We Survived the Earthquake

On the whole, it really wasn't a big deal.

In fact, I hope that the world doesn't think that we East Coast Americans are insensitive if we indulge in a bit of a collective laugh at ourselves.

We know that natural disasters can be among the hardest burdens that people have to endure. We have mourned natural and man made catastrophes, and some of us have been touched by them directly. We also know that this 5.9 earthquake that was centered in Eastern Virginia and that shook the East Coast from New York to Georgia did some damage to structures that are not built to withstand earthquakes. Large seismic events are not common in this part of the country. This was the largest earthquake here in over a century.

The jokes we're making are really on ourselves. For many of us, who have never experienced anything like this, it was an utterly peculiar event. Even though for most of us the damage was limited to a spilled cup of coffee or a few nicknacks falling off the shelves, it was an unsettling moment, or at the very least it was a strange moment. To some extent, our laughter is motivated by a sense of relief.

It is also and perhaps primarily the sheer oddness of it all. Many had no idea it was an earthquake until after it was over, and the result was some very funny speculations running rapidly through people's minds about what the heck was happening. I was standing in the living room with John Paul and Eileen was in the bedroom. The girls were outside. We have been dealing with a mouse problem (see previous post), and so our attention has been particularly attuned to listening for sounds of mice or mousetraps.

Suddenly there was this rumbling and my first thought was, of course, "Mouse? What kind of mouse is this?" I had a flash image of thousands of elephant-like mice running through the attic. John Paul, who was not facing me at the time, later told me that his first thought was that "Dad must be mad at the computer and is stomping around" (a fine example I set for my son). In the bedroom, Eileen's first thought was the same! Well, if you read this blog you're not surprised; you know how I lose my temper at technology.

Then my mind veered in another direction. Even though we live in a small country town, we are not so far from Washington, D.C. We know people who heard the sounds and saw the fires at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001 (and in New York, for that matter). So a thought and images went through my mind that were like the same ones that flashed through the minds of many people in Washington and Manhattan when they first felt the earthquake: "Bomb. Terrorists. Horror."

What does this say about the world we live in? An unusual and disturbing natural event occurs and among our first thoughts are memories and fears of human violence. Perhaps when bombs first fell from the sky on cities, people initially thought, "is it an earthquake?" But we have become accustomed to this. Now when the earth shakes, people think, "is it a war?" There is something here that merits further consideration.

But this feeling quickly passed and was followed by pure confusion; I wasn't sure what I was imagining and what was real. By this time the quake was nearly over. Then my wife burst into the living room and said with all the authority of someone who has lived in California, "That was an earthquake." And I must admit that my first inclination was to respond: you've got to be kidding! We don't have earthquakes in Virginia. But on second thought, it seemed the most plausible explanation.

We turned on the television and there was just the usual daytime TV. Where is the famous "Emergency Broadcast System?" I wondered. I briefly became a confused late 20th century man, thinking, "Wait, if it was real it would be on television, right?" Then the man of the third millennium awoke in me as I went to my laptop. What about Facebook? Even as I posted my querying status, the news feed was lighting up with others from New York to Georgia reporting the same experience. It was an earthquake.

We scooped TV! By the time the news was on the air, people had already posted links. There was something awe-fully significant about this moment. While the television news droned on in the background, another kind of earthquake was happening on the social media sites. Everyone was reporting in. And I realized that we are the media now. We hold mass communications power in our own hands. This is something new. Even newer than an earthquake on the East Coast.

Is this a good thing?

I don't know. I suppose that, like most human things, it will be as good or as bad as the use we make of it. The wheat and the weeds grow together.

One thing cannot be denied. It is a fact. We must understand it, judge it, master it, and use it as a tool in our search for the good. 

Mousetrap!

We have unwelcome guests in our house.

There is a mouse, at least one mouse--probably more--running about our living space these past 24 hours. And I mean something besides our usual live-in "mouse," Josefina. Real four legged furry things. Last night one bolted into the living room and another was spotted in the kitchen, setting the entire household into turmoil.

Children love mice in books and videos, talking mice all dressed up and dancing about. Real, wild, uncontrollable, shooting-across-the-floor mice are a different matter. They might crawl on someone. They're creepier than bugs and too big to squash (not that my kids deal very well with bugs, either). Arrrgh!

Like a flash, the bed in our room is suddenly covered with frightened children. Not even John Paul is particularly thrilled with the idea of mice. The truth is, Mommy and Daddy aren't very jazzed about it either. Bleeech. Traps. Disposal of their eventual contents. Errrgh! And nobody wants creepy things running around the house. (As for Teresa, she has been more stable in recent days. We are still working on her particular problems, but they don't seem to affect her reaction to a mouse, which is that of any regular eight year old.)

One person seems puzzled and not quite aware of what is going on. Josefina. "Can I see the mouse?" It's all kind of hazy and exciting for her. "Can we keep the mouse and play with it?" Josefina hasn't actually seen the real mouse. I don't know if she ever has seen one.

We've had mice in the house before. But it has been some years. The neighbor's outdoor cat has been keeping control over the mouse population for some time. But recently our neighbor gave the cat to her granddaughter. No more cat. Our address has once more become known to the mouse population as a safe place to hang out and maybe get lucky and raid a box of cheerios.

Last night was a strange night. A mouse snapped a trap but somehow escaped. Another trap was robbed of its peanut butter. Meanwhile there were a few extra squeamish human occupants in our queen sized bed. Nobody slept well. Everyone had nightmares about strange mouse-ish monsters invading the house.

Today everyone has gone about gingerly. We have assembled a whole arsenal of traps. Any rodent who sets foot in this house now faces nuclear war.

But we don't see or hear a peep.

Maybe they have day jobs.

Tonight I expect they'll be back, and we shall catch them. I'm a night owl, and I hope they don't wait until after I go to bed. Perhaps this is why owls are up at night.

At dinner time, I crept up behind Josefina and grabbed her and said, "I have the biggest mousetrap, because I want to catch the biggest mouse!"

"I'm not a mouse," she said.

The Theotokos and the Unity of East and West

I am always struck by how much Mary is invoked in the Eastern Byzantine liturgy (which is such a contrast to the Roman liturgy, which rarely makes explicit reference to Mary). Even though they do not have the tradition of the Rosary, the presence of Mary in their prayer traditions is so pervasive that she surely gives them great blessings and ardently desires all to be in full communion with the Successor of St. Peter.

Listen to how the all the elements of the Western "Hail Mary" are contained in a beautiful way in the prayers for the Feast of the Dormition:

"Hail, O Woman full of grace, the Lord is with you, the Lord who, because of you, bestows great mercy upon the world" (from Vespers). "Blessed are you among women and blessed is your womb that contained Christ, in whose hands you committed your soul. O pure Virgin, intercede with Christ our God that He may save our souls!" (at the Apostichon).

How can Mary not want them to have the fullness of unity with us?

So why hasn't it happened? We must not be praying hard enough! We are not loving, learning, or sacrificing enough of ourselves. They need to see the face of love, the face of Christ, in the faces of those who adhere to the Catholic Church. The Orthodox peoples of the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and in a special way those mysterious people beloved of God--the Russians--need Peter in order not to lose what they have, and in order to give to the whole world the riches of their faith!

A Reason to be Joyful

The Byzantine tradition celebrates an octave of the Dormition of the Theotokos (i.e. the Assumption). So today is the Fourth Day of the Celebration of the Dormition. Let us then continue to keep in our hearts the hymn of the Feast:

"You were a Mother, and yet remained a Virgin; you went up to heaven, and yet did not forsake the world, O Mother of God. You have passed to life, being the Mother of Life. Through your intercession, save our souls from death."

There is some echo of this in the current Roman calendar, in that the eight day after the Assumption is the feast of the Queenship of Mary (August 22).

So I like to think that we are in a "Marian Season." The light of Mary's Assumption and her taking up in its fullness the role of Mother of the whole human race shines through in these days.

This brings hope and strength even in the midst of trials and affliction. It reminds us that we have reason to be joyful in heart. Mary is real and alive and cares about each of us personally. She loves us. She carries us especially in those places where we are most fragile.

A Child's Pain, and Her Parents' Hope

There's our Teresa, playing with Josefina. Teresa is eight years old. She is the lively, cheerful mischief-maker in the house. She is also thoughtful, sympathetic, and affectionate. She considers things carefully and feels things deeply. Lately she has been worrying about a lot of little things.

But in the last few days, she has been afflicted.

She lays on the bed, with vacant eyes. She looks at me like she doesn't know me. Then she starts screaming. And she won't tell us what's wrong. We ask her and she screams louder. She scared us so much the other night that the only thing we could think to do was to take her to the ER. I know, obviously, that mental illness runs in the family. It runs right through me. But at a certain point one throws assumptions out the window and starts to think, "Is my child having a seizure? Is this going to get worse? Is she going to hurt herself?" Going to the ER is sort of the modern equivalent of calling the doctor in the old days (except you go to them instead).

So now she has seen several doctors and had blood tests, and we are trying to keep her comfortable while we wait to see what comes next. The work of keeping her calm has been exhausting for both Eileen and me. Of course, there are many possible causes for this, and we have to let them look at different things, but I think I know what's going on.

In my book I talk about a range of illnesses which are beginning to be classified as neurobiological disorders--these are "mental illnesses" that are rooted in chemical imbalances in the brain or the failure of the brain to carry out properly its delicate and complex operations. We know that neurological disorders can cause people to have chronic "tics" or muscle spasms. Well, it appears that on a more subtle and "invisible" level the same kind of disturbances in brain functioning can cause "mental spasms"--quirks, repetitions, or distortions in the imaging, impressive, and expressive activity of the brain that accompanies our thinking.

Thinking is fundamentally spiritual, but in the human being who is a mysterious union of soul and body it is something that is done in conjunction with (and is therefore affected by) physiological processes. We all know that drinking alcoholic beverages affects the brain and thereby inclines us to perceive things differently and even to "think" differently. Surely it is possible that all kinds of circumstances that we do not yet understand may affect (and afflict) the brain in more subtle ways. These circumstances may even be rooted in genetic factors, which seems to be the case in more obvious, visible neurological disorders.

Certainly all this has become something of a fad in some sectors of the psychiatric field. These kind of problems are overdiagnosed. They are also overmedicated, or many of the medicines made for them are clumsy and ineffective. Having said that, it must be admitted that the great achievement of modern clinical psychiatric medicine has been the discovery of the neurological basis of many mental illnesses. Moreover, advanced brain imaging technology is confirming the clinical evidence. We are just beginning to learn the need for careful and attentive medical care for the most important and mysterious organ in our body, the brain.

We have learned that the brain can't be ignored. Psychoanalytic therapy has many values, but we know it won't help a person with Tourette's Syndrome. Now we also know that it won't help the underlying condition of a person with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. The same thing can be said for many (though not all) types of depression, anxiety disorders, and that increasingly expanding category of complex conditions called "bi-polar" disorder. Psychotherapy has its place, especially in helping repair the life damage that comes as a consequence of these conditions. Certain types of therapy may even help stimulate healing processes within the brain itself. But what we know for certain is that in these situations the brain, as a physiological entity, needs medical help.

We are also learning that the brain can't simply be nuked with medications that are designed to counteract artificially its chemical or functional imbalances. "Brain medicine" is a delicate art of integrative health care, and here it is especially clear that it is impossible to be effective without treating the patient as a whole, i.e. as a human person.

It is also worth mentioning here the advances being made in the treatment of brain injuries, e.g. "concussions." If anything good has come out of the recent wars (though, tragically, not good for those who have had to endure them), it is the advancement in the understanding of brain injuries, how they can occur, what permanent damage they may cause, and how they may be related to conditions such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Having suffered and recovered from a major concussion in a car accident in 2005, my personal hunch is that "minor" brain injuries--perhaps even on the internal level--probably happen much more frequently than any of us realize.

The brain is, truly, a remarkable, resilient and durable instrument, for all its complexity and delicacy. I believe there are vast possibilities for healing the brain and supporting the overall health of the brain. We are only beginning to discover them.

Meanwhile the human brain remains much afflicted. I am not a health practitioner at all. I am a sufferer. I try to give an account of this aspect of my debility in my book, Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy. My own bi-polar disorder--a complex of depression, anxiety, and obsessions--has a long history in my family, and it has afflicted especially those who also have outstanding talents. It is reasonable to consider the possibility that it has a genetic character. It is a curse, but also a blessing, in my family.

I was ten years old when I first began to experience this problem. So as I watch my Teresa suffer and try to help her, I am not surprised. There may be other, aggravating conditions involved in her case (as there are in mine). But it appears that she has the "family blessing"--a wonderful, precocious, creative, intelligent, imaginative mind that somehow is connected to a brain that does so many things well but doesn't get the seratonin and dopamine flowing properly. Why? Who knows. Perhaps with fallen human nature, these kind of things come as a "package."

Still, we endeavor to heal the sick. And we can have a measure of success. And people who suffer in this way can be helped to live without fear and darkness and the self-condemnation that it can generate. So I have hope for my Teresa.

Her road to healing may be long, though I pray not as long as mine. I am still on the road.

More Than Rules: A Living Relationship

It's hard not to think about political, social, and cultural concerns these days. And a Catholic Christian is naturally inclined to try to articulate a "position" regarding how people should live, as individuals and in their common life. To a degree, this is necessary in order to participate in public discourse. But we must not allow it to truncate our fundamental sense of who we are and the fullness of what we are called to propose to the world.

I think we sometimes talk a lot about the moral "do's" and "don'ts" of our faith, but forget that we need to invite people to the possibility of a living relationship with Jesus Christ in the Church. It is only inside that relationship that people are given the grace that empowers them to live the demands of the faith. And it is only inside that relationship that people are enlightened to see the ultimate reason for living what the Church teaches.

When we forget about Christ, the "Catholic position" becomes a bunch of rules, which--even if they can be shown to be reasonable--are only going to make people feel guilty because they don't have the power to live up to them.

We must bear witness to Christ, to His grace, to the new life that He gives through His living presence in the Church!

Preparing For Mary's Feast

Byzantine Christians have been observing a two week fast in preparation for the Feast of the Dormition of the Theotokos (the Assumption in the West) on Monday. During this period, they pray a special office of supplication to the Mother of God, the Paraklesis. Here are a few brief selections from this venerable prayer of the Eastern tradition:


*O Virgin, I beseech you who have given birth to God the Savior, deliver me from my afflictions. It is to you that I now come for shelter, to you that I lift my heart and my thoughts.

*O you who alone are the Mother of God, you who are good and the Mother of Goodness, take away the disease of my body and soul: make me worthy of your good care, and of the coming of God.

*O Maiden, you have been given to us as a wall behind which we may seek refuge, as a perfect means of salvation for our souls, as a joy in our tribulations, for in your brilliance we always find delight. O Lady, save us at all times from every danger and evil desire.

*O you who gave birth to the Doer of Good, to the Cause of all Delights, let the wealth of his generosity abound within all souls, for since you have borne the almighty Christ, you have power to act according to your will, O you who are blessed of God!


Also, as the feast of the Dormition/Assumption approaches, I desire to commend in a particular way to the Mother of God all Christians who are facing persecution or the threat of persecution throughout the world. My heart and mind turn especially to the Church in China and to the ancient Christian communities of the Middle East. Mary’s tender love is reflected in this beautiful prayer from the Coptic Egyptian tradition:


O Theotokos, the second heaven
You are the honoured Mother of the Light.

From sunrise to sunset
the faithful offer you praises

You are the bright and unchanging flower
and the mother who remained a virgin
for the Father chose you
and the Holy Spirit overshadowed you
and the Son deigned to take flesh from you.

Wherefore, ask the Lord
to give salvation to the world
which He created
and to deliver it from all tribulations

Let us praise the Lord
and sing to Him a new song
now and forever and from all ages to all ages

Amen.

Family Life: Judging the Meaning of the Moment

The starting point is experience. Not what you feel, but experience, which is what you feel judged by criteria of the heart [the need for truth, goodness, beauty, justice, love, for the infinite, which the human being seeks in his/her engagement with reality], which, as criteria, are infallible (infallible as criteria, not as judgments: an infallibility can be applied badly).... Either the criteria are of the heart, or we are alienated, sold on the market of politics or economics (Luigi Giussani).

Oh no, it's another one of those "eyes glaze over" Giussani quotations! Can't we have more stories about Josefina? Tell us about the kids!

But I have to ask myself, "why do I care about my kids?" Why do I love my family? What is my experience of my family? Is it just the sentimental good feelings that I get out of the time we share together? Why do I love Josefina? Is it just because she is a cute little cuddly, snuggly muffin? All of that is true. These positive feelings give me a warm-hearted tender disposition toward my family.

But it's not enough. It won't even get me through the next family flu or stomach virus. Josefina's not cute when she's throwing up. Not cute at all. But never mind that. Even if we had nothing but good times and warm feelings, it would all come to an end. They are growing, and as they grow they become more independent. We can't hold onto the good times with our children and try to give those times a permanence that they don't possess. We'll end up in nostalgia and sadness, or we'll attempt to frustrate our children in order to hold onto them, somehow.

So what do these feelings mean? What does a good day with the kids mean?

I don't want to minimize the importance of these experiences either. I want to live them according to what they truly mean. These are moments full of significance. They are full of the taste of beauty and goodness. They do not give perfect happiness and it would be violent and destructive to my family if I tried to grasp perfect happiness from out of such moments. Rather these are moments full of promise. They inspire hope for the fulfillment that lies at the end of the journey we are making together. And so they empower me to love my family and to take the next step with them as time builds the road we travel.

Eileen and I love our children in the experience of the joy of being together because we glimpse therein that we are all made for the same destiny. The only reason to love our children is for their destiny (which is the same as our own), for the fulfillment of truth, of love, of freedom, of joy–this is the reason why their hearts have been entrusted to us in this moment. And this moment itself, this experience, bears witness to this fulfillment and draws us on toward it, together.

There must be some reason why Pope Benedict XVI reads Luigi Giussani's conferences and meditates on them every day. Everybody talks about "experience" but Giussani defines it in a completely different way from the common mentality.

By "experience," Giussani doesn't just mean "what happens to you" or "what enters into your consciousness." He means the way you engage reality by means of a judgment--not a relativistic judgment, but one that is based on the fundamental (God-given) impetus of human intelligence and love.

Rosary Time!

In our family, the Rosary at the end of the day is more than just a special time for this very precious and beautiful common prayer. "Rosary time" has become the most interesting time that we gather together as a family.

It's true that we also eat together, and dinner conversations can be interesting too, but the Rosary gathering has a special quality to it. There is always a certain period of time between when we sit down and when we actually start saying the Rosary, and a unique atmosphere of family community seems to arise spontaneously during this time. Conversations, questions, all kinds of teasing, and of course the antics of Josefina fill this time, in part because we are all together and in part because we are all procrastinating from actually getting down to the business of praying.

Let's face it. Praying the Rosary is sometimes dull. Okay, usually dull. Well, maybe "dull" isn't exactly the word. I love the Rosary. I want to say it well. Maybe what I feel is frustration at what seems like my continual failure to keep a sustained attention to the prayer and meditation it involves. But I know, of course, that Our Lord and His Mother see our effort, and give us far more than we deserve. Then the "family rosary" with children--which I must say is like glue for my family and which I think builds our unity like nothing else--poses its own "mechanical" problems with keeping the kids in the game and above all with managing the unique, "wild card" factor introduced by the participation of Josefina.

I know that it is a work that is bearing fruit. The maternal love of the Mother of God keeps us faithful to it. And this fidelity is something essential to our family life. There is something special about the whole gathering.

"Rosary time!"

This usually needs to be said more than once. At first people are in and out. Someone has to go to the bathroom. Someone needs a drink of water. And so we start to talk. Tonight Lucia asked me, "Daddy what was The Great Depression?" She is reading a story set in the period of the Depression, apparently. But everyone knows that you don't ask Daddy a question like that unless you want a thorough and detailed answer, because once Daddy gets going it's hard to stop him. Nevertheless, I restrained myself and answered briefly, with a few allusions to the differences (and also the similarities) between that period and the one in which we are now living.

Meanwhile Josefina distributes rosaries. That's her job. No matter how long it takes. And nobody else would dare to try to do it for her. So we talk about all kinds of things. John Paul is always full of questions, so he baits me with another one. Josefina romps about, swinging the rosaries. "Don't do that; the rosary is for praying." Finally everyone has their rosary and Josefina is perched on Mommy (unless she has decided to take advantage of the family stage to put on an act and make everybody silly). Still we search for things to talk about. Then finally we begin.

Midway through a decade Teresa used to always interrupt and say, "What mystery is this?" Now she has a guide that she uses that has pictures, so she doesn't do that anymore. The special challenge comes when it is Josefina's turn to lead a decade. She has just started doing this recently, and sometimes she alternates with Mommy. Josefina's Hail Mary is still just one big long word that she doesn't understand. Still she is very proud of the fact that she is able to say it. Sometimes she gets us laughing with her pronunciation or her squirming. But she really wants to be part of it. She is one of our "five mysteries," after all. And she knows who Jesus and Mary are, and wants to love them.

Really, it's a time of love, with all the clunkiness and awkwardness that family love has for us, and that it will no doubt continue to have in different forms as time goes on.

But with God's help, we will continue to pray together and stay together.

Edith Stein: Seeking and Finding the Truth

Today the Roman calendar observes the memorial of St. Theresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Edith Stein. Hers is a great story, from her Jewish roots, through atheism, to the search for truth in philosophy, to conversion to Christ in the Catholic Church, to teaching and advocating the dignity and vocation of women, to the cloister of Carmel where she continued to write philosophical and spiritual works, and finally to Auschwitz where she gave her life.

Edith Stein should be a special saint and helper for all who are searching for the truth. She knows what it means to search, and to find. I came across this prayer on Facebook today, and have been circulating it all around. I don’t know where it comes from in her writings, but it expresses so poignantly her relationship with God. It is a prayer for any person who is seeking the truth, and for anyone traveling the path of life:

O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace.

He Loved Me and Gave Himself Up For Me

With Christ I am nailed to the cross. It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me. And the life that I now live in the flesh, I live in the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me (Galatians 2:19-20).

This is Christian life.

What can I add to this? I have been dwelling on this text all day. What happened on the Cross? He intervened, definitively, in my life. He did something completely new, so new that it changes who I am. He identified Himself with me, to the point of even taking on my sins, from which He sets me free in the mystery of His love.

He loved me and gave Himself up for me. We should read these words every day. He loved me and gave Himself up for me. What is this "me" that He loves so much? Weakness. Selfishness. But then He takes hold of my life at its roots. Where I am helpless He comes with the love and the gift of Himself, He the Son of God. He claims my life, in order to become the source of something new. He asks me to let Him embrace me and become a source of new life--a life that is beyond the selfish prison of an "I" that struggles to find meaning in itself, alone. He breaks down the wall that separates me from the God that He is, the God that my "I" was created to live "for"--and this living for Him means that my self is opened up to Him. I am no longer alone. He lives in me.

How can this be? What does it mean? I live in the faith of the Son of God. I live a vital, obedient faith, full of hope, love, and trust because He has loved me. He has found me, He has given Himself to me, He has made it possible for me to recognize Him and live for Him. The Christian "I" lives in a relationship of self-abandonment to Jesus Christ, a relationship made possible because He gives Himself first.

Walking With Him, All The Way

Transfiguration.

A glimpse of glory. The voice of the Father: "This is my Beloved Son." How could Jesus have made Himself more "real" for these men? They saw all the miracles. They spent each day with Him, experiencing His tender gaze, marveling at His beauty. The man who is God: they were with Him. They saw Him. How could they ever falter in their faith? Why, after everything, did they still give in to fear?

Peter. After everything, after the promise of the Keys, after the calming of the storm, after the light of Mount Tabor, after the ardor of a heart that said in the peak of human sincerity, "I would lay down my life for You," how could he deny Him? Yet Jesus drew Peter's heart back to Himself. "Lord, You know that I love You."

Our life is so fragile and our experience so fragmented that we cannot energize ourselves to persevere in fidelity to the Mystery of God's presence and His love for us, even when He dwells with us and breaks bread with us every day and proves Himself trustworthy again and again and again.

And so He offers us this too as a gift: We may fail, we may turn from Him, we may forget Him a thousand times a day, but still His grace and mercy offer us the strength that we cannot generate from ourselves--the strength to rise and remember Him again, turn to Him again, be surprised by Him again, and if we cry out to Him and beg Him for His mercy, to walk with Him all the way through the end. All the way through death.

In the whole course of our life, He is prompting us, "Turn to Me, listen to Me, let Me draw you to myself, let Me give you what you need to take each step." Without Him we can do nothing. With Him we will have eternal glory. And He made us to be with Him, He wants us to be with Him.

He Knows Each One Of Us

My own trials have opened my eyes, my ears, and my heart to something I never noticed in my youth.  Maybe it is because I have finally started listening to people.  The fact is that so many people are struggling with suffering, most of them more than me.  Indeed, suffering is deeper than the immediate external struggles that engage most of us. Everyone has something missing in their life, something that has disappointed them, something that does not measure up to a once-cherished hope, something that inhibits their freedom, some burden that tires them, some hunger that is never satisfied.

People usually accommodate themselves to reduced expectations about life, especially as they get older.  How else could one get through the day?  Sometimes, however, one can still catch an echo of a cry of pain, that deep and mysterious pain at the heart of every human life.  Life is, in some measure, always something that has to be endured.

Why is this?  We suffer because of sin: original sin, our own personal sins, and the sins of the world.  We suffer in Christ, who is God’s love made personal and particular for each one of us.  Jesus is God drawn close to our wounded humanity, so close that He takes it upon Himself—not only in some “general” way, but in a way that encompasses each one of us.  Jesus is the intimate companion of each and every human person, even those who do not know Him.  He knows each one of us; He unites Himself (He—God the Eternal Son of the Father) to my humanity and to your humanity; He lives in us and suffers in us and through us.  He accompanies us through our companionship with one another and reaches out to others through our witness.

He knows “who I am” and who He wills me to be.  He knows the secret of why I was created.  He knows my sins.  He knows how to heal me of them, how to draw me to Himself, how to make me the “adopted son” that I am meant to be in Him for all eternity. And so my joys and sufferings are His infinitely wise, uniquely crafted, and tender love through which He shapes my life and leads me to my destiny.  How little I really understand about my “destiny.”  How little I understand about the “eternal life” which means belonging to Him forever.  We must remember every day that God is with us and that He draws us toward our true identity, which is to reflect His eternal glory in that unique way that corresponds to each of us as a person created in His image and likeness—a reflection that we do not yet understand but that He sees and knows.

We ought to dwell upon this and call it frequently to mind.  Those little prayers throughout the day are worth so much: “Jesus, I love you.  Jesus, I trust in you.  Come, Holy Spirit.” No matter the storms and the fury; the depths of our lives are not solitude.  At the heart of life, of every moment of life, there is companionship with the Merciful God.

There is Someone with us in our lives, every moment.  There is Someone “on the other side” of our prayers, listening, full of tender love, wanting to bestow mercy on us every moment with an attentiveness and care infinitely greater than that of any father or mother for their children.

From my book Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy (http://t.co/ddwYeqX)

"The Old Media"--Still The Real Thing

I was on the radio today.

I did an interview on a program called "Meet the Author" on Radio Maria network. They have actual stations in numerous states. Remember radio stations? You know, you could pick them up on a gadget like that thing on the left.

Of course, they also have a website and a webcast. Everyone I know of so far heard the program on the internet. But someone, somewhere, heard me on the radio.

Wow. I'm famous.

Actually, that's not accurate. This was not my first radio program. I was already famous before this broadcast. And I've been in the newspaper too! And, in the summer issue of Faith & Family Magazine there is an article (!) about me and Eileen and the kids and our adventures in these recent, troubled years. Then of course there is the book itself. A real book. Not available on Kindle.

Maybe it's just a prejudice of my generation, but the old media still seem more "real" than the new media. I write all the time on the new media. I might reach more people on the new media on a given day than I did on that radio broadcast. Still, the radio seems more "solid." So does a magazine. It's an odd feeling. We are in the midst of a change in the way we look at media and the alleged "fame" that it brings with it. Whether this is good or bad I don't know.

I know this: old media or new media, the desire that moves me is to communicate with people. That's what matters. I think I have something to give.

Someone called in to the radio program who has been disabled 16 years. My heart goes out to all those people whose suffering is so much greater than my own. Jesus have mercy on the sick, especially those who are alone in their pain. O Jesus, enter that solitude with your mercy.

I have been blessed and supported in so many ways. I pray that God would use me as His instrument to praise His mercy. In Your way, Lord. Your will be done.

The Witness of the Celibate Life

I'm a married man with five kids. But I think celibacy or “virginity” is beautiful for those called to it. The fact that there have been terrible abuses by some people who have violated their commitment to celibate life does not indicate that there is something wrong with the life itself (indeed, greater levels of such abuse are found in general among the married population). The problem of clerical abuse suggests various reforms, but the elimination of the celibate life is not one of them.

Celibacy is an ancient and venerated and specially blessed way of living the Christian life. Many different forms of living the Gospel are developing or being rediscovered in our time, which is a great grace. But this special consecration to God is as old as St. Paul and Jesus Himself. It is no imposition, but freely chosen by those whom God calls. It is a special and higher calling; I have no problem with that. I thank God that such people are part of my life. I thank God for their witness. Indeed, this special consecration to God is flowering in new ways today, in the midst of the secular world, in the ecclesial movements, even as it continues to be beautiful and fruitful in its classic forms.

It is certainly true that today the Church has placed great emphasis on the need for married people to seek God while living amid the cares and diverse circumstances of providing for a family and engaging in a secular career. We have many more positive images for “ordinary” Christian life in the world today, but it remains difficult for those of us who live in the ordinary way to remember the ultimate purpose of all the things we do and the concerns that press upon us. Being "in the world but not of the world" can become cliche if we forget the mystery of "self-transcendence" and transformation in Christ that are at the heart of every vocation, by virtue of baptism; St. Paul says, "remember you have died; your life is hidden with Christ in God." The exclusive dedication to God of those who embrace the consecrated, celibate life is a concrete witness that this is a fact for all of us, that it shapes the mystery of God's plan in the circumstances of our lives.

Why Do We Go To Church?

How do lay people participate in the liturgy? Must we leave the pews and go into the sanctuary? A few may perform certain tasks of assistance to the priest and the rest of the worshiping community such as serving at the altar or reading the Word of God. But that does not mean that the rest of us who remain in the body of the church are mere spectators in an action that does not involve us.

The real way for the laity to "get more involved" in the liturgy is for us to unite ourselves through liturgical worship to the offering of the sacrifice of Christ, to unite our whole lives to that offering. And in giving ourselves in earnest prayer, with words and heart, we, the faithful, also offer Jesus Himself–in the mysterious sacramental re-presentation of that One Sacrifice by which He redeems the world–to the Father in the Holy Spirit, through the sacred ministry of the priest who acts in the Person of Christ, and together with him.

Listening and praying God's word, gestures, hymns, and responses are meant to dispose our hearts, minds, and bodies to this sacrifice of Christ, in communion with our brothers and sisters. Through the liturgy, my whole life can be united to Christ's act of loving obedience to the Father on the Cross, and that is what gives my life real value, ultimately.

Dog Days Of Summer

The dog days of summer are here. The days are only a little bit shorter. And they are hotter, and the air stays warm at night.

It's the beginning of yet another month. I have written a great deal in this year 2011. Paging back through it, many things come vividly to mind. For example, I can remember how cold it was in February. Mmmmmm, that would be nice now!

This might seem strange, but I often go back to these posts and learn something from them, or remember something that I had forgotten. In desperate moments, I am reminded of the mercy and love of Jesus, and that He is worthy of my confidence. I see again how He has been working in my life, and surrounding me with signs of His tender care. I am frequently tempted to doubt. These pages have sustained me in the face of those temptations.

It's like having a diary (with a bit of scrapbook too), a diary that I show to everyone else. That's okay with me. I'm an open person, open to a fault. I'm one of those people who actually answers the question, "How are you?" I don't have many secrets; only the ones that I don't even tell myself. So of course there's some fibbing in these pages, but there would be in a locked and bolted diary book too, because we all lie to ourselves.

I know this: God is at work, in me, in our marriage, in our family, in these gestures and attempts to communicate. There are flaws everywhere. It all seems tinged by my faults and my self-centeredness, and especially by my vanity. There is vanity in my reflections and actions and especially in my words. Less, perhaps, than there used to be--I am learning a little more about how to let things go, if only because I am getting older and I just can't fool myself quite as well as I managed to do in the dreams of youth.

Of course, there are no doubt as yet undiscovered realms of foolishness in this, the sophomoric period of my middle age. The desire remains to be recognized and acknowledged, and frustration remains at being ignored. Yet that is not the whole explanation for why I write.

To paraphrase Fr. Carron, the point is not that I can talk about Christ being present in my life. The point is that He is present in my life. That is the difference. I probably talk about it too much. But in the midst of all these words there is testimony to the fact that He is here.

That is what really matters.

Suffering Has Meaning

I am certain that my suffering has meaning.  This in itself is something that amazes me. Even more, it astounds me that I know that it is even possible to be cheerful, and to have profound peace in the midst of great sufferings.  I do not arrive at this knowledge from the natural world.  Where does it come from?

I belong to a people—God’s People, the Church—where there are witnesses to this great peace and cheerful acceptance of suffering, not only in the lives of the saints, but even in the lives of some people that I know (and what a blessing those people are to me).  It is faith that enables me to recognize this, and to know that it is really true.  I know that the beginning of this peace is to suffer with the awareness of God’s presence and His plan for my life.  The road to a peaceful and cheerful acceptance of God’s plan passes through the practice of patience and trust.  “Jesus, I trust in You” begins as a prayer (a prayer that in a certain sense says, “Jesus I am afraid.  I do not know how to trust.  Give me the grace to trust in You.”).  The practice of this prayer develops into a habit, and out of this habitual prayer God forms in us and with us (slowly) the Christian virtues, especially humility and courage.  And so I pray to grow more actively aware of the truth that God’s Mercy defines my life.

To be honest, I do not know how much I understand all this concretely.  I could write a book on the “theology of suffering,” but how much do I really understand in a vital way?  I see it through a dark glass, a very dark glass.  So I pray.  I offer everything to God in the morning.  Then I grunt through the day, feeling lousy, and being grouchy toward my loved ones (perhaps I am not that bad; you will have to ask my wife if you really want to know). Then at night, I examine the worst of the day’s mess, make the act of contrition, and I really mean it.  But the next day is pretty much the same.  Will I ever grow beyond this level?  I pray that God may sustain hope in my heart.  In faith and hope I know that it is possible, that God’s grace can make something out of my nothingness, and therefore I must not—I will not—be discouraged.

From my book Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy

(click here to order: http://t.co/ddwYeqX)

Martha, Martha

Saint Martha.

Martha, Mary, and Lazarus were "good friends" of Jesus. He spent time with them. They were dear to Him. God made man had friends. These were people He "hung around" with, and there is a sign in that. It means He wants to be with us in that way too. He wants to be with us not only in Church, not only in prayer, not only in works of service, but also when we're sitting at the kitchen table, or when we play, or when we go eat pizza. He doesn't want to be left out of anything authentically human in our experience.

How does He stay with us in those "informal" moments that make up so much of life? He stays with us through the friends He gives us in our circumstances. When we gather together out of love for each other's destiny, we are gathering "in His name" and He will change us, through relationships, through ordinary life lived together.

Let us not think of Martha as the woman who was "too busy." Let us remember her as the one who said, "Yes, Lord, I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of God, who has come into the world." She was a friend of Jesus who recognized Him.

Spend just five minutes with this text, from the great encounter between Martha and Jesus: "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even if he die, shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me, shall never die" (John 11:26). Then he asks her, "Do you believe this?" To "believe in Him" means to adhere to His Person with a faith vivified by hope and love, to trust in Him.

Front Royal Cardinals Lose in 13 Innings

My blog is postponed tonight because I just got home from a very long and very disappointing baseball game. Our pride and joy, the Front Royal Cardinals, lost their final regular season game in 13 innings. After falling behind 9-0, they rallied back to tie the game, only to lose after several scoreless extra innings.

The Cardinals finished the season tied for the last playoff spot with the Haymarket Senators (yes, that's "Haymarket"--quaint, eh?), forcing a special one game winner-take-all match up tomorrow night, same time, same place. So John Paul and I will be back there again. It may be our last game of the summer, or it may be the beginning of the road to Valley League glory.

I just hope it's not extra innings.

The True Form of Desire

The more human beings are conscious that only He can constitute their true rest, the more they are moved by the fact itself that God exists. They cannot help being flooded with emotion at the fact that God exists, as Fr Giussani so often repeated: "My heart is glad because Christ lives." For this reason, His presence fills us with silence: "For Your way and Your judgments, O Lord, we look to You; Your name and Your title are the desire of our souls."  But this desire cannot survive even a few minutes if it does not become an entreaty, because the true form of desire is entreaty: it is called prayer.

Fr. Julian Carron, Spiritual Exercises, 2011

"The true form of desire is entreaty...prayer." I am moved by the possibility for life, that is, the expansion of my being in relation to truth, goodness, and beauty. This is the desire that reality engenders in my heart. But it is a desire that exceeds my capacities, that reveals that I am poor and in need, that I must go beyond myself and "give myself away" in order to attain my "true rest." If I remain alone, my desire cannot remain true. I must reduce reality to something less than myself, something I can grasp and consume. Thus I do violence to persons and things, and find in the end that I am still alone with my frustration.

But I do not need to remain alone with my desire. At the origin and the end of desire there is Another, and it is He who calls me through all my life to give myself over to Him in my poverty, to allow desire to blossom into a plea, a crying out, a patience that is both painful longing and joyful confidence in His mysterious presence and in His promise of fulfillment.

The true form of desire is entreaty, and within that plea is already rejoicing, worship, and a foretaste of glory: "My heart is glad because Christ lives!"

Warren Carroll, Rest in Peace

We buried Warren Carroll today, on the campus, on newly consecrated ground on a bluff overlooking the Shenandoah river, a stone's throw from the building where he taught most of his classes and wrote many of his books. Here, in this beautiful place, his body will await the glory that is to come. And we will be able to remember him, and pray for him. For me it will be a special place to visit on walks in my beautiful valley. It is a poignant thing, to visit the tomb of someone who has been an important influence on your life. It's a point of reference for remembering that the absence of the person does not mean the end of the relationship. We remain united, able to support one another and help one another in the "communion of saints." It's a reminder that death is something that has ultimately been overcome.

A coffin seems so final. It would be easy to look at a grave and think of it as representing the limit that seems to haunt all of reality. "All things come to an end." It seems like an overpowering fact, that flies in the face of our wild hope for eternity. At the very least, it suggests that our hope for fulfillment has nothing to do with human things, and that enduring meaning can only be found in escaping from the oppressiveness of an irredeemable reality.

But we honor the tomb. We know that humanity, and all of reality, is changed by an event that takes us beyond the end of all things. Love is not an unattainable dream. It has clothed itself anew in immortal flesh.

The tomb is not the final expression of human destiny. For we know that the greatest tomb in the world is empty.

Lots and Lots of Money

The President of the United States will address the nation tonight.

About money.

I don't think I can say a single intelligent thing about money. Well, I know the basic stuff, "medium of exchange," etc., but the current crisis of the Federal government escapes my intellectual capacity. Or maybe it just escapes the limits of my patience. Trillions of this and trillions of that. It's clear enough that something ain't right here. But the technicalities are too geekish for me to sort out.

I do study history. I know that it's a bad thing for a government to run out of money. Louis XVI's government ran out of money. The Weimar Republic ran out of money. Bad things tend to happen when a government runs out of money. Of course our government ran out of money a long time ago; we've put off the problem by borrowing kazillions of dollars. Now we're reaching our "credit limit." America is maxed out.

I know enough to know that's a bad, bad thing.

What I focus on is "home economics"--the Janaro version of home economics. For us, "money" is whatever is necessary to keep our family in a decent modern lifestyle. We don't want luxury. Just the basics. (Never mind the fact that the "basics" of a "modern" lifestyle surpass the dreams of emperors in all the previous epochs of history.) Small house. Old, junky furniture. Electricity, plumbing, heat, refrigeration, cooking, telephone, television, videos, computers, internet. Doctors and medicine for our illnesses. And, of course, air conditioning. Oh yeah, and cars. Used cars. We're modest, simple people. If I have enough money to take care of that, I'm satisfied.

How does it work? Eileen and I are both "service oriented" people. We want to serve the community in our profession: education. You can't put a price on education. I look at my own education and I say to myself, "I wouldn't give up this for all the kazillions of dollars that the world can hold." I paid tuition for higher education and it helped support the institutions and the teachers. I am glad my teachers had money to live and eat and have air conditioning. But the fact is that there is nothing that I could have given my teachers that could possibly have "reimbursed" them for what they gave me by leading me on the path of education.

And, as a teacher, I never have expected my students to "pay me back." Just give us what our family needs to live so that we can serve the community in our profession. We realize that this is best accomplished by the community we serve, through subsidiary institutions. It doesn't always work out that way for academic professionals. It hasn't always worked that way for us. Sometimes the money comes from weird places. Anyone who has been involved in "start-up" educational enterprises has stories about donations from strangers that fall from the sky. Donations. As in charity. Yes, sometimes we live on charity. Should we be ashamed?

If I calculated the relationship between the work I have done in my life and the money I have been paid, I could become a bitter man. But I am not bitter. I am grateful. I have been able to practice my profession.

Meanwhile, there have been some rough patches recently. I could be bitter about that too.

But God does provide. Do not seek what you shall eat, or what you shall drink, and do not exalt yourselves (for after all these things the nations of the world seek); but your Father knows that you need these things. But seek the kingdom of God, and all these things shall be given you besides (Luke 12:29-31).

Is there any advice for governments here? I am a naive man, and I don't pretend to be otherwise. To monitor the delicate instruments that facilitate civic life is the task of the Statesman. I hope our society can find people who can fulfill this role. It is truly a priceless work.

East and West: Fear and the Grace of Reconciliation

The need to build unity between Eastern and Western Christians has been a preoccupation, and I must say something of a cross, for me in my work. It seems to appear everywhere, in my study of theology through the years, as well as my more recent considerations of the history and prospects of Europe and Russia, and my investigations of Islam and the current circumstances of the Middle East.

I say that it is a cross, however, not just because of the frustration of seeing a possibility so close that it seems tangible, yet at the same time so thwarted by a tangle of obstacles. It hurts me in a visceral way. I don't understand why. I am told the Janaros of southern Italy have some Greek ancestry. How deep do such things go? I don't know. I am an American who nevertheless has a deep love of Europe, and desires for it authentic unity. I am also, from head to toe, a Catholic of the Latin rite who is rooted in my own tradition and yet loves the Eastern churches with all their rich heritage and ancient memory. To "breathe with both lungs" seems to me more than a metaphor.

One of the great obstacles is fear, a profound, ecclesiological fear. It is a fear that goes beyond dialogue, and beyond history. Certainly it has some basis in complicated political circumstances going back to the Crusades, and the diverse linguistic and cultural heritages (and even different alphabets) of the various peoples of Central and Eastern Europe. The Catholic Church has done much to dispel the basis for this fear, however, especially since the Second Vatican Council, and the great Encyclicals of Blessed John Paul II Ut Unum Sint (on Christian Unity) and Orientale Lumen ("Light of the East"). But the fear remains, a mysterious obstacle, woven from inexplicable pain as well as the inscrutable interplay of human freedom and Divine providence. The fear remains like a wound, and sometimes tries to justify itself.

What is needed is healing and reconciliation, which is the work of the Spirit. For me this means praying to be open to the Spirit, and to seek by His grace to be always a "person of the Church"--in fidelity of mind and heart, in words, in life, in suffering and in love.

True Martyrs Answer Violence With Love

This video may take a few minutes of your time. Please watch it.

I have written about the persecution of Christian minorities by militant "Islamic" groups in our time, as well as the constraints that indigenous Christian populations have suffered through the ages under various Islamic states.

But this short documentary presents it with shocking immediacy. Here are the words, the faces, the blood of the Chaldean Christians of Iraq who were slaughtered in a terrible attack during their service at the church of Our Lady of Salvation in Bagdad on October 31, 2010.

The Chaldeans are not only a religious minority. They are a distinct people, descended from the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia. They lived in the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates long before the Arabs came in the great seventh century Islamic conquest. They endured and suffered under many invasions and regimes through the centuries, preserving their faith, their ancient liturgical prayer, and their dignity. They nearly perished during the Ottoman genocides of a hundred years ago. But they endured.

Now they face perhaps their greatest crisis. The militant forces that claim to represent the religion of Islam pose a threat to many throughout the Middle East. In particular, these forces hate Christianity. They conceive it to be a duty to Allah and a command of the Qu'ran to kill Christians. The Massacre of last October 31 makes this abundantly clear.

Priests, lay men, women, and children were killed without mercy, out of hatred for the faith of Christ. It was neither the first nor the last expression of hatred toward these people. Many are fleeing their 2000 year old homeland. Who will defend their human rights?

I am not an expert on the religion of the Qu'ran, or the interpretations that wicked people may be able to draw from it. It is clear that the rights of all human persons must be upheld and defended against the attacks of the violent. But I also think that we must not let this violence provoke us to hatred, or to a purely defensive or reactionary posture, or to a division of the world into warring parties. Christians have something much greater to offer than "culture wars."

I do not believe that murder is a constitutive feature of the hearts of Muslim peoples. They are peoples with rich and varied traditions and cultures, and many have themselves been persecuted and oppressed down through the centuries. Facile generalizations cannot help us here. What is essential is to continue to seek understanding and love, and to find ways to live together in this world--now more than ever as we find ourselves increasingly side by side. Also, we Christians must continually witness to our Muslim brothers and sisters, and to all people, what it is that constitutes the human heart, and in allowing our hearts to be drawn we must hope and pray that others will be drawn with us to the Only One who satisfies the human heart.

In laying to rest the martyrs of October 31, 2010, the parents, children, brothers, and sisters who remained behind had a message for their persecutors: "We forgive you. We pray for you." What secret seed has been sown by their blood on this holy ground? Forgiveness is the strongest energy in the universe; there is no bullet or bomb that can overcome it, and it works miracles in violent hearts. Forgiveness brings reconciliation. It is the gift of Christ for Eternal Life.

And it radiates out to give hope to our poor world.

Hey, What's Goin' On? It's Hot!!!

102 degrees? Are you kidding? O cosmos, you are thwarting me again! How dare you?? This is...this is an...inconvenience!

In spite of all I’ve been through, I still expect life to be easy. Any difficulty that comes along seems like an imposition. It’s not fair! We were going to go to a ball game! Suffering? Grumble, grumble, grumble. O sure, I wrote a book about suffering (http://t.co/ddwYeqX), but it doesn’t mean that I like it. Whatever eloquence my words may possess, I have as much trouble as anyone remembering the value of suffering in daily life. I am positively a wimp when it comes to suffering, or any inconvenience for that matter. And I am put off by it. Life is supposed to be easy: that is the deeply rooted mentality in me (and others, I expect).

Part of it is that so many material aspects of life have come under our "control," and thus seem "easier." So we are tricked into thinking we can avoid suffering because--for example--I can do something my ancestors never dreamed of: on a sweltering hot day, I can control the temperature of my house to 72 degrees. Heat? No problem.

Just think of how we live! Think of what you do every time you turn on a light switch. If the ancient Greeks were transported to our time, they would worship us as gods. We live like gods!!!

But then, after a while, they would wonder: "why do they live like gods, but work like slaves?"

Indeed, we exhaust ourselves in labors and cares in order to secure our easy life, in order to protect ourselves from suffering. Underneath the surface of our ease and comfort there is the yawning abyss of anxiety. There is a desperation that is frightful, and that we do everything we can to ignore.

What would I do if the air conditioning broke down right now? I would freak out.

It doesn’t help to know theology. All that does is give me a deeper awareness of what a jerk I am.

Something more is needed, and I have spoken about it often on this blog. The truth is that the Mystery carries me with great delicacy, in all my pathetic weakness.

I am amazed by this Gentleness. It is a gift beyond anything I deserve.

My Soul is Yearning For You

Just some reflections from my reading for today.

Longing, yearning, aching for that "something"--this is the way my heart is made.

Most of the day I smother it, but it is what makes for every authentic engagement of life that I manage in a day, and it makes it possible to perceive things as they really are and to recognize that my relationship with reality consists in a recognition of its beauty and a joy tinged with sadness--things are and yet they are not enough.

Being Christian does not take away this yearning. It intensifies it. It does not remove the sweet pain of my need for the Infinite. It is the revelation that the Infinite One has embraced my life.

Being Christian makes it possible to live life according to its true meaning, without escape or desperation. I don't live this possibility. I flee every day, into my own schemes and vain imaginings and grasping and blindness. But I have moments when I remember that this is what life is really all about.

They are moments of prayer. They generate hope. In hope, I truly begin to live.

Team USA: Let Us Not Forget

Those who have been paying attention for the past two weeks know that a great drama took place in Germany. A sport that many Americans rarely think about--women's soccer --seized the attention of our troubled nation as Team USA made a thrilling and glorious effort to win the World Cup. The high point, undoubtedly, was the victory in the Quarterfinals against Brazil, in which the USA scored on a marvelous set play in what was literally their last chance, in the final seconds of extra time.

Americans are strangely resistant to the beautiful game. Soccer is loved the world over, perhaps because it is a game that can be understood by anyone, a game that transcends cultural differences because its fundamental rule corresponds to the simple human reflex of kicking something. It requires no equipment beyond some object that can serve as a "ball"--in the favellas of Brazil or the muddy back roads of villages in Africa, a malleable piece of garbage and a group of kids is all that is needed for a soccer match of dramatic intensity. The wealthy youth of Europe with the most refined athletic footwear, a regulation ball, and a beautiful field are nevertheless engaged in the same game. Kick it into the goal. There are no rich or poor on the soccer pitch. It is a game that highlights our common humanity on the most basic level. And it demonstrates that even on this level, human beings manifest intelligence, tenacity, and a desire that reaches out for victory. What is this desire to win? It is an elusive and inexhaustible thing, ultimately, because even when one triumphs, the flame of desire to win again only grows stronger.

In soccer, triumph often comes in a sudden and explosive way, after much ponderous effort. Perhaps we Americans are spoiled by too much accessible gratification; it is difficult for us to participate, as fans, in the labor of a soccer match. But Team USA drew us in, by their hard work, by their tenacity, their refusal to give up, their incredible sense of being a team and representing their country. For a week, we were fascinated by soccer. We danced around the room and shouted like Italians or Brazilians when the space of players suddenly opened up like clouds making way for the sun and a GOAL shined gloriously before us.

Soccer is "beautiful" not only because of its gracefulness, but also because scoring a goal requires one to be in the right place, with expectation and attention, when the opportunity suddenly emerges from the obtuse struggle, like a gift. Soccer inspires wonder in me, wonder about the human being. What is this "human being" who takes something so simple as kicking a ball and turns it into an expression of the human desire for exaltation, for a triumph that never ends?

For Team USA, the end this year came in a loss in the finals to Japan. For awhile, it looked like the names of Abby Wambach, Hope Solo, and the other heroines of the team were about to enter the pantheon of American sports legends. Perhaps they will anyway. They should. They gave us some of the most splendid moments in the history of our sports, they bore their loss with dignity and grace, and they remained always a team: human beings gathered together seeking a common purpose, a sign of destiny.

(Abby Wambach and Hope Solo, after the victory over Brazil)

Warren Carroll: Fidelity to a Charism

Warren H. Carroll. I don't know where to begin. I think it is going to take more than one blog entry for me to express all that I want to say.

Warren Carroll had one of those concrete inspirations: he saw something, dedicated himself to it for the love of Christ, and never gave up. Thus began the extraordinary adventure of founding a college in 1977 with nothing but trust in God, a handful of brave collaborators, and the conviction that it had to be done. Christendom College today is an established and respected educational institution, with a graduate school and a beautiful campus--a place sought out by high dignitaries of civil society and the Church. More importantly, it is an institution which offers a genuine education in which various academic disciplines, with all their particular riches, are harmonized and integrated in an overall vision that Warren summed up in his "five words": Truth exists. The Incarnation happened. Christendom offers a liberal arts education that takes seriously and ponders deeply the words of Blessed John Paul II: "Jesus Christ is the center of the cosmos and of history" (Redemptor Hominis, 1). Everything was created through Him and for Him. It is God's plan to bring all things together under His headship. "Instaurare Omnia in Christo" (Ephesians 1:10).

The Incarnation happened. Warren Carroll was convinced that this real fact revealed the meaning of everything. From this intuition came not only a curriculum and an institution, but a living reality, a history of relationships over the course of nearly 35 years among those who have been touched by the Christendom experience, and who have come to realize that they are members of a "people," the "People of God," the Catholic people--who are called to bring the beauty of Christ to the world.

There is only one thing that can explain the phenomenon of Christendom College. Warren Carroll was given a special grace to accomplish a work for the good of the Church and the world. He was given a charism. And he was faithful to that charism, that grace of the Holy Spirit, that begun its work with such fragility, that endured so many challenges from every direction, that continues to grow.

This is one constant memory I have of Warren Carroll through the years. He remained faithful to the mission God gave him. He allowed the seed planted within him to grow, he tended it, and he was always ready to fight to protect it. Thus it was able to bear fruit, abundant fruit, in the minds and hearts and lives of many.

Thank you Warren. God grant you eternal glory.

I Don't Deserve What I Have Been Given

I often speak of my afflictions. Tonight I am moved to count my blessings. And I find that my blessings are beyond calculation.

There are Mommy and some of the kids plopped all over and on top of the couch. It could be any old day. We are a family, together.

Thank you, God, for my family.

Thank you for my wife. It is not only difficulties that make us stronger. It is also joys. So many simple joys shared together. Life shared together. Learning and growing together.

And many joys come from the adventure of raising these children. Plenty of difficulties too. But also the joys that come from being entrusted with these five completely unique human beings. The greatest joys come from watching them open up and express that unrepeat-able image of God that each of them possesses. We do not create these children and we are not making them. We direct them, correct them, and teach them about how to enter into a relationship with reality. But it is reality, and the call of the Mystery conveyed by reality, that shapes their lives most deeply.

Thank you God for my children. Grant that I might look upon each of my children with love and respect.

And thank you God for keeping us together as a family. Without You we cannot remain together. Even if we stayed together physically, we would not be a community except through Your grace, and Your constant care for us.

I am sure that it is the presence of Christ in our family that keeps us together, and forms us into a community where love is (in spite of everything) the dominant language. Our blessings are a sign that He is mysteriously with us, with all of our weakness, and that He is at work, and that He is calling us to stay with Him and follow Him.

There is no sentimentality about what I am saying here. I don't deserve what I have been given. It is all mercy. I find myself enfolded in the compassionate Heart of Jesus. Why me? So that I can proclaim that His Heart is open to everyone; that His compassion brings joy and sustenance in the midst of affliction, if only we trust in Him. My trust is so very, very weak. And yet his desire to love is so strong. He gives so much, and He enables us to recognize it and be grateful for it.

Trust in Jesus. Or at least, ask Him to give you the grace to be able to trust in Him.

The Healing We All Need

The human being has a terrible fear of uncertainty.

I know I do. Since I was a child, my introspection, obsessiveness, and anxiety have convinced me that I cannot trust in myself. I cannot be confident about my opinions of myself. I cannot be confident that I am seeing reality in the right way.

Yet I have to judge. I have to act. I have to live my life and attend to my responsibilities. Even in my present, convalescent environment, with external pressures kept to a minimum and reliance on simple routine, still I am a man, a husband, a father, a companion to my wife and an example to my children, and--to the degree that I am able--a help to others. I still must work. Every day, I work on myself. I work on the healing process. I work on projects in the struggle to keep my profession alive.

Yet I often do not feel grounded. For many years, I attempted to trust in a kind of "Christian ideology." I attempted to impose a conception of what was "necessary to be a good Catholic" on the awful ambiguity of my life. It required a fair amount of rationalizing, interpreting, and good old fashioned fibbing to stuff the mess of my life inside this box so that it would not haunt my sense of self-confidence. Alongside of this, of course, God was at work, I was praying, seeking Him, and genuinely desiring (in however wobbly a fashion) to do His will and to trust in Him. Yet the ultimate uncertainty of my ideas constantly undermined my confidence.

Illness has forced me to face the need to rely on other people. What a relief it would be to abandon my freedom to their judgment. There is the temptation here to trust in other people's coherence, as if the reason why I follow the guidance of my wife, my doctors, my friends and my spiritual director is because they "have it all together" and I don't. But this kind of trust doesn't hold up either, because it is clear enough--sooner or later--that they are weak human beings too, with flaws and limitations and failures of judgment.

I have to trust in Jesus. This, for me, is not only a spiritual but also a psychological necessity. I am grounded in Jesus. I cry out to Him and beg for that certainty, and to keep my life centered on Him. In the Church He lives as a Presence for me now: as a way, as gestures, as a companionship. And other persons are given to me by Him to help me to insert myself into that life. It is He who works through them. It is because of His love for me that I can trust them. Even if we make a mistake, I can trust that He is behind us to catch us.

Look at this great mystery: marriage. Eileen and I do help each other and together we carry out the task of shaping an environment in which our children are growing. It's not because we are coherent. It's because marriage is a sacrament. It's grounded in Him. From here, it becomes possible to perceive that my relationships with my other companions are grounded in Him, in the communion of saints; that my relationship with every human person is grounded in Him who is the Savior of the world; that my relationship with reality is grounded in Him who is Lord of all creation.

Beyond any pathological condition, there is that radical anxiety, that radical fear of uncertainty, that afflicts us all. The healing we all need comes from Jesus. This is why He says, "believe in me."

Speaking New Languages

So now I have gotten on board Google+. Where does the craziness end?

I suppose it spans the whole course of life.

It’s all about communicating in the world we live in: a world of frighteningly powerful information technology. Can we learn how to be Christians--how to be human persons--in this dangerous world? We must! The love of Christ compels us. Wherever words are uttered, Christ must speak. We--members of His Body--must learn the art of speaking to each other in these new languages; we must learn the art of loving with the love of Christ in these new "places" where so many desperate people dwell. If we build communion on the internet, we will be given the grace to "speak" to the world in new ways. Wherever human persons go, we must go (provided that it is possible morally: i.e. we don't become bank robbers in order to preach to the bank robbers; but wherever it is possible to go without losing our Christian and human dignity).

It is possible to be present as Christians in the new media, and to expand that presence in the measure that it useful for bearing witness to the truth. The Church calls on us to use communications media, whether we like them or not (personally, I'd rather be playing with my kids than messing around with the internet, but this is part of my vocation as a communicator--a teacher and a writer). We have not been brought together in the Church so that we can sit around and look at each other and say, "isn't-it-great-that-we're-Catholic." We have been brought together to meet Jesus Christ, to come to know and love Him more, and to go with Him into the world...together. It is not easy: "tools" like the internet can suck us in and distort our life, but this doesn't have to happen! We can use these tools if we help each other. Finally, it’s about love. These words are being written for love, because whoever is reading these words is loved by Jesus.

What Will Make Me Truly Happy

If we are able to look deep down at the mystery of our being, then everything is small compared to the capacity of the soul--how we complicate life because of not under- standing this–because it does not resolve anything to go after the first thing that passes. It does not resolve anything: it complicates everything even more, and then you find yourself back where you started. We cannot respond to this in a merely moralistic way: “Because it’s prohibited,” and then tell ourselves, “But, deep down, we lose the best.” It means we have not understood anything!

Fr. Julian Carron, Spiritual Exercises of the Fraternity
of Communion and Liberation, 2011

This text was part of my reading for today. I am deeply struck by how much it describes my ordinary mentality. How easy it is to think of "God's will" as something external and even capricious, something that is alien to the deepest desire of my being. I try to obey God's will and keep His commands, but deep down I think that if only I could do it my way, according to what I perceive in the moment, on the surface of things, then I would really be happy. I have to do God's will, however, because He is bigger and stronger than I am.

How alienating this is, and yet how easy it is to be tinged with this kind of perception in one's practical attitude, no matter how much theology one knows. But it's wrong as a practical attitude, and it results in getting nowhere (as Fr. Carron says). It's not true about God and it's not true about myself. But to really change, I need more than a theoretical understanding of this. I need to know this in a vital way, from within my engagement of life. I need to know it from the heart. What God wants corresponds to what will make me truly happy. That is the truth about reality, even when it doesn't "seem" that way to my limited human perceptions and whims. God's will is what is, really, "for me"! Nothing else can make me happy.

I must beg God to help me become more aware of this truth, and stay with other people who help me to remember it.

Something Greater Than This World

July 11 is the Feast of St. Benedict.

St. Benedict was a man who went off into the desert in search of God. He sought to dedicate himself to God alone.

He had no project.

He did not plan to establish a monastery.

He did not plan to found a religious order.

He did not plan to lay the foundations for the Christian civilization of the Middle Ages.

He did not plan the preservation of classical learning and culture.

He did not plan to feed the poor, care for the sick, found schools, or become a counselor to the great and powerful.

He sought only to give himself to God. He found God in the desert. He found Him in silence and prayer. He also found Him in obedience, which for Benedict meant responding to the little things that God gave him. It meant loving God in those first followers who sought him out. It meant helping them to live together as brothers. It meant writing his directives down, as a rule "for beginners."

Silence, prayer, obedience, humility, love. These are still the things that really matter. These are the things that build up the heart of the Church. But we must acknowledge all of God's gifts: it is also this radical self-forgetfulness of love for Christ that builds up the world. St. Benedict was not aware of this, but God used him nonetheless, and for centuries in the West he has been known as the "Father of Europe." By seeking God after his example and according to his rule, Benedict's followers would also change the history of the world. Benedictine monasteries rose out of the ruins of the Latin Roman Empire, preserved and fostered all that was good from antiquity, and inspired and helped shape the institutions of the new peoples who built Western Europe's Christian culture.

Our world today may be on the threshold of a new dark age. Are there, even now in our midst, the "St. Benedicts" whose prayer and sacrifice are sowing the seeds of a new Christendom in the future? Or is this not in some way the calling of each of us? We must go into the desert of daily life, in this world which cannot but be a world of sorrows because we are not yet in the embrace of the God for whom we have been made. We must go into the desert of our hearts that are so distracted, and we must cry out for His mercy and healing. We must live in the midst of a world that has tried to make God absent, that has obscured the signs of His presence, and we must seek Him and stand with Him as He unites Himself to humans in their loneliness.

This is what makes the world a better place: knowing that we are made for Something greater than this world, and letting that "Something" touch us in the midst of this world and shape our way of looking at everything.

The Icon of St. Benedict is by Lu Bro:
http://www.bridgebuilding.com/narr/lbben.html