He Draws Us Through Her Heart

Jesus draws close to us through the tender-
ness of the loving heart of His mother Mary, and draws us to share in His joy and peace, even in the midst of suffering.

If we ask God for His peace, it is because He has already begun to work within us.

Totally Involved By Him

The center of existence,

which is what gives meaning

and certain hope

in the all too often difficult journey of life,

is faith in Jesus,

it is the encounter with Christ....

It is not a matter here

of following an idea or a project,

but of encountering Jesus

as a living Person,

of letting ourselves be totally involved

by Him and by His Gospel.

Benedict XVI

Clothed With The Sun

We know that Mary has been assumed body and soul into heaven. She sent us a picture!

Indeed, it's more than a picture. We are so familiar with reproductions and even color photographs of this "picture" that we are in danger of growing accustomed to it. But the original is unique.

We all know that the "tilma" has been the object of many scientific studies. They can't explain it. They know it's not a painting. Indeed there is no known human technique for making an image like this. Studies have concluded that the colors and patterns of the image are on the tilma in the way that color and design are on the wings of a moth.

In other words, they are like something natural. There is no sign of human artifice. At the same time, no one can explain how the image actually "interacts" with the cloth. To put it simply: it's not like anything we know.

And then there are the eyes....

I like the story of a Japanese optic specialist who came to Mexico to study the eyes of the image with the latest technology. According to the story, he was making his examinations through his scope when, suddenly, he fainted to the ground. When he regained consciousness, people wanted to know what happened, and he said:

"She was looking at me!"

As a pilgrim (three times) to this amazing place, my response is, "Of course she was looking at you."

During this beautiful period between the feast of the Assumption and the feast of the Queenship of Mary (August 22), I cannot help but recall the precious time that I have spent with her.

The Virgin of Guadalupe, Mother of the Lord of heaven and earth, Our Merciful Mother...she lives there. People who seek her, with attention and faith and patience, will find her, and will be changed by her personal presence.

Moreover, quite of few distracted or merely curious people will be surprised by a tap on the shoulder, and an encounter with a person who knows them, and looks at them with a profound tenderness. It makes them forget any other reasons they had had for coming. And they find themselves being loved, and healed, and gently corrected and set upon the right path. So many people speak of these experiences that it must be more than a collective delusion.

"Here, I will give all of my love...." This is the promise she made to Juan Diego.

Mary lives with her whole humanity, body and soul, in the New Creation. And in some mysterious way, her glory radiates from her resurrected life, and touches this earthly place and this inexplicable image, so that she might be "there" for us, to meet us, and to become a personal presence in our lives.

-------------------------------

P.S. - I neglected to mention the extensive temperature studies that have been done on the cloth. Regardless of the temperature outside, the cloth and its image have always maintained the same temperature. It always measures 98.6 degrees. Fahrenheit. Yup!

People, this is for real!

A Hero, A Young Man, and An Old Poem

St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Catholic priest, took another prisoner's place in the starvation bunker at Auschwitz, where he died on August 14, 1941. As he stepped forward from the line up, he spoke clearly to the camp officer, "I am a Catholic priest. I will take that man's place."

This is a poem that I wrote 23 years ago today.


August 14th

I am the guardian
unworthy
of the flesh and blood that I command.
I stand
extended
from world's edge to windowless walls,
the quarry-block place markers
around my becoming-all-things.
I am a mother's graceful, sweet breath
dissolving
like fine, penetrating mist
against your broken, burned skin.
I am the witness
stepping out of place
away
beyond the trembling assembly
of bony finger-clutched this-moment,
toward the timeless returning unto dust of you
and you
and you.

Forward!
step forward...
                           ...out of place
for I am
your sacrifice.

--August 14, 1989

The Olympics: What Did They Show Us?

The Olympics are over.

Here in the U.S.A., it was fun to get up in the morning and turn on the television to watch people from all over the world compete in a wide variety of sports.

The girls, of course, were especially captivated by the gymnastics. For a few weeks we may have several amateur gymnasts romping around the house, adapting the furniture to their routines. After the 2008 Olympics, Lucia turned the couch into a trampoline (they're not supposed to jump on the couch!) and almost went flying through the front window, shattering completely one of the glass panes (no one was hurt, thank God).

Of course, we also enjoyed the swimming, the diving (everybody loves synchronized diving), the sprints and the distance runners, the field events, archery, some of the more unfamiliar sports like water polo and handball, as well as the standards like volleyball, basketball, tennis, etc. (there was no baseball this time, which is a crime that must be rectified).

But the highlight of the entire Olympics, for our family, was (of course) Team U.S.A.'s gold medal in Women's Soccer. After last year's epic World Cup, with all its heroics and the brave but heartbreaking loss to Japan in the final (see last year's blog), we were ready to see "our girls" take the pitch once again.

They seemed like old friends: Abby and Hope and Alex and Carli and Meghan and everyone. And they did it again. With grit, relentless energy, and their never-give-up team spirit, they thrilled us, amazed us, and put us through the agonizing suspense of close matches and dramatic finales. And then, finally, they won the gold. Our American women were champions!

And they really were...indeed all the many participants in the various sports, within their defined courts or fields, gave a display of excellence, and those who won showed us what it means to be the best. In our rejoicing in victory or our sorrow in defeat, we could not help acknowledging that "goodness" is objective and real, and that human beings strive to attain it.

We cheer our athletes, who build something beautiful and awesome by the arduous work of developing their talents, strength, and skill. This requires intense training, total focus and dedication, and lots and lots of sacrifice. Here, people in our culture today can clearly see the value of submitting to an objective discipline. People see the value of sacrifice. They are stirred to the experience of a kind of wonder.

But things of deeper beauty are not so evident. People don't see these things, and so they don't even understand why they are worthy of seeking, of effort, of sacrifice.

It is here that we must aspire to be champions. We must take the "field" of each day, and keep working hard and making sacrifices in order to live lives of deep beauty, so as to make truth and love shine in the world.

I've Been a Christian For Years, But I'm Still So Selfish!!!

These days (when I'm not just goofing off and enjoying the summer with Eileen and the kids), I am working on the task of shaping certain themes from the reflections that have appeared on this site into into a more substantial and editorially polished presentation (i.e. a "book"). I am getting a good sense of the topics that I have developed consistently here over the past year and a half, and I have outlined various possible projects.

One theme that appears frequently in my meditations, and that manifests itself again and again in so many anecdotes from ordinary life, is the fundamental Christian vocation to charity.

I've written quite a bit about my experience of the struggle to love in a true, Christian way. It is the experience of being "converted" (slowly) from the tendency of selfishness to the cultivated dispositions of sincere self-giving. I feel very strongly my own need to be converted more fully, to be healed from a way of "loving" that is stunted by the ambivalence of my wounded humanity, by the reduction of persons to things, by the craving to amplify and assert my distorted perceptions of myself and others.

As I reflect on my own life, I discover many areas that are still formed by this kind of disoriented self-love, this selfish, grasping appetite that strives to subject reality and persons to my urges and impulses. But Christian life is a path of conversion from an egocentric posture to an ever deepening habit of authentic charity--an attitude of mind and heart that truly loves other persons for who they are, and for how Jesus makes Himself present to me through their own personal uniqueness.

I am working on developing this theme into a book.

Titles always develop and change, but my working title for this book is something like Learning to Love, or perhaps something eye-grabbing (?) like Why Am I Still So Selfish? The book is drawing together my reflections on life as a process of learning to give myself truly in love. The foundation of this life is the conviction and the ever deepening awareness that I am loved by Jesus. This awareness begins to free me from self-absorption and immaturity, and empowers me to give myself more and more profoundly to Jesus.

My Christian vocation takes concrete shape in Christ's call of love, addressed to me in daily life, in my family, in work and social environments, and on the internet too. And Jesus shapes my life in such a way as to draw me along the path of loving Him and loving others. My sufferings, too, are part of this particular plan of healing and transforming love that Jesus has for me as a unique person, whom He embraces in His infinite wisdom.

This book, however, is not meant to be an academic exercise. I am illustrating this theme with reflections on my own experience (many of which have been drafted on this blog), and also anecdotes from ordinary life, especially family life. In these circumstances the need to grow in love is especially evident.

In answering the call of the vocation to charity, we must have great trust in Jesus, for without Him we can do nothing. But He is with us, working in our lives and teaching us through His Spirit how to grow in genuine self-giving love. We must not become discouraged by our persistent imperfections and selfishness, but continue to work toward cooperating with God's grace and growing in love.

Blessed John Paul II speaks of the Christian life as an ongoing conversion, a work-in-progress through which God's love is integrated into every aspect of our lives, bringing personal and social healing and transformation:

"What is needed is a continuous, permanent conversion which, while requiring an interior detachment from every evil and an adherence to good in its fullness, is brought about concretely in steps which lead us ever forward. Thus a dynamic process develops, one which advances gradually with the progressive integration of the gifts of God and the demands of His definitive and absolute love in the entire personal and social life of man. Therefore an educational growth process is necessary, in order that individual believers, families and peoples, even civilization itself, by beginning from what they have already received of the mystery of Christ, may patiently be led forward, arriving at a richer understanding and a fuller integration of this mystery in their lives" (Familiaris Consortio, 9).

I hope to finish drafting a book proposal soon, and I'll keep everyone posted on how this project develops.

Edith Stein: "Fill My Soul With Holy Joy"

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

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

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

We Will Be White With Fire

          The Transfiguration

          brings the hope of glory

          to our poor human bodies.

          We must never hate ourselves

          over any physical imperfection,

          or any mark of affliction

          borne upon the body.

          We must not be anxious

          for the young brief beauty

          that passes away.

          It is our very own flesh

          that has been loved,

          and that is destined to shine,

          white with the brightness

          of Love's fire.

          Let us be good to ourselves,

          and to one another, for we are loved

          and we are wanted...forever.

The Beauty of the Edifice

The feast day of the unforgettable Cure of Ars brings to mind many stories about the humble and extraordinary parish priest. I have always been especially touched by the remarkable and perhaps unlikely friendship between St. John Vianney and another great French priest - who is not a saint (not yet, at least) but who was the great pioneer who helped bring about the restoration of religious life in post-revolutionary France, Fr. Henri Lacordaire, O.P.

Sometimes called "the French Newman," Lacordaire refounded the Dominican order in France, and dedicated himself to a vigorous and erudite apologia for the Catholic faith in his famous discourses given at Notre Dame to crowds of believers and unbelievers alike. He was the towering Catholic figure in the midst of the positivistic French intelligentsia of his time, and he lit the spark that began the Catholic intellectual, literary, and cultural revival of France in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Lacordaire's talents and education, however, were accompanied by a genuine humility and a devotion to the Church, and in Vianney he saw one of the saints that he knew the Church in France so desperately needed in his time. The Cure, in turn, recognized the value of great Dominican's brilliant preaching.

When it was remarked that Lacordaire's conferences had produced few conversions, St. John Vianney spoke up on behalf of his friend. Lacordaire's work with skeptics and unbelievers was important nonetheless, said the Cure, because "we must make them admire the beauty of the edifice before inspiring them with the desire to enter."

Jesus Can Change Me

Recently I posted a rather simple prayer on various media. It expresses the place where I so often find myself in front of God's wisdom and goodness--that is, in those unusual moments when I remember Him at all. When I am roused from the sleep of my daily illusions, I become aware of my great poverty. I am drawn toward God like a beggar, but full of hope:

Dear Jesus,

give me the grace

to want to do Your will!

Change me, Lord!

Change my heart.

Make me the person You will me to be.

After I posted this, I came upon the words of Pope Benedict XVI in his catechesis on the feast of St. Alphonsus Liguori. Indeed, we are called pray with in this way, and with confidence and trust. Here are some of Benedict's words:

We must always knock at the Lord's door with trust, knowing that in all things He takes care of His children, of us. We are invited, therefore, not to be afraid of turning to Him and of presenting our requests to Him with trust, in the certainty of obtaining what we need....

More than anything else, we need [Christ's] liberating presence, which truly makes our lives fully human and therefore full of joy. And it is only through prayer that we are able to welcome Him and His grace, which by enlightening us in each situation, enables us to discern the true good, and by strengthening us, makes our will effective; that is, it enables it to do the good that is known. Often we recognize the good, but we are unable to do it. Through prayer, we arrive at the point of being able to carry it out.

August Begins

Look, it's a new graphic.

I'm getting lazy this summer. Actually I've been busy with many things. Busy. Is that good? I think so. At least it means that I have some energy, although it feels like nervous energy. Nerves...there's nothing to be done with them!

I have, in fact, been writing scraps of this and that in the theological realm. But these things grow slowly, with time and attention, like trees in a garden. I am pruning and watering the ground, and hoping for fruit.

But I don't want to neglect the blog. So here is (part of) the post from one year ago, August 1, 2011. I could have written the same thing today. The human person also grows slowly....

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

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

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

Of course, there are no doubt as yet undiscovered realms of foolishness in this, the sophomoric period of my middle age. I still hope to be recognized and acknowledged, and I'm still frustrated because my brilliant words do not get enough attention. Yet that is not the whole explanation for why I write.

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

That is what really matters.

The Life He Has Given Us

It is good to live, to be affirmed, to be treated with justice, kindness and dignity, to flourish as a human being. The physical and earthly needs of the human person and human society are a concern of the Church because they too are the object of God’s mercy. God wants to comfort us in our afflictions and console us in our sorrows, but above all He wants to teach our hearts that He is with us, always.

He wants to open our hearts to the experience of something that we cannot perceive by ourselves: that the realities of our daily life mean more—not less—than we understand. Suffering must be endured, not because life is less important that we had hoped, but because it is more important that we can imagine. It is the place where God is with us.

Our hearts long for happiness, for “life.” But what is “life”? What is happiness? Do we find it only in that space of time that “belongs to us,” where we imagine that God sits in the background and allows us to play with reality, until He starts taking our toys away because “playtime is over”? No! This is not what life is! Life is God with us, every moment—in every joy (God delights in our joy) and also in the abyss....

In our trials, we may not feel the presence of God, but in our endurance and in our prayer (even our most inarticulate and desperate prayer) He is leading us to the truth that every moment of life has value because He is with us. And so we must open our hearts to Him and allow Him to shape us according to the mystery of His love. We must pray in faith and hope, that we might love God who embraces us within the life He has given us....

God knows how hard it is to suffer. But He has created us to love. Our hearts are made for God. We can only grow in this life by recognizing Him and loving Him more. Do I feel like I cannot love Him more? Do I want Him to draw away, at least a little, and give me back some of my space? Of course I feel that way, but I must pray and beg Him to teach me to love Him more, because His presence and His love are what is real in my life.

When we endure suffering, we are called to do so not with a merely stoic resignation, but with abandonment to His loving presence that is really with us and in us. And so we endure in the conviction that God offers us His love—the only fulfillment of the human heart—here and now, in the midst of our sufferings and the plodding of our daily lives. We are called to put our hearts on the line, to allow ourselves to be wounded by the hope that even in this darkness it is possible to love and to be loved, because He is with us and He loves us now. And we know that love—in the end—is always worth the risk.

The abyss is the hollow of the hands of God.

--excerpt from John Janaro's book Never Give Up: My Life and God's Mercy

To order the entire book, please see this link: http://t.co/ddwYeqX

Guest Blogger: A Five Year Old!

Josefina keeps trying to get me to play, so I said, "Do you want to write the blog tonight?"

And she said, "Yes" and started for the keyboard. I said, "No typing. You can tell me what to write." So Josefina spoke and I wrote down what she said. I also asked her a few questions. This is a transcription of our conversation, with a few parenthetical explanations added. She also selected these pictures. Remember, she is speaking to you, dear readers! :-)

What would you like to say to everyone, Josefina?

"I'm Josefina Janaro. Don't forget that I live in Virginia. I'll tell you about Nana and Grampa's house. We went swimming. I'll tell you about school: I love painting and clay. I love working a lot. We have a garden to pray in. Do you know that I am a little kid? I cut paper a lot."

What do you like to wear?

"I like to wear dresses, pants, and shorts. My favorite kind of dresses are long dresses cause they make me warm."

What are your favorite colors?

"Purple, pink, and yellow, green, red, and that's all."

What is your favorite thing to do?

"Painting. I like mixing colors cause they turn different things. I like to draw with colored pencils. I'll tell you what I like to draw, I like to draw persons, animals, and books [?] and pigs, cows, dogs, cats."

What do you like to read? [by this I mean "what do Josefina and Daddy read together?"]

"I like to read ...um...um... I'll get the books... [she brings over "Corderoy and Company"]

Oh there's more! What else? What do we read?

Ummm...Mr. Putter, Henry and  Mudge, Bread and Jam for Francis. [And many other books that she just can't remember right now.]

Thank you Josefina for talking to us. Any final words?

"Hello. Do you work on computers? Do you do a lot of work?"

Josefina wants to know if you are like her Daddy, i.e. Do you work on computers a lot? Daddy works on computers a lot. But she's been very patient. Daddy is going to stop working and go play with her. Goodbye!

It's Not Enough! I Want More!

Yosemite National Park, June 2012 (photo John Paul)

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

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

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

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

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


[previously posted July 20, 2011]

Everybody's Got a "Flip Side"

I'm going through old posts, looking for topics that deserve further development, or common themes that might be stitched together. Of course, I'm dragging my feet on this project. Why? Because: (1) I'm lazy [haha, this is always number one reason]; (2) I'm obsessed with getting it perfect; (3) I'm blocked; (4) I'm going through a period of creative boredom; (5) I think I'm a huge hypocrite for pretending that I know anything about all of this; (6) I'm not ready to move to the next level beyond the blogging format, because (7) writing is exhausting, and
 (8) I'm still "walking on eggs" with my health from day to day [although I'm improving].

Things move forward, nevertheless. I don't think someone who ponders things the way I do will ever succeed in being efficient. It's a personality flaw. One of many.

It's humbling to reflect on the fact that each of our talents has a "flip side"--a defect in temperament that all too often blooms into a lack of character in some respect. Our talents and their corresponding defects develop together. Some of us are vigorous and precise, but also partisan and argumentative. Others are gentle and empathetic, but muddleheaded. The brilliant intellectual is abstracted from human relationships. The one who is adept at building relationships may also be a schemer, or a gossip. Some are friendly and nice, but also timid and afraid to take risks. Others are brave and bold, but also reckless and even obnoxious. So it goes. How many of us strive for virtue and find after many years that we've developed some meager good habits, bent, a bit one-sided and out of focus, along with many constraints, fears, and egotistical inclinations that we "dress up" as virtue?

Then there are those who are even tinged with genius -- poets, scholars, writers, actors, painters, composers, architects, statesmen, inventors -- unhappy people, socially maladjusted, and often afflicted with significant psychological problems. That spark of creativity inevitably shakes up the person and knocks the whole system out of joint.

It doesn't take much for the human animal to start to unravel. "Our span is seventy years, or eighty for those who are strong. And most of these are emptiness and pain. They pass swiftly and we are gone" (Psalm 90:10). We just can't bear much of life.

Still, we want the stars, and beyond. We keep going. We keep trying to find a way.

Is Christianity an Oppressive Imposition of Rules?

Too many people (even Catholics) think that the essence of Christianity consists in a series of moral demands, most of which are impossible to keep, and which therefore result in making us feel guilty and making our lives gloomy. People even tend to think of doctrine not so much as the expression of God's revelation as the "stuff that we are required to believe even though it doesn't make any sense."

An external, oppressive imposition of rules. No wonder so many people abandon Christianity.

But this is not the Gospel. The Gospel is fundamentally a relationship with Jesus Christ, and, through Him, the Father in the Holy Spirit. God loves us, and by His grace raises us up to a participation in His own Divine life. Our life consists in the fact that we belong to God, and that we are called to union with Him. God brings us into union with Him by making us His children. Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, He gives Himself to us. Christianity is life with God.

It's a whole new life!

And His grace is His continual gift of this life, this "energy" that enables us to become "like Him." This means becoming "perfect," becoming the persons we were created to be, becoming happy. His grace recreates us, and enables us to adhere to Him with transformed, "supernatural" capacities of mind and heart: faith, hope, and charity. And his commands show us how this life unfolds in our daily circumstances; they show us its authentic direction; they indicate the space where our love is able to give itself and grow.

We are not just burdened with a bunch of rules, and then left alone. People are afraid to embrace the demands of Christian morality because they think they have to do it themselves. But this is not what Christianity proposes. We are not "by ourselves" and we are not left in the hands of our own power.

People need to hear and see this witness--the reality and the beauty and attractiveness of this fact--in the lives of Christians. If all Christians do is preach abstract moral duties, no one is going to change. People need to learn that they are not alone, and that they do not make themselves.

The witness of the Church is that we belong to God, that He has made us for Himself, that He gives Himself to us in grace, and that He wants us to ask for His love so that there might be the space within us for Him to give His love more and more. This is how the Church prays, and how she teaches us to pray. 

The "gifts of [His] grace" bring us into a relationship with Him and empower us to "keep [His] commands." It is God, through Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit, who gives us the power to live according to His will. Grace is good news! We are not alone. We belong to God, and He wants us to call upon Him, so that He might give us the life for which we have been made. Thus in the collect for Sunday's liturgy we prayed:

Show favor, O Lord, to your servants
and mercifully increase the gifts of your grace,
that, made fervent in hope, faith and charity,
they may be ever watchful in keeping your commands.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son,
who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.

And I love this simple prayer, which can be prayed at the start of every day:

Lord,
may everything we do
begin with Your inspiration
and continue with Your help
so that all our prayers and works
may begin in You
and by You be happily ended
We ask this through Christ our Lord.

Magdalen: The Vocation of Every Christian

Even if her feast does fall on a Sunday this year, we can't pass by unnoticed the great St. Mary Magdalen. Jesus entrusted the message of His Resurrection to the witness of a woman, the first of the "myrrh-bearing women" who stood with Him at the Cross and continued to love Him even in death.

The Byzantine Church honors her with the title of isapostolos ("equal to the apostles"). She is one who loved greatly, and she exemplifies the fundamental, common vocation given to every Christian: the vocation to love Him. So often in the history of the Church, women have pointed to Him, and have taught us all how to love.

Kontakion (Byzantine Liturgy):

Let us all sing a hymn of praise
and a special canticle
to the disciple of Christ,
Mary Magdalen,
the first ointment-bearing woman;
for she was a messenger of joy
to the disciples.
Let us praise the God of all
who lavishes upon us
and upon the world such a fountain
of wonders and miracles.

The Movie Massacre: How Does It Affect Us?

Police begin interviewing theater patrons outside the Century 16 early Friday morning. From LA Times online (photo by Karl Gehring / Denver Post / July 20, 2012)

The horrible tragedy at the movie theater in Aurora, Colorado has provoked many reactions in us. This is a normal thing. When the world seems to go out of joint suddenly, right in front of us, we struggle to find some kind of comprehensible categories for what happened.

Of course, a flood of analysis ensued, on television, on the internet sites and the social media. This time we even found ourselves staring at videos people took on their iPhones while it was all going on, watching with a mixture of horror and morbid curiosity as shots go off and patrons flee the theater...an ordinary, everyday American multiplex theater.

We are strangely and variously provoked by images of blood and mayhem juxtaposed with the stuff and scenery of our regular, routine lives. We are shocked. In fact, however, so much of the "ordinary life" that we live in our society is saturated with a culture of violence, a culture in which power takes precedence over the human person, a culture in which even our aspirations to be humane are stained with blood.

We have grown accustomed and even desensitized to a way of life full of violence--a violence that would have shocked our ancestors. But we are not yet impervious to the jarring incongruity of violence when it throws off all its masks. In front of such events nearly everyone recognizes that there is something wrong. "Good" and "evil" are not simply relative terms assigned to things and situations in order to coordinate competing interests and desires. Suddenly we rediscover--even if only for a moment, somewhere deep in our guts--that fundamental human perception that "good" and "evil" have to do with reality, and that good is to be done and evil avoided.

The true position in the wake of these anonymous and gratuitous mass murders is one of solidarity, sorrow and prayer.

God have mercy on the souls of the victims,

give strength to their families,

and to the survivors

whose long path of healing has just begun.

God have mercy on the community,

and bring them together

to help and support one another.

God have mercy

on the daily victims and perpetrators of violence everywhere,

who are still very real even if we take no notice of them.

God have mercy on us,

and heal us of the violence inside us,

especially the violence by which we ignore and forget

the goodness, the fragility, and the needs

of our brothers and sisters,

our spouses,

our children,

our parents,

and every person who is given to us

in order that we might accomplish the good through love.

Dear Mothers: God Loves You

I'm in the midst of the living room, with chirping children all around, and I'm trying to think.

I like to be surrounded by people and the sounds of life when I work, when I read and write. I even like being interrupted. I've been this way since my days as a student. It all seems to fit in with the rhythm of my concentration. When I am left alone, I begin to brood. Or else I just turn on the TV.

It's true that some types of thinking require silence and solitude. I can get that when I really need it (one way is by being an early riser--I love being the only person awake in a house full of people). And, of course, some portion of the day has to be set aside for the kind of prayer that can only be done alone, that prayer "in secret."

Everyone needs that time of silence with God. The "holy hour," of course, has a biblical foundation. "Watch and pray" (Mt. 26:41) because God wants our company (what an amazing thing!), and because otherwise we cannot hope to live truly in a world of confusion and forgetfulness and sadness and pain. A holy hour. Or a half hour. Or twenty minutes? Fifteen?

Wait, I hear the mothers out there rising up to address this point. Or, at least, I imagine that some of them may be thinking:

"We have no time for that sort of thing! You may be around the kids a lot, but you still don't know what it's like to be The Mother! They don't come running to you with every. single. thing. We can't ignore them the way you can. We can't just "think" like you can while they're trashing the house. No, no! We can never be alone. We just have to pray on the fly, and God will have to understand."

Dear mothers, I shall not lecture you. I know that even when Daddy is around during the day, the home and the children revolve around Mommy. She is the center of the home. It's an absorbing and draining thing.

And I know that God loves you very much.

I have an idea. Go into the bathroom. Close the door. Say Veni Sancte Spiritus, Veni per Mariam. Then take five minutes. You deserve those five minutes to remember how much you are loved.

It's just an idea....

Don't Be Discouraged: It Takes Time to Grow in Love

It takes time to grow in love.

This is not an excuse for being lazy. If I sit back and say, "It takes time..." and use that as an excuse to do nothing, to say "I'll put off loving until tomorrow"--nothing can grow. Tomorrow never comes.

I'll be the first to admit that I'm lazy. We're all lazy. Let's face it.

But let's also dwell on this fact: if we are lazy, we will never grow in love.

These words, "growing in love," sound like a platitude. This is because we don't recognize that we are made for love, that all the turmoil inside of us is the anguished cry of our being, the cry for love. Even underneath our laziness is a kind of desperation to hold onto what we have, because we don't know if there is anything out there "beyond ourselves" and we don't want to take the risk.

But really, are you satisfied with what you have now. Really?

But then comes the other side of our laziness: discouragement. "I have tried to love before, but all I've done is mess things up. I don't know how to love and I don't want to try. It's too dangerous!"

This is a moment where my freedom is challenged in a critical way. I have a choice. I can give in to discouragement. Or I can acknowledge my poverty, and beg for help.

So we cry out for help. And maybe it feels like a waste of time, because help doesn't seem to be coming. But that is not true. Look! We are already doing something. In that begging is already the recognition that we need to love and to be loved. In that begging is already the recognition that there is someone worth loving. If I were really alone, it would never even occur to me to ask. Someone is already here, helping me now.

So I begin to love. And when I fail, I get up and try again. Because it takes time to grow in love.