On the Interior Life

Mary Magdalene was utterly devoted to Jesus.  The Gospel is laconic when it says, "out of her He cast 7 demons"   (Luke 8). We tend to go on reading, skimming over the statement.  But what if the names of the demons were "Hatred,"  "Depression,"  "Oppression,"  "Lust,"  "Opposition,"  "Dissension," "Anger"?  And what if, after one of them had been cast out by Jesus, he roamed the world seeking another dwelling only to return to Mary with 7 others worse than himself?  

One of the famous mystics, who was given the grace to see details of the lives of Jesus and Mary, said that when Jesus spoke his parable about the cast-out demon returning to the place he formerly inhabited, he was looking at Mary Magdalene.  The place had been swept clean, but nature and human nature both abhor a vacuum.  No life remains empty of worship.  It doesn't help to know what we don't believe unless we know what we do believe.  Emptiness invites something or someone to enter, "and the last state of the man may be worse than the first."

On the beginning of the Interior Life, Father Garrigou-Lagrange, a Dominican theologian, says this:

As soon as a man ceases to be outwardly occupied, to talk with his fellow men, as soon as he is alone, even in the noisy streets of a great city, he begins to carry on a conversation with himself...If he is fundamentally egotistical, his intimate conversation with himself is inspired by sensuality or pride.  He converses with himself about the object of his cupidity, of his envy; finding therein sadness and death, he tries to flee from himself, to live outside of himself, to divert himself in order to forget the emptiness and the nothingness of his life.  In this intimate conversation of the egoist with himself, there is a certain very inferior self-knowledge and a no less inferior self-love....

The egoist knows little about the spiritual part of his soul, that which is common to the angel and to man.  Even if he believes in the spiriituality of the soul and of the highter faculties, intellect and will, he does not live in this spiritual order.  He does not, so to speak, know experimentally this highter part of himself and does not love it sufficiently.

Something must occupy the interior life--the soul must converse with someone other than itself.  So what if Mary's demons were driving her to destroy herself, to flee from herself, to try to escape the emptiness of her life, from which she was driving others away?  And what if instead of depression, oppression, hatred, dissension, anger, etc, the Spirit of God began to fill her emptiness with love, peace, patience, joy, kindness, generosity, goodness, patience, and self-control (see Galatians 5).  And what if she began to love what she saw and experienced within herself for the first time in her life?   And what if she began to love others instead of driving them away?  

Would not all of this explain her absolute devotedness to Jesus, the doorway through which she walked to a whole new and eternal life?

 

Give Up the Ego-Drama! — Bishop Barron’s Sunday Sermon

What more can I say?  He says it all!

The Journey Toward God

In 1977, I had a profound and unexpected conversion experience, which I have written about previously, in which I was "baptized in the Holy Spirit" after being prayed over in the hospital.  

Initially, I connected the event with a temporary phenomenon, perhaps an emotional experience, which would eventually disappear. Instinctively, I knew that there was no power within my own nature that could continue this newfound awakening of my spirit towards God.  Within a few weeks, I expressed my fear to my doctor, who had first prayed for me for the baptism of the Holy Spirit.  He laughed and said that he also had experienced the "baptism" some 14 years previously, and that it does not go away, but only gets better over time.    You do not have the Holy Spirit, he said to me; He has you, and He is not letting go.  If you leave Him at the corner, He does not wait until you come back.  He goes right around the corner with you and keeps guiding you in the right path.

My experience with the Holy Spirit was a "moment" in time that I can look back on now, some 44 years later.  As I began to grow in the Spirit with the help of friends and a supportive community, I asked a few times at first:  Is this real, or are we imagining things?  I did not want to be caught up in an emotional experience fed by others who were also deluded -- sort of like a Jim Jones cult.  Once, in prayer, I even told the Lord that I did not want to imagine that He was guiding me if this was all my imagination.  "Did you imagine things like this before the baptism?" the Voice inside said to me.  I had to admit that my imagination before this experience was practically dead to the things to God, while very alive and active toward fear and anxiety about the world around me.  Now, the things I was "imagining" brought me joy and confidence instead of worry.

During the past two years in our parish, as we began studying Alan Schreck's book, Your Life in the Holy Spirit,  I have watched at least three men in the parish also go through a kind of awakening to the action of the Holy Spirit in their lives.  For them, there has been no "moment" of conversion, but rather a gradual movement that has been more like a pilot light softly moving into flame.  As we studied and discussed each chapter week after week, one of the men described what was happening to him as "shifting from first into second gear."  Far from an emotional experience, these men have softly and gradually begun to become active in parish activities, reaching out to others, and leading discussion groups, taking leadership roles and emerging from the pews.  Anyone watching from a distance as I have been doing can see that something has happened in these men.  They are more attentive to the spiritual life in themselves and in others.  They are no longer afraid to talk about their faith, and they are considering ways to bring other men into the kind of experience they have had.

Yesterday, I started reading an anthology of great spiritual writers -- Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox.  The book is called The Journey Toward God, edited by Benedict Groeschel.  In his introduction, Groeschel writes:

Conversion, or metanoia, as the Greek New Testament refers to it, is the first real experience of the Christian spiritual life.  For some who have grown up in a devout home and have never deviated much from Christ's teaching, conversion takes on more the aspect of an awakening, like the call of Nathanael, who was asleep under a tree and whom our Lord called a man without guile.  Others, who have never really been active disciples even though they were baptized, or who have simply had no relation to the Gospel at all and are unbaptized, may experience a conversion that affects every level of their lives.  If their conversion is authentically spiritual, it will be experiential (affecting how they perceive things), theological (affecting what they believe), moral (affecting what they do), and even emotional (affecting what they feel).  In the beginning of a conversion, the emotional and spiritual are so close to each other that they are experienced as the same thing.  In time a wise person will come to see that they are not identical at all.

Why do I believe in the Holy Spirit?  I have seen Him, so to speak, living and acting in myself and in others for 44 years now, gradually changing people, including myself, in mysterious ways, and drawing them deeper and deeper into a relationship with God and with other people.  Some things just cannot be denied! 

The Gift

 Catholicism is not just one religion among many.  If the purpose of religion is to allow us to share in the life of the Divine Presence and Love, Catholicism offers the Gift of the Presence and Love of Jesus Christ in a unique way -- in the Sacrament of the Eucharist.

As I near my own death, I gather up all the joy, all the love, all the richness of life that I have experienced and with great desire, wish that I could offer it to those I love, to enrich their lives.  I wish that I could say to them: Eat This; Drink This -- Let it become a part of you.  

And Jesus, the night before He died, offered us not only His death, but all that He had experienced of this human and divine life -- His great love for the Father, His great love for mankind, His immense enjoyment of all of creation!  "Take and eat," He said; "the richness of my own life and joy will become a part of your life and joy."

He gave us a way to enter into his mind, his soul, his strength, his will.  "Put on Christ Jesus," Paul tells us in Romans, "and make no provision for the weakness of the flesh" (Romans 13:14).  When St. Augustine read those words, he understood for the first time what it meant to "put on Christ" -- to share in His humanity as well as in His divinity.

All that Christ is, is offered to us in the Eucharist.  We don't have to "think" it to receive it -- it is freely given to us.  "A great king gives a banquet," Jesus tells us in the parable, but we are too busy, too preoccupied, too not-interested, to partake of the Gift of Himself.  He left us a way to share in His own life, but our own lives are more interesting now.

"This is my body," He said -- more than just his flesh, but His Life: what He loves, what He thinks, what He appreciates, what He understands -- all of who and what He is, what He did, what He does.

"This is my blood," my health, my antibodies, my Life -- Drink this, and you will have zoe (joy, energy, zest, spirit, the divine spark of life) in addition to biological life.

If you do not eat my body, said Jesus (John 6), you will have no life in you.  And this He was speaking to living human beings standing before Him:  you will have no life in you.  What was He talking about? they wondered.

I wish I could wrap up my own life in a package and offer to others.  "Take this," I would say, "and eat it.  You will love it!"  But of course, my life, rich as it is, would not even be a brief taste of the eternal life He offers us week after week.  "Take this," He says, "you will love it!"

Where Can We Find God?

 Where can we go to meet with God?  How shall we pray when we don't know how to pray?  Where has God been in your life?  Where has He led you?  What doors has He opened for you?  

Our lives, our histories, are where we find the Divine Presence.  God led Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees to Haran, and from there to Canaan.  And how exactly did He "lead" Abraham?  Through peace, through "I am with you always."  Every night, as Abraham rested from his journey, he built an altar to God, and in that worship, he was assured of God's Presence and of His leading for the next day.

When we begin to pray, it helps to review in God's Presence where we have been, where we have come from, where we have gone to.  Our very lives reveal the presence of God; there we will meet Him.

Who are the people we have met along the way?  Who has become our friend, our support, our mentor?  Who has opened a door for us?  Found us a job?  Given us a recommendation?  Who has believed in us and made us laugh?  All these have been gifts from God to support us on the way.  

Even the books that have influenced us, inspired us, informed us have been God's direction for our lives, and a sign of His presence.  When the college moved me from the classroom to administration, my life changed entirely.  Everything was different and disorienting.  Time and responsibility were discrete issues when I was in the classroom.  Every hour was marked by some specific duty -- teaching, office hours, committee meetings, planning sessions, etc.  If I awoke in the middle of the night, it was usually an "aha" moment, a creative idea to solve a problem. 

 Once I assumed administrative duties, I usually awoke with a stressful moment, a nightmare.  I could not do my job until someone else completed theirs, and there was little I could do to hurry them along.  In addition, my paperwork and projects stacked up daily on my desk.  I was afraid to file things away until they had been taken care of, and everything depended on waiting for someone else.  I felt as if I were drowning every day.  And then......just I thought I was too far in over my head, I somehow found a book by David Allen called Getting Things Done.  After reading about 20 pages, I headed to my office on a weekend and spent two days re-organizing my work and projects.  As I continued to read that book, I began to feel as if God had thrown me a lifeline just as I was about to go under.  

Looking back on my life, I find many "rescues," from the time I was graduating from high school until the present day.  I find unbelievable friends who appeared just when I needed their presence and guidance in my life.  I find favor/grace given at every turn.  I find large and small miracles given at times of desperation and confusion.  

In my own history, I find God--- "I am with you."  Emmanuel!  And because He has been with me always, I can trust Him for the next step, the next day, the next project......

Then Neither Do I Condemn You

 If we want to see the face of God, all it takes is to look closely at the story of the woman caught in adultery (John, Chapter 8).  The teachers of the Law and the Pharisees brought the woman to Jesus, thinking they were clearly in the right to condemn her.  Yet, He bent down and began writing on the ground with his finger.  They kept on questioning (read "bugging") Him, ignoring whatever He was writing in the dust.  He straightened up and replied, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  

In my imagination, I see Him gesturing to what He had written on the ground when He spoke.  We have a clue as to what that might have been in the 17th chapter of Jeremiah:  

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure.  Who can understand it?  I the Lord search the heart and examine the mind...

O Lord, those who turn away from you will be written in the dust because they have forsaken the Lord, the spring of living water....

Do not be a terror to me; you are my refuge in the day of disaster.  Let my persecutors be put to shame, but keep me from shame; let them be terrified, but keep me from terror.  Bring on them the day of disaster; destroy them with a double destruction. 

If her accusers did look at what was written in the dust, they may have been terrified.  In any case, one by one, they slinked away, leaving only Jesus with the woman.  He was the only one present who was qualified by His own measure to cast the first stone.  And yet, having turned away her accusers, He now says to her, "Then neither do I accuse you."  

We can only imagine her relief and gratitude, especially if we call to mind what happens today in Islamic countries to those who break Sharia law:  They are stoned, thrown from high buildings, publicly flogged, and tortured.  Jesus rescued this woman from certain death: "Neither do I condemn you!"  

No one has ever seen God, but God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, has made Him known (Jn. 1:18).  Neither do I condemn you....go and sin no more!

The Gospel of Mark

 The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the work of the devil (1 John 3).

In this world, you will have trouble.  But take heart! I have overcome the world (John 16).

...the prince of this world now stands condemned (John 16).

The Gospel of Mark begins subversively:  The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.  In the Roman Empire of Mark's day, the word we translate "gospel" (good news) (euangelion in Greek) had a specific application.  It referred to the "good news" that the barbarians, the uncivilized peoples on the fringes of the empire, had been conquered, and that Roman "civilization" had been brought to yet another corner of the earth.  As the Roman emperor or another general was returning to Rome with his captives chained, emissaries were sent ahead of the procession to herald the "good news" of yet another conquest for Rome.  

Moreover, the Roman emperor was considered divine, the "son of God."  To be a citizen of Rome meant to acknowledge with incense the divinity of the emperor -- the "Augustus," or "August One."  For us to read "the beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God," it only means that we are about to read a book about Jesus, whom we know to be the Anointed One.  In the Roman Empire, those few words were a direct challenge to the rule and the divinity of Augustus Caesar.  It meant that there was another "son of God" who had conquered the outer edges of darkness and who now reigned in triumph.  There is now another "kingdom" alongside the Roman conquest of the known world.

The entire Gospel of Mark unfolds in explanation of that first sentence.  About one-fourth of his gospel is about the "mighty deeds" of Jesus -- healing of the blind and deaf, casting out demons, healing of a woman with a hemorrhage and a paralytic man.  These are not just "stories," but demonstrations of the kingdom of God breaking into, and overcoming, a dark and fallen world.  Jesus is conquering and destroying the work of the devil, as the first letter and gospel of John tell us -- the prince of this world now stands condemned.  

Immediately after his baptism by John, Jesus goes into the wilderness to confront Satan.  The battle is on!  He suffers the temptations that Satan offers to all mankind -- to use our "power" to satisfy our own hunger, to attain recognition and pride, and the lust to dominate in the words of St. Augustine (City of God).  Having come to the end of His own resources and human power in the desert, He is now ready to overcome the kingdom of darkness in the power of God.

The very first of the miracles reported by Mark comes as Jesus begins teaching at Capernaum.  A man in the synagogue who was possessed by an evil spirit cries out: "What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?"  Like King Herod threatened at the birth of a new ruler of the Jews, the rulers of this world ("the Prince of this world") are threatened by His appearance.  His kingdom will conquer theirs, and they know it.

At the very beginning of the Gospel, we see the significance of Jesus' miracles:  the overcoming by God of the evil forces at work in the world.  The spirit knows that Jesus has come to destroy "us" -- all of Satan's forces that wreak havoc in the world -- sickness, evil possession, sin, hatred, death ---the things that have destroyed what God has created and intended for mankind.

In Jesus Christ, God is actively fighting the evil that threatens to destroy mankind, and in Jesus' death, the ultimate confrontation with evil forces, their destruction is ensured forever.  There is nothing more fundamental to the Christian faith than the belief that in Jesus, God has overcome evil:  The kingdom of God is at hand!  "In all these things, we are more than conquerors through him who loved us" (Romans 8:37) and we know that God makes all things work for the good of those who love him (8:38).

I write this today at the time of terrible destruction through tornadoes in eight states, along with the horrible fires and floods that increasingly threaten the world we live in.  I pray that in all things we may discover the peace that overcomes the world of hatred, division, natural disasters, sickness, and death.  Jesus has come to destroy the work of the devil.  May we believe and accept that He has already done so, and may we, like Mark, announce the "good news" of the kingdom of God breaking into a dark world!

The Mercy Seat

 In the 25th chapter of Exodus, God gave Moses instructions for building the Tabernacle, wherein God would dwell among his people.  The ark of the covenant, which held the Testimony, or the Law, was the holiest part of the tabernacle. 

The chest itself was to be made of acacia wood -- a wood considered incorruptible and impervious to insects and decay.  The wood was to be overlaid with pure gold inside and out. Above the ark was to be an "atonement cover," sometimes translated as "mercy seat," of pure gold.  Two cherubim were to be placed at the end of the cover, one at each end, with their wings spread upward, overshadowing the ark. There above the cover between the two cherubim that are over the ark of the Testimony, I will meet with you and give you all my commands for the Israelites (25:22).

Symbolically in the bible, wood was the sign for man; gold, for divinity.  In Jesus, we have the purest "wood," or man, overlaid with gold, or divinity.  In Him is the "Testimony," or Word of God; He Himself is the Word, and the Word became flesh and tabernacled for a while among us (John 1).

In most Catholic churches today, the cross of Christ is displayed over the tabernacle, or Ark of the Covenant, containing the Word of God.  His cross is the "atonement cover,' or "mercy seat:" there I will meet with you and give you all my commands.  Jesus bore testimony to the Covenant between God and man; in Him are all the commands, or words of life, given to us by God.  His death is our atonement (at-one-ment) with God.  

If we ever doubt that God is with us, for us, among us, the Cross over the Tabernacle should be our assurance that "there," God becomes one-with-us.