Learning from others' mistakes

I find myself reflecting on the Israelites in the desert. They'd labored under terrible oppression for four hundred years. Finally their lives had become so bitter and the deliverance so complete that they dared to leave the enslaved life they'd come to know. Then they found themselves delivered from certain death at the hands of Pharoah's army, into a desert which presented them with challenge after challenge. No water. No food. Seraph serpents. Against each of these, they grumbled. Not merely praying for an answer, they grumbled against Moses and against God, not believing that the One who'd delivered them from slavery so wondrously would provide for their needs. They formed a calf to worship while Moses was on the Mount Sinai, and generally acted as if they didn't really believe in God at all, despite all they'd seen. When the abundant fruit of the promised land was brought before them, the scouts brought along with it their pessimistic report of the likelihood of God delivering them into this land of plenty.

So, basically, the children of Israel proved over and over again that they trusted only in their ability to provide for themselves.

We're not so different from them. We may not ever melt down gold to make an idol to worship, but we cling to plenty of things that are clearly not God's will for us. And we're probably even more likely than our long-ago forebears to trust only in the portion of the road we can see, and our own ability to move ourselves along it. So when we get to a choice between the "blind faith" we so disdain and the wrongful act that we can see will yield at least a short term gain or pleasure, we choose the latter. "God helps those who help themselves," we insist counter-scripturally, rationalizing the self-centered choices by which we advance ourselves - professionally, economically, intellectually, physically, emotionally, spiritually - at our brothers' expense.

We seem to have lost the ability to trust that if we do the right thing, loving God and our neighbor, God will be faithful to ensure that all is ultimately well.

I think this is partly because we insist on seeing this world only in its own context. Matthew Kelly would say we've lost sight of our essential purpose. Tarek Saab (the Catholic speaker, not the Arab-Venezuelan politician) would remind us that if we would live rightly, we must never lose sight of our death and desired destination.

God has delivered us from our slavery to sin, but we only want to leave the parts that we deem as really bitter. The "not-so-bad" parts? Well, we think we'd just as soon hang onto them for a while or, having given them up, we continue to pine for them.

The land ahead is filled with abundant life! Will we not hunger to become the person God dreams for us to be, and thereby enter it?

When things come together

So I've been having this wonderful Lent: prayerful, uplifting, transforming. It's been a wonderful confluence of unmerited favor, a combination of the opportunity to prayerfully reflect on the Way of the Cross each week along with the grace to pray and read reflectively each morning, even when I haven't especially felt like doing so or have wanted to go in another direction with my attention.

Then, last weekend, I hit a bit of a roadblock, a glitch in a relationship that immediately evoked my former tendencies to put all of my attention on myself and what I wanted. That's actually a far more complex thing, and I don't want to get into the details of it right now.

But a funny thing happened to me this time. Instead of just hardening my heart so as to go my own stubborn way, I found the grace and mercy - not within me toward another, but toward me from God - to keep on track. I persevered in daily prayer and reflection, embracing and trusting what I believe to be God's desire for me rather than my former self-centeredness. And, lo and behold, an opportunity to mend that bruised relationship arose, which I'd have ignored or avoided or just been oblivious to had I been engrossed in my selfish pique. Now my emotions and relationships are back in harmony, and the typical downward spiral has been checked.

A spiritual reflection on this will follow later . . .

New link

My reflections here often grow out of my quiet prayer time.

I don't claim to pray the Liturgy of the Hours. To my mind, that describes someone who prays morning and evening prayer daily, along with the office of readings. However, I do try to pray the last of these each morning. I find some real gems, especially in the extracanonical reading each day, with which I tend to be less familiar than the daily scripture reading.

Occasionally, I'll get midway through the day and realize that my mind wandered during my prayer time, because I lack the slightest recollection of that day's readings. At home, it's a simple enough matter to open my breviary and refresh my memory, often with an, "Oh, yeah," but also frequently with "Wow. I really missed that!" Fortunately, there's an online solution too, a great site to which I've added to my links list.

Gettin' real

Sorry for the clichéd title, but eventually the rubber meets the pothole, and that's when it's a challenge to keep letting God's peace direct my life. Such times and circumstances tend to be outside of our own control, but our response to them never is.

So I'm trying hard not to respond unlovingly to my bride (of 27 years), with whom I feel so frustrated over the past couple days. I don't want to enable more of the same, which further silence will doubtless do, as will getting petulant over the things that are on my mind. So I've got to find a way to communicate on the current issues in a way that expresses my feelings and gives us a chance to work on my issues - and they're clearly mine, as she doesn't seem to have any problem with them.

Who's really doing the work?

Last week my wife and I received an e-mail that shared a reflection based on a long-ago visit with a long-married couple. The writer saw that the wife was highly attentive to her husband's every need, yet seemed joyless. She observed that this wife may have primarily served out of fear of her husband's anger, which generated resentment rather than fear.

She concluded that our actions are "as useless as dry sticks on a cold hearth" until they are set ablaze by the love of God's Sacred Heart. Of course (me, now) this only happens as we set our mind and heart upon this marvelous God whom we serve so unworthily, and allow our actions to be responses to His perfect love.

I've observed that there's a related danger in trying to avoid a sin or make some positive change in my life by my own efforts. During that brief period of time when I am able to "gut things out," since I'm so focused on myself, I of course become convinced that it is I who have accomplished this good thing, whatever it might be. This further distorts my relationship with God, fostering pride rather than humility. This pride then also interferes with my relationship with others (though that is secondary; we sometimes get caught agreeing with the world's attitude that faith is primarily a means to improve our relationship with others - i.e. social justice - when the truth is that our relationship with others is properly and inextricably tied up with our primary relationship with God).

But when I undertake the same effort with the understanding that I cannot hope to accomplish what I think God is calling me to do - or more fundamentally to be the person He is calling me to be - and instead just ask God to do in me what I have proven that I cannot, then I see "my" victories as they truly are: God's grace at work in my life. Simply resting in that grace fosters true, humble growth, and brings a deeper joy, peace, love - and even satisfaction - than any amount of "my own" temporary accomplishments have ever done.

Christ, the model of brotherly love

In our faith sharing group last night, a passage that I read last week became highly pertinent:

From The Mirror of Love by Saint Aelred, abbot
The perfection of brotherly love lies in the love of one's enemies. We can find no greater inspiration for this than grateful remembrance of the wonderful patience of Christ. He who is more fair than all the sons of men offered his fair face to be spat upon by sinful men; he allowed those eyes that rule the universe to be blindfolded by wicked men; he bared his back to the scourges; he submitted that head which strikes terror in principalities and powers to the sharpness of the thorns; he gave himself up to be mocked and reviled, and at the end endured the cross, the nails, the lance, the gall, the vinegar, remaining always gentle, meek and full of peace.

In short, he was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and like a lamb before the shearers he kept silent, and did not open his mouth.

Who could listen to that wonderful prayer, so full of warmth, of love, of unshakeable serenity – Father, forgive them – and hesitate to embrace his enemies with overflowing love? Father, he says, forgive them. Is any gentleness, any love, lacking in this prayer?

Yet he put into it something more. It was not enough to pray for them: he wanted also to make excuses for them. Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. They are great sinners, yes, but they have little judgment; therefore, Father, forgive them. They are nailing me to the cross, but they do not know who it is that they are nailing to the cross: if they had known, they would never have crucified the Lord of glory; therefore, Father, forgive them. They think it is a lawbreaker, an impostor claiming to be God, a seducer of the people. I have hidden my face from them, and they do not recognize my glory; therefore, Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.

If someone wishes to love himself he must not allow himself to be corrupted by indulging his sinful nature. If he wishes to resist the promptings of his sinful nature he must enlarge the whole horizon of his love to contemplate the loving gentleness of the humanity of the Lord. Further, if he wishes to savor the joy of brotherly love with greater perfection and delight, he must extend even to his enemies the embrace of true love.

But if he wishes to prevent this fire of divine love from growing cold because of injuries received, let him keep the eyes of his soul always fixed on the serene patience of his beloved Lord and Savior.

Two of our group members are currently challenged by a distressing family situation, in which another family member is being hurt deeply. The "enemy's" actions in this situation are inexplicable, self-centered, and irrational. Loving this person has become both an internal and a practical challenge: internal because it is so difficult to want the best for someone who is acting so hurtfully, especially to someone we love; practical because it is most difficult to continue to love a heart that feels like a brick wall.

I believe we can only desire to love such an enemy if we recognize our own utter unworthiness of the love and forgiveness Christ has lavished upon us. Further, we can only share that love as we allow Christ to transform us. This is somewhat a chicken-and-egg dilemma: our transformation and our loving go hand-in-hand. But ultimately, in Christ we can and will love even our enemies, desiring for them the joy we have found, not just to evoke less hurtful actions from them - though certainly our desire is for Christ's transforming love to be at work in their lives, too - but simply because it is how Christ (within us) responds to them. After all, others' actions are beyond our control - though not entirely beyond our influence.

Too often, we focus on the transformation we want to see in others, rather than seeking our own deeper transformation in Christ. We'll love them when they act appropriately; we seek some desired behavior from them before we will risk loving.

Thankfully, God took no such wait-and-see approach with us, instead loving us before we deserved it.

We're called to become the person God dreams for us to be, which will result in both our desiring (for their sake) God's love to abound in others' lives, too, and our being vessels thereof.

Deliver us from evil

Thus far, by God's grace, I'm having a really prayerful Lent. I'm thoroughly enjoying praying the Way of the Cross in song, at least once every weekend with this group. Folks are clearly being touched by our ministry; every service thus far has been a very prayerful time.

In a not-directly-related matter, I found myself reflecting this weekend on The Lord's Prayer, certainly not for the first time, but in a new way. A phrase we pray so casually near the end of this prayer has really struck me afresh.

I've heard this phrase interpreted from a couple of different viewpoints: deliver us from "the time of trial," that is, the tribulation; deliver us from Satan's grasp for all eternity; deliver us from external evil that might otherwise wreak havoc upon our lives or our loved ones. I suppose I'm still aware of what I heard prayed at one of the national prayer services following 9/11. To paraphrase: our gravest threat will never be what others might do to us, but what we might become in response to them.

If that is so, the real evil from which I must pray for deliverance is that which I might choose, either wittingly or in ignorance.

We have a frightening ability to rationalize all sorts of behaviors that, if we ever engage in a clear-headed analysis, we'd have to agree represent objectively selfish and hurtful choices. These are the things that we know to be some sort of evil (see torture; indefinite "POW" internment when there's no government to release them to; abusiveness or mere rudeness toward others; sexual impurity; etc.) but we choose them anyway, often rationalizing why it isn't merely okay, but in fact necessary. It is right to pray that we be delivered from these temptations.

At other times, we truly believe that there is no harm, and perhaps even that there is ultimate good, along a particular path. I believe it is important to pray that God deliver us from this "ignorant" evil, as well. It isn't that I expect God would condemn us for our ignorance. Rather, knowing - as well as I am able - the abundance of love God has lavished upon me, I pray that I would live in a way that maximally responds to and propagates that love.

As we pray at each Mass, "Deliver us, Lord, from every evil."