Something Has Happened

We are going to die.

Let's just take our human hearts and confront them with this stark fact.

Each of us has a heart, with all its aspirations and desires, hopes and persistence, all its wanting and not yet being satisfied. Where does death fit into the picture?

If any of us were given a choice between death and total fulfillment of the heart -- that elusive thing called happiness -- we know what we would choose.

We want permanent happiness.

But everyone who has ever lived has ended up dead, and so will each one of us. Still, my heart -- that stubborn thing -- insists on wanting and seeking permanent happiness. The whole world lures us with the promise of happiness. But it is as if we are trapped and cannot get there.

Either our hearts and the whole universe are a lie, or happiness does exist, but we cannot achieve it, we cannot find it. As Kafka said, "the destination exists but there is no road."

Is this the dilemma? "Unto dust you shall return" -- is this the final word on human existence?

Is it?

"No," says the human heart. In the midst of conflicting circumstances and no perceivable hope, the heart still expects happiness. And so we keep on going.

Why?

There is a whispering in the depths of every human heart. Something has happened. No living human being has entirely lost the memory of the echo of that secret: Something has happened. Already the heart is hiddenly drawn forth.

Something has happened.

The mystery of grace opens the heart to this hope. And the eyes that look upon reality and history discover the fact that confirms it: A man has risen from the dead. He has himself died and destroyed death for all of us, and in rising has glorified the dust. This fact is called Christianity.

It is not Christianity unless it is a fact. A myth about a dying and rising redeemer to comfort our sentiments or symbolize some vague afterlife is not Christianity. Nor is Christianity the story of an ethical teacher who died for his beliefs and left us a lasting inspiration.

Christianity is a fact: Happiness became a man.

"That-Mystery-For-Which-Our-Hearts-Have-Been-Made" has become a man -- a man who lived and died and rose from the dead.

And this man gathered other men around him and began of movement of life in history that continues to this day -- an identifiable movement of life that can be seen and heard and touched: the "Church," ekklesia, the "gathering," the community of people who adhere to him through space and time unto this very day.

We have entered upon a season of remembering, but also a season of hope. We are moving toward death. We are returning to dust. But something has happened to the dust. The dust has been transfigured by Glory.

The truth, the reality, the fact about the dust is that it has been changed: even as dust, even as weakness and disappointment, even as frustration, even as death, it has been changed. It has become the road to happiness because Happiness Himself has taken it as His own.

My dust. He has taken my dust as His very own.

And I seek to walk in silence, to focus, to withdraw from distraction, to sacrifice ordinary comforts in order to listen more carefully to that heart where the whispering continues: Something has happened. Something has happened. Something has happened.

Remember: We're Still Having a Merry Christmas!

The Wise Guys have arrived!

Today is January 6, the feast of the Epiphany, in which we continue to celebrate God revealing Himself to the world in the flesh of Jesus Christ. We recall the "wise men from the East" who came from far away to pay homage and give gifts to the new king of Israel (see Matthew 2:1-12).

In the Byzantine tradition, today is the great feast of the Theophany, recalling the revelation of the Trinity as Jesus emerges from the waters of John's baptism (see e.g. Matthew 3:13-17). The Latin tradition will join in this commemoration in a few days.

And though the liturgical observance of the Epiphany is transferred to the nearest Sunday in the United States and a number of other countries, we are still observing "Epiphany week." Thus, in these days, the ordinary form of the Roman rite continues to pray:

"O God, whose Only Begotten Son has appeared in our very flesh,
grant, we pray, that we may be inwardly transformed
through him whom we recognize as outwardly like ourselves.
Who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever."

The formal liturgical observance of Christmas celebrations continues in the Western churches until Sunday, January 11. Moreover, the "classical Christmas season" (still observed in many cultures) lasts for 40 days, ending on February 2 with the feast of the Presentation, which commemorates Mary and Jesus being brought to the temple to fulfill the law of Moses, and that moment when the poor of Israel recognize Him through the eyes of Simeon and Anna (see Luke 2:22-38).

We still have much to celebrate in these days.

So there is no rush to take down the tree and decorations. Light up your January nights and let the brightness warm your hearts.

Jesus is with us. The Mystery that makes us, for whom our whole life is one great longing, is here. He has made Himself present in time, in history, so that we can find Him, so that He can shape our history, so that He can dwell with us and draw close to us in all our efforts and our cheer, and especially our sufferings.

God makes our human reality His own. How small and strange we are, with our glittery kitch ornaments and our awkward expressions, our funny-shaped noses and faces, our complaints and our cleverness, our gadgetry and our games. He has come to be with us.

That's a fact worth celebrating for more than one day. This is a season for that profound and humble human quality that brings together beauty and humor, a dark and cold season in which nevertheless we are -- or at least we desire to be -- merry.

And so -- because I am astonished to find that I am a quirky and odd little man in a family of funny people who have been chosen to be brothers and sisters of God -- I shall even today greet you all in this fashion [there should be a video below]:

Why is Christmas So HARD?

Dear Santa Claus: It would be a lot easier if you REALLY DID do this job!

It's Christmas Eve.

Many of us are stressed out. There are all these things to do, and we are all running around to fix every detail "just right" and to meet every expectation. We are determined that we are going to make our Christmas MERRY!

We may be troubled, broken, confused people; we may have dysfunctional families, or families separated by distance or rife with division, but we are going to do what we think we're "supposed to do" in order to construct a kind of ritual happiness. We will have gift-giving, and a big meal, and we will try to hold our tongues and not fight with one another.

Or when relationships have been severed beyond our hope, or when loved ones have died and are painfully missed, we will struggle to build new Christmas happiness rituals, holding back the tears as best we can.

We stress out and work so hard to make Christmas happy, or at least to make it look happy.

This is understandable. We want so much to be happy. And this time of year can feel like a weight, an obligation to be happy even if we don't know how, or don't think we can be happy. Still, we try so hard!

We try to make Christmas joy happen. Or, at least, we try to make something happen that feels like joy.

Why is it so hard?

We must take time to remember that the real happiness, the real joy of Christmas, does not have its source in anything we make.

The joy of Christmas is a gift. It is a gift freely given to us. A wonder. An utterly surprising, amazing, unimaginable gift that has been given to each and every one of us without exception.

Of course we work hard, make sacrifices, and try to set aside our disputes for the sake of a celebration. It's human to seek happiness, to hope for it, and to celebrate it.

But let us remember that our celebration is not a desperate, exhausting, confusing effort to build a great tower that will somehow reach and grasp that mysterious happiness that always eludes us.

This effort always leads to disappointment. Even if we have vacations and smiling pictures and fun and great memories, we will still -- in the end -- find ourselves empty when the lights come down and the long nights of January stretch out before us.

Disappointment. For some it triggers or exacerbates illnesses of mind and body. Others find ways to forget it, suppress it, or return to the (always temporary) truce that human beings make with boredom and mediocrity in their daily lives.

Christmas is not meant to lead us to disappointment. We must remember, again and again, that we are not trying to build a tower reaching up to an unattainable happiness.

We are preparing a place to welcome a gift that has already been given to us, to celebrate this gift, to rejoice in it. The gift belongs to each one of us, and nothing can take it away from us.

We can ignore it. We can run away from it. But the gift remains. It waits for us. It promises joy if we will only receive it. And the gift is so great that it will heal and open our hearts and enable us to receive it.

Whatever we may be suffering, the gift of Christmas is a triumphant Joy that opens for us a path and gives us the steps that lead from joy to joy, so that we can walk the road of joy and learn how to give ourselves in turn to this gift of Joy that never ends.

Let us remember: The Joy of Christmas is a Gift.

Let us welcome this Gift in a celebration of wonder and gratitude.

Let Yourself Be Found

Georges Rouault (1871-1958), Crown of Thorns

Keep going! Keep looking, asking, groping. Cry out for help.

 
The world is full of spiritual con-artists who try to sell people elusive dreams to trick their hearts. Don’t listen to them!

So maybe you’re not young anymore, you’re not satisfied, you’re not good looking, you haven’t gotten what you want, you’re disappointed, you're hurt. But you still have a heart that whispers Truth, Goodness, Beauty. You’re angry and frustrated because you can’t see any truth, or goodness, or beauty. But your heart is not lying.

Listen to it. It is a promise: you will not be cheated. So don’t give up.

The fundamental motivations of the heart cannot be false. They have been given to you, along with your very self and all the world you inhabit. Your heart cannot lie, because it belongs to Someone—the One who made it and who gives it life in this very moment. And that Someone has become human; He has become your brother so that He might draw close to you and embrace you.

Jesus is real, and He loves you—He is right in front of you on the path, even if the fog prevents you from seeing Him. He created your heart. He put the desire for truth, goodness, beauty, justice, love, and dignity within your heart. He is Truth, Goodness, Beauty.

He is the Reality that every genuine impetus of your heart seeks. He is seeking you, and He wants you to let yourself be found.

The Heart Does Not Die

People can ignore their hearts, or try to satisfy them in ways that don't work.

They can pretend to have achieved happiness on their own (inevitably narrow) terms, or they can try to cloud their perspective with apathy, narcissist self-indulgence, or cynical resignation.

Still, the heart does not die.

It wakes up again, sooner or later, and wells up with longing and with that insatiable thirst that dries up every illusion.

The One who sustains you every moment in your life is drawing your heart.

Working a Wonder

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Our relationship with God is mysterious, and our sufferings are a profound part of this mystery. We are called to share in the infinite life and love of God; we flesh and blood human beings, who have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning even on a good day.

We are called by God to a relationship that is destined to transform us into His likeness, to “divinize” us. This is going to take some stretching, to say the least. And on top of the simple fragility of being a human being, we all have the effects of original sin and our own personal sins with which we must contend.

This is why we suffer. But Jesus has suffered for all of us, and suffers in all of us. He is the reason why redemption and glory are destined to rise up out of our own suffering, if we adhere to Him in faith, hope, and love. The grace of His Spirit reaches us especially in our weakness.

I only see the surface of my life. Deep down, God is working a wonder, and the means He is using penetrate my whole life with its joys and sorrows, and all that is yet unknown. What God wants for me is so much more, so much greater, so much more glorious and joyful, than what I think I want for myself.

Why am I afraid that I can’t trust Him?  Could I have really given myself a better life than the actual life that God has given me?  And can I construct a better future for myself than what God has planned for me? Should I not trust Him?

In eternity, we shall see all and rejoice in all. Here, we see through that dark glass called faith. Sometimes it is very dark, but we must trust God to give us what we need to sustain hope, and to grow in the capacity to respond to His mysterious Love with our own self-abandoning love.

"Cheap Happiness"?

Why do we love distraction so much? What are we hoping to find by chasing after so many things?

I was in Target the other day. I needed raw almonds, and they have the big two pound containers. My plan was to go in, get the almonds, pay for them, and leave the store. Well...maybe I'd peek in the electronics section, quickly. Heh heh.

FLASHBACK: ME, AT TARGET, A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO...

Okay, where are the almonds? Oooh, books! Not much new here. Bleech. Its a bunch of garbage...oh wait, here's Political Scuttlebutt by Fred BigMouth. I wanna take a quick look at this.

Twenty minutes of reading. Then I finally said, "nah, this isn't very good."

Now, why am I here? Almonds!

Let me just check to see if there are any bargains in electronics.

On the way I pass the books and the DVDs and the clothes (let me look at those shirts over there...) and the bling and the food. Everywhere stuff is flashing, aiming for the appetites (and usually aiming low). Eat THIS!!! Giant "Creme*" Puff Poos (*artificially flavored). Sodas! Drink me, drink me, drink me!!! I have VITAMIN C. I have NO CHOLESTEROL. No sugar, no calories, drink me and be beautiful!

Movies? They're all trash, or else stuff blowing up. Two for five bucks.

Oh yeah, everywhere the magic words beckon: ON SALE! Save Money!

S.A.V.E.  M.O.N.E.Y.

Its remarkable: you spend money, but you feel like you've saved money. What a deal! So you spend your money on stuff that you don't need and wouldn't have even thought of buying, but you walk out of the store feeling like a champion. "Look how much money I saved! See, its in bold print, on the receipt."

In reality, you exchanged your money for a bag of junk. Which you are bringing home to a house full of junk. And what is all that junk really worth?

I suspect that the "health" of our economy depends on a lot of us being suckers.

Meanwhile, I'm in Target at office supplies, checking out some pens. Pens are fun. So are calculators, and writing paper, and all these things that no one uses anymore. But I've been here over an hour! I'm going to get the almonds...right after I swing by computer accessories.

Wait, what am I doing? I'm surfing the Target. This is like wasting time on the Internet, but with legs.

I finally got my almonds in the end, and I didn't spend any money on junk, but something still bothered me. A ten minute errand stretched into two hours of what? Distraction. Mostly I'm just laughing at myself here. There's nothing wrong with "window shopping," right? And its not like I was pressed for time.

But this wasn't like strolling down Main Street. I sort of felt like I was being pulled all around the store. Distracted. Not by the trashy stuff (I don't look at those things), but by all the other stuff. Everything seemed cloying. Everything seemed to be jumping off the shelves and saying, "look at ME! I can make you HAPPY."

Its the whole "cheap grace" thing, but in a more diffused mode, because we don't even talk about "grace" anymore. The reason why its being served up, more and more, bigger and faker than ever, is that we're still looking for it. We want transcendence in a package. We want "cheap happiness"! We like to play around with artificially flavored happiness, plastic happiness, processed happiness.

We don't care if its fake as long as it looks and feels real, and as long as its a bargain. Of course, fake is fake. So we're not satisfied, and we keep buying more. That's why we have houses full of junk. That's why we have hearts full of junk (in more ways than one).

Why are we so restless? Why do we keep trying to settle for the cheap stuff? Is it because we know that real happiness can't be bought at any price?

Real Happiness is not cheap.

Real Happiness is not for sale at all.

Real Happiness is free, if we are willing to receive it as a gift. It means becoming like children. It means being humble, and that can't be faked.

It also means making room, at least in the spaces of the heart. Are we willing to let go of our junk?

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is a time to be grateful to God. People often talk about being "grateful" or "thankful" for things, and yet they don't mention God, because they think that they don't believe in God. But their language betrays a deeper awareness underneath whatever explanations they give.

Gratitude is always a response to the gift of a person. And if we are "grateful" for the circumstances and elements of goodness that come to us in life, we are already acknowledging the mysterious One who bestows these blessings upon us with attention and love.

If the material universe is all that exists, then nothing is worthy of our gratitude. There is no one to recognize, no benefactor. When we say we are "thankful," our natural sensibility leads to the spontaneous expectation: "thankful to whom?"

Logically, it would make more sense to just call it "Turkey Day." But it takes more than ideology to separate the human being from his or her essential thirst for God.

We had a beautiful Thanksgiving day. I am grateful to God for the food and all the good things He provides. The turkey was about 19 lbs., and stuffed full of good things:

I 

I am far more grateful to God for this woman who expresses herself with such generosity in making a meal like this, caring for a home, directing a class, and loving a foolish man like me with such gentleness and consistency:

Our table is full and our family comes together, including "Uncle" Walter and "Papa and Grandma." We thank God that He has given us to each other.

And then, of course, those young people who are with us every day. We are grateful to God, and always a bit astonished. He used our love for each other as the instrument to create new persons, and these beautiful new centers of intelligence and love have been entrusted to us in time.

Also, we need them if we're going to finish all this food!

The littlest person even managed to weigh more than the turkey this year (although I think the turkey still had more fat). And she thinks the jokes about her providing extra drumsticks for the meal have really gotten old:

May you all enjoy this Thanksgiving weekend, and may God keep you safe in your travels.

Let us be thankful...not to the blind and unfeeling particles of nature, but to the One who loves us and provides for us.

Why Are We Always So Frustrated?

Everything is grace,

Everything is the direct effect of our Father's love. 

Everything is grace, because everything is God's gift....

--St. Therese of Lisieux

Everything? Really??

Okay, I can do the theology here, but when it comes to actual stuff that happens ... its very hard to see everything as a gift. Sometimes "everything" is a train wreck. Where is the "gift"?

At such times, it seems easier to understand that proverb of contemporary worldly wisdom, which might be paraphrased as: "Life stinks and then you die!"

But no. Those are always words of profound dissatisfaction. The human person knows they are wrong. If there is any "resignation" in them, its only in the attempt to make a cynical peace with the idea that the universe is one big scam.

But I can't say "I've been cheated by life" except from the expectation that life is supposed to give me something, that at the heart of life there is a promise.

Thus, people go on hoping for something, and if they say things like this its because they are trying to cope with a sense of frustration that seems to renew itself over and over again.

I usually don't go so far as to say that "life stinks..." (well, not lately anyway). But I do feel that "life is often frustrating."

How can my frustration be a gift? Why do I have to live with frustration, day after day; dull, throbbing frustration aching through the day; frustration like a prison that seems to build walls in every direction? What's the "gift" in that?

Well, frustration provokes me; it challenges my freedom, and my sense of who I am.

In the face of frustration, I can choose to give up. I can say "life stinks" and wallow in pity for my isolated self.

Or I can remember that my very self is a gift, and that this moment of frustration (with all of its bitterness, pain, and incomprehensibility) is a gift because it deepens my awareness of who I really am. It reminds me in a concrete way that I am made for something greater, something beyond my control, something I don't make or measure or manage, something that I can't find anywhere in this world.

Nevertheless, this "something" is real. It is at the root of me, it sustains me, and it carves itself into my heart in the form of a promise.

What does my five year old daughter do when she's frustrated by something?

"Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Help! Please help!" She asks for help. She asks Daddy to come.

What do I do if I see Josefina crying, helpless, frustrated by something because she's just too small to understand it?

I go to her and pick her up and hold her. She still cries. Sometimes she cries even more. It seems like she doesn't even notice I'm there.

But I am there, and I keep holding on to her.

Happy, Happy: So What Does It Mean?

Happy is not sappy.

Like so many other words that relate to the human being, "happiness" has been twisted, degraded, and used to fool people. It is not the solipsistic state of being pleased with one's self. Nor is it the temporary (and merely apparent) satisfaction of human impulses. Nor is it even the exaltation of any kind of earthly success. None of these things last. And we all know that happiness is meant to last. Forever.

In this passing world, we may call a person truly happy if they have found the beginning of happiness, if somewhere in the midst of all their human incoherence, the flower of joy has taken root and sprung a shoot inside the soul. In this world, true happiness always remains a goal. But it begins within us and sustains us--sometimes in mysterious ways--as we travel the arduous road to its final destination. The name for happiness in this life is hope.

Following up on yesterday's post, here are the words of a happy man, who makes reference in this little piece of text to another happy man (a man who taught thousands of people--including me--how to follow the One who makes us happy):

Thus do we discover the truest dimension of human existence, that to which the Servant of God Luigi Giussani continually referred: life as vocation. Everything, every relationship, every joy, as well as every difficulty, finds its ultimate meaning in being an opportunity for a relationship with the Infinite, a voice of God that continually calls to us and invites us to lift our gaze, to find the complete fulfillment of our humanity in belonging to Him....

The Lord...calls everyone to recognize the essence of our own nature as human beings: we are made for the Infinite. And God has our happiness at heart, and our complete human fulfillment.

Benedict XVI (August 20, 2012) 

What Does Religion Have To Do With Being Happy?

Often when we witness to our faith today, the problem people have is not so much what we believe, but rather why any of it at all should be considered vital and important by a human being.

Our society has room for religious views of all kinds, as long as they remain on the level of abstract theories about things, or irrelevant musings about "what's behind it all." Even many Catholics hold their faith in this way, as a kind of "background" explanation that only needs occasional contact with the real interests of life.

There is a dislocation in our secular culture. Having pushed God to the margins of reality, we have lost the awareness of the fundamentally religious character of human existence.

Religion is not just one part of life; it is the deepest dimension of everything in life. It is much more than an organization, rituals, and a set of ideas to which one nominally adheres. It goes right to the core of the question of the meaning of life in the concrete sense, i.e. the meaning of everything that we actually do in our daily life. 

Why do I get up in the morning? Okay, I have to work, or feed the kids, or whatever. Why? Why work? Why have a family?

At first these may appear to be stupid questions with obvious answers. "I work to get money, you dope!" Why do I need money? "Because I need food and stuff...." Why? "Because I want to have a decent life, a good life, I want to be satisfied, I want to be...." At a certain point, this questioning will lead me to dig up something deep inside me, something that is so close to my soul that at first it might seem like the easiest thing in the world to understand. It is as close to me as the roots of my desires and interests, and so when I assign a word to it, I might think that I know exactly what I'm talking about.

"I want to be HAPPY!!!"

But what is "happiness"? We know that this is what we really want. But what is it? This is not an abstract philosophical question. It's a question about why I got out of bed this morning.

We live in a culture that claims that the "real world" is confined to its material elements, and that the ultimate arbiter of rational human interest is empirical science. Everything that appears to be outside of these confines belongs to the realm of dreams or delusions, or at best to the unknowable and inaccessible (and therefore irrelevant to the serious business of life).

In this context, the question "what is happiness?" becomes almost subversive. The need for happiness, if we confront it truly, will take us beyond this world, beyond everything, toward an Infinite Mystery which is the only reality that truly corresponds to our hearts. It is a religious question, and human cultures throughout history--regardless of how they have attempted to answer it--have always recognized its religious nature.

But if we really believe that there is nothing significant beyond this world, then the need for happiness is desperate, unsettling, even pathological.

It is therefore something to be suppressed. We must not ask this question. We must distract ourselves from it, even though it permeates our being. We must live our lives on the shallow surface of every experience.

The truly religious person, however, is someone who is at least seeking the answer. And the Christian claims that the Answer has come into the world, and is seeking us.

This is a basic reason why our Christian faith doesn't make any sense to people. This is why people can't understand why it matters to us. Indeed, this is why many of us don't understand the place of faith in our own lives.

We have been conditioned to evade ourselves, to suffocate our hearts, to flee from the deep cry within us that cannot be satisfied by anything in this finite world. And this evasion has become a forgetfulness. We have cheapened and falsified all the terms associated with the question of happiness: love, justice, goodness, truth, beauty, freedom. We no longer remember how to ask the question.

No wonder the Christian proposal makes no sense. Fr. Giussani often quotes Reinhold Niebuhr's insight: nothing is more incomprehensible than the answer to a question that has never been asked.

There is, of course, still another possibility. There is the possibility of meeting some real people who have actually begun to be happy. The human person might wake up, remember their heart, and discover that they have been controlled by lies.

Nothing is more subversive to the dominant powers of this world than happy people.