Everything is Grace? Reflections on Grace and Freedom

"Everything is grace," Saint Therese famously said. Indeed, that is the Gospel of redemption in Jesus Christ.

This doesn't mean we don't "have to do anything" in our relationship with God. We respond, act, and even "merit" the fruit of our actions, but all of this (and much more) is the gift of grace through Jesus Christ. God inspires, sustains, and brings to fulfillment every act that we perform that takes us forward along the path of salvation.

God is the source of all that is good. He gives us our good actions, but in such a way that they are really our own. We are not puppets. We are free human persons who freely love God because He empowers us to love Him and "moves us" in the very depths of our freedom. The Holy Spirit anticipates, awakens, inspires, enlightens, draws, heals, elevates, sustains us totally. He precedes us, touches our hearts, mysteriously works within our humanity, calls us and begins to change us, "sowing the seeds" and "cultivating the field" of our hearts, and He does this in the lives of all human beings, including the billions of people who do not (yet) "know" Jesus explicitly. God's goodness is always "at work" - He draws us according to His mysterious plan of wisdom and love, and then inspires us to "cooperate" with His work, so that the infinite victory of Jesus on the Cross and in the Resurrection might fill and transform our lives, and be the vital center of the whole world and all of history.

There is much that is mysterious in this plan of God for every human person in Jesus Christ. Jesus is, after all, the Mystery drawn close to our lives, the Mystery made flesh, dwelling among us. The grace of Christ is superabundant, and the wide world and its many peoples strike us with awe and wonder at the unfathomable ways Our Lord works in every human heart through the inexhaustible love of His Most Sacred Heart.

If we really love Him, we want to share in His work. We want to witness to Jesus Christ, with humility, with reverence for every person, for peoples and cultures, for all that is holy and good in all the religious traditions, and for the many efforts throughout history to articulate the cry of the human religious sense (already stirred up, drawn, and helped in countless ways by God's grace). It is love that moves us to cry out (with our voices, with our lives) that Jesus is the gift of God, the source of all grace, the embrace of God who opens His arms to each one and to every one, who makes all things possible.

We who are Catholic Christians ought to meditate on the mystery of God's gratuitousness, which is beyond all measure. We must not shy away from the awesome mystery of God's grace.

I would like to propose a few considerations:

Everything really is grace. God accomplishes our salvation and sanctification in us and with us. He raises us up through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit according to His gratuitous love, freely adopting us as His children and giving us a participation in His own life. He calls the human persons He has created to a life that eminently fulfills and validates all our fundamental desires for truth and goodness, even as it draws us "beyond" this world to a new creation that "eye has not seen, nor ear heard," in which God will "be all, in all." 

He forms our very identity as persons in light of this destiny, for we are not merely hypothetical realizations of some abstract concept of "human nature." We are members of the human family who enter into the concrete reality of human history that unfolds according to God's wisdom. This entails the tragic mystery of our own indigence, our disoriented humanity, but God is here for us with His ever-greater love, giving Himself to us in the incarnate, crucified, and risen Jesus. And through Jesus in the Spirit, He gives us new life - He prompts, initiates, empowers, and sustains our loving response to Him. 

Everything is grace. Even our response to grace is the work of grace giving us supernatural freedom and its acts in such a way that they are truly our own, so that we really participate in God's love and become like Him and totally abandoned to Him even as we become most fully "ourselves"!

Everything is grace. This is a mystery which we cannot understand, but which we can contemplate in such a way that our confidence in God's love for us grows even as we attend to the responsibilities He entrusts to us in this life.

It sometimes appears, however, that we forget the full measure of what God's grace means, and we live according to a reduced conception of the depths of God's love for us and the dignity of our vocation.

We Catholic Christians can give the impression (and sometimes we even think, in the practical order of things) that grace is a sort of deal where God does half of it (or even most of it) but we have to "come up with something in addition" to what He does - we have make some radical contribution (however small) from ourselves alone, from our own power that we possess "autonomously." In the drama of salvation (as well as "good works"), we can be tempted to think that there is something we do "without God," something that fundamentally originates from us and us alone. If we "do our part," then God's power can and will "help" us.

This way of speaking, especially in the form of exhortation, is not uncommon in pastoral theology and homiletics. It aims to address the freedom of the will in its practical dynamics, the psychological reality of how this mysterious thing called freedom - my freedom - engages, chooses, and carries out actions that are truly my own actions.

The Catholic understanding of freedom, however, is embedded within the context of the whole mystery of salvation as conveyed by the complete, integrated witness of Sacred Scripture to the love of God, the human beings He has created, and the person and redeeming work of Jesus Christ - the witness that has been handed down from the Apostles, and that continues to be preached and given and lived in the Christian community today.

It takes a lot of theology to unfold what this means for human freedom. Suffice it to say that omnipotence does not cancel out human freedom, or render it "less free" or less "my own." On the contrary, Divine omnipotence is what makes human freedom possible, what makes my freedom possible, and what makes it possible for my actions to be truly "my own" - it is what makes the very reality of "me" in such a way that I am truly "myself." Clearly, much more needs to be said, and we learn a great deal from theology. But at the end we still find ourselves intellectually in the presence of a luminous paradox, which we recognize as the mystery and the ineffable splendor of superabundant Love only by means of a living, trusting, ecclesial faith.

As Catholic Christians in today's world, however, we can very easily become removed from effective contact with the environment generated by the witness to salvation, the reality of Jesus Christ living in His members through history and in the here-and-now (even with all the sins, mistakes, negligence, and stupidity of these members). He has promised to be with us always, and that we will always find Him here - the Crucified One, the Risen One who saves us. Here is where we are called to "live our faith." If we become distant from the "gathered people" called together by God (the ekklesia, the "church") and entrusted by God with the witness of salvation, we will be like fragments, like fishes out of water. We may identify ourselves as Catholic (even with a measure of intellectual coherence) but still be in some manner "distanced from" the life, the nourishing vitality of this "church," Christ's Church, Jesus Christ living in His Church. In this fragmented condition, our understanding and our words about our faith can subtly slip out of the context of the whole.

Not surprisingly, our mentality can thus easily reduce the mystery of grace and freedom to the idea that God does "some of it" or "most of it" but that we have to do "our part" - indeed that we have to do our part "first," fundamentally, exclusively from our own solitude, "before" God can do anything for us. We may live this mentality as an attitude toward life even if we intellectually reject what it expresses - which is in fact the heresy of "Semi-Pelagianism."

I think that this weakens the confidence, the hope, the trust of many Catholics, because they feel like they don't have that self-initiated, self-sustained "oomph" of will or energy that they think they need in order to summon from within themselves that radical "first step." In fact, they don't have the "oomph" to conjure God's love.

The good news is that our God doesn't need to be "conjured." He is already here. He has come to be with us, to make us like Him. He is "already" loving us, and if we even begin to turn to Him it is because He has already called us. Everything is from Him.

Everything is grace, even our (truly free, truly "our own") response to grace. God wants to give us the capacity to love Him and the realization of that capacity. He enters into every aspect of our lives by taking flesh. Jesus. 

The grace and salvation of God reach our lives in and through Jesus. Whenever we speak of these things we always must look to Jesus and come back again and again to Jesus. We are adopted sons and daughters of the Father IN HIM. We depend totally on Him, Jesus Christ.

What can radically "originate" from a human person "independent" of God? Nothing. No thing.

I can't adequately explain the mystery of how we freely "cooperate" with grace. We cooperate with grace by means of grace - by the working of the creative and transforming power of the Infinite Love of God in us, empowering us and effecting our action, which is precisely what makes our cooperation really free and really our own.

I don't know how we even exist - how we have "being" in a way that is totally dependent on God and also truly "our own" - there is no adequate metaphor for the primordial mystery of a created person, much less the grace-given "meritorious" (praiseworthy) acts of an adopted child of God --well, the images in the New Testament are best.

What is maybe a bit easier to see is the one "way" that we really are radically, independently "free" - without God we can do nothing, which implies an awful possibility. What if, in the presence of God, solicited constantly through life by His Infinite love, embraced by Christ on the Cross with the redeeming and transforming power that wills to generate a new freedom within us, we do... nothing?

Freedom implies that we don't "have to" love God. We can "non-accept" all this tremendous grace and love. Let us not think that saying "God takes the initiative" means that we should just sit around and do nothing, waiting for God to "show up" in a way that impresses us. He is already here and already at work within our hearts. We have no excuse to "do nothing." Of course, no one can entirely negate themselves, which is why our "non-acceptance" of God's love in Christ leads us to the wild effort to flee from Him and plunge into the nothingness of sin.

We may try to identify ourselves with the nothingness of our non-response to God's grace, but God remains omnipotent. He can create (or recreate) "something" where before there was "nothing." He is the Lord. Nevertheless, if we really are trying to be frozen in our nothingness, being recreated as something new is going to be a momentous change. God is not a bully. Are we going to "allow Him" to change us?

We have to (inadequate words here) "let" God change us, "let" Him empower us, etc so that we live more and more in Him. This is important, because the self-shriveling unfreedom of sin ultimately brings home to us the reality of our powerlessness and we may be tempted to despair. If I feel stuck, lost, afraid, frozen, "unwilling," what can I do?

PRAY. "Lord give me the desire..." "Jesus, give me the desire for the desire..." These things are mysterious, but prayer begins because we allow ourselves to be drawn into the relationship. Jesus will give us what we ask for. The Father loves us and is always tending us for our good even long before we think of praying. Be He doesn't force us. We can "stay closed" to God's love. We can say "not" to all the ways Divine love pours out to open us up. This is the mystery of sin, of iniquity. 

The negation of God's love: our desperate world seems dominated by it. Our own hearts have so much need for light to reach dark and shadowy places within them. Sin and death are a terrible weight, and a pretense of meaninglessness that brings misery and destruction. Still, God's love wins the victory through Jesus Christ. His grace is the gift of healing and redemption, salvation and transformation to eternal life.

There's so much that needs to develop from these thoughts, but there they are for now.

Grace: Our Need For His Mercy

Be reconciled: the journey is not based on our own strength. No one can be reconciled to God on his or her own. Heartfelt conversion, with the deeds and practices that express it, is possible only if it begins with the primacy of God's work. 

What enables us to return to him is not our own ability or merit, but his offer of grace. Grace saves us; salvation is pure grace, pure gratuitousness. Jesus says this clearly in the Gospel: what makes us just is not the righteousness we show before others, but our sincere relationship with the Father. 

The beginning of the return to God is the recognition of our need for him and his mercy, our need for his grace. This is the right path, the path of humility. Do I feel in need, or do I feel self-sufficient?

Happy Birthday Christina Grimmie, 2021

On March 12th - the 27th anniversary of Christina Grimmie's birth - TeamGrimmie people all over the world celebrate her legacy, play her music, and remember her bright beautiful life with gratitude and "With Love"🎶.💚

(I'm not sure how I like some of these new graphics applications, but I'm trying them out. Not everybody looks good as a "cartoon," but our girl rocks it.😉)

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Dear, dear, great-hearted Christina: We miss you. We will always love you!

Anniversary of My Baptism

I don't often make special note of today's date, even though the most decisive event of my life took place on it. On this day, 58 years ago, Jesus Christ entered the history of my life and claimed it - specifically and precisely - for Himself.

Baptism. A moment in time wherein Jesus - God and man, incarnate, crucified, and risen - makes Himself the foundation of eternal life for a particular human person.

May the Lord bring to fulfillment what He began in me, on that day.

Peace Requires Mutual Esteem and Dialogue Between Persons

During his visit to Iraq, Pope Francis stressed the importance of fraternal love in establishing peace in a land torn not only by recent foreign misadventures but by religious conflicts inherited from the past. The Pope wasn't saying that religious difference don't matter, but rather that they must not become the pretext for emnity between persons, who are all in the hands of God. The Lord is at work in every person for the fulfillment of His wise and loving plan through Jesus Christ. 

This takes nothing away from the Christian vocation to evangelization, but it excludes all hatred from Christian witness, while also joining with non-Christians in the common recognition that hatred has no legitimate place in any religious life that seeks to do the will of God, or any human life that seeks the good.

We can all acknowledge hatred as the common enemy, which blinds us to the personhood of the other.

Pope Francis Begins His Long-Awaited "Pilgrimage" to Iraq

Today Pope Francis embarks upon his first international journey in over a year. He is visiting the much-beleagured and suffering peoples of Iraq, the ancient peoples of Mesopotamia, of the land of Abraham's birth. Today they are mostly Muslims, but they are divided between Sunnis and Shiites living at the edge of the Arab world and on the border with "Persia" (Iran).

The recent wars and their violent civil consequences have driven many of the Chaldean Catholic Christians into exile, but there remains in Iraq a remnant of one of the most ancient Christian communities in the world. They sing their beautiful liturgy in Aramaic, the spoken language of Jesus and the Apostles.

The pastoral solicitude of Pope Francis for Iraq continues (and extends) the concern and attention of his predecessors. I shall never forget the passionate persistence of Saint John Paul II who gave such prophetic witness beginning 30 years ago: how he continually warned the West of the destructiveness and grave dangers of its misguided policies of war and crippling economic sanctions in this region. The modern nation-state of Iraq has always been fragile ever since it was created (artificially) by the European victors of World War I. It has always been difficult (but important) to preserve peace and build fraternity in this precious place, with its imperilled yet tenacious Christian minority, its depth of religious and human culture, and the divisions among its peoples.

Francis knows well his mission here. It is to witness to Jesus's gift of salvation through practical cultivation of conversion of hearts, forgiveness, and the love of one another to which we are all called. Jesus has revealed the mystery of this fraternal love to the world. It is His presence - revealing the Father's love as the true meaning of our lives - that works to draw the hearts of every person beginning from wherever they are on their individual and communal journeys. With intense esteem for everyone and reverence before the mysterious ways of God, the Pope will witness by his very presence that Jesus is the vital heart of our real common humanity - the One who fills history and makes us all brothers and sisters.

As always, the fruits of this courageous gesture are in the Lord's hands.

The Lord "Probes the Mind and Tests the Heart"

The text posted here (from today's liturgical readings) is really a consolation. 

The Lord alone truly sees, probes, tests, draws our hearts. He is our Father who loves us. So much more hopeful than if we were left to ourselves to judge, or worse, left to the judgment of one another!

The Globe is Golden For Laura Pausini!

These have been some exciting days for Italy's popular music Prima Donna (and Latin America's "adopted" Mujer Grande), the wonderful Laura Pausini.

The song "Io Si," which she sang and co-wrote for the movie The Life Ahead (starring the 86-year-old Sofia Loren), won the prestigious Golden Globe award on Sunday night.

Then Laura sang this song on the final day of Italy's San Remo Music Festival, revisiting the place and the event where she first became famous 28 (twenty-eight?!) years ago.

It cannot be possible that I first arrived in Rome 28 years ago, in March of 1993. The buzz about the 18-year-old girl who had just won the Festival was still fresh at that time. The San Remo Festival is a big event in Italy, which has been nationally televised and nationally watched every February-March since the 1950s. Long before Eurovision, or American Idol, or X- Factor, or The Voice, or any of those competitions there was San Remo. In Italy, after all, "popular music" is broadly defined, and singing is even more valued than soccer. Artists have gained national attention there (and occasionally international fame) for a long time. I was still living in Rome in 1994 when a much older (but previously unknown) male singer won and began his own international career. His name was Andrea Bocelli.

Italians are pretty talented people.

Now, after winning at the (mostly virtual but expertly presented) Golden Globe Awards on Sunday, Laura returned (not for the first time) to San Remo to sing to the entire country. Again it was a partly virtual show this year, but it seems that "we-are-getting-good" at doing this new kind of event. It's hard to know what that might mean for the future. But when I compare today to images from 1993, I realize that the world has indeed changed in many ways, even before the pandemic.

While most '90s pop stars have faded, Laura is bigger (and better) than ever. There are enough Latinos and Latinas in the United States that Laura got a big spot on Times Square on Monday (see picture second from the top). Anglo-America may start, finally, to wake up.

The Oscars are coming soon. I hope she wins again.

The Winds of March are Blowing On Us Once Again

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What will the coming weeks of March in this year of 2021 bring?

Spring, certainly. Much more evening light. Buds and the first blossoms of color. The progress of Lent to the beginning of Holy Week.

In Virginia and most of the United States of America, mid-to-late March will mark one year since the COVID-19 pandemic brought dramatic changes to the structure of our social and economic lives. Though vaccine distribution will continue to increase, we are not likely to see the end the crisis and its far-reaching consequences.

Concrete circumstances vary from one state to another (and in various areas within states). Many adaptations of work, commerce, and social interaction have developed that may well continue in some ways even after the pandemic is finally "over" (though it's hard to see who, if anyone, has the authority to officially declare its end).

We are approaching one year of this strange illness hitting our shores, bringing catastrophe for those gravely afflicted (and their loved ones) as well as requiring heroic and exhausting efforts by overwhelmed medical professionals. All of us have become familiar with "social distancing," cancelled events, "staying-at-home," educational upheaval, magic money from the government, ZOOM, sports in empty stadiums, virtual gatherings of every kind, and many other things we never anticipated 14 months ago when we rang in the new decade on New Year's Day, 2020.

It has been a bizarre and unbearable year for some people, and for all of us it has been (and continues to be) a bit surreal. I don't know what will come next. It's difficult even to come up with plausible imaginary scenarios for vaccinating "everybody" (in the USA? in the world?) rapidly and efficiently, and neatly solving all the problems. Overall, it would be good if we could reach a point where the psychological and emotional stress placed on so many people might be reduced for a significant period of time.

Nevertheless, our lives in this world will never cease to be dramatic, and in some measure arduous. That is the nature of this life: it is a pilgrimage, a journey toward a fulfillment that we never experience definitively in this world. In various ways, we learn through the circumstances of our lives how to travel the road and arrive at its destination, if we permit our minds and hearts to be thus educated.

March has been a month of difficult changes in my life for the past 3 years. 

In March 2018 my father collapsed, literally, and the whole dynamic of our family changed. A man who had taken care of himself for more than 80 years suddenly needed a network of medical assistance and physical and psychological care. This blog includes the memories of the year that followed, which was so hard and yet called his children and grandchildren to learn to love in new ways (while - I trust - mysteriously preparing him for the final length of his own journey).

In March 2019, I had just begun to think that we had "settled in" to new routines with Dad, who seemed more stable and comfortable (as much as could be hoped under the circumstances). Then over a few weeks he got pneumonia and succumbed to systemic complications. He died peacefully on April 3, 2019. We accompanied him through the final weeks and days in a way that brought us all closer together but also brought grief in its aftermath, with all its features that appear to be as unique as the person whose loss we grieve.

At the beginning of March 2020 - even as I heard of mounting complications from the growing coronavirus epidemic in Europe - I expected that for me the month would be marked primarily by the ongoing grieving process, which would include the inevitable "emotional revisiting" of the events of the prior year. The last thing I expected was that by the end of the month, the State of Virginia, the rest of my country, and most of the world would enter into one degree on another of lockdown - that daily life for millions of people would be constrained in ways no one could have imagined while the medical and scientific community tried to understand and battle against a highly contagious, weirdly capricious, and sometimes fatal disease that was spreading everywhere. The fact that most cases were apparently mild was reassuring in one way but unnerving in another: no one could be sure whether or not they had the disease and could become a source of infection to others (some of whom might become seriously ill).

The USA's testing program was woefully unprepared at first, then insufficiently accessible for too long, and sometimes kafkaesque in its procedures. But eventually, widespread testing did become available. A year later, many of us have had (or at least know people close to us who have had) a positive COVID-19 test and/or an uncomfortable but not unbearable case of the infection. We are also all-too-aware of people for whom the disease has been a terrible tragedy, and others for whom the accompanying social and economic upheaval have presented grave challenges for their work, livelihood, or education.

I'm not going to try to forecast what the end of March 2021 will be like. Of course, I have subconscious expectations and not-always-sub-conscious anxieties. As the winds of March blow, I feel in them my own humanity: with so much to be grateful for, and with still more aspirations and an inexhaustible desire. I feel my humanity: vulnerable, inadequate, flawed, full of needs that I cannot meet by my own strength, and wanting to remember every day - again and again - that God is my strength and that my trust must be in Him even as I contribute my own best efforts together with others to face whatever challenges lie ahead.

The Simplicity of "Papa Benedict"

On this day, eight years ago, we said goodbye to Pope Benedict XVI as his retirement took effect. We watched him take a helicopter from Saint Peter's Square after a moving final encounter with people there and all over the world via television and the internet.

Eventually, after a time at Castel Gandalfo, Benedict would move into the Mater Ecclesiae monastery in the Vatican to begin a new phase of his own personal vocation, taking up a life of prayer and solitude which continues even to this day. It is a genuinely hidden life, entirely detached from the office and active ministry of his successor Pope Francis, yet enduring as another special way of "serving the Church."

And we still benefit so much from the treasury of wisdom Benedict XVI gave us in the teachings of his papacy. Even with all his learning and erudition, his aim was always simple: to point to Jesus, to encourage us to trust in God's immense love for us, and to allow God to transform us in Jesus and raise us up to the measure of our vocation to eternal life.

Confucius Remarks on the Stages of Life

Lately, a notable passage of Confucius - found near the beginning of the Analects (in "Part 2" of a common editorial presentation in 20 parts) - has made a fresh and unexpected impression on me. For the sake of (over)simplification [cheap thinking?] I refer to this passage as his "remarks on the 'stages of life.'" Though I am for the most part decidedly not "caught up" with Confucius's indicated age-levels (no "perplexities" by age 40? seriously?), I am provoked by his characterization of the decade of life that I have nearly finished (having reached the age of 58 last month). It may touch on the peculiar struggles and challenges of this transition from "middle age" to "seniorhood." Here is the whole quotation, beginning with the age of 15:

"At fifteen I set my heart upon learning. 

"At thirty, I had planted my feet firm upon the ground. 

"At forty, I no longer suffered from perplexities.

"At fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven.

"At sixty, I heard them with a docile ear. 

"At seventy, I could follow the dictates of my own heart;
for what I desired no longer overstepped the boundaries of right."

When I turned 50, I thought it was a big deal (read the post from 2013😉). I wasn't entirely wrong. It was supposed to be the age where people finally begin to get a vital, "naturally experiential" grasp of the larger perspectives of life. It's almost inevitable, because by age fifty we have lived a good chunk of life, and we finally start to "see" what our grandparents were always talking about (and what our parents may still be talking about).

Speaking as a philosopher, this might be what the Master is getting at when he says, "at fifty, I knew what were the biddings of Heaven."

But it was not until age sixty, Confucius says, that he "heard them with a docile ear." It's one thing to start seeing what your life is all about, but another thing entirely to say "yes" to that understanding, to be at peace with how your life has worked out and what remains to aspire to (in terms of life in this world, with its relative concerns, which are real even if they are incomplete in themselves).

It is a challenge, emotionally and psychologically, to arrive at "docility" without veering off into cynicism and narrowing of the heart.

And how am I doing with all of this? Well, of course, the mercy of God in Jesus Christ brings a new and more radically hopeful dimension to everything, even our failures and weaknesses and disappointments. I am learning more and more how much I really depend on Christ's healing presence in my life.

Looking at things from the perspective of humanistic and psychological maturity (as well as the mysterious, deeper realities of life) proposed by Confucius, however, I would say that I have to develop a whole lot more docility in the next two years. I shall do my best...

Knock and the Door Will be Opened

What could be more worth reading and pondering on this blog post than the Gospel passage from the liturgy of February 25th?

"Jesus said to his disciples:
'Ask and it will be given to you;
seek and you will find;
knock and the door will be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives;  
and the one who seeks, finds; 
and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened. 

" 'Which one of you would hand his son a stone
when he asked for a loaf of bread,
or a snake when he asked for a fish?
If you then, who are wicked,
know how to give good gifts to your children,
how much more will your heavenly Father give good things
to those who ask him.

" 'Do to others whatever you would have them do to you. 
This is the law and the prophets.' "

~Matthew 7:7-12

There is also the Collect from the week, where we recognize once again that everything - even our good works - are founded on, sustained, and brought to fruition by the gift of God.

Melting and Moonlight

Here is some of my digital artwork from these sudden warmer days of thaw flowing into the creek, later setting suns, and the rise of February's full moon.

 

The Chair of Saint Peter

HAPPY FEAST OF THE "CATHEDRA" OF SAINT PETER.

Today we celebrate in a special way the unique Apostolic ministry bestowed by Jesus on Simon, to whom He gave the name "Peter." 

"You are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of the netherworld shall not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18).

From ancient times, the bishop's church in every local Catholic Christian community has been called "the Cathedral," not because it's especially large or fancy, but because it has the bishop's "chair" ("cathedra") from which he presides at the liturgy and which representes his ministry and the responsibilities of his office. Like many of the terms and archetectural features of the early Church, it was adapted from styles and practices of imperial Rome in late antiquity (such as the "chair" where officials heard and judged cases, which had practical as well as symbolic value).

What is essential is the bishop's vocation to the service of authority passed down to them from the Apostles and established by Jesus so that His followers would be united in faith and charity in every place and time. Of course, the Bishop of Rome (i.e. "the Pope") has the central responsibility for the whole Church as the successor of Saint Peter (who was the first bishop of the originally small and beleaguered Christian community in Rome and who was martyred on Vatican hill in the year 64).

[The actual, physical chair(s) have a long history. Pictured here is ancient relic in a byzantine/early medieval setting, kept within Bernini's famous reliquary in Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome.]

Bright Skies, Frozen Ground

It's still pretty frosty around here. And cold! But evenings are getting "longer."

I'm staying warm (when I'm not out taking pictures) by keeping busy in my digital art "studio." I have been working on various things, including these two stylistically (and technically) diverse renditions of different perspectives on a dramatic 5:30-ish PM late February sky.

Lent 2021: May God's Love Convert Our Hearts

Once again the great season of Lent has begun.

As we embark upon our journey toward Easter, we are charged with the task of calling to mind our sins with sincere repentence and taking up afresh the invitation to follow Jesus with renewed conversion of heart.

Christians claim that through the encounter and embrace of Jesus Christ we have come to know the love of God himself. If this is really true, why do we keep "forgetting" God's love and going back to selfishness, egoism, distraction, envy, and strife?

Every day we fail. Even those who aim the highest find that they fall short again and again. Should this be a cause for discouragement? Certainly not.

It should be cause for humility, for prayer, for turning and returning to the sources of grace, the places where Jesus "touches" us. Our faith makes especially clear the fragility of our humanity, our immense poverty, our utter dependence on God for everything.

The "good news" is that God's goodness and mercy are infinitely greater than our weakness, and that he has totally embraced our lives in Jesus. We must not give up, but on the contrary cling ever more fully to him.

Moreover - knowing the depths of God's love and our own frailty - we have all the more reason to look upon the struggles of every human person with compassion. Knowing God's generosity and our own vulnerability, we have every reason to forgive others when they hurt us.

We cannot be complacent. We must always strive to say "yes" to the love that God our Father pours out over our lives each day through the heart of Jesus in the Holy Spirit. Let us praise and worship our God who is Love, and beg for his love to change us, to turn us into lovers, and to show the wonder of his beauty through us on the roads of this world.

Fashioned By His Grace...

I love this prayer for today, from the "Sixth Week in Ordinary Time" in the Roman liturgy, so I want to share it before the Lenten Season begins tomorrow. 

Once again there is the emphasis on GRACE in this prayer. We ask God to "grant" the gift of being "fashioned by his grace" into a worthy dwelling place for him - with "hearts that are just and true" - and we ask for this gift of healing and transformation, as always "through our Lord Jesus Christ..."

Prayer and "The Beloved"

Here are two different "digital designs" for a text from Pope Francis's Angelus message of February 14. Obviously, the words are much more important than my experiments in presentation.😉

And here are some roses!

Your Will Corresponds To My Destiny

Lord God, Creator of all that exists,
Infinite Mystery who gives meaning and purpose and fulfillment to reality,
I ask You to show me Your will,
and to give me the grace to do Your will.

You, my God, are the absolute perfection of Truth, and Goodness, and Beauty. 
Your will is Your Glory, the radiance of You who are worthy of all my love,
and Your will is entirely "for" my life, my true identity,

to shape me into the unique person You have created me to be.
Your will corresponds to my destiny, to the real "me" 

and there is no other possibility for me to be happy, fully human, truly fulfilled
except through free obedience to Your will.

And what do You will for me?

Yourself,
You, the Infinite Mystery, who are infinite inexhaustible Love:
Your will is to give Yourself to me,
pouring Yourself out in the gratuitous freedom of love,
revealing Your Glory by reaching down to me in my lowliness.

God who is Love,
Holy Trinity, One God.
Father, You sent Your only Son to dwell with us and save us.
Jesus, you took our humanity to Yourself.

You became our brother,
so that, through the gift of the Holy Spirit, we might be transformed
as Your brothers and sisters, into children of the Father,
called and destined to share forever in the Glory of Eternal Love.

My God, I adore You, I give thanks to You, I love You, I trust in You. 

Jesus, I trust in You.

"We Must Have Confidence in His Strength"

February 10 is the feast of Saint Scholastica, the sister of Saint Benedict. February 11, of course, is the beautiful feast of Our Lady of Lourdes and the annual World Day of Prayer for the Sick.

Facebook also reminded me of the profound words spoken by Benedict XVI eight years ago in his Angelus of February 10, 2013. The next day he announced his resignation from the papacy and his embarking on what has proven to be a long "monastic journey" which continues to this day. In Benedict's apparent "weakness," the strength of God is at work in hidden ways.

Continuing to Remember the Person She Became...

I have a few more things than usual going on these days. But that doesn't mean I want to forget Christina Grimmie.

My own graphics, articles, and renewal of her memory have been consistent for me for over four years. It is my own participation in the vital legacy of this extraordinary young woman. Indeed, my monthly commemorations have a "history" of their own, which is highlighted for me by the various ways that the Internet reminds me of my posts from previous years.

Remembering how Christina's brief words and gestures struck me in the past "surprises me" today by showing fresh vitality and relevance to new circumstances and events in my own life. The love that inspired Christina's life always finds new ways to prove its value. 

Christina offered to Jesus in faith and love her great gifts of voice, music, and magnanimity of heart. In this way - expressing her spectacular, undeniable talent and dedication combined with her humble compassion and openness to every person she met - Christina poured herself out for her Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and was able to share His love in the midst of the secular entertainment world.

In her 22 years on this earth, she made incredible music, inspired and encouraged people, spoke simply but with a depth of sincerity and commitment that gave life to her words, and lived the joy and the risks of a great love... Her total gift-of-self in her passion for music and her unconditional love for people was her witness to the glory of Jesus who is God dwelling among us and who gives meaning to everything.

Confident in His love, Christina was not afraid to love others. Her light shines brighter today than three years ago when I first posted the graphic I share again here. It is a light that will endure.

Josephine Bakhita, “Fortunate” Daughter of God

Today we celebrate a woman who was empowered by the love of God, and gives hope to powerless women, abused women, trafficked women, and oppressed women and men throughout the world. 

She was abducted from her African village and native people of South Sudan in the latter half of the 19th century. She never remembered her birth name, but the Arab slave traders had called her "Bakhita," which means "lucky." There was nothing that looked lucky about the horrible abuse and mutilation that she suffered for years as a slave in Northern Sudan, but then she was brought to Italy, found Christ, and was baptized Giuseppina Fortunata ("lucky"). 

She became a religious sister and for 40 years worked at the convent and among the people simply but with profound charity. She not only forgave her oppressors, but said she would kiss their hands if she saw them, because they brought her to Jesus (ultimately, in God's plan). She lived a heroic and exemplary life of confidence in God, with the strength and humility of an immense self-giving love and dedication to the practice of the works of mercy.

Saint Josephine Bakhita, you now live in the glory of God's beatifying presence. But in today's world we need you more than ever. Please pray for us, and for our many needs, with all the compassion you showed in your earthly life towards everyone who encountered you.

Pray for us to follow Jesus with ever greater trust and love as we journey through this world, that we may attain the joy of eternal life.

Pray for us to turn away from sin, and devote ourselves to the love of God and service to one another, that his glory may shine more brightly in our lives and be reflected throughout our communities, peoples, and societies all over the world.

Pray for an end to the many degrading forms of violence that plague our world, especially the oppression of the poor, human trafficking, and child abuse. Pray for all women, especially those who suffer from lack of recognition of their full and equal dignity as human persons created in the image of God.

Pray for all those who are endangered in various ways by the ongoing COVID pandemic and the many distressing consequences related to it. 

Pray for an end to racism, and for an overcoming of all the interpersonal and social evils generated by it. 

Pray for your native land of South Sudan, for those suffering persecutions, hunger, the ravages of war in Africa and through the world, for an end to all forms of slavery, and for respect for the dignity and beauty of every woman and every man.

Pray for our homes, families, children, elders, and all those entrusted to our particular care. Pray for our perseverance, that we will never give up searching for God's will, and that we will trust in him when he shows us the way. 

Pray for us, that we might love and forgive our enemies out of the conviction that God loves us and them, and orders everything in his wisdom and mercy to the good.

"Obedience" is a Scary Word

In my previous reflection about the Mystery who creates me, calls out to me, and brings me to fulfillment, I said: "What should I do? Obey Him."

Yes, obey ... That's a scary word, and it makes us feel like backing away or hiding. We want to do our own will. We want to be self-sufficient. We think that "freedom" means the unrestricted ability to do whatever we want, no matter what it is. We want to be the independent source of our own value. We also fear being "constrained" by the will of others; we fear that they will force their will upon us and use us to satisfy their own agenda. How can we "trust" anyone?

This, of course, has been a problem "from the beginning," as we well know.

But it's hard just to be alone with our "unrestrained freedom," and eventually we realize that we don't really know what we want to "do" with it. We want to "act," to choose in a way that makes us flourish and grow (somehow). Realistically, we need to "be involved" with other people and the reality of life if we want to use our freedom. We want to find a way that at least appears to get us closer to whatever-it-is that we want, and that seems to give us some security that we will be able to act (or be "part of the action") to obtain - and to keep - the "thing," the state-of-being, and/or the societal organization that will help establish and convince us of our own value. The world abounds with proposals for these kinds of "ways" and this kind of action, all of which require us to commit our freedom to some plan, some system, some method, some person who claims to know what is right (but who is really, ultimately, no different from us). Usually these proposals end up disappointing us, and we may become discouraged or even trapped in bad or dangerous living situations. 

Too often, these proposals for how live freely are very attractive on the surface, but they are not what they appear to be. They promise to enlarge our freedom, but they end up diminishing it and obfuscating our identity. We are tricked into a false enthusiasm that puffs us up for awhile, but ultimately collapses and buries us. Then, we find ourselves suffocating under this weight, but we are told to conform to the party line, to obey orders, and give over our humanity and our very lives to those who wield power...or else!

In today's world, we fear this word, "obedience," not only because we are stubborn and self-willed, but also because it is often misused to serve the claims of power. I refer here specifically to the pride and ideological and imagination-manipulative schemes of humans who impose their power on others, who are without a proper mandate to exercise authority (or who are exceeding that mandate). These "powers" are self-appointed and (often cleverly) self-assertive; they invade the space of our humanity by lies and violence because they lack genuine authority. They are not dedicated to serving the good of others, to using external material forces as resources to benefit the human community and the created world entrusted to our care. They value their ideas, systems, or "tribal" instincts rather than love for the human person or reverence for the freedom of the person. 

Our anxiety about "enforced conformity" is understandable. And we are especially vulnerable in these uniquely complicated times. We are living in this vast, enormous, frighteningly interconnected world of unprecedented material forces, naked ambition and stripped-open defenselessness, speed and excess in every direction, distracted interactions of multitudes and terrible loneliness, pressure for external success, alienation in a boundless sea where we fear drowning without ever knowing which way to swim for safety.

That same world has so many wonderful and enriching possibilities. Humans are aware of themselves in an unprecedented way as being dependent on one another. There can be a beautiful sharing of resources and marvelous new solutions to basic problems, as well as the opportunity to appreciate one another in new ways: to give and receive all over the world from our diverse cultural riches, personal talents, and expressions of beauty. There is so much good everywhere, so much good in people, in the beauty and ineradicable dignity of each person, in so many facets of their lives, their accomplishments, their institutions and communities, their cultures and social life. But there is also darkness and strangeness, weakness, duplicity, and a kind of radical insufficiency in everyone too... including ourselves! And there are incomprehensible people who conceal dangerous flaws, perverseness, even wickedness beneath an "exterior" that appears good.

And it seems that never before this global epoch has all of this goodness, badness, and ugliness been so shaken together, tossed about through immense changes, and spilled out all through this brave new world in combinations and circumstances and proximity and sheer quantity - in a way that is new to human history. How are we going to live as intelligent, free, loving, compassionate human beings in the midst of all this? 

We would be foolish to ignore the wisdom of the past, of accumulated human experience. We still can learn much from it. But we also need to find new ways forward. We need to find a deeper way of "possessing ourselves" and loving ourselves so that we can freely give ourselves within the context of challenges our ancestors never knew. We need a deeper awareness of our own human freedom and more profound and vital modes of human cooperation and solidarity. We need to learn to trust one another and to "trust reality" (and not become cynical in front of the goodness we see, but open and hopeful in front of it).  But how?

Perhaps that frightening, seemingly ambivalent word "obedience" is relevant here.

The fundamental point here is that we are talking about obedience to God. This is the real meaning of the word: to adhere to and follow the One who is the source of my freedom, of the uniqueness of my personhood; He is the one who generates the freedom that is really "mine," that awakens, searches, and longs to find its real fulfillment, the freedom to really "become myself" - in the inexhaustible love of being-in-relationship to the One who is Love.

Obedience to God's will. Let's be clear: this word does not signify the subjugation of my humanity and the abdication of my dignity to someone who exercises definitive power over me from a place that is extrinsic to my true self, and who would thus perpetrate violence against me. (It may be "God's will" to permit me to suffer violence at the hands of others, but my adherence to Him secures my inner freedom and promises meaning and goodness for me as its fruition.)

We need not fear obedience to God. He is not another threat. He does not crush us. He is not another "Boss." He Himself transcends, goes beyond, this whole world of powers and forces that rise up and pass away in the universe. He is the freedom of Infinite Love, who cannot debase us because He creates us, who cannot violate our freedom because He generates and opens up that very freedom that each of us possesses in the depths of ourselves.

His "will" is the design of His wisdom and love. His will is good because He is Good (all the time!). His will is the love that makes me to be myself and makes me a lover of Him and all my brothers and sisters and everything He has created, because He is Love.

He seeks us, He draws close to us, He "reaches down" to us. And the most astonishing thing is the unimaginable gratuitous gift that by being so humanly particular has touched every moment of human history and invested everything with new meaning: God has come, to share our humanity. He is here. He has come to dwell with us.

Only Infinite Love can overflow in such mysterious superabundance that He can enter the world, take our flesh, become human like us, save us, give Himself to us, call us in a total way without doing violence to us because He is Love, emptying Himself to become our brother, our companion in the flesh.

Jesus Christ, crucified, died, risen to imperishable life - the life that cannot be destroyed, the life He desires to share with us from the depths of His heart. He wins our freedom by "emptying Himself," by pouring Himself out in love, for us. He does not overpower us. He does not lie to seduce us. He looks at each one of us with love, and says, "follow me."

I want to obey Him. His will is the only thing that can correspond to my destiny; He knows the happiness that will correspond to me, and fulfill my freedom.

Welcome to February "Snow and Melt and..."

So it snowed on Sunday night and Monday. I know, snow-laden branches, you've seen it again and again. (Notice that it didn't really end up being all that much in our area.)

I felt lazy... I mean, I felt like being artistic! So I jazzed things up a bit in ze "studio virtuale." Just a little bit:

A not-quite-"instant" Instagram fan fave. Not too difficult, thanks to digital cheating ... err "techniques." (ha, really, it's cheating!😉)

Then I did an artsy take on the "look-at-the-overburdened-Rhododendrons" annual theme.

By Tuesday, the melting had begun. Now with sunshine and receding snow, my favorite Winter greens are back! Oh yeah! So tough.🌿 You just get unvarnished photos for their re-emergence, and then also some hardy ivy keeping its color going strong.

Snow white retreats for now. But it will be back...

He Knows “Me” Through and Through

Not my thoughts, but Your thoughts; not my will, but Your will be done. 

But why?

His will is unfailing truth and goodness, because He is Wisdom and Love. He knows "me," infinitely better than I know myself; He creates "me" and He is my destiny. And He is the Infinite One, who is all good and worthy of all my love.

What do I know of all this, really, profoundly, beyond all the words and ideas I think I have mastered? 

Very little, and that is so easily obscured or forgotten through most of my days. I know that everything exists for His glory, and that He is here for me, He loves me, He is faithful to His promises. I have seen enough in my life to know that I should trust Him. He convinces me, occasionally by great and clear events but most often by obscure signs; whatever the case, His grace strengthens my adherence, my hope that hangs onto Him, and it enkindles love for Him who is Goodness itself.

Most of the time, however, I am absorbed in my own plans, my ideas, or my emotions. I'm distracted. Still, He draws my attention to His loving presence, and He enables me to remember that He is the meaning of my life. I "rediscover" my need to pray for the grace to be more focused on Him.

My life is in God's hands. What do I know by virtue of my own understanding regarding the future: the future of a 58 year old man in the 21st Century? Will there be some joys, some shocks, some achievements, some pain? Probably. Perhaps. In what proportion? I don't know. 

What about death? Definitely. 

But when? And what happens, experientially, in that moment? Will I die slowly or quickly? Today, or in thirty years? Am I "ready"? Come Lord Jesus! Father, deliver me from the evil one! Mother Mary, pray for me in that hour... Then there is the judgment by the just Judge who is also Mercy, whom I hope to adhere to without wavering through what remains of my life and through death, united with Jesus who died for me - indeed who made my death His own, somehow.... through this mystery of His salvific love.

I don't "know" much about these things, beyond what I need to know in order to stay with Him, to take the next step in faith and trust (when I'm paying attention). But He knows. He knows everything. He knows me, entirely, exhaustively, with implacable, immeasurable love.

What should I do? Obey Him. Follow Him. Trust in Him. Not simply because I'm "terrified" of being without Him. For all the incoherence of my "decidedly-not-holy" life, I want to be with Him because He is "what-it's-all-about." Everything, including me, has been created for His glory. He is the source of all meaning and goodness. Moreover, He has made me a person. He generates the personal depths, the freedom and the responsibility, the "heart" that constitutes the uniqueness of who I am. He alone knows who I really am, through and through.

I am relationship-to-Him (as is every person). He makes me in His image. 

And He is Absolute Love. He is my Father.

“A Light of Revelation”

[from Mosaic of the Presentation in the Temple, Mark Rupnik.]

Happy Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple.

It has now been 40 days since Christmas, when we celebrated the birth of Jesus, the Word made flesh who has come to dwell with us, to reveal the glory of God and the immeasurable depths of His love for us. 

Today Jesus is brought to the Temple in Jerusalem by Mary and Joseph in accordance with the Mosaic Law. Here He is revealed to the faithful of the Old Covenant who have ardently awaited His coming. By the grace of the Holy Spirit, there are a few who recognize the baby Jesus as the Messiah in this joyful "epiphany," as Simeon testifies: "My eyes have seen the salvation which You have prepared in the sight of all nations. A light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of Your people Israel" (Luke 2:30-32).

Then "Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be contradicted—and you yourself a sword will pierce—so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.'" (Luke 2:34-35).

Since Jesus is the "light of revelation," today is also a special day for the blessing of candles, "Candlemas." Two weeks from tomorrow we begin the liturgical season of Lent, in penance and preparation for the observance of that Holy Friday when Jesus takes our sins upon Himself... and the Resurrection of Easter Sunday. 

Christ is our Light in every darkness.

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At the beginning of today’s Mass, there may be a formal procession, where this beautiful prayer is used:

Illuminating Life's Path

Here is a text from a homily of Pope Benedict XVI on February 1, 2012 - the last full year of his pontificate: