You can't learn love

Monday, December 19, 2016

Monday of the 4^th Week of Advent

We are waiting for the miraculous this season, and it is something that has already happened but yet, as we ride the gentle waves of the liturgical cycle, we get to play “make believe” like little children and “pretend” that is hasn’t occurred yet, and with joyful anticipation we await the birth of the Lord anew.

Already/not yet. This is the time for the mystical, which is as far beyond linear time as the notion of God’s free gift of grace is from a simple stocking-stuffer. The birth of Christ has already taken place, but it has not happened yet as we make our way through the Advent readings and prayers, the O Antiphons and the hymns of expectation.

And so, if we are willing to become like little children and put down our pretentious sophistication for a while, we dwell in the land of excitement and enchantment. The Mass readings for this period of time help us as well. Today we hear of two miraculous pregnancies, miraculous because the women involved are old and barren and in disgrace, because to be barren in that society was a sign of God’s disfavor.

Manoah was to become the mother of Sampson; Elizabeth was to become the mother of John the Baptist. Both of these miracles were heralded by an angel of God, one of the same angels, we might imagine, who would be singing in flight above the manger in Bethlehem, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to people of good will.” Notice that I used the new “official” translation!

And the stage is being set for The Miraculous Birth by tales of other miracles that were taking place in the story of salvation history.

I must confess that I have a Facebook account, and at this time of year I enjoy seeing pictures of so many of my former students and friends who are building their own families, and I take delight in seeing the joy and excitement on the faces of the children. And I am moved to pray for all the children in our world whose faces are faces of misery, pain, abandonment and terror. But for today I want to focus on the happy children, and realize that even if they cannot conceptualize what is happening to them, in effect, what they are experiencing is the result of being loved.

As Fr. Richard Rohr reminds us, we don’t learn to love by studying ideas or doctrines or concepts. WE learn to love by experiencing it and “catching” it as it moves through our being.

I once heard a tale of a young man who had been lost in dissolute living and who went to a priest to ask why it was that he had not been able to find love in his life. “Do you want to find love?” the priest asked.

“Yes, Father.” “Well then, go and find yourself the nearest orphanage and volunteer to help out there for the next week, helping the children there to get through Christmas. If you do that, you will find love. You will find it by giving it.” And the young man took the priest’s advice, and he ended up saving his life and saving his soul.

Be a child this week. See the child within the people you deal with on a daily basis. And make the children smile. This is the stuff of miracles.

God bless you!

ALL peoples

Friday, December 16, 2016

Third Week of Advent: from the first reading at Mass today (Isaiah 56:6-8)

The foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, ministering to him, loving the name of the Lord, and becoming his servants . . . them I will bring to my holy mountain and make joyful in my house of prayer; . . . for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.

This is a rather extraordinary promise considering the fact that the religion of Israel, like many religions today, was exclusionary. There were those who belonged, and those who didn’t belong. But this prophecy blows that way of thinking right out of the water.

Why is it that there is such a strong tendency within religion to dualism: declaring that some people are fit to be members and some are not. And, to be honest, there are many examples in the Scriptures of this mentality at work. I think especially of the time that Jesus refused to heal the daughter of a Syro-Phonecian woman because she was not a Jew, but then changed his mind when confronted with the power of the woman’s faith and persistence. And yet the Pharisees were still busy separating those who were ‘’worthy” from those who were “not worthy.”

Jesus had a subtle way of being subversive in this regard. The Jews considered the Samaritans to be unworthy, and yet in the parable Jesus makes the good Samaritan the hero of the story. And, of course, there was the time he sat beside a Samaritan woman at the well and had a conversation with her, and as a result she believed in him and brought many of her friends and neighbors—Samaritans all—to see him and to come to faith in him as well.

This is a particularly powerful passage to keep in mind at this time in history when there are millions of displaced persons seeking refuge and new homelands, and facing often insurmountable odds against them being accepted into what one might call “comfortable” nations, the U.S.A. included.

God wants us to welcome all into our sanctuaries and homes, and to extend a merciful hand to all as well.

I saw a sad-but-true cartoon this morning. It was a drawing of the manger scene “without Jews, Arabs, Africans or refugees.”  The cartoon depicted a manger where the only inhabitants were the animals.

One last thing: these days of Advent, my heart goes out to the people of Aleppo and to all the other peoples in that part of the world who are being slaughtered because of hatred, religious extremism, or simply filthy politics. I am frustrated because I keep asking myself, “What can I do?” and coming up with no answer---until  I remember that I can pray for them in all of my masses and recitations of the Divine Office, and praying fervently that Jesus will come to show us a way that leads to peace.

God bless you! 

How can this be?

Thursday, December 15, 2016

Thursday of the Third Week of Advent

At office today I heard a reading about Advent that made absolutely no sense to me. It was well written, and very poetic, and tried to develop one of the many Advent themes, but when I took a look at each individual sentence, none of them really hit home or touched me in a way that could help me as I conduct my own very imperfect Advent journey towards Christmas. I should probably look back on my own writings and see if some of the things I’ve been saying are also as non-sensible as what I heard read at noontime.

So anyway, today I resolve to pull things out of the reading for Mass which do say something to me and which, I hope, might say something to you as well. A couple of things jumped out at me. First, 6 words from the prophet Isaiah (54:10):

My love shall never leave you.

I resist the temptation to comment except to say that those words are already written in your heart. Find them.

The second line I share with you today is from the Gospel of Luke (7:30), speaking about the Pharisees and scholars of the law, “who were not baptized by John.”

[they] rejected the plan of God for themselves.

The NRSV translation says that they “rejected God’s purpose for themselves.”

In this case, I have a few questions to ask you:

1.       How can this be? If it’s God’s plan, isn’t it going to come to fruition anyway?

2.       Well, isn’t that what Satan did?

3.       So if they do reject it, what happens to them?

4.       If God’s plan for us is the best thing that can possibly happen to us (and I believe it is), well then, how senseless it is to reject that plan. Would you or I do such a thing?

And finally, I recall a preacher once saying that if one refuses to say “Thy will be done,” then God turns to that person and says, “Ok. Your will be done.”

I hope this makes some sense to you.

God bless you!

A mid-December refreshment

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Isaiah 40:28-31

Do you not know

  or have you not heard?

The Lord is the eternal God,

  Creator of the ends of the earth.

He does not faint or grow weary,

  his understanding is beyond scrutiny.

He gives strength to the fainting,

  and to him who has no might he increases strength.

Though youths shall faint and be weary,

  and the youths stagger and fall;

They who hope in the Lord will renew their strength,

  they will soar as with eagles’ wings,

They will run and not be weary

  walk and not grow faint.  (NAB translation)

By this point in December, a great many people are indeed exhausted. This is also a time of the year that many people find difficult, for any number of reasons.

Are you taking care of yourself? Are you giving yourself enough time—rather, are you giving the Lord enough time to have direct, unimpeded access to you? Remember to breathe consciously, to close your eyes for what I like to call a “minor moment” where you clear your mind for all the distractions that oppress you and simply realize that you are in the presence of God and that he is promising to do the things that Isaiah describes in this beautiful passage from the Book of Consolation.

Could you, perhaps, take the time to write out these words on an index card or slip of paper and keep it with you throughout the day? Could you even, perhaps, memorize this passage?

Could it possibly be that at least one word, one phrase in the text has something to say directly to you? If it does, claim it. Don’t worry about what kind of effect it will have in your life: don’t forget that God’s understanding, that his ways, are so far beyond our human understanding that we cannot possibly predict how he will work with us. Prepare to be surprised. Prepare to be delighted. Today.

We are touching here on a great mystery, one that we discussed a few days back. We are considering “the peace of God which surpasses human understanding.” May it be with you this day.

Don’t forget to close your eyes for a moment and breathe deeply. As often as you like. No matter how busy or distracted you may be. Today.

Blessed Advent to you!

The Commitment to Change

Tuesday, December 13, 2016

Tuesday of the Third Week of Advent; Memorial of Saint Lucy

The Gospel today (Matthew 21:28-32) emphasizes the act of repentance. The Greek verb “to repent” is used twice in the passage.

A father asks his sons to go and work in the vineyard. One says “yes” but doesn’t go. The other, however, said “no” but then repented and went out to work as he was asked. The English translation we use simply says that he “changed his mind,” but the meaning of the original text is much stronger: he repented. He received a command from his father and initially resisted it and refused it, and we are not given to know the reason for his refusal. But then he repented: that is, reconsidered what he was asked and was, in effect, converted by his father’s request, and made an abrupt change of mind and heart.

During this season of Advent, in our preparations for the coming of the Lord’s birth, we too may find ourselves asked to make certain changes in our way of acting or thinking. The request might be subtle or it might be blunt; it might be in the form of a suggestion, or it might be a clear and unequivocal command from the Lord. And, like the son, we might find ourselves resisting the call which comes to us.

What I would like to suggest is that if you find yourself in such a circumstance that you examine your resistance. What is it about? What are you clinging to? What are you afraid to let go of? What change, big or small, are you having trouble envisioning. I remember quitting smoking several decades ago and getting discouraged by the thought, “Oh my goodness, how can I imagine living without smoking?” But the truth is that once we make the commitment to repent, then God meets us more than half-way, and often presents to us blessings that we couldn’t grasp or imagine before we had made the commitment.

I mentioned that the Greek verb “to repent” is used twice in the passage. The second time it refers to prostitutes and tax collectors, whose act of repentance involved a total change of life. But they believed the words of Jesus Christ so strongly that they found the courage to make the commitment to repent. Usually the changes that challenge us are not so drastic, and don’t necessarily involve a total change of life style. Or do they?

God bless you!

Our Lady of Guadalupe: some thoughts

Monday, December 12, 2016

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Every year, on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, our Gospel passage is the story of the Annunciation of the angel Gabriel to Mary, telling her that she was to be the mother of Our Lord Jesus Christ. Mary was a young Jewish girl from Nazareth.

The image of the Virgin of Guadalupe mysteriously imprinted on the rough fabric of Juan Diego’s cloak shows her Indian features and her dark skin. Juan Diego was a Mexican Indian, and so she appeared to him in a way that would help him see that even though his people was impoverished and downtrodden, he had a certain dignity and stature in her eyes and in the eyes of her Son. Notice that she didn’t appear to the bishop; she send Juan Diego as an emissary to the bishop, the poor insignificant man to a man of power and prestige. He was skeptical, as Bishops are wont to be when someone tells them of having seen a vision—nothing strange about that at all—but when he asked for a sign, Our Lady sent him a sign that was miraculous (roses in winter!) and magnificent and that removed any doubt.

This tale is especially poignant this year as Pope Francis continually speaks about the need of the Church and of society to be particularly devoted to the needs of the poor and downtrodden, and to the essential need in our time for economic justice. This isn’t a new message; no, not at all; but its urgency at this moment in our time has been emphasized by the teaching and preaching of our Pontiff.

A couple of questions that you might ask yourself, or perhaps ask Our Lady:

--What can you do that you are not doing now to become more sensitive to those who are subjugated, impoverished, downtrodden or forgotten by the powers-that-be in our societies?

--If the Blessed Mother appeared to you, in what guise do you think she would appear?

--Are you able to see the beauty in the faces of those who are so very different from you in so many ways?

Three last thoughts today: many modern theologians are scoffing at the notion of the perpetual virginity of Mary and interpret scriptural texts in such a way to prove their viewpoints. But here, in this wonderful tale of an extraordinary Marian apparition, Mary herself identifies herself as an “eternal virgin.”

The church Our Lady asked to be built was to be built on an ancient shrine to the pagan mother goddess. What do you make of that?

And finally, noting Our Lady’s special compassion and concern for the poor, might it be possible for us to pray today for the poor among us who perhaps are not able to pray for themselves and to offer them to the Blessed Virgin so that she could take them into her care?

God bless you!

Let Him lead you

Friday, December 09, 2016

Today we meditate on Isaiah 40:10-11

Here comes with power the Lord God who rules by his strong arm; Here is his reward with him, his recompense before him. Like a shepherd he feeds his flock; in his arms he gathers the lambs, carrying them in his bosom, and leading the ewes with care.

Remember that this prophecy was directed to a people living in exile, proclaiming to them that their exile was at an end and that they were going to be brought back home, and their passage would be made easy (yesterday’s reflection). This passage focuses on the care God has for his people, and notice that the image of the Shepherd and his sheep appears both in this part of the book of Isaiah, and also in the book of Ezekiel, and then finally in the great Gospel of John, chapter 10. Therefore we can say that all the “shepherd” passages in the Old Testament find their fulfillment in Jesus Christ, Whose birth we anticipate during this season of Advent.

Notice the tenderness (Tuesday’s reflection) and the care; notice that the shepherd feeds his flock (Eucharist?); notice that the shepherd carries them when they cannot walk by themselves (think of the famous “Footprints” message).

Do you, perhaps, need to rest in the arms of the Shepherd today? If so, place yourself there when you go to pray. Allow yourself to be engulfed by his “strong” arms and nestled to Himself. Know that you are being led on a path whose destination you do not know, but that He is leading you and guiding you. Surrender to His lead and to His direction for your life. Consider all the present circumstances of your life and realize that it is here now that He is realizing his purpose for you, and if the present circumstance is filled with pain, know that your pain is meant for good and that it is going to be transformed when your Savior comes to you. Take to heart also the prophecy of Isaiah read at Mass today: “I, the Lord, your God, teach you what is for your good, and lead you on the way you should go.” Let him lead you. Give up trying to walk the path on your own with only yourself as guide. That never works out well, as your past experience can probably teach you.

This would be a good day indeed to read Psalm 23 and relate it to the passage we are considering today.

Blessed Advent to you. Have a nice weekend!

The Power of Commitment

Thursday, December 08, 2016

The Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary

Today I would like to continue our study of the wonderful beginning of the “Book of Consolation,” Isaiah 40-56, working with the text of Chapter 40, verses 1-11.

On Tuesday we meditated on the first few verses of that chapter with particular attention to the words comfort, tenderness and expiation. Today I’d like to look at the promises made in verses 4 and 5:

Every valley shall be filled in,

every mountain and hill shall be made low;

The rugged land shall be made a plain,

the rough country, a broad valley.

This is what the promise says to me, and what it has said to me in the past:

When you come to serve the Lord, and when you make a conscious decision to give yourself over to the Lord and to His care and keeping, wondrous things begin to happen. Seemingly insurmountable barriers begin to be lowered and you can pass over them without an heroic amount of effort. Small “coincidences” occur in your life that never would otherwise have occurred if you had not made the commitment to turn your life over to him. Barriers will be removed, difficulties eased, and you will receive all sorts of help and support from people, places and things that you had never realized you could count on before. People who are toxic or dangerous to you will be removed from your life, and, one by one, habits that you have that go against your purpose will be dropped and eliminated almost without effort. All you have to do is to make the commitment and then get out of God’s way so that He can act in your life.

I have known this to be true in my own life on a number of occasions, and I have seen it operative in the lives of others who are close to me. Interestingly enough, the 3^rd of the 12-steps for recovery from addiction describes the beginning of the same process, and many spiritual writers, myself included, have encouraged everyone to make the process of the 12-steps a part of their own spiritual journey. Here is the 3^rd step in its original language:

Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

One of the barriers associated with this step is the image of God that an individual may live with, a God who is judgmental and punishing, or remote and uncaring. On this, consider these words of Fr. Thomas Keating: ”This God as revealed by Jesus is forgiving, gentle, nurturing, caring, motherly, always leaning over to protect us, and secretly accompanying us in our daily lives. This companionship is available to everybody the moment they turn to God” (Divine Therapy and Addiction, p. 45).

Turn to this God today, and repeat in your heart the same words the Blessed Mother spoke at the Annunciation: “be it done unto me according to your word.”

May God bless you, and may the Blessed Mother pray for you throughout this day and the remaining days of Advent.

An Advent Hymn

Wednesday, December 07, 2016

We sing a hymn at noon every day during Advent, and its text is particularly poignant this year.

I share it with you here below:

Light-bearing Christ, come down to us

and light in darkness sow;

come down and save our fallen world

whose sinful ways you know.

Prepare us for your light and truth,

who watch and wait for you.

Restore lost dignity to man;

come down and make us new.

Almighty Father, speak the  Word

your children long to hear,

and with your Spirit dwell with us.

Lord God of love, draw near.

Perhaps you can find it helpful in your own Advent meditations.

God bless you!

Tender Comfort

Tuesday, December 06, 2016

Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her service is at an end, her guilt is expiated. (Isaiah 40:1-2)

Thus begins the section of the Book of the prophet Isaiah which is often referred to as the “Book of Comfort.” Let us take comfort from its wonderful messages and let us make them our own.

As always, and particularly during the season of Advent, I encourage you to take the words Jerusalem or Israel as referring to you personally as your practice your lectio divina. Here are some suggestions that you might find helpful in your prayer:

God speaks to the prophet and tells him to give his people comfort. May you receive that gift today and throughout the season of Advent. How do you need to be comforted? What area of your life is marked by struggle, toil, defeat, pain or anxiety? Can you invoke God’s comfort and experiencing it touching those areas of your life?

In your prayer, realize that through the prophet your God is speaking tenderly to you. What does a tender voice sound like? When is the last time anyone has spoken tenderly to you? When is the last time you have spoken tenderly to someone else? Can you open yourself to receive the tenderness of your God as He speaks words of comfort to you? Remember what I said yesterday: the magnitude of the gift depends on our readiness and our openness to receive what God wants to give us. Let in the tenderness.

God also speaks of the expiation of guilt. Is this too good to be true? Present to God the one or two things in your life that you are most guilty about, and ask to have that guilt expiated. If you haven’t already done so in the past, this might also be a good time to go receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation and to allow the grace and forgiveness of that wonderful sacrament to wash you, to comfort you, and to hear the voice of the priest saying to you “I absolve you from all of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Rest within the dynamic grace of the Trinity, realize that the Trinity invites you too to become part of the flow of love within it (see Rohr: The Divine Dance for more about the dynamic relationships within the Trinity). Rest there.

There are many more blessings offered in this first chapter of the “Book of Consolation.” We will consider more of it on Thursday and Friday. (I have something different planned for you tomorrow.)

But for today, rest in these three words of blessing: Comfort, tenderness, and expiation.

God bless you!

God will restore

Monday, December 05, 2016

During these early days of Advent, we are coddled with beautiful and fantastical predictions of the prophet Isaiah. If you have a chance, I encourage you to take your Bible and read Isaiah 11:1-10 and 35:1-10, the two readings we had at Mass on Sunday and again at Mass today.

As I sat and listened to the Isaiah reading yesterday, I felt washed by the Spirit as (S)he is identified by the prophet speaking of the coming Savior: The spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him: a spirit of wisdom and of understanding, a spirit of counsel and of strength, a spirit of knowledge and of fear of the Lord, and his delight shall be the fear of the Lord. Not by appearance shall he judge, nor by hearsay shall he decide, but he shall judge the poor with justice . . .

We do well to consider these qualities of the Spirit in Our Lord, and ask that He touch us with a measure of each as we need it and as we have the capacity to receive the gifts. Always remember that the power of a particular gift depends on some extent on us, on our openness and willingness, on our sensitivity and humility, on our readiness and our open acknowledgment of need. I can’t help thinking of the lines of psalm 24:

O gates, lift high your heads;

grow higher, ancient doors.

Let him enter, the king of glory!

And so, lift high your gates and open wide. Let him fill you with good things. Make your Christmas list and make it big. Expand your faith that God, in His goodness and love, wants to do good things for you.

This God even has the power to restore nature and to redeem it. Many of the prophecies of Isaiah speak of things which have not happened yet, particularly things involving nature. From today’s first reading:

The desert and the parched land will exult; the steppe will rejoice and bloom.

And from yesterday:

The wolf shall be the guest of the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall browse together, with a little child to guide them.  . . . . . there shall be no harm or ruin on all my holy mountain . . .

These prophecies are particularly poignant to me this year as I often read of the devastation our planet is suffering, and of the terrible things to come.

But God will restore. And He will restore whatever devastation lies within you as well. Hope in Him and wait for His salvation!

God bless you!

Wait in faith

Friday, December 02, 2016

Waiting, waiting, waiting . . . one of the great Advent themes is based upon that one word: wait.

We are impatient. We want things to be wrapped up quickly. We don’t like long lines. We expect mysteries to be solved within the hour of a television program. Children (and sometimes adults) count the days until Christmas and try to do anything they can to hurry up its coming). And, we must add, more than one adult starts eagerly awaiting the coming of January 2, when all the hoopla will be over and done with.

How long, Lord, . . . . how long will you come? How long before you rectify this injustice? How long before you bring me through sweet death? How long before you take away this character defect from me? How long before you bring peace to our world, you who are called the Prince of Peace? Things are getting worse, not better, Lord: How long before you fix this mess we are in?

And almost always, the answer is, wait. Wait in faith in what you cannot see now. Wait in faith for the eventual resolution of everything that hurts in your life. Wait until your trial has run its course. It will, you  know, but remember that God’s time is not the same as our linear sense of time to which we are bound during our earthly lives.

That is why it is so good to meditate, to enter a realm where time releases its hold on us, even for a few brief moments. That is also why it is so good to read the psalms, even though they ask “how long,” and noticing that some of the psalms of lament end up being psalms of praise before they are finished---but remember that the psalms are in the realm of eternal time, not linear time.

During these first few days of Advent, we hear proclaimed some of the wonderful promises of Isaiah, promises of things that have not yet been brought to fulfillment, even though thousands of years have passed. Their purpose, I suspect, is to help us set our eyes on what lies beyond the realm of human imagining and to realize that we, too, are part of this eternal time when the promises will come true:

“On that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of gloom and darkness, the eyes of the blind shall see . . . . . the tyrant will be no more and the arrogant will have gone . . . .those who err in spirit shall acquire understanding, and those who find fault shall receive instruction.”  (Isaiah 29:17-24---the first reading for today’s Mass).

These things shall come to pass. The trials in your life will come to an end. The mysteries will be cleared up. And you will be given a great sign of hope: the birth of the Son of God lying upon straw in a tiny cave in a subjugated city in a part of the world marked by strife and violence for centuries. In the darkness there is a great light. Hope for it; long for it; gaze upon it; and pray that your faith may be straightened.

God bless you! Have a blessed weekend, this second Sunday of Advent.

He is alreadywithin you

Thursday, December 01, 2016

Spiritual writers frequently refer to the three comings of Christ.

The first coming is at his birth in a stable Bethlehem, which we anticipate during the season of Advent, but which has already happened in linear time (as opposed to Liturgical Time).

The third coming is at the end of the world when Christ comes to judge and to save. This coming is usually referred to as the Second Coming.

However, before the “Second Coming” there is another coming of Christ which we often tend to overlook, and that is the coming of Christ into the human heart and soul. This is not a one-time event, like a “born-again experience,” but is something that happens repeatedly at key moments in our spiritual evolution. But like the “first coming,” this coming has already happened even though we don’t realize it, can’t accept it, overlook it, or live as if it has not happened. And yet you can find numerous references to this coming in the New Testament. I’ll give you just one example, from Romans 5:5

“hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, that has been given to us.” (See also Romans 8:14).

And that is my message to you this day. Realize that you already possess the fullness of the Holy Trinity. Live as if it is within you. Act as if it is within you. In private prayer, open your heart to experience the love of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Ask for what you will. Allow this presence to bring forgiveness and healing to your wounded spirit, to the cracks and crevices of your life and let it flow like water down through them to bring new life and freshness to what has lain barren and forgotten.

Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus!

God bless you.