A Fountain of Hope

Today is the Solemnity of the Holy Trinity.   A feast day in which we celebrate the mystery of who God is.  God is one being.  That is something all of the different, major religions descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  Christians though believe that though He is one being, one God, He is three co-eternal persons.  That is what we Catholics mean when we say it is a mystery.  It doesn't make sense to us as a 'person' to consider being also part of another being.  Yet, we are much the same aren't we?  My wife, my daughters, and I are all a family.  We are one unit, made up of separate people.   The trinity is more intimate than that.. but the Church has long held that the family, the domestic church, is the visible sign of the trinity and a witness to the faith we profess.

Jesus reminds us that the Holy Spirit will guide us to the truth and will proclaim to us all things that were belong to Him.  That's a beautiful promise that many of us have rejected or forgotten here two thousand years later.  When we look around we find not just one Christian family, but over forty thousand Christian denominations.  All of them claiming to be led by the Spirit, all of them claiming to know the truth, but all of them holding different beliefs.   Just the other day a friend was telling me that at a church they had attended the Pastor had said that all of the miracles in the bible were not real, they legends.   Then another Pastor at another church declared that Jesus did not actually die, but rather was in a state of deep sleep, a coma perhaps?  We see the results of this fracture, this drifting from the truth handed on by the Apostles and protected by the Church Father's, throughout all of our societies today.   From the people who protest military funerals and declare that God hates people who have same sex attraction, to those who say that everyone is saved and you can live whatever hedonistic lifestyle you want to live.

The Church has long taught that the fruit of the Spirit is a necessary sign of His presence in our Church.  In the Morning Prayer of the Divine Office this morning one of the intercessions proclaims: "Come, Holy Spirit, that we may show your fruit in our lives: charity, joy, peace, equanimity, kindness, generosity, long-suffering, patience, faithfulness, modesty, self-control, and chastity."   Isn't that a poignant reminder of what it means to be the body of Christ?   It means to be one, just as Jesus and the Father are one.  That's what we are to learn about the trinity.  That they aren't struggling for glory and honor, but sharing in it.   They aren't breaking ranks to form their own godhead, but rather are one God.

When I grew up as a Protestant, I began to realize that something was amiss.  As I shopped churches looking for the one that had the truth, I watched as people left one church to form another over some of the most interesting things.   At one point I watched as a church split because one preacher said it was OK to smoke and the other felt it was a sin.. so the congregation split too forming another church just down the road.  Everything else was the same... but that one thing.   Then I sat and listened to that man preach about the ills of tobacco smoke while he spit in a cup from his 'chaw.'   I journeyed from the Baptist faith that I had grown up around into the Pentecostal arena and listened to people shout out in tongues and fall out in the spirit.   I was even known to speak tongues and raise my hands while shouting Amen to the preachers message.   Then one day I sat down because I didn't feel God in it.   Someone turned around demanding to know what was wrong.. and I said nothing, and he declared I was no longer saved because I didn't speak tongues anymore.

"Now there are a variety of gifts, but the same Spirit, and a varieties of service, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of working, but it is the same God who inspires them all in everyone."    God decides where He goes and whom He saves.  I truly believe that.   I do not know who will be in Heaven with me, but I imagine that there are going to be some Catholics who are truly surprised when they come face to face with some Protestants who also will be in wonder.  Then there will be others whom we expected to be there and we will look down in sadness at their condition.  What I do know without a shadow of a doubt is that Jesus left us a Church to guide us.   That Church wrote the New Testament scriptures themselves.   Yes, God can go outside of the ordinary means of salvation to save anyone he chooses, but if you're standing in a desert with a water fountain next to you, do you take a drink?  Or stumble through the hot sands hoping to find a drop somewhere else?   The Church is that fountain... God has given Peter the keys to the vault of grace and mercy, and it's available to every person who seeks it in earnest.

It's time for us to stop trying to write our own Gospel and be united.  One faith, one baptism, one Church.  Jesus asked his Apostles to do just that, he prayed that they might become one, as He and the Father were one.   What is the bond that connects the Father and the Son?  It's the Holy Spirit. It's love.   Jesus then breathed on his Apostle's and sent them on a mission to evangelize the world.   In the words of Saint Athanasius written in the 6th century (which may seem harsh to some):

It will not be out of place to consider the ancient tradition, teaching and faith of the Catholic Church, which was revealed by the Lord, proclaimed by the apostles and guarded by the fathers. For upon this faith the Church is built, and if anyone were to lapse from it, he would no longer be a Christian either in fact or in name.

It's time to come home.

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Let Him Ask Again

There are so many things we try to do to get good health.  One doctor tells you to eat high fat, another high protein, another no fat, low protein.  One high carb, another low carb.  This one tells you to use aromatherapy.   Another to take this pill and that.  Yet another tells you to avoid pills and simply stick needles into certain places of your body.  All of them claim to have the answer.  It becomes quite confusing to the average person to try and figure out exactly what they should do and eat, what they should put in their bodies, what they should avoid... Yet we find people going to great lengths, eating extreme diets, concocting various potions and chemicals, all in the search of adding a few years to their life.

How many times in the movies have we seen people take upon themselves these massive quests to find a cure, or to save the one they love.  Indiana Jones risked his life navigating the maze of death to get the holy grail that he might save his father who had been shot with a bullet.  He was willing to risk his life for just the chance that he might save his dad.  In other movies we see people seeking rare flowers in the heights of the trees in the jungle, seeking out estranged guru's hidden from sight in order to find the secret to their condition, or even like Eddie Murphy, climbing the highest peaks of some strange country to find a temple to retrieve a scroll that will save many lives.

We do that still in our own lives sometimes don't we?  We look for the right herbal treatment, or the right natural remedy.  We ask doctors for medicine to cover up our symptoms that we might live a semi-normal life.  If someone told you today that you should load up your family and head to some other continent because the cure for cancer was in a plant in the middle of the desert, would you pack up that loved one and head out?  Many of us would.  If my daughter were dying and I were told I had to climb the highest mountain to pick a blooming rose on the 3rd of december at midnight, I'd likely be willing to do it...

The thing is though, it's Divine Mercy Sunday.  It's a reminder to us that God's mercy is infinite, it's an ocean waiting to be poured out on us.. all we have to do is accept it.  When I was a Protestant I did find God's grace.   God's grace is available to all people.   I'd feel the Holy Spirit at a prayer service, while listening to some preacher on the radio, while praying with some friends at work... yes, his grace was there.   It was though like I was searching in the desert looking for those moments.  Looking up to the dry, blistering sky I would occasionally find relief from the arid world around me. A drop here.. a drop there... just a moment of relief...

Then I found the Church... I found Him.. I found that river of life that Jesus told the woman at the well about.  Instead of a drop here or there... there was enough of God's grace to pour over me, around me, and through me... all of it right there in the Eucharist.  How much of that grace has God offered to the world and the world refused?  In the Divine Mercy Chaplet we pray about the fount of life, unfathomable divine mercy.. An ocean of mercy so deep it can never be sounded.  An ocean of mercy that is beyond comprehension, God himself, descending into a piece of bread... something defenseless... to allow me to receive Him into my body... to place that Mercy into me.. to consume it.. to let it flood through my body and change me.. to help me to grow into Him.. to be more like my savior and my Lord..

We seek concoctions, potions, spells and incantations to cure things which are temporal....... To ease the symptoms of a much less serious illness than that of apathy, that of spiritual sloth.  Do we realize how important Mass is?  How important it is to receive Jesus Christ; body, soul and divinity; into our own body to help us become what he intended us to be?  It's not enough to just receive that Mercy.. it's not enough to just tap into this ocean and consume enough for our own needs... No.. you see, you are a conduit.. The Eucharist fills you up, just like a cup... if you are full?  There's no more room.  God didn't design us to be just a cup.. He designed us to be little Christ's.... to pour ourselves out, like Christ did on the cross.. to take this living water and turn it into a transforming flood to mold the world into the image of His kingdom.

Are you ready for that?  To go out into the world and give away what you have been given?  To hand the mercy and forgiveness you have experienced through God's abundant grace and love to those who need it most?   The widow, the orphan, the poor, the downtrodden, the oppressed.. and yes, to your enemies.. to those you like the least.. to those who are most unlike yourself... That's what God is calling you to.  He is coming before you in the Eucharist and saying to you, as he said to Thomas, "Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.”  Now it's up to us.. to say back to Him... to look up at the Mercy of God himself, to look up at Jesus in the Eucharist, and to say with Mary, the Mother of God, and all the Angels and Saints in Heaven, "My Lord and my God!”

His servant and yours,
Brian

"He must increase, I must decrease."

Hear the Sounds of Hearts Returning to You

This afternoon and tomorrow morning Christian’s all around the world will celebrate the triumphal entry of Jesus Christ into the city of Jerusalem.   This celebration leads up to Holy Week and Easter, our greatest and most important celebration.  Last night as we gathered together to relive the stations of the Cross, we meditated on what it might have been like for Mary to experience this journey alongside her son.   A mother watching her child be welcome in such a powerful way on Palm Sunday, only to see him a few days later being ridiculed and murdered.  It was so very powerful for me personally, that as we looked up at the wooden cross held high above our heads and read the 15th station, the Resurrection of Our Lord, my heart too felt as if it would burst with joy.   Tears streamed down my face and I found it difficult to say the words, not because of my sorrow but because of the immense ecstasy that I felt pouring out on me.

This morning as I prepared to be a lector for Palm Sunday it struck me again that we as Catholics do that a lot.   We don’t just sit passively and watch someone preach or perform, but on many of our special holidays we relive the events.  We read the entire experience from Scripture with one person reading the narration, another the response of specific people (centurions, officials, pharisees, etc), the Priest reading the words of Jesus, and the entire audience the words of the ‘crowds.’  The story of Palm Sunday to many is just that, the story of one day two thousand or so years ago, in which one man had one experience.  We as Catholics do not see it that way.  Last night at the Stations of the Cross I was reminded of that truth.  At the triumphal entry there were two kinds of people… there were those singing “Hosanna,” and those plotting revenge.    There were those waving palm branches, and those sending daggers from their eyes.

Last night’s Stations reminded me of that.  At each stations we are asked a question, challenged in our walk.   Are you condemning Christ to death in your actions and words?  Or are you bringing instead life and joy? Are you looking on as Jesus begins the walk to calvary? Or are you participating in carrying his cross? When Jesus falls are you helping him get back up?  Laughing at his failure?  Being compelled like Simon to do something you don’t want to do?  Rushing forward like Veronica to comfort and console him? Crying for him but missing the message? Are you stripping him of his clothing and dignity?  Or trying to restore him to the place he deserves? So many questions that there isn’t enough space in any amount of storage to contain the words that could be written about these simple 14 events.

The thing is they, like the scripture and tradition they are based on, speak to us in the here and now.   They aren’t just about the time of Christ, but they are about our everyday life.  Once again I must quote Blessed Mother Teresa as she paraphrases one of my favorite pericopes of scripture:

“At the end of life we will not be judged by how many diplomas we have received, how much money we have made, how many great things we have done. We will be judged by "I was hungry, and you gave me something to eat, I was naked and you clothed me. I was homeless, and you took me in.”

As Christians we see Jerusalem as the early model of the Church.   So when we see Jesus being welcomed and reviled by the same people, we must ask ourselves.. How are we doing Church?  When St. Matthew wrote those words in scripture he reminded us that we as the church must see Christ in every person we meet, not just in the building.  Though Jesus is substantially present in the Sanctuary of the Eucharist, he is not trapped.. Not limited to that place.   He is in every person we meet, every encounter we have is a moment in which we can serve Christ.  So how are we doing?   Are we welcoming them into our lives, into our domestic churches, with fanfare and joy?  Or are we like Simon carrying their cross only because someone forced us to?  Like Veronica are we wiping the face of those who need comfort? Or are we pushing them away?

In our current political sphere we see people who want to build walls, evict families from our presence, even if it means separating mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, infants from caregivers.   How do we reconcile that with the message of Christ?   It is to the alien, the refuge, the widow, and the orphan that we must look for the vision of Christ in our lives.   It is to them that we must give a drink, not pluck their beard leaving nothing but bloody and raw skin.  We must offer them dignity and clothe them with respect and love, not tear apart their clothes and gamble them away for our own comforts and benefits.   We must rush forward to see him as a Mother sees her only child.. To see their suffering as our own.. To be like Mary and see their pain as a sword piercing our own hearts.. That we can strengthen one another.

Yes, we have an opportunity here to help those who are fallen by gossip, trash talk, bullying or teasing.. To help them get back up.. Clothe them with the armor of Christ, the breastplate of righteousness, the boots of peace, the shield of faith and the helmet of salvation. So we must look around and ask those questions of ourselves, to examine our lives every day, and say when I am standing at the water cooler am I building up or tearing down?  When we take a smoke break are we gossiping or edifying?  When we are away from parental supervision and authority figures are we watching things that help build each other up?  Or watching things we know will tear someone down?  Do we glorify God with every breath we breathe?  Or are we letting Him down?

It’s Palm Sunday.  Let us lift our branches both in the Sanctuary and in the world! As you go forward to receive that Sacrament, the Most Holy Eucharist, remember that it's not enough to just receive Jesus.. it's necessary to journey with Him... to pick up our own Cross and journey to our own Easter... That's what it means to live a sacramental life... Not just to receive it.. but to give it away. Not just to be aware of Christ.. but to allow the Sacraments to transform you into a 'little Christ' who then can begin to transform the world. Are you ready for that?

His servant and yours,

Brian

“He must increase, I must decrease.”

Life Flipped-Turned Upside Down

Tomorrow is the second Sunday of Advent.  In the Gospel we see John the Baptist coming out of the wilderness proclaiming the coming of the Kingdom of God.  He proclaims Isaiah's message that the world is about to be shaken. Things are going to change.  Valleys will be laid flat, and mountains shaken to their cores.  Winding roads will be made straight and the rough path made smooth.  All of these speak of major changes.  Of topographical divergence.  That is what the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit, do to a person.   Change.  Conversion.   The Greek word is Metanoia.  It means to alter course 180 degrees.. to turn things inside out... around.. back on themselves.    Baruch, in the first reading, also talks about this conversion.. this change.. this Metanoia.  

Then we see this letter from the Apostle Paul to the Philippians sandwiched in the middle.  Paul is the ultimate example of metanoia.   Paul who was the Pharisee of the Pharisees not only ceased persecuting the Christians that were such a danger to his way of life, but he joined them in faith and practice.   Here now we see him in prison awaiting word to whether or not he will be freed or executed.  Yet, he is full of joy.  Full of kind words, and prayer.. not for his own concern.. but for the Philippians themselves.   Wow!

How well that fits in with my experience of this day.  Today my wife and I took part in a class on redemptive listening.   That is, learning to listen to other people in a way that truly gets our own thoughts and interests out of the way.  It means trying to be Christ to that person, to respect their dignity and help them feel loved.  How powerful, yet how difficult.  That though is what we must learn to do if we want to be more like Christ.  That's the true metanoia isn't it?  To consistently and intentionally be more like Christ, and less like ourselves.  That's what conversion is about.  It's not a one time event, though some people have major conversion stories.  It starts at one point.. but it moves towards the end of time.  We have a conversion.. we have more conversions... and we will have a conversion... It's a lifelong process of daily growing in our relationship with God and with each other. 

As we continue through Advent towards Christmas, that seems to me to be the goal.  To examine our hearts, minds, and lives.  To ask ourselves, am I growing towards Christ?  Am I more like him this Advent than I was last Advent?  Am I more like him today than I was yesterday?  How can I be more like him tomorrow?  It's up to us to change the landscape.  It's up to us to go into our environments, filed with this obstacle or that one.  When we go in alone they can be too much.  Just like a winding path that never seems to get you any closer to your goal, or a steep mountain that simply feels like you can never climb it, so too is the Kingdom of God impossible to bring about on your own.  It's when we bring the Architect, the creator of the universe, with us into our environment.. that he levels the mountain, smoothing the rough ways, and making crooked paths straight.  

By changing our environment, by bringing the God we receive in the Eucharist into the world, we bring others closer to the promise that God has made to his people.  "All flesh shall see the salvation of God, for God is leading us in joy by the light of his glory, with his mercy and justice for company."

As St. Paul said, "I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus."  Keep allowing the Holy Spirit to work in your life, drawing you deeper and deeper into conversion.  God will not allow his word to return to him void, but will accomplish the task he has sent it out to complete. 

His servant and yours,
Brian

28th Sunday in Ordinary Time: Wisdom From on High

Today was one of those amazing days where I got the honor of sitting in a group of men who are

offering their lives in hopes of eventually being configured to Christ to the servant in Holy Orders.  It struck me as I began to read the readings for tomorrow of how apropos they were after the experiences we shared today in that room.  The first reading from the book of Wisdom is just so powerful and reminds me of one of the very great philosophical reminders that Father Peck talked to us about today.

I prayed, and prudence was given me;
I pleaded, and the spirit of wisdom came to me.
I preferred her to scepter and throne,
and deemed riches nothing in comparison with her,
nor did I liken any priceless gem to her;
because all gold, in view of her, is a little sand,
and before her, silver is to be accounted mire.
Beyond health and comeliness I loved her,
and I chose to have her rather than the light,
because the splendor of her never yields to sleep.
Yet all good things together came to me in her company,
and countless riches at her hands.

Wisdom 7:7-11 NAB

How truthful is that?  I think we often don't understand the power that God has given us in the gift of reason and logic.   We take it for granted.   Do we hold it up as something precious?  Something so wonderful that it makes gold seem like sand?  That something quite rare is really just as common as the sand by the sea?   Do we long for wisdom more than our own health or beauty?   Today's society would teach us otherwise.  To choose to have wisdom over even light?   Are you so enthralled by the beauty of God's gift to us of prudence that you would give up your sight itself to be perfected in it's execution?

There is an allegory from Plato that Father Peck mentioned in his lecture that really puts things in perspective.  The Cave, in which people are chained to the wall unable to see anything or anyone, except for that which is right in front of their face.  They cannot see behind them or around them, but only the shadows cast by a fire and by objects held by people unseen.  That these people are unaware of the world outside because all they know is the shadows on the cave wall. Here we have these people in bondage, but are they aware of it?  Do they realize how much they need?  How much they haven't seen?

In freedom they find themselves open to a world of sight and sound that is so much more full of depth than anything they had thus experienced.  They feel sorry for those still trapped in the cave, and do everything they can to bring them out of the bondage.. out of the flat, one experiential existence.  Isn't that what wisdom is indeed?  Philosophy? Theology?  Opening our minds to a reality so far beyond what we first perceived with our limited senses?  Bringing us to understand something so much deeper than just the visible, but helping us to grapple and wrestle with the invisible?  In Wisdom we find hope, we find a world beyond just the shadows cast on the wall in our self imposed caves, but rather we open our minds to contemplate and experience things beyond ourselves. 

How does that apply to the gospel?  The church in her infinite wisdom and effort has attempted to tie the gospel and the first reading together thematically.  What do I see there?  In this parable Jesus talks of a young, rich man who wants to know what he must do to get to heaven.  The rich man says he has followed the commandments, and wants to know what more he must do?  Jesus tells him to sell all that he has and give it to the poor, then come and follow him.  The Scriptures then tell us that the "young man went away sad, for he had many possessions."   Then Jesus speaks of a camel passing through the eye of a needle.  We could really go deep into that imagery and what it might mean or what the words might mean, but suffice it to say that many times I have a hard time just threading a needle with regular thread... imagine doing it with anything larger? 

How does that mesh with the first reading?  Wisdom.   That is what Jesus was encouraging this young man to do, to increase his Wisdom.  You see the young man was trapped in his cave, in his own prison of viewing the world.  He was attached to the material wealth he had, enough that the thought of losing it made him sad.   Jesus was not condemning having possessions, nor even having wealth; but rather being attached to those things.   We was asking him to see the world of detachment, a world in which we are free of desire.   A world in which we are free of suffering, because we do not desire health, wealth, comfort, etc over God... but rather what consumes us most is God.  That is true Wisdom.  That is what Jesus offered to this young man.  He saw him shackled, looking at the wall of the cave, unable to see more than the shadows that Satan and the world offered him.   Jesus tried to free him and bring him outside the cave to see the real world, so full of color and sensation, something beyond what the rich mans mind was able to see.   Instead of coming outside, the young man simply sat in the cave looking at the wall. 

So what about us?   Are we ready to step outside the cave?   Are we ready to follow Christ with a growing detachment to worldly things and a thirst so enormous for God's presence in our lives that we would give up everything else for it?  That anything else, even the most precious gems and metals would seem like filth and refuge to us?  Thomas Aquinas said nearing the end of his life, ""The end of my labors has come. All that I have written appears to be as so much straw after the things that have been revealed to me."   Are we there?   Are we at least working to be there?

Lord I believe,
Help my unbelief.

In Christ,
Brian