The Heart of the Matter

Traveling from one year to the next: A New Year's Eve Treat

New Year's Eve is an opportunity to reflect on the passage of time as we move from one year to the next.  So, as a New Year's Eve treat, here is a video that briefly explains Time Travel, that is, Albert Einstien's Theory of Relativity.  Enjoy!

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Don't fritter away your peace of mind

I mentioned at the end of my homily (for the Feast of the Holy Family) that I had a whole other homily on how people in a family can lose their peace of mind because of the actions, words or silent treatment of one member of the family.  I'd like to share these thoughts in this space.

Jesus tells us in Matthew 10:12-13 that when you enter a house "wish it peace.  If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it.  If not, then let your peace return to you."  How can we keep our peace of mind when someone we love is behaving outrageously?

What we tend to do when in an unpeaceful situation is to lose our peace, the very contrary behavior the Lord suggests for us.  Spiritually speaking we give ourselves over to a "desolation."  Desolation is beautifully described by a young teacher, by the name of Mattie, who belongs to an Ignatian blog community. She writes about consolation and desolation in her blog posting called, "Gift." Check it out.

"Let your peace return to you," Jesus tells us.  When other people enter into a time of desolation we should recognize that God moves us toward growth even in moments that seem to be devoid of God's presence.  Life is filled with ups and downs; and we are occasionally visited by disasters, tragedies, and other events that can make us shudder.  Yet God is to be found in all things.

If we can make it a firm part of our make-up, that God is to be found in all things, then we should look for the face of God in the events that would otherwise make us slide into a funk.  We may indeed enter compassionately into extreme suffering, because of other people's distress, but this spiritual suffering is meant to lead us, and others, to a deeper union with God. 

Our culture would have us think that all suffering is to be avoided.  The reality is that if we did not suffer we would not have compassion for the sufferings of others.  However, what looks like compassion can frequently actually be some other dynamic, like pity-pot-thinking, or woe is me yet again, or let me worry about this situation as if worrying can make things better.

"Let your peace return to you,"  Jesus tells us.  Don't catastrophize and think that the world is going to end because of this suffering.  In trying moments, try to make an act of faith that God loves us so deeply that He will indeed turn this moment of disaster into some new breaking in of His Kingdom.

Did you ever realize that there'd be no resurrection if there were no crucifixion?

Homily for the Feast of the Holy Family

Just about everybody has spent a lot of time with our relatives over these holidays.  No wonder, then, that the Church has us celebrate the Feast of the Holy Family during these days.  It’s a great time to reflect on our family dynamics. One of my favorite take-offs from Einstein’s theory of relativity is this: time goes more slowly when spent with one’s relatives.

            That depends on which relatives we’re talking about.  Who doesn’t have that pesky relative who makes everyone in the family wonder when something will go wrong?

   

Our Scriptures today have us reflect on the dynamics not only of the Holy Family, but also of any family trying to live according to God’s ways.  Let’s begin by looking at Sirach:  God sets a father in honor over his children; a mother’s authority he confirms over her sons.Whatever the causes are, the sense of honoring our parents has become less an emphasis in many American families.  Yet, the Scripture says, Whoever honors his father atones for sins, and preserves himself from them. You see, if you honor your father, with all of his faults, you will be able better to see not just your father’s foibles, but your own as well. 

         

Too many people give way to a free wheeling freedom to sit in judgment of their parents.  In actuality, the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, especially if those children do not honor, respect, and revere their parents.  This kind of honor does not pretend that the faults are not there; it just sees those faults within the context of realistically seeing that every human being is flawed. If a son looks at his parents this way, the Scripture says: When he prays, he is heard; he stores up riches who reveres his mother.

         

Too often adult children do not see the wonder of their parents until they themselves become parents.  Then they understand the difficulties their parents faced, and then they see that many of their own parental behaviors are imitations of what they saw in their parents’ behaviors.  Then it dawns on the adult children, that their parents learned from their parents how to do parenting. 

            

We also have some wonderful advice from Sirach on how to relate to our parents as they get older:  My son, take care of your father when he is old; grieve him not as long as he lives. Even if his mind fail, be considerate of him; revile him not all the days of his life; kindness to a father will not be forgotten, firmly planted against the debt of your sins — a house raised in justice to you. 

Have you ever noticed that as some children become adults and then become parents, they start treating their aging parents as if they were children?  They take it upon themselves to scold their parents, to find fault with their parents, thinking that they know better than their parents about what is good for their parents. 

               

What’s the antidote for this sad turn of events in a family? 

          

Oh, it’s so beautifully phrased in Colossians, Chapter 3: “Put on, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.”  Honoring our parents means that we learn early on the virtues we will need for the rest of our lives: love, kindness, humility, and gentleness.  If we were able to grow in humility we would never sit in judgment of our parents, or our brothers and sisters as well.  Nor would we sit in judgment of the people our siblings choose to marry.

          

We also need to learn early on how to “bear with one another and forgive one another.  If one has a grievance against another; forgive.  As the Lord has forgiven you, so must you also do.”  So much lingering ill-feeling in a family happens because members of the family don’t learn how to forgive. 

And over all these put on love, that is, the bond of perfection.  And let the peace of Christ control your hearts, the peace into which you were also called in one body.

Love your family – anyway. 

            

And lastly, don’t let your own peace of mind be disturbed by any member of your family. There’s a lot more to be said about not letting other people disturb your peace of mind, but I’ll leave that to tomorrow’s posting.

If you had the power, what would you change in the Catholic Church?

Mother Teresa, now Blessed Teresa of Calcutta, was once asked, "If you had the power, what would you change in the Catholic Church?"

Before giving her answer, I ask you the same question: what would you change?  Lots of people want many things changed, from institutional discipline, to theological freedom, to less emphasis on moral teachings, and so on and so on.  What would you want to change?

With the most succinct and profound grasp of what the church really is, Mother Teresa answered the question of what should be changed by saying, "You and me."

The Dark Night of the Spirit

In yesterday's posting I wrote about the first of the 2 dark nights that St. John of the Cross wrote about in his book, The Dark Night of the Soul.  Now I'll give a little spiritual direction about the second dark night, "the dark night of the spirit." 

Let me preface this description of this kind of spiritual darkness by saying that very few people undergo this dynamic.  So, relax, chances are that it is not you who will go through this experience.  It is reserved for those whom the Lord chooses and is only given to those who are not only proficient at prayer, but are faithful to love of neighbor and to daily prayer, and are well on the way to sainthood.  Mother Teresa went though this as is described the collection of her private writings recently published as Mother Theresa: Come Be My Light.

In the "dark night of the spirit" the person experiences the withdrawal of all internal and external support for believing in God.  Gone are the consolations of faith, gone are the sureties that faith can give, gone are the delights of communion with God, and mysteriously gone are the usual persons who ordinarily are very supportive.  The soul is left alone by God, like Jesus on the cross crying out, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?"  The project for the soul is to believe, anyway.  It is an invitation to naked faith.  It is an extremely difficult stage of spiritual growth and is frequently described by those who experience it as like doing your purgatory on earth.

A good book to read about this is Mystical Theology: The Science of Love by William Johnston, SJ.

The Dark Night of the Senses

Someone came into the sacristy after the morning Mass to ask me about the dark night of the soul.  He has been reading from the writings of St. John of the Cross, namely "the Dark Night," and he wanted some clarity.  This conversation leads me to suggest to anyone who might be returning to the sacraments this Christmas that knowing something of "the dark night" might help explain what wanderers go though.

There are 2 dark nights, "the dark night of the senses" and "the dark night of the spirit."  I'll give a thumbnail sketch of "the dark night of the senses" now, and tomorrow I'll describe "the dark night of the spirit."  If you want to read "The Dark Night" yourself, just click and read.

As one makes a decision to return to God's grace, learning how to pray is essential to grow spiritually.  During this time, if one stays faithful to daily prayer, there will be a deepening of the ability to meditate and a movement into contemplation.  The most important thing to do here is to remain faithful to a daily regimen of a consistent amount of prayer.  For instance, praying the rosary can move from saying words, into meditation upon the mysteries of the rosary, and then into a state of peace and even a union with God, which is what contemplation is. 

At some point most people who really want to grow in God's grace will experience "the dark night of the senses."  This dark night is when the giddy thrill of knowing the Lord's presence fades and one enters a time of decreased consolation, a dark night instead of the light of day. 

The dynamic going on here is the Lord's grace moving the person away from sin, i.e. major sin.  Usually some sin (or set of sins) has been so habitual that pulling away from sin is dreadfully painful.  The Lord allows the person to experience the darkness as a test to see if there will be fidelity to prayer and fidelity to the process of becoming purified.

St. John of the Cross uses the image of a log on fire in a fire place.  Just as the log burns and turns black, so the soul's purification seems to experience the blackness.  Just as the log becomes on fire and then becomes fire itself, so the soul comes to know the fire of God's love and becomes love as well.

Tomorrow we'll look at the "dark night of the spirit," which very few go through.

“My God, if you exist, let me come to know you.”

For many days I have been praying that this Christmas would be a time for many to make a return to the Lord if they have been away from the sacraments for some time.  Many families experience the gathering of relatives for Christmas.  What happened to one individual upon his return to his family is worthy of our study, Blessed Charles de Foucauld.  He was born in Strasbourg, France and lived between 1858 and 1916.  He, like many of us, lost his faith as an adolescent and had "a taste for the good life."  While on an exploration project in Morocco he was inspired by the way the Muslims there expressed their faith.  He began his religious turn around by saying to God: "My God, if you exist, let me come to know you." 

When he was about 28 years old, he returned to his deeply religious family and was treated so well, and with such respect, that he began to reconnect with his own Catholic faith.  When he made his return, he said, “As soon as I believed in God, I understood that I could not do otherwise than to live for him alone.”  Read his biography by clicking the link (his underlined name, above).  I hope and pray his example might inspire some who are searching for God.

Here's a prayer he wrote:  Dear God, I do not know whether some people are capable of beholding You poor while they at the same time willingly remain rich...  I cannot conceive of love without an imperative need of confirming, resembling, and especially of sharing all the pains and hardships of life...  To be rich, in comfort, to live pleasantly on things that are mine, when You have been poor, molested, living arduously in difficult labor - as for me, I cannot love that way."

Charles de Foucauld was beatified by Pope Benedict XVI on November 13, 2005.

Why no longer "Peace to men of good will"?

Here's a Christmas insight from the Preacher to the Papal Household, Fr. Raniero Cantalamessa, OFM, Cap.  "In the past this expression [of what the angels sang on the night of the first Christmas] was translated differently, that is, as 'Peace on earth to men of good will.' In these words the expression entered into the Gloria and it became common in Christian language. After Vatican II this expression was used to indicate all the honest, who seek the true and the common good, whether or not they be believers.

"But it is an inexact translation and for this reason it has been abandoned today. In the original biblical text it is a matter of men who are loved by God, who are the object of the divine good will, not that they themselves are gifted with good will. In this way the proclamation becomes more consoling. If peace were accorded to men on account of their good will, then it would be limited to a few, to those who merit it; but since it is accorded through God's good will, through grace, it is offered to all. Christmas is not an appeal to the good will of men but a radiant proclamation of the good will of God toward men."

Merry Christmas!

Homily for the 4th Sunday of Advent

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of God.”  That was one of Jesus’ favorite lines later in his life, so what did He actually mean?  We can gain an appreciation of this righteousness He was pointing to by thinking about His foster father, St. Joseph.  St. Joseph is presented in today’s Gospel as a righteous man who was unwilling to expose Mary to shame.   

Let’s look at what being righteous means biblically, then let’s look at what the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was like, and then let’s look at what the implications are for us.           

The Old Testament notion of being righteous meant that you would be faithful in abiding by all the statutes, commands, and ordinances of the Torah.  Before a legalism entered into Judaism, living according to the Torah’s commands was seen as letting God influence every choice you made in life.  To be righteous, or just, meant that you were truly a man or woman of God.  It meant that you studied the Torah and may even have known it by heart.           

Psalm 119 says it all: “Happy those whose way is blameless, who walk by the teaching of the LORD. Happy those who observe God's decrees, who seek the LORD with all their heart. They do no wrong; they walk in God's ways.”

Now the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees was a nit-picking attention to every minute interpretation of the Law, with a penchant for fault-finding in regard to the righteousness of others.  It was a self-righteousness that translated into a loveless attitude that said, “I am better than you.”

What Jesus experienced in St. Joseph was a man who lived the Law in a way that inspired rather than discouraged, that was uplifting rather than fault-finding.  Joseph was the truly just man, the supremely righteous man, who was so attuned to the will of God that he could bend his will to go beyond the prescriptions of the Law and see that the purpose of God was to do something far more wonderful than any human being could have conceived; that through His acceptance of what seemed unbelievable, he would play a major role in the salvation of the human race.

            Now, what are the implications for us?

            A variation of the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees is today’s minimalism: just tell me what I absolutely have to do, and I will do that, the bare minimum.  I’m fine the way I am; I don’t need to change.  After all, I’m a good person.  But I’m just going to do the minimum.  And even when I am told what the minimum is, I will pick and choose from that as fits my life-style or my wants at any particular moment in time.  Like just tell me the minimum of what I have to do, for instance, to get confirmed.

“Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the Scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the Kingdom of God.”  Unless we gain St. Joseph’s perspective, we will not be able to play our part in the ongoing salvation of the human race.  If we just want to do minimum, if we just see religion as fulfilling a duty, and if we add on top of this an attitude of judging others, then how will others come to know of the love of God.  If the members of the Church are not on fire with the love of God, then how will others come to know the God of Love who became incarnate in Jesus Christ?  Righteousness is not just doing the right things.  The righteousness of St. Joseph, the righteousness that exceeds that of the Scribes and the Pharisees, is a righteousness that comes from the depths of the heart of someone who is living in union with the Word made flesh. This kind of righteousness comes forth from our hearts and in our words.  It is as a fire burning in the depths of our souls.  It is a passion for God, and a profound desire to know Him, and love, Him and serve Him in all that we do. 

For the righteous man or woman, doing the bare minimum would be a failure and unworthy of us as baptized Christians. 

Lord, we give our all.  Never let us give in to the temptation to cut corners with You.  Keep us free from “just getting by.”  Give us a passion for You.  Give us a hunger for you; and never let us drift away from You.  Amen.

To help us get ready spiritually for Sunday

I came across this wonderful meditative approach to helping us prepare for the Sunday liturgy. It's a website produced by the Carmelites, one of whose saints was the Little Flower, whose picture is here.  This website provides a study and prayer approach to the upcoming Sunday's Gospel.  You can reach this Carmelite website by clicking here.  Also, I've added an automatic link in the column just to the right of this posting, labeled as, "Preparing for Sunday: Carmelite Meditations for Sunday."

Think what Sunday Mass could be like if the whole congregation prepared for Sunday by reading the Scriptures ahead of time!  And think further what we could be like as the Body of Christ if we prayed about the Scriptures before we come to Mass!