The Silence of this Night

William Congdon, Crucifixion series

God is good, and we must turn to Him always with grateful hearts, even when things seem very dark, when we are afflicted, when we can't see the way forward or don't feel like we're getting anywhere, when we search and cry out to Him and we still can't grasp "why?" Jesus loves us with a patience and a tenderness that is attuned to all of our frailty.

Jesus understands and loves us. He understands being human.

We must never be discouraged by our complicated selves, and our struggles and weakness in the face of sacrifices that God calls us to make. These things are hard. He knows that.

And we must never measure ourselves by what other people say or insinuate or might be thinking. We must not be discouraged because we think that something that appears easy for others is a difficulty for us. God knows our hearts, and is teaching each of us to love in that unique way that corresponds to our destiny as particular persons.

Therefore, I must be quite certain that He loves me, and that He will enable me to live fully whatever circumstances I face, whatever burden I must bear. The way that I am called to live and suffer, however, is His way, and not my way. Thus I sometimes won't understand what He is doing in my life, and even when I cry out to Him, I may not always find consolation.

In the silence of this night He works most deeply in us. We must surrender ourselves to Him and trust in Him.

The Poverty of Who I [Still] Am

Here it is mid January 2013 already. Its hard to believe that its been almost two years since I began this peculiar literary exercise. Among other things, blogging is a kind of workshop for writing. It feels personal, but its also "out there" in a way that would have been unimaginable twenty years ago (I remember, because I kept detailed written journals from 1990-1992). Since there is at least a potential "readership," I shape what I write here in certain ways.

Clearly, I'm not afraid of being repetitive. This was my post from one year ago today, January 16, 2012. I could easily have written the same reflections today, using pretty much the same words (except I don't have the energy to write so much text today). Here we find the same person with the same preoccupations. Its also digital data that I can scoop up and toss out into the blogosphere again, so that someone might stumble upon it in a fresh way. Without further ado, take it away, last year's JJ:

I put myself out and push myself into relationships with other people, but I am not receptive. I'm always in a kind of desperation, like I'm trying to invade the other person's interiority with all of my large, clumsy, awkward personality and then do everything I can to impress, to amaze, to draw out some reaction, to somehow get the other person to love me, because in the end I just need to be loved, so badly.

I want to be loved. And I am so afraid of being alone. This is the poverty of who I am.

Other people don't usually regard me as pushy or obnoxious. If anything it's the opposite: I don't "promote" myself enough. This may be true in the professional sphere. And with people I am "nice," accommodating, non-controversial, and always leaning on my sense of humor. I also use my intelligence to illuminate things, to encourage and inspire. But in all of this there is a "push" of myself, which comes out of the abyss of the poverty of who I am. In everything I say and do there is always this cry that says, "Please love me, accept me, approve of me, affirm me."

But why is this a problem? I am surrounded by loving, accepting, affirming people. Why, then, am I restless? Why do I feel "unloved"?

Pathology plays a part in this, undoubtedly. I describe it in my book; it is something I call "the cloud" (see Never Give Up, pp. 18-28 [http://t.co/ddwYeqX]). But "the cloud" has been brightened considerably, even since I wrote the book. My restlessness goes deeper than any pathology. It goes right to the root of who I am. I am a person. I need to be loved. And I need to love.

Where does this all end?

Of course I know the answer from the Catechism. I do not want to underestimate the fundamental importance of this basic knowledge: that I have been created by God, that God loves me, that union with God is the purpose of my existence. Yes. Millions and millions of people walk the earth and do not know this truth about themselves. That stirs something else within me, something that remains in many ways confused, but that is gradually taking hold of me and changing me.

But it takes time. I ask forgiveness from my wife, my children, my family, and my friends--indeed from all the people God has placed in my life. There is something here that echoes the desire that Alyosha discovers inThe Brothers Karamazov: the desire "to beg forgiveness from everyone, for everything." And I am willing to forgive, yes, to struggle on the path of forgiveness. Forgiving but begging too, because I know that I have not loved enough.

Jesus, I bring to You my broken heart,
broken by the desire to be loved
and the confusion over how to love well and truly.
O Lord, forgive me.
I have not loved You as I should,
and I am self-seeking and divided in all my relationships.
How can I love people truly,
with the "detachment" that recognizes that they belong to You alone,
and also with the passionate attention
that recognizes in each of them
the beauty of Your image and the glory of Your redeeming power?
Jesus, open my heart to receive Your healing mercy.
Change my heart,
and make me silent,
patient, and tender,
full of awe and wonder and gratitude
before Your gift of Yourself to me
and to every person I meet.
I am so in need of healing.
I am so in need of conversion.
Have mercy on me,
and make me the person You will me to be.

There Are No Shortcuts

I have nothing to say. I have been staring at a blank screen for over an hour. Staring. Really.

Lots of ideas have gone through my mind. The Amerisphere is full of ideas, because we have all been provoked in recent days. Why do these mass killings keep happening? People argue about gun laws. People argue about whether or not these shooters are "mentally ill." People talk about our violent society, our narcissistic culture, the effects of violent video games, the degradation of masculinity, social isolation, family breakdowns, and so on.

Some of these reflections have value. Some of them are rather silly. Many of them are, in part, ways of distracting ourselves. We want to reduce the fundamental questions of life to social and political problems that can be fixed somehow.

Let's figure out what causes this, and fix it!

But many of us are just shaken up and confused. I work in the office of a children's center. Eileen teaches there. We have a six year old daughter. My gosh! There are no words for this.

We have prayers and sorrow and deep sympathy for the families, certainly.

We are also reminded of our own vulnerability, how we have invested ourselves so profoundly in relationships and circumstances that seem to hang by a thread. We are reminded of the presence of the faces we love so much, how dear they are to us, but also how fragile everything is...how easily we might lose our loved ones, even our children.

"Why do people have to die? Why this darkness, this absence, this wrenching separation from someone I love?"

The big questions. We all experience them sooner or later. Even if we are convinced that we "know the answers," our guts will still be torn by their pain.

Christians need to remember this.

Of course, our faith reassures us that there is eternal life, that death has been conquered. There is comfort here; indeed, when life seems incomprehensible we are reminded that our trust in Jesus must be radical and total. We must trust, because it is through love that faith holds on in the most obscure places, the inexpressibly personal places where ideas can seem so cold.

[If I continue writing words here, it is only with the understanding that I'm just stammering, and that I hardly know what I'm talking about. If I write, its only to point to a reality that is infinitely more important than anything I can say.]

Christianity is not "cheap answers to the fundamental questions of life." Christianity is a Person who loves us and endures our vulnerability to the very end, transforming it from within. The "answer" is the way He embraces each of our lives. We are changed by living with Him. We are not changed by a satisfying explanation. We are changed by Him.

There are no shortcuts. We must live through everything, trusting in Him. Especially when we feel powerless and He seems absent. We may not even feel any trust, but still we must trust, we must beg to be able to trust, we must continue to hope even if it all seems wild and impossible. Because He Himself really endures with us all the tears, the separations, the crushed hearts. Really.

He has made it all His own.

For the Children who Died....

In prayer and remembrance.

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut.

December 14, 2012.

For the children who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the teachers and staff who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the parents in their grief, Jesus have mercy.

For the families who have endured loss, Jesus have mercy.

For the children who witnessed this horror, Jesus have mercy.

Jesus have mercy, and protect the sanctuaries of the child from all this monstrous violence.

Protect the classroom, and every learning environment.

Protect the home, and the families who build the home.

Protect that inner, sacred space of the child's emerging awareness.

Protect children in every place where they are vulnerable and defenseless. Grant that they might find love, and be nurtured, and supported in every step of their growth.

Protect every child, from the dawn, in that intimate space beneath the heart of his or her mother.

Protect the mother and the child, and the sanctity and inviolability of their relationship, which is always a gift from God.

Give us the strength to love and support the lives of every mother and child, from the beginning, in whatever crises they may face.

Protect the children, from the beginning, from their first moment through all the moments of their epiphany, their opening up to reality, their expression of themselves as persons, created uniquely in the image of God.

Jesus have mercy on us.

Give us hearts that cherish Your beauty reflected in every child.

Give us reverence and humility in our care for the children entrusted to us.

Help us to remember that every child belongs to You.

From whence comes this unearthly, unspeakable violence that invades the human soul, and drives it to killing? So much killing.

So much blood.

Jesus, have mercy on us all. Have mercy on the whole world.

He Dwells With Us

Jesus healed the sick.  He spent a significant portion of His public ministry doing works of healing.

It is true that the healing of the body is a symbol of the healing of the person from sin. And it is also true that the miracles of healing demonstrated His divine power. But I am always touched by that particular indication given in the gospels: that He “had pity on them.”

Jesus came to save us from our sins. He came to save us through love. And that Divine and human love burned with compassion for all the fragility of our afflictions, our sickness, and our poverty.

We are not always healed of our sicknesses. God knows that our journey to Him takes us through darkness and pain. But He does not simply leave us to endure this alone; in His compassion He takes our suffering upon Himself.

In the most desolate places, He dwells with us.

Suffering With Us

"Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvelous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis—God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love" (Benedict XVI, encyclical Spe Salvi, 39).