Like loving a child

Thursday, August 31, 2017

There is an interesting contrast in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians (3:7-13), our first reading at Mass today.

Paul tells the Thessalonians that there are shortcomings in their faith and that he wants to visit in order to remedy them.

Immediately after that he extends a beautiful blessing: “. . . may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we have for you, so as to strengthen your hearts to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.”

On the one hand, they are deficient. On the other hand, they are loved and cared for much as a father and mother do for their children, children who still have a lot to learn and who at times are far less than perfect.

That is the way God cares for us his children. It’s not a question of how much we know and understand. It’s not a question of whether or not we measure up to any particular standard at all: we are loved and cherished and blessed before we attain any pre-assumed level of perfection, wisdom or knowledge.

Knowing that, perhaps we can be more patient towards ourselves. And doing that, perhaps we can be more understanding and patient when we see what we think are the shortcomings of others.

God bless you!

God suffers?

Tuesday, August 29, 2017

Today at Mass we read about the beheading of St. John the Baptist, such a terrible and sleazy story, such a senseless murder by a madman beguiled by wine and lust and pride, such a horrendous ending to the life of a man whom Jesus called the “greatest born of women,” who had done so much to prepare the way for Jesus’ public ministry.

I remember the remark of St. Theresa of Avila that if this is the way God treats His friends, it’s no wonder that He has so few of them. And we might well wonder why God permitted this to happen and why He was silent about the onslaught of evil against what is holy. If we extend this question more broadly, we might also wonder why He allowed the Holocaust to place, or why He has allowed so many to suffer from natural disasters (as the people in Texas are now doing), why He permitted the seeming destruction of His only Son, or even why He seems to be looking the other way when terrible things happen in our own lives. Why has He been silent?

But has He been silent, truly?

Cardinal Sarah (“The Power of Silence”) believes that God suffers when we suffer, that He is present with us at the point of our suffering and misery (just as He is present with us in the reality of our greatest weakness and sinfulness), and that, just like a parent who suffers when her child makes bad and dangerous choices in life, God grieves with us.

Consider your own life, if you will. Perhaps God has never “spoken” words to you that helped you get through your trials and difficulties, but if you are a person of prayer, you might well be aware that He has been with you and has sent you graces and strength and even solutions to the problems you face.

I was concerned and frustrated about something yesterday, when all of a sudden, a solution to the situation “appeared” in my mind and I was able to act on it. I don’t know about you, but I believe that God was not silent as I was considering what to do.

Cardinal Sarah writes that, “God manifests himself in the tear shed by the child who suffers, and not in the order of the world that would cause this tear. God has his mysterious way of being close to us in our trials.” and that “The person of prayer is also the only one to grasp the silent signs of affection that God sends him.

I pray you might have that experience as well.

God bless you!

Food for the eyes

Monday, August 28, 2017

While on vacation last week, I watched news programs on television. (We do not have televisions in the monastery.) For the most part, the news was distressing, but what bothered me even more was the constant barrage of commercials with their flashing images, computer-generated bursts of “creativity,” and also the fantabulous lies, distortions, attempts to manipulate, temptations to greed and covetousness—especially to the gullible, and most especially, the car ads. They’re the worst of all, in my humble opinion.

So many people are assaulted by this barrage on a regular basis, sometimes for hours at a time, day after day and night after night. What does it do to them, I wondered. I remember Cardinal Sarah writing about the deleterious effect noise for the ears and noise for the eyes affects the soul. I recall what Jesus taught:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! (Matthew 6:22-23)

My readings and thoughts tend to connect with one another. This morning I read these lines in Steve Taylor’s book of meditations (“The Calm Center: reflections and meditations for spiritual awakening”:

It takes courage to face up to reality---

it’s so easy to live in avoidance

to lose yourself in a haze of diversion

in a lukewarm glow of entertainment

or a stream of never-ending activity

making sure you’re always so immersed and occupied

that there’s no time to wonder who you are. (p. 51)

I was back home on Sunday. Sunday night we celebrated Vespers with Eucharistic Benediction. I usually close my eyes during Benediction, but last night I kept them open, and I gazed upon the quiet beauty displayed before me: the altar, the candles, the Eucharist in a monstrance on the altar, the special vestments, the sight of the incense rising above it all. And it occurred to me that maybe by letting my eyes gaze upon this peaceful, gorgeous scene, they might be healed from all the toxic images that infected them while I was watching television commercials.

God bless you!

noise damage

Thursday, August 24, 2017

More from Cardinal Sarah on silence:

“Our world no longer hears God because it is constantly speaking, at a devastating speed and volume, in order to say nothing.” (“The Power of Silence” p. 56)

What if you or I were to remain silent, unless we had something significant to say? Something that would build up, or console, or comfort, or bring joy—not to ourselves, but to others? What if this were to happen at any gathering of individuals? Isn’t it a sad truth that when people gather casually, most of what Is said will quickly be erased as having no significance at all, and isn’t it also true that the more we speak, the more we reveal our own inadequacies, lack of coherence, or even pathology?

Great friends or even lovers develop the ability to be present to one another for long periods of time in silence. The mere presence of the other brings peace, joy, safety, contentment. But, in our world, unfortunately, the majority of people feel they have to say something to fill the silence.

I find this most distressing at daily Masses. We have just receive the Eucharist and perhaps sit in silence for a very brief instant. A concluding prayer is said, and then the dismissal, and as soon as the priest leaves the sanctuary, right at that point, most people break out in conversation. An extraordinary thing has happened! Our bodies are filled with the very Body and Blood of the Lord. And yet, we find it so difficult to simply sit in silence to savor what has just happened. What a terrible loss this is.

Cardinal Sarah writes pointedly about what it costs us to fail to resist the chatter and noise. “In this hell of noise, man disintegrates and is lost; he is broken up into countless worries, fantasies, and fears.”

Do you sometimes find the voices in your head tormenting you with worries, fantasies, and fears? Perhaps the remedy is to find a silence corner of your world and rest there, paying attention to your breath and get beneath your mind’s unnerving chatter. Steven Taylor (“The Calm Center”) offers solace to a person who has lost himself beneath the weight of noise:

“You don’t need to do anything---

you need to do nothing

to life yourself out of the noise and stress

until the fog has cleared

and your being has settled to stillness

and the connection forms itself again.” (p. 49)

God bless you!

God's generosity exceeds our limits

Wednesday, August 23, 2017

Today’s Gospel passage (Matthew 20:1-160 speaks of the generosity of God, a generosity which far surpasses our limiting ideas of “fair” or “just,” of “earned” or “not earned,” of “worthy” or “unworthy.”

It tells of the story of the man who got called to work at the last hour, but who ended up getting paid the same amount offered to those who had worked under the hot sun all day.

We customarily recoil from this tale: “it’s not fair!”

And that’s true, according to our usual way of thinking. But Jesus calls us to a fresh, new way of thinking about His Father and the abundance of His grace, His mercy, His forbearance and His sense of justice.

If we put it into practical terms, we may be able to grasp it better. Consider these examples

·         That dirty, rotten, scoundrel who has cheated and defeated you several times in your life calls upon the mercy of God and you discover that he is given the same place in heaven as you.

·         Those people you despise in your heart are blessed by God and delivered from their sins and their sufferings and enjoy peace and abundance forever in eternity.

·         The day you little sister got a bigger piece of cake than you did.

·         The person who was passed over you for promotion at work . . . and then becomes a resounding success.

·         The ones whose sin you consider to be the most detestable are surrounded and forgiven in the embrace of the Almighty Judge.

One last thought for you: Considering these things, how might you apply them to your life here in the present?

God bless you!

Flow

Monday, August 21, 2017

Just a brief thought for today while I am enjoying my vacation:

From Steve Taylor:

“It’s time to stop swimming

and let the river carry you.

Why strive so hard

when you can flow easily.”

I see the “river” as God.

God bless you!

Most truly myself

Friday, August 18, 2017

I have come to discover that

I am most truly myself when I am not

My-Self.

The truest aspect of my being

is that which resides

in the deep silence,

beneath emotions, passions,

fears, regrets,

past and future,

the desire to plan ahead,

or to reproach what has gone before.

When I am able to reach

that quiet realm where I rest in God,

I experience a freedom

which can sustain me throughout the day.

Most often, I experience this freedom

in fleeting moments,

because all the stuff of my egoic life

tries to crowd out the silence

and tries to convince me how

significant and important it really is,

and how deserving my attention.

Futile, fleeting flights of fancy

are these thoughts.

It is best to let them pass through

without leaving any residue,

and to return to the breath

which will lead me back

to blessed silence

and divine reality.

God bless you! Have a nice weekend.

I will be on vacation next week, so I won’t guarantee that I will post every day.

Let God gentle you

Thursday, August 17, 2017

When we get to the point in our spiritual journeys where we realize that God is love and that He is calling us to deeper love, not only for Him but also for one another, we also become aware of how much we are “un-love,” of how we miss so many opportunities to live out that love in our lives, and how often we lose touch with love in our thoughts and actions, in what we do and in what we fail to do.

I often remember something Thomas Merton wrote one time, that he realized that if he entered the monastery he would be given 100,000 opportunities to act in charity and that if he were lucky, he just might be able to grab onto a couple of them. That’s how I feel at times, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could say the same thing yourself.

And precisely because we reflect so much on God’s love, we become more and more aware of how we fall short of that love, and sometimes our failures can be humiliating and devastating to us. And yet this is not a time to be discouraged; every failure is another opportunity to learn and to grow.

And is there a remedy for our lack of love? Mother Theresa would have told you and me to pray more, to spend more time in silent prayer, especially before the Eucharist, and to allow God’s never-ceasing love to continue to do its work in us, to soften what is so often all too brittle, to smooth over what is so often too harsh.

Pray more. Don’t worry. Let go of the past. Be gentle with yourself. Receive God’s love, and let it gentle you.

God bless you!

A simple "rosary" prayer

Wednesday, August 16

In a homily this weekend, our Fr. Benedict offered us a very simple way to use the rosary for contemplative prayer, which I am pleased to pass on to you today.

Use a rosary, and as you move from bead to bead, simply say, “Jesus, help me,” or even simply the name of “Jesus.”

This came from a story about a nun ministering to a man who was near death. She spoke to him of Jesus and what He had done for us, and eventually, the man asked to be Baptized. On another day he asked to be taught how to say the rosary, and since the nun knew he was too weak at this point to learn the prayers (“Our Father,” “Hail Mary,” and “Glory be”), she suggested he do as I stated above.

I’ve been doing it since I heard the homily, and I find it a wonderful way to enter into a contemplative state. Perhaps it will help you as well.

God bless you!

The Assumption

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary

I’ve always believed there to be a simple and logical explanation for this reality that Mary was taken up into heaven without undergoing physical death. I offer it in three propositions:

1. The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6:23)

2. Mary never sinned.

3. Mary never needed to undergo the punishment for sin, namely death.

Take it or leave it.

On another and somewhat unrelated note, Cardinal Sarah (“The Power of Silence”), writing about what he calls the “silence of the eyes,” remarks on the relationship between modern light pollution and its effect on the human conscience:

“The faculty of sight, which ought to see and contemplate the essential things, is turned aside to what is artificial. Our eyes confuse day and night because our whole lives are immersed in a permanent light. In cities that sine with a thousand lights, our eyes no longer find restful areas of darkness, and consciences no longer recognize sin.” (p. 42-43)

From this I make one suggestion, for what it is worth:

Pray in the darkness. Pray with your eyes closed, or at least focus all of your attention on just one simple object that represents for you the “essential things.”

God bless you! On this feast day, don’t be afraid to ask the Blessed Mother for special favors.

Thank you!

Friday, August 11, 2017

Scientists doing research on the brain have been trying to pinpoint what it is that causes feelings of happiness, self-fulfillment, sense of purpose, and confidence. So far, Abbot Matthew told us in a homily this morning, the one factor they have been able to identify is this:

GRADITUDE

Give thanks to the Lord always!

Remember what He has done for you.

Give thanks for everything he has created,

even the tiniest things:

the various varieties of the color of blue;

the sight of dust particles floating in the air in the sunlight;

the pebble alongside your walkway;

the clouds, the horizon, the breezes, the bees.

every person in your life, even those you have difficulty with,

the difficulties, because they give you an opportunity to grow.

Look at the world through new eyes.

Imagine that you have been blind until today,

and suddenly your sight has been rrestored,

what is the first thing you notice?

Give thanks for everything as if you are seeing it

for the first time.

Be like St. Francis:

praising brother sun and sister moon

and giving thanks for it all.

Every single situation in your life,

give thanks. God has allowed them for a reason.

Give thanks for yourself.

Give thanks for man-made things,

not for things themselves as for the skill and learning and wisdom

of those who have been able to create them.

Give thanks for creativity,

for learning and for knowledge,

for skills and for craftsmanship,

for technology and inventiveness,

for those who have made it possible for you to read these words,

for generosity and compassion you see in others.

For all things, give thanks to God,

and all will be well with you.

Thanks be to God!

Have a nice weekend. God bless you!

Sifting through the Noise

Tuesday, August 08, 2017

In his book “The Power of Silence,” Robert Cardinal Sara writes about how we are bombarded with stimuli and how much that affects our sense of presence and serenity and even our relationship with God. I’ll let him speak:

“Far from God and from the lights that spring from the true Light, man can no longer see the stars, cities have become such flashlights that dazzle our eyes. Modern life does not allow us to look calmly at things.”  (p. 43. The emphasis is mine.) . . . . .

Can you take just a moment and look calmly at just a single thing you can see, much like I spoke about gazing upon a big of grass in the cloister last week?

If we could develop the ability to look calmly at the other people in our life, how much would the quality of our life and relationships be transformed? This is something we have to practice, because the world is armed to defeat us in our efforts to live reflectively and to allow God to see the world through our own eyes (and ears and touch). I can’t help thinking of the outcry made by a young monk in Rilke’s poem “Ich verinne:”

“I am aware of so many senses,

all of them thirsting with new demands.

Painfully in a hundred parts

I throb and tense . . . “ (transl. by Susan Ranson)

How do we vibrate and how great is our tension? And what can we do to relieve ourselves, and to lessen the tightened coils within us? What concrete, specific steps can we take to eliminate some of the sensory noise that tears us away from the true Reality and Beauty of our lives lived in God’s embrace?

Turn off the television? Spend less time on line? Simplify our environments? This is a question that each of us needs to answer for ourselves. (For today, after I post this reflection to Facebook, I won’t waste any time looking over the trivialities it offers me every time I go there.)

Cardinal Sara says it so eloquently, and I’ll close by letting him have the last word:

“Man feels obliged to seek ever new realities that give him an appetite to own things; but his eyes are red, haggard, and sick. The artificial spectacles and the screens glowing uninterruptedly try to bewitch the mind and the soul. In the brightly lit prisons of the modern world, man is separated from himself and from God. He is riveted to ephemeral things, farther and farther away from what is essential.”

Find what is essential and you will bring more joy into your life.

God bless you!

Off the Ash Heap

Monday, August 7, 2017

 A friend has been going through a difficult time lately, and because of it his weaknesses were getting the better of him, adding to his distress. He sought some consolation and/or advice from me. What I offered him, first of all, was one of my favorite passages from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 43:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name, you are mind.

When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;

when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,

and the flame shall not consume you.

. . .

Because you are precious in my sight,

and honored, and I love you.  (Is 43:1b-2,4a)

It is so easy for us to be weighed down by stress, by failure, by shame or by guilt that we have a hard time grasping the reality that we are precious in God’s sight.

But that is what we are, and He has told us that again and again, and demonstrated it to us in very graphic ways.

Now, what about those weaknesses—and we all have some, don’t we—and sometimes they trip us up and, like St. Paul (whom I quoted last week), sometimes we do the very things we hate and don’t manage to do the good things we want to do? Paul, if you remember, ended up calling himself a wretch! And yet he is a saint!

Well, the weaknesses that we have are precisely the points where God comes to meet us. God loves us with our weaknesses, not in spite of them, and always remember, as Richard Rohr teaches, God loves us not because we are good but because God is good.

God is infinitely kind and infinitely patient and his mercy is infinite as well. He meets us are our weakest point and raises us up above the heap of sludge and mire that our lives can be at some times. Consider Psalm 40:

I waited, I waited for the Lord,

and he stooped down to me;

he heard my cry.

He drew me from the deadly pit,

from the miry clay.

He set my feet upon a rock,

made my footsteps firm.

He put a new song into my mouth,

praise of our God.

And finally, Psalm 113:

From the dust he lifts up the lowly,

from the ash heap* he raises the poor,

to set them in the company of princes,

yes with the princes of his people.

Note: Remember that the ancient Hebrews would dress in sackcloth and sit in ashes as a sign of repentence and mourning.

Think on these things this week.

God bless you!

Not filling up the time

Friday, August 4, 2017

I sat on a bench in the cloister this afternoon,

waiting for the bell to ring for prayer.

I had 12 minutes to wait—not a long time,

yet long enough that my inclination

was to consider what to do

to fill the time.

We do that a lot, don’t we?

Trying to fill time with

something.

God forbid the time be left empty!

But wait! Maybe that’s what God

is inviting me to do: just to remain

empty

for that dozen minutes.

So I stared at a grassy area

before my feet,

and noticed how silently the grass sat there,

and coveted that simple silence.

Thoughts got quiet, in the presence of the present moment.

Nothing from the past got through to me, none of it mattered

in this one precious moment,

concerns for the future dropped away as well,

and I was free---me and the green

grass and the fresh air

and the timelessness.

It was if I was being protected and

cared for, and unburdened, unsullied, unprepossessed,

and then the bell rang

and I gave thanks

and headed inside to pray

with words.

Have a wonderful weekend. God bless you!

Embracing our darkness

Thursday, August 03, 2017

In today’s Gospel (Matthew 13:47-53), Jesus presents us with a horrifying picture:

“Thus it will be at the end of the age. The angels will go out and separate the wicked from the righteous and throw them into the fiery furnace, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.”

This passage made me shudder as I wondered what it would be like to be cast aside away from the Kingdom, away from God, into an excruciating loneliness with no hope of making my way back. And I wonder if any of the great Biblical figures also considered such a moment of despairing loss, particularly at the times when they had committed their greatest sins, or in their folly chose what would alienate them from God. I thought of Moses the murderer, Peter the denier, Paul the zealous persecuter; I thought of those who were lost in sin whose salvation was brought to them by Jesus himself—the tax collector, the adulteress, the Samaritan woman, the prostitutes. And I thought of all those who were cast away from society but who were embraced by God Himself through the ministry of Jesus Christ—the lepers especially, the blind, the demoniacs, even the dead whom He raised to life again.

And I realized that it seems like God’s saving love has consistently been the most powerful for those who were most in need. And then I thought of my own condition, and of the weaknesses and past sins and the sometimes frustrating condition of imperfection that I have to live with day by day as well as what Carl Jung would call “the shadow side,” because there is a cave of darkness within all of us.

And I realized that there was great hope. And I resolved once again to continue my efforts to make my away back to God, or as Saint Benedict put it at the very beginning of his Rule, “The labor of obedience will bring you back to him from whom you had drifted through the sloth of disobedience.” (Prologue, v. 2)

“Blessed are those who know their need for God.” I don’t remember who said or wrote those words, but they have always been a hope-filled consolation.

Mystics from all religious traditions have always know that it is by embracing our darkness that we move towards the light. Consider these words of the Persian mystic poet Rumi:

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested.

Whoever sees clearly what’s diseased in himself begins to gallop on the way.

And I remembered the outcry made by the great Saint Paul:

The desire to do right is there, but not the power. What happens is that I do, not the good I will to do, but the evil I do not intend. . . . What a wretched man I am! Who can save me from this body under the power of death? All praise to God, through Jesus Christ Our Lord! (Romans 7:18-19, 24-25)

And finally, I give thanks for the great gift our tradition has given us to sum all of this up in just a few simple words: “Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner!”

God bless you!

Creating Silence

Wednesday, August 02, 2017

In his book “The Power of Silence,” Cardinal Sarah quotes Pope Benedict XVI:

“we live in a society in which it seems that every space, every moment must be ‘filled’ with projects, activities and noise; there is often no time even to listen or to converse. Dear brothers and sisters, let us not fear to create silence, within and outside ourselves, if we wish to be able not only to become aware of God’s voice but also to make out the voice of the person beside us, the voices of others.” (in Sarah, p. 27)

The Cardinal teaches that God is within every human heart, in the deepest and innermost place in a person’s being, a place of deep interior silence. If we seek God, we don’t need to seek Him outside ourselves, but rather in a profound inner silence where we can draw near the silence presence of God within us.

I’ve been reading the beginning pages of this book, and when I studied the Gospel passage for today’s Mass, I was able to make a connection with two verses from the Gospel of Matthew:

“. . . the Kingdom of heaven is like a merchant searching for fine pearls. When he finds a pearl of great price, he goes and sells all he has and buys it.”

In my meditation, I considered that the place of interior silence is that pearl, and that I must sell everything I have—that is, all my thoughts and preoccupations—in order to attain it. And so, in my silent breath, I sought out that pearl, and when thoughts or distractions came my way, I “sold” them away and returned my focus to the pearl. This helped me; perhaps it will help you as well.

God bless you!

"The Dictatorship of Noise"

Tuesday, August 01, 2017

I’ve come across an intriguing new book by African Cardinal Rober Sarah called “The Power of Silence: against the dictatorship of noise” (Ignatius Press) and you may be reading excerpts from it in these Reflections as time goes by.

The Cardinal maintains that as our world becomes more and more noisy, the need for us seek and carve out moments of silence in our lives is more difficult than ever and yet vitally important. I’m reminded of what C.S. Lewis said in the Screwtape Letters (another book you should read if you have never done so before) that “noise is the music of hell.”

These summer days are times when a whole host of construction and repair projects are taking place all over campus. We have endured far too many Masses and offices where the noise outside the church windows has made it even impossible for us to hear one another as we sing the Mass and pray the Liturgy of the Hours. Sometimes the coincidences are diabolical: just at the Mass begins, the noise outside will get louder and louder. I can’t help thinking about the Life of Saint Benedict where it describes noise outside the church while the monks are trying to pray, noise which is meant to distract and tempt the monks. Obviously nothing has changed except for the fact that we are bombarded with far more decibels on a regular basis than would ever have happened in St.Benedict’s time. And every year it gets worse, haven’t you noticed?

I have a good set of headphones and some of my favorite music loaded onto my Iphone, and I have to fight the temptation to play the music when I am working in my studio. So far, I’ve been successful. I think of the students on our campus, and I would expect that they would find it difficult or even impossible to understand why one would even want to turn of the music.

And then, of course, there is the ever-present noise inside our own heads which never ceases. Nonetheless, it is urgent, if we want to live spiritually and reflective, to make time in our lives when we focus on our breathing and try to get beneath the constant chatter our minds produce, even as we try to fall asleep.

And yet the Lord comes to us in the silence. The words He speaks to us are silent words, and we have to grow silent if we are to hear His voice. Right in the beginning of his book, Cardinal Sarah writes:

When he drapes himself in silence, as God himself dwells in a great silence, man is close to heaven, or, rather, he allows God to manifest himself in him.

And when we do so, wrote Symeon the New Theologian, “He makes us utterly real. And everything that is hurt, everything that seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful, maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged is in Him transformed.”

And without silence, those hurtful things continue to assail us.

God bless you!