God Comes in History to Change Us

BLESSED AND HAPPY FEAST DAY!

The Christmas season culminates in the celebration of "the Baptism of Jesus," known in the early Church (and still in the Byzantine tradition) as the Theophany. The mystery of the Trinity is revealed as the Spirit descends upon Jesus in the form of a dove and the Father's voice is heard (theophany means the "appearance of God").

We see this event portrayed and written in images in the basic structure of the icon of Jesus's baptism. Let us note a few other details: Jesus is immersed in the waters, not for his own purification (he doesn't need it, obviously) but to consecrate the waters of the world by contact with his body and to begin the restoration of all creation as the New Adam. Jesus is naked (sometimes, as here, portrayed with a loincloth), which symbolizes the restoration of Adam's innocence before the Fall. Strange beasts and humanish forms under his feet symbolize the demons defeated by Jesus. John the Baptist gazes not at Jesus but at the Holy Spirit, corresponding to his own testimony in John 1:32-34. Angels wait upon the shore in adoration and in readiness to serve Jesus who is the Lord of all creation.

This is brief reading of the icon above. As we reflect on the important symbolism here, however, let us not be led to think that this is nothing more than a clever and imaginative mythological story. This imagery conveys the truth about a real event that happened to a real man, Jesus. This man is the answer to the human search for the Mystery that sustains everything and gives ultimate meaning to life.

God has answered the question of our hearts by entering our history as a man, giving His life to us, and accompanying us on the journey to our destiny, to live in the glory of His love forever. Christians receive the sacrament of baptism from Jesus, through His ministers, because God's love for the world and for every human person is not abstract, distant, cold and inaccessible. God has touched us in Jesus, our brother. His love enters our history and changes us.

Let us be grateful for our baptism, or—for those who do not yet know Him—ardently seek this encounter with the Mystery who heals and saves and brings the heart to fulfillment, this touch of God who has come to meet every person on their journey, and who will begin to draw to Himself whoever opens their heart and asks for the truth and beauty of life.

The Hope of the World is Our Hope

Mercy is an incredible thing.

During Christmas we remember Jesus coming among us. He comes for the poor, and for the Gentiles, and for Israel--for the whole world. He comes to seek out and save what is lost. He comes for sinners.

Jesus loves the worst sinners, the people we would consider disgusting. He has not given up on them. He loves them, He goes out in search of them, He gives Himself completely for them.

He wants sinners. He wants the most awful people, the disgraceful people, the people we don't want anything to do with. He wants to change their hearts by His grace, to bring them to repentance and conversion, to heal them, to forgive them, and to enable them to love Him. He wants them to be with Him forever. His heart burns with love for them: the ones we look upon as gross, horrible people--not just "ordinary sinners" but really bad people.

This should be a cause for great hope. For who among us looks in the mirror and sees a face with no cause for shame? The hope of the world is our hope. Jesus wants to awaken in us and draw forth from our hearts a true sorrow for our sins, and then He wants to fill our hearts with His love and transform us and make us beautiful.

On the Cross, in the Church, in the sacraments, and in these beautiful days of Christmas that we celebrate, He shows how He has given Himself to us, and how He longs for us.

He wants us to pray and to open our hearts to Him in trust. We must pray, "Lord, make me the person You will me to be. Shape me, change me, lead me. I believe in Your love for me. I trust in You."

The Glory of the Cross

On this Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, my prayer is that every human person (beginning with my own self, who is always so desperately in need) might be touched, awakened, and changed by the light of the Glory of the Cross -- the revelation and the enduring gift of Divine Mercy that springs from the very mystery of the God who is Love.

Gilded mosaic, Marko Rupnik, Redemptoris Mater chapel (personal chapel of Saint John Paul II)

The Holy Family: What About the Relatives?

Bartolome Esteban Murillo, Holy Family (1670)

Last Sunday, the Gospel reading spoke of Jesus's first visit to Nazareth after he had begun his public ministry. Everyone had heard the reports of his mighty deeds, and yet, when he stood up in his hometown synagogue, the locals seemed to find it all a bit too much to take.

They couldn't understand why their Jesus, whom they'd known as far back as they could remember and had seen day after day, was all of a sudden a big shot. "'Is he not the carpenter, the son of Mary, and the brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, 'A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house'" (Mark 6:3-4).

Eventually, some of these people followed him. They saw by faith that his ministry was rooted in the extraordinary way that he had lived normal life all those years in their midst. They saw this reflected also in his mother Mary, and in Joseph (whom they remembered). Those who overcame the temptation to "take offense" -- who refused to be closed up in their jealousies, their narrowness, or in the cynicism that thinks it has nothing new to learn -- would have wanted to follow him beyond Nazareth, to share in his work of building a greater house.

This passage is significant in so many ways, but I just want to reflect upon the context it reveals. All those years of the "hidden life" at Nazareth were probably a lot more crowded, busy, and noisy than we generally imagine.

It is beautiful to meditate on how the Holy Family encouraged and sustained one another in a profound and vital holiness that also passed through years of uneventful time and ordinary, daily responsibilities. It is also worthwhile, however, to consider what "normal life" actually meant in Nazareth in Palestine, two thousand years ago.

We tend to imagine the Holy Family living in a home pretty much like ours (just like Murillo, above, puts them into an unostentatious but comfortable and spacious 17th century environment). And we often envision them as alone, even perhaps a bit isolated (or at least appearing as such).

But I wonder... perhaps the greatest daily challenge for the Holy Family may have been the not-so-holy extended family and neighbors that they probably ate, drank, worked with, and even slept under the same roof with during all this time. Was not the home in Nazareth and its immediate environment a living space -- awkwardly divided -- and occupied by, basically, everybody? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph... and who else?

Typical Palestinian first century dwellings looked like this.
Everybody all together! (...as this reconstruction illustrates)

Mary's parents, while they were still alive, were close at hand. (It's not like Joachim and Anna would have retired and moved to Florida.) Then there were aunts and uncles and all those cousins who get translated as "adelphi" ("brothers") in the Greek New Testament. Mary and Joseph lived with Jesus and his "kin" -- the whole big, affectionate, bickering, sometimes nosy extended family such as can still be found today in the cultures of the Levant.

The "neighbors" (how did they arrange living space, I wonder?) were probably relatives too. We could try to imagine what work and cooking and all that was like, but what strikes me most is that the Holy Family was surrounded by people whom they were called to love every day.

This is an image that challenges me: Mary and Joseph were contemplatives in the midst of the world. The "hidden life" of Nazareth was in their hearts, as they lived cheek-to-jaw with "the brothers of Jesus" and all the rest of the family and the people who "knew them," living with a mystery that they could not communicate except through love.

We, too, are called to live with Jesus in the midst of so many of our human brothers and sisters who need to come to know Him, to be touched by Him through gestures of love that embrace the familiarity of each day with patience, kindness, simplicity, ardor, and courage.

May the Lord enable us, like the Holy Family, to live as companions of those around us, offering compassion, not fleeing from the ordinary circumstances of life but cherishing them, and building with them a house big enough for all the world.

The Human Person: What a Mess!

The human person. Image of God.

Made from dust. Destined to return to dust.

Redeemed by the grace of the God who took the dust and made it His dust, raising it up to eternal life.

This is the truth. I believe it. I believe -- which is to say I know with certainty -- that this is the truth.

This certainty is a gift from God.

It is not up to me or anyone else to change the truth that He has given to the world. Nor would I want to change a single iota of the truth, because it is here that I find the mercy and the love that I need.

The human person. What a mess!

Who can understand the heart of a human person? I know, from my own experience -- from my own suffering and from the suffering of those I love -- something of the hindrances, the obstacles, the feebleness of enfleshed human intelligence and human freedom.

The opaque afflictions of the bodily person lead to the confusion and the interior realm of misperception that limit us and so often hinder our judgment. Due to various disorders we've only begun to understand, we are born with brains and nervous systems and endocrine systems and other systems that are off balance, "tilted," more or less dysfunctional in a myriad of ways.

We all enter into a world of relationships with other people who have more or less the same dysfunctions, people who also have a history of living with their problems and dealing with the struggle of trying to be together in the world. They make judgments and act freely, thereby a growing a little in love or becoming more selfish and destructive (or moving back and forth between the two). But real people think and choose inside a thick fog while carrying a lot of weight.

Intelligence and freedom are not lost, but they are often obscured (to a significant extent) because they are incarnate in a broken human frame and pass through all the afflictions of a distorted human life.

We think and act, indeed. But it is difficult.

We Catholic Christians know that at the root of this dysfunction is original sin. Jesus died to free us from the sin of Adam, and baptism frees us from original sin and all other sins. Still, the "effects" of original sin remain in us at various levels of our humanity.

We Christians engage in the struggle and the journey of life along with our non-Christian brothers and sisters, who do not yet know that they too have been redeemed by Jesus and are living within the context of the profuse, mysterious action of His grace.

If we have truly encountered Jesus, then we long for them also to see His beautiful face. With all our faults and weakness, we aspire to live in such a way that His glory shines through us. But the "results" of our witness are in His hands, and we must trust in Him because He holds the destiny of us all, of each and every human person with immeasurable and ineffable love.

Meanwhile, we all journey together in this life, and we are all broken.

Original sin darkens the intellect and weakens the will, certainly. But it also makes us sick. Physically sick. Disoriented. "Off-balance." Afflicted. Passing from generation to generation in pain. Sweating to bring forth thistles and thorns from the earth.

We all suffer from a terminal illness. We are all dying.

And we are all stunted as human beings by a subtle and diffuse distortion of perception and emotion. Most of us struggle to overcome this condition. A few stand out in extraordinary ways, as "saints" or heroes. Others live flawed but beautiful and admirable lives. A great number of us (I hope) just keep working at it, trying move forward. We make the best choices we can. We fail, we make mistakes, we acknowledge them, we take advice from others, we keep trying, we build up the good in ourselves and others.

Sometimes others can see that we've made some progress.

Sometimes, however, this stunted, "chronic and terminally ill" human condition can overcome a person even in spite of their best efforts; it can be as powerful as the acute disorientation that we recognize when a person has a great fever or a massive brain seizure. This sickness, in reality, is a kind of "brain damage" that we don't yet fully understand.

It is the crisis brought on by those diseases that we classify as "mental illness."

But often our poor feeble human frame undergoes more subtle convulsions that we don't perceive on the surface of our lives. The pain is deep down in the layers of memory, wound up with hormones and the whole emotional structure, with the nervous system and the brain and its tangled neurological arrangements, or with other more obscure aspects of our humanity that we have not discovered or about which we can only guess.

Humans get sick, grow old, and weaken. We experience this in various ways at various times in ourselves and/or in those we love. We all carry great burdens.

We are all suffering.

The road is difficult. Human freedom, nevertheless, is real. It is woven into all of this mess. The love of Jesus is also real, and it is offered to us within all of this mess.

Our lives therefore, are inescapably dramatic. Love is always possible in this life. So too is sin. We know this if we are honest with ourselves. We know when we have freely chosen to do something that is evil. The weight of our human condition may diminish the blame we deserve, but we still know that we must take responsibility for the things we do wrong.

We must examine ourselves honestly, and repent of our sins.

It is true that our myriad human afflictions can reduce (in various ways) our measure of responsibility for the evil that we do.

But nothing in our particular human condition can turn evil into good. If something is morally destructive in itself, there are many aspects of our burdened humanity that can make it less destructive for us. But there is nothing that can make it good for us.

If our misery drives us to plunge deeper into more kinds of misery, this is a sorrowful event that should evoke compassion, solidarity, and the effort to help. We deserve this solidarity, each one of us, because we are human beings!

But we cannot use our misery to justify ourselves. It doesn't work. We remain miserable. Even if the whole world told us we were happy, would it make any difference, really?

Self-justification is a project that ends in despair.

It doesn't help, however, simply to point this out. Because we all remain broken and in need of healing. We need healing.

Jesus is the gift that brings healing and hope.

Jesus heals us from our sins and begins to heal the brokenness all the way through us, to lift up our humanity, to empower our freedom, and to enable us to embrace the mysterious path of suffering for ourselves and others.

Our destiny is the glory of God, and His glory is a healed and transformed humanity in which we are brothers and sisters of Jesus forever right down to our bones and nerves and tissues, right down to the delicate and exquisite balance of all our parts, to the depths of spirit and mind and heart and flesh and blood.

The human person: alive and whole forever. Filled up and flowing out with joy.

The hope for every human person is Him. God wants each and every human person to be beautiful and whole forever, and He has promised to bring us to this integral fulfillment when we trust in His Son Jesus.

This is the hope that enables us to taste even now the promise of fulfillment. This is the hope that generates the compassion which we are called to have for one another, the interest in life, the building up of the good in this world, the struggle to move forward without being crushed by our own burdens.

In all things, this is our hope.

Why I Am a Catholic Christian

The Catholic bloggers are all writing about this, so I decided to join in. I have woven together and revised some previously written texts and added a few things. I thought it might be worthwhile to present a few points that strike me and sustain me.

These are just some considerations that in no way exhaust the mysterious fact that Jesus has made me a member of His Church by baptism, and has sustained me in faith by His grace.

He made me His own before I understood anything. But I can also say that I have really encountered Him living in the Church—in her teaching, sacraments, governance, and guidance, as well as in the communion of life with many brothers and sisters that endures in the midst of so many obstacles.

I am a Catholic Christian because Jesus is concretely present in the Church through time and space. His humanity reaches me here, in the Catholic Church. God became man 2000 years ago because He wanted me to encounter Him. He wanted (and still wants) to reach me, and you, and every person.

"What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we looked upon and touched with our hands concerns the Word of life—for the life was made visible; we have seen it and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was made visible to us. What we have seen and heard we proclaim now to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; for our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ" (1 John 1:1-3).

God became man so that He could be seen, heard, and touched. God became man to be our shepherd, our servant, and to wash our feet—to accompany us in our own history all the way to its ultimate fulfillment.

God became man so that He could teach with a human voice, so that He could stretch forth a human hand over a person and say "your sins are forgiven," and—in the ultimate humiliation to which He was impelled in His gratuitous love—so that He could break His human body on the Cross and distribute it as "food and drink" to the whole human race, so that His death-defeating, immortal, risen human flesh could generate the resurrection of the flesh of all those who eat His body and drink His blood.

God became man so that He could be seen, heard, and touched.... He communicates His infinite, ineffable, transcendent Mystery through His humanity, and through visible, audible, tangible actions that are human.

The Son of the Father became man without ceasing to be God. Thus my eyes and ears don't "grasp" the Mystery of God in a reductive and limited way when they interact with this humanity of Jesus. Rather, He takes the initiative by showing Himself, by speaking, and by healing with His touch. Through His human presence and action, God awakens and nourishes my faith; He shapes the path by which my heart and soul come to know (by faith, hope, and charity) who God is, and to know His Mystery as a mystery of Love.

Jesus's living humanity was the method by which God willed to communicate His grace and revelation to human persons.  Therefore, this same method must characterize the way that God saves me today! This is the method that follows as a consequence of the Incarnation, and it is the method that is most adapted to the condition of human beings who walk through the world of space and time.

Why did Jesus rise from the dead? Was it to become less present, less active, less effective in His saving mission? Why did Jesus ascend to the Father? Was it so that the revelation He brought might cease to present itself to our senses, might remove itself from human history, becoming once again intangible, unapproachable, distant? Was it because He didn't want to meet people one-on-one anymore, didn't want to call them personally, accompany them personally in their lives, forgive their sins personally?

On the contrary. In the Resurrection and Ascension, Jesus's humanity is transfigured and perfected; it does not cease to exist or cease to be significant. His humanity becomes greater, and the human energy of His mission becomes more extensive—after the resurrection Jesus becomes more capable (not less capable!) of being present on the roads of the world. Jesus's humanity has reached its perfection, and that means a perfection of His humanity's capacity to mediate salvation to every human person, to be humanly present in the concrete life of every person.

Therefore, today, in 2015, I should be able to find a community of the followers of Jesus who still have access to His humanity in all of the human facets that He displayed during His earthly mission. The "place" in the world today where I can follow Jesus must be a place in which His mission continues to be carried out visibly, audibly, tangibly in all of the aspects that are proper to it. There must be a human reality in the world that continues the human presence of Jesus. "I am with you all days, even unto the consummation of the world."

If I were in Judea and Galilee in 30-33 a.d. I would have been able to interact immediately with Jesus.

I could have listened to His teaching with the certitude that it was God's teaching, and the certitude that it had not been corrupted since it was coming directly from the mouth of the One who reveals and articulates Divine truth in a definitive way. I could have listened with confidence that this one human voice was to be followed over all the other conflicting voices including the confused voice of my own narrow subjectivity.

I could have obeyed the will of this man, done the things He told me to do, practiced His demands in my life, confident that His will was the expression of the will of God for my life. I could have gone up to this man and told Him all my sins, and when He said "your sins are forgiven" I would have known that God had forgiven my sins in that very moment and through the very action of Jesus enunciating these words with His human voice.

I could have stood at the foot of the Cross in the very moment when He was dying for my sins; I could have touched His risen flesh with my hands, and sat with Him at table when He broke bread and said, "take this and eat, this is my body."

These are the human gestures and human actions through which Jesus saved people. Therefore, even today, I want to be in touch with these saving human gestures and human actions of the God-man.

Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." Jesus is saying here, "through me you learn what the truth about God is; I show you how you must live your life; and my action is what makes it possible for you to have that 'new humanity,' that transcendent participation in the life of God for which you were created."

Thus the place where I can follow Jesus today must be the place where His teaching continues with a single voice, His instruction continues through a single authority, and His sanctifying work continues through human gestures that communicate Divine life. Unless all of these aspects are available to me now, how can the humanity of Christ be my salvation?

Is it enough to have a book that tells me about what He did 2000 years ago, with some merely interior assurance that it applies to me now?

It is enough for me to have a book—even a book that I believe to be Divinely inspired—is it enough for me to have a book about a man who did things 2000 years ago, things the human images of which I have to reconstruct with my own imagination? Is it enough to have maybe a group of people with whom I can talk about Jesus and try to stimulate my memory and emotions with words spoken about His absent humanity?

Is it enough to have God as a "spiritual presence within," as though after the Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Jesus, God suddenly decided to abandon the method of using human realities as His instruments, and instead to give direct, interior, spiritual subjective revelations?—revelations, moreover, about which everyone disagrees and which each interprets in his own way, so that the clear human voice of Jesus can no longer be distinguished in the cacophony of conflicting testimonies to inner experiences?

Or is there a hypothesis which is much simpler, more consistent, more adequate, more in keeping with the kind of man Jesus was and the character and intent of His mission?

The very nature of Jesus's presence in the world as God Incarnate suggests that the fundamental characteristics of this presence must continue if Jesus's saving work is to continue. This means that, in some humanly real way, the same possibilities for interacting with Jesus must exist today that existed in 30 a.d. Indeed the possibility of "encountering" Jesus must be greater now, not less! "Greater works than these you shall perform, because I go to the Father."

Jesus rose from the dead and sent the Holy Spirit. Some non-Catholic Christians, however, may not grasp the full significance of this. They seem to think that the Holy Spirit replaces the humanity of Jesus; that the work of Christ's humanity is over and done, and that everything is now left to the interior, illuminating presence of the Spirit testifying in the heart of the person.

But in the Catholic understanding Jesus sends the Holy Spirit in order to deepen and amplify the mediation of His humanity, not to lessen it. The Holy Spirit effects the interiorization and the vitality of what Jesus gives me through His sacred humanity, but my personal encounter with Jesus retains its human concreteness—Jesus remains humanly objective, "in front of" me and not simply "within" me (although He is also within me).

Jesus became incarnate so that human beings would not be alone in their own subjectivity—so that we would not be alone with our speculations, so that there would be a humanly perceivable reality in front of us to which we could submit ourselves, upon which we could depend.

Jesus became incarnate so as to mediate the way, the truth, and the life to us from a "position" that is outside of our own subjectivity, a "reference point" that is objective for every human person, "present" for every human person. "No one has ever seen God; it is the Only Son, ever at the Father's side, who has revealed Him" (John 1:18).

Thus there is some reason for making the following point about the "modern epoch," with all due respect to non-Catholic Christians who are sincerely opposed to the autonomous individualism of our culture today. It must be said that the Protestant tendency to make the decisive reference point for Christianity an inner illumination (supposed to be the testimony of the Spirit) rather than an objective human presence (a presence to which the Spirit bears witness) has led us inexorably into the trap of subjectivism. Ultimately, there is no objective authority that can ever tell me that my inner experience or personal interpretation is wrong, and there is no objective contact with the human concreteness of the Mediator who saves me.

But I want (and I need) this contact! I am not pure spirit. I am not pure consciousness. I am a man of spirit and body, and God became man so as to address me wholly, spirit and body.

It's true that Jesus says, "The flesh profits nothing"—but the "flesh" (sarx) is not my bodily reality as a human person. The "flesh" is materiality and temporality emphasized exclusively and in itself; it is the "stuff" of my humanity insofar as it is "cut off" from (or resistant to) the Spirit of God, and therefore also not integrated into my personal reality as a human being.

Christ's words "are spirit and life," but that means that they are spiritual in a way that informs life, human life; they are spiritual in a way that communicates life also to the body, that saves the body from degenerating into dead flesh and restores it to its integral place within the human person. Human spirituality that rejects the goodness of the body is as bad (or even worse) as human carnality unruled by the spirit. The human being needs the integration of both; which is why he needs the mediation of the Incarnate Word.

This understanding of the Incarnation has implications for our question about "how to follow Jesus today."

In the world of 2015, I must look for a human voice that teaches the truth of Jesus with consistency, with unity—a voice that I can count on, that won't lead me astray.

I must look for a human authority to which I can entrust myself, which I can follow with confidence because the demands of this authority communicate to me clearly the will of Christ which is for the ultimate good of my person.

I must look for those human gestures through which Jesus Himself calls me to be His disciple, strengthens me and sends me off to bear witness to Him, looks upon me compassionately and forgives my sins.

I must find a way to "stand at the foot of the Cross"—to be touched directly, physically by that once-and-for-all sacrificial act that happened so long ago but that happened with direct reference to me.

If I were to find the place where all of these factors were present, I would find the place where Jesus continues to be present and where the saving mission of His sacred humanity continues to operate with all of the human immediacy of the Incarnation. Indeed, I would find that place, that human and divine reality, called the Catholic Church.

And indeed, I have found this Church, and I continue to discover her anew as I walk the path of my life. I am a Catholic Christian because Jesus is present in His Catholic Church, because He has called me to belong to Him and to share this belonging with the people He entrusts to me in the places He sends me.

The Catholic Church is His Church, and the shape of her life is His glorified life radiating through history, His Lordship of every time and place. He uses the Church's ministers and members, even with all their enormous faults, to go forth into the world and give Himself.

He also works through the Church in the lives of those Christians not fully in communion with her, because of the measure of unity that really does exist.

And He works through the Church even among the multitudes of non-Christians, through the Church's dialogue and witness, her presence and prayer, and also—mysteriously—through the way human existence and human destiny are in themselves consecrated in Christ through the Church.

The Catholic Church is for every human being because Jesus loves every human being, and seeks the salvation and eternal fulfillment of every single human person with all the ardor of His Sacred Heart. What matters first and fundamentally is that He is at work in and through His Church.

I entrust everyone to His infinite mercy.

Jesus living in His Church is not my "belief system," not just my particular “philosophy of life” or my “support community”—something that “works for me” but might not necessarily “work for you.” He is for me, because I am a human being. That means He is for you.

I am sure of this.

But how? Who do I think I am anyway? What makes me so sure that my ideas about the meaning of life are true for everyone? That is just the point: these are not “my ideas”—this is a relationship. He is here, in my life, in a relationship with me. In fact, He started it—not me.

There is no way I could give myself this certainty, not even with all the philosophy of all the ages. What could possibly sustain this certainty in a blockhead like me?

I am amazed at myself, at the fact that I am so sure about this. I haven’t seen any miracles. I haven’t had any visions. And it is definitely not because I have a “deep spirituality”—I am a spiritual wimp.

What make me certain? It is Jesus Himself—not just some vague ideals about “goodness” or “the importance of Christian ethics” or “my understanding about the meaning of suffering.”

It is Jesus, the objective, actual, true Son of God, the living man who is with us now.

That is why I am a Catholic Christian. Because He is here. I need to be with Him. We all need to be with Him.

Where Do We Place Our Hope?

The people of Israel knew to place their hope in God. There has never been a human being whom God has not prompted again and again to the relationship of hope. In the vast ages before the coming of Christ, the prompting was for a promise destined to be fulfilled, and the human heart itself--drawn by God's mercy and love--spoke in hidden languages about a longing and a purpose that it did not understand.

Even today, so many hearts--surrounded by walls of ignorance, presuppositions, and misunderstanding--are still drawn by God to speak the secret language of hope.

The plea of the Psalm indicates the object of this hope for all time, and for every person who is seeking in the midst of impossible hindrances, who aspires to a destiny that calls him or her, but who does not know the way:

"May your love be upon us, O Lord...."

Jesus Christ is the love of the Lord who has come "upon us," for each one of us, for each person in the inner depths of his or her originality, and for the whole human race, called to gather together as God's people. Those of us who know His Name pray all the more vividly, "May your love be upon us, O Lord, as we place all our hope in you."

Come Lord Jesus, we trust in You. Lead each step of the way, and overcome whatever hinders us. Make us witnesses to Your mercy, so that those who search for a place to put their hope might discover that they have been made for You.

The Work of Shaping My Heart

Please Don't Enter the "Fear Zone"!

It's easy to fall into the tendency to think of "Christianity" as merely a worldview, or a collection of ideas that explain the universe and direct us regarding what we should do. It's easy to act as if Christianity is primarily an intellectual system that has to be expounded and defended in competition with other intellectual systems. In fact, it's easy to go through the day reading about Christianity and writing about Christianity and talking about Christianity--all the while seeming to forget the reality that makes it worthwhile:

Jesus Christ.

How do I live so much of my life without an awareness of Him? Why does my heart not converse more with Him? O sure, I "pray"--but it's like I'm an official making a report to my boss from time to time. Or even if I speak with Him in sugary, "personal" terms, so much of it is still a game of dodge and duck, an effort to "love" Him but still keep Him at arms length. Which, of course, is the way I interact with the human persons who are important in my life. Please don't enter the fear zone.

But He said, "Do not be afraid."

How seldom do I just enjoy being with Him. Of course I have to attend to the many tasks of life. But He is with me, and He is inside of those little things. I feel as though I say morning prayer and then leave Him there on the wall. Why do I try to leave Him behind?

Sometimes I will turn to Him during the day, even with great intensity...when I need something! "Jesus, give me...." Why are there not more simple, joyful expressions of adoration and love.

What's the problem? I love Him. Of course I do. But I take Him for granted. And I am a little...afraid.

"Fear is useless. What is needed is trust."

I know. But I am still afraid. Why? I'm afraid that I can't measure up to Him. Of course I can't. I'm also afraid to let Him do what He wills with me. Lord let me see that what You want for me is for my happiness. It's the only thing that can make me happy.

I want to love You more, Jesus. I want to trust in You more. I want to live my life as a relationship with You.

"Lord, you know that I love you." Under all the junk and the forgetfulness and the fear,
I love you. Jesus I love you. Jesus I trust in You. Have mercy on me. Deepen my trust.

Jesus Says, "I am Leaving the World and Going to the Father"

Entrance to Abbey Church, Holy Cross Monastery, Berryville, VA

In recent weeks, the Gospel reading for the day has been taken from what is sometimes called the "farewell discourse" of Jesus in the Gospel of John, chapters 14, 15, and 16.

Many classic verses are found here. "I am the way, and the truth, and the life" (14:6). "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father" (14:9). "I am the vine; you are the branches... apart from me you can do nothing" (15:5). Then there are those words about His gift of His peace, and bearing abundant fruit, and exhortations to "abide in Him" and "keep His commands," and especially "this is my commandment: that you love one another as I have loved you" (5:12).

This part of the Gospel is so rich; indeed it is quite overwhelming. It takes about twenty minutes at the very least to read the three chapters continuously with attention. I should know. For almost a decade my spiritual father was an old Cistercian monk at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. Fr. Edward died in 2012, and at some point I will have to devote a post to him and the very great blessing he was for me and my family in times past. Right now, I mention him because he always gave the same penance for confession: the prayerful reading of John 14-16.

This seems like a bit more of a time-and-effort investment than most "standard" confessional penances, but I am grateful for the frequent reading of this text, which has taught me a little how to listen to it and dwell with it.

The "discourse" is a profound exchange between Jesus and the disciples. As is so often the case, however, the disciples don't understand. Jesus uses these great images that are familiar to us, but the disciples are confused. Jesus speaks of Himself, His Father, the Spirit, the world, and the disciples themselves, but they are not sure what he means by all of it.

When we read these texts, we are dazzled by their depth and inspired by all the often-heard themes. Still, perhaps we sympathize with the disciples in a certain way.

Maybe we have studied the Bible for years, but do we really "get it"?

"We do not know what he is talking about" (16:18) the disciples are saying near the end of chapter 16. Two thousand years later, we can still appreciate their perplexity. We too may wonder, "What is He talking about?"

We have the benefit of the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ after the resurrection and Pentecost, as well as the development of doctrine, the tradition and the Fathers, the teaching of Christ's Church, many good modern commentaries, and our own prayerful reading in the light of the Holy Spirit. These resources assist us, but the heart of the text remains an awesome and beautiful mystery, and it brings us more and more to a simple gaze full of silence, adoration, and love. We are drawn to "abide" in Him, and allow Him to dwell in us, with the Father and the Spirit.

Here is one of the powerful moments in the New Testament when we encounter the Infinite Mystery made flesh, the One whose presence is decisive for the destiny of every human person.

Within the narrative, however, the disciples remain confused.

But just then comes a moment in the text when the clouds seem to open for them. Jesus says something that strikes the disciples in a different way, that breaks through and appears clearly, even if only for a moment, in their minds and hearts.

Jesus says:

"I have said these things to you in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I will no longer speak to you in figures, but will tell you plainly of the Father. On that day you will ask in my name. I do not say to you that I will ask the Father on your behalf; for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God" (16:25-27).

And then He says a single verse that sounds like something He has already said many times. Yet this time it stands out; it seems to touch the disciples for the first time in all its richness. If we ponder it for awhile, we might be touched by it too. Jesus says:

"I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father" (16:28).

The hitherto bewildered disciples seem suddenly awakened by these words. Perhaps they don't know what they are saying, and yet they are impressed with a luminous certainty, as if they are standing before Jesus transfigured. They are greatly consoled and illuminated. Suddenly they rejoice, and cry out with a newly found joy.

"His disciples said, 'Yes, now you are speaking plainly, not in any figure of speech! Now we know that you know all things, and do not need to have anyone question you; by this we believe that you came from God'" (16:29-30).

Perhaps we reach this point and wonder what we've missed. What did Jesus say that suddenly made it all clear?

I wonder if these words might indicate the very heart of the matter. The Eternal Mystery -- source and fulfillment of all things -- is the Holy Trinity, in which the Son is eternally generated by the Father. And the Father and the Son eternally breathe forth the Holy Spirit.  The Trinity is, of course, the transcendent, "super-dynamic" and "always" realization of the exchange and overflow of Love, a mystery that transcends words like "coming" and "going."

Yet this is why the Son of the Father has been made flesh. Jesus has come into the world above all to reveal and glorify the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the mystery of the God who is Eternal Love. "I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father."

Earlier in the discourse, Jesus told them, "If I do not go, the Advocate [the Spirit] will not come to you. But if I go, I will send Him to you" (16:7). Now He appears to be synthesizing everything in a few words that refer to His "coming-from-the-Father" and His "going-[returning]-to-the-Father."

Perhaps these words open the hearts of the disciples to Jesus's relation to the Father in the Spirit. Perhaps they grasp for a moment His whole mission: He who is forever generated from the Father is sent by the Father into the world to "open up" the life of God so that those who adhere to Him might share that life through Him, so that they might be raised up into the Father's glory in the Holy Spirit.

The Voice and the Dove at Jesus's baptism. The luminous Glory of Tabor and the Voice again. Transfiguration. Infinite Love who is Father, Son, and Spirit, revealing His Trinitarian mystery and freely pouring forth His glory and His love and His mercy upon the world.

Is this what stirred the ardor of the disciples and drew forth for a moment their joyful affirmation of faith?

Still, in the "farewell discourse," Jesus knows that His coming-and-going has not yet reached its definitive moment. The Cross remains before Him:

Jesus answered them, "Do you now believe? The hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each one to his home, and you will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone because the Father is with me. I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world!" (16:31-33) 

Hope in the Face of Death

Marko Rupnik, mosaic (detail) of crucified Jesus

My hope in the face of death is Jesus.

My hope is that I will recognize Jesus in my own death: He who died for me and who "dies with me" -- really it's more correct to say that I am going to "die His death."

The drama of life and death is to abandon myself totally and completely to Him, or at least to throw my whole self -- however wildly and desperately -- upon His infinite mercy.

For me, hope in the face of death doesn't come from trying to isolate my "I" exclusively in the spiritual aspect of myself, while suppressing and devaluing the whole reality of being a bodily person. Sometimes we imagine that in death we become angels, and the human body is shed like a casing that never really belonged to us.

But that is not who we are.

I am a bodily person. My spiritual, immortal soul is also by nature the form of my body. My body is an aspect of me. That is why death, in itself, is such an impenetrable mystery.

But Jesus transforms death, and my hope is that in dying I will "lose myself" only to discover myself fully in Him. In death I shall "lose" my body of this present age in order to live fully, face to face with Infinite Love, as a member of Christ's mystical body (a member of "the Church Triumphant").

This is my hope.

The ultimate fullness of His victory will therefore include my own resurrection, so that the God who is Love might indeed be all, in all.

Light

Death, Taxes, God, and Caesar

And so, it's April 15th. Happy American Tax Day. Blah! Boooo! Help!!!

Of course, not everyone waits until the last minute. Maybe you filed weeks ago. Maybe you're getting a refund.

Still, today is a day that we all must remember the fragility of our lives at the hands of the powers of this world. Even those who benefit from the system know that it is a ponderous, ambivalent, and sometimes capricious patron.

They say that there are two things that cannot be avoided in this life: Death and Taxes. It seems to me not insignificant that the One who embraced death for us all began His life by being enrolled in the census.

The Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem with the help of the Roman imperial bureaucracy and its tax system.

Joseph the Builder paid taxes. Jesus paid them too, in the many years of His quiet labor. When God took human nature, He became one of the multitude in the empire of Caesar. He Himself bid us to pay lawful taxes, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17).

So today, even as we recognize Caesar's authority to tax our money, we remember also that we must render to God what belongs to God, our consciences. Yet God seems so far away when the forces of the world loom over us. It would seem like nothing for worldly power to crush the human conscience if it runs out of ideas for how to corrupt it.

And if there were nothing but worldly power and then death, what hope would we have? Where would we, who sin for the sake of convenience, find the strength to adhere to truth at all costs?

Only Jesus has defeated death, and in so doing has affirmed that the relationship of the human person to God is greater than every earthly power.

Our strength is in Him.

The Resurrection: Teaching Us to Trust in Him

Happy Easter Thursday!

Today I present one of my favorite poems from my book Never Give Up (click HERE to learn more). Those of you who know the book are aware of the way in which its narrative is interspersed with poetic prayer reflections, not unlike those I've posted on this blog.

I thought this text was appropriate during Easter week, as our daily toil is touched by the glory of a great hope.

At the heart of this "Divine Mercy Week" is the aspiration and the prayer for the virtue of trust. We hardly even know what it means to trust.

Therefore we must ask of Jesus: "Teach me how to trust in You completely." For if we do not know, what else can we do besides ask? Ask, and ask with confidence, because He will answer. He will form that awareness, that simplicity, that spiritual childhood within us.

Trust

Jesus, I trust in You
even in the turmoil of this night:
O let me feel in its wild winds
the breath of Your eternal lips
        enlivening, expanding,
        spiriting dull flecks of my ashy ground
        into form, flesh, body
        of my New Eden everlasting.

For it is You who speak me,
You who call me by name in each moment,
You who penetrate
the spaces within me that I do not know,
the moments of me
        not yet birthed by time,
        nor conceived in the tiny gaps and crevices of my mind,
        nor even beginning to trace dim shadows
               before my near-blind eyes.

It is You who see me.
You who grasp my hand and guide me
in the valley of shadows.
For You have taken every hollow trench
and scaled every slope,
to stand in the fiery sun that has burned me.
You have won the victory
that You proclaim and celebrate each moment,
each day,
when You call my name,
when You call me to awaken
        to the frail pieces of light
        and gray dust of earth’s every morning.

Save me!
For only You know me.
Shut my eyes and stop my ears
from phantom shades who cry out:
        “your name is slave,
         your name is fear,
         blackness is your life.”

Jesus
You call my name.
O open my ear that I may hear Your voice,
clear.
For You carry, whole, within Your Living Light,
the only “me” that will ever glimmer and shine—
        pool of light,
like splendid diamond
clean and cut
with the lines of Your Face.
My real name:
sounding like song, and gushing—
        fresh, cold, sweet water of life,
        that rises up from the deep
        deep well
                of Mercy’s hidden spring.
You call me by a name never spoken before
and never to be uttered again.
Let me live, O Lord, by faith—near blind, near deaf,
        straining the ear of earth to hear the echo of my name
        in gifted speech of hinted truth,
        though shallow like shells:
                Child, Beloved, Likeness, Your Glory
                                              Your Glory.

Lead me,
by the Glory that slips between the crack
of faith’s eye,
        to trust in You,
        to spy the promise of all made new.
Grant me that glimpse,
faint,
firm,
of all earth’s pain and weight.
Of my fighting, faltering,
fumbling heart’s hope
        washed in White Wonder.

                from Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy
                [click HERE to order; hard copy or Kindle available]

Holy Cross

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you...

...because by Your Holy Cross You have redeemed the world.

Dear Mary, Mother Mary

O Mother Mary,
perfect vessel of Jesus,

help us.

When everything still seems too impossible,

you are there, Mary.

I entrust everything into your hands,
and I ask you

who carried Jesus in your womb,
to bring Him to me

and me to Him,
to bring together

in your maternal heart
what the distance of my weakness

keeps apart.

Mary, you brought Jesus into the world.
Bring Him, ever more deeply, into my life.

Dear Mary, mother Mary.

The Solitude of Our Tears

"The Lord Jesus... took upon Himself
the burden of all our mortal anguish.
His face is reflected in that of every person
who is humiliated and offended,
sick and suffering,
alone, abandoned, and despised.
Pouring out His blood,
He has rescued us from the slavery of death,
He has broken the solitude of our tears,
He has entered into our every grief
and our every anxiety."

~Benedict XVI

My Own True Face

Jesus, you have healed me
and raised me up,
filling my life with such undeserved joy,
with the foretaste and the hope of a fulfillment
beyond all imagining,
that is awakened by the smallest
and most humble moments of today.

Jesus, thank you for your forgiveness,
for your mercy, finding me in the deepest darkness,
your tenderness so gentle with my wounds,

your patience, waiting for me to stop running away,
your relentlessness, seeking me
all the way down my own long deluded, distant roads.

Jesus, give me complete and total trust in you.

Jesus I believe in your Infinite Love for me.

You thirst for me!

You thirst for me,
Even when I want to be satisfied
with something less than myself!

Jesus, make me the person you have created me to be.
Give me my own true face,
the face that I do not know,
but that you always see,
that you have always loved:

The face of my forever-joy.

Fifty YEARS of a Great and Mysterious Love Story

It is the Lord who shows us the real drama, and the real possibilities and mystery of a human relationship. That is why today I feel it worthwhile to continue my account of a very special and astonishing relationship between a man and a woman, a relationship far more radical and unusual than anything we see or hear about.

Several months ago, in Magnificat, I wrote about the conversion to Jesus and the Church of Jacques and Raissa Maritain, a remarkable young couple whose lives and search for the truth could not be separated.

And indeed, they continued for more than fifty years this relationship of loving Jesus together and bearing witness to Him. It was a passionate love story, deeply personal, and yet also wonderfully fruitful in the world. They touched so many of those around them, and drew them in to share in the "great friendship" with Jesus that they had found and were living.

Meanwhile they also made a great and lasting impression upon the world. Jacques became internationally recognized as a great philosopher (arguably the greatest Thomistic philosopher of the twentieth century), and also as a teacher, a prolific author, a man of public affairs, and an ambassador. Raissa's reflective nature led her to become a notable poet and writer, and though hindered greatly by health problems, she wrote through the years and also continued to be Jacques's most important inspiration, confidante, editor, and critic (when necessary she could be a very blunt critic, and he listened to her when she corrected his thinking).

Raissa's most famous works are the two beautiful memoirs (Les Grandes Amities and Les Aventures de la Grace) about her early life with Jacques, their conversion, and their years of spiritual, intellectual, cultural, and artistic partnership in France before World War II. Of course there's even more to the story after that, and some things were only revealed when Jacques published Raissa's Journal after her death, along with his own notes.

I believe it was one of the greatest human friendships ever.

As a marriage, it was unique... mind blowing, really.

It was a truly great marriage between two people who loved each other really and concretely, in every kind of circumstance and stress. But this marriage had at its core a very special commitment: something that strikes even Christian married people as strange and incomprehensible, and that is positively not recommended by the Church as an ordinary way of life in the married state.

It is a commitment that is possible in extraordinary circumstances and in the light of a very particular kind of vocation, and it must be rigorously discerned in spiritual direction to be sure that it is entirely free of any subtle contempt for the goodness of married life as a real means of sanctification. But Jacques and Raissa were deeply convinced of the God-given goodness and interpersonal beauty of the activity that they both felt called to abandon freely in sacrifice. They wanted to sacrifice this expression of love... for the sake of love. This was not an immature spiritual impulse or a failure of affectivity. This was a desire that had been growing in their hearts for some time, for a very special path they were called to follow.

Many people simply don't understand it, or even disagree with it. Certainly there is nothing "ordinary" about it even for Catholic Christians.

But the Maritains were called by Jesus in a singular, extraordinary way. It is impossible to comprehend, but at the same time the reality of this call for these particular people is evident; it is undeniable, in its fruits.

And this commitment between them was completely unknown to anyone else while they both lived (except those who gave them spiritual direction, who kept it in confidence as was their duty).

Jacques revealed the whole truth about their marriage and their decision only toward the end of his own life, and he emphasized that it was something very particular to their own personal Christian life together, their particular circumstances and the ever-greater love that Jesus continued to draw from their hearts. They believed themselves called to a mysterious love that Jacques called "mad love" -- the love of Jesus that draws people to sell everything and follow Him alone. At the same time, they experienced this as a "common vocation," to love Christ "madly," to sacrifice everything but to do it together and in the midst of the secular world.

After eight years of married life, characterized by an ardent physical intimacy that participated in and expressed, no doubt, their profound growth in faith, they felt called to a great renunciation. No doubt also, this possibility arose in light of the fact that they had no children, and it did not appear that they would be able to have children.

Finally, after much prayer, discernment, and direction, they took vows as Benedictine oblates and included therein something not required for a married oblate: celibate chastity. In their circumstances, without responsibility for a family, they could have chosen to part ways in this world, with Jacques becoming a monk and Raissa a nun.

But that is precisely what they did not choose to do, and herein lies the utterly radical and particular nature of the vocation they had discerned. They chose to live their marriage within this profound and secret commitment, to leap into the mystery of living the bond they shared in new ways unknown to them (and to us). So they consecrated themselves to pursue God alone (but also together) and lived thereafter in a celibate marriage.

They lived together in this way, as husband and wife, for fifty more years!

And everyone who knew them testified that they lived a relationship of profound unity, companionship, and fidelity to each other, while also possessing an openness that drew people from the milieu in which they lived, people of many faiths or no faith: intellectuals, artists, musicians, political activists, poets and writers.

The cultural world of France, and later America, found in them a unique kind of hospitality. Not a few of these men and women of the world converted, and the Maritains became godparents many times over. Clearly Jacques and Raissa lived a companionship that was both personally intimate and full of a humanity that radiated out to many others.

The Maritains, near the end of Raissa's life.

They lived what Raissa called, "Contemplation on the roads of the world."

In its particular sacrifices and as a form of married life, it is not a way that people should try to copy (really, people, don't try this out...).

It was simply something extraordinary, a unique grace that they were given.

For us married people it seems strange, like a distancing, a coldness, a breaking off of spousal love, an attempt to turn marriage artificially into a kind of religious life. And that is what it would be (and worse) if any of us presumed to take it up.

It was not meant to be a "form of life" that could be proposed in a general way to the Christian people. Rather it was a profoundly personal and interpersonal grace given to transfigure the lives of two particular people. As such it is, really, incomprehensible; it touches on the mystery of particular human persons and their relationship.

We can't really understand it.

But the more we "get to know" the Maritains from their own writings and the testimony of others, the more we can "see" the fruits of their "mad love" for Jesus (and for each other!). There is in them, unmistakably, something both awesome and tender, great and humble, incomprehensible and approachable.

We see the Mystery within the human. We see humans being transformed and at the same time becoming more profoundly human, more attractive with a love that reaches out to us and accompanies us.

Even though we are not called to imitate the dramatic life and relationship of the Maritains, it remains a witness to a Love that can change us even when it surprises us, a Love that can be trusted and followed because it leads to the depths of God and the realization of our own personal identity.