In the Company of the Saints

As newcomers are baptized into Jesus Christ and His Church on Holy Saturday evening, our choir typically sings the Litany of the Saints:  All you holy ones, pray for us!  Athanatius and Polycarp, Pray for us!  Catherine, Teresa, and Hildegaard, Pray for us!  Francis and Therese, Pray for us!  

Because of the corona virus, I am going to miss the Holy Saturday liturgy this year, and I think the Litany of the Saints is one thing I'm going to miss the most, since this is the one time all year we sing it.  As we welcome new saints into the church, I love the reminder of being surrounded by all of our brothers and sisters who have so loved God that we recognize their holiness.

Hebrews 12 says, You have not come to a mountain that can be touched and that is burning with fire; to darkness, gloom and storm; to a trumpet blast or to such a voice speaking words, so that those who heard it begged that no further word be spoken to them, because they could not bear what was commanded....The sight was so terrifying that Moses said, "I am trembling with fear."

But you have come to Mount Zion, to the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God.  You have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly, to the church of the firstborn, whose names are written in heaven.  You have come to God, the judge of all men, to the spirits of righteous men made perfect, to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel....Keep on loving each other as brothers.

It is true that "spirit speaks to spirit," and when we meet those who love God, our hearts leap with joy in their presence.  In the spiritual life, the physical barriers of race, religion, culture, and preferences melt away.  C.S. Lewis says that friendship is two people who look together at a 3rd thing that they both love, and each one's love is enhanced by the perspective and love of the friend for the 3rd thing.  When the friend dies, one loses not only the friend himself, but we lose also the friend's love of the third thing.

We can imagine God at the center of a series of concentric circles.  Somewhere on the outer edges of those ever-widening circles, there we are -- widely separated from other people by a whole host of reasons and barriers: ethnicity, customs, preferences, politics, etc.  But as we each move closer to the Most Holy Trinity in Jesus Christ, the barriers melt away, and we automatically move closer to one another by our mutual love of God.

The saints embody in their very flesh the gifts and charisms of Jesus Christ in His love for the Father.  Padre Pio and Francis of Assisi were very different in time and space, but both bore the wounds of Jesus Christ, and both were completely consumed by the love of Jesus for His Father and for the world itself.  And from the reports of those who knew and loved these saints, you could not help but be consumed with joy in their presence!  St. Dominic Savio once said, "Joy is the unmistakable sign of the presence of God."

So to be in the presence of the saints is to be filled with joy at their love of God and their love of other people.  These are our brothers and sisters in the faith!  And from the joy I have in the presence of my biological brothers and sisters, I have a glimpse of the joy we experience in the company of the saints --- no barriers of time or space!

St. Dominic and St. Patrick, pray for us!  Francis and Elizabeth, Pray for us!  Anthony and John Paul II, Pray for us!

The Perfect Gift

My daughter sent me a gift for my birthday.  When I first opened the box, my spontaneous reaction was "Ooooooooh!"  I could not believe she had found the perfect gift for me!  If someone had said to me, "Give me the specifications for the perfect gift, and I will make it for you," I'm not even sure I would have known exactly what to ask for.  But this was it -- the perfect color, the perfect weight, the perfect fit to flatter my somewhat out-of-shape and aging body!  The perfect "feel" to comfort my soul so that feels like a hug that I can wear on a 24-hour transatlantic flight.

To make it even more special, there are no real stores within a hundred miles or so of my daughter's town.  There are no Macy's, Dillards, or even Wal-Marts.  There is a very small "mall," which consists of a boutique grocery, and a few very small specialty stores.   The day she went to buy a gift for me, she discovered that the mall was closed because of the corona virus.  There was one store open, not for shopping, but for a photo-shoot for future advertising.  They graciously allowed my daughter to look around, and she spotted this item that, as she said, "had your name on it."  It was not what she intended to get me, but she knew when she saw it that I would love it.  It was as if God had led her to this one gift.

When it comes to the spiritual life, we hardly know what to ask for -- because we ourselves do not know the shape and size of our souls.  We don't know the color, the weight, the shape that will embrace and fill our hunger and thirst.  But Someone Else knows exactly what we need, what will fill our minds with the Peace and the Truth we seek, the love we crave, and the choice we don't know how to make.

Jesus said to the woman at the well, the woman who was so thirsty for love that she had had five husbands, none of whom had satisfied her thirst:  If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and [I] would give you ...a spring of water welling up to eternal life...... (John 4:10 & 13).   

Sir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.

I who speak to you am He.

Jesus is the Perfect Gift, and He Himself gives Another -- the Gift of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, the Advocate, the Counselor, the Helper.  He is what we would ask for, if we only knew what it was we were seeking.  There is only One Store that has this gift; there is only One Place where we can get it.  This Store is eternally open, and waiting for us to ask for the Perfect Gift, the One Who will satisfy all our desires.

Jeremiah 2:13 clearly tells us the problem:

My people have committed two sins: 

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own wells,

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

But there is a remedy for our hunger and thirst: Jesus came to "water the land" of our souls, broken and forsaken.

Psalm 36 says,

Both high and low among the children of Adam 

seek shelter in the shadow of your wings. 

They feast on the abundance of your house; 

you give them to drink from your river of delights. 

 For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

If you knew the Gift of God, you would ask, and he would give you....

Conversations on the Spiritual Life

Are you a disciple of Jesus Christ?
What does it mean to be a disciple?
How do you know you are a disciple?
How does that affect your life?
Why are you a disciple?

Catholics have what has been called "a conspiracy of silence."  Somehow, we have learned to be suspicious of those who talk about the faith and the spiritual life.  It seems "Protestant" to us to be too verbal about our faith.  I suspect part of this culture emerges from the great depth of our faith: we don't know how to express the depth of which we ourselves are barely aware.  Ron Rolheiser once said that the best things cannot be talked about, so we are forced to talk about the second-best things.

The problem of not approaching Catholic conversations, however, is that we often do not ourselves do not really know what we think or believe.  We do not know how to uncover the great treasures that lie within our souls.  I think we might be surprised to find what lies within us -- the Pearl of Great Price -- if we allow ourselves to open the treasure box!

The Bible is a book of stories, not of doctrines.  One of the problems of our modern day is that we have over 50,000 dominations who cannot agree on doctrine, even though they all read and agree on the same stories.  I think we need to ask ourselves how those stories connect with our lives, with our own stories. 

Every single person on the planet has at least one story to tell, but there are few ears who want to hear that story.  We are focused on the world around us -- on the athletes, on the movie stars, on the advertisements.  Few of us are focused on the spiritual life, on what God is doing in us.  God is not "static;" He is present to our world and present in us every single moment, every single day.  And if He is present, He is acting; He is dynamic.  It is our supreme joy to be able to "see" what He is doing.  Jesus said, "What I see the Father doing, that is what I do."  As He opened the eyes of the blind and the ears of the deaf, He is so willing to do the same for us-- so that we can see and hear the work of God in us and in the world around us.

I wonder if there is a way to even haltingly begin to talk to one another about what God is doing, has done, in our lives.

The People in the Back Pew

When Jesus ascended Mt. Tabor with Peter, James, and John and was transfigured before them, Peter's first reaction was, "Lord, let me build three tents" (and stay here).  Anyone who has been to a retreat knows exactly what Peter was talking about:  don't make me go back home!  Let me stay here in the glory of God, in the everlasting peace, in my blindness to the suffering of the world!  Let me stay here! 

But Jesus descended the mountain of the Lord --- right into the Devil's chaos, just as Moses had done 2000 years previously, when the Israelites were worshiping the golden calf.  He had to go through mankind's suffering, not around it or above it.  And He had to do it because we have to.

In the first few years after I was baptized in the Holy Spirit (1977), I was ready to be "taken up" into heaven, like Peter.  Just let me stay here in glory, Lord!  But one night during the praise and worship part of the prayer meeting, I saw a vision of Jesus standing in heaven.  At His feet was a ladder reaching to my feet.  When I saw Him, I started to climb the ladder, leaving behind everything on earth.  But He immediately stopped me and showed me in the vision the people in the back pew of church.  He gave me to understand that when people come to church, those who want to be close to Him gravitate toward the front of the church, getting as close as possible to the altar.  Those in the back pew are those who feel unworthy, those who are not sure they deserve to be there, those who are afraid to approach God.

[Caveat:  this is a vision, symbolic.  In reality, the people in the back pew of our church on Sunday may be the lame, those in wheelchairs, or those with illness who need to leave church before the crowd, etc.  Those in the front pew, on the other hand, may have small children who need to be able to see what's going on, etc.]

Anyway, Jesus turned me back away from climbing the ladder:  "I want you to remain on earth.  I want you to go to the back pew and put your arms around these who are there, and I want you to walk with them arm in arm and step by step until they are able to come with you to the front of the church" (figuratively, the ladder of heaven.)  And just as I had seen the ladder in a vision, I saw myself doing what was commanded. 

Pope Francis' meditation on the Transfiguration today reminded me of that vision from the 1970's.  He talked about "ascending" the mountain of the Lord and then "descending" the mountain to those who need the Divine Presence.  Both directions are necessary to our lives.  If we do not spend time with Jesus on the mountain (in prayer and sacramental strength), we do not have what we need to "descend" into the depths of hell and walk with those suffering there until they reach the Promised Land. 

Wisdom: The Sacrament of the Present Moment

Wisdom Literature is among the most beautiful in all of the Bible.  The Books of Wisdom and Sirach (found only in the Catholic Bible) and that of Proverbs spill over like the Nile with lofty and inspirational verses, watering a thirsty heart.  The Book of Job is also considered Wisdom Literature, but for most people, it is one of the most puzzling of all Scriptural texts.

The words of Job's friends are earnest and learned attempts to apply balm to Job's heartache.  They are spoken out of compassion for him in his suffering, and they are mostly rational and even spiritual explanations for what is going on his life.  The problem is that they don't "fit" Job's situation, as Job knows it in the depths of his heart.  "Yes, Yes, that's all very true in general," one can almost hear Job saying to his friends,"but it's not true in this situation."  In fact, the words Job has to suffer from his friends make him hurt even more.

For example in Chapter 22, Eliphaz says,

Can a man be of benefit to God?

Can even a wise man benefit Him?

What pleasure would it give the Almighty if you were righteous?

What would He gain if your ways were blameless?.......

and then Eliphaz goes on to list Job's imputed sins, finally telling him to submit to God, to accept instruction, and to study Scripture --- and "to remove wickedness from [your] tent.....and then God will hear you."  Although everything Eliphaz says is "true," not a single word of it is what Job needs to hear at the moment.  None of it brings balm to the suffering of Job. Moreover, from Job's response, we find out that Eliphaz, friend though he is, does not really know Job's heart or his "sins."

Imagine giving this "wisdom" to someone whose children have died, as Job's have done!  Every one of us needs to tread softly when speaking out of our own "wisdom" to someone who is suffering.

Job replies that mankind is able to mine the deepest earth for silver, gold, and sapphires, tunneling through rock so flinty that "no bird of prey knows that hidden path," but that he is not able to find wisdom:  Where then does wisdom come from? Where does understanding dwell?  It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air....God understands the way to it, and He alone knows where it dwells. (28:20-23).

In the New Testament, we find a very similar passage in I Corinthians 2:

No eye has seen,

No ear has heard,

No mind has conceived

What God has prepared for those who love him---

But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit.

I find it somewhat unfortunate that most people will quote this passage as a sort of incentive to get to heaven, where we will find things we cannot even imagine on earth.  That reading, while certainly true, obliterates a much deeper and richer reading -- that God reveals to us even now the secret wisdom of His mind and heart.  The end of that section reads simply, We have the mind of Christ.

Wisdom is the Sacrament of the Present Moment.  What may certainly be true for someone else in their situation may not apply right now to ours.  Wisdom is received directly from the mouth of God, and only He can speak it to our hearts, calming, reassuring, giving us peace and knowledge that we can use at the moment.

To be a disciple is to become a student -- one who enters fully into study and understanding of the Word of God -- not just the written word, but of the Divine Word as He is in Himself: to look with the heart, to understand with the mind, to choose with the will.

---to apply oneself wholly to seeking in prayer what one needs, not only for myself, but for what I need for others.

---to trust that as I dedicate the hour of study, the Living Christ will supply the wisdom and knowledge that only He can give.

---to know that I not only do not know, but that I also do not know how to begin.

---to be as my beginning students, utterly dependent upon the Teacher to open the Book at the appropriate place each day and to say, "Read this," "Do this," and then to await further instruction.

The aim is not to acquire knowledge in itself, but to become so intimate with the Teacher that His words live in me and speak through me.  What I thought I understood yesterday may not be the word that I need to understand today:  The Word of God is living and active, sharper and more powerful and than any two-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow....

This passage from Hebrews refers to the Rhema, the living and spoken Word which enters our heart at the right moment, imparting the Wisdom that only God Himself can give us for today.  It is not enough to know Scripture if we do not know God.