a Pastoral Associate, a Co-Pastoral Administrator, a Co-Playwright, but even more importantly, as a daughter, a sister, a wife, a mother, a friend, I  feel conflicted.
      I remember those times in my life when, like Fr. Richard, I have felt very important and holy, as if the Holy Spirit was flowing through me unimpeded. I was truly loving the people in my life, and my ministries were leading to new flowerings of grace in my parish community.
      But also I remember those times in my life that I realized, with devastating clarity, that "pride goes before a fall," and that, while I was preaching God's message, my own sinfulness was causing me to deny God's message by the way I was living. I was preaching about "God's community" but I was allowing myself to be irritated with people, to be stubborn, to want my own way when others saw more clearly what needed to happen.  I was lacking the courage needed to reach out to people who needed my - and God's - help.  I was neglecting my own family because parish ministry had me on a "spiritual high."
      Often, on life's journey,  we forget three things:
      First, as Fr. Rohr says, we are here on earth for one reason: to be used by God's Holy Spirit. We are instruments, pure and simple. Knowing and accepting and rejoicing in this is what brings peace to our souls: "LORD, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us." (Isaiah 26:12)
      Second, we are sinful, unworthy instruments. But, once we admit that, we don't have to use up spiritual energy being perfectionistic and prideful. We can humbly admit with Fr. Rohr: "God always uses unworthy instruments so we can never think that it is we who are accomplishing the work. The older I get, the more I think, 'God, you were so patient with me! I didn’t do it right and you still did it right, you still used me.'"
      Third, we are instruments because Jesus the Christ is the Vine and we are the branches: God really needs us to accomplish God's Will in this world, and God equips us for the work we are to do by calling us to abide in Him as He abides in us.  In the "Pope's Daily Message for June 23," Pope Francis says:
     "It’s true that Christian life is to obey the Commandments (Cf. Exodus 20:1-11); this must be done. Christian life is to follow the way of the Beatitudes (Cf. Matthew 5:1-13); this must be done. Christian life is to carry out works of mercy, as the Lord teaches us in the Gospel (Cf. Matthew 25:35-36), and this must be done. But, it’s more: it is this mutual abiding. Without Jesus, we can do nothing, as the branches without the vine. And He — may the Lord permit me to say it — seems unable to do anything without us, because the branch bears the fruit, not the tree, not the vine. In this community, in this intimacy of “fruitful abiding,” the Father and Jesus abide in me and I abide in Them.”
      ​When we abide in God as God abides in us, God inspires us to bring balance into our lives, balance between being present to our family and reaching out to the wider community beyond our family. In our family life, and in the various communities beyond our families we are, in person, a New Song in this world.  
​      When we know that we are one with God, Jesus the Morning Star shines in our hearts so that we can see and hear with clarity the new song that God asks us to play and sing as His instruments.  We can sing out our own, precious song, knowing that, though we are not perfect, we make mistakes, we even sin, we even pridefully try to sing someone else's song, in the end God will use us and use others to accomplish the plans of His Heart, which last from age to age.  We don't ever sing and play our new song completely right. But if we are faithful enough instruments, God allows others to hear the song they need to hear to be loved, encouraged, challenged, and healed. 
      So we need to stop hating ourselves for what we are not, and start loving ourselves for what we are: God's instruments playing entirely new songs of love, songs the world has never heard before and never will hear again, songs which are never perfect, but always enough, songs whose melodies and words  will love, encourage, challenge, and heal the important people in our lives. Why? Because God plays and sings our unique song through us, with us, in us. God cannot play and sing it without us; we cannot play and sing it without God, for we are through prayer united into one: Jesus the Christ is the Vine and we are the branches. 
​       Do not be too afraid to be used by the Holy Spirit. Do not be too self-conscious.   Bravely step out from the crowd, allow the Holy Spirit to tune the instrument of your own heart, and then play and sing your new song loudly with all your skill. In a world of divisiveness, of cynicism, of shallowness, of selfishness, your melody and words will shine, lit by Jesus, the Morning Star in your heart. Your melody and words will be infused with the love, forgiveness, and healing of the Father. You will humbly be an imperfect instrument who paradoxically is out of tune and still, in tune with the Holy Spirit, is exactly right, the New Song needed to be heard, with grateful hearts and tears, by this time and place.
​      When we abide in God and God abides in us, when we sing our own new song, knowing that God has composed it with us and sings and plays it  with us and through us, we discover the deep, abiding peace that has eluded us, passed us by. "O Lord, you establish peace for us. Everything we have done, you have accomplished for us." 


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Become Your Truest Self

6/6/2020

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      The United States is such an individualistic society that we spend a lot of time and energy on "fixing" ourselves. We buy self-help books to teach us how to handle our neuroses, our obsessions, our co-dependencies, and our self-doubts. We spend time in solitary prayer and meditation to help us find balance and union with God, however we call God. We have this burning desire to become the best person we can possibly be.
      All that is very necessary soul work. But the truth is that we cannot become the best person we can possibly be alone. God is a Community of Love, Three Divine individual and equal Persons Who are One in Love.  And so when God created us in God's Image, God created us as social animals, meant to be together.
     How many people during this time of social isolation because of the pandemic are using Face Time and Zoom to stay connected? How many are enduring depression because they cannot see or hold their loved ones?! Somehow one of the great gifts that can flow from this pandemic is rediscovering our deep, necessary connectedness with one another. Mother Teresa diagnosed the world’s ills in this way: we’ve just “forgotten that we belong to each other.”
​      Dorothy Day, the activist who founded the Catholic Worker movement, described the terrible loneliness we each feel until we can become secure in another's love. "We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community."
      We all belong to many communities in our lives, because just one group can never give us everything we need to grow. Family, friends, workplace, neighborhood, Church - all these teach us new ways of being, deeper ways of loving others as unique and equal individuals, and being loved as the unique person we are. We learn gradually not to be threatened by others, but instead to be gifted by their differences. When we truly love each other, we set the other person free to be and become his/her deepest, truest self.
      And there are many ways of being "Church." Fr. Richard Rohr says, "Too often, the formal church has been unable to create any authentic practical community, especially over the last half-century. In response, we see the emergence of new faith communities seeking to return to this foundational definition of church. These may not look like our versions of traditional “church,” but they often exemplify the kinds of actual community that Jesus, Paul, and early Christians envisioned. People are gathering digitally and in person today through neighborhood associations, study groups, community gardens, social services, and volunteer groups. They’re seeking creative ways of coming together, nurturing connection, of healing and whole-making. The “invisible” church might be doing this just as much, if not more, than the visible one. The Holy Spirit is humble and seems to work best anonymously. I suspect that is why the Holy Spirit is often pictured as a simple bird or blowing wind that is here one minute and seemingly gone and then nowhere (John 3:8)."
      Yet as we reach out to build a community with others who have the same interests, the same vision, do we also ever take the huge risk of reaching out to someone whose life is very different from ours because he or she has a different skin color or ethnicity? It is false to say that to set another free in love is to be color-blind. No, to truly love another, we love the other in his her entirety: skin color, religion or lack of it, body type, personality type, culture, language, age. To truly love another exists when both people can be vulnerable with each other, share their life experiences, painful and joyful, share their deepest fears and insecurities, knowing that you are not going to be judged.
      Astoundingly, because of the murder of George Floyd, people are doing exactly that. As peaceful protests explode across the country - and I speak of the peaceful protests rather than the rioting and violence - we see huge new multi-colored, multi-ethnic communities forming, uniting in one purpose: to work for equality between whites and persons of color. People of color are acknowledging their pain, their inequality, their sense that their lives do not matter as much as white lives. Many whites are listening and acknowledging that they need to be educated in what it's like to live in America when you are black. Blacks and whites are acknowledging that here, in America, they have forgotten that they belong to each other.
      America's greatest Peace Activist, Martin Luther King, Jr., a man whose marches included people of various colors, was inspired by a great black teacher, philosopher, and theologian named Howard Thurman, who founded America's first interracial and interfaith Church. (Photo above)
      Fr. Richard Rohr tells us about him:
​      "As Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) observed, one of the most segregated hours in the United States still occurs on Sunday mornings when we attend church services. ( Martin Luther King, Jr., “Communism’s Challenge to Christianity,” Sermon, August 9, 1953) Yet as early as the 1940s, African-American writer and mystic Howard Thurman (1899–1981) was seeking to build a worshipping community across racial differences. In 1944, along with his white co-pastor Alfred Fisk (1905–1959), Thurman co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, the country’s first interracial, interfaith congregation. Reverend Thurman describes how the collective experience of God became the center of the community’s life, unifying people from many different backgrounds and cultural expressions:
      "Fellowship Church was a unique idea, fresh, untried. There were no precedents and no traditions to aid in structuring the present or gauging the future. Yet [my wife] Sue and I knew that all our accumulated experiences of the past had given us two crucial gifts for this undertaking: a profound conviction that meaningful and creative experiences between peoples can be more compelling than all the ideas, concepts, faiths, fears, ideologies, and prejudices that divide them; and absolute faith that if such experiences can be multiplied and sustained over a time interval of sufficient duration any barrier that separates one person from another can be undermined and eliminated. We were sure that the ground of such meaningful experiences could be provided by the widest possible associations around common interest and common concerns.....
       "Our worship became increasingly a celebration before God of life lived during the week; the daily life and the period of worship were one . . . rhythm. Increasing numbers of people who were engaged in the common life of the city of San Francisco found in the church restoration, inspiration, and courage for their work on behalf of social change in the community. The worship experience became a watering hole for this widely diverse and often disparate group of members and visitors from many walks of life.
      "It was not long before I realized that what I had learned and experienced as to the meaning of love had to be communicated as a witness to the God in me and in our personal conduct as a witnessing congregation.
      "What had I learned about love? One of the central things was that the experience of being understood by another was of primary importance. Somewhere deep within was a “place” beyond all faults and virtues that had to be confirmed before I could run the risk of opening my life up to another. To find ultimate security in an ultimate vulnerability, this is to be loved." (Adapted from Howard Thurman, With Head and Heart: The Autobiography of Howard Thurman (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich: 1979), 144, 145–146, 148.)
      Here is a prayer exercise to help you to become your truest self by interacting with someone of perhaps a different skin color, a different life experience. If this has been your life experience, I listen and lament with you. Here is someone being vulnerable with us, angry and in pain with us. Can your heart reach out to hold this person's heart carefully, to accept this vulnerable soul? Hold this wounded life safely, securely? I found this poem on a website called "The Moral Universe," but couldn't find the author. Prayerfully read this and enter into community with him/her:

LAMENTATION FOR GEORGE FLOYD:
White men and women have thought of black bodies for centuries as something they can do what they will with.
Neither the Emancipation Proclamation nor the 13th Amendment nor the Voting Rights Act nor the institution of a category of felonies called hate crimes has changed this.
Black bodies have only been good for making wealth off of or using as scapegoats for white rage.
How long, O Lord, how long?
The murder of George Floyd was committed in plain sight; the four cops knew exactly what they are were doing. They intended to kill him and they did, right out in public. How can we breathe when he couldn’t?
How long, O Lord, how long?
I fear the pandemic of white supremacy more, a great, great deal more, than I fear COVID-19, though for black bodies, both are methods of genocide.
How long, O Lord, how long?
I woke up today with such a weight of anger, grief, and despair that I could barely move. Prayer time didn’t help. All I wanted to do was post to white policeman, “Keep your fucking hands off black bodies.”
How long, O Lord, how long?
The list of names has gotten so long, we could fill a Vietnam Memorial with them. George, Amadou, Philando, Oscar, Jamal, John, Sandra, Ahmaud, Breona, Emmet, Jordan, Eric, Jimmie Lee, and hundreds of others whose names are recorded at the Equal Justice Initiative’s Lynching Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama.
This list doesn’t even include the thousands of black bodies who have been killed or neglected in prisons.
How long, O Lord, how long?
When Saul sent men to kill David, David wrote Psalm 59 in lament. When I read verses 1-7 now, I hear the voices of all the black bodies crying from their graves.
59 Deliver me from my enemies, O my God;
protect me from those who rise up against me;
2  deliver me from those who work evil,
and save me from bloodthirsty men.
3  For behold, they lie in wait for my life;
fierce men stir up strife against me.
For no transgression or sin of mine, O LORD, 
4  for no fault of mine, they run and make ready.
Awake, come to meet me, and see!
5  You,  LORD God of hosts, are God of Israel.
Rouse yourself to punish all the nations;
spare none of those who treacherously plot evil.
6  Each evening they come back,
howling like dogs
and prowling about the city."

      As Howard Thurman said, "What had I learned about love? One of the central things was that the experience of being understood by another was of primary importance. Somewhere deep within was a “place” beyond all faults and virtues that had to be confirmed before I could run the risk of opening my life up to another. To find ultimate security in an ultimate vulnerability, this is to be loved."
      Can we accept the tragedy that many of Thurman's family and friends experienced terrible segregation and oppression, and that many blacks still do? That their crying need is to be able to be real and vulnerable with whites and be accepted in their entirety, respected and loved for who they are so they can be secure? And safe? And, I might add, the reverse is true: whites need to be accepted by blacks in their vulnerability and entirety, be respected for who they are so they find security, And safety. Then each can become their truest self. 
      May you find many communities where you are able to be vulnerable, to show your gifts, your fears, your weaknesses, your foibles, and know you are accepted for who you are, where you are secure, where you are safe. May you find many communities where you share a common cause, a common vision, to make this world a better place. May you find at least one community where you worship God together and the faces are different colors, and there may even be different languages, and you all know you are God's children, and it is safe for all to be there. 
      We  never want to forget that we belong to each other. We all want to pass through that long loneliness of being alone and discover that the only solution for all of us is love lived in community, a love that mirrors the love of the Community Which is God.



  
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God's Home; Our Home

5/24/2020

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     The promise of silver tufts on pussy willows is delightful: they are a sign that finally we're moving from the cold winds of winter to the warm breezes of Spring. But - what ARE those silver tufts, anyway?  The Brooklyn Botanic Garden website tells us:
      "At the tail end of winter, fuzzy nubs start to appear along the branches of pussy willows. These soft silver tufts—as well as the plant itself—are named for their resemblance to tiny cats’ paws, and they feel so much like fur that young children often wonder if they are animals instead of plants. What are those little nubs? Are they seeds? Fruits? And why are they fuzzy?
     "They're actually flowers just before they fully bloom. The soft coating of hairs acts as insulation to protect these early bloomers from cold temperatures. The species most commonly called pussy willow in the Northeast, Salix discolor, is a small, shrubby species of willow that can be found dotting wetlands and moist woods throughout much of North America. Most other willows make similar flowers, and since they’re among the very first to bloom, they’re especially delightful—they signal the last throes of winter and the brink of spring."
      Don't you love learning facts like that about a facet of Nature? Don't you feel sometimes that you could never, even in a lifetime, explore all the wonders of Nature around you? There are so many beautiful, intriguing, trees, flowers, vegetables and fruits, birds, fish, animals,  and insects? How often do we gasp in awe as we stand on a mountaintop? How often do breathe a prayer of gratitude to God as we gaze at an especially lovely, vibrant sunset, or breathe in the luxuriant scent of a Spring lilac or Summer rose, or sigh in comfort as we stroke our warm, beloved pet? How often do we get excited as we experiment with a new  spice in the entree we're creating?
      On the other hand, isn't it more realistic to say that, most often, we take Nature for granted? Barely experience it except as a backdrop to our Real Life? Don't we really think of ourselves as separate from those "lower life forms"? Superior? Science has proven to us that all of life on this planet is interconnected and interdependent, that human beings need the rest of Nature to survive and thrive. But don't we still live under the mistaken assumption that Nature is there for WE HUMAN BEINGS, to do with as best serves US?
      How often do we think of Nature, or Creation, as being Sacred, as being God's Home, a Home that God shares with every creature on earth as a magnificent Gift? How often do we realize that every wonderful facet of Nature gives us the gift of the Voice, the Beauty, the Goodness, the Power and Majesty, the Touch, the Scent of God? But it's true! Every creature of Earth carries the Divine DNA - who else's DNA would they  carry? Everything created comes from the same Divine Source: God.  
​      This is why Nature/Creation is considered to be the First Bible, the first tangible way in which God has revealed God's Self to us, to further and deepen our understanding of Who God is. Fr. Richard Rohr says "Creation is the first Bible, ... and it existed for 13.7 billion years before the second Bible was written. Natural things like animals, plants, rocks, and clouds give glory to God just by being themselves, just what God created them to be. It is only we humans who have been given the free will to choose not to be what God created us to be."
      St. Francis understood this. In his encyclical "Laudato Si,'" Pope Francis, who took the name of the Saint, says
      "What is more, Saint Francis, faithful to Scripture, invites us to see nature as a magnificent book in which God speaks to us and grants us a glimpse of his infinite beauty and goodness. “Through the greatness and the beauty of creatures one comes to know by analogy their maker” (Wisdom 13:5); indeed, “his eternal power and divinity have been made known through his works since the creation of the world” (Romans 1:20)." 
      If this is true, if Nature is sacred, carries God's DNA, and is God's Bible, can we understand that when we misuse, pollute, and destroy  any facet of Nature, this is sinful? 
​     The next great revelation of God to us comes through the Incarnation of God's Son. In the Incarnation, God comes near in a new and different way to all that God has created, and demonstrates once again that all is sacred. In the Incarnation, Jesus, the Divine Word through Whom the world was made, humbled himself and became human flesh, became fragile, vulnerable, perishable. In taking on human flesh, Jesus became physically connected to all human beings and also to the whole of creation, just as we are.
      Science has taught us in the last few decades that human beings are part of an interconnected whole. We know today that the human species is "an intrinsic part of the evolutionary network of life on planet Earth, which in turn is a part of the solar system, which itself formed out of the dust and gas of ancient exploding stars. The landscape of our imagination expands when we realize that human connection to nature is so deep that we can no longer completely define human identity without including the great sweep of cosmic development and our shared biological ancestry with all organisms in the community of life." (Sr. Elizabeth Johnson in "Creation and the Cross.")
      Think of how radically connected to all of nature Jesus, true human being, was and is:
      "As a creature of earth, Jesus was a complex living unit of minerals and fluids, an item in the carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen cycles. The atoms comprising his body were once part of other creatures. The genetic structure of the cells in his body were kin to the flowers, fish, frogs, finches, foxes, the whole community of life that descended from common ancestors in the ancient seas. And by the nature of living things, he was going to die." (Johnson)
      St. Bonaventure expressed this truth so beautifully. St. Bonaventure (1221–1274) taught that “Christ, as a human being, shares with all creatures; indeed he possesses being with rocks, lives among the plants, senses with animals, and understands with angels.”
      In the mystery of the cross, once again God reveals God's interconnectedness with, first of all, human beings:
      "The cross is a mysterious and profound sign that God enters into the darkest trials of human suffering, death, and near-despair.  In solidarity with the human race, Jesus crucified and risen abides in intimate contact with all people who walk through the valley of the shadow of death. His presence in the Spirit can comfort, strengthen, and bring hope to everyone in their suffering and dying. So Christians have long believed." (Johnson)
      But, "is the suffering solidarity of God in Christ limited to human beings? Or does it extend to the whole community of life of which human beings are a part?  Deep Incarnation would seem to imply that God-in-Christ is with all flesh that suffers and dies, not just human beings....Deep Incarnation seems to say that God in Christ is with every field mouse caught and eaten by a hawk....
      "Pain and death are woven into the very fabric of life's evolutionary history on earth. As some scholars would have it, nature is cruciform.
      "Jesus' anguished death places him among this company of creatures of the flesh. Such a location allows divine solidarity to reach to all who are made of flesh and are perishing, not disdaining them in their distress....In their suffering and dying, they are never left alone.
      "During his ministry Jesus taught that not even a sparrow falls to the ground without God's knowing and caring. The cross now seems to bring vital divine presence even closer to every dead bird...The Creator of all flesh is silently present with creatures in their pain and dying. They remain connected to the God of Life despite what is happening; in fact, in the depths of what is happening." (Johnson)
      But, if Christ dying on the cross is connected to all creation, what does that say about all creation being connected to the Resurrection?
      "The risen Jesus Christ pledges a future for all the dead, not only the dead of the human species but of all species. In Jesus crucified and risen, God who graciously gives life to the dead and brings into being the things that do not exist will redeem the whole cosmos. As (St.) Ambrose of Milan in the fourth century preached, 'In Christ's resurrection the earth itself arose.'"(Johnson)
​      Johnson says that Pope Francis writes beautifully of this in "Laudato Si'":
​     "In the days of his flesh, 'the gaze of Jesus' looked on the natural world with an attention full of fondness and wonder. Now risen from the dead, Christ, who took unto himself this material world, is intimately present to each creature, 'surrounding it with his affection,' illuminating it and directing it towards fullness in God. Indeed, 'the very flowers of the field and the birds which his human eyes contemplated and admired'  are now imbued with his radiant presence. (LS 96 - 100.)
     "Speaking oracles of promise like the prophets of old, Francis proposes a wonderful vision of where this is all going. 'At the end we will find ourselves face to face with the infinite beauty of God.' Rather than enjoying this by ourselves, 'eternal life will be a shared experience of awe in which each creature, resplendently transfigured, will take its rightful place. All creation 'will share with us in unending plenitude.' (243). The fullness of God will be our common home, 'our' referring here to humans and all species together, just as now in time our common home is the earth." (Johnson)
      For a long time, we human beings have mis-read the Creation Story and the Christ Story. We have automatically figured that because we are the ones who can think for ourselves, act for ourselves, that our lives are separate from and superior to the rest of creation. We have chosen to believe the lie that our species is free to dominate, subjugate, and misuse every other species and life form without there being fatal and destructive consequences for all life. We have chosen to act as if our wants and desires are paramount and holy because we are "the chosen species." We think that because the Son of God came as a human being, that the significance of his life, death, and resurrection are for the human species only.  
      Because of this misguided notion of the "pre-eminence of human beings" we have lost track of the meaning of that great hymn in Colossians chapter one which speaks of Christ in these cosmic terms: "In him everything in heaven and on earth was created...all were created through him, and for him.....It pleased God to make absolute fullness reside in him and, by means of him, to reconcile everything in his person, both on earth and in the heavens, making peace through the blood of his cross."
    If everyone and everything was created through Christ and for his delight, and if, through the blood of his cross, everyone and everything is reconciled and brought to fullness, then all creation is equally important to God. All is sacred; all is holy; all has infinite dignity. Science, teaching us of the physical interconnectedness and interdependence of all life, reinforces and illuminates this religious truth.  Human beings are not superior, born to rule the earth. In fact, it is an illusion to think that we live separate from the rest of life on this planet. All life needs each other. The earth and all life are a gift to all. What  does God want we who can think for ourselves, choose for ourselves, and act for ourselves, to give back to God and the rest of life?  Because life isn't so much about what you're given, - or take for granted. It's about what YOU give. 
      Father Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, a theologian who has studied and written extensively about Laudato Si′, urges us to heed the warnings of both science and our conscience:
      "Today, we could, and probably we should, understand this house as our common planetary home. It is this common home which is being despoiled and desecrated today. Significantly, our common home is also God’s own house, permeated by the Spirit of God from the dawn of creation, where the Son of God pitched his tent in the supreme event of the incarnation. It is in this common home that God co-dwells with humanity and of which we have been entrusted with stewardship, as we read in the book of Genesis [2:15]. The contemporary ecological crisis, in fact, lays bare precisely our incapacity to perceive the physical world as impregnated with divine presence. We have swapped the lofty vision of the physical world as God’s own abode, sanctified by the incarnation of the Son of God, with the one-dimensional mechanistic outlook of modernity. Accordingly, the physical world gets reduced to a mere storehouse of resources for human consumption, just real estate for market speculation. . . . Through pollution of the planet’s land, air, and waters, we have degraded our common home that is also God’s own home. We have turned this sacred abode into a marketplace.
    "In a situation of planetary emergency like the collapse of our planetary abode, we need to be aflame once again with the zeal for our common home." 
(Adapted from Joshtrom Isaac Kureethadam, The Ten Green Commandments of Laudato Si′ (Liturgical Press: 2019), 4, 211–212.)
      Fr. Richard Rohr laments the rampant acts of human destruction of the planet that we can see all around us. But he also reminds us that human beings are capable of love, and sometimes that love manifests itself in what we humans choose NOT to do when we show restraint:
      "Over these past several months I have witnessed many examples of this restraint, which (environmentalist and author) Bill McKibben calls love. While the lives of our elders, our vulnerable, and essential workers are at stake during the COVID-19 pandemic, tens of millions of us across the globe have been restraining ourselves at home, choosing not to do many things for many weeks in order to protect those we love (and those others love as well). Surely the earth is breathing a sigh of relief for our reduction in pollution and fossil fuel use. This “Great Pause,” as some are calling it, gives me hope that we will soon find it within ourselves to protect our shared home, not only for our own sake, but for our neighbors across the globe, and future generations."
​      Can we take the time now, during the Great Pause, to pause and REALLY look around us at the wonder of our planet which is God's First Bible, and God's Home and our Home? Can we allow ourselves to think and feel, deep down in our bones, that we are not separate from the trees, the grass, the air, the water, the insects, the animals, the fish, the birds of the air, but that we live in a fundamental physical AND spiritual connection, a true union, needing one another to survive?
​      Can we humbly recognize and admit Jesus the Christ did not become a human being in the Incarnation only to become one with us humans, but instead to become one with all species? That his death did not only free him to be one with human beings in their suffering and death, but to become one with all forms of life as they suffer and die? That through his resurrection, Jesus the Christ did not only bring human beings to the fullness of eternal life but brings all creation to the fullness of eternal life?
      Once we recognize and admit, deep down in our bones, that ALL life is sacred, ALL life has dignity, ALL Life has Divine DNA, ALL Life is beloved of God, perhaps, God willing, All Life, and not just some life, will become a sacred responsibility for us to preserve, protect, prioritize, and truly love.

 
      
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We Are Not Orphans

5/21/2020

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      Two dams broke in Michigan yesterday; thousands of people are being rescued from their inundated houses and cars as they experience what's been called a once in five hundred year's flood.  This, at a time when not only the whole country but the whole world is flooded with a new and unpredictable disease: COVID - 19. Simultaneously the pandemic has unleashed a flood of economic woes as businesses are shut down and owners worry if they ever can re-open, or, if when they do re-open, people will come back. Our troubled hearts, flooded with anxiety, call out for help. Will the Lord abandon us? Have we truly become orphans, left alone to cling to a piece of wreckage in dangerous, uncharted waters?
      But, how can God abandon us when God is in a relationship with us, a relationship so dear and precious that Jesus tells us that God is our Parent and Jesus is our brother? Can a true Parent, loving in every sense of the word, ever abandon his or her child? 
      Jesus' last words to his friends at his Last Supper (John: chapters 14,15, and 16) comfort us and encourage us: "Do not let your hearts be troubled. Have faith in God and faith in me....I will not leave you orphaned." How can this be true, when Jesus will suffer, die, rise, and then return to His Father in Heaven? It's true because Jesus' great gift to us is to show us that he and the Father are one, and, if the Father never leaves Jesus, then our mutual Father can and will never leave us alone as orphans.
     Jesus' Father is also our Father: when the risen Jesus speaks to Mary of Magdala, he says "Go to my brothers and tell them 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." Whenever Jesus speaks about God the Father, he tells us that he is always with the Father: "I can never be alone; the Father is with me." (John 16:32) and this is God the Father Who is also OUR Father!  We also can never be orphans: our Father is always, always, with us.
      God our Father is always speaking to us; all we have to do is to be attentive to God's Voice. One echo of God's Voice today is the great mystic Julian of Norwich, who lived in a time in history which is eerily reminiscent of ours: Here is how author, scholar, and Episcopal priest Mary Earle describes Julian’s fourteenth-century context:
   "Julian lived at a time of vast social, [religious,] and political upheaval, incessant wars, and sweeping epidemics. Norwich, with a population of around 25,000 by 1330 . . . was struck viciously by the plague known as the Black Death. At its peak in the late 1340s in England, it killed approximately three-fourths of the population of Norwich. A young girl at this time, Julian was certainly affected in untold ways by this devastation. When the plague returned, she was about nineteen. . . . [1]
      Yet, even in the midst of all this suffering, Julian does not speak of a wrathful, avenging God Who has sent a great flood of illness and war to punish human beings. Instead, "Again, and again, Julian reassures each one of us that we are loved by God, unconditionally. In her writings, we hear Christ telling us, just as he told Julian, “I love you and you love me, and our love shall never be separated in two.” [1] If we live IN Christ  and Christ lives IN us, then we can never be separated from Christ or from his Father Who is OUR Father. 
      Some of Jesus' most beautiful words to his friends  - and to us - at his Last supper are these: "On that day, you will know that you are in me and I am in you." (John 14:20) Jesus is reminding us that God is so close to us that we live inside God - in Him we live and move and have our being - and simultaneously God lives inside us.
      Julian reassures us "The place which Jesus takes in our soul he will nevermore vacate, for in us is his home of homes, and it is the greatest delight for him to dwell there. . . . And the soul who contemplates this is made like [the one] who is contemplated."
      Fr. Richard Rohr reminds us that belief in humans' union with God "has been the enduring message of every great religion in history. It is the Perennial Tradition. Divine and thus universal union is still the core message and promise—the whole goal and the entire point of all religion."
      Lady Julian of Norwich uses the idea of “oneing” to describe divine union. In chapter 53 of Revelations of Divine Love, she writes, “This beloved soul was preciously knitted to God in its making, by a knot so subtle and so mighty that it is oned in God. In this oneing, it is made endlessly holy. Furthermore, God wants us to know that all the souls which will be saved in heaven without end are knit in this knot, and oned in this oneing, and made holy in this holiness.” [1]
​      If we look carefully at a knit shawl or muffler or glove, we see that it is a whole piece - we cannot see any divisions in it. We couldn't say "This piece is God and this piece is me, and here is where we are joined together." 
​      And all souls which will be saved are also knit together and are one with God and us - how amazing! United in God, we human beings truly are all one family.
      In Julian's day, a lot of the popular art depicted the artists' ideas of the Last Judgement, of damned souls writhing in agony. So many popular religious speakers spoke of the wrath of God, and people who were suffering despairingly asked "God, why me?  How can you punish me this way?"
      But Julian did not believe in a wrathful, avenging God. She looked at people's hearts and souls and saw that human beings can be wrathful, go to war, ignore people who are suffering, exact inhumane punishments on wrongdoers. But that is the work and "mind-set"of human beings, not of God. We could add that today we understand that God allows nature to evolve as it wills, and also allows human beings to take responsibility for the world and all its creatures and experience the effects of not caring for our common home.
      "Julian’s radical insistence that we know there is “no anger in God” [2] directs us all to look at ways in which we project our own bitterness, anger, and vengeance upon God. In a resolutely maternal way, she encourages us to grow up, to cast aside our immature and punitive images of God, and to be honest with ourselves about our own actions that have their roots in spiritual blindness. . . .Julian tells us, again and again, in a variety of ways, that God is our friend, our mother and our father, as close to us as the clothing we wear." 
      Today, Pope Francis asks us to remember that, if God loves all of us, we are all called to love one another as one family under the protection and leadership of one Father. He says,
      "Today in the world, there is a great feeling of being orphaned: many have many things, but the Father is missing. And this is repeated in the history of mankind: when the Father is missing, something is missing and there is always a desire to find, to rediscover the Father... always looking for the missing Father. Today we can say that we live in a society where the Father is missing, a sense of being orphans that affects one’s belonging and fraternity. Let us ask the Holy Spirit to remind us always, always, how to access the Father, to remind us that we have a Father. And to this civilization that has a huge sense of being orphaned, may He grant the grace of finding the Father once again, the Father who provides everyone with a sense of meaning in life. May He make all men and women one family.”
      Truly, if we believe in our hearts that we are in relationship with a God Who loves us unconditionally, we will trust that, even if we feel as if we are almost drowning in the flood waters of life, that we are clinging alone to a piece of wreckage to stay afloat, we still can always pray and say "You, God, will reach down from Heaven and rescue me; You will draw me out of the deep waters of this flood."






      



 
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Through Locked Doors

4/23/2020

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      Because of this global pandemic, how many of us feel imprisoned behind our locked doors? Even if we go outside, we have to hide half of our faces behind masks, and others, also masked, cannot see our smiles and so often look away from us as if our gaze could spread contagion. How lonely we are in the prisons of our houses, and behind the prisons of our masks! How much we miss the touches and kisses of our family and friends! How much we miss our church families! It is so easy, these days, to sink into sadness and depression, feeling as if this hellish isolation will never end. It is so easy to feel that, since we no longer can go to Church, that we cannot pray. That God cannot find us if we no longer can enter God's House of Prayer.
      Never forget, my friends, that God's original Church is in our souls. That our own souls are our original Houses of Prayer where we can meet God and God can meet us. And also, never forget that God has no problem entering either our houses or our souls through locked doors.
      When Jesus' disciples were hiding in a locked room in Jerusalem, far away from their House of Prayer, the great Jerusalem Temple, they must have found it so hard to pray. They were terrified that they too would be arrested by the Roman soldiers who had arrested and murdered Jesus. They felt so guilty that so many of them had run from Jesus and left him to his fate. They were so grief-stricken that their teacher, their Rabbi, their best friend whom they thought was the Messiah, was dead.
      Yet, suddenly, the risen Jesus, a glorified body and soul, appeared among them, miraculously traveling through that locked door as if it wasn't even there. Miraculously his beautiful face shone with the light of love and forgiveness, healing their grief-stricken, depressed, tormented souls as he breathed his Holy Spirit upon them and poured his peace over them. Seeing their great need he traveled to them, sought them out. Do we have any doubt that the Risen Christ will do the same for us? In over 2000 years, the Risen Christ has always known his people's needs and traveled to them, wherever they were, and however they were imprisoned.
  We can be imprisoned in actual places or imprisoned in our minds/hearts/souls. The great Spanish mystic and poet St. John of the Cross (1542 – 1591), friend of the great reformer St. Teresa of Avila,  endured a terrible nine month physical imprisonment that included torture at the hands of his own Carmelite Order, during which he almost lost his faith. But the risen Christ still reached him, coming through the locked door of John's cell as easily as he reached the frightened disciples through their locked door. Biographer Mirabai Starr tells John's story:
       "Juan de la Cruz was twenty-nine years old and madly in love with God. The great living saint Teresa of Ávila had recognized a rare sanctity and brilliance in this humble young friar and placed him in charge of her first reform convent [in 1572].
    "Then late one night [when John was thirty-five], threatened by this movement to return the order to the contemplative path embodied by the Desert Fathers and Mothers, the mainstream Carmelites whisked him away and imprisoned him in Toledo.
       "His cell was a tiny closet that had formerly served as a latrine. There was not enough room to lie down, and the only window was far above his head. . . .
Twice a day the friars took him out and flogged him. 
     “'Denounce Teresa!' they demanded. 'Renounce the heresy of this so-called reform!'
    "But he would not betray the dream. The dream of a life of voluntary simplicity, solitude, and silence. A contemplative life based on the Gospel teachings of poverty of spirit and charity of heart. A life of stripping away rather than accumulating. Of relinquishing power and seeking nothing. Of nothing but loving friendship with the divine and loving service to [God’s] creation. . . .
     "As the months ground by, [John] began to fear that he had been abandoned by the Holy One. For the first time in his life, he questioned the existence of a God he could no longer feel or remember. And, as his soul dried up, he found he could no longer even conceive of this God to whom he had dedicated everything. When he tried to pray, all he encountered was a cavernous emptiness. 
      "He cried out, 'Where have you hidden, my Beloved?'
   "Echoing from this cry came an outpouring of love poetry to God. He committed each poem to memory and recited them all again and again until they were etched on his heart. His poems became simultaneously a call to and a response from his Beloved. . . .
    "At last [after nine long months], one dark night, a sympathetic guard turned the other way as the frail friar made his escape. Taking refuge among the sisters in a nearby convent, he fell into an ecstatic state [of love for God], from which he never recovered." (Adapted from Mirabai Starr, "St. John of the Cross: Devotions, Prayers and Living Wisdom", Sounds True: 2008)
 ​     Although the public could not guess it as they laughed at his brilliant caustic wit, the great Danish philosopher, theologian, and poet Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) was caught in an inner prison. He was held captive by ongoing depression which he'd struggled with since childhood, and an ongoing interior struggle over what the purpose of life was, and, if he could believe in God, who God truly was.  Sounds like the dilemma of many people today, doesn't it? One of his early poems states this dilemma:

Where am I? Who am I?
How did I come to be here?
What is this thing called the world?
Why was I not consulted?
And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the director?
I want to see him.

      Soren endured a life-long state of depression, undoubtedly caused in part by his early life. He grew up in an affluent family, but, over the years, five of his siblings died, leaving him with only one brother.  His father made everyone's life miserable because he feared God, feared no one could ever really be forgiven by God, and preached that the family was cursed and that everyone would die tragically by age 33, the year of Jesus' death on the cross. He took his children on regular trips to the cemetery, where he exhorted them to meditate on the agonies of Christ and on their own terrible sins.
      The older Soren, an oddball, loved roaming the crooked streets of Copenhagen, mentally fiercely rejecting a God Who was a punishing, wrathful avenger, but also a God who was distant and uninvolved with His creation. What - or Who?-  was God? How could he find meaning and purpose in his life?
      Soren grew ever more melancholy as philosophy failed to answer his questions about the meaning of life. He was drawn to Jesus, the Jesus that was alive and real behind and beyond the abstract religious dogmas he'd been taught, but he knew somehow that to embrace the person of Jesus would require a full spiritual commitment. Since his brilliant mind and deep emotions rebelled at the idea of conversion, his inner struggle - and imprisonment - continued as  his soul cried out "Not yet!" But the Risen Christ is never held back by locked doors, whether they are the locked doors of our houses, or the locked doors of our souls.
      "One Sunday, Soren read the Gospel story of the disciples who, frightened at their teacher's crucifixion, took refuge in an upper room. Soren felt much like them, conflicted and scared, at once relentlessly seeking the divine, studying theology and even reading Scripture and yet hiding out from the living God. The disciples were taken completely by surprise when Jesus showed up saying   'Peace be with you.' If Jesus was going to get to him, too, Soren realized, it would only be through firmly locked doors.  And yet, unexpectedly, that is just what the risen Jesus did. On May, 19, 1838, Soren had a decisive spiritual experience, a feeling of 'indescribable joy' that was inexplicable to his rational mind. In that mysterious moment, the young man arrived at his life's central truth at last - the realization that, at his core, he was a person found by God."
( from Karen Wright Marsh's book "Vintage Sinners and Saints: 25 Christians Who transformed My Faith.")  
      The Risen Christ knew all of the needs of St. John and Soren, traveling to the cell where John was imprisoned, and the mind/heart/soul where Soren was held captive. For both men, what began as a catastrophe became instead a time of illumination and great change. Their imprisonments were defining times in their lives. In the midst of a dark spiritual captivity, each met the Living God and was set on fire by a new, passionate intimacy with the Divine Lover.
      St. John, met by the risen Christ in the cell he could not even lie down in, composed and memorized the first thirty-one stanzas of what would become a spiritual classic, "The Spiritual Canticle." In the Spiritual Canticle St. John  beautifully tries to explain the mystical process/journey of  the soul until it reaches its union with God, the Divine Lover. St. John explains by using an  allegory: the search for the husband (Christ) by the wife (the human soul). The wife feels wounded by love, and this causes  the search for the Beloved (el Amado); the soul asks everywhere for the Beloved (Christ) in despair until they finally meet and unite in the garden (Paradise)
      After his spiritual experience of liberation by the risen Christ, Soren taught that faith is an either - or: either God, whom we reach through constant prayer,  or an unfulfilled life. "Don't just be a Christian...as if 'Christian' is some assigned label that you are simply stuck with forever, an identity that means nothing to you. No, take all of your life to become a Christian: Choose again and again with each new day, to be a real self, an authentic person in relation to God. Abandon your calculated safety for a reckless, whole-hearted life of faith in Christ. Continue to become. Grow. Risk. Take that radical leap of faith right now.... Soul brother Soren, so traumatized by his father's fearful, fundamentalist religion, was once found by a great divine love. Now he urges us to take the risk and go deeper, to fling ourselves into God's Presence - and know the one, good, unshakeable thing in life." (from "Vintage Saints and Sinners.") 
      My friends, in this new imprisonment in our homes, in this unwanted loneliness, boredom, and fear, we have a defining moment in our lives. Some day this will end, our homes' locked doors will open, and we will be thrown back into that busyness that in the past has shielded us from our spiritual need to unlock our inner door for the risen Christ to enter. Not that Christ needs for us to open our locked doors! If we have the least interest in Him, He will come! But, oh, it is so much better for us to unlock our inner door first so that we can welcome Him with open arms, ready for a new risk, a new leap, into becoming a more authentic Christian, into discovering a deeper intimacy with our soul's Beloved. Christ does not need us kneeling in Church to find us; He wants to drift past the locked doors of our own humble homes and the stately Churches of our own souls.
       If we open our inner locked door to Christ right now, He is ready to liberate us by entering into our lives. Ready to help us grow, risk, take that radical leap of faith right now. The radical leap of faith we take now will change our lives irreversibly in our future. The radical leap of faith into believing that our Father, our brother Jesus, and the Holy Spirit love us with a love that is unimaginable, and that Christ can and will show our Father and Himself to us. Our God will intimately touch our souls, and then enter into our lives to make them new.
     The risen Christ is ready to enter all our relationships in our homes, to deepen them. Away from work and school, parents and children can navigate their family life into new ports of understanding and acceptance and forgiveness.  
     Christ is ready to deepen all the relationships we now have on the phone, on Facebook, on Zoom, in email, in texting, as we laugh and cry together, share news, and say "I love you" more often and with greater commitment.
  Christ is ready to deepen our understanding that as this is a global crisis, the whole world are our brothers and sisters, needy for our prayers and financial assistance. Christ is ready to deepen our understanding that now is the time of Crucifixion and Resurrection for us, the time to reach out to our crucified families, friends, neighbors, city, state, and world to help them find the resurrection of new life in ways we could never have imagined at Christmas.

      Choose each day to pray with Soren Kierkegaard: 
"Father in Heaven, help us never forget that You are love. This conviction will triumph in our hearts, even if the coming day brings inquietude, anxiety, fright, or distress."

      Or choose each day to pray with St. John of the Cross:
"O Blessed Jesus,
give me stillness of soul in You.
Let Your mighty calmness reign in me.
Rule me, O King of Gentleness,
King of Peace."
      
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Abide In Hope

4/17/2020

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      "It is a serious thing / just to be alive / on this fresh morning / in this broken world," says poet Mary Oliver in hope-filled, singing verse.
      Just to be ALIVE! ALIVE to all of life!  Being ALIVE means looking out a window to behold red-breasted robins on the lawn and yellow daffodils spearing up through cold-hardened ground. Or taking out the garbage, a fresh, stinging, snow-filled breeze buffeting your face and reminding you that you are ALIVE.  Or cuddling a wiggly, complaining five year old who should be in school but isn't because her school is closed, and discovering you are ALIVE when you smell her neck's sweet skin. Being ALIVE means looking beyond this broken world and all its crosses, contradictions, cross-purposes, and conflicts that we see daily in our own lives and on national and international stages, and being able to rest, to abide, in the ongoing Life that pulses beneath it all. To be truly ALIVE to all of life is to abide in that supernatural Life Which is Hope. 
      HOPE is deeper than happiness, and comes from a different source.  We are aroused to happiness by outer circumstances. For instance, we can easily become happy and optimistic when people say "It has to end sometime. There's a new day coming." But then we sink so easily into despair when that new day doesn't come as fast as we want it to, or, when it comes, it doesn't bring us what we so desperately want or think we need. We can live in this terrible uncertainty about whether a new day will ever come.
      Happiness and optimism are dependent on certain things happening which will make us happy and relieve our inner tensions and sufferings. They are not the same thing as Hope, which operates independently from our "outer life."  Happiness and optimism can make us feel alive for the moment, but they are not supernatural, mystical Hope. Happiness and optimism come and go, leaving us on a roller coaster of attitudes and feelings influenced by people and events. Hope is eternal, because its Source is eternal.
      No, we cannot find and abide in Hope in our outer world of life. We can only find and abide in Hope in our inner, hidden world of life, our heart-and-soul-world, our life with God. In our inner life, we meet with and are met by God, our Hope and the Source of our Hope. In our inner life, we talk with, and are held by God, our Hope. To abide in Hope is to abide in God.
​      God! You say. Where is God, where is Hope? Fr. Richard Rohr, a Franciscan priest, says that often while we suffer we only see the backside of God. In other words, we have an IDEA that God is with us during our times of uncertainty and suffering, but we can't really see God or feel God's Presence. We cannot pray, or we can't "find" God when we do pray. All we seem to get, during our painful experiences, and our attempts at prayer then, is the sight or sense of God's "back." Then, when do we discover that God has been with us? Sometimes, it's only later, after the fact. He explains,
     "I feel a deep solidarity with individuals throughout the world who are wrestling with health issues. In 2016, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent a complete prostatectomy....Prayer was both constant and impossible for much of this period.
     "About ten days after the surgery, during my attempt at some spiritual reading, I opened the Bible to an obscure passage in the Book of Exodus. Moses asks YHWH to “Show me your glory” (33:18), and YHWH shows it in a most unusual way: “I shall place you in the cleft of the rock and shield you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I shall take my hand away, and you will see my backside, but my face will not be seen” (33:22–23). In several sermons, I have used that verse to teach that our knowledge of God is indirect at best, and none of our knowledge is fully face-to-face. God is always and forever Mystery. All we see is the “backside” of God."
      Rohr continues, "My best spiritual knowing almost always occurs after the fact, in the remembering—not seen 'until God has passed by.' I realized that in the moments of diagnosis, doctor’s warnings, waiting, delays, and the surgery itself, I was as fragile, scared, and insecure as anybody would be. If I could stay with the full narrative all the way into and through, only afterward could I invariably see, trust, and enjoy the wonderful works of God (mirabilia Dei). 
      "The foundation of faith is the ability to look at our entire salvation history (our own life story/salvation history, and the Biblical story of how God has always abided with God's people) and then trust that this pattern would never—could never—change! It is largely after the fact that faith is formed—and gloriously transmuted into hope for the future. Only after the fact can you see that you were being held and led during the fact. During the fact, you do not enjoy or trust your own strength at all, in fact, quite the opposite. You just cry out in various ways. Then God, for some wonderful reason, is able to fill the gap....
      So often, when we are in pain of any kind, we cry out to God "Why? Why is this happening?" It seems that we are only crying out to the "backside" of God, that God doesn't hear us, that God doesn't answer. Remembering our common/communal Biblical salvation history, we can remember Job, who lost so much, - his health, parts of his family, his belongings, his wealth - and who continually cried out to God in various ways. God heard him out and finally answered, "Be still and know that I am God." In other words, "Trust Me. I alone can be the Source of your inner peace, stability, and hope." Job realizes that his cries have actually been prayers, and that he has actually met God and been in a conversation with God, and that God has listened to him and replied. He hears God's reply and is satisfied. 
   Rohr comments,
   "Sooner or later, the heart of everybody’s spiritual problem is 'What do we do with our pain? Why is there evil? Why is there suffering?' Job begs God for an answer to this mystery, and he can’t get one. He only begins to trust when he no longer feels ignored, when he knows that God is taking him seriously and that he is 'part of the conversation' (see Job 42). When Jesus later becomes the answer in his own passion, death, and resurrection, he discovers what Job finally experienced: in the midst of suffering, God can be trusted. The world is still safe, coherent, and even blessed.
     "We are 'saved' by being addressed and included in a cosmic conversation. We do not really need answers; we need only to be taken seriously as part of the dialogue. But we usually only know this in hindsight after the suffering and the struggle. It cannot be known beforehand, not theoretically or theologically. Our knowledge of God is participatory. God refuses to be intellectually 'thought,' and is only known in the passion and pain of it all, when the issues become soul-sized and worthy of us."
​      In these past High and Holy Days, we have remembered the apex of our common/communal salvation history: the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Son of God and son of Mary, who becomes the answer to the Mystery of pain, suffering, and death.  In the solid, physical reality of a bloody Jesus hanging on the rough wood of the cross, dying, and a resurrected Jesus allowing his frightened friend to touch his wounded hands and side, we find a God Who meets us, communicates with us, is audible, see-able, touchable.
      First, the cross. We usually describe happy times as times when things are "looking up." The cross, an instrument of torture, seems to be a symbol of things "hitting the bottom." How can the cross be the source of our Hope?  Paradoxically, during those times when our lives seem to have fallen down off a cliff and are falling apart, we can turn to what Jesus did for all of creation on the cross. Rohr tells us that reality has a "cruciform shape": reality is perpetually wounded and dying. Nothing is perfect in this world, nothing and no one lasts, everyone and every relationship is wounded by conflict, and misunderstanding, by sin. He describes how Jesus, God and man, holds our broken world in his outstretched arms, both cradling it and literally holding its broken pieces together in love, a love-to-the-death which forgives and heals:
      "It seems there is a cruciform shape to reality with cross purposes, paradoxes, and conflicting intentions everywhere. Jesus hangs right there amid them, not even perfectly balancing them, but just holding them (see Ephesians 2:13–22). This deserves a major “Wow!” because mere philosophy or even proper theology would never have come to this conclusion."
      Imagine! Jesus on the cross, hanging there, holding everything together, not even worrying about trying to bring things into perfect balance.
      How well do I hold all the brokenness in my life in my arms, just HOLD it?! 
​We each have to respond to this personally, so I will go first. I think of my ongoing worries about my family and my Church family, especially during the global health crisis of this pandemic. When will scientists discover an antiviral that works? Develop a vaccine that works? Can parishes survive financially during this time when they are shuttered because of the pandemic? How can impoverished Third World countries even survive when this virus attacks them?
    I think of "Church" concerns: will the Catholic Church ever get past its patriarchal bias and ordain women? Are there any pastoral answers for couples remarried without having gotten annulments, or gays and lesbians in faithful, committed relationships? Can we adequately heal all the victims of Church sexual abuse? Can we truly preach the Gospel and be heard by those who most need to hear the saving, forgiving, healing, challenging Word of God? Can we preach Christ with our frightened, weak, inadequate lives?
      I think of political concerns: how can Catholic/Christians possibly  choose between the Republican and Democratic  candidates for election when neither party is truly committed to the sacredness of all life, including the life of the planet?
      I think of Justice concerns: when will white Christians/ Catholics truly realize and acknowledge that people of color in this country deal with so much racism and economic inequality, which is a good deal of the reason why so many are dying during this pandemic? Why can't so many committed Christians understand and acknowledge that climate change is real? That "in 2018, climate scientists reached a consensus that, based on current global emissions, we have roughly twelve years to dramatically reverse course before we cause irreparable harm to our planet and our way of life....Through floods such as Katrina and Harvey, we hear the planet gasping 'I can't breathe.' Amid out f control wildfires in California and Australia, our planet is hollering, 'I can't breathe.' The tragedy is that the church is too often unresponsive to the earth's desperate cry." (Adam Russell Taylor, "A Planet Gasping for Breath," Sojourners Magazine, May 2020.)  I think of so many discriminated people struggling just to live, mired in hopelessness, and I cry out "Why?' and embrace Bryan Stevenson, Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative's cry, "I think hopelessness is the enemy of justice."   
       I don't know the answers to any of these questions, but I keep crying out to God  Why? Or How? Or When? as if my cries will make any difference. But the cross tells me that God hears me. I know God hears me because God, in Jesus, held all the brokenness of this world between his outstretched arms, held everything, cradled everything, first accepting this broken world as it is and yet forgiving it (us!) and healing all through the sacrifice of his blood.
      The bloody, crucified Jesus looks at me and says, " Your cries, your questions are important, and I hear them. The answers will come in their own time, way, and place, and you don't need them all now. You may not even live long enough in this world to receive your answers! Just hold those questions, those people, those concerns, close to you with love, with patience, with committed involvement. Accept the brokenness of this world as I accept your brokenness. If you first accept, you will not grow bitter. Bitter people cannot do the works of Justice. Just trust me, the Source of your Hope, that Healing and Reconciliation will come. Rest in Me, abide in Me, in Hope."
      The frightened, inadequate apostles and disciples certainly saw only the backside of God. Did they pray, were they even able to pray, during the trauma of Jesus' arrest, torture, crucifixion, and death? Could they even find God present with and to them, or did they only feel and see fleeting glimpses of God? They must have cried out in various ways to God: Why? Why now? Why He who was our Hope?! Could they even believe that during this time of terrible suffering and guilt that God could be trusted? Aren't they Everyman? Aren't they us?
      Imagine their pounding hearts, their radiant - though for the most part guilty - faces, when Jesus appeared to them, - still wounded?! Aren't they Everyman, aren't they us? Suddenly God in Jesus is fully visible, fully present to them, but only after the fact, after the suffering and pain have passed. Now Jesus the Christ converses with them, saying Peace, Peace is my Gift to you. His wounded hands reveal that there is a deeper Mystery and Meaning to suffering than we can understand in this world, that we will only understand how our suffering has molded us and made us wiser after the fact, when we are alive with God in Paradise. Because, if the Christ still has his wounds, then suffering does have meaning and importance, beyond anything we can grasp this side of the grave. Knowing this, that suffering IS important, DOES have meaning, is what gives us Peace and allows us to be held by Christ and to abide in Hope.
      Can we allow all that we are to wait quietly before God, abiding in Hope? Only being held by God the Source of our Hope can give us true Joy in being ALIVE. We are ALIVE with wonder at a robin and a daffodil and a brisk, snow-filled wind, because we know that in the resurrected and cosmic Christ, all creation will endure and one day be made new. We can be ALIVE holding a wiggling child because we know that even as inevitable change and death come her way, one day she will be re-born in Heaven. We can be truly ALIVE facing the contradictions, wounds, and challenges in our lives and as we work for Justice because we know that God our Hope and our Justice will one day (not in our lifetimes) bring God's Heavenly City to radiant and eternal Life, and that we are indispensable stones in that City's defending Wall.
      Peace is Christ's eternal Gift to us, Peace wrapped in the Gift of Hope: for God in Jesus forever holds us, sustains us, forgives us, heals us, reconciles us all in the Mystery of His Cross. God in the resurrected Jesus holds out His radiant wounds for us to touch, teaching us that nothing that we suffer here is unimportant, or without meaning. One day, when we see Him Face to Face, these magnificent Mysteries in our lives will be revealed by God as the Ways in which our wounds have made us whole in Him.

      





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    Mary C. Weisenburger

    BIOGRAPHY
    I've loved to write since I was twelve years old. The smells of fresh paper and ink galvanized me! Now I'm galvanized by the sight of a keyboard. Short stories were fun; then I wrote poetry at Sacred Heart Academy, and Rosary Hill College.  By the time I attended Christ the King Seminary, my friend Kathy Sutter and I co-wrote two musicals, "ACTS" and "Hadassah", and Kath began the Alden Christian Theater Society.  My husband, Paul, is a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Buffalo, New York, whom I met through our mutual loves of words and music - in singing, acting and writing.  We have five children ( all into music, drama, dancing, and writing), eleven grand-children, and numerous siblings and cousins.  One of our sons died two years ago; his loss confronted me with how precious the gifts of relationships and time are. My great loves are reading, especially murder mysteries, writing (I'm currently writing a murder mystery), doing crossword puzzles, traveling, and most especially visiting our family and friends throughout the Diocese and country. 

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