The Holy Spirit, Patience, and Crazy People

"Being patient: that is the path that Jesus also teaches us Christians. Being patient ... This does not mean being sad. No, no, it's another thing! This means bearing, carrying the weight of difficulties, the weight of contradictions, the weight of tribulations on our shoulders. This Christian attitude of bearing up: of being patient." 

Thus said Pope Francis yesterday in another of his splendid homilies. The Christian bears tribulations with patience. The Christian does not complain. The Christian bears suffering and sorrow, but is never sad. (Never sad? Really? More on this below.) The heart is at peace. It is not a good Christian attitude to be "Signore o Signora Lamentela" (which has generally been translated as "Mr. or Mrs. Whiner" -- my impression from the Italian press is that he actually "coined" another one there, the latest of his special and vivid idioms).

The first thing that struck me, of course, is that I am Mr. Whiner. For many years I was also Mr. "I-want-everybody-to-like-me," so I kept the whining inside myself and pretended to be brave. As a person gets older, however, Mr. "like-me" increasingly fades away. You learn by experience that you can twist yourself into a pretzel for some people and they still won't like you. And you no longer have the energy to do the pretzel routine. At this point, Mr. Whiner starts to show himself.

In the 21st century, Mr. Whiner might even dedicate an entire blog to whining. And he's amazed that some people actually keep reading it! I suppose it helps if Mr. Whiner features some stories about his funny family. They are, of course, the ones who keep him from becoming Mr. "Put-me-in-a-rubber-room."

Okay, enough whining about the fact that I'm a whiner.

Pope Frank emphasizes that he is talking about patient endurance, which is founded on the new life that we receive in the Holy Spirit when we are baptized into Christ. If the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we have the radical potential to patiently endure our trials, to live them within the redeeming death and resurrection of Christ.

Frank refers specifically to the term in the Greek New Testament: Hypomone. The sense of this term is to bear up "under" our difficulties with an awareness, a determination to keep going forward toward the goal that gives meaning to all of it (the goal in this case being supernatural, eternal life, the fullness of maturity in Christ, which means that hypomone is the working of grace, a gift that not only calls for the cooperation of our freedom, but also elevates, empowers, and attracts our freedom).

Hypomone says "never give up!"

It enables us to grasp in faith, hope and love, and in the light of the Holy Spirit, the destiny to which we are called. We grasp the reason why we must "never give up," why we must keep going forward. It is a grasp "in love," which may not manifest itself clearly in our understanding. Hence there can be "dark nights" and all sorts of strange and secret paths on which people are patiently bearing their burdens, especially when those burdens involve cognitive and emotional and (to be quite precise) neurological incoherence. 

It is important to emphasize this supernatural grace of the Holy Spirit by which we are enabled to bear any kind of crazy problem with patient endurance. It is also true that grace perfects nature, and the tendency of the Christian life is to transform our entire personality. Thus it is not surprising that we meet people in the world who possess Christian joy and patient endurance in a way that is obvious, that is visible and "tangible" to pretty much everyone.

How great and significant such Christian witness is in this world! But it should not surprise us. The life of grace is the beginning of eternal life, which is destined to heal and transform everything.

If we look with attention, however, we may also find this joy and endurance in hard and peculiar places. We may find it mixed with the symptoms of the burdens it bears. We may be distracted from it by the rawness of the wounds that are borne, the physical or mental ugliness of the affliction, or the madness of delusion, confusion and crazy total love that has characterized the holy fools throughout history. All God looks for is an open heart. He'll work with anything that doesn't oppose Him. If He could make children of Abraham from stones, He certainly can take badly broken human beings, failures, oddballs, beggars, crazies, and raise up exotic masterpieces of holiness.

Never look down on any human being. God loves each and every one of them with a persistence and an intensity beyond anything we can imagine.

As Pope Frank says, this life of grace is a "process," and it takes a unique shape in each person's life, and in accordance with their concrete vocation, the burdens they bear, and the sufferings they must endure.

"This is a process - allow me this word 'process' - a process of Christian maturity, through the path of patience. A process that takes some time, that you cannot undergo from one day to another: it evolves over a lifetime arriving at Christian maturity. It is like a good wine."

It is like a good wine! (Argentina makes very good wine, and no doubt Father Frank is speaking from experience.)

It is a process of maturing, and it takes time. Most of us are nowhere near ready to be bottled yet.

But the Holy Spirit is at work in us, and is the source of our strength and our growth. Here I want to present a particular point that might be confusing to some people. The work of the Spirit cannot be reduced to the way we "feel" (to put it in general terms). In particular, the presence or absence of the Christian virtues and the gifts of the Spirit must be distinguished from the symptoms of neuropsychiatric illnesses that afflict suffering on many people.

This means (for example) that an anxiety disorder is not the same thing as a lack of patience. A person with an anxiety disorder needs to seek treatment, follow a process of healing, factor certain limitations into their life, and suffer in some unusual ways. But we must make sure they understand that they can bear all of this with patient endurance -- even the "feelings" of impatience, as well as all of the mistakes they make because they are still "immature" -- they can bear all this in a way that moves forward on the road to maturity, and even "taste" the gift of God (perhaps only in hidden ways) in all of this.

When a person with mental illness wakes up in the morning and looks in the mirror, their reflection doesn't look like a holy card. Nevertheless, God is truly at work in them. These people should be encouraged to draw close to Jesus and have confidence in Him. Their disorder does not make them Mr. or Mrs. Whiner. They are suffering, and they must rely on God's grace to endure and to offer their suffering, and not condemn themselves for it.

The illness of depression is not the same thing as "being sad"! Being sad is what happens when I freely choose to turn away from the reality that promises happiness. There are people with jolly dispositions and energetic personalities who are really distracting themselves from a profound, hidden sadness that comes from the fact that they've given up on trying to find any real meaning in life. These people may "feel" fine. The genetic pool may have favored them in such a way that their brains are in great shape. But they are sad people. Sadness is a decision.

Depression is not a decision. It is a disease. Your brain is injured and malformed. You may "feel sad" (or you may feel a whole spectrum of wacky things in the "cloud" of depression and other disorders that may accompany it). You feel sad in the same way that a blind person feels like they are in the dark. They are not in the dark. And you are not sad... as long as you don't really choose to be sad. An evil voice may try to tell you that because of your condition, you cannot follow Christ, you are forced to choose sadness because of this inner oppression. The voice is lying.

We know where these lies come from.

Say "Jesus, I trust in You. Jesus!" Entrust yourself to Mary's protection. Call on St. Michael and the angels. Stay close to the sacraments. Pray the rosary. But also seek professional medical help for your disease. You can get help and healing, and you can learn to carry this burden with patient endurance, and go forward and live.

And God will work within you a secret joy that will shine. Perhaps you will never see more in this life than the luminous darkness of a love that is slowly maturing through patient endurance. Still it may be a light in the darkness of other suffering people. Let God shine in you in His way, with the light that is destined to radiate through all eternity. Trust in Him.

New Media and Old: "The Message" is Personal Communication

The internet is not such a strange place. I have never really agreed with the famous line of Marshall McLuhan, "the medium is the message." The medium affects the message. The medium can distort the message. It can also bring out and emphasize certain aspects of the message. It can be distracting, but it can also open up new areas of focus.

But the "message" is something more. A message is the expression of a person in search of meaning, or trying to communicate meaning. A message is a sharing of perceptions, an expression of values, a cry for help. The medium is always some external reality that a person uses to communicate with other persons, in the hope of establishing or sustaining some sort of sharing.

Media connect persons and generate interpersonal relationships and environments. These may or may not be constructive for people. Media tend toward cultivating certain kinds of environments and contexts, and not every medium is appropriate for every message. The determination of this, however, involves various factors.

For example, the medium of text messaging can be used by me to express to my wife that I love her. I can text, "I love you." Is this medium appropriate or constructive for expressing love? You can't answer this question without knowing more about the circumstances. If I said, "I text her, but I don't tell her face to face," you might conclude that this is a bad thing. But what if I added that I am ten thousand miles away working on an essential project, and the only thing I have access to is a cell phone? In that case, we might say, "Thank God for text messaging!"

These questions about how to use media, and how they affect our communication with one another and our relationships as persons, are very important. However, they are not easy. This is a realm where concrete judgment and personal responsibility are very much called into play. There are various tendencies, possibilities, and dangers of different media that must be considered in addition to the nature of the message.

One important consideration is this: "What exactly do I have on hand to use for communication?" If I want to write a letter, I will use a good pen. If I have no pens, I'll have to settle for a pencil. If the letter is urgent enough, and all I can find are crayons, so be it. Or perhaps it must be charcoal on the wall, or scrapings on a stone. "Peter is here" -- so say the scratches on the stone excavated under St. Peter's Basilica. Dear anonymous first century brother, thanks for the message.

On the cultural plane, I certainly should pay attention to how and where people are actually communicating, and present what I know or what I am seeking to understand within these environments if possible. This is because I think I have things worth saying, and because I want to be able to listen and be available to communicate with others.

There are basic questions about the form and content of any communication, "What? When? Where? Why?" Context conditions both medium and message.

A person on a street corner in Manhattan starts burning a pile of wood and sending up plumes of smoke. As the police arrive to take him away, you ask him, "What are you doing?" He responds, "I'm just trying to say, I'm Here! I'm Here." You probably think, "well, that's New York City alright. Every kind of nut case can be found here." But another person finds himself stranded on an island after a shipwreck. He starts burning a pile of wood and sending up plumes of smoke. When the rescuers fly over the island and recognize patterns of smoke, everyone is glad that this person had a way of communicating his message, "I'm Here! I'm Here!"

Media cannot be understood apart from messages and the persons who seek to communicate them. In our circumstances and with the media we have, let us struggle to make good judgments and to communicate in a way that is worthy of persons who share a journey together and who help one another.

Works of Mercy: Much More Than Just Being "Nice"

Be merciful.

Its harder than it sounds. It means much more than just being "nice." It means love, yes, but mercy is a special modality of love. To be merciful, one must shape one's actions according to the needs of others.

Mercy seeks to serve the needs of others. It means to approach the other person with an awareness of his or her weaknesses and frailty, and be an instrument of help. Sometimes it means building up the person. Sometimes it means trying to help a person correct a problem. Sometimes it means comforting the person. Sometimes it means suffering with the person.

But mercy never dismisses the needs of the other. Mercy certainly does not dismiss the sins of the other. A doctor would hardly be considered merciful if, finding a treatable tumor inside his patient, he were to ignore it out of fear of upsetting the patient.

At the same time, the doctor usually doesn't pull out a scalpel and immediately begin cutting the tumor out. He considers the best method of healing the patient, taking into account all of the patient's needs. He also does well to be sure that his diagnosis is correct. So it is with mercy. Mercy does not always make the other person feel nice and comfortable. The focus and shape of a work of mercy is the other person's good, which is often served by a challenge, an intervention, or a correction.

Nevertheless, I must not forget that mercy serves the other person, not my desire to feel proficient in wielding a moral scalpel. That applies to the whole realm of the works of mercy. Mercy does not consist in the pleasure I derive from building social or spiritual systems of providing for the needs of others.

Mercy means that I subordinate my actions, my talents, my mind, and my heart to real needs of the person in front of me. It is a kind of self-emptying, in imitation of God who "emptied Himself" and took the form that would touch our needs from within our history. It is an abandonment of self to the person in his or her need.

This is not easy. But it is beautiful. Because the person in front of me -- my child, my wife, my friend, the student who needs extra help, the colleague who needs my advice, the person at the checkout who has been working all day, the person who just posted on Facebook -- that person, in his or her concrete need, is Jesus.

"Offer It Up." Just Do It?

Suffering is a great mystery of life. It has taken me many years to realize that I can't find a solution, an idea that would enable me to grasp it all in my mind, somehow, so that the fact of suffering wouldn't bother me anymore. But Hegel's "speculative Good Friday" does not exist. We can't think suffering away. We can only bring it to the real Jesus, and offer it in union with His real and all-encompassing suffering, through which God gives Himself to us and works in us.

Suffering is a mystery of love. Jesus has embraced it with His infinite Love, and calls us to join Him in offering our own sufferings. Jesus is already inside the depths of our particular sufferings, and He is calling us to embrace His love for us right there, in all that is obscure and disjointed and incomprehensible in each of us. We can't understand it or fix it, and that's not the point. We must offer it. We must let Him transform it into His love for the Father.

Jesus, I offer you my sufferings, especially all the pain that I can't understand. I offer You all my afflictions of mind and body and circumstances. I offer You the deep sorrow that comes from recognizing my own failure, my weakness, my broken humanity. Then there is all this inner pain that I seem to inflict on myself and I don't understand why. I offer You that pain too. Have mercy on me, a sinner.

"What do you DO?" Human Work, Expression, and Suffering

Work is hard. Its engaging. Its rewarding. Through it we participate in caring for creation, shaping the world, building a more human environment, and providing for and taking care of those entrusted to us.

Work, like life itself, has a mysterious frustration woven into it. It can become dull and aimless, or heavy like an imposition we try to avoid in every possible way. Or it can become wildly pretentious, a titanic striving that swallows our personality with ferocious ambitions.

Work enriches the person. It expresses human dignity. Our work is often an action that expresses our identity; it gives us a "second name" (literally, in many historical instances), because it indicates something about our fundamental relationship to reality. It also locates our place within the community. Think of all those common last names we have inherited from our ancestors: Smith, Mason, Miller, Weaver, Baker, Cook, Cooper, Carter, Potter, Turner, Brewer, Wright, and--yeah--"Carpenter" too, and many, many more. Over the centuries, people often became identified by what they did, especially if it was some kind of skilled trade passed on from generation to generation.

Of course, today these names are mostly relics. It would be humorous to meet someone named "Cook" who actually works as a cook. Many of these trades no longer exist in industrialized society. Nevertheless, our identity and our conception of ourselves remains profoundly tied to our work. "What do you do?" "Where do you work?" We ask these questions because we hope they will give us insight into the person that we meet. We hope that their work will reveal something about their talents and their interests.

How often is that really true in the world we live in today?

There is a mystery about work. In the beginning of human history, we tried to make ourselves gods by our own effort, and we fell from this presumption into a hostile world where we had to struggle to survive. This struggle remains as part of the legacy of suffering and death.

Work remains a good thing. It has a fundamental attraction which we follow because we are human persons. Work remains a source of enrichment and expression. But something is skewed, and our working life is always weighted with ambivalence and frustration, with failure, disappointment, a sense of alienation. It can even drive us to become oppressors, or trap us into slavery.

But even in the most ideal circumstances, our work falls short of its aspirations. Moreover, "ideal circumstances" are rare. Too often, we work but do not enjoy the real fruit of our labors. Our work does not insert us into the community, and we do not feel like we are building up anything. We invest ourselves as persons in our work, but the value of that work is measured by an opaque entity known as money, a thing that seems to float about the world in an almost random fashion, a thing more easily gained by luck, celebrity, or tricks and schemes. Today money seems like mostly magic numbers that we can view on paper forms, or a computer screen. But the wizards who guard this magic...to whom do they answer? Are they even in control?

All through history, people have grappled for survival; some have achieved modest success, but only a few have attained goals in their work that endure for very long. Today, some things may seem easier but work remains a struggle, and we are still reaping thorns and thistles. Like every human thing, work is shot through with suffering even as it is admirable and necessary. Many people feel stuck with constraining and meaningless work; they feel as though they are forced to bury their talents and sell themselves into slavery. We must not underestimate the human pain involved in such circumstances. Then there are those want to work, but can't work. They have something to offer but it seems trapped inside them.

"Unemployment" is a very particular, very real, very disorienting kind of suffering. It doesn't matter whether the cause is a diagnosis or a pink slip or a mysterious scrambling of the "magical numbers"--it remains an open wound. It is some relief if one can still acquire the necessities of life without entirely losing one's dignity. But since work is an expression of the person, the loss of work is an intensely personal experience. It causes a person to feel "unworthy," lacking in value. It causes them to question their identity. "I thought I knew who I was. Then one day I woke up and... it was gone!"

There are many proposals for helping unemployed people; some more worthwhile than others. But in every instance we must remember that we are addressing persons who have dignity, who are made to give of themselves, who are hindered and are grappling--in some way--with human fragility at a radical level.

Like every other human thing, work cries out for redemption.

Held

April has come and gone. It is still Easter. The candle marks another year of our Lord.

Christ is Risen! Alleluia!

Sometimes in a moment, in a simple gesture, a word, the shape of a face, I am surprised. It really is true. There is an Absolute Love who has given everything to make me His own forever.

I could burst into rivers of tears for having forgotten everything. And I know that I shall forget it again. But the edifice of hope is being built in my soul. This is true. This is stronger than my weakness.

And when I feel my weakness, I discover that I am being held.

Janaroland: A Pictorial Essay

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and I just don't seem to have a thousand words in me right now, I'm going to take the opportunity to show some pictures! So here's some "life at home" and "life at school" images. As the children grow older, they are increasingly reluctant to be photographed, especially by me, because they know that any picture I take may end up here! So I have to be sneaky. The kids don't realize that only five people read this blog, and that one of them is their "Papa" (their grandfather, "Hi Dad!").

Before this rambling introduction gets to be a thousand words in itself, here we go:

Josefina has strapped on these binoculars on so she can have super vision (and look silly)

What is it, a space monster? !!

There's Teresa snuggling Alex, our "outdoor cat"! By the way, Alex is now a
grandmother. One of her kittens that we gave away to friends just had her own kittens.

Teenagers avoiding camera. "Daddy I can't believe you put that picture up!" They
will say when they see it. Oh well, we've got two thirds of Agnese's face here, hahaha!

The beautiful world we live in... a few weeks ago, before Spring started.

Alexandra and her daughter Reepicheep, our two OUTDOOR cats, eating fancy-pantsy
cat food instead of going out to hunt for mice. This is something like "grilled salmon with
cream sauce and portobello mushrooms." Its nice that they allow us to live in their house, lol!

That would be this house here. Ah, the humble abode! Yes, its small by American
standards for our family, but thank God we have what we need, and He takes care
of us. So we bump into each other a lot. That's not such a bad thing.

But we have to be careful where we sit. You never know where you might find
a little person taking a nap.

The kids (in 2013) can still fit in the old Toyota minivan....

Although they had more room in 2004 (from left to right, baby Teresa, Agnese,
John Paul, Lucia). Josefina didn't exist yet, which is mind-blowing even to imagine.

Back to 2013: Here's the little Missy in the school hallway. With a straw hat from somewhere.

And here's Teresa, lovelier than all the flowers

The lovely Lucia, busy at school

Three of our beautiful girls

And a handsome young man who is their brother (Go Caps!)

The little one is always up to something. Josefina's restaurant is open. "Hey Mister, what do wanna eat!"

At the Montessori Center, Jojo examines some coral

Then, of course, there are the parents who love each other very much, and who are grateful to God.

Flowers. Have a beautiful day. :)

Pope Francis to Youth: "Have a Great Soul!"

"To you [young people],

who are at the beginning of the journey of life,

I ask: have you thought about the talents

that God has given you?

Have you thought about how

you can put them at the service of others?

Don't bury your talents!

Bet on big ideals,

those ideals that enlarge the heart,

those ideals that will make your talents fruitful.

Life is not given to us

so that we can keep it jealously for ourselves,

but is given to us so that we may donate it.

Dear young people, have a great soul!

Don't be afraid to dream great things!"

--Pope Francis

Asking For My Love

How do I treat the people who are closest to me in my life every day?

There is plenty of material right here for an examination of conscience: one that brings humility, and sorrow, and a memory that commits me again to the vocation of love and the work that it requires.

If I were alone in my own being, however, it would be a fruitless commitment. I would despair of ever being able to find the bridge between my limited self and the lives of other limited persons. My solitude would be an impenetrable shell.

But I am not alone. Jesus is present, and He is at work drawing me beyond myself by the power of His Spirit.

I fail again and again. But Jesus is present. Jesus has conquered my weakness. I must never be discouraged. I must keep going to Him, seeking Him, asking for Him, letting Him build me up through the instruments of His grace, and learning more and more to recognize Him in other persons, in every circumstance.

He is here, asking for my love.

Teresa's Take on Educational Method

Teresa at the Montessori
Center, dressed as an angel

Educational diversity is giving rise to some very interesting and unusual learning models. I have heard of homeschooling and various cooperative enterprises, charter schools, vocational schools, online schools, and of course the Montessori school.

Our kids have been enriched by the Montessori environment, and I think they are very much at home in it. However, they are aware of the existence of other unusual methods of pedagogy. Teresa told me about one of them the other day that sounded new.

It began with my overhearing a conversation, in which Teresa said something like this:

Teresa: "...its a Desk School."

Me (interrupting): "What? What kind of school did you say?"

Teresa: "A Desk School."

Me (not hearing well, ironically): "A deaf school? Oh, you mean a 'school for the deaf' -- that's good. Its good that they have resources for children with special needs."

Teresa: "No, a DESK school. Its a school where the kids sit at desks."

"Gosh," I thought... but before my mind could drift into a reflection on how constraining it must be for a kid to be stuck to a desk, I realized that I went to "Desk School" for twelve years! "Oh, hahaha, you mean like a regular school."

I hope the desks still have cubby holes underneath. :-)

Ah, the old "school desk" with cubby for storing textbooks, notebooks, pencils,
candy wrappers, baseball cards, paper airplanes, and even the occasional frog.

Have You Been "Busted" By the Pope?

"Gotcha!" No, just patting a kid's head

You have probably found that, when you read Pope Frank's homilies, you come across passages which make you think, "Oh my gosh, he just nailed me!"

Are you the lukewarm Christian who just wants a small, comfortable Church? Scorch!

Or maybe you think of God as a kind of "god-spray" that diffuses itself into a mist which goes a little bit everywhere but doesn't really matter. Zing!

Or maybe you have your little "idols"--success, careerism, vanity (or something...c'mon don't kid yourself)--that tend to bump Christ off the center of the road of your life. Yup!

Or you think being Christian is just wonderful, and you're in such a good place right now with Jesus that, like Peter, you want to build a monument right here and just be happy. But the Holy Spirit is "annoying" you, drawing your heart to grow, to go forward on the journey, and especially to embrace all that "cross" business, erk. Can't the Holy Spirit just take a nap for awhile? Hahaha...oh dear....

Do you actually worship the Lord, or do you just ask Him for stuff? Facepalm! Oh, umm... I forgot about that. Worship, yes...just saying, "God, wow, glory to You! Praise You! I adore You!" This means more than just mouthing the "Glory Be" and then saying "gimme, gimme, gimme!" It means real attention to God, silence, adoration, and praising God just because He is God.

God doesn't need our praise, of course. But as created persons, we are made to be worshipers; we are made to recognize, to adore, to rejoice in, to be amazed by Eternal, Infinite Love. He raises us up to share His glory and to fill us with His Love. We are made to worship, and as Pope Frank points out, if we don't worship God, we will worship something else instead, something less than God and therefore unworthy of our hearts and degrading to our humanity.

Okay, Francis. We surrender. We're busted.

But let us not stop there. There's a reason why he keeps ruthlessly slicing the baloney of our illusions. He wants us to see the real possibility that God offers us. He wants us to place our confidence in God and receive His mercy through Jesus Christ.

"Let us not be closed
to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives!
Are we often weary, disheartened and sad?
Do we feel weighed down by our sins?
Do we think that we won’t be able to cope?
Let us not close our hearts,
let us not lose confidence,
let us never give up:
there are no situations which God cannot change,
there is no sin which he cannot forgive
if only we open ourselves to him."

--Pope Francis

Christianity Brings Joy...So Why am I So Messed Up?

A Christian is full of joy. Right?

So what's wrong with me? Why do I so often feel weak, angry, frustrated and broken? Why am I depressed and obsessed and devoid of energy, and why does my life seem like such a train wreck?

It is rather a blow to my "Christian Ego". I've tried using raw will power to bury all that and make myself joyful, but it doesn't work. Okay, I know there's a lot of pathology going on here. Its important to acknowledge that and deal with it on the appropriate level.

It is also important to recognize honestly that my Christian life and witness leave much to be desired. NEWSFLASH: I am a sinner!

Surprise.

I can't deny it. But I also must never be satisfied with it. God is changing me, and He wants me to cooperate with Him. Into the midst of all my mess, Jesus has come! Jesus is here with me, and I want to follow Him.

I'm on His mysterious journey, and it has plenty of dark valleys and sorrows on many levels. Its about healing me and raising me up to a supernatural life, making me a new creation, an adopted son of the Father.

Yup. Me. Bozo-the-human-being, destined to live forever in the glory of God.

The journey, with all its depths, is also about sharing in the mysterious solidarity of the human race, helping to carry the burdens of others, and being plunged into the great love of the heart of Jesus, which is always going out to the margins....

And so, again and again, I discover that I am weak and broken.

God wants all of that. He wants our crying out in pain–spiritual, emotional, or physical–to be a cry that begs for Him. Where else can we bring all of that? Jesus has already borne all of it, my weakness, my brokenness, all of it right down to the core of me… He has endured it all and wants me to open up that vulnerability so He can transform me. That doesn’t mean he’ll make me “feel better” (at least, not in the way I think He should), but He will deepen my trust in Him, and it is through trust that I am changed.

It is through trust that I begin to taste joy.

A priest once told me to imagine I had a basket. Take the anger, the fear, whatever, and (in my mind) put it in the basket, and then (again in my imagination) put the basket on the altar before the Blessed Sacrament and say “Jesus I give this to you.” If I find more stuff still there inside me, I put it in the basket again. And again. Give it to Jesus.

"But I can't do this..." Grab that feeling right there, and put it in the basket. Bring it to the altar. Give it to Jesus. "I feel so helpless..." Basket. "My head hurts, I can't think, I'm exhausted..." Basket. "But I don't want to change. I love myself. I want to keep my life. I don't want to give myself away!..." BASKET!

Okay, that’s a “technique” — it might be helpful, or it might not. If all we can do is groan in pain, let’s groan to the Father and let the Spirit groan in us. I am convinced that He works deeply this way. Just “give” it to Him. God is not surprised by our pain. He has made it His own.

On the other side of it all is an indestructible joy. A spark of this fire has already begun in our hearts, and sometimes others can see it even when we can't.

The Pickle Jar

Lucia comes up to me with a pickle jar.

"Daddy, can you open this?"

Haha! Daddies live for moments like this. Lucia and Teresa and Jojo are sitting at the table, and Daddy has a chance to show his Olympian strength and be their hero. I rub my hands together.

[Of course, this family has no illusions. Everyone knows that there are many things that Daddy can't do. Daddy's sick, Daddy takes medicines, Daddy goes to doctors, Daddy rarely drives the car, Daddy doesn't teach anymore, Daddy's tired, Daddy's nervous, Daddy's tired, but he has written a book. And they can bother him anytime they want. Daddy can answer questions. He reads a lot. He works on the computer a lot.]

But my hands feel fine right now, and I'm the king of opening jars. I can also reach things in high places, and I can kill crickets. Gimme that jar.

Oof oof ow ow...these are usually easy but this one won't budge.

"Can you get me that thingamagigger that grips the lid?" Lucia gets it and brings it to me.

Lid secure, but now the jar is slipping in my other hand. My hand is almost circling the jar. What, did they glue this thing on?

Towels don't help. "Where's Mommy?" someone says. Hey, if I can't do this, Mommy can't do it either. How about both of us?

Mommy grabs the jar with both hand and I take the lid with both hands. Its not working. The jar moves.

This is the toughest jar of pickles I have ever encountered.

We decide to switch. I take the jar with both my hands and dig in, while Eileen takes both hands and turns the thingamagiggger on the lid. "Arrrrrgh!"

POP!

Success at last. It took both of us using all our strength. But the girls wanted pickles. Mommies and Daddies work together to take care of their kids. We do it hundreds of times a day without even noticing it. Its just being a family.

Desperate Josefina Turns to Cards and Drinking ;)

It was just a pitiful sight! She started chugging first thing in the morning. 100 proof H2O. Dangerous stuff. It should be regulated. People drown in it all the time. Although not usually from a sippy cup.

A sippy cup?

Okay, Jojo has some congestion, so it goes down easier in a sippy cup. She also requires entertainment.

Her: "Lets play a game."

Me: "I am not playing Reptile Bingo!" What is Reptile Bingo? Exactly what you think it is. A bingo board with pictures of snakes and lizards (and their names...its educational, of course), and a deck of cards to match. Actually, it is interesting in a nerdy sort of way, but after you've played it fifty thousand times, well....

Her: "No, lets play cards." She slaps the deck on the table.

Me: "What card game?" But the deck has the name of the game on it: "War." I never knew you needed special cards to play "war." Actually, you don't. But if a company wants to make money selling cards these days, they need to come up with gimmicks. Its just a regular card deck, but it says "war" on it, and the picture cards have cartoon dogs and cats instead of kings and queens.

Me: "Do you know how to play 'War'?"

Her: "Ummm... no... teach me!"

This looked like it might be interesting. Higher number beats lower number. That was easy enough. The picture cards were more of a challenge.

Her: "Can I have the cat cards and you can have the dog cards?"

Me: "No, it doesn't work that way. These are actually kings, queens, and jacks. We take what we get. But the picture cards are higher than the number cards. A king beats a queen and a queen beats a jack." I wondered how to illustrate this point. The cartoon dogs and cats were not clearly hierarchical. "Do you know what a king is?"

Her: "The king is a guy who can do whatever he wants." Hmmm. Maybe the kid is smarter than I thought.

Me: "Haha, just remember the higher card wins, but if its a tie, then its a "war," and...etc."

So we played our cards. She put down a six and I put down a ten.

Me: "Okay, see how it works. I have a ten and you have a six. So I win this one and I get to take it."

She seemed quite thrilled by the whole thing. She took another swig, squeezed the cards in her hand and looked at me and said, "Can we play again?"

The Divine Babysitter?

"Hey, I'm baptized, I'm confirmed, I've got my identity card. Now I'm going to go to sleep!"

That's the way Pope Francis described a mentality that often prevails among us. I'm not sure he used those exact words. But since he was speaking off the cuff, I'll cite him off the cuff.

That's funny. Some of us who consider ourselves "serious Catholics" might have a bigger checklist, but once we get through it we're just as ready to hit the hay.

Francis (I am resisting the urge to call him "Frank") observed simply that if we sleep we don't grow, and if we don't grow the Church does not bear fruit. "Instead of being a mother, the Church becomes a babysitter," he said.

Hilarious images from a papal homily, and right on the mark too. They won't be easy to forget.

Brain Power, Energy, and Love

I'm trying to write things, but its very slow and laborious right now. Forgive me if we are rolling through April with snippets and quotations and pictures. I've been tired, and my brain is just not running very well.

Let me show you some more spring flowers.

There are many projects I want to do, but the energy is just not there.

I continue to study the possibilities of internet media. There is much here, but all I can do is plug away at it slowly. The internet is certainly changing our brain patterns, for better or for worse... probably both. I think that it has been good medicine for my brain, in some ways. It seems to help an obsessive brain to be drawn out of itself and into diverse interactions. But it also uses great quantities of mental energy, or so it seems to me.

We need to maintain the tension toward learning how to discern what is worthwhile in all of this new media, and what is predominantly a waste of energy for us. Applying this discernment in our own lives comes with the development of virtue. Here the grace of the Holy Spirit will lead us, but also there will always be the earthly, human "grunt work" of trial and error and more trial and more error, and learning about ourselves, and listening to others, and helping one another.

People like me have limited physical and mental energy. We must prioritize and learn to measure out what we have. Still, we must give of ourselves. It is too easy to claim a lack of energy when our real problem is a lack of love. Often, for us muddled human beings, it is a combination of both.

There are other people who have a touch of the opposite problem. Their brains are in overdrive. They are a bit "manic," and so they are frantically busy and even successful in building many large projects, but perhaps without sufficient reflection on the real value of any of these things. We must also recognize that some people are simply gifted with energy and good health. Thank God for them! (Thank God especially for the one I married.) We are grateful for their accomplishments. Nevertheless, success and achievement in doing things can also hide a lack of love, or become a substitute for love. Here also it is, for so many people, some combination of both a desire for the authentic good and the subtle tricks of a selfishness that resists becoming a gift.

The point is not to feel guilty because we don't push ourselves to exhaustion, nor is it to have contempt for success, and have no regard for the legitimate fruits of creative energy and hard work. The point is that we all need to grow in love.

Here especially we need to ask Jesus to send the Holy Spirit to work within us and change us. And we need to forgive one another again and again and again.

Do We Worship the Lord?

I would like all of us to ask ourselves this question:

You, I, do we worship the Lord?

Do we turn to God

only to ask Him for things,

to thank Him,

or do we also turn to Him to worship Him?

What does it mean, then, to worship God?

It means learning to be with Him,

it means that we stop

trying to dialogue with Him,

and it means sensing that His presence

is the most true,

the most good,

the most important thing of all.

All of us, in our own lives,

consciously

and perhaps sometimes unconsciously,

have a very clear order of priority

concerning the things we consider important.

Worshiping the Lord

means giving Him the place that He must have;

worshiping the Lord means stating,

believing – not only by our words – 

that He alone truly guides our lives;

worshiping the Lord means

that we are convinced before Him

that He is the only God,

the God of our lives,

the God of our history.

Pope Francis (April 14, 2013)

Spring is Finally Here!

Spring is finally here!

Flowers blossom, tree buds open.

Green advances by the hour.

Sky blue, hard heat,

then dark, wet storms roll through

Clouds dip down like fiery smoke on the mountain tops,

moistening the ground for the surprise

of shoots of yellow and laughing faces in the sun.

A Home Where Jesus Dwells

In the heart of Mary, every human longing for the Mystery of God is overwhelmed by the miracle of Divine love, the miracle that transforms the universe: Jesus.

Mary is a living person, right now. The fact that she has always been free from sin doesn't make her any less human. Mary's immaculate heart is a profoundly human heart. The purity of Mary gave her, from the beginning, an aspiration that was utterly genuine, a vital space where God Himself could dwell with the human race. Mary is mother of God and mother of each one of us.

Let us remember the closeness of Mary, the tenderness in the way she looks at us. She understands each of us, and knows how to shape us and foster our growth. She makes our lives into a home where Jesus dwells. The Holy Spirit lives in her. He works powerfully through her intercession. She holds us “in the crossing of her arms,” in her heart, and it is there that the Holy Spirit forms the new life of Christ in us.

All-pure, loving, Immaculate Heart of Mary, my Mother, obtain for me conversion and trust in Jesus.

Pope Francis and the Patience and Mercy of God

Pope Francis continues to place before us the face of God's mercy, his tenderness, his patience, his gift of ineffable love that is greater than our weakness: "The Lord saves us by his love: not with a letter, nor with a decree, but with his love."

God's love comes first. He has loved us, in a way beyond our understanding. "God did not wait for us to go to him, but he moved towards us, without calculation, without measures." He gives himself without measure, all way to the end, to the whole depth of our lives, asking us to open our hearts so that his love can change us and empower us to come out of ourselves, to love him and one another, to become a new creation in him. His mercy probes each of us; he who knows each of us more intimately than we know ourselves calls us and draws us, and makes conversion possible.

"On the cross, Jesus loved me and gave himself for me. Each of us can say, He loved me and gave himself for me. Everyone can say that for me."

And in his preaching, Francis even gives us a voice. He gives words to our own hearts:

"Lord, I believe.

I believe in your love.

I believe that your love has saved me.

I believe that your love has given me

the dignity that I did not have.

I believe that your love gives me hope."

"Lord, I am here,

accept my poverty,

hide my sin in your wounds,

wash it away with your blood."

Jesus calls us to believe in his love, to trust in him.

"Don’t be afraid, go to him, he is waiting for you, he will take care of everything. We hear many offers from the world around us; but let us take up God’s offer instead: his is a caress of love. For God, we are not numbers, we are important, indeed we are the most important thing to him; even if we are sinners, we are what is closest to his heart."

"How beautiful is the gaze with which Jesus regards us – how full of tenderness! Let us never lose trust in the patience and mercy of God."

"Pathophobia": On Freedom, Sickness, and Being Human

Suicide has been in the news again. I pray for the Warrens, and entrust the soul of their son Matthew to the infinite mercy of God.

I know very little about Rick Warren's work as an evangelical minister or his famous books. It doesn't matter. He's a human being, and a father. His wife Kay is a human being, and a mother. Along with thousands of other people, I sent them each a tweet expressing sympathy and solidarity. It won't reach them personally, but that doesn't matter. Solidarity is in the heart, and the human heart is the original "social network" and remains the only one that's necessary; the one that gives value to all communication. Twitter has some value, if it can be used to express a work of mercy.

I wish I could say I'm surprised and shocked by suicide, but I'm not. The awful fact is that it happens all the time.

It happens to "nice" people. It happens to people who "look normal" on the outside. It happens to good people, loving people, admirable and heroic people. I'm quite sure that you know and love people who struggle with impulses toward suicide or lesser forms of self-inflicted personal harm.

And I cannot stress this point enough: These are "regular" people! I'm not just talking about "crazies" here. I'm not just talking about people in straight jackets, people living in the streets, drug addicts, sociopaths, or terrorists. I'm not just talking about people like Monk who are always straightening picture frames and arranging the food on their plate, or people who are generally considered "weird," or even people who have especially melancholy temperaments.

I'm talking about your friends, neighbors, children, parents, spouses, teachers, students and co-workers. I'm talking about people who may be active in your parish, who volunteer for stuff, and - yes - I'm talking about your priests, your good and holy priests (who have never harmed anyone or stolen anything, who have nothing to hide and no reason to feel this way). 

Often suicide can be prevented (which is one reason why we should try the best we can to take care of people suffering from mental illness, and why we should pray for them). But there are times when it just seems to devour a person like an implacable monster.

We have to keep fighting the monster, and never allow ourselves to get discouraged even if it appears that the monster has won.

It is never good for a human person to end his or her life. But there are various ways that this can occur, and so it is important to be as clear as possible about the context of such an event.

Anyone who knowingly and freely chooses to kill themselves commits a serious sin against the loving God who gives life, and whom we must always trust, no matter how desperate or painful our circumstances. Suicide is never the answer. It is not "death with dignity" in the face of a terminal disease or any other problem. To choose suicide is always wrong, and to help someone else commit suicide is always wrong. Of course, we cannot judge another person's heart, and we know nothing about what might transpire in that final moment. We continue to hope and pray for the person, knowing that God's mercy can still work miracles at the moment of death, even while we recognize the evil and destructive nature of this action.

However, with our increasing understanding of the complexities and subtleties of human pathology, we find it likely that many instances of self-inflicted death are not chosen as such. Rather, they are obscure events of human behavior that are driven, in part or perhaps entirely, by a relentless disease that results in a neurological breakdown. It seems that mentally ill people can become altered in their brain functioning to the point where their judgment and freedom must wrestle with deeply distorted perceptions and impressions of themselves and their environment.

There is something truly dramatic about this struggle. Human freedom is called into play, as it is in any other sickness or suffering. It has its triumphs and its failures, which may be invisible to us and even to the person who fights in the darkness. No doubt, the Enemy of the human race is involved as well. The one whom Jesus calls "a murderer from the beginning" will make trouble wherever there is an opening for it. Those who accompany a mentally suffering person should "put on the armor of God" and use the weapons of prayer and sacrifice, and of course the sacraments.

But do not underestimate the devastating force of the diseases that afflict the brain--this most delicate organ of the human body that we have only begun to understand.  The human being is a unity of the spiritual and the material, of soul and body. Human knowing and loving work within the context of sensation and images. Even though they are spiritual, they draw from and are expressed in bodily reality, and to this extent they are "dependent" on the brain. This is obvious when we consider the fact that we cannot perform significant acts of human responsibility when we are asleep. Our capacity to understand can be hindered and distorted by a brain injury, or by alcohol or other chemical substances that interact with brain functioning.

Clearly, then, diseases of the brain can impair human judgment and even bring about substantial disability. Given the brokenness of a human nature affected by original sin in so many ways, it would be amazing if there were not a wide spectrum of problems in the functioning of the body's most complex and intricate organ.

How do we heal a sick brain? How do we keep our brains healthy? These questions make it clear that medicine, like life itself, is primarily an art. Medicine makes extensive use of science, but ultimately it must be practiced on a particular human person. Moreover the brain is not isolated; it is an integrated part of the whole organism of the body, and shares in its vicissitudes. The art of medicine continues to develop in this area, along with all the arts that constitute healthy living. Our world has the potential to accomplish much that is good for human health and well being, for opening new vistas and bringing healing to human places that are difficult to find and burdened with indescribable suffering.

But lets get rid of the stigma of "mental" illness. Once and for all. It doesn't help anything.

There is no real reason why a brain ailment should be considered more shameful than a heart ailment or a liver ailment. The difficulty is that it has more direct and pervasive effects on human behavior, and is therefore more invasive of human interiority. Moreover, we have no illusions of control here; our remedies are fragile and temporary, and the causes and cures elude us.

The symptoms of a brain illness make it clear to us that our humanity consists in the union of soul and body. What afflicts the human body afflicts the human person. This makes us afraid. It makes us want to distance ourselves. It tempts us to isolate the sufferer, because otherwise we might have to look at him or her and see the reflection of ourselves, and our own suffering.

Here is a challenge for our culture that no one wants to confront. Here is a form of discrimination that everyone practices and no one denounces. In a sense, its very much at the root of our common problem. One might even coin a sociological term of reference for it, although its not likely to catch on:

Pathophobia.

Pathophobia. The fear of suffering. The dread of suffering. The full scale flight from suffering, or the cover up of real suffering with fake solutions, and then the marginalization of those whose problems we cannot pretend to have solved.

But the fear only grows. We need the audacity of humility. We need to acknowledge that the human project is cracked at its foundation. None of us can fix it. But humility frees us to hope for a renovation, nonetheless.

We must see that we are all small and broken and we feel endangered by the world, and by each other. And yet we aspire to an endless life. We are afflicted in every way, and yet we aspire to live in the image and likeness of God.

Let us direct this aspiration, and let it be shaped into the recognition and supplication of the One who corresponds to our dignity and our need. And let us take care of one another. Let us be compassionate and merciful to one another.

I Throw Myself Upon the Mercy of God

Mercy Sunday is at hand. We have prayed the Novena during Easter week, as always. And I find myself among the lukewarm, once again...yet I still am offered the hope of running to Him, to Jesus whose compassion knows no bounds, Jesus who can change my heart. Jesus, help me!

I am a word maker. So I bring my words to Him, hoping He can use even words. It seems that He does use these poor words, in His way, mysteriously, according to a wisdom that will remain forever beyond me. So I place my confidence and my smallness and my weakness in Him. Jesus.

What can I do other than throw myself upon the mercy of God? I have the gift of expressing myself. I know that words are straw, but there is a place for straw in life and the task of making straw has been given to me. I will make straw.

I am a human being and I have met Jesus Christ. I express that humanity in words, inadequate words, sentimental words tinged with my own vanity; words that make it sound too easy, and that give me the false appearance of being "wise" as I toy with mysteries. All these words. All this straw.

My dear friends who are reading these words: I want you to know that in this feeble effort to give of myself, and with hope in Jesus, I make this straw for you. Use it for your bed. Throw it in your fire and be warmed. Let it dry up the damp ground under your feet. Find something in it.

From my own struggle, what I want you to see is that Mercy is at work. In all my efforts and words the great hope is that you might see His mercy. Because of Him, I am bold enough to hope that you might find it, even in me, in the midst of my many words.

Look for Him. Discover the beauty of His face. I know it's not as easy as it sounds. I know that. But still, He is here, and He is real.

Mercy is at work in the world, in me, and in you.