In this Step we contemplate the identity of Jesus, first how he defined himself, then also what others discovered in him. - Orientation and meditation, step 19
I have had a personal encounter with Jesus and have been learning who he is for over a quarter century since. But anyone who suggests that they know Jesus because they have walked with him probably hasn't even met him yet. This will be a good step!
The gospels present Jesus not only through stories such as Healer and Exorcist but call him Son of Man, Son of God, Rabbi or Teacher, Lord and in the book of Revelation he is the Bridegroom of the Church, the Lamb, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the faithful witness, Alpha and Omega and so on. Similarly you can find a lot of definitions in the various letters in the New Testament and in writings throughout the history of Church. Below we will list some texts for the upcoming prayer sessions, but the companions can continue to find who is Jesus in the Scriptures. - ibid.
I think, too, that this step will be one for me to revisit when I have completed the Exercises for the first time, as each title and revelation of Jesus helps us to know him more intimately and provides us with another way to choose to be conformed to him.
Thomas said to him, "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" Jesus said to him, "I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but by me. - Jn 14: 5-6
Each of these three titles Jesus uses to refer to himself is worthy of a full meditation, but that will get me too far behind on the calendar. Since I get to return to this step later, perhaps that will allow for further treatment of this passage, if I am still so inclined at that time.
I start with my namesake, who deserves so much more attention that the "doubting Thomas" moniker with which we one-dimensionalize him. This is an earnest query, I think. It is true for all of us that we don't know where Jesus is going, and therefore do not know the path before us.
I am the Way. It has been true from the beginning. The eternal Son has always been his people's way throughout all of salvation history. (Listing them all would be exhausting!) No matter how often we lose our way, when we seek Jesus we find the Way again, for he will always be the Way. Do I not know the way through grief and pain? Let me embrace my Lord and he will carry me through it in ways that I will not even fully understand in retrospect, in this life, at least. Do I not know the way to forgive another? Let me receive my Savior's forgiveness knowing how undeserving I am of it, and beg him to help me forgive when I know not how; he will make a way of forgiveness. Do I not know the way of his will? Let me ask him to finish conforming my will to his, and then examine my own will with an eye wary for signs of self-interest. Do I not know how to live out his love in the life to which he calls me? Let me look to lay down my life and take up my cross, and he will return my life to me filled with joy that can only be provided through my cross and which I cannot hope to anticipate.
I am . . . the Truth. How often we get swallowed up in what we perceive to be the truth of our life, only to discover later that we were focusing on only the tiniest piece of the truth rather than the Truth which holds all truth. (Thanks Fr. Neuhaus.) The enemy's most fruitful work is to focus our attention on the truth and help us lose sight of the Truth. He may be the father of lies, but his best lies are a misinterpretation of the truth that ignores the Truth.
I am . . . the Life. We cling to this life and its experiences, full of fear that it will slip away from us without our having done all that we long for. In our fear, we mistake experiences for Life. We rebel against God, certain that he is depriving us of joy when we are really longing for is a choice of death instead of Life. Jesus is the Life, and as we walk in him he provides us with everlasting life, which he intends for us to have to the full (Jn 10: 10). Sometimes we must lay down our life as we understand it to receive Life as only he can give us and only inasmuch as we do not insist on preserving our own life (Mt 16: 25, Mk 8: 36, Lk 9: 24).
There is so much more to be said about each of these, but perhaps my post-cycling heart rate will now allow me to fall asleep! Lord, please let me awake refreshed in the morning, determined to embrace you as my only way, truth, and life!
Showing posts with label Conversion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Conversion. Show all posts
Tuesday, March 17, 2015
Wednesday, February 25, 2015
Conforming (phase 2), Jesus Calls His Followers - Arriving to a Decision (step16), session 7
(Lk 5: 1-11, 27-32)
The first thing that strikes me in my second reflection on this passage is the different ways in which Jesus calls us. In the first section, the fishermen are stunned by what Jesus does before he calls them to follow him. First they hear his teaching, then the magnitude of their catch, after they had fished all night without success, astonishes them. In a way, it seems unsurprising that they should follow after such a turn of events. Yet it is clear that they are looking for something other than blessings upon their livelihood, for they leave that behind in order to follow Jesus. But Matthew - er, Levi - is simply sitting at the tax office. Perhaps it is nothing more than Jesus' willingness to have even a tax collector - shunned by almost everyone - as a follower which draws Levi in. Again, whatever it was, his life wasn't going to be business as usual, either.
The second thing that stands out is that, regardless of the specifics of how Jesus calls us, it is still up to each of us to choose to respond, to follow even though it may require radical changes to how we make our decisions and live our lives.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (32) Were there any righteous, they would have no need of repentance, nothing that could serve as visible evidence that Jesus has entered their lives and made radical changes there. The repentance of the sinner is the testimony to those on the outside that something wondrous has taken place in this person's life.
I wonder what evidence I present for others to see.
The first thing that strikes me in my second reflection on this passage is the different ways in which Jesus calls us. In the first section, the fishermen are stunned by what Jesus does before he calls them to follow him. First they hear his teaching, then the magnitude of their catch, after they had fished all night without success, astonishes them. In a way, it seems unsurprising that they should follow after such a turn of events. Yet it is clear that they are looking for something other than blessings upon their livelihood, for they leave that behind in order to follow Jesus. But Matthew - er, Levi - is simply sitting at the tax office. Perhaps it is nothing more than Jesus' willingness to have even a tax collector - shunned by almost everyone - as a follower which draws Levi in. Again, whatever it was, his life wasn't going to be business as usual, either.
The second thing that stands out is that, regardless of the specifics of how Jesus calls us, it is still up to each of us to choose to respond, to follow even though it may require radical changes to how we make our decisions and live our lives.
I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. (32) Were there any righteous, they would have no need of repentance, nothing that could serve as visible evidence that Jesus has entered their lives and made radical changes there. The repentance of the sinner is the testimony to those on the outside that something wondrous has taken place in this person's life.
I wonder what evidence I present for others to see.
Friday, January 16, 2015
The Two Standards, part 1
When Jesus answers to Satan, “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes forth from the mouth of God”, (Lk 4:4 and Mt 4:4, cf. Dt 8:3) it means that he chose to renounce the immediate gratification in order to follow what God’s will was for him. - The Two Standards meditation, 140-142. First Part: The Standard of Satan, the “values” he uses to deceive and seduce all of us
I am not so good at making this choice consistently. I do it pretty well for the bigger things, but there are areas of purity that I miss out on because I indulge in immediately gratifying thoughts instead.
The second temptation of Jesus is to let the power principle dominate his life. The search for power, personal prestige and status, the exploitation of others in order to gain these, and the allure of “honor” is so much widespread phenomenon that Alfred Adler in his “individual psychology” asserted it as the basic drive in life. Although a certain level of self-esteem is necessary for a healthy psyche, the temptation of the power drive misleads us to seek status and honor directly, and the price to pay for it is in destroyed relationships, falsity and deceit. - ibid.
There can be a tricky balance between setting appropriate boundaries for ourselves and trying to exercise power over the lives of others. Sometimes the people around us can feel that we are imposing boundaries or values on them when we are really only setting them for ourselves. It's an important distinction. To keep from being taken advantage of in an unhealthy way, I must sometimes prevent another from taking unhealthy advantage of me. That can feel to them as if I am trying to make a decision for them that they do not wish to make for themselves, when in truth I am truly only making a decision about what is healthy for me. It is important, when we are on the other side of such a decision, not to allow our own wishes to outweigh our respect for the other person by acting in a dishonest way in order to coerce a decision in line with our own wishes. This is especially hard when we feel that we need our lives to be different from how they actually are.
Viktor Frankl pointed out many times that there are several things, like joy and happiness that cannot be willed directly but should come as a by-product of one’s deeds. As the pursuit of happiness does not lead to its fulfillment so is it with the power drive. - ibid.
I've been thinking about this lately. In fact, I have long been convinced that the single greatest obstacle to finding happiness is to pursue it directly. Matthew Kelly propounds that we maximize our happiness by becoming the best version of ourselves, by making physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy choices rather than pursuing happiness for its own sake.
The third temptation of Jesus as Robert C. Leslie points out is to escape from personal responsibility, which is a manifestation of self-sufficiency and pride. Harder to recognize than the other two this temptation is permeating our culture on personal and societal level. It works through the dominance of psychological and sociological determinism. We can excuse our behavior endlessly by past traumas and by what others did or did not. - ibid.
There is so much in these few sentences. First of all, I'm pretty sure that I've never thought of the third temptation quite in these terms, but this makes perfect sense. Jesus is tempted to escape the consequences of a personal decision. The one thing that I am pleased about concerning my initial experience with therapy is that, while I needed to learn the effect that my childhood abuse had on my adulthood decision making, I recognized from the beginning that I was responsible for my choices. No matter how many men may have sexually abused me when I was a kid, I knew that I was responsible for my own adult actions. But this temptation remains so very present in how we respond to stimuli around us, as it is so easy to feel that we have been provoked into our choices.
In reality the future does not depend so much on past experiences as on our conscious decisions in the present. - ibid.
Yes!! Now, it is true that our past may have trained us to make decisions in a way that does not maximize our future growth, but we have the power to recognize that and learn to make our decisions in a different way. But let's say, for instance, that I recognize that I have a tendency to try to fix things for those around me. It does no good to recognize that trait in myself unless I recognize when I am doing that at the expense of others.
Responsibility is an indelible characteristic of human existence and it means that we ought to give a response or an answer for our acts in front of our conscience. In religious terms, we are created beings and we are not self-sufficient but our life is constant gift from God whose creative love we respond to with our existence, choices and acts. - ibid.
Yes, all of our life is our response to God's creative love, in one way or another. I must choose to respond in ways that draw me more deeply into that love, believing that God's plan for my life is more trustworthy than my own wishes, which are subtly tainted by the influence of the standard of Satan in my life and on the world around me.
Okay I haven't even started looking at the reflection on Jesus' standard, but there is just so much in here! The really should have made this initial meditation part of a longer step; one week was just not enough to cover this along with six individual session readings. On the other hand, they do revisit it twice in short order.
I am not so good at making this choice consistently. I do it pretty well for the bigger things, but there are areas of purity that I miss out on because I indulge in immediately gratifying thoughts instead.
The second temptation of Jesus is to let the power principle dominate his life. The search for power, personal prestige and status, the exploitation of others in order to gain these, and the allure of “honor” is so much widespread phenomenon that Alfred Adler in his “individual psychology” asserted it as the basic drive in life. Although a certain level of self-esteem is necessary for a healthy psyche, the temptation of the power drive misleads us to seek status and honor directly, and the price to pay for it is in destroyed relationships, falsity and deceit. - ibid.
There can be a tricky balance between setting appropriate boundaries for ourselves and trying to exercise power over the lives of others. Sometimes the people around us can feel that we are imposing boundaries or values on them when we are really only setting them for ourselves. It's an important distinction. To keep from being taken advantage of in an unhealthy way, I must sometimes prevent another from taking unhealthy advantage of me. That can feel to them as if I am trying to make a decision for them that they do not wish to make for themselves, when in truth I am truly only making a decision about what is healthy for me. It is important, when we are on the other side of such a decision, not to allow our own wishes to outweigh our respect for the other person by acting in a dishonest way in order to coerce a decision in line with our own wishes. This is especially hard when we feel that we need our lives to be different from how they actually are.
Viktor Frankl pointed out many times that there are several things, like joy and happiness that cannot be willed directly but should come as a by-product of one’s deeds. As the pursuit of happiness does not lead to its fulfillment so is it with the power drive. - ibid.
I've been thinking about this lately. In fact, I have long been convinced that the single greatest obstacle to finding happiness is to pursue it directly. Matthew Kelly propounds that we maximize our happiness by becoming the best version of ourselves, by making physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy choices rather than pursuing happiness for its own sake.
The third temptation of Jesus as Robert C. Leslie points out is to escape from personal responsibility, which is a manifestation of self-sufficiency and pride. Harder to recognize than the other two this temptation is permeating our culture on personal and societal level. It works through the dominance of psychological and sociological determinism. We can excuse our behavior endlessly by past traumas and by what others did or did not. - ibid.
There is so much in these few sentences. First of all, I'm pretty sure that I've never thought of the third temptation quite in these terms, but this makes perfect sense. Jesus is tempted to escape the consequences of a personal decision. The one thing that I am pleased about concerning my initial experience with therapy is that, while I needed to learn the effect that my childhood abuse had on my adulthood decision making, I recognized from the beginning that I was responsible for my choices. No matter how many men may have sexually abused me when I was a kid, I knew that I was responsible for my own adult actions. But this temptation remains so very present in how we respond to stimuli around us, as it is so easy to feel that we have been provoked into our choices.
In reality the future does not depend so much on past experiences as on our conscious decisions in the present. - ibid.
Yes!! Now, it is true that our past may have trained us to make decisions in a way that does not maximize our future growth, but we have the power to recognize that and learn to make our decisions in a different way. But let's say, for instance, that I recognize that I have a tendency to try to fix things for those around me. It does no good to recognize that trait in myself unless I recognize when I am doing that at the expense of others.
Responsibility is an indelible characteristic of human existence and it means that we ought to give a response or an answer for our acts in front of our conscience. In religious terms, we are created beings and we are not self-sufficient but our life is constant gift from God whose creative love we respond to with our existence, choices and acts. - ibid.
Yes, all of our life is our response to God's creative love, in one way or another. I must choose to respond in ways that draw me more deeply into that love, believing that God's plan for my life is more trustworthy than my own wishes, which are subtly tainted by the influence of the standard of Satan in my life and on the world around me.
Okay I haven't even started looking at the reflection on Jesus' standard, but there is just so much in here! The really should have made this initial meditation part of a longer step; one week was just not enough to cover this along with six individual session readings. On the other hand, they do revisit it twice in short order.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Conforming (phase 2), God Prepares a Way for Our Salvation - The Mystery of the Incarnation (step 8), Session 2
The Visitation
"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." - Lk 1, 45
Yes!! This!! Each of our lives is blessed to its greatest possible abundance when we believe that there will be a fulfillment of what the Lord has spoken to us! This is a true Advent: to spend these weeks longing for God's presence, asking and allowing the Holy Spirit to help us believe what we have not quite been able to fully believe on our own:
May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. - 1 Thes 5, 23-24
It is not us doing this, though we must participate in the process. I don't primarily sanctify myself or keep myself sound and blameless, though I must cooperate in both these things. But having given my fiat, I will trust - and ask - God's Spirit to be at work in me to fulfill what he has spoken.
"And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her from the Lord." - Lk 1, 45
Yes!! This!! Each of our lives is blessed to its greatest possible abundance when we believe that there will be a fulfillment of what the Lord has spoken to us! This is a true Advent: to spend these weeks longing for God's presence, asking and allowing the Holy Spirit to help us believe what we have not quite been able to fully believe on our own:
- That we can do what God is calling us to do, because God empowers us (see last item)
- That we can count on God o fulfill his promise to provide for our needs
- That God's desire for us to do what he is calling us to do is not rooted in some despotic wish to control our lives and deprive us of joy, but instead in a deep love for us and a desire to maximize the blessings he pours out in and through our lives
- That the things we choose in God's stead are a vaporous mirage
- That adoring, praising, and worshiping the Savior leads us to all of the "more practical" ways of living out the Gospel in our lives
- That holiness and sacrificial love are not burdens, but the great gift which is our only means of participating in the life and presence of God
- That the Holy Spirit indeed dwells in us, sanctifying us and drawing us ever deeper into the love of the Triune God
May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. - 1 Thes 5, 23-24
It is not us doing this, though we must participate in the process. I don't primarily sanctify myself or keep myself sound and blameless, though I must cooperate in both these things. But having given my fiat, I will trust - and ask - God's Spirit to be at work in me to fulfill what he has spoken.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Conforming (phase 2), God Prepares a Way for Our Salvation - The Mystery of the Incarnation (step 8), Session 1
The Annunciation to Mary
And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since . . . ?" - Lk 1, 34
As God calls us to a course of action, how often do we offer a slightly and completely different response: "This can't be, since . . . "? I have seen this at work in my own life and the lives around me countless times. The most egregious was my initial resistance to enter counseling, two decades ago. I knew, I thought, where that confession would lead, and I wanted no part of it, though it was unmistakable that I had to accept this responsibility.
Most of the things that God asks of us (ultimately, for us) are far more mundane things than the physical Incarnation of the eternal Son in the womb of a virgin. Mary's situation was unprecedented, and her question was not so much an "I don't believe you" or a "Yeah, right!" as a "Hmm. How is that going to work?" We approach our opportunity to trust God with far more skeptical assumption: "I don't see how that could work" or "but I have a good reason why that isn't applicable to me," so "it's okay (or even necessary) for me to do this instead." We are most stubborn about this when this is clearly not God's will as revealed through Scripture and the Church.
We forget the end of Gabriel's response to Mary: "For with God nothing will be impossible." Lk 1, 37. We fail to trust God, and especially to truly believe it possible that God will bring more good out of the right decision we wish to avoid than out of the wrong one we seek.
There is more to reflect on in this session's reading (Lk 1, 26-38), especially with regard to Mary's ultimate response, but that will be for another post.
And Mary said to the angel, "How shall this be, since . . . ?" - Lk 1, 34
As God calls us to a course of action, how often do we offer a slightly and completely different response: "This can't be, since . . . "? I have seen this at work in my own life and the lives around me countless times. The most egregious was my initial resistance to enter counseling, two decades ago. I knew, I thought, where that confession would lead, and I wanted no part of it, though it was unmistakable that I had to accept this responsibility.
Most of the things that God asks of us (ultimately, for us) are far more mundane things than the physical Incarnation of the eternal Son in the womb of a virgin. Mary's situation was unprecedented, and her question was not so much an "I don't believe you" or a "Yeah, right!" as a "Hmm. How is that going to work?" We approach our opportunity to trust God with far more skeptical assumption: "I don't see how that could work" or "but I have a good reason why that isn't applicable to me," so "it's okay (or even necessary) for me to do this instead." We are most stubborn about this when this is clearly not God's will as revealed through Scripture and the Church.
We forget the end of Gabriel's response to Mary: "For with God nothing will be impossible." Lk 1, 37. We fail to trust God, and especially to truly believe it possible that God will bring more good out of the right decision we wish to avoid than out of the wrong one we seek.
There is more to reflect on in this session's reading (Lk 1, 26-38), especially with regard to Mary's ultimate response, but that will be for another post.
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Conforming (phase 2), The parable of the Kingdom of Christ (step 7), session 7
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." - Mt 5, 3-10
Most kings are somewhat insecure in their power, at least to a degree, and this causes them to primarily align themselves with the powerful in order to shore up their security.
Jesus aligns himself with the weak, for he has security which can never be rivaled by any other power. When we, in our weakness, conform to him, we become aligned with his security and power. Yet we can only conform to him by aligning ourselves as he did, with our weak brothers and sisters.
Most kings are somewhat insecure in their power, at least to a degree, and this causes them to primarily align themselves with the powerful in order to shore up their security.
Jesus aligns himself with the weak, for he has security which can never be rivaled by any other power. When we, in our weakness, conform to him, we become aligned with his security and power. Yet we can only conform to him by aligning ourselves as he did, with our weak brothers and sisters.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Conforming (phase 2), The parable of the Kingdom of Christ (step 7), session 6
Conforming does not mean an external imitation but it expresses the essence of belonging to Christ, as “to be conformed to the image” (Rom 8:29) of the Son. Meanwhile tradition uses the expression Imitatio Christi, “Imitation of Christ” for what we call here conforming, it is not meant to be () a slavish copying Jesus’ words or deeds (nor) a sort of moralizing based on Jesus’ example. - Step by Step Retreats
If reforming is the act of allowing God to remove from our lives the outright sin that has deformed us, conforming must be a matter of embracing Jesus fully, with all of his radical implications in our lives. I'm not sure the degree to which this is a matter of B following A. Perhaps the two processes end up working back and forth between each other over the course of a lifetime.
And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!"- Mt 27, 28-29
Sometimes I forget to think about the sort of King I am following, and what it means to conform to him. It is no accident that we have two consecutive sessions in this step that are taken from accounts of Jesus' Passion. This is how Jesus has won his kingdom to himself, how he defends it from attack, how he tends to his subjects' deepest needs. Even when we are rejecting and mocking him, his love is at work to redeem, reform and conform our lives.
It can feel like a discontinuity to reflect on these things in the season of Advent. But I think it is good, as we seek a fuller coming of Christ into our lives by conforming to him, to remember why he came in the first place, and how he establishes the kingdom that we desire to enter more fully, and what is the means of our participation in that kingdom - or, in another sense, what it means for us to be his conformed subjects.
If reforming is the act of allowing God to remove from our lives the outright sin that has deformed us, conforming must be a matter of embracing Jesus fully, with all of his radical implications in our lives. I'm not sure the degree to which this is a matter of B following A. Perhaps the two processes end up working back and forth between each other over the course of a lifetime.
And they stripped him and put a scarlet robe upon him, and plaiting a crown of thorns they put it on his head, and put a reed in his right hand. And kneeling before him they mocked him, saying, "Hail, King of the Jews!"- Mt 27, 28-29
Sometimes I forget to think about the sort of King I am following, and what it means to conform to him. It is no accident that we have two consecutive sessions in this step that are taken from accounts of Jesus' Passion. This is how Jesus has won his kingdom to himself, how he defends it from attack, how he tends to his subjects' deepest needs. Even when we are rejecting and mocking him, his love is at work to redeem, reform and conform our lives.
It can feel like a discontinuity to reflect on these things in the season of Advent. But I think it is good, as we seek a fuller coming of Christ into our lives by conforming to him, to remember why he came in the first place, and how he establishes the kingdom that we desire to enter more fully, and what is the means of our participation in that kingdom - or, in another sense, what it means for us to be his conformed subjects.
Friday, October 10, 2014
I need to let go of a couple things
One of my Orioles' fan coworkers walked by my cube this morning and asked if I went to the game last weekend. In the process of answering, I lied again.
I put a high value on honesty, but in this case I cannot reconcile it with a higher one. I simply cannot say the bald truth - that I was discouraged from going rather than encouraged, and so I didn't go, even though I longed to - because I don't want to portray my bride in the negative light that would result from it.
So yes, there are a couple of things that this reveals that I need to turn over to God. I need to not hearken to my lifelong fandom more than to being the husband and grandfather and follower of Christ that I am called to be. I need to quit blaming my wife for something that was, ultimately, my decision to make. I need to be done with this childish petulance that I don't have the life I wish I had, and mourning over unimportant things in a way that interferes with my appreciation for my many blessings.
At least I was calmly honest with my bride when she suggested that I might be glad I didn't go to the game on a fairly chilly day.
I suppose I may be dying to myself a little bit more here, which would be a good thing, but I'm not sure I am doing it right. If I am or if I'm not, it hurts about as much as you'd think dying would.
I put a high value on honesty, but in this case I cannot reconcile it with a higher one. I simply cannot say the bald truth - that I was discouraged from going rather than encouraged, and so I didn't go, even though I longed to - because I don't want to portray my bride in the negative light that would result from it.
So yes, there are a couple of things that this reveals that I need to turn over to God. I need to not hearken to my lifelong fandom more than to being the husband and grandfather and follower of Christ that I am called to be. I need to quit blaming my wife for something that was, ultimately, my decision to make. I need to be done with this childish petulance that I don't have the life I wish I had, and mourning over unimportant things in a way that interferes with my appreciation for my many blessings.
At least I was calmly honest with my bride when she suggested that I might be glad I didn't go to the game on a fairly chilly day.
I suppose I may be dying to myself a little bit more here, which would be a good thing, but I'm not sure I am doing it right. If I am or if I'm not, it hurts about as much as you'd think dying would.
Friday, March 14, 2014
The one I haven't been using
There are four options for the invitatory psalm in the Liturgy of the Hours. I'm still only using the Office of Readings, but the invitatory is always used with whatever Hour one first prays each day. Usually it is either Morning Prayer or the Office of Readings, the latter of which is still offered up in (at least some) monastic communities during the wee morning hours as Vigils.
Three of these four psalms seem to lend themselves to particular seasons of the year. I most often use Psalm 95, which is the primary recommended one and is particularly well suited for Lent with its second half, including the reminder, If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts. (I know I've reflected in the past on how the different translations of this verse provide different insights into the ways we disregard God's voice, but can't find that post right now. Maybe it's just on paper?) The other option I use often is Psalm 24, which includes the verse, O gates, lift up your heads. Grow higher ancient portals. Let him enter, the King of Glory! This is so apropos for Advent, the season in which we pray for God to prepare our hearts to receive our Savior more fully. And Psalm 100 seems to fit the Easter season, beginning with the admonition to Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth!
I haven't prayed Psalm 67 as often, though, and this morning I am having a fresh (for me, at least) insight into its last strophe,
I often get complacent in my walk with God, accepting the habitual choices that I no longer even think about as I am making them: flying off the handle over my frustrations, engaging in impure thoughts, even indulging my penchant for reflection on my own thoughts and circumstances rather than praying. The thing that keeps more people from being drawn to the love of God is that they don't see it in our lives. There is either no transformation to which they might be drawn, or worse, the only transformation they see is the seeming judgment of their way of living. We make the same mistakes they do, tolerate certain behaviors in ourselves while condemning comparable behaviors in others. We say we trust God, but live our lives each day the same way as everyone else, getting wrapped up over our life decisions as if we were our only source of providence and often making them accordingly.
The only fruit which might make those around me revere God is a transformed life, and that means letting people see what he has transformed me from, both in the past and today. God's glory shines through the weaknesses in our lives that are answered in his strength. And we steal his glory, both by suggesting that we have made the changes that are really the result of his grace and by not letting him transform us out of our old selves simply because we have already - to our eyes - changed so much. When we encounter something that we can't change on our own, we too often choose to accept what we shouldn't rather than enter more fully into the painful process of allowing God to overcome and transform our limitations.
I have a feeling I'll be coming back to this thought more during Lent, or perhaps again during the Easter season. After all, as I've been observing, it was at the end of his fast that Jesus was tempted, and that has been when I return to my old ways, as well.
God, it is time I let you really have your way with me.
Three of these four psalms seem to lend themselves to particular seasons of the year. I most often use Psalm 95, which is the primary recommended one and is particularly well suited for Lent with its second half, including the reminder, If today you hear the voice of the Lord, harden not your hearts. (I know I've reflected in the past on how the different translations of this verse provide different insights into the ways we disregard God's voice, but can't find that post right now. Maybe it's just on paper?) The other option I use often is Psalm 24, which includes the verse, O gates, lift up your heads. Grow higher ancient portals. Let him enter, the King of Glory! This is so apropos for Advent, the season in which we pray for God to prepare our hearts to receive our Savior more fully. And Psalm 100 seems to fit the Easter season, beginning with the admonition to Cry out with joy to the Lord, all the earth!
I haven't prayed Psalm 67 as often, though, and this morning I am having a fresh (for me, at least) insight into its last strophe,
The earth has yielded its fruitI'm sure that the people of Israel primarily sang this verse in reference to the physical bounty of the harvest and in remembrance of the ways that God miraculously provided for their needs in ancient times. But it seems to me that the modern believer whose physical needs are already being amply supplied by God (skipping the obvious social justice teaching here) should also strive for another, perhaps more miraculous fruit from God: a more transformed life.
for God, our God, has blessed us.
May God still give us his blessing
'til the ends of the earth revere him.
I often get complacent in my walk with God, accepting the habitual choices that I no longer even think about as I am making them: flying off the handle over my frustrations, engaging in impure thoughts, even indulging my penchant for reflection on my own thoughts and circumstances rather than praying. The thing that keeps more people from being drawn to the love of God is that they don't see it in our lives. There is either no transformation to which they might be drawn, or worse, the only transformation they see is the seeming judgment of their way of living. We make the same mistakes they do, tolerate certain behaviors in ourselves while condemning comparable behaviors in others. We say we trust God, but live our lives each day the same way as everyone else, getting wrapped up over our life decisions as if we were our only source of providence and often making them accordingly.
The only fruit which might make those around me revere God is a transformed life, and that means letting people see what he has transformed me from, both in the past and today. God's glory shines through the weaknesses in our lives that are answered in his strength. And we steal his glory, both by suggesting that we have made the changes that are really the result of his grace and by not letting him transform us out of our old selves simply because we have already - to our eyes - changed so much. When we encounter something that we can't change on our own, we too often choose to accept what we shouldn't rather than enter more fully into the painful process of allowing God to overcome and transform our limitations.
I have a feeling I'll be coming back to this thought more during Lent, or perhaps again during the Easter season. After all, as I've been observing, it was at the end of his fast that Jesus was tempted, and that has been when I return to my old ways, as well.
God, it is time I let you really have your way with me.
Monday, March 10, 2014
A poor reason, and some good ones
Some scholars speculate that "Good Friday" comes from "God's Friday," as "good-bye" was originally "God be by you." But it is just as odd that it should be called God's Friday, when it is the day we say good-bye to the glory of God. Wherever its name comes from, let your present moment stay with this day. Stay a while in the eclipse of the light, stay a while with the conquered One. - Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Death on a Friday Afternoon
I find myself referring to quotes I've referenced on previous readings of this magnificent book, but in new ways. I've reflected before on the first part of what I've quoted here, but am now really wanting to focus on this latter part; I've only included the first two sentences of this citation because the part I wanted to include refers back to them.
I've been told before by a Catholic adult catechist, almost dismissively, that Catholics do a great job of focusing on Good Friday and a terrible job of truly celebrating Easter. Honoring Fr. Neuhaus' invitation to not rush to the resurrection, I nonetheless find that I am utterly convinced that the reason we're so bad at rejoicing in Jesus' (our) victory is that we are, in fact, just awful at truly entering into all that Good Friday should mean for us. If it were primarily about making us wallow in our guilt then, yes, we would excel at it! If the purpose of our meditation on this day is to make us more neurotic about the terrible thing that we did to Jesus, many of us could stop right now because we have that part down pat! As Jesus told his disciples about being clean, though: But not all. There are definitely some who do not associate enough of their lives with sin that something must be done about. And when I enter into eternity, I pray that I don't find that I am one of them.
But there is so much more about Good Friday for us to enter into than just the surface ideas at which we often stop: that it was my sin and guilt that Jesus bore on the cross so that I could be free from it, that God's love for me is so great that Jesus was willing to do this for me. Please don't think I'm being dismissive of these great tenets of our faith! So many of us have failed to grasp even the surface implications of these glorious truths.
But because God is infinite and eternal and Jesus is God, there is so much more depth to enter into in our reflections on this holy day, more than we can get in a full human lifespan, let alone in the time that most of us spend at the foot of the cross. It will take eternity for us to know it fully, just as to know God fully, in the personal-relationship sense. The purpose of a redeemed soul's prayerful reflection on Good Friday is not to increase our sense of the guilt from which Jesus has set us free, but neither is knowing that we are free from our guilt a good reason to forsake any further reflection.
I find that learning more of the depth and details of this mystery into which we enter (by the Holy Spirit) fills my heart with a greater sense of awe at God's infinite glory as revealed incomparably on the cross. It strengthens my desire to share God's love with those around me who have not chosen (or been able) to immerse themselves in the unfathomable depths of this incomprehensible love. It causes me to marvel at my increased understanding of the infinite vastness and infinitesimal detail of this glorious love. It gets my eyes and thoughts and heart fixed on something - someOne - inexpressibly beyond the limits of my mind.
And it makes me more aware of the utter abandon with which I am called to lay down my own life.
Have a blessed Lent!
I find myself referring to quotes I've referenced on previous readings of this magnificent book, but in new ways. I've reflected before on the first part of what I've quoted here, but am now really wanting to focus on this latter part; I've only included the first two sentences of this citation because the part I wanted to include refers back to them.
I've been told before by a Catholic adult catechist, almost dismissively, that Catholics do a great job of focusing on Good Friday and a terrible job of truly celebrating Easter. Honoring Fr. Neuhaus' invitation to not rush to the resurrection, I nonetheless find that I am utterly convinced that the reason we're so bad at rejoicing in Jesus' (our) victory is that we are, in fact, just awful at truly entering into all that Good Friday should mean for us. If it were primarily about making us wallow in our guilt then, yes, we would excel at it! If the purpose of our meditation on this day is to make us more neurotic about the terrible thing that we did to Jesus, many of us could stop right now because we have that part down pat! As Jesus told his disciples about being clean, though: But not all. There are definitely some who do not associate enough of their lives with sin that something must be done about. And when I enter into eternity, I pray that I don't find that I am one of them.
But there is so much more about Good Friday for us to enter into than just the surface ideas at which we often stop: that it was my sin and guilt that Jesus bore on the cross so that I could be free from it, that God's love for me is so great that Jesus was willing to do this for me. Please don't think I'm being dismissive of these great tenets of our faith! So many of us have failed to grasp even the surface implications of these glorious truths.
But because God is infinite and eternal and Jesus is God, there is so much more depth to enter into in our reflections on this holy day, more than we can get in a full human lifespan, let alone in the time that most of us spend at the foot of the cross. It will take eternity for us to know it fully, just as to know God fully, in the personal-relationship sense. The purpose of a redeemed soul's prayerful reflection on Good Friday is not to increase our sense of the guilt from which Jesus has set us free, but neither is knowing that we are free from our guilt a good reason to forsake any further reflection.
I find that learning more of the depth and details of this mystery into which we enter (by the Holy Spirit) fills my heart with a greater sense of awe at God's infinite glory as revealed incomparably on the cross. It strengthens my desire to share God's love with those around me who have not chosen (or been able) to immerse themselves in the unfathomable depths of this incomprehensible love. It causes me to marvel at my increased understanding of the infinite vastness and infinitesimal detail of this glorious love. It gets my eyes and thoughts and heart fixed on something - someOne - inexpressibly beyond the limits of my mind.
And it makes me more aware of the utter abandon with which I am called to lay down my own life.
Have a blessed Lent!
Wednesday, January 01, 2014
Daily Christmas
In the very act in which we are reverencing the birth of our Savior, we are also celebrating our own new birth. For the birth of Christ is the origin of the Christian people; and the birthday of the head is also the birthday of the body. - from a sermon by Saint Leo the Great, pope
We may generally consider Pentecost as the "birthday of the church," but in the eternal scheme of things there is probably no single event of Jesus' earthly life which by itself represents the beginning of our life in him. There may be a single point in our own lives to which we might point as our conversion experience - that is certainly the case for me - yet many of us can also identify ways in which God was already at work in our lives preparing us to accept him as our Lord and Savior. So each of the historical events in Jesus' life that have significance for us can be celebrated with reverence for their connection with the life of Christ within us, without which we need not bother celebrating any of them! Saint Leo continues:
For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.
There are at least two parts of that last sentence that I feel as if I should spend a little attention on. I believe I'll address that latter one first. The modern rejection of the concept of substitutional atonement seems to reduce Christ to the role of teacher revealing the way to God, rather than Christ actually being the only Way himself. All we need, some suggest, is to follow his example. They reject as quaint and outdated the concept that we are born into a kingdom in which our sinfulness is the central truth of our existence and transferred to the kingdom of God by the grace that flows from Jesus' life, death and resurrection. I believe that our rejection of this concept is a great hindrance to our effective preaching of the gospel.
Our being the stock of Christ rather than our earthly heritage is a truth that comes to greater fulfillment as we walk with him throughout our lives. It isn't that we're saved a little at a time, or gain our new heritage little by little, but it is often true that we are transformed in it through a lifelong process of growth. For the longest time following my own conversion I continued to act in - and experience the impact of - the earthly influences that abounded in my youth and early adulthood. I did not know all the ways that my former nature had its roots still sunk into me, if you will, and I often nurtured those roots either intentionally or unwittingly. It is good for us to take stock of our stock, and to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal those ways in which we must continue to grow into our new heritage and kill off our old one.
This Christmas rebirth which we celebrate is not a singular historical event in Jesus' earthly life nor in our own. Rather, we should seek to embrace our rebirth each day so that its roots may kill off what remains of our old ones.
We may generally consider Pentecost as the "birthday of the church," but in the eternal scheme of things there is probably no single event of Jesus' earthly life which by itself represents the beginning of our life in him. There may be a single point in our own lives to which we might point as our conversion experience - that is certainly the case for me - yet many of us can also identify ways in which God was already at work in our lives preparing us to accept him as our Lord and Savior. So each of the historical events in Jesus' life that have significance for us can be celebrated with reverence for their connection with the life of Christ within us, without which we need not bother celebrating any of them! Saint Leo continues:
For every believer regenerated in Christ, no matter in what part of the whole world he may be, breaks with that ancient way of life that derives from original sin, and by rebirth is transformed into a new man. Henceforth he is reckoned to be of the stock, not of his earthly father, but of Christ, who became Son of Man precisely that men could become sons of God; for unless in humility he had come down to us, none of us by our own merits could ever go up to him.
There are at least two parts of that last sentence that I feel as if I should spend a little attention on. I believe I'll address that latter one first. The modern rejection of the concept of substitutional atonement seems to reduce Christ to the role of teacher revealing the way to God, rather than Christ actually being the only Way himself. All we need, some suggest, is to follow his example. They reject as quaint and outdated the concept that we are born into a kingdom in which our sinfulness is the central truth of our existence and transferred to the kingdom of God by the grace that flows from Jesus' life, death and resurrection. I believe that our rejection of this concept is a great hindrance to our effective preaching of the gospel.
Our being the stock of Christ rather than our earthly heritage is a truth that comes to greater fulfillment as we walk with him throughout our lives. It isn't that we're saved a little at a time, or gain our new heritage little by little, but it is often true that we are transformed in it through a lifelong process of growth. For the longest time following my own conversion I continued to act in - and experience the impact of - the earthly influences that abounded in my youth and early adulthood. I did not know all the ways that my former nature had its roots still sunk into me, if you will, and I often nurtured those roots either intentionally or unwittingly. It is good for us to take stock of our stock, and to allow the Holy Spirit to reveal those ways in which we must continue to grow into our new heritage and kill off our old one.
This Christmas rebirth which we celebrate is not a singular historical event in Jesus' earthly life nor in our own. Rather, we should seek to embrace our rebirth each day so that its roots may kill off what remains of our old ones.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Thoughts on economic mercy
I've been enjoying the discourse on a young friend's FB post. Here are some thoughts they've inspired which are not intended to rebut anything anyone has said there, but are merely where I am as a result of their wonderful sharing. I have struggled of late with my inner longing to make radically different decisions than those which it seems my bride and I often choose.
God blesses us with many gifts in a variety of forms, and we take each one out of perspective and make it into something other than God intends. This certainly includes the gifts of personal responsibility and financial success.
Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, so strive to be like them." I don't care what 5 or 50 things rich people do that I don't, even rich Christians who are trying to help me be as successful as them. The rich have no corner on either generosity or (by any means) divine wisdom.
Now, the Holy Spirit? There is the One for me to heed, with regard to both my own decisions and my encouragement of others.
God blesses us with many gifts in a variety of forms, and we take each one out of perspective and make it into something other than God intends. This certainly includes the gifts of personal responsibility and financial success.
- One way we misuse these is as an excuse to judge others' perceived shortcomings, to provide them with answers that "worked for us" that also just happen to be less demanding of us than living according to the grace and generosity of the Gospel. We tend to think that others are like ourselves, and that is largely true and very misleading, because there are many reasons why others may be unable to apply the answers that worked for us.
- Another misuse of these gifts of God is to apply them to a different end than God intends, to a different goal than living our own lives in the grace and generosity of the Gospel. It is shortsighted, we say, to not build up our 401K to our target goal for our retirement, to not make our home down payment fund a high priority, to fail to invest in our future. We might even couch these decisions in terms of stewarding God's gifts - a valid approach when we're being accurate about that - when we're really making some of these goals into golden calves. Sometimes our approach to stewardship is too closely rooted in attempting to provide for our own security, as we gather more than our day's supply of manna. Of course, for Shabbat it's two days' supply, but we have lots of things which we rationalize are more important reasons than Shabbat for hoarding more than our daily bread.
- One other abuse of God's gifts is to try to force them on others, especially those who have not accepted that they are God's beloved ones. Dare I try to legally force everyone to be generous to the poor in the name of economic justice? I must be generous, and must call others to be generous, but when I compel their generosity by force of law I rob them both financially and spiritually. This tendency has the same roots as every other overreach of power throughout history: even when primarily rooted in good-hearted desire for our brother, there is another root drawing malnourishment from our lack of humility and insistence that we will impose on others what we are convinced is best. So:
- To what degree do we who believe in the scriptural mandate to care for the poor have a responsibility to compel our fellow citizens to do so through our legal institutions?
- Is it right to ensconce in law those loving actions which God in his grace blesses us with the freedom to choose for ourselves in his Spirit or to reject?
- When I make the government into the provider of people's needs, do I undermine the Gospel?
Jesus never said, "Blessed are the rich, so strive to be like them." I don't care what 5 or 50 things rich people do that I don't, even rich Christians who are trying to help me be as successful as them. The rich have no corner on either generosity or (by any means) divine wisdom.
Now, the Holy Spirit? There is the One for me to heed, with regard to both my own decisions and my encouragement of others.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Songs I lie
There are songs of praise and worship that I sing with all my heart, yet know in my mind as I do that I have always, always fallen short of them in my life. We sang one last night:
It seems that Advent will be timely for me once again. Perhaps my heart should enter into this season a bit early this year.
Lord, you are more precious than silverAnother springs immediately to mind:
Lord, you are more costly than gold
Lord, you are more beautiful than diamonds
and nothing I desire compares with you.
Refiner's Fire,Yet, when the rubber meets the road, I find that I frequently choose other things than those I know best please God, that would allow me to be like a tree planted close to the stream, whose roots would take sustenance from their proximity to the source of their life. I protect the idols I must smash to remove their influence over my life. I insist on acting as if God is depriving me of good things, things I value and treasure - often inappropriately - rather than trusting that every good thing in my life is from God and turning it all back over to him knowing that God will not deprive me of anything that I need. I want what I want, which is sometimes to embrace the world's attitude toward myself and the people and things around me.
my heart's one desire is to be holy,
set apart for you, Lord
I want (choose) to be holy,
set apart for you, my Master,
ready to do your will.
It seems that Advent will be timely for me once again. Perhaps my heart should enter into this season a bit early this year.
Sunday, June 23, 2013
Analogies
(now I've lost track of when I started this. it was weeks ago, but how many eludes me. I'm finishing based on today's gospel reading:)
The rule with boats is: on, or off, but don't straddle! Early in my Christian walk I heard this analogy. Oh, the boat may be right next to the dock right now, but it's going to move away. We must either follow Christ or not, but don't try to follow him partly, with a foot in each kingdom. Either get in the boat or stay on the pier, but if we try to keep one foot each place we're going to get very wet.
A similar idea is used by Mr. Miyagi to explain to Daniel-san how he should commit to the way of life represented by karate, not just dabble in it. "If do karate just little bit: squish. Like grapefruit."
For several years we've been throwing around the no-limit poker term "going all-in," often without really being fully committed. Poker players mean this, for the game currently in progress, when they use this term. But there will be another game tomorrow, after all, and Christians sometimes try to borrow the idea of being all-in when they're not, really, totally committed to their walk.
The thing is, trying to be a little bit Christian is a dangerous thing for us. Let me be clear: I'm not talking about condemning people who don't agree with us. But we really cannot live according to God's plan for our lives and according to the world's perspective, and any way that we try to do that is going leave us soaked, squished, or broke. In my finances, my ethics, my relationships, my morality, my responses to my emotions, my control of my life, my spiritual influences, or any other way I can think of, I need to decide how I'm going to live and then commit myself to that path. Am I going to trust in God or not?
In today's gospel reading, Jesus says that if we would follow him, we must take up our cross and follow. The thing is, we try to follow without really taking up our cross and committing ourselves to follow where he leads. When we do, we usually discover later that we have to go back and retrieve it from where we tried to leave it behind or avoid it.
Completely talking to myself here.
The rule with boats is: on, or off, but don't straddle! Early in my Christian walk I heard this analogy. Oh, the boat may be right next to the dock right now, but it's going to move away. We must either follow Christ or not, but don't try to follow him partly, with a foot in each kingdom. Either get in the boat or stay on the pier, but if we try to keep one foot each place we're going to get very wet.
A similar idea is used by Mr. Miyagi to explain to Daniel-san how he should commit to the way of life represented by karate, not just dabble in it. "If do karate just little bit: squish. Like grapefruit."
For several years we've been throwing around the no-limit poker term "going all-in," often without really being fully committed. Poker players mean this, for the game currently in progress, when they use this term. But there will be another game tomorrow, after all, and Christians sometimes try to borrow the idea of being all-in when they're not, really, totally committed to their walk.
The thing is, trying to be a little bit Christian is a dangerous thing for us. Let me be clear: I'm not talking about condemning people who don't agree with us. But we really cannot live according to God's plan for our lives and according to the world's perspective, and any way that we try to do that is going leave us soaked, squished, or broke. In my finances, my ethics, my relationships, my morality, my responses to my emotions, my control of my life, my spiritual influences, or any other way I can think of, I need to decide how I'm going to live and then commit myself to that path. Am I going to trust in God or not?
In today's gospel reading, Jesus says that if we would follow him, we must take up our cross and follow. The thing is, we try to follow without really taking up our cross and committing ourselves to follow where he leads. When we do, we usually discover later that we have to go back and retrieve it from where we tried to leave it behind or avoid it.
Completely talking to myself here.
Monday, March 25, 2013
Choosing
Even habits are choices, habits both of action and of thought.
The power and desire to choose better is a gift from God. The actual choice to do so is a small gift back, by comparison, and yet turns out to be another gift from God, too.
The power and desire to choose better is a gift from God. The actual choice to do so is a small gift back, by comparison, and yet turns out to be another gift from God, too.
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Striking the root of the matter
I just can't pick a phrase or two from today's second reading from the Office of Readings that particularly struck me. Usually I prefer the selections that are chosen from the early church fathers, which often resonate with their timeless truth. Yet today's reading from the documents of the Second Vatican Council kept drawing me into its own veritas as I continued to read. A couple of things in particular struck me, and I hope I'm able to capture them before my own thoughts obscure them.
Without God, the higher kind of life to which we aspire is obscured, taking the form of our mere dreams and wishes. Sometimes there is a sincere element of selflessness in this striving, insofar as we are able to understand and apply it. But what we understand to be the freedom to live this higher calling becomes instead an enslavement to the ideas, the dogma, that becomes an empty shadow of the true freedom we find only in living in God's love.
Without God, we do not understand our weakness and our sinfulness properly. Rather, we often mistake these characteristics as noble causes which we should embrace, or toward which we should strive. And the power of our own wants can become all the more consuming if we have no source we trust that might serve to steer us away from them. The unhappiness we experience in response to our failure to understand that our loving God is providing for our true needs ends up driving us toward more unhappiness, for ourselves and for those whom we are trying to love as well as we can.
These questions with which we grapple should serve to bring us to a relationship with God. Yet when we begin the struggle with an inner conviction that God cannot be the answer because there is no god, that indeed no rational person should believe in any form of god, they can indeed drive us to despair. By no means is this inevitable; there are undoubtedly atheists who accept their fatalistic position with an inner peace, but in my experience they are often driven off of their precarious peaceful perch when they encounter various sorts of upheaval in their lives or opposition to their point of view.
Yet faith in God does free us from our own inner struggle between sinfulness and righteousness, nor from our tendency to close off when we are hurt rather than reconcile. The battle wages within us even when we believe in God, even when we have a relationship with him that transforms us, and the efficacy of that transformation wanes when we fail to give ourselves regularly and with increasing consistency to this most perfect of loves. I cannot fully imagine the effect that not believing must have on that battle, and pray that I never will experience it.
Only the conclusion of this selection, its last three brief paragraphs, provide the proper context for the resolution of this conflict, and therein can be found the only way to approach it that brings life rather than death, selfless love instead of narcissism, grace and forgiveness in place of vengeance and judgment.
Yet none of these positive approaches is possible of our own effort. Only the Holy Spirit can manifest grace, and at our best we merely participate in and give ourselves over to this work of God.
Without God, the higher kind of life to which we aspire is obscured, taking the form of our mere dreams and wishes. Sometimes there is a sincere element of selflessness in this striving, insofar as we are able to understand and apply it. But what we understand to be the freedom to live this higher calling becomes instead an enslavement to the ideas, the dogma, that becomes an empty shadow of the true freedom we find only in living in God's love.
Without God, we do not understand our weakness and our sinfulness properly. Rather, we often mistake these characteristics as noble causes which we should embrace, or toward which we should strive. And the power of our own wants can become all the more consuming if we have no source we trust that might serve to steer us away from them. The unhappiness we experience in response to our failure to understand that our loving God is providing for our true needs ends up driving us toward more unhappiness, for ourselves and for those whom we are trying to love as well as we can.
These questions with which we grapple should serve to bring us to a relationship with God. Yet when we begin the struggle with an inner conviction that God cannot be the answer because there is no god, that indeed no rational person should believe in any form of god, they can indeed drive us to despair. By no means is this inevitable; there are undoubtedly atheists who accept their fatalistic position with an inner peace, but in my experience they are often driven off of their precarious peaceful perch when they encounter various sorts of upheaval in their lives or opposition to their point of view.
Yet faith in God does free us from our own inner struggle between sinfulness and righteousness, nor from our tendency to close off when we are hurt rather than reconcile. The battle wages within us even when we believe in God, even when we have a relationship with him that transforms us, and the efficacy of that transformation wanes when we fail to give ourselves regularly and with increasing consistency to this most perfect of loves. I cannot fully imagine the effect that not believing must have on that battle, and pray that I never will experience it.
Only the conclusion of this selection, its last three brief paragraphs, provide the proper context for the resolution of this conflict, and therein can be found the only way to approach it that brings life rather than death, selfless love instead of narcissism, grace and forgiveness in place of vengeance and judgment.
Yet none of these positive approaches is possible of our own effort. Only the Holy Spirit can manifest grace, and at our best we merely participate in and give ourselves over to this work of God.
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Agents of grace
Since the very name you bear as Christians is a profession of love for men, imitate the love of Christ.
Reflect for a moment on the wealth of his kindness. Before he came as a man to be among men, he sent John the Baptist to preach repentance and lead men to practice it. John himself was preceded by the prophets, who were to teach the people to repent, to return to God and to amend their lives. Then Christ came himself, and with his own lips cried out: Come to me, all you who labor and are overburdened, and I will give you rest. How did he receive those who listened to his call? He readily forgave them their sins; he freed them instantly from all that troubled them. The Word made them holy; the Spirit set his seal on them. The old Adam was buried in the waters of baptism; the new man was reborn to the vigor of grace.
What was the result? Those who had been God’s enemies became his friends, those estranged from him became his sons, those who did not know him came to worship and love him.
Let us then be shepherds like the Lord. We must meditate on the Gospel, and as we see in this mirror the example of zeal and loving kindness, we should become thoroughly schooled in these virtues. - Saint Asterius of Amasea, bishop
This wonderful truth can elude our consciousness if we omit the first part of the last sentence. The discipline of regularly focusing our attention back on the truth allows it to penetrate and transform our lives.
But when we see a phrase like "become thoroughly schooled in these virtues," we can get the idea that our transformation in Christ by the Holy Spirit is primarily of our own doing and by our own effort. It isn't that our effort isn't important, but the transformation is God's work, in which our role is to participate as we are called. There is an element of relationship which is completely beyond our ability to make happen. We have no hope of embracing God by our efforts, yet we are nonetheless called into communion with God. As we respond to that call, humbly acknowledging that we need God and that God alone can reach us in our need (not vice versa), we find that God makes his wondrous way into our lives, and we can live in him as we could not of our own efforts. Our lives become full of thanksgiving (Eucharist) for what God has done for us, and we then become purveyors of the grace we have received, ministers of God's grace in others' lives.
Sunday, February 17, 2013
Thought from retreat
Near the beginning of the day, our regional liaison for the charismatic renewal was sharing some thoughts from Pope Benedict's document on the current Year of Faith, and some other thoughts from the Holy Father's Ash Wednesday homily. I'm not sure which of these was the source for the thought that caught my attention and resonated for me: the idea that the Eucharist is the summit of worship. I know plenty of people who believe that social outreach ministry is a higher calling.
I'm sure I must have written before against a popular approach to our faith that has begun to dominate over the past century: that its chief value is in how it moves us to be a force for social change in the world. In Catholic circles, the theology behind this thought is sometimes summed up very briefly in a very reasonable sounding idea, "The Eucharist is created for us, not vice versa." I had a former pastor, whom I love dearly, who was fond of quoting this as he opposed any excesses, as he understood them, in Eucharistic adoration. But there are a couple of truths which get mixed up in this misunderstanding, and of these, the first is probably the one that most gets at the root cause of the error.
It is the failure to fully understand that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ.
Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest that any of us fully understands this. Only when we participate fully in the heavenly banquet for all eternity will we begin to approach this level of knowledge of God. Yet even understanding to the smallest extent that, in ways we do not fully understand, the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, leads us to understand that we were indeed created for the Eucharist - though not to meet His needs, for He has none. And this is where those who use that phrase have it right, for indeed the Eucharist was instituted to meet our need for spiritual food. Done right, worshiping the Lord in the Eucharist is a key element of eating his Body and drinking his Blood. (More on which aspect of Christ's body was created/instituted for which in a bit.)
First, though, is the thing that this modern theology usually gets right when its adherents lament the practice of regular Eucharistic adoration (an objection which they have wrong, in most cases). They point out that the traditionalists' emphasis on reverence for the consecrated elements in the context of the Mass often comes at the expense of a recognition that Christ is just as really present in the assembled Body as in the Eucharistic elements of the Body and the Blood. They are often right about this, yet the one ought not come at the expense of the other. In this sense, it is true that we and the Eucharist have indeed been created and instituted for each other. According to God's plan for us, we do not become his Body - and individually parts of it - to the degree God intends unless we are fed by the spiritual food, in which Christ gives us himself as the nourishment we most need.
So my chief objection to the phrase as it seems (to me) to be misused is in its implication that the purpose of the Eucharist is to equip us for the social outreach that many mistakenly consider the "real purpose" of Christianity. Indeed, this viewpoint holds that the chief purpose of our worship is to make us the best version of ourselves - itself a concept on which Matthew Kelly has written extensively that is worth investing our energy and effort into - so that we might go forth and do what we're really supposed to be about. The truth of the matter is that we frequently put too little effort into the things that God might have us do, but the purpose of our relationship with God is not for us to do those things. Rather, a relationship with God is the greatest good our lives will ever know, and inevitably when it is all that it should be it leads to our transformation - which is of course a good thing - and our social outreach - which is also a good thing.
And yet to say that our personal growth or our social ministry is the purpose of our relationship with God gets the two greatest commandments out of order. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now, these two are inextricably linked for us, but their linking does not make the second commandment equal to the first.
Of course, God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and it is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. And if we love our neighbor rightly, we will enter more deeply into our relationship with God in the process. So maybe this whole megapost is just an arguing of unimportant semantics.
And yet it seems to me that I see way more people lose their perspective on the truth by focusing on service of others and trying to let their spirituality flow from that than by focusing on worshiping God (though perhaps I've just been blessed by being around true believers). Putting service ahead of worship puts us at risk of despairing over the injustice we perceive in our neighbors' suffering. Worshiping first reminds us that God is God, and we, though his Body, are not God. We are his presence in the world, yet in God's infinite eternity he remains greater than any finite collection of our finite minds can fathom. It is certainly possible to go through the rituals of worship without entering into a true relationship with God in the process, but then the lack of fruit - the absence of transformation and service - eventually becomes evident.
I'm sure I must have written before against a popular approach to our faith that has begun to dominate over the past century: that its chief value is in how it moves us to be a force for social change in the world. In Catholic circles, the theology behind this thought is sometimes summed up very briefly in a very reasonable sounding idea, "The Eucharist is created for us, not vice versa." I had a former pastor, whom I love dearly, who was fond of quoting this as he opposed any excesses, as he understood them, in Eucharistic adoration. But there are a couple of truths which get mixed up in this misunderstanding, and of these, the first is probably the one that most gets at the root cause of the error.
It is the failure to fully understand that the Holy Eucharist is Jesus Christ.
Of course, it is ridiculous to suggest that any of us fully understands this. Only when we participate fully in the heavenly banquet for all eternity will we begin to approach this level of knowledge of God. Yet even understanding to the smallest extent that, in ways we do not fully understand, the Eucharist is Jesus Christ, leads us to understand that we were indeed created for the Eucharist - though not to meet His needs, for He has none. And this is where those who use that phrase have it right, for indeed the Eucharist was instituted to meet our need for spiritual food. Done right, worshiping the Lord in the Eucharist is a key element of eating his Body and drinking his Blood. (More on which aspect of Christ's body was created/instituted for which in a bit.)
First, though, is the thing that this modern theology usually gets right when its adherents lament the practice of regular Eucharistic adoration (an objection which they have wrong, in most cases). They point out that the traditionalists' emphasis on reverence for the consecrated elements in the context of the Mass often comes at the expense of a recognition that Christ is just as really present in the assembled Body as in the Eucharistic elements of the Body and the Blood. They are often right about this, yet the one ought not come at the expense of the other. In this sense, it is true that we and the Eucharist have indeed been created and instituted for each other. According to God's plan for us, we do not become his Body - and individually parts of it - to the degree God intends unless we are fed by the spiritual food, in which Christ gives us himself as the nourishment we most need.
So my chief objection to the phrase as it seems (to me) to be misused is in its implication that the purpose of the Eucharist is to equip us for the social outreach that many mistakenly consider the "real purpose" of Christianity. Indeed, this viewpoint holds that the chief purpose of our worship is to make us the best version of ourselves - itself a concept on which Matthew Kelly has written extensively that is worth investing our energy and effort into - so that we might go forth and do what we're really supposed to be about. The truth of the matter is that we frequently put too little effort into the things that God might have us do, but the purpose of our relationship with God is not for us to do those things. Rather, a relationship with God is the greatest good our lives will ever know, and inevitably when it is all that it should be it leads to our transformation - which is of course a good thing - and our social outreach - which is also a good thing.
And yet to say that our personal growth or our social ministry is the purpose of our relationship with God gets the two greatest commandments out of order. Jesus said that the greatest commandment was to love the Lord our God with all of our heart, soul, mind and strength, and that the second is like it: to love our neighbor as ourselves. Now, these two are inextricably linked for us, but their linking does not make the second commandment equal to the first.
Of course, God is love, and all who live in love live in God, and it is impossible to love God without loving our neighbor. And if we love our neighbor rightly, we will enter more deeply into our relationship with God in the process. So maybe this whole megapost is just an arguing of unimportant semantics.
And yet it seems to me that I see way more people lose their perspective on the truth by focusing on service of others and trying to let their spirituality flow from that than by focusing on worshiping God (though perhaps I've just been blessed by being around true believers). Putting service ahead of worship puts us at risk of despairing over the injustice we perceive in our neighbors' suffering. Worshiping first reminds us that God is God, and we, though his Body, are not God. We are his presence in the world, yet in God's infinite eternity he remains greater than any finite collection of our finite minds can fathom. It is certainly possible to go through the rituals of worship without entering into a true relationship with God in the process, but then the lack of fruit - the absence of transformation and service - eventually becomes evident.
Thursday, February 14, 2013
How does our garden grow?
Initially, men are made new by the rebirth of baptism. Yet there still is required a daily renewal to repair the shortcomings of our mortal nature, and whatever degree of progress has been made, there is no one who should not be more advanced. - Saint Leo the Great, pope
There is a sense in which it's appropriate to apply the "good enough" test, and another in which we frequently misuse it. When we have done due diligence in whatever task is at hand, then it is appropriate for us to let that be good enough rather than apply an undue level of effort to achieve perfection either in an area that can never be made perfect or when that attention should really be better applied elsewhere. On the other hand, we sometimes fail to even ask the question of whether there is growth we should be looking for, just allowing our life to continue by inertia along its current trajectory.
Just yesterday I reflected how we are never fully living as God has called us to. St. Leo says as much here, and it seems to be a hallmark of true spirituality - as reflected in the lives of the saints over the centuries - that the closer we walk with Jesus, the more aware we are of how we yet need to grow. Sometimes this is because of things we should scale back to a more appropriate level or cut out of our lives completely. At others it may be that we have failed to recognize Jesus' presence in those around us in some way. And I can't help but think that we too often lose sight of who we are and are called to be, sometimes due to an over-awareness of our past failings. Whatever the cause, it is true that a daily examination of conscience may help us to recognize changes we need to make in our daily walk, and equally true that the season of Lent gives us an opportunity to join with the whole Church in striving to grow.
Dear friends, what the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater care and devotion. - ibid.
It isn't that we shouldn't be doing this all the time, but the Lenten season in which we're all more aware of being in this boat together seems to bring a special grace that nurtures our transformation in ways beyond us. Let us recall that any labor of transformation is not ours alone, nor even chiefly ours, but simply a matter of our participation with the Holy Spirit's work in glorifying God through our lives.
There is a sense in which it's appropriate to apply the "good enough" test, and another in which we frequently misuse it. When we have done due diligence in whatever task is at hand, then it is appropriate for us to let that be good enough rather than apply an undue level of effort to achieve perfection either in an area that can never be made perfect or when that attention should really be better applied elsewhere. On the other hand, we sometimes fail to even ask the question of whether there is growth we should be looking for, just allowing our life to continue by inertia along its current trajectory.
Just yesterday I reflected how we are never fully living as God has called us to. St. Leo says as much here, and it seems to be a hallmark of true spirituality - as reflected in the lives of the saints over the centuries - that the closer we walk with Jesus, the more aware we are of how we yet need to grow. Sometimes this is because of things we should scale back to a more appropriate level or cut out of our lives completely. At others it may be that we have failed to recognize Jesus' presence in those around us in some way. And I can't help but think that we too often lose sight of who we are and are called to be, sometimes due to an over-awareness of our past failings. Whatever the cause, it is true that a daily examination of conscience may help us to recognize changes we need to make in our daily walk, and equally true that the season of Lent gives us an opportunity to join with the whole Church in striving to grow.
Dear friends, what the Christian should be doing at all times should be done now with greater care and devotion. - ibid.
It isn't that we shouldn't be doing this all the time, but the Lenten season in which we're all more aware of being in this boat together seems to bring a special grace that nurtures our transformation in ways beyond us. Let us recall that any labor of transformation is not ours alone, nor even chiefly ours, but simply a matter of our participation with the Holy Spirit's work in glorifying God through our lives.
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
The attitude of Nazareth, cont. (corrected)
Okay, perhaps the latter part of this post tends to obscure the first part, which is the message I really need to pay more attention to if I'm to not consign myself to living as a slave to the feelings at the end. There's some good meat in there, though I was wondering if maybe I'd gotten ahead of myself/the Church a little by focusing on what was coming, After all, Jesus' neighbors' response to him wasn't part of Sunday's Gospel, yet I found myself focusing on how applicable that reading is to our own lives and the reasons why we often fail to hear that this word is fulfilled in our hearing it. I'm sure I've blogged on "hear" before in the context of Ps 95. It means more than physical hearing, but understanding, as well. "This passage" is indeed fulfilled to the degree that we hear and apply it to our own lives. But just when I thought I'd plumbed too far and wouldn't have anything left for the coming week, we found fresh insight when we read the Gospel for this coming Sunday.
First, it is probably good for us to understand some of the religious, social and psychological perspective ot Nazareth. As I understand it, the entire northern part of the kingdom of Israel was looked down upon by the Jews of the south because of their intermarriage and resulting idolatry following the conquering of the northern kingdom by Assyria, and these people's opposition to the repatriation of the southern kingdom following the Babylonian exile. Galilee, north of Samaria, was disrespected right along with it as being impure in blood and faith, and Nazareth was considered basically considered the scum of Galilee.
Then one of their own sons goes abroad, and back come tales of the wonders that he has worked. Now, the people must have thought, we're finally going to get the respect we deserve! This miracle worker will show them that we aren't scum! Yet they were also skeptical: it isn't as if three decades would erase the scandalous circumstances of Jesus' birth from their collective memory. Surely no rose of deliverance could blossom from such sinful roots? Ironically, the people of Nazareth use the same skepticism that Nathanael would use when initially decried, "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" carrying it to the point of the later out-of-hand judgment and rejection of the Pharisees, "Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."
This, then, is the sort of judgment we often use against ourselves - and against each other - to limit the ways we believe God will work in our own lives. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of doubt, and is what I referred to in my previous post as "the trap of Nazareth."
And even when we dare to share in the hope that they initially express, - "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." - we also tend to look for incontrovertible evidence that we are not placing vain hope in something that we have seen to be so flawed. How can I be individually a part of the anointed Body of Christ, when I have seen how utterly, undeniably unworthy I am of such a role? We sometimes want proof that God is working powerfully in our lives, and in the absence of some sort of miracle we interpret each stumbling as evidence that he is not.
In response to the signs for which Jesus knows his neighbors and kinfolk are seeking, he seems to offer a rebuke, invoking most renowned works of two of the greatest ancient prophets of Israel - even of their own region - and pointing out that these works did not benefit the many needy of their native land who were in similar need to the ones who were so blessed. No wonder they wanted to throw him off a cliff!
But once again, their history is not so important as what it reveals about our own faith journey. I am reminded of our visiting priest on Epiphany this year, who talked about what it truly meant for Israel to be God's chosen people. They viewed it as a mark of privilege for their own benefit, that God would always be their provider and defender, at the expense of those around them. "We are chosen, and therefore you are not!" Yet this priest emphasized that what it means for us to be God's people is actually something very different. Israel was, and we are, to be a light to the nations. This is what it means to belong to God. It isn't that we are privy to great wonders wrought on our behalf, but that we have the unfathomable privilege of God's light shining through our lives, of participating in his plan of salvation! The wondrous works God has done have always been primarily about revealing his love to those who do not know him. Thus it was for Jesus, too, and when we look for those works for some other purpose - for our own benefit or blessing - we may find ourselves angry at God for not serving us according to our own will.
So no, being a disciple of of Christ doesn't mean we will be free of the circumstances that are faced by many others around us who don't follow him. It doesn't mean we are superior to them. Rather, it means allowing God to be present in and work through our lives in whatever way best reveals the light of his glory to those who are still struggling, whether those ways be mundane or marvelous. It always means having someone close to us who lends us strength and peace in the midst of even the darkest of our circumstances. And it means continuing to follow rather than being filled with despair or anger when our prayers are not answered in the way we deem best.
But we can be assured that the Holy Spirit will reveal the Father's glorious plan of salvation no matter how humble our beginnings, no matter how great our failures, no matter how people might judge us or we might judge ourselves. God's plan for us is always greater than we can imagine!
First, it is probably good for us to understand some of the religious, social and psychological perspective ot Nazareth. As I understand it, the entire northern part of the kingdom of Israel was looked down upon by the Jews of the south because of their intermarriage and resulting idolatry following the conquering of the northern kingdom by Assyria, and these people's opposition to the repatriation of the southern kingdom following the Babylonian exile. Galilee, north of Samaria, was disrespected right along with it as being impure in blood and faith, and Nazareth was considered basically considered the scum of Galilee.
Then one of their own sons goes abroad, and back come tales of the wonders that he has worked. Now, the people must have thought, we're finally going to get the respect we deserve! This miracle worker will show them that we aren't scum! Yet they were also skeptical: it isn't as if three decades would erase the scandalous circumstances of Jesus' birth from their collective memory. Surely no rose of deliverance could blossom from such sinful roots? Ironically, the people of Nazareth use the same skepticism that Nathanael would use when initially decried, "Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?" carrying it to the point of the later out-of-hand judgment and rejection of the Pharisees, "Look into it, and you will find that a prophet does not come out of Galilee."
This, then, is the sort of judgment we often use against ourselves - and against each other - to limit the ways we believe God will work in our own lives. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy of doubt, and is what I referred to in my previous post as "the trap of Nazareth."
And even when we dare to share in the hope that they initially express, - "All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips." - we also tend to look for incontrovertible evidence that we are not placing vain hope in something that we have seen to be so flawed. How can I be individually a part of the anointed Body of Christ, when I have seen how utterly, undeniably unworthy I am of such a role? We sometimes want proof that God is working powerfully in our lives, and in the absence of some sort of miracle we interpret each stumbling as evidence that he is not.
In response to the signs for which Jesus knows his neighbors and kinfolk are seeking, he seems to offer a rebuke, invoking most renowned works of two of the greatest ancient prophets of Israel - even of their own region - and pointing out that these works did not benefit the many needy of their native land who were in similar need to the ones who were so blessed. No wonder they wanted to throw him off a cliff!
But once again, their history is not so important as what it reveals about our own faith journey. I am reminded of our visiting priest on Epiphany this year, who talked about what it truly meant for Israel to be God's chosen people. They viewed it as a mark of privilege for their own benefit, that God would always be their provider and defender, at the expense of those around them. "We are chosen, and therefore you are not!" Yet this priest emphasized that what it means for us to be God's people is actually something very different. Israel was, and we are, to be a light to the nations. This is what it means to belong to God. It isn't that we are privy to great wonders wrought on our behalf, but that we have the unfathomable privilege of God's light shining through our lives, of participating in his plan of salvation! The wondrous works God has done have always been primarily about revealing his love to those who do not know him. Thus it was for Jesus, too, and when we look for those works for some other purpose - for our own benefit or blessing - we may find ourselves angry at God for not serving us according to our own will.
So no, being a disciple of of Christ doesn't mean we will be free of the circumstances that are faced by many others around us who don't follow him. It doesn't mean we are superior to them. Rather, it means allowing God to be present in and work through our lives in whatever way best reveals the light of his glory to those who are still struggling, whether those ways be mundane or marvelous. It always means having someone close to us who lends us strength and peace in the midst of even the darkest of our circumstances. And it means continuing to follow rather than being filled with despair or anger when our prayers are not answered in the way we deem best.
But we can be assured that the Holy Spirit will reveal the Father's glorious plan of salvation no matter how humble our beginnings, no matter how great our failures, no matter how people might judge us or we might judge ourselves. God's plan for us is always greater than we can imagine!
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