Lin Wilder's Blog, page 16

Give Up Nothing for Lent!

Give Up Nothing for Lent!Give up nothing for Lent!

A good title gets our attention and this one sure does grab. It’s Father Casey Cole’s exhortation as we begin what our Byzantine friends call The Great Fast: Give up nothing for Lent!

Fr. Casey’s point applies to those of us thinking of Lent as a time to give up our morning cup of coffee. And make everyone around us miserable. Deprive ourselves of things to make us uncomfortable.

Maybe giving up social media or desserts.

Or chocolate.

Or…?

Fr. Casey looks earnestly at us as he entreats:

“Please.

“Stop giving up things for Lent….Giving up things for Lent is a fairly shallow practice…the practice instills no lasting virtue.” The young Franciscan priest suggests that when we deprive ourselves of something we love, that makes us miserable, we’re making Lent all about suffering. As if we can “earn His love by suffering.”

I remember waiting for Easter so we could finally have a cup of coffee! Although there’s truth to the good in suffering for Him, my forty-day denial of coffee didn’t instill new virtue.

How about incising the closed off places in our minds and exposing them to the Son?

Maybe work at our forgiveness of someone or even of ourselves?

Or beg for the grace to finally risk what we’re most afraid of, even though we suspect it’s a step we desperately need to take?

How about evaluating how we spend our leisure time?

So what are we supposed to do?

The ashes on our foreheads prompt us to think of what will happen when we die.

To our souls.

About our hopes that we and all of us will get to Heaven—say it! We want to be saints!

So we do what the Church tells us to do, what Jesus did:

Pray, Fast, And give alms.

In last year’s Ash Wednesday homily, Bishop Barron defined prayer this way: “Lifiting our hearts and minds to God.” It’s the attitude we were created to have, when we were one with the Triune God. It’s the attitude the animals live since they lack a free will to walk away. Their natures remain in His Will; the primary reason, I wager, that we’re drawn to them.

Fasting isn’t giving something up. Instead, it’s gaining mastery over our appetites, over our bodies’ need for food. It’s about emptying so that we can be filled with what we each hunger for: Him.

Some practical tips?

Not all of us can do without food for extended periods of time, so there are options.Consider the manner and amount that we eat. Fr. Casey talks about his gluttony with favorite foods like pizza.Fast from gossip-defined by Bishop Barron as “speaking negatively about a person to someone who can do nothing about our complaint.” [Wowza.]Bishop Barron suggests attending daily Mass for Lent.Consider praying the Liturgy of the Hours, you may fall in love with these expressions of every human emotion.If not already tithing, suggests Fr. Casey, start…just for these forty days.And one from me: How about considering what we watch and read for fun? I love thriller movies, TV shows and books. But reading about serial killers and terrorists and virtually rooting for the demise of the bad guy isn’t making space for Him…for Love.So, for the third time, I’ve quit reading and watching them.There must be serious spiritual heft to prayer and fasting

because Jesus tells the disciples that demons whom they could not exorcize can “only be removed through prayer and fasting.” So our extra prayer time and sacrifices can change the world—starting with our cleansed minds and hearts.

St John Cardinal Henry Newman speaks on this point and of learning Him by unlearning ourselves:

…This conflict and victory in the world unseen, is intimated in other passages of Scripture. The most remarkable of these is what our Lord says with reference to the demoniac, whom His Apostles could not cure. He had just descended from the Mount of Transfiguration, where, let it be observed, He seems to have gone up with His favoured Apostles to pass the night in prayer. He came down after that communion with the unseen world, and cast out the unclean spirit, and then He said, “This kind can come forth by nothing but by prayer and fasting,” [Mark ix. 29.] which is nothing less than a plain declaration that such exercises give the soul {11} power over the unseen world; nor can any sufficient reason be assigned for confining it to the first ages of the Gospel. And I think there is enough evidence, even in what may be known afterwards of the effects of such exercises upon persons now (not to have recourse to history), to show that these exercises are God’s instruments for giving the Christian a high and royal power above and over his fellows...[italics mine]

…And during this sacred season, let us look upon ourselves as on the Mount with Him—within the veil—hid with Him—not out of Him, or apart from Him, in whose presence alone is life, but with and in Him—learning of His Law with Moses, of His attributes with Elijah, of His counsels with Daniel—learning to repent, learning to confess and to amend—learning His love and His fear—unlearning ourselves, and growing up unto Him who is our Head.

Fasting: A Source of Trial

The post Give Up Nothing for Lent! appeared first on Lin Wilder.

The Right Not to Know: Advice from Solzhenitsen

I don’t want to know pretty young woman with hands over ears and eyes closed on white backgroundThe right not to know

Since I’m an admirer of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, I’ve used excerpts from his speeches and books, for articles about his riveting observations. Many of his comments feel relevent, almost urgently so, although they were penned decades ago. This one: the right not to know, is another of the Russian’s remarks that seems to leap off the page and into our living rooms.

In 1978, former Soviet political prisoner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn gave a speech at Harvard University entitled, “A World Split Apart,” in which he spoke about individual and social fragmentation. In his assessment, a significant cause of individual fragmentation is the spurious idea that “everyone is entitled to know everything.” In reality, Solzhenitsyn remarked, “People also have the right not to know, and it is a much more valuable one. The right not to have their divine souls stuffed with gossip, nonsense, vain talk.”  [italics mine.]

The Right Not to Know

I’d not read the address, A World Split Apart, before. I’ve embedded it here because the ten typed pages contain a wealth of provocative and challenging material.

The Russian author opens his speech with these words;

“Harvard’s motto is “VERITAS.” Many of you have already found out and others will find out in the course of their lives that truth eludes us as soon as our concentration begins to flag, all the while leaving the illusion that we are continuing to pursue it. This is the source of much discord. Also, truth seldom is sweet; it is almost invariably bitter. A measure of truth is included in my speech today, but I offer it as a friend, not as an adversary.”

Solzhenitsen proceeds to provide a ‘measure of truth’ about our western world in general and America specifically. Explaining, as he does so, the dangerous lure of socialism to western intellectuals and the young alike. But that subject was dealt with elsewhere.

After reading through the Russian writer’s remarks a couple of times, l decided that his observations are accurate.

But insufficient.

His statement below provides a case in point.

A decline in courage

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society. There are many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.”

Yes and no.

Of course we’ve seen the notion of American citizenship devolve to rights without corollary obligations. The effects of our country’s plunge into atheistic humanism are frightenly apparent in our cities, schools and government. Our leaders appear incapable of anything but spewing nonsense or dealing with real problems. The mouth-dropping persistence of drought in the face of supernatural flooding belies reason. The list is endless and growing.

But a “decline of courage” isn’t a characteristic unique to the west or even to the ‘enlightment.’

It began in the Garden.

When neither Adam nor Eve was capable of honestly answering their Creator’s “Why would you do such a thing?” Satan’s instilled shame and distrust of God haunts each phase of history, all nations and each human soul.

Even when Baptism erases Satan’s destruction in us, we must do battle daily, sometimes hourly to “be perfect as Our Father in Heaven is perfect.” But examples of civic courage which defy our sinful souls and the craven narrative do exist: In those who are filled with what St. Augustine calls, holy desire.

The Justice Department’s use of the FACE act to indict protesters against abortion rocked the ProLife world. However, Mark Houk‘s acquittal by a Philadelphia jury has attained national notoriety—even in the secular media. Houk plans to return to the sidewalk next Wednesday when 40 Days for Life Begins. Along with thousands of Americans who abhor the evils against the sanctity of life being perpetrated by American public policy.

A televison celebrity, Jonathan Rhoumie, spoke of the “Jesus Revolution” at the March for Life a couple of weeks ago. Can Solzhenitsen’s trenchant remarks serve as catalyst and fuel for those of us fully deployed in the Jesus revolution?

St. Augustine declares that, “The entire life of a good Christian is in fact an exercise of holy desire. You do not yet see what you long for, but the very act of desiring prepares you, so that when he comes you may see and be utterly satisfied.”

The Mission of Divine Mercy supplies a daily meditation for our consideration.

Raise Your Gaze:

Raise your eyes to God.
Remember that His ways, and His plans, and His Actions,
ARE NOT LIKE THOSE OF THE WORLD.
NOR LIKE WHAT YOUR REASON WOULD IMAGINE THEM TO BE.

God’s Ways, Plans and Actions are
INFINITE AND FULL OF MERCY AND JUSTICE.
AND VERY IMPORTANTLY, THEY ARE INFINITELY GREATER THAN THE PLANS OF THE ENEMY.

For this reason, it is good to stop frequently and
LOOK UP AT HEAVEN.
Raise your gaze from the rottenness of this world, And try to see as God sees.
Try to think as He thinks.

But HOW are you supposed to see as He sees,
or think as He thinks?
 

BY FIRST BRINGING IT ALL TO HIM.

Everything that you see, that you hear, that you feel,
that causes you terror, fear, anguish, despair, sadness, doubts—
bring it all to the Father.
Bring it to Him,
SO THAT TOGETHER, YOU CAN LOOK AT ALL OF IT.
Let Him give you His LIGHT, so that He can teach you how HE sees it,
and how you must truly see it.

So that you regain HOPE,
So that your FAITH is strengthened,
So that you begin to RECOGNIZE HIM more and more,
And so that you become more and more ABANDONED to His love.

Perhaps more than ever before it is necessary to stop seeing with the eyes of the world,
And instead see with the EYES OF ETERNITY.
 

RAISE YOUR GAZE.
LOOK UP TO THE FATHER WHO LOVES YOU.
WHO WANTS TO ENCOURAGE YOU.

WHO WANTS TO HELP YOU SEE.

Courage and speak up text on wooden stick – Business culture value concept.

The post The Right Not to Know: Advice from Solzhenitsen appeared first on Lin Wilder.

The World: The Great Yes and the Great No.

The world: the great yes and the great noThe world: The Great Yes and the Great No

It’s a cryptic but arresting phrase, isn’t it: The great yes and the great no?

I tripped on it while searching for something online a couple of weeks ago. After listening twice to a ten-year-old homily of Bishop Barron’s called—you guessed it—The Great Yes and the Great No, I decided to write this piece.

Although the Bishop intended the homily for the Sunday readings of August 4th, 2013, his words pack a whallop today—every day.

POW! The ongoing battlefield between good and evil is reduced to these seven words: The Great Yes and the Great No.

It’s a message to every one of the almost 8 billion souls on this planet. But one that’s anathema in our dangerously adolescent black and white culture.

But first, the readings of this past week.

Followed by the only safe place.

Genesis: I remember reading it when I first read the Bible following my decision to become a Catholic Christian. And how struck I was by the beauty of the words, more than prose, they’re lyrical, almost poetic.

Years later, I followed a friend’s suggestion that I read a novel called Havah and then read Genesis a second time. And realized I could read it a hundred times and still not plumb its depths. Lee’s novel captures the extraordinary, supernatural lives of our first parents brilliantly. She doesn’t simply write an ordinary story. Instead, she immerses us into the psyche of Eve and her flights on the wings of the wind with Him.

Here’s how she begins:

A whisper in my ear: Wake!

Blue.

A sea awash with nothing but a drifting bit of down carried on an invisible current. I closed my eyes.

Light illuminated the thin tissues of my eyelids. A bird trilled. The percussive buzz of an insect sounded near my ear. Overhead, tree boughs rustled in the warming air…

I could feel the thrum of sap in the stem—the pulsing veins of the vine, the movement of the earth a thousand miles beneath, the beat of my heart in harmony with it all…

Then, like a gush of water from a rock, gladness thrilled my heart. But its source was not me. At last! It came, unspoken—a different source than that first waking whisper—and then the voice thrust aloud, jubilantly to the sky: “At last!” He was up on legs like the trunks of sturdy saplings, beating the earth with his feet…Flesh of my flesh…

At last. I heard the timbre of his voice in my head. Marvel and wonder were on his lips as he kissed my closing eyes. I knew then he would do anything for me.

Havah

The echoes of Eden

is a phrase that appeared in my head when I stopped running away from God. Reading Genesis that first time as a believer felt as if I were reading the history of mankind…our genesis. When we risk opening ourselves up to the power of those words they can’t help but evoke wonder and awe.

And every now and then galvanize an echo of Eden.

Maybe with the love of a dog.

Or watching a sunrise.

Or merely remembering how to communicate with animals— when I/we knew more.

Each of last week’s daily readings in the Christian liturgy brought us back to Genesis.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Then God said,
“Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
Thus evening came, and morning followed–the first day…..

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air, and the cattle,
and over all the wild animals
and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”

God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying:
“Be fertile and multiply;
fill the earth and subdue it.

We can get lost in the wonder of it,

those beginning chapters, the astounding beauty of creation and its creatures.

We’re not Puritans, Dualists or Gnostics, Barron sharply exhorts us in his ten-year-old homily. We Catholics believe that the world and everything in it is GOOD! Just so, we know that our bodies and our sexuality are Good! This is the reason our Church is so very passionate about marriage. And also priestly celibacy.

The apple Eve reached for and offered to Adam was also good, it could not have been bad or it would not have been created.

So wherein lay the problem?

The woman answered the serpent:
“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
it is only about the fruit of the tree
in the middle of the garden that God said,
‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.'”
But the serpent said to the woman:
“You certainly will not die!

Eve knew her God had said “No!” but she did it anyway. Attracted by the beauty of the fruit and the specious wisdom of the serpent. And then, of course, she had to share it with her husband.

Why? The serpent was “the most cunning of all the animals.”

The first time I read Genesis seriously—prayerfully, I stopped there, at the wily serpent: he knew to approach Eve.

And not Adam.

And the heartbreak of it.

The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden;
but I was afraid, because I was naked,
so I hid myself.”
Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me—
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the woman,
“Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”

What might have happened, we must wonder, if fear and shame hadn’t prevented Adam from answering truthfully? Or if Eve had taken responsibility: “It was I!

I was the one who perverted your law and the Adam!”

But the power of that serpent is supernatural, his hatred for humanity a thing that even the most vicious of humans cannot conceive of. Tosca Lee writes in Havah:

….How deftly the human finger pointed at me was returned to its owner. But greater than that was the sorrow behind it—a sorrow made deeper by a history of love.

Did God weep?

Was the One capable of tears?

Dust you are . . . to dust you will return. The light faded like a back that turns to walk away.

Havah

St. Pope John Paul ll once referred to Genesis as holding the answer to every human question.

To live in the only safe space that exists, we live between the two extremes: the dualistic, puritannical hatred of the world and the idolization of it.

We must live in the tension between The Great Yes and The Great No.

Concept of harmony and balance. Balance stones against the sea. Rock zen in the form of scales

The post The World: The Great Yes and the Great No. appeared first on Lin Wilder.

The World: The Great Yes and the Great No

The world: the great yes and the great noThe world: The Great Yes and the Great No

It’s a cryptic but arresting phrase, isn’t it: The great yes and the great no?

I tripped on it while searching for something online a couple of weeks ago. After listening twice to a ten-year-old homily of Bishop Barron’s called—you guessed it—The Great Yes and the Great No, I decided to write this piece.

Although the Bishop intended the homily for the Sunday readings of August 4th, 2013, his words pack a whallop today—every day.

POW! The ongoing battlefield between good and evil is reduced to these seven words: The Great Yes and the Great No.

It’s a message to every one of the almost 8 billion souls on this planet. But one that’s anathema in our dangerously adolescent black and white culture.

But first, the readings of this past week.

Followed by the only safe place.

Genesis: I remember reading it when I first read the Bible following my decision to become a Catholic Christian. And how struck I was by the beauty of the words, more than prose, they’re lyrical, almost poetic.

Years later, I followed a friend’s suggestion that I read a novel called Havah and then read Genesis a second time. And realized I could read it a hundred times and still not plumb its depths. Lee’s novel captures the extraordinary, supernatural lives of our first parents brilliantly. She doesn’t simply write an ordinary story. Instead, she immerses us into the psyche of Eve and her flights on the wings of the wind with Him.

Here’s how she begins:

A whisper in my ear: Wake!

Blue.

A sea awash with nothing but a drifting bit of down carried on an invisible current. I closed my eyes.

Light illuminated the thin tissues of my eyelids. A bird trilled. The percussive buzz of an insect sounded near my ear. Overhead, tree boughs rustled in the warming air…

I could feel the thrum of sap in the stem—the pulsing veins of the vine, the movement of the earth a thousand miles beneath, the beat of my heart in harmony with it all…

Then, like a gush of water from a rock, gladness thrilled my heart. But its source was not me. At last! It came, unspoken—a different source than that first waking whisper—and then the voice thrust aloud, jubilantly to the sky: “At last!” He was up on legs like the trunks of sturdy saplings, beating the earth with his feet…Flesh of my flesh…

At last. I heard the timbre of his voice in my head. Marvel and wonder were on his lips as he kissed my closing eyes. I knew then he would do anything for me.

Havah

The echoes of Eden

is a phrase that appeared in my head when I stopped running away from God. Reading Genesis that first time as a believer felt as if I were reading the history of mankind…our genesis. When we risk opening ourselves up to the power of those words they can’t help but evoke wonder and awe.

And every now and then galvanize an echo of Eden.

Maybe with the love of a dog.

Or watching a sunrise.

Or merely remembering how to communicate with animals— when I/we knew more.

Each of last week’s daily readings in the Christian liturgy brought us back to Genesis.

In the beginning, when God created the heavens and the earth,
the earth was a formless wasteland, and darkness covered the abyss,
while a mighty wind swept over the waters.

Then God said,
“Let there be light,” and there was light.
God saw how good the light was.
God then separated the light from the darkness.
God called the light “day,” and the darkness he called “night.”
Thus evening came, and morning followed–the first day…..

“Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.
Let them have dominion over the fish of the sea,
the birds of the air, and the cattle,
and over all the wild animals
and all the creatures that crawl on the ground.”

God created man in his image;
in the divine image he created him;
male and female he created them.

God blessed them, saying:
“Be fertile and multiply;
fill the earth and subdue it.

We can get lost in the wonder of it,

those beginning chapters, the astounding beauty of creation and its creatures.

We’re not Puritans, Dualists or Gnostics, Barron sharply exhorts us in his ten-year-old homily. We Catholics believe that the world and everything in it is GOOD! Just so, we know that our bodies and our sexuality are Good! This is the reason our Church is so very passionate about marriage. And also priestly celibacy.

The apple Eve reached for and offered to Adam was also good, it could not have been bad or it would not have been created.

So wherein lay the problem?

The woman answered the serpent:
“We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden;
it is only about the fruit of the tree
in the middle of the garden that God said,
‘You shall not eat it or even touch it, lest you die.'”
But the serpent said to the woman:
“You certainly will not die!

Eve knew her God had said “No!” but she did it anyway. Attracted by the beauty of the fruit and the specious wisdom of the serpent. And then, of course, she had to share it with her husband.

Why? The serpent was “the most cunning of all the animals.”

The first time I read Genesis seriously—prayerfully, I stopped there, at the wily serpent: he knew to approach Eve.

And not Adam.

And the heartbreak of it.

The LORD God called to Adam and asked him, “Where are you?”
He answered, “I heard you in the garden;
but I was afraid, because I was naked,
so I hid myself.”
Then he asked, “Who told you that you were naked?
You have eaten, then,
from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat!”
The man replied, “The woman whom you put here with me—
she gave me fruit from the tree, and so I ate it.”
The LORD God then asked the woman,
“Why did you do such a thing?”
The woman answered, “The serpent tricked me into it, so I ate it.”

What might have happened, we must wonder, if fear and shame hadn’t prevented Adam from answering truthfully? Or if Eve had taken responsibility: “It was I!

I was the one who perverted your law and the Adam!”

But the power of that serpent is supernatural, his hatred for humanity a thing that even the most vicious of humans cannot conceive of. Tosca Lee writes in Havah:

….How deftly the human finger pointed at me was returned to its owner. But greater than that was the sorrow behind it—a sorrow made deeper by a history of love.

Did God weep?

Was the One capable of tears?

Dust you are . . . to dust you will return. The light faded like a back that turns to walk away.

Havah

St. Pope John Paul ll once referred to Genesis as holding the answer to every human question.

To live in the only safe space that exists, we live between the two extremes: the dualistic, puritannical hatred of the world and the idolization of it.

We must live in the tension between The Great Yes and The Great No.

Concept of harmony and balance. Balance stones against the sea. Rock zen in the form of scales

The post The World: The Great Yes and the Great No appeared first on Lin Wilder.

What Have You Got to Do With Me?.

Who, me. What have you got to do with me?What have you got to do with me?

“…Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

It’s a very strange Gospel passage: The one for this past Monday in the Christian liturgy. Jesus and His disciples have traveled to the Decapolis. Although I’ve heard it countless times since I’ve been in the faith, this time, the reading sticks with me days later. There are a number of reasons I find this passage memorable. But primarily these:

The Lord travels to a primarily Gentile region, Garasenes.The man lives in the tombs and is exiled by everyone. But,Instantly the man possessed by a “legion” of demons prostrates himself before the Lord, calling Him, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.And our Lord ‘obeys’ the Demons’ plea to let them inhabit the herd of 2000 plus pigs.The formerly exiled and tormented man becomes the first Gentile evangelist.

How can we help being struck by the response of demons to Jesus?

The man doesn’t answer Jesus’s question because he can’t.

It’s worth a repeat, Legion, [Read the entire Gospel reading here] recognizes just Who This is and prostrates himself before Him and addresses Him as “Son of the Most High.”

While the scribes, rabbis, and the priests mock, criticize, then concoct an elaborate plot to ensure Pilate’s submission to kill Christ, the demons know. They know because they are angels, fallen ones to be sure, but with powers and knowledge far beyond our own.

What is Legion, the name given to Jesus when He asks?

A Roman legion numbered between 6000 soldiers along with a number of calvary—and legion is also the name of satan and his followers. Since Jesus answers Legion’s bidding, we know there were over 2000 of them because the Lord drove them into the herd of over 2000 pigs.

Is this way too outlandish a story to believe?

Demons?

Come on.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you may have noticed that I’m a fan of Eric Barker.

Why?

He’s funny and timely. More importantly, it doesn’t require a humungous stretch to apply his thoughts to my primary interest: friendship with God. Barker’s latest piece is on the problem of distraction and productivity. Rhetorically, Barker asks, “Who is best suited to teach us about productivity?”

And answers, “Monks.”

Abba Poemen, a leader at the monastic community of Scetis, said, “the chief of all wickednesses is the wandering of the thoughts.” Monks would space out during prayer or even when officiating mass. (This might sound like a Monty Python skit waiting to happen but the Middle Ages weren’t as different from modern times as you think – I hear they dealt with a pretty bad plague, too.)

Believe it or not, monks were the productivity gurus of their era, always looking for a better way to focus and get things done. They saw themselves as athletes and warriors of the mind. And what did they find was the primary cause of mind wandering?

Demons.

Six Things the Most Productive People Do Each Day

Barker isn’t about to admit what we can see with our own eyes: demons are no convenient fabrication of an eighth-century-monk. We can see after school satan clubs being allowed in elementary schools. The rising number of people being drawn to the newly revised satanism reveals the frightful cleverness of the deceiver.

Although Eric Barker knows that talking about satan as real doesn’t get you on the bestseller list, ever so lightly, he suggests there may be truth in what the monks believed. His openness is one of the many reasons I enjoy reading his thoughts.

Announce what the Lord out of pity has done for you.

Until I read his article, I’d not thought of my prayer as “productivity.” Or that my focus—or lack of it, matters to the salvation of the world. Perhaps without knowing it, Barker provides us with a map for prayer. He’s even included the need to fogive ourselves when we don’t measure up.

A necessary reminder for me, because constantly, I mean all the time, I’m flattened by my inconsistency, laziness and distractions while in prayer. Only then do I remember, it’s all grace. And yet even those instances when disgusted with our weaknesses and fickleness, we trust that they can be occasions for grace. Unmerited grace sufficient to announce what He has done out of pity for us!

This last Thursday, we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation at the Temple.

Out of pity, The Lord of the Universe incarnated to take to Himself all our humanity. Emptying Himself, taking the form of a slave, obediently accepting death, even death on a cross.

The wonder of it!

Never again would she awake 
And find herself the buoyant Galilean lass,
But into her dissolving dreams would break
A hovering consciousness too terrible to pass —
A new awareness in her body when she stirred,
A sense of Light within her virgin gloom:
She was the Mother of the wandering Word, 
Little and terrifying in her laboring womb.
And nothing would again be casual and small,
But everything with light invested, overspilled
With terror and divinity, the dawn, the first bird’s call, 
The silhouetted pitcher waiting to be filled.

The Virgin Shall Conceive

The mind has a spiritual sense which teaches us to distinguish between good and evil.

The light of true knowledge makes it possible to discern without error the difference between good and evil. Then the path of justice, which leads to the Sun of Justice, brings the mind into the limitless light of knowledge, since it never fails to seek the love of God with all confidence. Therefore, we must maintain great stillness of mind, even in the midst of our struggles. We shall then be able to distinguish between the different types of thoughts that come to us: those that are good, those sent by God, we will treasure in our memory; those that are evil and inspired by the devil we will reject….

Do not stifle the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of goodness: do not grieve him by your evil actions and thoughts, and so deprive yourself of the defense his light affords you. In his own being, which is eternal and life-giving, he is not stifled, but when he is grieved he turns away and leaves the mind in darkness, deprived of the light of knowledge.

The mind is capable of tasting and distinguishing accurately whatever is presented to it. Just as when our health is good we can tell the difference between good and bad food by our bodily sense of taste and reach for what is wholesome, so when our mind is strong and free from all anxiety, it is able to taste the riches of divine consolation and to preserve, through love, the memory of this taste. This teaches us what is best with absolute certainty. As Saint Paul says: My prayer is that your love may increase more and more in knowledge and insight, and so enable you to choose what is best.

From the Treatise on Spiritual Perfection

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What Have You Got to Do With Me?

Who, me. What have you got to do with me?What have you got to do with me?

“…Catching sight of Jesus from a distance,
he ran up and prostrated himself before him,
crying out in a loud voice,
“What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?”

It’s a very strange Gospel passage: The one for this past Monday in the Christian liturgy. Jesus and His disciples have traveled to the Decapolis. Although I’ve heard it countless times since I’ve been in the faith, this time, the reading sticks with me days later. There are a number of reasons I find this passage memorable. But primarily these:

The Lord travels to a primarily Gentile region, Garasenes.The man lives in the tombs and is exiled by everyone. But,Instantly the man possessed by a “legion” of demons prostrates himself before the Lord, calling Him, Jesus, Son of the Most High God.And our Lord ‘obeys’ the Demons’ plea to let them inhabit the herd of 2000 plus pigs.The formerly exiled and tormented man becomes the first Gentile evangelist.

How can we help being struck by the response of demons to Jesus?

The man doesn’t answer Jesus’s question because he can’t.

It’s worth a repeat, Legion, [Read the entire Gospel reading here] recognizes just Who This is and prostrates himself before Him and addresses Him as “Son of the Most High.”

While the scribes, rabbis, and the priests mock, criticize, then concoct an elaborate plot to ensure Pilate’s submission to kill Christ, the demons know. They know because they are angels, fallen ones to be sure, but with powers and knowledge far beyond our own.

What is Legion, the name given to Jesus when He asks?

A Roman legion numbered between 6000 soldiers along with a number of calvary—and legion is also the name of satan and his followers. Since Jesus answers Legion’s bidding, we know there were over 2000 of them because the Lord drove them into the herd of over 2000 pigs.

Is this way too outlandish a story to believe?

Demons?

Come on.

If you’ve been reading my articles for a while, you may have noticed that I’m a fan of Eric Barker.

Why?

He’s funny and timely. More importantly, it doesn’t require a humungous stretch to apply his thoughts to my primary interest: friendship with God. Barker’s latest piece is on the problem of distraction and productivity. Rhetorically, Barker asks, “Who is best suited to teach us about productivity?”

And answers, “Monks.”

Abba Poemen, a leader at the monastic community of Scetis, said, “the chief of all wickednesses is the wandering of the thoughts.” Monks would space out during prayer or even when officiating mass. (This might sound like a Monty Python skit waiting to happen but the Middle Ages weren’t as different from modern times as you think – I hear they dealt with a pretty bad plague, too.)

Believe it or not, monks were the productivity gurus of their era, always looking for a better way to focus and get things done. They saw themselves as athletes and warriors of the mind. And what did they find was the primary cause of mind wandering?

Demons.

Six Things the Most Productive People Do Each Day

Barker isn’t about to admit what we can see with our own eyes: demons are no convenient fabrication of an eighth-century-monk. We can see after school satan clubs being allowed in elementary schools. The rising number of people being drawn to the newly revised satanism reveals the frightful cleverness of the deceiver.

Although Eric Barker knows that talking about satan as real doesn’t get you on the bestseller list, ever so lightly, he suggests there may be truth in what the monks believed. His openness is one of the many reasons I enjoy reading his thoughts.

Announce what the Lord out of pity has done for you.

Until I read his article, I’d not thought of my prayer as “productivity.” Or that my focus—or lack of it, matters to the salvation of the world. Perhaps without knowing it, Barker provides us with a map for prayer. He’s even included the need to fogive ourselves when we don’t measure up.

A necessary reminder for me, because constantly, I mean all the time, I’m flattened by my inconsistency, laziness and distractions while in prayer. Only then do I remember, it’s all grace. And yet even those instances when disgusted with our weaknesses and fickleness, we trust that they can be occasions for grace. Unmerited grace sufficient to announce what He has done out of pity for us!

This last Thursday, we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation at the Temple.

Out of pity, The Lord of the Universe incarnated to take to Himself all our humanity. Emptying Himself, taking the form of a slave, obediently accepting death, even death on a cross.

The wonder of it!

Never again would she awake 
And find herself the buoyant Galilean lass,
But into her dissolving dreams would break
A hovering consciousness too terrible to pass —
A new awareness in her body when she stirred,
A sense of Light within her virgin gloom:
She was the Mother of the wandering Word, 
Little and terrifying in her laboring womb.
And nothing would again be casual and small,
But everything with light invested, overspilled
With terror and divinity, the dawn, the first bird’s call, 
The silhouetted pitcher waiting to be filled.

The Virgin Shall Conceive

The mind has a spiritual sense which teaches us to distinguish between good and evil.

The light of true knowledge makes it possible to discern without error the difference between good and evil. Then the path of justice, which leads to the Sun of Justice, brings the mind into the limitless light of knowledge, since it never fails to seek the love of God with all confidence. Therefore, we must maintain great stillness of mind, even in the midst of our struggles. We shall then be able to distinguish between the different types of thoughts that come to us: those that are good, those sent by God, we will treasure in our memory; those that are evil and inspired by the devil we will reject….

Do not stifle the Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of goodness: do not grieve him by your evil actions and thoughts, and so deprive yourself of the defense his light affords you. In his own being, which is eternal and life-giving, he is not stifled, but when he is grieved he turns away and leaves the mind in darkness, deprived of the light of knowledge.

The mind is capable of tasting and distinguishing accurately whatever is presented to it. Just as when our health is good we can tell the difference between good and bad food by our bodily sense of taste and reach for what is wholesome, so when our mind is strong and free from all anxiety, it is able to taste the riches of divine consolation and to preserve, through love, the memory of this taste. This teaches us what is best with absolute certainty. As Saint Paul says: My prayer is that your love may increase more and more in knowledge and insight, and so enable you to choose what is best.

From the Treatise on Spiritual Perfection

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In Praise of Inequality

Great Dane looking at a Chihuahua sitting, isolated on whiteIn praise of inequality

Title grab your attention?

Good.

Because the notion of universal equality is irrational and foolish. Perhaps even sinful if done against God’s Law. In praise of inequality!!

Take just a moment and look about God’s creatures and creation: the massive inequality of it.

That Great Dane will be fortunate if he makes it seven years before dying. But the Chihuahua will likely see over twenty years of life.Attempting to equalize the heights of trees would be futile and idiotic, we’d never try.Although we accept and delight in the astounding variations in animals, variations that make them suited to their homes, for humans,Significant numbers of us worship at the altar of equality, of sameness; consequently accepting mediocrity.

A hike in the woods or the mountains displays the Lord’s profligate disregard for equality. While gazing in wonder at the majestic mountain peaks and evergreens, we can learn much from what looks like random, wholly disparate beauty. We see the same in the insects, shrubbery, flowers and animals: It’s a continual song in praise of inequality.

Similarly, when traveling either physically or virtually, we see the variariation among us: of skin color, height, body type and structure, no two of us are the same. Just so are the astounding variations in the gifts each human has been given, intellectually and spiritually.

And of course, we cannot really close our eyes to His created humanity: Male and female He created them. Such that the man leaves his family and marries, mysteriously becoming one with the woman. And welcoming a third. This truth of marriage as sacrament is upheld by keepers of the faith.

The ease with which we believe lies confounds.

Man can make equal what God does not. With man’s laws and science, biologic differences can be erased.

Humanity can be perfected.

Like we’re just a bunch of cells in the womb. Today’s ease of information access opens up a world of information, much of it untrue. But history reveals that lies, if printed often enough, become truth.

Outside the San Luis Obispo abortion clinic early last year, or if you believe another lie, “Planned Parenthood,” Miguel spoke with tiny, pregnant Guadalupe about her plan to abort her baby. Miguel turned to us non-Spanish speaking women who were circled about them. And then he said,

“She says her friend told her that it’s just a clump of cells, it’s not a baby.”

Almost simultaneously, Linda dug into her pocket and brought out the image of a six-to-eight-week old perfectly formed “fetus” and showed it to Guadalupe while I grabbed hold of Guadalupe’s hand and placed in it my rosary beads. Then I took her fingers and closed them around the rosary.

She began to cry. Not long afterward, she and Miguel went to speak with her husband who waited in their car.

On the drive home, I could nearly hear the future conversations Guadaupe and her husband would have with this special child whom they nearly killed.

Most of us learned embryology in high school biology. If not, we’ve experienced the manner in which all mammals reproduce. The orderly, efficient process of a new creature beginning in the womb of the mother horse, sheep or dog and the miracle of the new creature.

And yet, people of good will allow themselves to believe that it’s only a bunch of cells. And vote for politicians who insist that killing unwanted babies up to “viability” is women’s health.

America’s obsession with equality,

is based on Jefferson’s Preamble to the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

But it’s evident that the founder didn’t mean the equality that our nation seems to be pursuing at all costs; wholly ignoring the dignity of work and the dangers of idleness.

When Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men are created equal,” he did not mean that all men were equal in all respects. In other places he wrote with conviction about the existence of a natural aristocracy among men, based upon virtue and talent. Yet, many today quote Jef­ferson as though he intended to state that all men ought to be made as equal as possible. This is to speak of equality of condition, a position rejected by Jefferson and all politi­cal thinkers in the Age of the Ameri­can Revolution. It was rejected be­cause even a cursory examination of human nature reveals ineradicable differences among men.

The Idea of Equality in America

There’s an ugly and vicious underside to the recent insurgence of mantras that end up under the innocuous term of “cancel culture.”

It’s real name is envy. Envy is worse than jealousy we recall, because it isn’t just that “I want what you have,” it’s that “I don’t want you to have it at all.”

Anthony Esolen is an influential Catholic author and Dante Scholar. Until 2016, Esolen was an esteemed professor at Providence College. He and his family were victimized by social mobbing and literally driven out of the college and city by a social media driven “flash mob.”

Author Anne Henderschott well understands the ancient satanic root of envy: our first murder.

“At least one senior administrator was present at the mobbing that took place outside Esolen’s office window. In a scene reminiscent of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, Esolen was denigrated through chants and taunts by the angry students and faculty enablers. And although he had many student and faculty supporters on campus, most were too afraid of the angry mob to offer public support to their colleague — telling him privately that they were “with him” but could not publicly help. Some feared for their safety… .Even though Esolen, an internationally renowned Dante scholar, has many thousands of admirers of his published work, all of that was little consolation for the Esolen family when they were in the middle of a social media–driven mobbing action that persisted from November 2016 through the following spring semester, when Esolen finally was driven out of Providence.”

The Politics of Envy

Inequality reigns too in our prayer life, it must.

Last Tuesday was the Feast of St. Francis de Sales. Reading the saint’s exhortations to us about the distinctly different prayer lives of monks, priests, bishops and working people, galvanized my thinking, “In Praise of Inequality.” In Introduction to the Devout Life, the saint writes that devotion to Christ is suitable for every vocation.

WHEN God created the world He commanded each tree to bear fruit after its kind; and even so He bids Christians,—the living trees of His Church,—to bring forth fruits of devotion, each one according to his kind and vocation. A different exercise of devotion is required of each—the noble, the artisan, the servant, the prince, the maiden and the wife; and furthermore such practice must be modified according to the strength, the calling, and the duties of each individual…

…if the artisan spent the day in church like a Religious, if the Religious involved himself in all manner of business on his neighbour’s behalf as a Bishop is called upon to do, would not such a devotion be ridiculous, ill-regulated, and intolerable? Nevertheless such a mistake is often made….the devotion which is true hinders nothing, but on the contrary it perfects everything; and that which runs counter to the rightful vocation of any one is, you may be sure, a spurious devotion. Aristotle says that the bee sucks honey from flowers without damaging them, leaving them as whole and fresh as it found them;—but true devotion does better still, for it not only hinders no manner of vocation or duty, but, contrariwise, it adorns and beautifies all. Throw precious stones into honey, and each will grow more brilliant according to its several colour:—and in like manner everybody fulfils his special calling better when subject to the influence of devotion:—family duties are lighter, married love truer, service to our King more faithful, every kind of occupation more acceptable and better performed where that is the guide….

Introduction to the Devout Life

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The Use and Misuse of Power

Tornado In Stormy Landscape – Climate Change And Natural Disaster ConceptThe use and misuse of power.

When we see a phrase like this, we think of powerful persons, institutions or some kind of disaster, don’t we? The use and misuse of power connotes vastness.

Someone Huge!

Something colossal!

We sure don’t think of ourselves—our reason, will or our intellect as method for the use and misuse of power, at least I didn’t. Until I read last Tuesday’s Office of Readings: St. Basil the Great’s excerpt from the Detailed Rules for Monks. The excerpt is maybe 500 words. But just about each word seemed to leap off the page and appear in a font of 64, as in SHOUT! Starting with “The ability to love is within us.”

But primarily this sentence: This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good, a use contrary to God’s commandements.

Contained in these few hundred words is all the wisdom needed to be perfect as Our Father in heaven is perfect. St. Basil’s counsel is simply stated: we need not travel, learn from wiser counsel, or be someone special because,

Love of God can’t be taught.We have what we need.We learn from ourself and within ourselves.

Shortly afer I became Catholic, I cancelled a trip I’d planned to the Greek Islands more than two years before. My husband John was surprised when I did it because the company would refund only half of the money I’d already paid. I didn’t care, I no longer needed to go to the other side of the world.

All those years that were wrought with the use and misuse of power were extinguished by the “power of reason implanted like a seed.” God’s mercy permits even hardened sinners to return and make use of that power of reason.

We have everything we need

St. Basil writes: “First, let me say that we have already received from God the ability to fulfill all his commands. We have then no reason to resent them, as if something beyond our capacity were being asked of us. We have no reason either to be angry, as if we had to pay back more than we had received. When we use this ability in a right and fitting way, we lead a life of virtue and holiness. But if we misuse it, we fall into sin.

This is the definition of sin: the misuse of powers given us by God for doing good, a use contrary to God’s commands. On the other hand, the virtue that God asks of us is the use of the same powers based on a good conscience in accordance with God’s command.

Since this is so, we can say the same about love. Since we received a command to love God, we possess from the first moment of our existence an innate power and ability to love. The proof of this is not to be sought outside ourselves, but each one can learn this from himself and in himself.

I’ve read St. Basil’s words countless times now and think as I do so, it’s like everything in the spirtitual life: easy and excruciating.

All too often, we allow ourselves to believe our prayers are ineffective, that it’s actions that matter. We behave just like King Ahaz: I will not ask!!

Uppn learning about the Mystical Body of Christ, so many years ago now, my first thoughts were, “Of course! Of course we’re connected with one another, therefore my sin—or grace—affects everyone else…”

But we forget.

I’m reminded of a story

told by a newly ordained priest I heard last year at a daily Mass at St. Patrick’s Church in Arroyo Grande, California.

Father David Allen called his homily for that November daily Mass, “Holiness can’t be taught.” The young priest couldn’t recall where he’d read the phrase but in his talk, he added to the phrase, “It must be caught.” But I wonder if it was St. Basil he paraphrased.

The ability to love is within each of us

Love of God is not something that can be taught. We did not learn from someone else how to rejoice in light or want to live, or to love our parents or guardians. It is the same—perhaps even more so—with our love for God: 

Fr. David’s story was about his friend, an upperclassman, two years ahead of him, who had just returned from his pastoral year with a local priest.

“How was it?” Fr. David Allen asked his friend.

“Interesting, I enjoyed it.”

“Did anything happen that surprised you?”

“Yes, the parishioners at the church kept asking me how I’d gotten to be so holy, so content with silence.

“What did I do?

“How did I pray?

“What prayers did I say?

“And there wasn’t anything I could say that I did.

“In fact, I do nothing! Nothing at all…

“I just love Jesus…the more I love Him the more I want to love Him- it’s like an addictiion!”

Fr. David looked at us and said, “Holiness can’t be taught, it must be caught.”

“We know about addiction, it’s all about getting the drug.

“Now! It’s all about the drug. How about our drug being Jesus?

“How about us getting addicted to Christ?”

Letter to the Ephesians

For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household,  built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone.

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The Loss of Context: Pope Benedict and Islamophobia

Content and context symbol. Businessman turns wooden cubes and changes the word context to content. Beautiful grey table, grey background. Business and content and context concept. Copy space.The loss of context: Pope Benedict and Islamophobia

If you’re wondering why I’d add another opinion, analysis or virtual eulogy to the many thousands already published about the death of Pope Benedict, I understand. Especially since I’m woefully ignorant of this man, his thoughts and writings. Of over 200 published books, I’ve read one. Of Pope Benedict’s many thousands of speeches, articles and essays, I’ve read only a few encyclicals.

So why then add to the plethora of words that have been published about Pope Emeritus Pope Benedict?

Because of my surprise, actually astonishment, at the controversy attached to his name, writings and speeches. How and why would such a distinguished, seemingly reclusive individual evoke such invective upon his death? Upon seeing the magnitude of adjectives like divisive, contentious, islamophobic and controversial while searching for one of St. Benedict’s speeches, I asked my friend, a priest, to help me understand.

When my friend explained that this antipathy stemmed from Pope Benedict’s early attempts to dialogue with Muslim leaders, I felt the smirk and cynicism seep out. A Catholic leader’s attempts to dialogue with other religious leaders about the nature of the one God, the God of Abraham, Issaac and Jacob would naturally be vilified.

Of course. Anyone who steps outside of their box gets stomped on. And a Catholic Pope initiating religious conversation with Islam isn’t just stepping out of the box, he’s leaping into space without a parachute.

More than a little intrigued, I started to dig, to see what I could find. As I worked on this piece last week I remembered another Pope who had stepped out of the box. Pope John Paul’s invitation to leaders of all faiths to meet and pray for peace at Assissi caused similar consternation. And still does, three decades later.

It’s nothing new, is it? The loss of context: Pope Benedict and Islamophobia

The Regensberg Address

A year into his papacy, in 2006, Pope Benedict began meeting and talking with Muslim leaders. Then, invited to the University of Regensberg when he evidently once taught, he gave an “infamous” talk called, “Faith, Reason and the University.” In doing so, the Pope ignited many of the opinion shapers in liberal, conservative, secular and religious circles. This Pope is a dissident, Islamophobe, racist…

Although his speech isn’t long, it’s work to read it because it’s dense with philosophical explanations of our descent into theological liberalism. It’s not unlike unpacking the prose of St. John Henry Newman.

But also because his grip of language is so searing and soaring. We want to take very good care when reading prose like this:

…, making possible a genuine experience of universitas -something that you too, Magnificent Rector, just mentioned – the experience, in other words, of the fact that despite our specializations which at times make it difficult to communicate with each other, we made up a whole, working in everything on the basis of a single rationality with its various aspects and sharing responsibility for the right use of reason – this reality became a lived experience.

The university was also very proud of its two theological faculties. It was clear that, by inquiring about the reasonableness of faith, they too carried out a work which is necessarily part of the “whole” of the universitas scientiarum, even if not everyone could share the faith which theologians seek to correlate with reason as a whole. This profound sense of coherence within the universe of reason was not troubled, even when it was once reported that a colleague had said there was something odd about our university: it had two faculties devoted to something that did not exist: God. That even in the face of such radical scepticism it is still necessary and reasonable to raise the question of God through the use of reason, and to do so in the context of the tradition of the Christian faith: this, within the university as a whole, was accepted without question.” [italicized portions are mine.]

Faith, Reason and the University

Pope Benedict then takes a deep dive.

Via a thirteenth-century-dialogue between the Byzantine Emperor Manuel Paleologus and a Persian intellectual about the truth of both islam and Christianity, Pope Benedict exposes a rarely discussed fact about Islam. Quoting from a text by theologian and historian Theodore Khoury, the Pope says, “In the dialogue which extends for several suras (chapters) in the Quran, the Emperor declares there is no compulsion in religion. Pope Benedict adds that this sura was likely written while “Mohammed was still powerless and under threat.”

Continuing on, the Pope reads from the text, “And then the Emperor brusquely demands that the Persian, “”Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”[3] The emperor, after having expressed himself so forcefully, goes on to explain in detail the reasons why spreading the faith through violence is something unreasonable. Violence is incompatible with the nature of God and the nature of the soul.”

“God”, he says, “is not pleased by blood – and not acting reasonably (σὺν λόγω) is contrary to God’s nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats…To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death…”.[4]The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.[5]

Many stopped listening or reading here. And few note the Pope’s notation [page 7 of the document] at the end of his remarks where he states clearly that these are not his own words but are quoted. In including the remarks, his intention was to show the essential relationship between faith and reason.

But some listeners were open, maybe even searching for truth…

Pope Benedict and Islamophobia. Pope Benedict at the University of Regensberg 2006“Effective communication is

the most difficult undertaking on earth.”

One of the men whose work and writings I treasure, Norman Cousins, once wrote that. And so it’s surely no surprise that Pope Benedict’s address caused such a frenzied outcry. After reading, then rereading then studying this speech, the measured weight of the prose and orderliness of the logic, it’s clear he knew what he was about, the risk he was taking.

A man with “the mind of twelve professors,” and spoke or understood nine languages knew that a dialogue couldn’t occur in the absence of truth.

It’s not all that difficult to imagine ourselves in Pope Benedict’s shoes. After all, many of us have had to address audiences on one or another controversial subject in our past—or present.

And we’ve known full well that there will be listeners who will disagree to the point of outrage. Maybe even at great cost to our reputation or even livelihood.

Hence, we have opportunity.

Do we state what we know to be fact—truth?

Or do we dilute, compromise truth for fear of giving offense: axiomatic of this twenty-first-century?

We can’t know the effect of speaking truth to listeners who seem closed, even outraged at our words if we risk it.

I well recall when my mind was closed to anything that smacked of religion, the Bible or Jesus as the Son of God. And yet, I spent two years working my way through an undergraduate degree at a Catholic private women’s college. It was during the era when nuns, at least Dominican nuns, wore a starched habit so restrictive that only their cheeks and part of their foreheads could be seen.

And yet I was undeniably drawn to the Thomistic philosophy they taught. And yearned for the joy and wsdom with which the head of the English department taught. Allegories just rolled off her lips and into my mind and heart.

All these years later, I’m overwhelmed with gratitude at the education I received from those Dominican nuns and priests. Even though I thought I disagreed with everything they represented, I had a tenuous grasp of this fact:

…For philosophy and, albeit in a different way, for theology, listening to the great experiences and insights of the religious traditions of humanity, and those of the Christian faith in particular, is a source of knowledge, and to ignore it would be an unacceptable restriction of our listening and responding.

Here I am reminded of something Socrates said to Phaedo. In their earlier conversations, many false philosophical opinions had been raised, and so Socrates says: “It would be easily understandable if someone became so annoyed at all these false notions that for the rest of his life he despised and mocked all talk about being – but in this way he would be deprived of the truth of existence and would suffer a great loss”.[13]

The West has long been endangered by this aversion to the questions which underlie its rationality, and can only suffer great harm thereby.

The Regensberg Address

Farewell to Pope Benedict- Bishop Barron

The Loss of Context: Pope Benedict and Islamophobia

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Epiphany – What Does It Mean Again?

An old jail cell interior with barred up window with light rays penetrating through it reflecting the image on the floorEpiphany: What does it mean again?

“You have had an epiphany,” remarked my friend when I told her about my decision to become a Catholic Christian. Although my friend Adele’s comment occured a couple of decades ago now, I think of it on this day we celebrate Epiphany.

Perhaps I’d heard the word before but certainly it was not one used in my every day thoughts or speech. Or that of the people around me, for that matter. I was silent so long that she thought I’d hung up. Deciding that the word meant seeing something in a new way or was perhaps synonymous with enlightenment, I finally agreed that yes, I guess I had an epiphany.

But for our celebration today, epiphany is a word for which there are few, if any, synonyms.

Marking the end of the Christmas season in the Christian liturgy, Epiphany Sunday occurs twelve days after Christmas and commemorates three events—manifestations— in the life of Christ:

The incarnation of Christ, Emmanuel: God is here, The miraculous star which led  three wise men on a long journey to seek the Messiah of the world. Epiphany also celebrates a third event: The beginning of Christ’s mission on earth. His conversion of vats of water used to wash the dusty feet of desert walkers into the finest wine of any served before. At His mother’s behest, before, ‘His time had come.’Marriage at Cana or Wedding at Cana , fresco paintings on the ceiling of the churchMy friend’s interpretation of the word epiphany wasn’t wrong.

But ‘seeing things in a new way’or ‘enlightenment’ lacks its essence: the person of Christ, the baby and Christ the man. The very Person through whom we see things in a new way; the Person who enlightens.

“BEHOLD!“

“STOP!”

“PAY ATTENTION!”

That’s how Pastor Reverend Eric Ritter began his homily for the 6 am celebration of the feast of the Holy Name of Jesus.

“When do we hear that word, Behold?” Fr. Ritter asked. “It isn’t a word we use a lot, is it?”

The priest answered his rhetorical questions with, “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord.”

“Behold your mother.”

And then, “”Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.”

With his last statement, Fr. Ritter spoke about Tuesday morning’s Gospel passage,

John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward him and said,
“Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the one of whom I said,
‘A man is coming after me who ranks ahead of me
because he existed before me.’
I did not know him,
but the reason why I came baptizing with water
was that he might be made known to Israel….”

That’s what was missing from the secular definition of epiphany. Seeing things in a new way and enlightenment are far too passive…inert. But, BEHOLD!?

Yes. That’s it.

The wise men.

These unnamed men who journeyed to a manger in Bethlehem, where an infant lay amidst straw. Accompanied by, we’re told, a number of animals. Maybe donkeys, a lamb or two, some cattle and shepherds.

In the ancient world, there were few countries with citizens who knew astrology well enough to use the heavens as a guide for a journey of close to 3000 miles. An exception was India. There lived magi with the knowledge to make the inconceivable trek.

Tradition tells us there were three. And yet the Gospel of Matthew does not tell us how many. Just that they were the wise men from the east.

Who were these men?

What impelled them to set off on a journey that must have taken years?

We know who they were not. 

They were not God’s chosen people. They were not from Abraham or the root of Jesse, one of the twelve tribes of Israel. The people with whom God had made an everlasting covenant. They were not Jews.

They were the forerunners of leaders of nations…of Gentiles. They were the beginning of the new covenant. One that includes all nations, all peoples.St. Paul writes of  what must have driven those long ago travelers: Faith.Before faith came, we were held in custody under law, confined for the faith that was to be revealed. Consequently, the law was our disciplinarian for Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a disciplinarian. For through faith you are all children of God. In Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s descendant, heirs according to the promise.Mystic Maria Valtorta writes of the wise men:
 

“From the main road a cavalcade is approaching. Harnessed horses are
led by hand, dromedaries and camels bear riders or are carrying loads. The
cavalcade, lit up by the star, is a fantasy of splendor….everything shines
and the light of the star increases the splendor of metals, leathers
silks, gems, coats. Eyes are radiant and mouths smiling because another
splendor shines in their hearts: the splendor of a supernatural joy. 

…The oldest of the Magi speaks on behalf of them all. He explains to Mary
that one night the previous December, they saw a new star of an unusual
brightness appear in the sky. The maps of the sky had never shown or mentioned
such a star. Its name was unknown because it had no name. Born  out of
the bosom of God, it had flourished to tell men a blessed truth, a secret
of God. But men had not paid any attention to it, because their souls were
steeped in mud. They did not lift their eyes to God neither could they read the
words that He writes with stars of fire in the vault of Heaven.

They had seen it and had striven to understand its meaning…they devoted
themselves entirely to studying…the stars, the time, the season, the
calculation of the hours passed, and the astronomic calculations told them
the name and the secret of the star. Its name: “Messiah.” Its secret:
“The Messiah has come into our world.” And they set out to worship
Him.  Each unknown to the others….For each of them, from three different
directions, they followed the star towards Palestine. And then they met beyond
the Dead Sea. God’s will had gathered them there….”

READ MORE Mission of Divine Mercy Newsletter The Adoration of the Wise Men

Monday ends the Christmas season

with the Baptism of Christ.

And we return to ordinary time. 

The word ordinary conveys the commonplace, the lack of something special, the routine. And yet, quite often its opposite, is all too often, a crisis. Yet another lie of our black and white world: We’re either bored or terrified, there’s no in-between.

But that’s not the meaning of the church’s ordinary time. It’s root is the Latin word, ordinalis: numbered or ruled…a seasonal rhythm of order. Like the rhythm of the seasons, langorous summer days and the blessing of each new day.

The green-colored vestments used by the priests and on the altar during ordinary time? The green signifies growth, our growth in the daily routines of living our lives, caring for the creatures and the creation we’ve been given. Precisely like the mesmerizing greens of trees and grass. Extending to us the invitation to the grace of the virtue of gratitude.

 

During the greater part of his life, Jesus shared the condition of the vast majority of human beings: a daily life spent without evident greatness, a life of manual labor.

Catholic Catechism 531

This means that “Centuries later, all can enter into fellowship with Jesus by the most ordinary events of daily life.”(Catechism 533.)

BEHOLD.

STOP.

PAY ATTENTION.

The Creator of the universe lays helpless in a manger.

Because our blessed Mother understood the humiliation of running out of wine at the wedding, we hear her last words to the servants and us, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Despite knowing that her Son’s transformation of the water into wine would jumpstart His Passion and Crucfixion, she asked Him to save this family from shame. 

When God is in us, we are lifted up, rendered joyful, transfigured. Therefore, when Mary says, “They have no wine,” she is speaking of all of Israel and indeed all of the human race. They have run out of the exuberance and joyfulness that comes from union with God.

And this is precisely why Jesus calls her “woman.” We can be easily misled into thinking that he was being curt or disrespectful. But he was addressing her with the title of Eve, the mother of all the living. Mary is the representative here of suffering humanity, complaining to God that the joy of life has run out. Bishop Barron

Baptism of the Lord: Used by permission copyright 2020 Jeff Haynie

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