Lin Wilder's Blog, page 9

The Real Spiritual Battle

Render illustration of “SPIRITUAL COMBAT” title on head silhouette with cloudy sky as a background.The Real Spiritual Battle

We’re approaching Holy Week, the days of silence, reflection and accounting we’re given by the Christian liturgy each year to reply to some questions and thoughts:

How did I do during these forty days?Will there be reason to feel jubilant on Easter a week from today?We  fight our spiritual battles alone; in the silence, in the reflections, in the accounting.

The real spiritual battle is forgiveness, not of others, but of ourselves. Because always, an honest examination of ourselves reveals flaws, failures and weakness–sin.

Annually we spend millions- more accurately billions- on drugs to anesthetize ourselves to the fact that we dislike, perhaps even hate, ourselves because of what we did or what we did not do. Of the reality of what we cannot forget or forgive.

Or worse, we lie. We pretend that the action, decision, loss or betrayal did not really affect us, was not truly wrong, deny that the injury inflicted callously on another was even an injury, justifying and revising history.

“The first and greatest commandment,” Jesus asserts, “is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. The second is like unto it: love your neighbor as yourself.”

“Unless we love ourselves, ” Father Charlie Banks declared in his homily a few weeks ago at the Saint Matthew’s six AM Mass, “we cannot love our neighbor.”

I’ve been thinking about his statement and its simple, profound truth. Only with a peaceful heart can I love: one devoid of anxiety about the evil in me and all around me. The real spiritual battle begins with forgiving ourselves.

This man Jesus did exist historically:

The events which take place during the Palm Sunday worship services and Masses all over the world today did happen. It is their meaning that is disputed among so many.

Only the religious leaders wanted him dead. Their power over their people was so great the religious leaders incited the masses to chose freedom for a known murderer instead of the King of the Universe. The Roman practice during the high Passover religious holidays was to release a prisoner. One chosen by the people. Despite the fact that neither Pontius Pilate nor King Herod find anything to condemn Jesus for,

The crowd screams “Free Barabbas!”

“Crucify Jesus!”

To which Jesus asks, “I have shown you many good works from my Father. For which of these good deeds are you trying to kill me?”

For three years, he speaks in the synagogues, in the public and private places. Addressing the Israelites, specifically, their leaders, the learned Pharisees, Scribes and Sadducees, month by month, year by year,

He heals.

Teaches.

Exorcises demons.

Preaches a message of forgiveness and a Father’s love beyond all human imagination. Today he rides into Jerusalem amidst shouts of Hosanna!! Alleluia! Joyous shouts that must have risen to the heavens.

His was a joy, freedom, authority and incarnate love never before or again seen in the world. For those the leaders of God’s most beloved people had to kill him.

But he does not blame himself.

He does not seem to waste his limited time on self-recriminations or second-guessing himself.

“If only I had said this and not that.”

“Maybe I should have refrained from interfering with Lazarus.”

When most of his disciples–maybe hundreds, left upon hearing that eating his body and drinking his blood was the path to eternal life, he turned to the twelve apostles and merely said, “Will you leave too?”

On his last night on earth, Jesus and the twelve eat the meal where he institutes the Eucharist. Twelve men whom he had lived with, slept with, laughed and drank with for three years. Like each of us, each man is filled with weakness, cowardice and ignorance. One of the twelve he knows will betray him. Each man, including Judas, receives his body and blood.

Later, Peter, James and John cannot stay awake even for one hour despite his desperate plea for their company. .

But he does not blame himself.

We are permitted to see the sadness, the fear and the horror he ingests by our sins–all of them. We witness a love for human souls so vast that the loss of those who refuse him causes blood to pour out of the pores of his body like sweat. Three times, he implores the Father that those of us too stupid to follow him not be lost.

Finally we hear his total abandonment of his will to the Father’s.

Maintaining peace of heart

Apropos of Father Charlie’s remark about the criterion for loving our neighbor–husband, wife, politician, pope, fill in the blank, peace comes from lovingly accepting their flaws and weaknesses. We can do that only when we make friends with our own. It’s the work of a lifetime. Carl Jung termed that part of each of us the ‘shadow.’ For Jung, coming to grips with the darkness in ourselves was the most critical work of life. Without doing so, we’ve no hope of attaining and keeping a peaceful heart, the temptation to moral outrage is irresistible.

Some books warrant many reads, one is wholly inadequate. Jacques Phillipe’s Searching for and Maintaining Peace is one such book. Just a hundred or so pages, Father Phillipe packs it with spiritual wisdom from Saint Francis de Sales, Teresa of Avila, Dom Scupoli, and Saint Therese of Lisieux.

The primary message? Without genuine, consistent peace in our hearts, we risk loss of grace and preclude growth. The real spiritual battle is finding and maintaining peace of heart.

Peace is the simplicity of spirit, the serenity of conscience, the tranquility of the soul and the bond of love. Peace is order, it is the harmony in each one of us, it is a continual joy that is born in witnessing a clear conscience, it is the holy joy of a heart wherein God reigns. Peace is the way to perfection, or, even better, in peace dwells perfection. And the devil, who knows all this very well, does everything possible to cause us to lose our peace. The soul need be saddened by only one thing: an offense against God. But even on this point, one must be very prudent. One must certainly regret one’s failures, but with a peaceful sorrow and always trusting in Divine Mercy.

Searching for and Maintaining Peace

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Cabrini, the Movie and Radical Goodness

Cristiana Dell��� Anna stars in a scene from the movie “Cabrini.” Cabrini, the movie and radical goodness.

Saint Francesca Cabrini was a force of nature. The actress portraying the first American saint, Francesca Dell ‘Anna makes Cabrini, the movie, a tour de force. Rarely does a film make use of all of its potential. In this one, however, the acting, screenplay and cinematography in Cabrini achieve near-perfection. Although I knew next to nothing about Saint Francesca Cabrini, the fact that it was written and produced by Sound of Freedom writer and director , along with this riveting face on the trailer, served as compulsion to see it on opening day.

Most of the film takes place in late 1880’s New York, recently flooded by two million Italian immigrants. Cabrini’s persistent requests to begin a new missionary order is finally granted by Pope Leo Xll. But not in China where the determined nun wishes to go but to Five Points, New York.

���What place is this, to which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies behind this tottering flight of steps? Let us go on again, and plunge into the Five Points. This is the place; these narrow ways diverging to the right and left, and reeking everywhere with dirt and filth.

Charles Dickens

The face in the photo above belongs to Cristiana Dell’ Anna. The power of her performance makes Rod Barr’s sparse dialogue almost afterthought. Asked what she learned from her portrayal of Cabrini, Dell’ Anna’s reply is unsurprising. “There’s a part of me that I leave behind, that I lose into the character. I don’t know where it goes, but there’s a bit of me that gets lost somewhere, and that person becomes real. When I see the movie, I feel like that person now exists other than me. It wasn’t something that I did. It’s something that exists, and if I could, I would call them up and ask them, “How are you doing?”

Indeed the character I was introduced to last week in Cabrini the movie, is real: she taught me about sanctity.

Sanctity isn’t about being extraordinary

…If only with the light God gives me, I could make all souls desirous of sanctity see this, but they become discouraged because they think that sanctity is very difficult to attain. How little God asks of the soul that is disposed to seek it without fear!…But how to disabuse souls of the idea that something extraordinary is required to become saints? To convince them, I would like to erase everything extraordinary in the lives of saints, confident in so doing I would not take away their sanctity, since it was not the extraordinary that sanctified them but the practice of virtue we can all attain with the help and grace of the Lord…how many souls never reach sanctity because they do not proceed on the path they were called by God…

Venerable Mary Magdalen of Jesus in the Eucharist, CP

We never hear Cabrini’s feelings about the continual rejections or the mountainous obstacles to achieving her goal. She doesn’t have the breath for them. As I reflect on this film, the countless reasons that it stays with me, thoughts of sanctity cannot help but bubble up in my mind. Rather than being intimidated by this true force of nature Cabrini and the immensity of her accomplishments, it’s God I see in her. And, perversely, in me.

What she achieved and how were impossible.

And yet she did them.

Cabrini personifies not just the theological virtues of faith, hope and love. But also patience, persistence, hope- the combative hope that Pope Francis exhorts us to pray for.

Radical goodness

All of which brings me to this astounding phrase, radical goodness. Rabbi and messianic Jew Jonathan Cahn recently published The Josiah Manifesto-The Ancient Mystery and Guide for the End Times. Like each of its predecessors, this one fuses the God of ancient Israel with current events and politics. I read it in one sitting.

Cahn’s writing of the consequences of America’s embrace of abortion to our nation and each one of us is categorical. Revealing the Biblical demonic entities behind rights-talk,, the reader is introduced to those ancient Babylonian and Canaanite gods who demanded the blood of babies and children. And who are alive and prospering in our twenty-first century. Cahn’s data correlating the pandemic of Covid 19 with Covid deaths in New York City, the epicenter of abortion, are jaw-dropping.

It isn’t a fun read and the content may stretch one’s credulity. But his phrase, “radical goodness” has engraved itself into my heart and mind. In the last few chapters of the book, Cahn addresses the remnant: those God-fearing Americans who see the satanic underpinnings of “progressive ideology.” Regardless of religious affiliations, Cahn addresses each one of us with his rallying cry of radical goodness. We’re here, Cahn writes, at the “appointed time.”

Despite the conflict and confusion everywhere we look, we have the weaponry given us by Christ:

PrayerFasting And almsgiving. Done more ferociously than ever before andA scrupulous obedience to God’s law that looks foolish to everyone, except the remnant.

“Through prayer, the soul unites with God and attracts His grace; through fasting, and in general through penance, the flesh is subjected to the spirit and the soul becomes more disposed to receive divine favors.” As the prophet Joel proclaimed, “Sanctify a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders, gather the children” (Joel 1:14). Don Dolindo continues his advice by saying that ���prayer increases faith, fasting increases self-control and holy humility���, as Scripture says “the sacrifice pleasing to God is a broken spirit” (Psalm 51:17). Elie G. Dib

The appointed time

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The World Doesn’t Need Theology, It Needs God

man holding crossThe world doesn’t need theology, it needs God

Halfway through Lent, I’m feeling extraordinarily grateful. Rather than my usual, panicked, “Only three weeks left!”

Or:

“These grace-filled days are half over and I’m still committing the same boring, banal sins!”

Our warmer San Antonio very early mornings beg for reflection and prayer on our outside deck as I await the thrill of the first bird’s song. Alone and in the dark, at times, the joy and wonder almost suffocates.

Is this new-found peace because I’ve stopped sinning?

Hardly. Rather it’s a two-fold realization.

Having raced to confession three times in the Lent that’s barely half over, I’m acutely aware of the temptation to judge, criticize, and if not very careful, gossip each time I open my mouth. But instead of letting it crush me, I’ve a renewed appreciation of the wonder, immensity, mercy and majesty of God. My nature is to do and speak what I know I should not. But yet he meets me right there, in my lovelessness– if I just ask.

It’s what drives me outside in the dark and the silence. To await the first songs of those winged creatures that upon opening their eyes, sing. Is there a more glorious thing to do upon awakening than to sing? In her lovely photographic tribute to these beautiful creatures, my friend Almita Bey Carrion, writes, that “each bird we see or hear is a blessed gift from God from the world of nature.”

The second part of my realization is exquisitely expressed by Father Jeremiah Shryock‘s, “The Necessity of Solitary Prayer.” Only when I read his essay was I aware of precisely what drives me outside to sit alone in the dark.

“A great while before day

he rose and went out to a lonely place, where he prayed.”

Father Shryock begins his essay on prayer with Saint Mark’s “window into what a day of the life of Jesus looks like.” Reflecting on why the second person of the Trinity needs to pray, the Franciscan friar remarks on the difference between our prayers from those of Jesus.

So often, we are praying–begging– for cures, relief, rain or whatever is the invitation to fear with which the relentless news cycle insists we inhale. Just so, Saint Mark’s Gospel reveals that Jesus’ days are filled with healings. Whether relieving Peter’s mother’s fever or curing leprosy, paralysis or driving out demons, the news of healings spread quickly. Therefore Jesus is constantly surrounded by people. Saint Mark writes that “the whole town was gathered outside the door.”

Why then, with so many people desperate for him, does Jesus step away to pray?

Father Shryock’s reply warrants our deep reflection. For Jesus, prayer isn’t a means to ‘get something’ from the Father.

Or to fulfill an obligation.

Or to show how good and reverent he is.

First:

“The truth is this: the Father is always caring and providing for us in every moment of life. If he were not, the world and we ourselves would not exist. Therefore, we do not have to be anxious, we do not have to kill ourselves by overworking, and most importantly we can enjoy time alone with the Father to marvel more deeply in his love, goodness, and providential care for all of us…Jesus will reference the Father���s tender care for all of his children and his own trust and faith in the Father���s goodness later in the Gospel when he says, ���Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on���your Father knows that you need them all��� (Matthew 6:25:32)

The Necessity of Solitary Prayer

And second, perhaps primarily?

Jesus’ understanding of prayer is wholly different from our own. For all the reasons Father Shryock exhorts us to understand, Jesus isn’t praying for an end to drought, war or illness, from the Father. Rather the second Person of the Trinity seeks to glorify the Creator. By rising while the needy searchers sleep, the Lord seeks to glorify God–solidify his union with the Father. Those beautifully subtle words bear repeating: A great while before day he rose and went to a lonely place where he prayed.

Yes, I think, as I read and reflect on the Franciscan Friar’s article, Jesus is divine. But he is also fully human. We’re told he “felt the power go out” when the unnamed hemorrhaging woman touched the hem of his cloak. Hence, mustn’t his–and our–humanity have drained him?

On that point Father Shryock remarks on those of us who become so obsessed by a good intention: working in a food kitchen or prolife organization or any worthy cause that we lose sight of reality. We get hooked into believing we’re important, essential, perhaps better than those around us. Although the Franciscan Friar writes about apostolates and missionary work his caution applies to all work that any of us does. The excitement of learning, excelling and succeeding often propels us right into the arms of the enemy. We forget: we can do nothing alone.

The reason for this is that the demands of the apostolate and fraternal life are simply too much for us.
They are beyond our natural strength.
Without a deep life of prayer, our apostolic life will possess a major problem; there will be too much of ourselves in it. 

The Necessity of Solitary Prayer

You must meet the living God every day in solitary prayer

In recalling a conversation with an elderly priest he’d never seen before, Father Shryock explains my title. It was a few days before his ordination and he sat in the seminary cafeteria with the priest who asked if he were one of the seminarians to be ordained in a few days. Upon replying yes, the soon-to-be- priest asked if the older man had any advice for him.

“He paused for a moment, looked out the window, and said, ���It���s great that you studied all this theology, but remember the world doesn���t need theology, it needs God, and for your theology to have any impact in people���s lives, you must meet the living God every day in solitary prayer. If you don���t, nobody will listen to you, nor should they.���

Those words, “The world doesn’t need theology, it needs God,” dove into my mind and heart.

Why?

They’re a warning. The study, knowledge, work of whatever it is we feel called to do is good. Good because our desire to do it is a grace, gift from God. But the words and knowledge can seduce and eclipse him whom we seek to glorify.

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The 90th Anniversary of The Barmen Declaration

The 90th Anniversary of The Barmen Declaration

Pictured above is a memorial to the band of Christian Germans who opposed Hitler. In 1934, eminent Protestant theologian, Karl Bath and numerous German Lutherans wrote the Barmen Declaration. Adolf Hitler had successfully persuaded, intimidated and/or cowed the leaders of the church into supporting the Aryan Solution. The Aryan Solution was the third Reich’s clever euphemism for persecuting and then executing the Jews.

Only because I read Francis Maier’s intriguing piece, Toward A Confessing Church, am I aware of the document. But because Diedrich Bonhoeffer is one of my friends in heaven, I recognized his title and was drawn to the article.

I first ‘met’ Bonhoeffer ten years ago when Eric Metaxas’ tome of Bonhoeffer’s biography shoved its way into my psyche.

You know how that happens, right?

It’s often a book I don’t have the time or interest to read. And yet, it keeps cropping up everywhere. Finally, I gave in and read Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Prophet and Spy. And–of course–! got hooked on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, hence this piece, The 90th Anniversary of The Barmen Declaration.

Why jump from the Barmen Declaration to Bonhoeffer?

Because it was Bonhoeffer who, upon reading and understanding the vital nature of the document, founded the Confessing Church. And inspired the writing of his brilliant The Cost of Discipleship. And who died at the hands of the Nazis for proclaiming truth.

It’s ancient history, why write about it?

History doesn’t repeat itself. Yes, that’s true. But looking around at the plethora of Catholic and Christians who either tacitly or aggressively support the ideology of death promulgated by our government today, aren’t there one or ten similarities here?

Maier’s article reminds me that I read Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship three or maybe four times. I couldn’t get enough of it. Because as his biographer Metaxes writes, Bonhoeffer is indeed a prophet. It’s impossible to read his words and believe he’s speaking of a foreign nation. One that lived and died almost 100 years ago.

No, he speaks to you.

And to me.

To America.

After I read The Cost of Discipleship the last time, [embedded in the link is a free PDF] I was reminded of the very hardest part of faith, of any religion: obedience. So difficult at times that it feels impossible. And without an ongoing personal relationship with Christ and His sacraments, obedience is impossible.

Bonhoeffer examines the two-step process of conversion.

The call.Obedience.

“The response of the disciples is an act of obedience, not a confession of faith in Jesus. How could the call immediately evoke obedience? The story is a stumbling-block for the natural reason… Christianity without the living Christ is inevitably Christianity without discipleship, and Christianity without discipleship is always Christianity without Christ. It remains an abstract idea, a myth which has a place for the Fatherhood of God, but omits Christ as the living Son. And a Christianity of that kind is nothing more or less than the end of discipleship. In such a religion there is trust in God, but no following of Christ….Discipleship without Jesus Christ is a way of our own choosing. It may be the ideal way. It may even lead to martyrdom, but it is devoid of all promise. Jesus will certainly reject it….”

During the process of my conversion, many perhaps most, of my former beliefs and values died. Along with them so did some dear friendships.

But are there times when obedience still feels impossible?

Yes.

We need to remember who we serve

We need to remember who we are, who we serve, and why we’re here as Christians.  We need to be confessors of Jesus Christ and his Church.  All day, every day.  In everything.

As one senior bishop told me in the course of my interviews:

I grew up in an extraordinarily warm, liberating Catholic culture.  That’s gone.  We can no longer count on the culture to support a Christian life.  What we’ve got now in our country is, at best, a tolerance of religion as a personal hobby for superstitious weak people who cling to their childhood dreams.  At worst, more and more, we’re dealing with a real hatred, an outright bigotry, toward religious faith.  Which is ironic, because there’s never been a progressive reform movement in American history that wasn’t birthed  by religion.  We’re almost back in the days of the French Revolution.  We have a gang of juiced-up Jacobins running society who really think the government should control everything. . . .I never thought I’d put the prayer of St. Michael the Archangel on my medicine cabinet mirror.  But I did.  Now I pray it every morning when I shave.  There is utter, raw evil in the world, and it’s the strongest force in the universe.  Save one.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer was right.  His world needed a Confessing Church, and he was willing to risk his life for it.  Times have changed.  Circumstances have changed.  But the need hasn’t.

The lesson is simple:  We need to be Confessing Christians.  And we need a Confessing Church.

Toward A Confessing Church

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An Icon for Lent: Into the Desert

cropped image of Jesus in robe, sandals and red sash walking on sand in desertAn icon for Lent

Atop one height sits a solitary figure. His head is bowed, His hair tossed by the fitful gusts of wind. His dusty clothes, sunburnt face, and gaunt frame suggest that He has been here for some time. His eyes are closed and His brow furrowed as His mouth silently forms the words of David: O God, You are my God, for You my soul is thirsting … like a dry, weary land without water.

Suddenly, His eyes open and He looks quickly to His right. There is a scrawny brown jackal, which shies away at the abrupt movement. A smile breaks over the Man’s face, and He gently beckons the creature nearer. Though its only human contacts up to now have been accompanied by sticks and shouting, somehow it seems to know that this Man is to be trusted.

A strong, calloused hand reaches out and strokes the jackal’s rough mane. The Man, still smiling, closes His eyes again and begins to mouth another prayer. All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the LORD; praise and exalt Him above all forever.

As the fierce sun begins to wane, the Man is still sitting there, with the beast sitting beside Him. They gaze together at the burst of color that heralds the dying day. As the first stars begin to shine, the Man looks to His left, where a light of unearthly brightness has appeared. He smiles once again, beckoning the angel nearer…

Into the desert

Last Sunday’s Gospel passage was from Mark. It’s a passage so laconic as to be terse, acerbic:

The Spirit drove Jesus out into the desert,
and he remained in the desert for forty days,
tempted by Satan.
He was among wild beasts,
and the angels ministered to him…Entire Gospel Reading

Saint Mark’s first sentence jolts: He was driven into the desert by The Spirit. This passage shouts,

“BEHOLD!”

“Pay attention!”

Jesus’ humanity had to be driven: Just like yours and mine.

Although we understand–kind of–Jesus’ emptying himself of divinity to be born in the likeness of man, we shy away. It’s uncomfortable to ponder the reality of His Humanity. However, passages like this one bring to the forefront just how monumental was the condescension of the Lord of the Universe: the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.

This brief Gospel passage skips right to the death of John the Baptist and Jesus’ public ministry. Strangely, Saint Mark’s omission of the desert details highlights these Lenten days in the beautiful and forbidding Judean desert.

The silence calls out: “Come!”

“He was among wild beasts and the angels ministered to him.”

Why is Jesus in the desert?

He’s there to redeem creation. to eclipse the distrust of God by our first parents. With their decision to listen to the father of lies, satan, the harmony and unity of creation disintegrated. The perfectly blended unity of humanity’s body and soul ruptured. Establishing a war within each one of us: our bodies pulling downward while our souls are pulled up…up.

Sometimes, with the glory of a sunrise or in the presence of a soaring symphony, we can hear, even feel that lost unity. We can recall something lost–something indescribably precious. We hear the echoes of Eden.

“So there they sit, beneath the stars – the angel, the Man, and the beast. Not since Eden has such a harmony been seen. Has Eden, then, been renewed in the midst of this forbidding desert? No, something greater than Eden is here — for the Man seated on the rocky bluff is not only Son of Adam, but Son of God, come to search out His straying brethren.

For now, though, He remains apart. The time will come when He will be surrounded by a sea of humanity, day and night — but for these forty sacred days, He will be seen only in the company of the higher and the lower creation, the angels and the beasts. Will man receive Him as readily as they?”

The dislocation of body and soul

Are your soul and body at war, Bishop Barron asks in last Sunday’s homily? Like the I’ve liberally quoted, Bishop Barron recommends we focus on the Man, the angels and the wild animals, as an icon for Lent.

Driven by the Spirit, Jesus walks and climbs the “vast canvas of rock and dust” that David trod. But Jesus isn’t there to escape a king. The Lord of the Universe is there to battle our enemy. Only after forty days without food or water will Jesus face satan. Only when his flesh is starved and his thirst supernatural, will Jesus face the tempter. The being that deceived Eve, the mother of the living, is Lucifer-literally the “angel of light.” We have no conception of the malevolence Satan holds for humanity. Nor can we grasp how vast is his intelligence and his knowledge of all things.

But Jesus did—does.

In his remarkable book, Rescued: The Unexpected and Extraordinary News of the Gospel, Father John Riccardo explains the weakened, starving, crucified Christ as the “ambushed predator.”

“God became a man to fight, to rescue us, to get his creation—you—back. He landed on earth in order to vanquish the enemy, but here’s the challenge: the enemy won’t fight God. Satan isn’t stupid. Satan knew he couldn’t beat God and wouldn’t try, so God designed a plan: a plan he knew would involve piercing, nails, and a cross. Then he hid himself as a man. And he waited…

Jesus on the cross is not the poor, helpless victim, and he is not the hunted. Jesus on the cross is the aggressor and the hunter…in slaying our Lord, death itself was slain. It was able to kill natural human life, but was itself killed by the life that is above the nature of man. Death could not devour our Lord unless he possessed a body, neither could hell swallow him up unless he bore our flesh; and so he came in search of a chariot in which to ride to the underworld. This chariot was the body which he received from the Virgin; in it he invaded death’s fortress, broke open its strongroom and scattered all its treasure.”

Rescued: The Unexpected and Extraordinary News of the Gospel

A PS on Fasting

My online poet friend Maura Harrison, sent me a link to Franciscan Friar Brother Elijah’s riveting talk on fasting a few years ago. Recently, I’ve questioned my fasting regimen and so I gratefully watched it once again.

Here are just a few examples of the wisdom Brother Elijah shares in this grace-filled talk:

“There was just one commandment in Eden: a fast….and we broke the fast…”

“Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”

While in prayer, Brother Elijah asked God why we’re to fast and heard,

“I desire to feed you.”

“Will you let me feed you?”

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The Blessed Detox of Fasting

Cross, buckwheat porridge, bread, glass of water and Bible on white wooden table. Lent seasonLove Fasting: Blessed detox.

Love fasting? You’re joking, right?

No, in fact, fasting is “in.” Increasingly popular is limiting meals to specific times. In intermittent fasting, eating is restricted to eight of six hour periods out of each twenty-four. Or, in alternate day fasting on one day, total calorie consumption is limited to 500 to 600 followed by normal eating routine on the next day. The terminology can be confusing but the underlying principle is simple: Stop mindlessly eating. Experience the feeling of hunger as something which passes. Because it does.

Many of us have learned from sad experience that having cookies, or chips, ice cream or cake around can function as magnets. Exciting the appetite to the point that the entire bag or carton is consumed, despite the fact that we were not hungry but bored, or tired or frustrated or… And then had to deal with the yucky aftermaths of our gluttony.

Sorry, but that’s what it is, right?

Thousands of dieters have experienced tremendous weight loss only to regain not just the lost weight but with added pounds leading to convictions that most diets fail. Despite TV ads to the contrary, it’s just not smart to be constantly eating. Unless you are a teenaged male, that is. Periods of resting our oft maligned and underappreciated gastrointestinal system-or GI immune system– is a no brainer.

The more we abstain from food, we find some super interesting results:

We can learn to experience hunger.And distinguish it from appetite.Master it and along the way, ourselves.Enjoy the sense of emptiness and clarity of thinking that hunger can evoke.Blessed detox

So here, Moses has outlined in his second speech, the way to Heaven: we must observe the divine commandments (chap. 5); we must love God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our strength, without testing Him and acting insolently against Him (chap. 6); we must fight evil, without yielding in anything to the world and without harboring its abominations within us (chap. 7); we must never forget God in the comforts of life, thinking that our goal is Heaven, the true promised land, which we must reach through struggles against our passions (chap. 8); finally, we must profoundly humble ourselves in the memory of past sins, thinking that we are undeserving of any benefit (chap. 10). Following Moses’ example, who implored for mercy by fasting for forty days and forty nights, we too must repent for our sins, at least by scrupulously observing the fasts and abstinences imposed by the Church…Lent must be for us, the sacred time of our lives, must be for us, at least in the merciful form in which the Church imposes it, our forty-day supplication like that of Moses.

Blessed Detox

Father Dolindo Ruotolo–Creator of the Surrender Novena–speaks of fasting as detox. At least that’s how Elie G. Dib, translator of Servant of God Ruotolo phrases it. Quite accurately because Father Dolindo exhorts: We, who know how to submit to much more painful diet restrictions when they are imposed by our doctor for bodily health, we who can renounce meat, pasta, sugar, salt, wine, smoke when we are diabetic or when we are suffering from arthritis or nephritis, will we be ashamed not to perform such a mild fast?

And “Are we not the true diabetics of the soul, we who waste all God’s sweetness into our senses and diffuse the false sweetness of the world into our blood?…Are we not suffering from nephritis, we who cannot cleanse ourselves of evil, and we sediment it into our inflamed kidneys?”“

So the physical benefits plus the spiritual…

make it as at least plausible to love the blessed detox of fasting:— don’t they?

The fourth chapter of the Rule of Benedict, the “Tools of Good Works,” begins:

In the first place, to love the Lord God with the whole heart, the whole soul, the whole strength. Then, one’s neighbor as oneself. Then not to murder. Not to commit adultery. Not to steal. Not to covet. Not to bear false witness. To honor all (1 Peter 2:17). And not to do to another what one would not have done to oneself. To deny oneself in order to follow Christ. To chastise the body. Not to become attached to pleasures. To love fasting. To relieve the poor. To clothe the naked. To visit the sick. To bury the dead. To help in trouble. To console the sorrowing. To become a stranger to the world’s ways. To prefer nothing to the love of Christ.

The Tools of Good Works

My online friend and mentor, Brother Jerome Leo lives on through his daily reflections on the rule. For the many times I reach the end of the day and am shamed at how little I’ve done. Or the fact that I failed at my fasting plan, his words console and make me smile.

If we truly preferred nothing to the love of Christ, we would be sinless saints. We would need no other rule! Small wonder that most of us read and look away in embarrassment. But ALL of us, every one, can chisel at that mountain day by day, resolutely. A day in which the seemingly tiniest and most token of obstacles to the love of Christ is conquered and removed is a day of great rejoicing in heaven!

As St. Teresa of Calcutta observed, “We can do no great things, only small things with great love.” We HAVE to start small, because, for most of us, if it weren’t for small, we’d never start at all! Ah, but those tiniest things done with love delight the heart of the Divine Merciful Christ more than we could ever imagine! Go for it!!!

Holy Rule Reflection

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The Culture of Lent: Ash Wednesday

The culture of Lent: Ash WednesdayThe culture of Lent: Ash Wednesday

Is Lent a culture?

Really?

When considering the word culture, we understand it signifies a cumulative deposit of knowledge, beliefs, values, notions of time and of roles. So yes, the upcoming forty days embodies a “culture of Lent.” One that I aim to inhale more completely this year than those that have gone before.

I am not a ‘cradle Catholic.’ My entrance into Catholicism occurred while living in Massachusetts during the late nineties. When the Boston Globe was demonizing the then Cardinal Bernard Law and the Catholic Church and earning a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering homosexual grooming of boys by Catholic priests in the Diocese of Boston. Lurid headlines and vicious television ads ceaselessly touted the abject criminal behavior of a Cardinal who entered the accused priest into therapy then transferred him to another diocese. Wholly ignoring the fact that Law was following the advice of psychiatrists and psychologists–the ‘science,’ of the time, the investigative journalists “got Law.” And incited thousands of viewers and readers to decide that yes, he too was a victim.

Well-known financial leader Peter Lynch sat on the Board of the Boston Archdiocese during the siege. The effects of the 1991 changes to the sexual harassment legislation were predictable. But Lynch’s sage advice: “Do NOT settle!” went unheeded and the tsunami of lawsuits began. .

Over three decades later, untold numbers of Catholic priests have been accused in the endless cycle of litigation. Most without a chance to defend themselves. Some, like Father Gordon McCrae, imprisoned despite their innocence.

“How,” as Chief Justice Clarence Thomas baldly put it, “do you prove you did not do something?”.

That this malady is actively encouraged in secular society isn’t just ignored, it’s celebrated– but not prosecuted. The hypocrisy is stultifying.

All of this brings me back to the culture of Lent: Ash Wednesday. And the plunge we accept when the ashes are inscribed on our foreheads.

Plunge into what?

Into what indeed?

Not what but who.

Into this Person: Jesus. Foretold by Moses:

The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— just as you desired of the LORD your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, Let me not hear again the voice of the LORD my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ And the LORD said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him. 

Deuteronomy 18:15-22http://Deuteronomy

So what is the connection between alleged sexual abusers and Lent?

Right.

Love–His Love for humanity.

The ease with which one person can destroy another’s life by taking and twisting an event. Or making it up. A judicial system that isn’t hampered by the need for evidence, accusation suffices. And the staggering amount of money underscoring the entire enterprise None of this can infect me: I must understand these and all things as opportunity for grace.

Daily, I have been praying one hour of the Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Jesus Christ.

Just one hour: from 5pm in the afternoon when Jesus said good-bye to Mary, his mother, through to 5pm the following day when she leaves his dead body in the tomb.

The mystic Luisa Piccarreta writes profoundly detailed visions of Jesus’ experiences on the way to the Cross. He permits her to share in his passion—and—us.

A love we cannot grasp.

Never,

Ever,

Does Jesus demonstrate any emotion but love for his Jewish tormentors.

In this hour Jesus is in the midst of the soldiers with imperturbability and iron constancy. God as He is, He suffers all the strains which the soldiers inflict upon Him, and looks at them with so much love that He seems to invite them to give Him more pains.

And we – are we constant during repeated sufferings, or do we lament, get irritated and lose peace; that peace of the heart which is necessary to allow Jesus to find a happy dwelling within us?

Firmness is that virtue which makes us know whether God really reigns in us. If ours is true virtue, we will be firm in trial, with a firmness which is not inconstant, but always equal to itself. The more we become firm in good, in suffering, in working, the more we enlarge the field around us, in which Jesus will expand His graces. Therefore, if we are inconstant, our field will be small, and Jesus will have little or no space. But if we are firm and constant, as Jesus finds a very extensive field, He will find in us His shelf and support, and the place in which to extend His graces.

The Twenty-Four Hours of the Passion of Christ

A PS on Confession or

more accurately, the sacrament of reconciliation.

Always, I feel cleansed–a word my friend Sharon used when speaking about a recent confession. I like Sharon’s word because cleansing implies washing off dirt which is precisely what I do every couple of weeks.

Or more often if I’ve done or thought what I know not to think or do—spiritual showering, to restore friendship with Jesus. But spiritual cleaning requires the Church. Alone, I can’t erase the sin:

…From within the man, from his heart,
come evil thoughts, unchastity, theft, murder,
adultery, greed, malice, deceit,
licentiousness, envy, blasphemy, arrogance, folly.
All these evils come from within and they defile…

Rather than pontificate about why this sacrament is so crucial, this super-cool video from Saint Ferdinand’s Church in Blanco, Texas explains far better than I could. And in less than eight minutes.

Thank you, Father Brion Zarsky for posting this on your website.

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Communism, Confession and Our Souls

Communism, Confession and Our SoulsCommunism, Confession and Our Souls

Why am I thinking about Communism in this first Sunday in February, 2024?

Because it’s all around us, headlines and exhortations shouted out by the American elite. And it’s been so for years. Progressive ideology is merely Marxist rhetoric. Sure it’s cool, 21st-century name, woke, provides a cloak, but it’s transparent–if we open our eyes.

Historically, anti-semitism and communism are closely affiliated. But its existence right here in River City, US has been hidden, until now. The recent appalling anti-semitic riots on US campuses have revealed the Marxist, atheistic ideology of a majority of university faculty members. One that is overtly or subtly broadcasted to American college students.

“Antisemitism isn’t new among intellectuals nor is it surprising. By their very existence, the Jewish people call up a God who spoke to Abraham, Moses and a Bible that predicted the state of Israel. Pundits securely enthroned on their secular humanistic tautology get itchy at the notion of the chosen people. It offends their sense of equality. Antisemitism is a spiritual evil, as is much of the deranged, absurdly called ‘progressive,’ agenda.

A few years ago, a book about the resurgence of socialism and communism caught my attention. Kristian Niemitz’s explanation made sense: prior attempts at socialism weren’t real. Or although history is replete with failed socialistic governments, we Americans “can do it right.” His is an excellent analysis into why so many embrace a socialism that’s indistinguishable from Communism.

But it’s inadequate.

Peace of soul

“It is the basic principle of Marixism that any attempt to reconcile capital and labor so that they both cooperate in prosperity and peace is a betrayal of communism.”

Fulton J Sheen

Penned in his1949 book, Peace of Soul. Archbishop Sheen’s pithy phrase explains the current animosity toward capitalism among–seemingly everyone. Especially billionaires, and millennials.

Fulton Sheen’s popularity in America was unparalleled. In 1930, he started a radio program that grew to over four million listeners. In 1951, he turned to television with his Sunday night show, Life is Worth Living. Although neither of my parents was Catholic, they seldom missed an episode. And if we take the time to listen to one of the talks, like the one below, we understand his popularity among Catholic and non-Catholics alike. In this episode, Quo Vadis, America? Archbishop Sheen lucidly described a country and its citizenry headed for a precipice.

Quo Vadis America?Frustrated souls

Just so, Sheen’s book, Peace of Soul-I’ve embedded a link to a free PDF- begins with that same piercing and disquieting insight. He writes:

UNLESS souls are saved, nothing is saved; there can be no world peace unless there is soul peace. World wars are only projections of the conflicts waged inside the souls of modem men, for nothing happens in the external world that has not first happened within a soul…If the frustrated soul is educated, it has a smattering of uncorrelated bits of information with no unifying philosophy.

Then the frustrated soul may say to itself: ‘1 sometimes think there are two of me — a living soul and a Ph.D.’…Such a man projects his own mental confusion to the outside world and concludes that, since he knows no truth, nobody can know it. His own skepticism (which he universalizes into a philosophy of life) throws him back more and more upon those powers lurking in the dark, dank caverns of his unconsciousness. He changes his philosophy as he changes his clothes. On Monday, he lays down the tracks of materialism; on Tuesday, he reads a best seller, pulls up the old tracks, and lays the new tracks of an idealist; on Wednesday, his new roadway is Communistic; on Thursday, the new rails of Liberalism are laid; on Friday, he hears a broadcast and decides to travel on Freudian tracks…

Peace of Soul

In the 300 plus page book, Sheen analyzes the inimical effects of psychiatry and psychology upon the souls of modern men and women; explaining as he goes, just how destructive was Freud’s total annihilation of conscience, sin and moral responsibility.

Confession–and religion

It’s more than strange when just the perfect book falls into our laps, like Jung’s Modern Man in Search of A Soul. Jung’s book affected me so profoundly that I included it in my first novel.

It had taken Lindsey just two days to read Jung’s Modern Man in Search of a Soul.

“She had enjoyed the book so much that she had read it twice, the second time slowly, enjoying the thoughts of the man who had begun his career as a protégé of Freud, but who had diverged from the Freudian school of psychiatry after only six years with his brilliant but tortured mentor. Lindsey reflected on the many surprises she had found in the book: Jung’s nomenclature, for example. He was emphatic about the essential aspect of the confessional stage of the psychoanalytic process for the therapist and patient to establish a therapeutic relationship.

“Confession: the word had seemed to proclaim itself to her as she had read and then reread sections of his book. The power of the word itself and of Jung’s conviction that the physician psychiatrist could not be of assistance to anyone past the age of thirty-five—for Jung, the onset of middle age—without the aid of some religious belief on the part of the patient, reverberated in her heart. She wondered if Jung’s theories were perceived as radical when he wrote what would be the last book of his life? Radical indeed seemed an appropriate description in the contemporary age of psychiatry, one that predominantly relies on medication—the chemical cure.”

The Fragrance Shed By a Violet- Murder in the Medical Center

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A Spirit of Silence

A Spirit of Silence

In the Rule of Benedict, silence is necessary, even indispensable for those of us who seek God. In fact, chapter six of the Rule of Benedict, “A Spirit of Silence,” makes clear why Saint Benedict considers silence imperative. The chapters’ title challenges our conception of silence as a lack, an absence. Saint Benedict’s phrase, “a spirit of silence,” implies the opposite–perhaps is even suggestive of a presence.

Let’s reflect on the word for a moment or five. We define silence with negatives: “absence of sound,” or “a state of not speaking.” So it feels like a lack of a necessary thing. But St. Benedict’s wording implies doing with intention and action. Although I’ve written about the ‘Seduction of Noise: Advice from the 5th Century, ‘ noise ‘pollution‘ and its mitigation is a vastly different thing from silence

This man from the 5th century, isn’t writing about the external condition of noise. Instead, Saint Benedict speaks of our internal selves, our mind and hearts…our intention: we must adopt a spirit of silence-(italics mine)

Here are his words:

Let us do what the Prophet says:
“I said, ‘I will guard my ways,
that I may not sin with my tongue.
I have set a guard to my mouth.’
I was mute and was humbled,
and kept silence even from good things” (Ps. 38:2-3).
Here the Prophet shows
that if the spirit of silence ought to lead us at times
to refrain even from good speech, so much the more ought the punishment for sin make us avoid evil words.

“

Sinning with my tongue?

In our culture of endless rights, whether to our bodies, free speech, and freedom from all kinds of rules, the notion of ‘sinning with our tongues’ sounds so fifth- century as to be laughable. Bur if we stop for just a moment and consider the content of usual conversation and what’s called, “news,” the words of Saint James take on breadth and heft.

Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze.
The tongue is also a fire.
It exists among our members as a world of malice,
defiling the whole body
and setting the entire course of our lives on fire,
itself set on fire by Gehenna.
For every kind of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature,
can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species

Saint Benedict is challenging us. With his specific examples, the precise details of instructions, the master explains that a spirit of silence is a gift, even perhaps a virtue. Obtained by strict self-control, a focus away from self and toward the other, external noise can fade into oblivion when we cloak ourselves with a spirit of silence.

Emphatically, Saint Benedict writes to refrain “even from good speech.” Therefore we must resist our temptation to pass on the latest terrifying bit of news about a new plague–fully aware of the damage ‘bad speech’ or writing can cause. Trusting that Saint Paul’s admonition to Timothy applies to us:

I remind you to stir into flame
the gift of God that you have through the imposition of my hands.
For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice
but rather of power and love and self-control

Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus

How do we do this?

On the face of it, it feels impoassible I know. There are some things we must know, if only to pray for those perpetrating lies and fear, So how do we practice a spirit of silence, practically?

Brother Jerome Leo, still my mentor although he died last year, has a few suggestions.

“We aren’t Trappists in the world. We cannot control our spaces as if they were monasteries, but we can and must control our own mouths. Total silence would likely be read as uncaring rudeness, but what about some alternative forms of silence? What if one resolved to speak not at all, all day, except in words of kindness, mercy or support, to never open one’s mouth except to affirm.

Pursue that line of thinking, be creative. Fast for a week from contention and see what happens. Try a day of not talking at all about yourself. Try a whole day of asking others about themselves! One way or another, increase the levels of good one can do with speech and diminish those of harm.

“Death and life are in the power of the tongue.” (Prov. 18:21)”

Not just the tongue, folks, but the keyboard and any other writing instrument, too! Genuine inner peace cannot coexist with meanness of thought, word or deed. Genuine inner peace can be held only in a field of gentleness and deep, tender mercy!”

Brother Jerome Leo, RIP.

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Why Do We Need Church?

Why do we need church?Why do we need church?

For much of my early life, church and all that reeked of religion were anathema. As loudly as many shout “Why do we need church?” today, I did too, back during what I’ve called my lost years. And so I can appreciate the fervor with whch devoutly religious people like me are disliked–even hated. The reason is quite simple: fear. Before unwrapping what might be a puzzling or far too simple answer, some background.

Recently, Bishop Robert Barron addressed the precipitious decline in Americans membership with a church, synogogue or mosque. According to Gallup, In 1999, over seventy percent of us claimed membership with a church, synogogue or mosque. A stable percentage since first surveyed in 1937. But twenty years later, in 2019, Americans’ affiliation with institutionalized religion has dropped to forty-seven percent.

I’ve written about church and its necessity before. Because of my one-eighty on religion, I thought I understood the fundamental reason. But Bishop Barron’s reason surpasses any reason I could have come up with.

“We’re not angels.”

“It’s a kind of angelism,” he declares., as he talks about those who insist they can go out in the woods to go to church. The Bishop refers us to Thomas Aquinas.

Hence after the precept about the hallowing of the Sabbath the reason for it is given: “For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth . . . and rested on the seventh day.”

Summa Theologica

Did the work of creation tire God out?

Did the Lord need a nap? Is that what the Bible implies?

No, explains Kody Cooper, the rest is intended for us, each person created by God. “Rather, as St. Augustine explains, God is said to “rest” by metonymy in that he acts to bring us to his rest. Under the New Law, Christians are simultaneously strengthened in our journey toward our ultimate rest, and get a glimpse and taste of that rest, in the Sunday Mass, fulfilling the commandment on the day of Christ’s resurrection.”

God’s rest informs ours…

Our bodies, contrary to the “enlightenment” philosophers and our current political narratives aren’t just matter to weigh down our soaring superior intellects. Nor are they objects with genders we can change at a whim. Instead, according to the Catechism,

“The human body shares in the dignity of “the image of God”: it is a human body precisely because it is animated by a spiritual soul, and it is the whole human person that is intended to become, in the body of Christ, a temple of the Spirit:1
Man, though made of body and soul, is a unity. Through his very bodily condition he sums up in himself the elements of the material world. Through him they are thus brought to their highest perfection and can raise their voice in praise freely given to the Creator. For this reason man may not despise his bodily life. Rather he is obliged to regard his body as good and to hold it in honor since God has created it and will raise it up on the last day. 2

Less elegantly speaking, our bodies are not our own!

And when we fullfil the command to take up the invitation–and the obligation–to worship God at church, our bodies take up the adoration. Gazing at the altar and the cross affects us in such a way that kneeling is the only correct posture. Of course we can kneel at the splendor of a sunrise. Perhaps, like me, you’ve done just that.

But joining with other men, women and children in mutual adoration of our God effects a change in our hearts. Reflecting as a body of believers, His mystical Body upon our sins, weaknesses is perversely comforting. We’re there because we’re sick from sin and trust that Jesus is the healer.

Invitation or obligation?

Whether skipping Sunday Mass should be considered a sin is yet another controversial aspect of the Catholic faith. Fearmongers during the pandemic evidently questioned the obligation and haven’t stopped. It’s remarkable, isn’t? Despite the Church offering Saturday evening vigil Masses as well as Sunday Masses throughout the day, we complain.

For the early Christians, there was no such obligation some claim as reason for making Sunday Mass optional. But if we take the time to reflect about why that was true, the inanity of the comment is evident. These were the friends, relatives, of men and women who had seen Jesus. Maybe listened to his preaching. Perhaps even watched the horror of the crucifixion. And then heard of his resurrection. Perhaps even saw him, spoke with him.

How could these people not fall on their knees in adoration?

And feel privileged to participate in the memorial of the Messiah’s coming to earth to save mankind?

Pope John Paul ll gives us a bit of a wake-up call on the matter:

Even if in the earliest times it was not judged necessary to be prescriptive, the Church has not ceased to confirm this obligation of conscience, which rises from the inner need felt so strongly by the Christians of the first centuries. It was only later, faced with the half-heartedness or negligence of some, that the Church had to make explicit the duty to attend Sunday Mass: more often than not, this was done in the form of exhortation, but at times the Church had to resort to specific canonical precepts. This was the case in a number of local Councils from the fourth century onwards (as at the Council of Elvira of 300, which speaks not of an obligation but of penalties after three absences)(Cf. Canon 21, Mansi, Conc. II, 9) and most especially from the sixth century onwards (as at the Council of Agde in 506).(Cf. Canon 47, Mansi, Conc. VIII, 332) These decrees of local Councils led to a universal practice, the obligatory character of which was taken as something quite norm

A History of Sunday Obligation

Fear and blessing

“…And so I can appreciate the fervor with whch devoutly religious people like me are disliked–even hated. The reason is quite simple: fear.” That’s how this piece began and it’s time to explain what might sound strange. Relecting on myself and my antagonism to religion, to the devoutly religious, the anger and rage I felt was a cover for my fear.

Atheism wasn’t something I chose because it was cool. I lost all belief…everything became a sham, Christmas, Easter, all the prohibitions I’d grown up with. And I couldn’t explain what happened to anyone because I didn’t know. So I made up reasons and over time, believed them. I’ve had years to think about it all and understand that what I expressed as anger was actually fear. Of the consequences of my behaviors, bad decisions and the lying to myself that became habitual.

Of the fact that I didn’t belong.

I don’t think I’m unique in preferring anger over fear. Anger provides a feeliing of control, false, of course but superior to fear.In fact, hang on because I’m taking a huge leap here, all this dismaying reaction to Pope Francis’ declaration on blessings might emanate from fear. Americans are weird about sex, more so, I believe, than other cultures. There’s a reason the “sexual revolution” happened here rather than France.

And so when our Spanish-born Pope Francis and his advisors compiled a document based on the old testament’s view of blessings, and encouraged parish priests to look out for same-sex couples looking to get right with God, to help them, we uptight, still quasi-puritanical Americans freaked.

In last week’s piece, The Holy Sprit and Pope Francis, I wrote in defense of his recent document on blessings, I did not embed Fiducia Supplicans. an error I’m correcting today.

The Church is thus the sacrament of God’s infinite love. Therefore, even when a person’s relationship with God is clouded by sin, he can always ask for a blessing, stretching out his hand to God, as Peter did in the storm when he cried out to Jesus, “Lord, save me!” (Mt. 14:30). Indeed, desiring and receiving a blessing can be the possible good in some situations. Pope Francis reminds us that “a small step, in the midst of great human limitations, can be more pleasing to God than a life which appears outwardly in order but moves through the day without confronting great difficulties.”[28] In this way, “what shines forth is the beauty of the saving love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ, who died and rose from the dead.”[29]

Fiducia Supplicans

What is a blessing?

Irish priest and poet John O’Donahue speaks to the power and perhaps the obligation of blessings in his lovely book, To Bless the Space Between Us.

What is a blessing?

A blessing is a circle of light drawn around a person to protect, heal, and strengthen. Life is a constant flow of emergence.

The beauty of blessing is its belief that it can affect what unfolds. To be in the world is to be distant from the homeland of wholeness. We are confined by limitation and difficulty. When we bless, we are enabled somehow to go beyond our present frontiers and reach into the source. A blessing awakens future wholeness. We use the word foreshadow for the imperfect representation of something that is yet to come. We could say that a blessing “forebrightens” the way. When a blessing is invoked, a window opens in eternal time. The word blessing comes from the Old English: Blêtsian, blêdsian, blœˆdsian. As intimated in the sound of blêdsian it means “to sanctify or consecrate with blood.”

It is interesting that though the word blessing sounds abstract, a thing of the word and the air, in its original meaning it was vitally connected to the life force. In ancient traditions blood was life; it connected the earthly, the human,and the divine. To bless also means to invoke divine favor upon.

We never see the script of our lives; nor do we know what is coming toward us, or why our life takes on this particular shape or sequence. A blessing is different from a greeting, a hug, a salute, or an affirmation; it opens a different door in human encounter. One enters into the forecourt of the soul, the source of intimacy and the compass of destiny. Our longing for the eternal kindles our imagination to bless. Regardless of how we configure the eternal, the human heart continues to dream of a state of wholeness, a place where everything comes together, where loss will be made good, where blindness will transform into vision, where damage will be made whole, where the clenched question will open in the house of surprise, where the travails of a life’s journey will enjoy a homecoming. To invoke a blessing is to call some of that wholeness upon a person now…

The beauty of blessing is that it recognizes no barriers—and no distances. All the given frontiers of blockage that separate us can be penetrated by the loving subtlety of blessing. This can often be the key to awakening and creating forgiveness. We often linger in the crippling states of anger and resentment. Hurt is always unfair and unexpected; it can leave a bitter residue that poisons the space between us. Eventually the only way forward is forgiveness..

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings

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