Redemption!

 My backyard is a bit of a mess, even though I call it my own personal Eden.  I am not much on maintaining a neat garden, as I enjoy living in a more natural forest-like atmosphere.  And I love looking out the window at the surrounding trees with lush undergrowth, especially when the sun shoots long rays through the branches and leaves.

The downside of encouraging all this rich undergrowth is that it also encourages thorny vines and the proliferation of weeds.  At least once a year, I have to put on my boots and wade through the forest-like vegetation to ferret out unwanted plants that have taken advantage of my benign lack of attention.  Last year, for a number of reasons, I somehow never worked my way around to the backyard, so nature took over, as it is wont to do. 

A few days ago, I realized that things had gotten out of control, so I put on my boots and made my way to the farthest corners of the yard, where the larger plants had been completely covered by a beautiful but deadly vine.  When I first moved to this property, a neighbor brought me a seed for this vine, asking if I wanted it.  I looked at the large, heart-shaped leaves and thought it quite beautiful, so I planted it, little realizing what a bully it would turn out to be.  

In the years since, I have noticed this vine growing on vacant lots in the neighborhood, entirely blanketing 40-foot trees.  Like kudzu, this plant covers and smothers everything in its path, and keeps on going.  One year, it had completely stripped a large pineapple guava bush of all its leaves before I realized what was happening.  And since I did not pay attention last year, the vine had once again covered the larger plants along my fence.  Once planted, it becomes almost impossible to eradicate.

As soon as the weather turned cool this year, I determined to attack this vine, along with the thorny weeds that encircle and choke out the lower vegetation.  As I worked my way along the path, I couldn't help but remember my childhood stories of Anderson's Fairy Tales, where the hero made his way through deep forests choked with thorny vines to rescue the trapped princess in the castle.  Thorns caught at my ankles, while mosquitoes attacked my arms and neck.  All the while, I was on the watch for snakes in the deep underbrush.  But I was determined to rescue my beautiful plants, so long neglected.  

Several hours later, with the pile of heart-shaped vines at my feet, I looked with satisfaction at the beauty of the pineapple guava, the pittosporum, and the nandina that could finally breathe, free from smothering leaves and choking vines.  I smiled to myself and kind of blessed them, saying, "Grow! Be who you were meant to be! Be beautiful!"  And the word "Redemption" went through my mind.

Exactly what God has done, is doing, for us -- putting on His boots, so to speak, making His way through the thorns, snakes, and mosquitos of our lives to finally reach out and destroy our enemies.  Pulling away the vines that choke us, deprive us of our own beauty, saying to us, "Grow, be perfect, be who I created you to be! I am your caretaker, your husbandman, your shepherd.  You are free!"

What kind of Arks are we building?

 Shortly after we bought our first house, a young woman came one evening to sell us insurance.  When she asked my husband what kind of work he did, he replied, "I'm an archivist."  There was a long pause, and then she said, "What kind of arks do you build, Mr. Nolan?"

I've always enjoyed telling this story, but now that I've read a bit of Jordan Peterson, I have come to realize that her question is a very serious one.  Peterson points out that there is a reason these stories from Genesis have endured through all cultures for 4000 years, more or less.  Regarding the story of Noah's Ark, he comments that in a world of chaos, we are all building arks -- places of refuge -- for our families.

Recently, a woman in her sixties who is raising her six nephews and nieces posed this question:  what are we to do in the face of the evil and discord all around us?  Her "children" are being exposed to things in school that she wishes she did not have to deal with.  Indeed, the Democratic platform during the last election proposed that transgender "education" in the public schools now begin in kindergarten, and we now have "Queens" in full drag doing story hour for young children at the local library.  Recently, one of the state legislature sessions opened with a prayer to Satan.

C. S. Lewis warned in one of his stories about raising "men without chests," that is, people who are educated only for the mind but without moral values -- or hearts that learn to love and to value others.  What is a family to do when children are exposed to values and ideals that they are not yet ready to weigh against a moral code?  

The story of Noah has much to tell us, if we take it seriously.  To begin with, Noah's very name sounds like the Hebrew word for "comfort."  His father Lamech named him Noah because "he will comfort us in the labor and painful toil of our hands caused by the ground the Lord has cursed." ( Interestingly, after the Babylonian Exile, the "rebuilder" of Jerusalem was Nehemiah, whose name has the same root, sounding like "comfort" in Hebrew.)

The evil that covered the earth at that time, the evil that grieved the heart of Yahweh, was caused by the "sons of God" who married the daughters of men and thereby produced a master race called the Nephilim.  In the Old Testament, the terms "sons of God" usually refers to the angels, in this case, the fallen angels or demons.  In the face of a race of men whose "thoughts were only evil all the time," Noah "walked with God," a term that characterizes the just men of the Old Testament.  All around him, "the earth was corrupt in God's sight and was full of violence."

God's answer:  Build an ark for you and your sons and your wife and your sons' wives with you. And the creatures of the earth are not forgotten -- two of every kind of bird, of every kind of animal and of every kind of creature that moves along the ground will come to you to be kept alive.  The man or woman of God is a safe haven even for the animals; those who have no use for God are often a threat to the animals around them, as well as to the people close to them.  Recently, the evening news carried a story about a dog that had been deliberately set on fire -- if that is not demonic behavior, I cannot imagine what might be.

Here's the point:  those who choose not to walk with God will become a curse to the earth and all that is in it because their god is themselves.  The only refuge for the just man or woman is an Ark built by God -- Jesus Christ, God with us.  We did not, do not, "walk with God," so He came to walk with us.  And His aim is to gather us together in Himself.  Where God is, there is love.  The world around us insists on dividing, opposing, scattering -- indeed one of the very names of Satan is "diabolos" -- the one who scatters.  Where there is division, God is not in it.  

We cannot keep our children isolated from the world around them, but if we ourselves continue to walk with God and listen to Him, He will "remember" us (Gen. 8:1) in the day of disaster and provide a safe place for us and for our loved ones until the disaster has passed us by (Ps. 57:2).  In fact, it might be a great starting place to read the Psalms looking for this theme:

I am in the midst of lions;
I lie among ravenous beasts--
men who teeth are spears and arrows, 
whose tongues are sharp swords....
They spread a net for my feet--
I was bowed down in distress.
They dug a pit in my path--
but they have fallen into it themselves.

Corrie TenBoom wrote a book called The Hiding Place, about her life during the German occupation of Holland and her subsequent experience in the concentration camp, where a German soldier beat her elderly sister to death.  That book was instrumental in my beginning search for such a place as she found in God.  I wanted to know how to get from where I was at the time to where she had come.   Now I know for sure that God is our refuge and our strength, an ever-present help in distress! (Ps. 46:1).

In the day of disaster, we all need an Ark of one kind or another, not only for ourselves but for those we love.  And the words of Joshua seem appropriate:  Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served (in Egypt), or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living.  But as for me and my household, we will serve Yahweh (Joshua 24).  

Apology

I have written over 1300 entries over the past 7 or 8 years, and in all that time, I have seen maybe 6 comments total.  The lack of comments has never bothered me, as I always figured only 6 people read this blog and half of them were family members.  

I think I write to know what I think, and it is a joyful occasion when there is a glimmer of recognition on the part of a reader, but whether a comment arrives or not, I seem to keep writing -- maybe for myself, but also because joy overflows at the goodness of God, and I need an outlet to express it.

Yesterday, however, for the first time (duh!), I noticed a tab labeled Comments, and I clicked on it, spilling out hundreds of comments over the years.  I don't know why I have never noticed this tab previously, or why a very few comments slipped through the cracks and actually appeared on the blog itself.  

So today I want to thank those who have commented over the years and apologize for never responding.  I think in addition to adding a comment, there might be another step to actually make that comment appear -- is there a "publish" button on your end?  I'll look into it.  In the meantime, I am going back years and enjoying your comments.  Thank you!

"Goodbye, Best Friend!"

 My husband was archivist for the Archdiocese of New Orleans for about 20 years.  His last boss during that time was Monsignor Crosby W. Kern, Rector of St. Louis Cathedral, a man loved by most and hated by a few.  Msgr. Kern could charm the socks off a rooster, in the words of a good friend, but he could also be brash, angry, and impatient when he needed something done.  

During one of a number of overseas trips my husband took with Msgr. Kern to oversee publication of a new book, the two of them found themselves one afternoon in Strasbourg, France, with a few hours to themselves.  The two of them wandered down to the beautiful river which splits Strasbourg in two, and there found a bench by the side of the river.  According to the story Msgr. Kern told me later, the two of them sat without saying a word for close to an hour, just taking in the scenery and the activity around them.  The reason Msgr. Kern told me about this incident was that, according to him, he had never before been so still in someone's company for so long in such peace and contentment, without saying a word.  It seemed to me that he considered this brief moment the highlight of the trip.

Some years later, when Crosby Kern was dying of cancer, my husband and I visited him briefly while in New Orleans.  We had no idea how soon he was to die, but as we were leaving, his last words to my husband were, "Goodbye, Best Friend!"  Within a few days, he passed away.

The remembrance of this story came to me last night, as I lay awake for awhile in the Presence of Jesus, saying not a word but just resting in the peace and joy He brings.  I felt it totally unnecessary to say anything; it was enough just to be with Him, and I thought about the wisdom of Msgr. Kern's last words--we can be that comfortable saying nothing only to a best friend.  No need to fill the silence, to chat about events, to explain what we are thinking --- just knowing that your friend needs nothing from you but is content to be in your presence and to enjoy with you the world around you.

Often we think that prayer is saying something, making an effort to contact God, to let Him know our concerns, etc., and indeed prayer can be all of that and more.  But there are rare times when His Presence is enough, when we have no need to say anything, but just to smile and enjoy Him.  Granted, these are probably rare moments, but we can reach for them.  A priest in Medjugore once told me, "What we do for God is very interesting, but what God does for us --- well, that's the whole story!" 

 That certainly can be said of prayer:  our prayers are probably very interesting, more or less, but the whole story is not what is said, but what is communicated in the silence and comfort of being in the presence of a good Friend, the Best Friend.

Actually, Psalm 131 says it perfectly:

My heart is not proud, O Lord,/ my eyes are not haughty;

I do not concern myself with great matters/ or with things too wonderful for me.

But I have stilled and quieted my soul;/ like a weaned child with its mother,

like a weaned child is my soul within me. 

This is the peace that passes all understanding! 

 

 

 

 

Like the Burning Bush

 In his marvelous new book, Light From Light, Bishop Robert Barron has an interesting observation:

When the gods of ancient mythology enter the world, they always do so destructively, something in the world order giving way in order for them to appear.  But there is none of this in regard to the true God, whose relationship with creation is beautifully expressed in the biblical image of the burning bush.  The closer God comes to a creature, the more that creature is enhanced and rendered splendid (p. 22-23).

We see this dynamic at work in the ministry of Jesus, when he says to the paralytic, "Your sins are forgiven," and the paralytic stands up, takes up his mat and walks out of the building.   Or again, when Mary of Magdala is released from the prison-hold of seven demons and begins to follow Jesus and the disciples, "ministering to them from [her] own means."  Or, when the seas rage and foam and the winds threaten to overturn the boat, and He stands and commands the wind and waves to subside.

People tend to fear the entrance of God into their lives, but reading the Gospels should dispel that fear entirely.  Adam and Eve feared the Presence of God in the garden after they had sinned, but it was not the nature of God that threatened them.  Rather, in some unfathomed sense of the order of the universe, they "knew" that they had surrendered their divine right to dominion over nature.  We were instructed to 'tend the garden' through Adam, to maintain the beauty and harmony of the universe.  But once we lose, or have lost, the Spirit of harmony, truth, and goodness within our persons, we have not the wisdom and understanding of things needed to maintain the balance and beauty of creation.  Nature -- spiders, snakes, and storms--- tends to overwhelm and threaten our existence, rather than to enhance it.

Sometime after I had experienced a kind of rebirth through a new outpouring of the Holy Spirit in my life, I was walking home one lazy summer afternoon after spending some time on the beach.  Suddenly, I kind of caught my breath when an interior voice said, "Come; I will show you the world created by my Father!"  And in that moment, I began to see with a new sharpness of vision things I had formerly passed by without observation -- leaves on a tree, blades of grass shining in splendor, birds, squirrels, sunlight playing on a leaf.  If it had been a movie, there would have been splendid music, along the order of Cinderella with the mice, or Sleeping Beauty in the forest.

Here's my point:  when God does enter our lives, nothing of our humanity is destroyed or diminished.  Instead, everything in us comes alive:  our minds are sharpened with wisdom and understanding; our emotions are re-ordered to love what God loves and hate what God hates; our wills are strengthened to choose the good instead of what is harmful to us.  Our bodies, too, "know full well that You are my God," in the Living Bible's translation of David's words in Psalm 16.  Nothing in us is destroyed at the entrance of God into our lives, except sin and hatefulness, except death itself.  Instead, like the burning bush, we come alive.  Everything in us is enhanced, on fire, so to speak.  We see further, we know more, we love more, we hear more, our bodies begin to function the way they are designed to.....

Not that all of this happens at once, or even before our death.  Most of the great saints experienced what St. Paul called "a thorn in the flesh," and many of them died from terrible diseases.  But grace, the Presence of the Holy Spirit, overcame the defeat that disorder brings in its wake.  Christ has overcome even sickness and death, so that we are beaten down but not defeated, in the words of St. Paul. 

There is not much I can recall from high school Literature, but one poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins has remained in my memory all these years.  I think it perfectly expresses what I am trying to say here:

God's Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil 
Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastwards, springs---

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

Because of the renewing Presence of God in our lives, "The soul of one who loves God always swims in joy, always keeps holiday, and is always in the mood for singing" (St. John of the Cross).

The Great Hallel

 In Jewish liturgy, the Hallel prayer is a collection of joyous psalms typically recited at the beginning of each Jewish month and during the last six days of Passover.  The theme of the Hallel is gratitude to God for all He has done for Israel.  

The "Great Hallel" is Psalm 136, which narrates the history of God's revelation through all the events of the Old Testament.  After each event, the refrain "For his mercy endures forever" is sung or recited:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good./ His mercy endures forever.....

 ...who struck down the firstborn of Egypt/ His mercy endures forever....

and brought out Israel from among them/ His mercy endures forever.....

                    ...to him who led his people through the desert/ His mercy endures forever....

                    ...to the One who remembered us in our low estate/ His mercy endures forever.... 

It is no accident, according to Pope Francis, that the people of Israel wanted to include this psalm---the Great Hallel---in its most important feast days.

In the Gospel of Matthew (26:30), it says, "when they had sung a hymn," Jesus and his disciples went out to the Mount of Olives.  The "hymn" was Psalm 136, prescribed for the last days of Passover. It is within this context of God's everlasting mercy that Jesus entered into His passion and death on the cross.  He had just instituted the Eucharist as an everlasting memorial of His sacrifice, and then "they sang a hymn" as He went to His death, which sums up and includes all the saving acts of God toward Israel.

Some years ago, I was in Jerusalem during a Friday Sabbath meal at a downtown hotel.  Our group of 50 Christians was part of a buffet held weekly at the hotel for well over 100 Jews.  Each Jewish family would light a candle upon entering and place it upon a table.  During the meal, the Jews occupied one end of an enormous ballroom, with visitors occupying the other side of the room.  After the meal, the Jews sang their traditional psalms together before dispersing into small groups of instruction and catechesis in different areas of the hotel.  Since there were guards assigned both inside and outside the hotel, my assumption was that it was too dangerous to hold the Sabbath service in the local synagogues, so the congregation assembled weekly at the downtown hotel for their service.

Even as an observer and an outsider, entering into that Sabbath meal was a moving experience for me.  To say they "sang a hymn" does not even approach a description of what I saw and heard of their service.  About 200 or more families sat at long tables with food and wine, all singing with gusto and grace their psalms, while their small children roamed the room, playing quietly with one another and moving easily from family to family.  Anyone who has ever seen a movie of a Jewish wedding will understand the picture -- the joy is palpable everywhere.  They were singing in Hebrew of course, but knowing something of the Great Hallel and other psalms, it did not take much imagination on my part to join in their psalms of praise and thanksgiving.  Their rejoicing even to this day of what God has done in His mercy puts to shame even our most vigorous Catholic hymns.  

That experience has forever changed my image of Jesus and his disciples "singing a hymn" as they left the upper room for the Garden of Gethsemane. He placed His passion and death in the context of the Great Hallel:  Give thanks to the God of gods/ for His mercy endures forever.....