tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60200020357257695082024-03-05T04:34:23.860-08:00Lenten Healing & Conversion: Daily Gospel Meditations on a Medical Odyssey Happily CompletedAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.comBlogger44125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-13163373832577240722015-04-01T00:00:00.000-07:002015-04-02T15:49:11.726-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">From Ash Wednesday to Spy Wednesday to the End<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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This day of Holy Week---Spy Wednesday---takes its name from
today’s Gospel in which Judas “spies” an opportunity to betray Jesus, inquiring
of certain Jewish chief priests: “What
are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you?” The very question reflects a shriveling of
this Apostle’s soul, that some thing could be exchanged for Someone. For Judas eventually to cast away the “thirty
pieces of silver” and then his own life demonstrates in a horrific way that
truth which should give each of us pause along the course of what we call our
life---that abysmal dissatisfaction is the ultimate result of rejecting the One
Who is the Incarnate Way, Truth, and Life.
There is no gaining the world in the loss of one’s soul.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But today’s Gospel also indicates the mysterious
intersection of the Lord’s own triumphantly salvific plans with the nefarious
plotting of Judas. Jesus too is on the
look-out for new opportunities to further His own interests, which are precisely
those of His Heavenly Father. Christ
thus sends His disciples “into the city to a certain man,” with the good
news: “My appointed time draws near; in
your house I shall celebrate the Passover with My disciples.” Perhaps the host of the Last Supper remains
unnamed to allow each of us the privilege of sharing his surprise and joy---not
unlike that of the greedy tax collector Zacchaeus when, at the outset of his
conversion, he first heard Jesus insist:
“I must stay at your house today!” (Lk 19:5b). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Today I conclude the written reflections that I began on
Ash Wednesday. In my meditation over the
course of this Lenten season on how Christ has come to me in my infirmities, I
have hoped to share with you how the Lord Jesus has brought the Paschal Mystery
more deeply into the house of my life.
It has been a journey that has taken me away from home and brought me
back again, in a type of “apostolic loop.”
Embracing the discipline of writing each day has been for me more than
just a substitute for preaching on the daily readings; it has also been a
personal accounting to the Crucified and Risen Lord of His goodness to
me---both an examination of conscience and a proclamation of His grace and
mercy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Several people have asked me to continue this blog, apparently
having grown too accustomed to this practice of Lenten penance! I end it here where I do, first because that
is what I promised. Quite simply, I have
said what I was given to say; this limit feels right for this purpose. It is a perennial temptation in any form of
communication to say more than needs to be said, for longer than it needs to be
said. More profoundly, these essays were
always meant to be preparatory for entering the Sacred Triduum, where the Lord
speaks most directly to us through the Liturgy.
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On Holy Thursday, I resume my preaching of the
Gospel---live and in person---which I have always held to be at the happy
center of my Holy Orders (cf., <i>Code of
Canon Law</i> #762: “Sacred ministers,
among whose principal duties is the proclamation of the gospel of God to all,
are to hold the function of preaching in esteem since the people of God are
first brought together by the word of the living God, which it is certainly
right to require from the mouth of priests.”).
In the wise and loving providence of God (and of my pastoral calendar conformed
to it), there may be future opportunities for writing projects. But for now---as of tomorrow---let the
preaching resume! <i>Deo gratias.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>+++++++<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i>Although this
completes the original series of Lenten meditations, I hope in the next days of
the Sacred Triduum 2015 to offer some additional meditations of thanksgiving
and summary update for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter
Sunday. The timing of these will depend on my other pastoral responsibilities!<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-34303472013893716482015-03-31T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-31T00:00:00.555-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">From Confusion and Anxiety to Glory<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Today’s portion of St. John’s
account of the Last Supper begins with the unsettling assertion that <o:p></o:p></div>
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“Jesus was deeply troubled and
testified, ‘Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.’” It ends with Christ’s even more focused prediction
not simply of His betrayal by one of the Twelve but also of a three-fold denial
by Peter, the head of the Apostles: “Amen,
amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow before you deny Me three times.” Between these two assertions, there is
unspeakable confusion, attempts to find presumably preventative or at least
ameliorative answers, and assertions that the problem will somehow be checked
by the strength of one’s own resources.
From our vantage point, we see in this event that there are obviously
many forms of denial taking place on the evening of Holy Thursday!<o:p></o:p></div>
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In this penultimate Lenten blog
post, I look back on all of the forty-plus meditations in which I have in one
way or another detailed the feelings of being “deeply troubled” by my own body “betraying
me,” so to speak, in the failure of my jaw’s physical integrity. This trial led in time to my having to
prepare for surgery, undergo the TMJ operation, and then begin a new period of
recovery to health. I have also alluded at
many points to the confusion I felt at not knowing all the crucial factors
which brought me to this strangely slow-motion-yet-abrupt ending of normal life
and my anxious, temporary-yet-drawn-out bafflement at how I was to move
forward.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When we recall the most common
artistic depictions of the Last Supper (as, for example, that of Leonardo da
Vinci), we instinctively imagine figures with a certain static quality,
seemingly frozen in place despite the troubled looks, the contorted gestures,
and even the one hand guiltily dipping the morsel of bread into the dish with
Jesus. Likewise, the post-meal
representation of the washing of the feet---Christ’s engagement of tending
intimately and individually to the members of His Own Body---also often lacks
the dynamic quality of the Apostles’ experience of the confounding unknown they
were living. It is even more
disconcerting to consider them living these feelings <i>with</i> <i>Jesus present</i> rather
than simply apart from Him in His seeming absence. <o:p></o:p></div>
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It is well worth pondering in
these final days of Lent, on the cusp of the Sacred Paschal Triduum, exactly
how much of our confusion and anxiety the Lord Jesus invites us to bring with
us into our observance of Holy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday---and even into
Easter Sunday and beyond. The first
followers of Christ make it abundantly clear that we are to bring everything
with us---complete, unreserved emotional honesty and the most penetrating
rational inquiry. Such, and only such,
is real faith seeking true understanding.
So often I have found that people expect, and even sincerely desire, that
Christian life in general---and Priestly life in particular---have the reliably
flat character of a two-dimensional reproduction of an all too familiar Last
Supper tableau. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I cannot count the number of
people who have told me they were shocked that I could have been experiencing
an almost two year medical ordeal and still have gone about my ordinary
Priestly duties as if life was good and there were new reasons for joy to be
found. What other real choice is there for
any of us in our Christian life of faith?
I have learned from my parishioners---many of whom have suffered far worse
and far more for far longer---that short-term trading of prayers for comfort
and miracles on demand are not in the evangelical offing for those who seek to
follow the Master---the prophet Isaiah’s Man of Sorrows, “acquainted with
grief” (Is 53:3). As one of my
professors once remarked: It is
impossible to finesse one’s way around Calvary!<o:p></o:p></div>
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But our Divine Savior does
infallibly promise us light, even in what we think is deepest darkness. Immediately after Judas’ departure into the
“night,” Jesus proclaims: “Now is the
Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also
glorify Him in Himself, and He will glorify Him at once.” I have witnessed this glory super-abundantly
over the extended span of the “at once” that is God’s time---in the cascading love
that has been given and received, multiplied and shared precisely in my having
to pass with Christ through this malady.
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So now when I approach Holy Mass
and look out at the congregation, I marvel so much more deeply at the rich
complexity of the lives the Crucified and Risen One draws to be close with
Him---embracing their confusion and anxiety (as well as their joys and hopes) in
a boundless mercy which dares to accompany them redemptively to the end. To put it another way, I see the Divine
Artist as having no intention whatsoever to <i>reproduce</i>
the Last Supper of the Upper Room according to our reductive imaginings; rather,
He sacramentally insists on <i>re-presenting</i>
the Eucharistic Banquet of Calvary to Heaven---on making the Sacred Mystery
present in all of <i>its</i> dimensionality
working through all of <i>our</i>
dimensionality---according to the expansive fullness of His Glory. And that is what brings joy to our sorrow and
light to our darkness. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-89881632040497533032015-03-30T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-30T04:20:12.523-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Operative Words of Holy Week<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In today’s Gospel, when Lazarus’ and Martha’s sister Mary
“took a liter of costly perfumed oil<o:p></o:p></div>
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made from genuine aromatic nard and anointed the feet of
Jesus and dried them with her hair,” her gesture of love was made in silence.
Nonetheless “the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil.” The cutting remarks of Judas, by contrast,
divide the house and fill it with a different odor: “Why was this oil not sold for three hundred
days’ wages and given to the poor?” Judas’
heart is divided, “because he was a thief and held the money bag and used to
steal the contributions.” He is
ultimately deaf to the Lord’s correction, because a short time later he too
will touch the body of Jesus with a silent gesture---the kiss of betrayal in
the Garden of Gethsemane. <o:p></o:p></div>
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From yesterday’s reading of St. Luke’s account of the
Passion, we learn that Judas’ evil action had immediate and infectious consequences: “His disciples realized what was about to
happen, and they asked, ‘Lord, shall we strike with a sword?’ And one of them struck the high priest’s
servant and cut off his right ear. But
Jesus said in reply, ‘Stop, no more of this!’
Then he touched the servant’s ear and healed him.” Violence is, in a sense, both the result of
spiritual deafness and the cause of the further spread of it. At the Easter
Vigil later this week, the catechumens who have prepared for Baptism will have
their ears touched and Christ’s efficacious words pronounced over them: <i>“Ephphatha”</i>---“Be
opened!”. But to reach this point, the
Lord must open our ears to receive all of the graces of Holy Week, including
the painful and difficult ones.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I mentioned in a previous blog entry that the operation on
my temporomandibular joints was performed, so to speak, from the outside
in. The surgeon made an incision along
the cartilage of my ears to gain access to the interior of my jaw. Many times over the past two months I have
looked at the surgical photos taken of that procedure like I look at holy
cards: These images remind me in the
most strikingly vivid (because somatically literal!) way how good and necessary
it is for my ears to have been radically opened. Dr. Piper was deeply knowledgeable,
technically very refined, minimally invasive, and utterly decisive about (1) where
he cut, (2) exactly what his salutary purpose was, and (3) even how best to
repair the temporary damage caused by his healing art. So it is---super-eminently---with Christ.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I cannot help but think of the starkly opposed yet
tragically similar gestures of Judas’ kiss and Peter’s sword. Both are botched surgeries. Judas perversely makes of an expression of
love its very severing, like a renegade doctor who would betray his profession
by plotting to instrumentalize the patient and maliciously cause harm. Peter, by comparison, wields the tools of
evangelical operation clumsily, like a well intentioned physician who has not
adequately appropriated the best practices of medical training---thus using the
wrong means to the desired outcome---and in the process causes
complications. The Lord Jesus suffers
“patiently” the wrongheaded interventions of both the good and the evil, in no
small part to train us future generations in the salvific arts of the Divine
Charity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Today is March 25 [2013], ordinarily celebrated in the
Church as the Solemnity of the Annunciation.
Because the date this year falls during Holy Week, its observance is
transferred to April 8, the first day after the ending of the Easter
Octave. But we can, for all that, ask
the Lord to grant us the hearing aid of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s receptive
ears. At the announcement of the Angel
Gabriel which she did not at first understand, Our Lady--- full of grace and
with consummate contemplation in action---inclined forward with her whole being
to inquire: “How can this be?”<o:p></o:p></div>
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How, Lord Jesus, can the days of this particular Holy Week
be for our salvation? What is the
surgical procedure we must understand---and the recovery protocol we must
follow---for the coordinated healing of our mouths (what we say) through our
ears (how we listen) to form those gestures of love which permeate the whole House
of Your Church and reach even to the ends of the world You have come to save? As the Priests of our Diocese gather around
Bishop Rhoades this evening at the Chrism Mass at St. Matthew Cathedral to
renew our vows and share in the blessing of the Holy Oils, may these sanctifying
gestures bear the fragrant form of the sacrificial service of Mary of Bethany
and the all-sufficiently receptive grace of Mary of Nazareth: May it be done unto us, O Christ, according to
Your word.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-33561086637597483482015-03-29T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-29T00:00:03.421-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Gospel in Many Voices<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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On this Palm Sunday of the Lord’s
Passion (as on Good Friday), the Gospel is ordinarily proclaimed in a
multiplicity of speakers’ parts. For
most of my life, I have added my voice to what the “crowd” has to say: “Crucify Him!
Crucify Him!” In my eleven years
as a Priest, however, it has always been my liturgical office and personal joy
to speak in the person of Christ. Today
is the first day that I must assume the role of narrator of Christ’s suffering
and death, because the principal celebrant at Queen of Peace---Fr. John
Eze---properly speaks in the voice of the Lord (and with an African accent!).<o:p></o:p></div>
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In my meditations on this blog
(now numbering forty), I have referred often---but usually only in passing---to
this much beloved Nigerian Priest who has shepherded my flock with such care
during the days leading up to, and now following, my jaw surgery. He has literally been my voice as Pastor for
over two months. Beyond the obvious
challenges of seeing another person performing tasks that are so dear to my
heart for people who are so dear to my heart, I have consistently been
overwhelmed---even to tears---at the depths of God’s goodness in sending to my
people and to me such a good shepherd. I
have come to know and love the Lord’s voice in his.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To sit side by side with Fr. John
in the sanctuary, hear him proclaim and preach the Gospel, stand near him
during the Eucharistic prayer, and receive his updates each day at the rectory
we share on the parishioners he has visited---all of these privileged stances
have given me a new insight into the fathomless humility, extravagant
generosity, and (dare I say) reckless boldness of God to entrust His saving
words and deeds to each of us as members of His Body. Out of infinite love, Jesus Christ actually lets
us bear His voice and extend His gestures of saving charity.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In a conversation, it is so
tempting simply to want to say one’s own part.
We often look to seize the moment when our interlocutor pauses so that
we can interject ourselves into the opening.
To grant the other enough receptive silence to hear a voice beyond one’s
own is a life-long discipline involving an on-going dying to self. In the
case of the trusting silence of God, it is a miracle: He really allows us speak through Him and
with Him and in Him---not just to (or at) Him!
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In our modern age, of course, the
microphone has amplified the Priest’s voice to the point of distorting it by
exaggeration. The electronic pseudo <i>“vox Dei”</i> too easily pretends to fill
the church, all the while risking overwhelming by its one-sidedness the prayer
of those not similarly equipped. It is
an etymological paradox that the word “microphone” literally means “small
sound.” Overcoming the passivity of
hearing that this device abets, we can be more receptive to the “still, small
voice” of God (cf. 1 Kings 19:11-13). <o:p></o:p></div>
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For all of the rich liturgies of
this Holy Week in which the Lord sacramentally speaks to us the words of
everlasting life, we must prepare for each---and follow up on each---in
contemplative silence. When I was
ordained, I never knew that a plastic mouth splint would become a personal sacramental,
disposing me to receive the graces of Passiontide with more sensitive ears and
a more open heart. It has also been so
spiritually fruitful for me to play the “narrator” of the Lord’s “mercies-through-trials”
each Lenten day on this blog. But to begin
to hear the ineffable harmony of my soundless sharing of Christ’s words through
another’s voice is to receive on earth something of the very reverberations of
the Crucified and Risen Lord of Heaven:
“Today you will be with Me in Paradise.” <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-22294725048434700282015-03-28T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-28T00:00:03.267-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<i><span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Non Vedo L’Ora<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
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The Italian expression for “I can’t wait!” literally means
“I do not see the hour!” <i>(“Non vedo
l’ora!”</i>). Today’s Gospel is filled
with agitation mixed with competing expectations. To those who have begun to hope in Jesus as a
type of messiah, they speculate about whether He will come to the festival of
Passover and work a sign to catalyze a popular throwing off of the yoke of
Roman occupation. On the other hand,
those Jewish leaders who believe collusion with imperial forces furthers the
interests of stability (and their own hold on power) see the capture and
execution of Jesus as a possibility ripe for pursuing; in the words of the high
priest Caiaphas: “It is better for you
that one man should die instead of the people, so that the whole nation may not
perish.” Neither Christ’s friends nor
His enemies “saw the hour.” In the face
of all their fevered scenarios, we are simply told that “Jesus no longer walked
about in public . . . but He left for the region near the desert . . . and
there he remained with his disciples.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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The day before Holy Week begins is a strange “desert
day.” On the eve of Palm Sunday of the
Lord’s Passion, the Church readies herself to re-present liturgically our
renewed entrance into the culminating moment of our salvation in the Paschal
Mystery. We do have the privilege of
“seeing the hour”---the “Hour” our Savior foresaw as God from all eternity and
toward which His earthly ministry as man was oriented from the beginning. But as we approach the reading and hearing of
the Gospel of Christ’s Passion, we must avoid all temptations to see it as
“scripted”---that is to say predictable and hence dismissible. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Preparing for great events requires contemplation and a
necessary retreat from public view and its attending expectations. So does convalescing from surgery. As I have shared with you, it is during this
upcoming week that I am medically approved to begin preaching. I have waited for this hour! My TMJ difficulties and their on-going
resolution have existentially persuaded me that the Hour of Christ’s Passion
possesses us infinitely more than we think we possess it. Our long prepared entrance---ready or not!---into
this sacred mystery of the Lord’s redemptive spontaneity is what we must beg of
our Divine Savior the grace to see. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-53247217640971480422015-03-27T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-27T00:00:03.600-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Where the Way of the Cross Begins and Ends<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The traditionally recognized
Stations of the Cross are fourteen in number and begin with Pontius Pilate’s
condemnation of Jesus to death. This
Lenten Friday evening at Queen of Peace we have kept again as a parish
family---for the last time before the beginning of Holy Week---this devotion to
our Savior’s Passion. Tonight was
particularly poignant, because the children of our school embodied for us, in a
dramatic form all their own, the <i>Via
Crucis</i> of the Lord. Instead of
merely gazing upon the beautiful hand-carved images hung on the stone walls of
our church to remind us of the final earthly steps of Christ into His Paschal
Mystery, we saw enacted in the lives of our own flesh and blood the work of our
salvation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Just as the Way of the Cross does
not end in the tomb of the Fourteenth Station, it does not really begin with
the Roman Governor’s infamous judgment of the penalty of death for Jesus. In today’s Gospel we hear that Christ’s
adversaries “picked up rocks to stone Jesus.”
They hold in their own clenched hands and hardened hearts what will form
the painful way that the Way must travel, the error that the Truth must engage
to correct, the plot of death that Life must pass through to rise above. The Gospels are unanimous in their witness
that even in the events surrounding His birth and childhood, the Lord Jesus
began tracing for us the path to Calvary.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In participating in our children’s
Living Stations, I could not help but think of the injuries of childhood. Whether it is physical pain or mental
anguish, the young possess a sensitivity that we who have grown calloused to
the blows of life often lack. In several
of my previous blogs, I alluded to the fact that the surgeon who operated on my
jaw was persuaded by what he saw that my damaged TMJ was ultimately consistent
with childhood injury. This “trauma” (as
it is medically termed and has been spiritually felt) is one I do not
remember. It nevertheless halted the
full and proper development of my lower jaw, leaving me prone to the later
adolescent and adult complications which led to my debilitating pain and
seeking of surgical remedy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That pattern also seems to me
consistent with the ordinary course of our spiritual life. We bear in our souls the primordial wounds of
sin---that of others first and then, ineluctably, our own---as we do the
childhood scars on our body. In being
unable to recall exactly how my jaw was injured and when, I am prevented from
even attempting to calculate my share of the blame (I was in fact a willful
terror as a child!), the potential part played by another/others, or even
simply the role of troublous circumstance.
Such is any life as lived along the Way of the Cross.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For six Lents in the church of Queen
of Peace, I have witnessed class after class of children trace the same
movements of Jesus across the passage of these years. Each and every year Pontius Pilate condemns
Jesus from my presider’s chair; Jesus falls where I genuflect; the little body
of Christ is laid on the ground in a burial shroud on the very spot on which the
tiny Sacred Host of the Risen Eucharistic Lord is daily distributed in Holy
Communion. The young girls dressed as
first century women always pretend to cry, as their parents in the pews shed
real tears. The older have carried
longer the ancient, tragic secret of the passing of youth in growing up and the
myriad threats to innocence which surround those of fewer years. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I shall never forget the first
time I saw this children’s Passion Play in miniature. A boy by the name of Sean Casey was dressed
as a Roman soldier, and he was whipping the back of a child-Christ with cords
made of bright red tissue paper. The perfect
absurdity and absolutely just depiction of it all overwhelmed me. What are our blows and insults to the
impassible One? Yet how our Lord must
expose the impotence of our evil designs by exposing Himself to our nugatory
venality! With each passing year, I see
the generational dimension of our participation in Christ’s Passion. Our church is a school for teaching the
Divine Charity over the course of a lifetime, even as our school exists to
prepare students to worship in Spirit and in truth by walking the Way of the
Cross.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I went to Our Lady of Grace School
in Highland, Indiana and rode the bus to school until I was old enough to ride
my bike. More often than not, that
enclosed trip from home to classroom was---call it what you will---a living
hell or a Way of the Cross. There were
no cameras monitoring and controlling bullying in the 1970’s! There was many a day when my ear lobes would
be twanged to redness and my heart to rage; all of my winter hats had the
strings of the pompon pulled out one by one, like so many threads of self-respect. But on the bus was the bull’s eye target
named Karl, who in his perceived slower mental development became a lightening
rod of rejection and venomous hatred.
One day so many older kids spat on him over the few miles of the trip
that when he stood to get off the bus at his stop, his coat was literally
covered and dripping with the darkly shimmering collective contempt of his
tormentors and the guilt and cowardice of the rest of us. Even through my grade schooled eyes, I saw in
the boy Karl the Man of Sorrows.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“Trauma consistent with childhood
injury” is not simply a speculative causal evaluation of a broken body part but
a description of what has happened both to connect us to---and alienate us
from---each other in our shared history, which is a prelude to our restoration
in Christ. On this final Lenten Friday,
which only Good Friday can succeed, we confess that our whole life---singly and
corporately---is the Way of the Cross.
Christ has borne it to form and reform us into spiritually healthy members
of His Mystical Body. He carries us on
shoulders so broad and powerful and grown up as to hold the universe in
existence, yet with a fresh and gentle innocence most passionately and
vulnerably felt---even if not yet completely remembered---in the earliest joy
of children’s play.<o:p></o:p></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-48122231667521130942015-03-26T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-26T00:00:00.953-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Sight and Gladness of Abraham<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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In the Gospel readings of these days, we see that the road
to Calvary is paved with the shards of fragmented, unresolved arguments and
misguided, abandoned hopes. Steadfastly
conversing on this <i>via Crucis</i> with
whomever will listen and remain to follow Him to the end, Christ offers these
mysterious words pregnant with covenantal promise: “Abraham your father rejoiced to see My day; he
saw it and was glad.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
In today’s first reading from Genesis, the scope of this
promise is sketched by God: “I am making
you the father of a host of nations. I
will render you exceedingly fertile; I will make nations of you; kings shall
stem from you. I will maintain my
covenant with you and your descendants after you throughout the ages as an
everlasting pact, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you.” Jesus Christ is, of course, as man one of the
earthly descendants of Abraham, even as He is the very same Lord Who created
the world and forged its covenants:
“Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
It is striking that before Jesus’ opponents pick up rocks
to stone Him, they attempt to beat Him up with the brute (and brutal) fact of time: “You are not yet fifty years old and you have
seen Abraham?” Our Divine Savior is
actually mocked by what we might call “chronological bullying.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
People who suffer a physical malady like jaw pain are in a
very elemental way bullied by time, in that their suffering seems to know no
end (thus shutting down any future of gladness). If the illness is chronic, it can even ruin
the happier past pre-dating the suffering, precisely because the health of
once-upon-a-time seems irrecoverable.
But the sick---especially when they are diagnosed or being treated---endure
in addition yet another perversity of temporality: Their sense of time is incessantly determined
by medical timetables and therapeutic milestones. Having “two months to live” or “seven more months
until the cast may come off” can appear to a given patient to be either heartening
or soul-crushing (or both simultaneously).
Moreover, when there are multiple agonizing stages spaced over stretches
of time to attain the restoration of health, the temptation to bouts of
frustration or even despair is an ever-present possibility. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
Two weeks ago, for example, I had a phone appointment with
Dr. Mark Piper to discuss my progress in healing, which has been excellent and
right on schedule. Up to that call, my
sense of time had been governed by: 1.) when I can begin to preach regularly
again (= Holy Thursday); 2.) when I can be both the principal celebrant and
homilist at all of the Sunday Masses (= end of April); 3.) when I can be off of
my anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxing medications (= beginning in May); and
4.) when I can get my surgical braces off and be splint-free (= October). All
of these milestones were enthusiastically confirmed as I spoke with Dr.
Piper. But then I made the mistake of
asking him how long he expected I would have to wear regular braces to refine
my new bite pattern. I had been thinking
perhaps three more months. In one
corrective sentence, Dr. Piper broke my heart:
He predicted another <i>year</i> of metal
in my mouth to finish the job---Lord, have mercy! So now my medical horizon of
hope recedes to <i>October 2014</i>! In the grand scheme of things, and certainly
when compared to the suffering of countless millions, my “slight momentary
affliction” (as St. Paul would put it---2 Cor 4:17a) is as nothing. But in time it does feel like a heavy something.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
I was thinking of these matters today when I was able to
meet up with a good high school friend, Leo Meskis, whom I have known for
twenty-seven years but have only seen perhaps three or four times since
graduation. After giving him a tour of
Queen of Peace, we went to Elia’s for a great Mediterranean lunch. Of course as we talked, time disappeared and
the years melted away in memories as vividly present as yesterday. Leo is currently in the orthotics business,
traveling great distances to fit people who have very serious medical
malformations of their bodies to those devices which will best relieve their
pain and optimize the normal physical functioning of their lives. My friend sees suffering on a daily basis and---in
seeing solutions the patients may not see---fits people with hope.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
As Leo and I reminisced, our conversation turned to a
certain Priest we had as a teacher at Bishop Noll Institute. Fr. Stephen Gibson regularly and aggressively
interrupted any number of Saturday mornings of our adolescent laziness to goad
us into joining him on “religious mini-field trips.” Somehow this cleric’s gentle pushiness made
it easier to accept these suburban pilgrimages than to refuse them, and one of
his favorite spots to meet was a Carmelite shrine and monastery in Munster,
Indiana. The more I talked with Leo
today, the more I realized that---like Abraham---Fr. Gibson saw what we didn’t
see: In the week by week, month by month
spiritual formation this Priest was offering us, he saw that the Lord had a
blessed and life-long mission for each of us to discover. Clearly our teacher saw in each student of
our little group at least the potential of a Priestly vocation, and in my case
his sacrifices have borne precisely this fruit (Leo is happily married in
Indianapolis with a beautiful wife and daughter).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
For all of the Teresian Carmelite graces I have pointed out
in several of these blog entries, never until today did I think of the roots of
these gifts extending back through time to my half-hearted and even reluctant
teenage prayers at that Carmelite monastery all those years ago. I also mentioned to my friend Leo that I have
never expressed my gratitude to Fr. Gibson for all of the unrewarded labor and
countless hours of prayer he put into us as a spiritual father trying to raise
good spiritual sons. To this day we are
able to imitate this Priest’s quirky speech patterns; we have only begun to
imitate the confidence of his faith which emboldened him to share it in such
straightforward, life-changing ways with the young and the clueless.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 16.8pt;">
It gives me so much joy this night to know that the Lord
Jesus Christ is not intimidated by time.
He can be patient with His adversaries---even unto death on a
Cross---because He sees and accomplishes in His own Person the boundless
promises made to Abraham to be fulfilled over the course of centuries and
millennia into eternity. I am not yet
fifty (seven more years to go), but I can testify that today I recovered a
Carmelite joy hidden for me from of old.
The weight of a quarter century was lifted by a single conversation with
a good friend to reveal that the infinite happiness of my Priestly vocation was
already being prepared in long-forgotten visits to a silent monastery during
the time in my life when I was wearing my <i>first</i>
set of braces, restricted to the small horizon of hoping---just <i>hoping</i>---that I would finally get them
off for my high school senior year! In
seeing now what Fr. Gibson saw then, I am truly glad with my Father’s joy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-24819541057935630742015-03-25T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-25T00:00:06.181-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Communication: Broken Down and Raised Up<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the Gospel accounts leading up to the Lord’s Passion, the
truth of Christ is revealed with greater clarity, even as it is misunderstood and
rejected by some more vehemently. Jesus
teaches: “If you remain in my word, you
will truly be my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set
you free.” Those to whom His words are
directed refuse to recognize that they are in need of liberation from slavery;
moreover, Christ exposes the rebellious root and ultimate consequence of this
denial: “But you are trying to kill me,
because my word has no room among you.”
The breakdown in communication is, in other words, deadly for all
involved.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my on-going recovery from jaw surgery, I have become by
necessity more attentive to the words which---so to speak---“make their room in
me.” Very simply, more words come into
my ears and mind and heart than are able to come out of my mouth. When I was recuperating in Florida in the
week or so after my operation, my “conversational world” was radically limited
largely to two people, Larry and Judy Garatoni.
Of course, I was able to phone a few folks and my parents were able to
visit. But even the addition of those
few extra people was exhausting, because each embodied a whole universe of
sharing that seemed naturally to demand verbal back-and forth. It felt so peaceful and good to be given the
blessed privilege of minimal demands on my speaking.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Such situations of convalescence can lead, if overly
indulged, to an unhealthy retreat from the world and its responsibilities. Church history is filled with men and women
who initially sought the <i>fuga mundi</i>---the
flight from the world---in the desert, on the pillar (the Stylites or
pole-sitting saints, including St. Daniel the Stylite), or (at least as romantically
imagined) the monastery. Paradoxically,
the more successful these people became at living their aspiration to
contemplative silence, the more the crowds from the world would find them and engage
them incessantly in conversation about the spiritual life! Even a married couple ordinarily discovers
their intimate dialogue of two “challenged” (leavened? stretched? opened up?
tortured and mortally threatened? crucified and buried?) by the addition of
children’s voices---and the wills those voices express.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During my silent time at the Garatoni home, I had ample
opportunity to read. The words of the
written page were principally what filled the “inner room” of my heart and
exposed me in a more guarded way---almost like my protective plastic mouth
splint---to the disputes and other conversational vicissitudes of the
world. Although I mentioned in a
previous blog some of the books I read during my convalescence, I also had as a
silent companion John W. O’Malley’s <i>Trent: What Happened at the Council</i>. The whole monograph has as its leitmotif an
extended narrative amazement that any substantive consensus on Church reform
expressed in doctrinal formulations implemented over the succeeding centuries was
attained with any success at all! The
Council of Trent took place, off and on, for eighteen years---interrupted by
every conceivable manner of internal and external strife. And yet the Holy Spirit was present throughout
as safeguard and guide.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
All of these thoughts have been constantly in my mind since
my return to Queen of Peace a month and a half ago. I have been, of course, thrown back into the
swirl of conversational back-and forth that constitutes the heart of parish
life. Within this I have also returned
to the family disputes---many and varied and intense---which are also part of
sharing a common life. Queen of Peace’s
strength is that we are a family; and our weakness is that we are a
family. And disagreements among
intimates can often be the most painful, potentially volatile, and sometimes
intractable, precisely because there is so much at stake in the closeness of
sharing a home and facing the challenges of agreement on what is most important
and how best to attain it. My greatest
Lenten suffering has been my current inability to use my previously unfettered
and practically unlimited speaking opportunities when such challenges
arose. As much of a Pastor’s work of
reconciliation takes place outside of the Confessional as in it! For now, at least, more difficult words of
others are brought to the inner room my heart than can be resolved from my
mouth; they and their resolution must be given to God in more silence than I
would initially have offered to the Lord. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s readings about the conversational frustrations of
Jesus Christ---the very Incarnate Word of the universe---are strangely
comforting. Not every problem or
misunderstanding can be resolved by words---still less by the electronic
substitutes for personal exchange to which we have grown so accustomed to think
we are adequately expressing ourselves (e-mails, texts, tweets---even
blogs!). It is the Lord’s Passion,
Death, and Resurrection---leading to the sending of the Holy Spirit Who leads
us into all truth---which establishes graced structures of communication unto
Holy Communion in the life of the Church.
If the mortal verbal sin of our age is conversational divorce by slicker
and more various technological means of ultimately uncommitted verbal sparring,
Christ nonetheless still chooses to wed Himself to us in a way that opens up
greater demands for---and possibilities of accomplishing---the “conversion”
that transforms the most challenging “conversations” about matters of deepest
truth. On the Cross, His expiation of
our refusal becomes the living and perennial condition for the possibility of
our conciliation with each other in Him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the first reading from the Prophet Daniel, the “white-hot
furnace” into which King Nebuchadnezzar thrust the three faithful Jewish men of
God was the direct result of the tyrant’s becoming “livid
with utter rage,” because he had no fruitful place---no faith-shaped
outlet---for his passions. Through all
of our frustrations at failures of adequate communication, we know in Christ that
the Lord accompanies us “unfettered and unhurt, walking in the fire” not simply
through the damnable flames of human rage which threaten to consume us, but by
purgative fires of His own Divine Charity.
This fiery purification refines our hearts, tempers our tempers, and
transforms our communication break-downs into evangelical heights attainable
only by the Holy Spirit’s descending tongues of flame. On the conversational far side of Calvary is
nothing less than Pentecost---the Church in the Upper Room simultaneously in
hidden, silent prayer and joyful public sharing of the Risen and Ascending
Word.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-14946513425473853062015-03-24T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-24T00:00:01.156-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Less is More<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
In the recorded words of the
Gospel, St. Joseph is silent.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
I have come to embrace silence in
the past months as never before and now yearn for more of it.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Together in prayer we share the
gift of silence, which---like Our Lady’s spouse, St. Joseph---lovingly
treasures the Word of God and provides a home for Him.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
What good things can we say today
without speaking?<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-7314131876545475962015-03-23T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-23T00:00:02.501-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Teaching in the Treasury of the Temple<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Most of today’s Gospel is an apparently insoluble argument
between Jesus and His co-religionists.
Life at times, too, can seem like an intractable back-and-forth. But Christ precedes what would seem to be
frustration with the brilliant declaration:
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness,
but will have the light of life.” And
once the claims and denials have been exchanged, we finally find out the
setting in which it all took place:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
“He spoke these words while
teaching in the treasury in the temple area.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is a great joy to know in faith
that the One Who first created the whole world by saying, “Let there be light” has
become flesh to bring illumination to whatever we must face---even, in my case,
if this has meant facing the mandibular troubles and healing of my face. It is also an ultimate consolation to know
that our lives together are intended by Christ to constitute the infinitely
precious and endlessly circulating treasure in the Temple of the Church. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
My reflections this Lent are each
and all premised on these “alpha” and “omega” truths. Whether we know it or not, we go about our
business today under Christ’s beneficent light, drawing as need be from His
treasure, even as we by His grace are given to make our own contribution to it. The first thing one does in the
orthodontist’s chair is place oneself under the bright light so that
everything, good and bad, can be optimally seen. And then one is literally handed sunglasses,
because in the end---as the song goes--- the “future’s so bright I gotta wear
shades!” <o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-61805731034829331202015-03-22T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-22T00:00:03.387-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Three Meditations on the Miracle of Lazarus<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">I. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Gospel for the catechumens
this Sunday is that of the miraculous raising of Jesus’ friend Lazarus from the
dead. But the narrative of the miracle
which has become synonymous with this name begins very simply: “Now a man was ill. . . .” Certainly not every bout with sickness leads
us immediately to think of death, especially in those parts of the world where
the practice of modern medicine has attained so many successes (however partial
or temporary). But serious illness can in
fact focus the mind to consider the certainty and nearness of the horizon of
our mortality.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several years ago I was playing in
the waves along the shore of Lake Michigan.
Others were on the beach, and in the extended delight of my pretend
battle with the elements I did not notice the gradual increase of the frequency
and intensity of the waves. Before I
knew it I was unable to move back to shore and realized to my horror that I was
trapped in a rip current. The people on
shore apparently did not see me, still less realize that I was entering panic
mode. And then I recall thinking with mysterious
serenity and clarity: This is it. This is the end of my life. So this is what it feels like to die. In this moment which seemed both beyond time and
encompassing the whole time of my life, I then received the presence of mind to
swim along the rip current rather than struggle against it. It so happened that the lake house at which I
was staying---aptly named “Providence House”---had a yellowed newspaper
clipping on the kitchen refrigerator warning of rip currents in Lake Michigan
and what to do when caught in one. I
walked back to shore alive, spent, grateful, and wiser---thanks to obeying that
old news.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My experience with the initial TMJ
diagnosis and the description of the serious surgery and its very challenging,
lengthy recovery process also evoked in me similarly powerful feelings of “illness-unto-death”---but
with a subtle and profound difference: I
realized that I needed to face (and actually grieve) the loss of my “healthy”
forty-some years of life as I had known them.
And through all of the occasional panic and frequent waves of anger,
there emerged in prayer---my own, and surely through that of others---a great
and growing peace beyond my mortal misery, so strangely similar to what I felt in
the midst of mortal danger in Lake Michigan.
In prayer it became clear that whatever I had to go through was not outside
of the Lord’s plan but taken up into it.
Many of my personal superficial cares and plans simply disappeared, as
did the weight I gave to the larger churning of events in the so-called wider
world. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The response of the Lord Jesus to
the “bad news” of Lazarus’ illness was exactly the “Good News” that came to be
my peace: “This illness is not to end in
death, but is for the glory of God, <br />
that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Yes, I would live whatever came “for the
glory of God,” having learned to walk this path not from a faded newspaper in
someone else’s house, but from first sharing the lives of so many of the chronically
and mortally ill people of my Parish Home.
As they walked this path from panic to peace ahead of me, they
became---by the grace of the Crucified and Risen Lord---my teachers (often
unwitting but always expert) in the Way of the Cross leading to Easter. So it must continue this Lent in the life of
the Church, moving together toward the tomb to rise from it in Christ.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;">II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The body of Lazarus, the Gospel
tells us, was in the tomb---a cave---for four days. It was here Jesus came to face His friend in
a new way, as old as the tears of human mourning for the apparently final loss
of one who is loved. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Son of suburbia that I am, my
first viscerally serious staring of death in the face (expired hamsters and permanently
sleeping Skippy the dog notwithstanding) was at a strange Roman church located
behind Piazza Farnese, along the Via Giulia in the Eternal City. The name of the small chapel is <i>Santa Maria dell’Orazione e Morte</i>---Holy
Mary of Prayer and Death. It is not a
famous tourist attraction (like the better known Capuchin “bone church” of Rome
on the Via Veneto) but a silent little sanctuary administered by a group of
pious Christians. Historically this association
of the faithful had as their apostolate the dredging of dead bodies from the
Tiber to give unclaimed lives---first created in the image and likeness of God---a
worthy Christian burial. This work of
fulfilling the last corporal work of mercy continues in this community’s
on-going enfolding of the dead in the prayers of the Church.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, as a sophomore on the
St. Mary’s Rome Program in 1988 filled with all sorts of questions about life
and faith, I hunted down this church with the be-skulled façade from directions
in a guide book and was told to be sure and visit the crypt to see some REAL
BONES! So, upon finding it, down the
stairs I went with my friends, and we marveled at the macabre spectacle. The crypt was dark and filthy, with a variety
of bones layered in years of dust arranged in a gruesome chandelier; countless
other bones were just strewn about. I
remember picking up a femur, only to put it back down immediately. This was surely a <i>memento mori</i>---a reminder of mortality---<i>alla romana</i>!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A few years after I was ordained,
I came back to this church, not as a practitioner of gawking tourism or
detached forensics, but as a pilgrim and a Priest. When I entered what had once seemed to me an
empty, neglected place, there was by contrast on this occasion a be-habited Sister
at prayer before the Tabernacle. She
gave every appearance of being part of a living religious congregation staffing
this place, so I made bold to ask permission to go downstairs to the crypt to
pray. Consent granted, I descended to
behold---to my happy surprise---that in the intervening decades since my first
visit, the burial chamber had been cleaned up.
The walls were white and the bones reverently arranged. This enormous tomb had been transformed into
a lovingly cared for place of Christian prayer.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I remember looking at a row of
skulls, some of them neatly labeled on the brow with information like names and
(presumably) dates of burial. I must
admit that I picked one up and held it in my hands for the sheer marvel of
cradling so intimately the mortal frame---bone which once housed thoughts
greater than the universe---created and redeemed by Christ for immortal
glory. Setting the skull back in its
place next to its neighbors, I blessed the forehead of each one, claiming for
them (and through them for me) the graces of Ash Wednesday and of Easter. The custodian eventually came downstairs and
eyed me suspiciously, so I finally went back up and out of that church into a
world less real for being revealed as so superficially alive.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
During my initial evaluation at
the Piper Clinic last September, I spent quite some time with Dr. Mark Piper
reviewing the CT-scans and MRIs of my skull obtained earlier that day. I was beyond amazed at how on the computer
the doctor and I were able to explore the complex design of my very own skull,
with all of its little abnormalities and injuries. It was such a mysterious privilege to “look
inside” my head with one who, at least medically, knew more about---and was
able to help---me far beyond my abilities.
To this day, I have a CD copy of these three-dimensional photos of my
skull on my computer---thank God, not to contemplate the dead but to quicken my
understanding of what it means to be alive!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think of how Martha and Mary and
Lazarus were friends with Jesus precisely because they allowed Him to look
within them with love; and they in turn dared to accept Christ’s invitation
into the intimacy of His life. In these
days leading up to the Passion, we do not neutrally examine for the sake of fulfilling
curiosity a Head crowned with thorns, or Hands and Feet nailed, or a Heart
pierced. We are invited into this
Mystery of mysteries like the Apostles, so that we “may believe”---and in
believing we might be healed and saved for life eternal.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16pt;">III.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Gospel narrative of Lazarus
being raised from the dead concludes with what can properly be called a “Divine
Comedy.” A comedy is, after all, a drama
with a happy ending. But here there is
more: Lazarus is alive but still bound;
he must “hop” to Jesus wearing his burial bands even before he is able to see
everything new that has happened to him!
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my weeks and months of recovery
from surgery, I must say that I sympathize more with the crazy predicament of
Lazarus. Being bound by my surgical
braces and the accompanying macramé of restrictive rubber bands has given me a
deeper sense of how one’s problems can be both essentially “fixed” yet
temporally still “on the mend.” My jaw
just needs time to rest and fully heal into its new, healthy position; but this
also requires periods of necessary freedom and a regimen of self-initiated
physical therapy several times a day.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Jesus points to Lazarus and
commands His disciples---the nascent Church---to “untie him and let him go,”
our Savior is using the same word regarding the freeing of His friend that He
employs in His commission to St. Peter to “bind” and “loose” sin. To our great joy, Pope Francis is the latest
in the Petrine succession to guarantee that this divine gift of mercy is
safeguarded and extended in the life of the Church. Many secular observers hope that the new Pope
will have an “open mind” to give them something different from the Catholic Faith---that
Papa Francesco will “loosen up a bit” on aspects of faith and morals which
conflict with the spirit of the age (which ignores death and shuns dying to
self, even as it furthers a “culture of death”). The maxim of the late Catholic journalist
G.K. Chesterton---who at about 300lbs. had a lot riding on the resurrection of
the body!---is here freshly apropos: “Merely
having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening
the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.” I long for the day when my mouth can once
again literally do what my intellect bound by faith has been freed by Christ to
do, all along and forever.<o:p></o:p></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-59184976957008936292015-03-21T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-21T00:00:02.973-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Having the Last Word<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s Gospel reports some of the
argumentative ferment surrounding Jesus.
Various people and factions of the crowd make speculations about His
identity (prophet? Messiah?) and
question His origins (Galilee?
Bethlehem?). Apparently there are
“guards” in the crowds colluding with some Jewish authorities (themselves in
collusion with the Roman occupation?).
The summary verdict of these particular chief priests and Pharisees is
that Jesus is “accursed.” By contrast,
Nicodemus pleads---as a voice of both faith and reason---that it is not just to
condemn someone without first hearing him and finding out “what he is doing.” This whole narrative of confusion and
speculative confrontation (here there is no mention of directly and impartially
questioning Jesus) ends strangely and abruptly:
“Then each went to his own house.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I first went to the Piper
Clinic in St. Petersburg, Florida last September for the initial evaluation of
my TMJ problem, my heart was filled with conflicted feelings about my medical
care up to that point, as well as substantial worries about the future of my
jaw’s health for my Priestly ministry (how could I continue to preach or teach
or administer the Sacraments in such pain?).
My temporary home for these troubled thoughts was the Ponce de Leon
Historic Hotel, the cheapest place I could find within walking distance of the
Clinic. As the name would imply, it had
a certain Latin American accent in its décor, which I would describe as heavily
trafficked contemporary---renovated to be slick minimalist, yet
frayed-around-the edges. The rooms were
small, simple, and clean. And the cast
of characters that checked in and out were worthy of a novel (my favorite was the
bridal party standing at the front desk with bags full of vodka and high expectations
for the pre-nuptial evening, if not for the following wedding day).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, the hotel was quirky
and satisfactory, so---creature of habit that I am---I also returned to stay
there in January of this year in the days before my surgery. As reading I brought along an eclectic
assortment of books, including John Zmirak’s <i>The Bad Catholic’s Guide to the Catechism: A Faithful, Fun-Loving Look at Catholic
Dogmas, Doctrines, and Schmoctrines</i>; Jon Meacham’s <i>Thomas Jefferson: The Art of
Power</i>; and two books by Charles C. Mann---<i>1491: New Revelations of the
Americas Before Columbus</i>, and <i>1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created</i>. Zmirak’s book was a hilarious and profound---post-modern
yet utterly traditional---presentation of the Faith which seemed somehow tailored
to fit my surreal medical situation. The
Jefferson book was the literary equivalent of comfort food, because our third
President was the intellectual obsession of my adolescence. But it was Mann’s two histories of the
Americas that were a perfect fit for my place and time in Florida. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Without doing book reviews, the
genius of Mann’s historical/archeological/sociological/(even biological) reporting
of the “Columbian Exchange”---the infinitely variegated interactions between,
and changes resulting from, the encounter between the “Old World” of Europe and
the “New World” of the Americas---opened my mind further to the endless
complexities of human interaction and the constantly revised historical
narratives which must be the fruit of deeper, more comprehensive research and honest
debate. In terms of the Catholic
Church’s 15-16<sup>th</sup> century missionary efforts, I detected in Charles
Mann’s secular account no particular love for---or special interest in---the
Catholic Church; nor did I detect overt animus; he was overall rather
indifferent to it. But I was continually
impressed at Mann’s human sympathy for trying to understand what the different
protagonists of a given place and time were trying to accomplish, and the
intended and unintended results of their actions or inactions.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When on March 3, 1513---almost
exactly half a millennium ago---Ponce de Leon set forth by ship from Puerto
Rico, he discovered without knowing it at the time a new way to a new place. In secular terms, his mission was both
extractive and contributive; but the Spanish explorer was part of a spiritual movement
much larger than his mixed motives---to fulfill Christ’s mandate to share the
Catholic faith with all people of all nations.
Seeing the extraordinary beauty of its fauna and flora---and knowing
that this moment of arrival was enfolded in the celebrations of the Easter
season (which the Spaniards called <i>“Pascua
Florida,”</i> the “Festival of Flowers”)---Ponce de Leon called the place <i>La Florida</i>. To this place I came, not exactly to find the
fountain of youth, but to receive healing of my jaw and restoration of my
normal life.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I have been thinking about all of
this in the past few days as I read the media caricatures of Pope Francis and
his involvement as a Jesuit superior in the complexities of the Argentinean
military upheavals of the 1970’s and 1980’s.
Apparently he is blamed for ordering two Jesuit Priests under his care not
to engage in political action in a dangerously volatile area. The Priests were disobedient, subsequently
kidnapped and tortured by governmental authorities (for which, utterly
incomprehensibly, Francis is also held up by some for indirect blame). And when this Jesuit superior risks his life
by secretly and successfully pleading for safe release of these Priests, he is
finally accused of “not speaking out” with sufficient vigor to provoke (convert?)
governmental authorities. [For further commentary on these points, see Edward
Peters’ essay at the end of this blog post.]<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Pope Francis visited the
Basilica of St. Mary Major this past week at the very outset of his Papacy to
pray, he entered a church whose ceiling is literally covered in the first gold
brought over by the conquistadors from the New World. Pope Francis---like every single one of us---walks
under the heavy weight of a very complex history in which weeds and wheat, sin
and sanctity are often inextricably mixed, this side of Judgment Day. The Basilica of St. Mary Major is also the
place where St. Ignatius Loyola celebrated his first Mass, on Christmas Day in
1538. As Pope Francis well knows from
his Jesuit religious life, St. Ignatius wanted to begin his Priestly ministry
by offering the Holy Eucharist at the chapel containing the relics
traditionally associated with the manger of Bethlehem. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Like St. Francis of Assisi before
him, St. Ignatius staked his life on the belief that the humble earthly origins
of our Divine Savior can in every age create a “new beginning.” As we walk with the saints---and now Pope
Francis---through the vicissitudes and ambiguities of history scarred by sin,
we can do so with serenity and joy: We
know that Jesus Christ has gone before us---through every misunderstanding and
beyond every argument---to explore every way forward to our true home, and in
so doing to lay rightful claim by His grace to the realm of Easter (where the
fruit trees always yield and their medicinal leaves never fade [cf. Rev. 22]). The Lord has bigger plans for us than arguing
and going back to fume in the private houses of our own imaginings; we are meant
for the many mansions of Our Father’s House.
Even though life can seem---as St. Teresa of Άvila famously put
it---like “a bad night in a bad inn,” we know in Faith that the Redeemer of
history has the last word because He <i>is</i>
the last Word: “Behold, I make all
things new!” (cf. Rev. 21:5).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
+++++++<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<b>Bonus Reflection on Today’s Topic<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #444444; font-size: 16.0pt;">When
Nothing Else Will Work, Accuse a Catholic Prelate of NSO<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;">
<i><span style="color: #444444;">Edward Peters, JD, JCD, Ref. Sig. Ap.---March 15, 2013<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">The mainstream media is in panic over Pope Francis.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">The new pope is solidly opposed to everything big media
wants (contraception, abortion, ‘same-sex marriage’, etc.), but it can’t simply
write him off as an out-of-touch academic (Benedict) or as a provincial Slav
suffering Nazi and Communist induced post-traumatic stress disorder (John Paul
II). Worse, the first prelate of the Catholic world is a man of proven
commitment to the poor (far more demonstrably than are his limousine liberal
critics), and has lived his whole life in a simplicity that is utterly beyond
the ken of Manhattan or the Beltway sophisticates.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">So, confronted by a major Catholic prelate of such
palpable integrity, what’s the media to do? Only one thing: Look up what
country the prelate calls home, find out what trauma that country suffered
(that’s not hard to do, all modern countries suffer from traumas, generally
those organized by their governments), and accuse the prelate of—wait for it—<b>Not
Speaking Out</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">NSO is the perfect accusation: first, it can only be
levied by history, that is, by folks with access to much more information than
was possessed by those against whom an NSO is aimed; indeed, as NSO is almost
always raised well after the trauma and its agents have passed from the scene,
retaliation by such agents for reminding folks of their travesties is unlikely
or impossible; very importantly, NSO allows the media to claim the moral high
ground by implying that, had <i>it</i> been on scene during the trauma, it
would surely have “spoken out”. That last claim is, of course, the most
laughable (as—to take just one example of ignored victims of modernity—hundreds
of millions of baby souls will attest on Judgment Day). Best of all, even if
evidence of “speaking out” can be found, it can always be dismissed as “not
enough”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">Totalitarian regimes (whether left or right) act like
rabid dogs in that their behavior, while irrational, is often predictable. Now,
if one can, according to the information available to one at the time, predict
that “speaking out” will provoke an act of irrational savagery, pray, where
exactly is the obligation to speak out such that one’s “failure” (a judgmental
word, notice) to speak out is later sanctionable by those not remotely
confronted with the crisis? What if, moreover, one directly confronted by a
crisis, on the basis of the information available at the time, makes the choice
to oppose the savagery in other, even hidden, ways, though not in a way that
big media pundits, separated from the crisis by decades and oceans, are so sure
was <i>the</i> “correct” way to act?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #444444;">I figured that an NSO would, sooner or later, be visited
upon Francis, but that it comes so quickly underscores, I think, how really, <i>really</i>
worried big media is about the influence that Francis will wield against their
vision of the world. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-52761415361138932812015-03-20T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-20T00:00:01.143-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Traveling Unknown<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Today’s Gospel is about
predictable public movement and changed, secret plans: “Jesus moved about
within Galilee; He did not wish to travel in Judea, because the Jews were
trying to kill Him. But the Jewish feast
of Tabernacles was near. But when His
brethren had gone up to the feast, He Himself also went up, not openly but as
it were in secret.” The Jewish feast of
Tabernacles or Booths involved one of three annual pilgrimages to Jerusalem to
worship at the Temple. This feast was
distinctive as a combined festival of gratitude for the harvest and a sacred
recalling of how the Israelites had to live in tents as they crossed the desert
from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
These obligatory rituals were
known to all, and yet Christ chose to enter Jerusalem in secret. He was, nonetheless, recognized: “Some of the inhabitants of Jerusalem said,
‘Is He not the one they are trying to kill?’”
The Gospel explicitly indicates that the murderous plotting had already begun
but did not thwart the Savior’s divine purposes, which were ultimately deeper
and more mysterious than the ordinary movements of pilgrimage. In Jerusalem during a later celebration of the
Feast of Passover, Christ will establish at the Last Supper the Holy Eucharist as
the definitive “Thanksgiving Feast” of the New and Eternal Covenant,
accomplishing in His saving Death and Resurrection the all-encompassing
“Passover” from sin and death into our true and lasting Homeland of Heaven. But in our meditation today, we simply pause to
contemplate our Lord’s travel for a time in secret.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Anyone who has ever been to an
airport these days knows the soul-crushing obsession with identity verification
to prevent murderous plots, paradoxically combined with seemingly endless
movement through the wasteland of anonymity between home and destination. It is not, in other words, a generally happy
adventure to travel a long distance alone, especially to a new place. Such was my first experience traveling this
past September for my initial jaw evaluation at the Piper Clinic. By design I tried to keep this trip a secret
from all but a few staff members of Queen of Peace; not even my parents knew
that I was going, still less for what purpose.
Why worry my parishioners and my family, I thought, until I know more
answers and am chronologically closer to the recommended surgical resolution of
my TMJ problems. Of course, predictably,
some people did find out!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is my practice always to travel
dressed as a Priest, for the simple fact that I am a Priest. So while most people do not know my unique
identity as the Pastor of Queen of Peace Parish, they are given unmistakable
visual clues (ecclesiastical advertisement?) that I am ordained and somehow
supposed to be about the Lord’s business.
Arriving at the airport for the first time in St. Petersburg, for
example, all of the cabbies jokingly wanted me to ride in their cab for “good
luck” and gladly accepted a blessing instead.
The technicians at the Piper Clinic were amazed that I always showed up
in the same outfit (except in post-operative visits when---to their complete
surprise---I arrived wearing shorts and a t-shirt [not even black!] to make the
medical exam and removal of stitches from the abdominal fat graft site easier).
And yet throughout my first days in
Florida---before my parents and some friends arrived---it was so oddly
difficult to be both “known” as a generic Priest and at the same time virtually
unknown as Fr. Daniel Scheidt.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In these first days of Pope
Francis’ papacy, we must pray for his personal movement into St. Peter’s
succession. From the beginning, the
Christian life in general---and the election to the papacy in particular---has
always involved the taking up and transformation of one’s familiar identity
into a new mission. As this mission opens
up and demands to be “filled in,” the living of it opens one up to receive a
new identity: You are a Disciple of
Christ; you are Peter. There is so much
about the papacy that the former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio knew last week; but
there is now even more of that unique secret of his new identity and mission that
remains for him to seek and discover and live---all day by day. And so it is for us.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may recall my account of seeing
many years ago then-Cardinal Ratzinger secretly slip into a certain side chapel
of Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major to pray before the Mass on October 11,
1992 at which St. Pope John Paul II would promulgate the <i>Catechism of the Catholic Church</i>.
Today, Pope Francis---at the very outset of his assumption of the
Petrine Office---chose to visit discretely (with only ten minute’s notice to
the Basilica staff!) the very same chapel in St. Mary Major to pray. In this holy place is kept an icon of Our Lady
holding the Christ Child, under the title of <i>Salus Populi Romani</i> (“Salvation of the Roman People”).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We would be wise in following more
closely these two shepherds in prayer, separated in mysteriously identical
pilgrimages by decades, yet visibly united in complimentary missions as Bishop
of Rome to safeguard and pass on the one true Faith in the one true Lord. In entrusting the unknowns of their future to
Our Blessed Mother Mary, each points us to Christ, Who first chose to be
carried in the secret of the Virgin’s womb. The murderous plots against Jesus were already
afoot from the outset of His earthly life---as the mortal dangers and countless
lesser threats to our faith and well-being ever seem to surround us and the
Church. But our confident freedom in moving
through this Lenten wilderness to the particular new graces of Easter 2013 is
the knowledge that Christ accompanies us in hidden closeness every step of the
way---assuring us that in our shared faith, walking on the blessed and secure
foundation of St. Peter’s faith, we never travel alone to the festival of the
Heavenly Jerusalem, where everyone is fully known and eternally loved. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-33020976795956859642015-03-19T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-19T00:00:03.680-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Transferring Loyalty and Accepting Testimony<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In today’s Gospel, Jesus proposes
to all who will listen to Him a testimony---not simply of words but of the deeds
which He was first given to share: “The
works that the Father gave me to accomplish, these works that I perform testify
on my behalf that the Father has sent me.”
Many of Christ’s interlocutors, having grown so accustomed to their own
interpretations of the Mosaic law, simply refuse to recognize its fulfillment
in this man Who seems to speak and act in the prerogatives of the Almighty. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Loyalty is not transferred easily,
and it necessarily involves an act of faith based on the trusting acceptance of
another’s testimony. In the medical
realm, I have found that people have either a deep (even fierce) devotion to this
or that doctor (who is, of course, the best!); or, in other cases, they have a visceral
hatred toward a particular doctor (who is simply incompetent and untrustworthy---the
worst!). Rarely is a physician assessed
as being merely average or just acceptable.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Changing doctors can be a trauma
in itself, precisely because there is a serious judgment about whether a transfer
of loyalty is warranted, and on whose testimony. In my own case, even through the worst of my
orthodontic travails, I trusted my doctor to make sound recommendations of what
he thought best for me. And at a certain
point in my treatment, when he had reached the limit of his abilities to help
me himself, my doctor had the humility and professional expertise to point me
to (i.e., testify on behalf of) just the right specialist.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I still remember going to the
website of this recommended specialist, Dr. Mark Piper. The site was unimpressive (nothing fancy,
just the basics), and his photo immediately for some reason struck me as odd. I was happy to see who I would be contacting,
but Dr. Piper had a handlebar mustache that looked like it was right out of the
1930’s. His <i>curriculum vitae</i> (Harvard, Vanderbilt, a plethora of professional
organizations and awards) was about as reassuring as any institutional testimony
of medical excellence can get; yet still I wondered about his humanity. And in so doing, I wound up adding up all of
my external data points into a picture that was ultimately confirmed in some
ways but utterly debunked in others, as I got to know him personally over time through
my medical treatment. I would never have
guessed, for example, that someone so talented and utterly focused on the
cutting edge of his specialty could at the same time be so unpretentious (even
laid-back) and superabundantly generous in the time he gave to his patient’s
concerns, no matter how small.<o:p></o:p></div>
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All of these thoughts have been on
my mind as I---with the rest of the world---try to begin to accept the gift of
our new Holy Father, Pope Francis.
Seeing him for the first time as he approached the loggia of St. Peter’s
Basilica and looking at his face, my first impression was of seeing a strangely
“generic pope.” It wasn’t just the very
well defined contours of my very deep love of Benedict XVI or St. John Paul II
which prompted my reaction; it was more the simple fact that I did not know
anything about this new Successor of the Fisherman, whose life will necessarily
forever shape mine and that of the whole Church. I was being asked in faith to accept the testimony
of the Cardinal-electors who chose this particular man.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the flood of information and
analysis that will flow from today on forward, I think it is worth pausing to
ask the Lord to refine---to the point of utterly burning away in His divine
charity---our expectations, presuppositions, and projections of who we think Pope
Francis should be. His initial gestures
(the name and the first blessing, for example) are a sufficiently rich and
suggestive introduction to bring to our prayer.
To have the boldness to select a papal name never before chosen suggests
a courageous opening to new promptings of the Holy Spirit (Who bears final testimony
to Christ’s Lordship, through the water of Baptism and the Blood of the
Eucharist [cf. 1 Jn 5:8]). But in
harkening back to St. Francis of Assisi---who was passionately devoted to an
absolutely undivided love of both the “hierarchical-institutional” dimension of
the Church and the Church’s mission of radical service to the poor---Pope Francis
makes in his choice of name a profoundly traditional choice. In short, St. Francis of Assisi unreservedly---and
at great cost to his plans and timetables---loved the Petrine Office through
all of its limitations and even the scandalous defects of its temporary
occupants. <o:p></o:p></div>
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When I ponder Christ’s testimony
to St. Peter (“You are Peter and upon this Rock I shall build my Church . . .”)
combined with His testimony centuries later to St. Francis (“Rebuild my Church,
which you see is fallen into ruin”) coming together in the person of our new
Holy Father, I see the outline of a figure whom the Lord has given to fill us
with joy and hope and zeal for the New Evangelization. But it all will surely take getting used
to---for everyone. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Lent requires radical openness to
the Lord’s surprises. As today’s Gospel
cautions, it is all too easy for us this side of Paradise to be scandalized by,
and hostile to, divine gifts---especially when they may come in a human profile
not immediately tailored to our liking.
Nonetheless, our earthly loyalties must be open to transfiguring
conversion, and the testimony of the Apostles’ successors must be accepted
afresh---as if for the first time. We
have as the people of God been placed in the care of an Argentinean who from
the outset of his papacy has himself entrusted his person and the exercise of
his Petrine authority to our prayers. <o:p></o:p></div>
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As a simple point of history, the
former Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergolio has astonishingly become the first Pope
from the New World. But, then again, considered
from the standpoint of the Risen Christ, it is nothing short of a miracle that every
Pope is created from the New World, to shepherd us toward the New World---encouraging
us along the way to extend this New World by our shared testimony and the loyalty
borne of love.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-68992175570552341742015-03-18T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-18T00:00:03.465-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Working for the Rest<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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In answer to those who criticized
His miracles for being performed on the Sabbath, Christ responded: “My Father is at work until now, so I am at
work.” In essence, Jesus announced His
divine essence, Which alone can be both “at work” and “at rest” in perfect
simultaneity. What the Jewish day of
rest pointed to chronologically, Christ actually demonstrates in the flesh
theologically. For us, however, work and
rest are often experienced as an endlessly negotiated either/or.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To have one’s plans for good work
interrupted by illness is, of course, a trial---the personal details of which I
have been elaborating on in these meditations since Ash Wednesday. I share with you today some words I received
upon my return to Queen of Peace from my jaw surgery. The words came in the form of a long letter
written by a former student of mine.
Although she is currently studying theology in graduate school in
California, she penned this extended encouragement (which at twenty-nine pages
is no small amount of work!) over the course of a long retreat which happened
to coincide with my pre- and post-operative days in Florida.<o:p></o:p></div>
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I was struck by how our respective
times away from ordinary duties coincided.
At one point she wrote: “Oddly
enough, several people that I know from different times in my life are in India
right now. I’ve asked all of them to
pray for you---particularly if they see any Missionaries of Charity. I know Mother Teresa is your 2013 saint
friend, so I thought that might make a nice ‘Happy Speedy Recovery’ gift.” Recall that in an earlier post I recounted
receiving Mother Teresa as my “saint of the year,” along with her words: “Yesterday is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today---let us begin.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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It is wonderful to think in our
rounded globe of a world that our yesterday is someone else’s today, even as
our today is also another’s tomorrow. As
I type these words, the Cardinal-electors of our Church are gathered in the
Sistine Chapel to do the work in prayer of discerning the next Successor of St.
Peter. Our prayers---half way around the
world---help sustain them in their responsibility. They also prepare, in God’s plan, the
“tomorrow” of the Church. In fact, every
child born and sacramentalized and educated today also contributes to the
“tomorrow” of the Church, which will be lived in a world ever changing, yet for
all that remaining so much the same.
Florida is connected to California is connected to India is connected to
Rome is connected to Indiana, and so it goes. . . . <o:p></o:p></div>
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To be a “missionary of charity”
through time is to recognize Christ’s work in what one might contrast as our
active accomplishments and our passive diminishments. In another entry, my friend entrusted me to
the care of the late Jesuit missionary, Fr. Walter Ciszek: “I just figure that since you’ll be spending
so much time in silence, having a friend who spent years and years in solitary
confinement [in the Russian gulag after WWII] might not be a bad idea. It’s not the same thing, but maybe it’s close
enough. And I think he’s a good example
of a priest who was able to live out his vocation in creative ways and under
adverse circumstances.” Fr. Ciszek’s
autobiographical <i>With God in Russia</i>
and <i>He Leadeth Me</i> are spiritual
classics.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In all of the endless commentary
pre- and post-conclave about the impossible tasks that the next Pope faces (as
every Pope must face)---all of the crushing work that awaits him in what can so
often feel by any leader as “solitary confinement”---we should each reflect in
prayer on our own daunting responsibilities and unfulfilled tasks---all in
light of the saving action and redemptive Passion of Christ. For the consummation of Jesus Christ’s
healing ministry to be His Crucifixion and Resurrection shows us that God’s
work is not limited by our abilities or lack thereof. In Him we each are the one specially
“elected” to bear witness to the victory of Love, which gives itself to us and
through us---in both our resting and our rising. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-73896182421676166042015-03-17T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-17T00:00:05.917-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Excuses, Excuses, Excuses . . . and Miracle!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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The Lord Jesus in today’s Gospel
encounters a man at the five-porticoed pool of Bethesda who has been “lying
there”---surrounded by “a large number of ill, blind, lame, and crippled”---for
thirty-eight years. Christ’s question is
bracingly straightforward: “Do you want
to be well?” But His query is met by the
paralyzed man’s egregiously---pardon the pun---“lame” excuse that “I have no
one to put me into the pool.” For almost
the span of years that the Israelites were trudging through the desert, this
guy can’t network with anyone to get help?
Come on! After the man is finally
cured by Jesus, the Lord must seek him out again with some salutary follow-up
scolding: “Look, you are well; do not
sin anymore, so that nothing worse may happen to you.” Clearly there was a more serious spiritual
paralysis which had come to underlie this invalid’s physical limitations.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On my first visit to the Piper
Clinic for an initial consultation about my chronic TMJ problem, I had to spend
several hours watching videotaped “pain lectures” produced by Dr. Mark
Piper. In these presentations, the
doctor described how the different systems of joints and nerves and muscles
were inter-related. A malady in one of
them quite frequently, if not inevitably, cascaded into problems with the
others. Of particular interest to me
were the facial photos of patients who had suffered chronic pain for many
years; their mouths had a tendency to form into a permanent frown. The drooping at the sides of the lips
gradually but inevitably became the most comfortable position for the damaged
muscles and nerves to be in. Put another
way, for those suffering jaw problems for a long time, it became---for many
reasons---virtually impossible to smile.
And, as one might imagine, this physiological condition led in turn to
emotional and (although the videos did not allude to them) spiritual problems.<o:p></o:p></div>
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My ultimate diagnosis from the
Piper Clinic was two-fold: I had slipped
cartilage disks in my jaw joints, but I also had a “syndrome of pain patterning”
that had to be addressed as well.
Fortunately in my case, the latter was not as advanced as the
former. I was actually amused to find
out that Dr. Piper’s initial observations of my “nice smile” and happy looking
face were not at all small talk or polite niceties intended to put me at ease;
they were in fact physiognomic medical descriptions of what was going on
“underneath” my skin. Much of my
post-surgical recovery involves the reversal of this syndrome of pain
patterning through a temporary regimen of anti-inflammatory and muscle relaxing
medications, combined with physical therapy exercises I can do on my own. I expect to be fully back to easy
smiling---exteriorly and interiorly---over the course of the next few months.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The Lord Jesus knows as our Divine
Physician that we have more than one single problem that needs to be
cured. He also knows that any serious
sin---or chronic indulgence of the same, small bad habits---in fact typically
catalyzes a whole “syndrome of pain patterning” which threatens to deform every
aspect of our lives, paralyzing us in the endless negative feedback loop of
limitations followed by excuses, followed by more limitations followed by more excuses.
. . . <o:p></o:p></div>
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Only in recent years has the five-porticoed
pool of Bethesda been re-discovered and systematically excavated. It is one of the few places in contemporary
Jerusalem where one can literally descend to the very depths at which Jesus
Christ moved in His public ministry to work His cures. Today the Lord wants, so to speak, to
excavate the rubble of years (and perhaps decades) of excuses under which we
have been lamed or paralyzed or even crushed.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Our Savior allowed Himself---Isaiah
prophesies---to be “crushed for our iniquities” (Is 53:6) that we might be made
whole. The Lord enters our pain to
reveal its patterning and to propose His sacramental remedies leading to fully
restored life in His Church. Jesus wants
to repeat His miracle in us of making a zealous evangelist out of a
half-hearted beggar. To accomplish this,
Christ gives us St. Peter as the “Rock” on whom He will build His Church, so
that we can have a foundation of people to help us in our need. Thus we pray fervently for the Cardinal
electors as they gather in Conclave today to select a new Pope under the
guidance of the Holy Spirit. In the historic
drama of this particular day---in this pivotal Lenten moment in our life---the
time for lying around is passed: Thanks
be to God, Christ will accept no more of our lame excuses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-20266521028621765622015-03-16T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-16T00:00:00.134-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Co-incidences of God Working Over Time<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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When we read the Gospels, it is
almost inevitable that our attention is first drawn to persons rather than to
time. Of course, there is ultimately no
separation between the two, because human persons live their lives and work out
their salvation precisely in time. But I
propose that it is, so to speak, well worth our time to examine closely the
chronological references---implicit and explicit---in today’s Gospel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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First we hear of a feast in
Jerusalem, to which the people of Galilee had gone and from which they had
returned. Fidelity to God’s time
requires movement, even pilgrimage. Next
there is a reference to the miracle that Jesus worked in Cana at a particular
wedding feast for a particular couple on a particular day: The specificity of God’s time can be
intimately personal. Very dramatically,
ordinary time (and even the memory of great festivity) can be interrupted by
the tragedy of illness and the threat of death---the royal official intervenes
at Cana for his son who is dying in Capernaum.
After using this occasion to chide people for constantly expecting the heavenly
intervention of “signs and wonders,” the Lord Jesus responds to the official’s
faith and cures his son, but without making the walk back to Capernaum. The man discovers upon inquiring of his
slaves that the fever left his son “about one in the afternoon.” The man marvels that “just at that time Jesus
had said to him, ‘Your son will live,’ and he and his whole household came to
believe.” As God, Christ does not need
the dimension of space to work through time.
These divine “coincidences” reveal the gentle humility and subtle
sovereignty of the Lord’s non-manipulable benevolence, temporal and
trans-temporal.<o:p></o:p></div>
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When the illness involving my jaw
brought me to Florida for surgery, I had the great blessing of recovering at
the Naples home of Larry and Judy Garatoni, which was situated overlooking a
bay connected to the Gulf of Mexico.
During these days, I was able to see dolphins for the first time in my
life. Pairs of them would even surface
and dive underneath our deck as if to offer a brief greeting before swimming
off to continue their day’s business.
They were a marvel to behold.
Having recently myself received three “blowholes” drilled into my splint
for improved breathing (and ingestion of liquids), I certainly felt a special
affinity to these marine mammals!<o:p></o:p></div>
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In any case, my days of
convalescence in the Garatoni home were filled with deep peace and restorative
relaxation. In addition to the crazy
regimen of speed dining, jaw therapy, and medication intake, I had plenty of leisure
time each day to celebrate my “private Mass,” pray the Liturgy of the Hours and
the Rosary, read, walk, and begin to resume my running. I completely ignored the news of the outside
world and all of the markers of its time.
Everything was so peaceful and beautiful in the Garatoni home that it
was as if time had stopped for me and I was able to taste something of eternity. In the midst of all this loveliness, for some
reason I was particularly drawn to an amazing fireplace in Larry’s office with
striking accents of carved green and brown onyx. I remember telling him that this was, in my
opinion, the most beautiful object in the whole house. In his humility, Larry demurred at acquiring this
seeming extravagance as the result of a moment of weakness, but I insisted that
the world needed stonemasonry of this quality.
And so the conversation ended.<o:p></o:p></div>
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On the first Sunday I returned to
Queen of Peace, I was so happy to be back at my Parish, truly my most beautiful
home. In the midst of all the gifts of
soup and other tokens of love, Ruth Carillo handed me a plastic bag filled with
lots of bubble wrap. She said that Pat
Kessick---whose funeral I had celebrated on January 4 before I left for
Florida---had personally wrapped this gift for me and wanted me to have
it. After removing layer after layer of
protective wrapping, I held in my hand a beautiful hand-carved <i>dolphin</i>, made of <i>green and brown onyx</i>! I was
slack-jawed. Ruth was puzzled and a
little disturbed at how taken aback I was, so much so that she sent the
following reassuring note about the dolphin a few hours later: “Please put your mind at ease
regarding the dolphin you received from Pat. It was, indeed, picked out
by her personally to give to you. She helped to wrap it up and then we
wrote your name on it. There are only three other things that she picked
out personally to be given to people. She said that this dolphin
was unique in her collection (and it is; all her other dolphins are brass or
ceramic) and it reminded her of you.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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Before I had left for surgery, I was given from the Parish
Office a list of Mass intentions to offer each day I was gone, and I knew that
I had offered a Mass for Pat. Like the royal
official in today’s Gospel, I also had a hunch and a hope about the Lord’s
timing and went back to the sheet to look at the persons and dates included in
my celebration of the Eucharistic feast.
Sure enough, I celebrated the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for Patrica
Kessick on January 30, 2013, the very first day I moved into the Garatoni home
where I saw the dolphins.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In early Christian iconography, the dolphin was recognized
as a type or figure of Christ. To
paraphrase the Traditional Catholicism website, the dolphin was thought by the
ancients to be the “king of the fishes.” It was noted for the swiftness of its
motion and the benevolence of its strength, “for it was supposed that it could
not be controlled except by its love for man.
Its affection for man was said to be so great, that it proved not only
most docile to anyone kindly approaching it, but would follow the fishermen,
recognize them individually, and frequently warn them against storms by
changing its usually frolicsome gambols into straight motion towards port. The Greeks called it ‘<i>philanthropos</i>,’”---lover of man.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Why, in the end, do we believe in Christ and love Him? Is it simply the encounter with His Person,
or is it not rather also the mysterious chronology of the intertwining of our
lives with His through time? Because the
Divine Word has become flesh to save us in time, we can be sure that the
coinciding of persons and events in the life of the Church---be they religious
feasts or tragedies like illness or death--- will be our way to discover the
One beyond time loving us within time. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Thus it is no coincidence (in the sense of happenstance)
that Jesus Christ chooses the feast of Passover as the salvific context for His
Passion, Death, and Resurrection. As the
disciples pondered the significance of this timing in the Risen One’s Easter
light, they knew that the Lord had been acting in their lives all along at a
deeper, more comprehensively redemptive level of utmost refinement---well
before they recognized all of the connections.
And so Christ acts in us <i>this</i>
Lent in view of <i>this</i> Easter. We should keep this maritime mystery (the
sign of Jonah!) well in mind in view of tomorrow, when the Cardinal-electors
will gather in Conclave to elect a new successor to St. Peter the Fisherman. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-25033036199345736582015-03-15T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-15T00:00:04.665-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Roseate Beauty of <i>Laetare</i> Sunday<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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As we reach today the mid-point of the Lenten
season, the Church is vested in rose---the color of the rising sun---to
indicate that our journey from the darkness of sin to the glory of Easter dawns
more radiantly on the horizon. It is
fitting, therefore, that the Risen Son leads us in this Sunday’s Gospel closer toward
the Paschal Mystery of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection by means of the path
He outlines in the parable of the Prodigal Son.<o:p></o:p></div>
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In tracing the trajectories of the
three characters---the father and his older and younger sons---we are
inescapably confronted by the all-encompassing mystery of gratuity. The parable begins and ends in the riches of
the father’s house, which embrace (so to speak) the drama of two brothers whose
very lives and material inheritance are (to put it tautologically) “unmerited gifts.” The younger son “spends freely” in
self-destructive squandering, while the older son relinquishes his brother to
sin, his father to loneliness, and himself to embittered servility. Only the father is able to see from “a long
way off” that each of his sons must be given an astonishingly creative and
pro-actively redemptive invitation of love, that they each might share together
in a great feast which neither of them “deserves.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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In this spirit of meditating on
the fathomlessly foundational and incalculably generous gratuity of the love of
God, I shall attempt in today’s reflection to fulfill a promise that I made in
an earlier blog entry (February 25). Having shared in that posting the story of St.
Thérèse of Lisieux’s unexpected gift to me on the day after my jaw surgery in
Florida of a (literal!) sign of “speaking roses,” I noted that there was a
Theresian “prequel” to this wondrous account that also needed to be told. So given that the color of this Sunday is
rose, I cannot resist sharing three beautiful blooms of preparatory grace given
to me from the Little Flower’s heavenly garden for deepening our understanding
of the boundlessly beneficent freedom of divine charity.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
I.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It all began with a splinter in my
thumb last summer. Having apparently
failed to extract the little wooden invader entirely, I developed a cyst inside
the violated digit of my right hand which grew larger and more painful by the
week. I finally decided to have it
looked at by my regular doctor, who proceeded to tell me that the cyst was
wrapped around a tendon and I needed to see a specialist to have it surgically
removed. Fortunately I knew just the
guy---my friend from St. Pius X Parish days, Dr. Tom Akre. We were both delighted to see each other, the
circumstances notwithstanding, and spent more time plotting going out to eat
with his wife Mary and eldest daughter Teresa than in scheduling my appointment
for surgery. I proposed that we dine the
day after I went under the knife.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Prior to these events, I must
confess that my mood alternated between anxiety and irritation, often spiraling
downward toward discouragement. Having
to contend with two separate maladies at the same time---bad jaw and bad
thumb---was really beginning to take its toll on my spirits. Often the pain from one would distract me
from that of the other, but in this I found no spiritual comfort. I just wanted Heaven to see how pathetic I
was and show me the way out of these messes.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The day of thumb surgery arrived,
September 6, and I had my first ever experience as an adult of being prepped
for surgery---dressed in the gown, placed on the gurney, wheeled into the
refrigerated operating room, given the (partial) IV sedation in one
outstretched arm while the other arm with the splintered hand was also extended
to be worked on. It looked like a
horizontal crucifixion, except that everyone around me was good---especially
Dr. Akre and the anesthesiologist (who kept me semi-conscious but insensate). I was amazed at how quick, efficient, and
utterly controlled the whole procedure was.
Reflecting on it now, I am convinced that this little surgery was a gift
to prepare me for the greater one on my jaw, so that I would not be afraid of
some of the scary general aspects of undergoing an operation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In any case, the following day I
met Tom, Mary, and Teresa at Trio’s jazz bar in downtown South Bend. I sat facing the window looking out onto the
sidewalk, my right thumb bandaged and looking like that of Mickey Mouse. The evening was delightful and we talked for
hours. Well into the conversation, Tom
mentioned that he was reading a book of retreat conferences given by Archbishop
Fulton Sheen about St. Thérèse of Lisieux.
No sooner did he mention her name than I started to catalogue in my mind
the great stories about her that I wanted to share when it was my turn to
speak. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At a certain point in this
extended conversation, Tom said, “You know, sometimes when I read a single sentence
of the Little Flower’s, I just have to put the book down and be quiet. . . .” At that very moment, I saw a man enter the
restaurant from off the street, proceed directly to our table, and shamelessly
interrupt what we were saying with his proposal: “Would the ladies enjoy receiving some
flowers this evening?” The man was
holding about two dozen roses in his arms!
The four of us just looked over at him stunned and speechless. Finally, after what seemed like a very long
and awkward moment, I looked at Tom and said, “I think the ladies would like
some roses.” So Tom bought one for his
wife and one for Teresa, and the man just disappeared---either further into the
restaurant or back out onto the street.
We were too shocked to notice.
Looking at Mary and Teresa holding the roses, and fully aware of when
and how our conversation about the Little Flower was gently but surely paused,
I could only ask the Akres, “Did that just happen?” We finally laughed and just accepted the
heavenly orchestrated gift that reduced us to silence even as it surprised and
quickened us with joy. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
II.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One week later, September 14 (the
Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross), I had an appointment at Dr. Akre’s
office to have the stitches in my thumb taken out. Afterward, because I was in the neighborhood
of St. Pius X Parish, I thought I would stop in to say hello and to collect my mail. Even after six years away, I still get mail
there---most of it just junk---but also occasionally a letter worth reading. In the pile of that day, I noticed a bulk
mail letter from the Carmel of Port Tobacco in Maryland, the oldest Carmelite
foundation of nuns in the United States.
I had visited there years ago and continued to receive novena
notifications throughout the year. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I opened the letter to find a
novena preparing for the Memorial of St. Thérèse of Lisieux, in itself no
surprise, because the Little Flower is so dear to Carmelites and her feast day
is October 1. The enclosed photo of <i>le petite Thérèse</i> holding a bunch of
flowers did, though, fill me with a desire to share my recent little encounter
with her with Fr. Bill Schooler. As I
held the photo in hand, Diane Schlatterbeck, a staff member at St. Pius and a
close friend, came around the corner and greeted me. Not wanting to tell the story twice, I told
Diane to follow me to Fr. Bill’s office for a great Theresian tale. So I recounted to the two of them in precise
detail what happened at the jazz bar, using my newly acquired photo of the
Little Flower as a prop. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At the EXACT MOMENT I finished the
story, from the front office Leona Wigent the secretary approached us and
interrupted our conversation holding A VASE OF ONE DOZEN WHITE ROSES! Fr. Bill, Diane, and I just looked at each
other in stunned silence, until I finally spontaneously burst out as I waved
the photo, “She’s stalking me! She’s
stalking me!”. Leona had no idea
whatsoever to make of all this, but she simply pointed out that these flowers
had just arrived for Fr. Bill. The
attached card indicated they were sent from Fr. Bob Van Kempen, who sends Fr.
Bill some type of plant on the anniversary of the death of Fr. Bill’s mother, the
Memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The
dozen roses were a day early but right on time.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was at St. Pius as
Associate Pastor, the funeral directors had nicknames for us clergy. Fr. Bill was “Smokey,” because he used so
much incense, and I was “Windy,” because my homilies stretched the suburban
attention span. I had my own nicknames
for the two of us, based on the primary motif that recurred in our respective preaching. He was “Struggle” and I was “Mystery.” One way or another, those facets of the
Gospel were the ones which had marked us most deeply and also the ones which
always made their appearance in our evangelical witness. So I turned to my former Pastor, plucked one
of the roses, and as I tapped him over the head with the Little Flower’s holy
card said, “Remember, in the end mystery always trumps struggle!”. We laughed at the improbable gratuity of it
all. Only after my jaw surgery would I
reflect that even though Mystery does ultimately trump Struggle, nonetheless in
God’s wise and love providence, Struggle refines and reveals the credibility of
Mystery.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
III.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As autumn of 2012 turned to winter,
the date of my operation through the Piper Clinic was drawing nearer by the
week. When Advent came, I really was
waiting in joyful hope for many things, including surgical intervention to heal
my jaw. I had begun to tell my regular
appointments that we would have to postpone our meetings for several months
after my recovery from surgery. One such
couple I spoke with about this was John and Kathleen Ferrone. We had been meeting regularly for years for
what we came to call our “Mother Teresa Hour.”
John and Kathleen are lay Missionaries of Charity. Our last meeting was December 1.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the meantime, some other
friends of mine, Brian and Jen Starks, had come to me saying that they and a
number of their friends from Little Flower Parish were considering registering
at Queen of Peace. Believing in the
“bloom where you’re planted” principle, I wanted to encourage them to use this
time at Queen of Peace as one of discernment to see if a return to their
spiritual home was possible. I also
wanted to offer them hospitality, so I invited these Little Flower families to
a <i>Gaudete</i> Sunday Party at my
rectory. <i>Gaudete</i> Sunday is, you will recall, the mid-point of Advent and the
only day other than <i>Laetare</i> Sunday in
which the liturgical color is rose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
So there we were at table having a
grand time (and also talking about Little Flower Parish vs. Queen of Peace)
when the rectory doorbell rang. I
answered it, only to find John and Kathleen paying me a surprise visit to
announce that they had a <i>Gaudete</i> Sunday
present for me. It was a homemade card
with a color photo of a rose on it. They
were overjoyed to report that they had found a rose blooming after a snowfall
outside St. Mary’s Convent infirmary at Notre Dame on December 11, the day
before the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
I opened the card to find a single rose petal, which John and Kathleen
asked me to bless with a tiny vial of holy water before they gave it to
me. The petal got a single drop---all it
could handle! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As I held the rose petal in my
hand on my front porch, I simply marveled at how utterly impossible such a
heavenly coincidence would be to make up:
I have the Mother Teresa couple on the outside and the Little Flower
people on the inside, and I’m left holding a single rose petal---from St. Thérèse? From Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Queen of
Peace? Whatever. I went inside and showed my guests the
freshly arrived rose petal, reassuring them that little Thérèse is taking very
good care of them. I added that no
matter how long they remain here and when or whether they return to their home
parish, they will always be loved and taken care of from above. The whole thing was really too much for me.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Several days into the new year,
the Fitzmaurice boys---John Paul and Gregory, who serve at daily Mass---came
rushing up to me holding a baggie filled with what looked to be shredded
paper. They said that I was to choose a
saint for the new year; but they quickly corrected themselves, adding: “It is not you who choose the saint---it is
the saint who chooses you!” So I reached
in the baggie and pulled out a scrap of paper that read: “Blessed Mother Teresa: Feast day September 5<sup>th</sup>---“Yesterday
is gone. Tomorrow has not yet come. We have only today. Let us begin.”---<i>Pray for charity and love in your parish</i>.” Yet again I was speechless at the gratuity of
it all. This maxim has sustained me every
subsequent day of my life---leading up to surgery, passing through surgery, and
throughout my recovery from surgery. I
have shared this maxim with the staff and teachers of Queen of Peace, so that
“charity and love” may indeed continue to grow in my Parish.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
***<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the rose-colored dawn of <i>Laetare</i> Sunday, we can all rejoice that
our life of faith is more reliably secure and beautifully gratuitous even than
the sunrise itself. The Risen Son gives
us countless lovingly prepared but wholly unexpected preparatory graces, so
that we can face our sorrows in great trust and confidence, and receive all of
the gifts He will surely give us---wholly free of calculating what we deserve
or don’t deserve. In terms of the Lord’s
parable, Jesus Himself becomes our divine Brother, going in search of us to
find us where we are tempted to wallow in despair, and to labor with us in being
reconciled beyond our servitude. He has
come this Lent to accompany us home, opening for us---not in the slaughter of a
fattened calf but in the sacrificial gift of His very Person---the celebratory
Easter joys of our Heavenly Father’s House.
How surpassingly beautiful that the seed of Christ’s life falls into the
ground of our life and dies, so that in Him we might blossom with the
truth---and share in countless unpredictable ways (with St. Thérèse and all the
saints)---that He is alive because He truly rose. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-67422590991645575692015-03-14T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-14T00:00:01.942-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Like the Rest of Humanity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When Christ shares with us today the parable of the Pharisee
and the Publican, it is worth pondering the differing placement of each figure in
the temple area, as well as their contrasting prayers. Jesus notes that the Pharisee “took up his position”---presumably
at the front---because, by contrast, the Publican (or tax collector) “stood off
at a distance.” As for their respective
prayers, the Pharisee “spoke [his] prayer to himself,” while the Publican “would
not even raise his eyes to heaven.”
Moreover, the content of the Pharisee’s prayer is the supremely absurd
statement: “O God, I thank you that I am
not like the rest of humanity;” the Publican speaks simply and honestly, “O
God, be merciful to me a sinner.” And
lest anyone miss the moral of this story, it concludes with the maxim: “[E]veryone who
exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be
exalted.”<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My liturgical task and position as
an ordained Priest is to preside “at the front” of the assembly, <i>“in persona Christi”</i>---in the person of
Christ---no less! On the day of my
Ordination, November 3, 2001 in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception,
there was a particular moment immediately following Bishop D’Arcy’s invocation
of the Holy Spirit and laying on of hands in which I received a curious, almost
prophetic admonition that I shall never forget.
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of my seminary professors, Fr.
Romanus Cessario, O.P., was vesting me for the first time in my chasuble, the
outer garment worn by Priests when they celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass. Apparently noticing that my head
had been bowed toward the ground throughout the Sacred Liturgy (because that
was the habitual posture of my prayer at Mass to which I had grown most
comfortable over the years), he whispered in my ear with firm and almost
scolding authority: “Keep your head <i>up</i>!”
No hug, no tears, no sentimentality---just implicitly the bracing commission: You are a shepherd now and must exercise
oversight---eyes fixed on the people for whom you must lay down your life; on
the danger-filled horizon to guard against wolves intent on slaughter; and on
the Lord from Whose divine shepherding you will receive necessary guidance by a
gaze relentlessly focused on the “Big Picture” of eternal salvation.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
About eleven years into my
Priesthood---when I made my first visit last September to the Piper Clinic in
Florida for the initial evaluation of the severity of my TMJ problem---I shared
with the medical staff my narrative of excruciating jaw pain and its probable
cause. Dr. Mark Piper listened intently
and sympathetically, spoke to me about joint displacement and cartilage deterioration,
and then looked me in the eye and (from seemingly out of nowhere) asked about
my neck. He noted that my head was bowed
forward and that this downward bent was both a symptom and a contributing cause
of my jaw pain. Moreover, he insisted on
physical therapy for this condition, both immediately following surgery and as
part of a lifetime of rehabilitation. I
was stunned and incredulous. For the
second time in my life, I was essentially being told by a specialist of utmost
competence: Keep your head <i>up</i>!<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Since returning to Queen of Peace
and taking my place in silence beside Fr. John Eze---the principal celebrant
of, and preacher at, all of the Masses of my beloved pastorate---I have had
plenty of opportunities to ponder my simultaneously exalted and humbled
position. There I am in the sanctuary
for all to see but none to hear, my dumbly protruding mouth plugged with
plastic and metal, feeling like a piece of ecclesiastical furniture. But I also ponder the astounding grace of
being the beneficiary of so much sympathy and kind indulgence---an avalanche of
get-well cards, buckets of soup, and countless prayers and words of
encouragement. I have received more
support to "lift me up" than most people who have suffered and
continue to suffer problems deeper than my own---including many parishioners at
Queen of Peace---who may lack such a visibly extended network which often
eagerly comes to the assistance of a public figure like a Pastor. I am tempted
for more reasons than ever to bow my head and close my eyes to pray, brought
closer beyond my choosing to the Eucharistic Lord, Who chose in His silent
abiding in the Tabernacle to be both adored and ignored as “a piece of
ecclesiastical furniture.” <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In my prayer during these days of
the <i>sede vacante</i> as we await the
election of a new Pope, I also cannot help but think of the contrast in the
bodily posture of prayer between Bl. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Polish Pope (and former actor) would ever
lift his eyes to the crowds he loved but would always bow his head and close
his eyes when he prayed, all the more poignantly when Parkinson’s disease
cruelly bent his neck and humiliatingly bowed his back with the burden of the
Cross of infirmity. Benedict, by
contrast, continually attempted before the crowds to direct attention away from
himself, finally---in his abdication of the papacy---taking his place (like the
Publican) “off at a distance” to pray.
But when Benedict prayed in public, his normal stance was with head up
and eyes wide open. In the membership of
Christ’s Body, humility can take as many different postures and expressions of prayer
as there are persons. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I conclude this meditation by
reflecting on the public prayer of last evening at Queen of Peace, which was a
historic moment in the life of our Parish.
Earlier in the day, the hand-carved Stations of the Cross to be newly
hung in our church finally arrived from Italy.
Throughout yesterday’s special Friday Stations liturgy, a different
Knight of Columbus processed in with each Station, one by one. After the corresponding meditation and prayer
led by Deacon Bill Gallagher (another one of my substitute “voices”), I blessed
and kissed each Station, escorting the one who carried it to the exact position
in church in which it would eventually be fixed in its permanent place. In carrying the Stations, the Knights were
instructed to hold each one high enough for the faithful to see, for the public
veneration of this beautiful image of the Lord.
As it so happened, the face of each Knight was discretely shielded by
the very humanly shaped, divinely conceived mystery he was holding.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
After the placement of the 14<sup>th</sup>
Station, the final prayers, and the singing of “When I Survey the Wondrous
Cross,” I was filled with such joy---the happiness of a father beaming with
pride---as I looked around the church with head raised high to see my people
literally holding the tokens of the Lord’s Passion in their own hands. They were more than pieces of ecclesiastical
furniture; I saw the “living stones” which, St. Peter assures us, constitute
Christ’s exalted temple, His Holy and Beloved Church (1 Pt 2:5). Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus “lifted up”
on the Cross, we see together the love of God, which humbly abased itself
precisely to be revealed as “like the rest of humanity.” But in so doing, our Crucified Savior opens
the way to our divine exaltation, that---keeping our heads up---we might, as
St. Paul admonishes in the light and power of the Risen Christ, “seek the
things that are above” (Col 3:1). <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-74864310828351048572015-03-13T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-13T00:00:02.372-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">The Sacrifice of Loving God with All One’s Heart<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus warmly commends the scribe
who approaches Him to affirm that loving God “<em><span style="font-style: normal;">with all your heart,</span></em> <em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">with all your understanding, with all your
strength,</span></em> <em><span style="font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and to love your neighbor as yourself</span></em> is worth more than all burnt offerings and sacrifices.” To love God with all one’s heart---what a
sacrifice! And one’s neighbor as
oneself---what a sacrifice! What a
wonder that Bl. John Henry Cardinal Newman chose as his episcopal motto, <i>Cor ad Cor Loquitur</i>: Heart Speaks to Heart. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For meditation on Christ’s
teaching about the sacrifice of loving God with all of one’s heart, I share
with you a beautifully profound reflection from the heart of one of my dearest
friends, Lisa Lickona, whom I first met during our college days at Notre
Dame. Together with her husband Mark and
nine children, she lives on Red Rose Farm in upstate New York and is a regular
contributor to <i>Magnifcat</i>. She spoke these words of remembrance at the
funeral luncheon for her father, James Gabany.
So from Christ’s heart, to James’ heart, to Lisa’s heart, to my heart,
to your heart . . . all the way back to Christ’s heart: <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt;">James A. Gabany<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
+February 28, 2013<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over eleven years ago my father experienced his first
congestive heart failure. I was with him
that night here in Latrobe hospital. The
doctors did not know what was wrong with him at first; and, as he lay on the
bed struggling to breathe, he told me that he thought he might be dying. I went home that night, back to his house,
and lay in bed quite afraid. As you can
see, he survived that event, and went on to experience congestive heart failure
10 more times. He told me about two
months ago that he had recently asked his doctor what the record for the number
of congestive heart failures was. “He
wouldn’t answer,” my dad said, “what do you think that meant?” “Well, Dad,” I answered, “that probably meant
that you hold the record!” We both
laughed.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I am sure my dad held the record. My father did many things very well. He built the house I grew up in. He made the lake we swam in. He was, we know now because we have been
through his papers, a mechanical engineer who kept receiving awards for
excellence. He retired---and then kept
going: he worked as a courier for the <i>Tribune
Review</i>, had a stint as a realtor and took up golf. He got a bread machine and studied up on how
to make the best, most healthy bread. He
bet on the Steelers and, in a conversation about a year and a half ago, shared
with me how he had made a science of it.
He was a gambler like his own father, but his proclivity to gamble was
turned toward the stock market. And he
was very good at making money in the stock market. After his first heart attack he had made a
study of the best diets. He tried each one in turn—low cholesterol, low sugar,
flax seed, nuts. He kept track of which ones worked the best to keep his
cholesterol low. And that was the one he
followed. And obviously it worked.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That’s just how my dad was—smart, diligent, determined. He did many things well. But that night eleven years ago, when I
thought my father was dying, I lay there with the most awful ambiguous
feelings. Even though I loved and
respected my father, there was one way in which I felt he had failed. And that was that he had failed to reconcile
with my mother. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But, as they say, life is very long. The ancient Greeks pictured life as a thread
that was spun by one of the Fates, measured out by another, and cut by a third. Dad’s thread was pretty long and, if the
third Fate had been poised to cut the thread that night, something had stayed
her hand. Dad’s life went on and <i>my</i> life went on. And so I had much time to think about this
situation, to reflect on it. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the things about being middle-aged—right now I am
forty three and a half, exactly half the age of my father—is that you start to
see things in new ways. You realize that
everyone makes mistakes—sins we would call them. We are all sinners, every one of us. And not only have we all made choices that we
regret, but we have all suffered many times over from the choices of others—our
friends, our spouses, our parents, their parents. At mid-life, life starts to look less like a
neat thread that has been meticulously measured out and more like a tangled
bunch of yarn after the cats have gotten into it---a mess of choices that we
cannot sort out. That is why it is very
tempting to want to begin again, to cut the thread oneself and start over.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But what is actually needed is someone to untie the
knots---someone who has the patience to quietly sit and carefully follow the
twisted threads to where they begin; to do the work with our life that seems
impossible to us; to sort it all out; to make sense of the mess. And there <i>is</i>
someone who can do it: A few years ago
when I was first starting to see the mess that my own life is, I stumbled upon
a beautiful website with the picture of a woman who has a length of thread in
her hand and is diligently and lovingly untying it. Beneath her feet a hapless snake is being
crushed. The title of the painting is <i>“Maria, Knotenlöserin”</i>—in English,
“Mary, Untier of Knots.” If the Greeks
had the placid Fates to measure our lives, we Christians have a loving Mother who
untangles the messes that they become.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But if Mary is the untier of knots, the one who can work on
sorting out the mess, then what is left for <i>us</i>
to do? Well, when one has a tangled ball
of yarn that needs to be untangled, where does one start? By looking for an end. Our humble job in life is to not hide the
ends of the yarn. What we are most
tempted to do is to hide the messy ends, to tuck them deep down inside--to
pretend that we have it all worked out, that we know all the answers, that we
don’t need anyone’s help. But what we
actually need to do is keep looking, keep admitting fault, keep trying to get
help. And these things are what a life
of faith is about. Faith is not a smug
position in which one sits, knowing all the answers. On the contrary, a life of faith is a life
lived believing that the answers are not within oneself, that someone else will
make sense of everything, that in Him is Truth, and Goodness and all
Beauty. A person living by faith is
always trying to be better, despite his limitations—and by “be better,” I mean
learning to trust better, learning to love better. Because that gives God a chance.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And whatever else one may say about my father, James Gabany,
he did live in this way. About a month
ago, when my dad was in rehab for the second time, I had a conversation with
him in which he kept saying “I don’t know, I don’t know.” What didn’t he know? I think that he did not know what to do. He was always a doer, always found a way to
work through things. But, weakened and
confused from his poorly functioning heart, he did not know what to do. He could not get up by himself. He could not exercise. He could not read. He could not do much of anything. He couldn’t even think straight. When I talked to him, he was very upset. I suggested that he just pray. “I can’t even
remember the words of the Our Father,” he said.
“All I can remember is that one prayer: ‘Eternal rest grant unto them and
let perpetual light shine upon them. May
their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace.
Amen.’” It was the prayer for the souls
in purgatory. “That must be the prayer
you are meant to say, Dad,” I told him. <o:p></o:p></div>
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A couple days later I called again. Dad sounded much more up. He must have felt better, I thought. “How are you,” I asked. “Well, Lisa”, he said, “I’ve decided to change my attitude. I had a conversation with my roommate here, a
young guy, and he told me that fighting it will only take me longer to get
better. And so I’ve decided to begin
every day with a prayer to Genevieve, the patron saint of our family.” [Genevieve is Lisa and her husband Mark’s
daughter, born with Down Syndrome, who died in infancy and who continues to
live in Christ and share her gifts, apparently here with her Grandpa.] I knew that he wanted to be better than he
was. My dad was always trying to be
better. <o:p></o:p></div>
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At the very end, in the last hour of his life, his heart was
failing and he was in great distress. My
sister Christie was there. She told me
he kept saying two things: “Lord, help me” and “Grant me a clean and pure
heart.” As my father’s human heart was
dying, he was asking for a new heart, a heart not made of flesh. A heart of faith. And that is, I believe, what he will be
given. <i>That</i> is the end of the
string—that is all God needs to work with. I am sure that when my dad died, God
sent Mary straight to work to untie all the knots. Maybe that is one way to think about
purgatory—as the place where the messes of our lives get untangled. At any rate, that is what I am praying for
for my dad. Mary, Untier of Knots, pray
for us!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-3927825595075944752015-03-12T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-12T00:00:04.094-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 15.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Driving Out a Demon That Was Mute </span></b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">St. Luke describes in his Gospel that “Jesus was driving out a
demon that was mute, and when the demon had gone out, the mute man spoke and
the crowds were amazed.” It is curious that
the quality of muteness is ascribed both to the demon itself and to the man
likewise afflicted with an inability to speak.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">The unanimous witness of the Evangelists is that the Devil does,
in a way, know how to speak---or, more precisely, how to manipulate parasitically
the language of its host to destroy authentic communication. Think, for example, of Satan’s
pseudo-conversation with Jesus in the desert, even quoting Sacred Scripture to
misinterpret it. Real communication
involves the common love of, and search for, the truth. And embracing shared truth forms communion. The Evil One is opposed to such
communication---especially because as it leads to the exchange of divine truth,
it conduces to holy communion. Thus
Jesus calls the Devil a “liar” and the “father of lies”---in other words, a
creature ultimately incapable of meaningful speech---self-damned to be an
incoherent, fading echo. On this basis
one can rightly claim that Satan is in fact theologically mute, insofar as he
has placed himself in willful, final opposition to the Word of God made flesh
in the Person of Jesus Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">My temporary and partial muteness has made me much more sensitive
to the myriad ways in which the Devil insidiously uses our speech---and its
limitations---against us to render us virtually mute to one another and to the
Lord. First, not being able to speak
freely and with ease necessarily multiplies opportunities for isolation and its
accompanying feelings of loneliness. One
is more vulnerable to feeling ignored or misunderstood. There can even grow (secretly, of course) an
envy which resents the ability of other people to express themselves in such a
carefree or masterful way apparently involving no difficulty or sacrifice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Second, I have become much more aware of the violence involved in
deliberately refusing to speak to someone with whom there is a genuine
obligation to seek the truth in love.
The imperious <i>nuclear option</i> <i>pronouncement</i> of “I’ll never speak to that
person again!” is an ever-present temptation in a disagreement or
misunderstanding generating any heat.
Such one-sidedly chosen muteness has a demonic finality to it,
prematurely closing off opportunities for future communication in such a way
that the Lord’s Word is refused entry.
After all, only God can pronounce the “final sentence,” and that on
Judgment Day. Any pretended “permanent” closure
short of that is in fact absurd (which etymologically is rooted in deafness). Refusing to speak to each other necessarily
implies the inability to hear each other.
This spiritual attitude is literally dumb.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Finally, the medical restrictions on my speech (even using my
splint, I am only allowed four hours cumulatively each day) have made
preaching, pastoral counseling, and the administration of the Sacrament of
Confession to my people practically impossible.
I confess that this has been an excruciating trial for me, but one with salutary
benefits: Not only do I have a deeper hunger
to return to these activities with increased zeal; I also appreciate more how
precious the gifts of speech are---especially shared conversation concerning
our spiritual lives---and how demonic the logic that opposes such opportunities
to share the truth in love. I am
overjoyed that---as I type these very words---Fr. John Eze is in my
Confessional at Queen of Peace welcoming all of those who are availing
themselves of <i>“The Light is on for You”</i>
campaign in Catholic churches throughout our Diocese and nation, inviting people
back into a new conversional conversation with Christ.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">It is a true miracle to be able to speak to the Lord in the
Sacrament of Confession this Lent, exercising the holy privilege of putting
into words one’s struggles and fears and failures. The Risen Christ wants to rescue us from our
temptation to abandon our true self to alienated silence and thus allow the
Devil’s accusations (at best only partially true) and final condemnations (certainly
false) to echo endlessly in our minds, paralyze our lips, and harden our
hearts. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">So what deep, muffled sound did the Lord Jesus hear in the heart
of that possessed mute which He also listens for in our hearts? Surely the first words which begin the
Church’s prayer in the Liturgy of the Hours each morning---the Psalmist’s
cry: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth
shall proclaim Your praise!” (Ps 51:15).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-11638682778928072832015-03-11T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-11T00:00:07.218-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 15.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Obedience to the Smallest Part </span></b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Moses presents the Lord’s “statutes and decrees” to form over time
a chosen people liberated to embrace a truly good life in the wise and loving
plan of God. Jesus Christ has come not
to abolish this movement but to fulfill it.
In so doing, He Himself decrees:
“Amen, I say to you, until heaven and earth pass away, not the smallest
letter or the smallest part of a letter will pass from the law, until all
things have taken place.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">To an outsider literally “unaccustomed” to Jewish belief and
practice, such a proposal would seem a crushing burden, incapable of
observance. Even if we rightly see
Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection as ushering in the “passing away” of
“heaven and earth” as we have come to know them, thus freeing us from the
plethora of ancillary Levitical precepts, it is well worth contemplating the
joy---and even the necessity---of attentiveness to the “smallest part of a
letter.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">As I have explained in previous meditations on this blog, the
post-surgical therapeutic protocol for the on-going stabilization and healing
of my jaw is complex, exacting, and repetitive.
Five times a day, I must unhook the rubber bands from my splint, do my
specifically calibrated TMJ exercises, eat certain foods while avoiding others,
ingest multiple medications and supplements, and follow a strict regimen of
oral hygiene before anchoring my splint in place again with new rubber bands---all
on a specified timetable. The whole span
of my waking life revolves unceasingly around this ritual. I must think in advance of where I can and
cannot go, and what provisions I must bring with me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Included in my kit of medical obligations are two sets of
orthodontic elastics labeled “A” and “C.” The “A” rubber bands are 1/8 of an inch and
hold the splint on my upper teeth; I must put two of these on, five times a
day. The “C” rubber bands are 3/16 of an
inch and connect the splint to both the upper and lower teeth; I must put six
of these on (initially it was eight), five times a day. There are thirty separate hooks on the
various brackets of the braces in my mouth, and the elastics must always be
connected to specific hooks. My informal
calculations estimate that in the full nine months of my recovery, I will have
performed approximately 44,400 hookings and unhookings of tiny stretchable
circles over the metal and plastic in my mouth.
One spiritual result of this medical regimen is that I shall never read
the Book of Leviticus in the same way again!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Without expecting it, I have developed a much greater sympathy for
the Mosaic “statutes and decrees.” They
were, after all, intended not simply to restore a single injured part of one
person’s body but to shape and transform a whole culture and allow for its
survival over the course of centuries and millennia. In some respects, I have
not only “gotten used to” my new and strange form of life; I have actually
begun to interiorize its obligations in such a way that the observance of the
doctor’s therapeutic plan for me really has become easy and prompt, if not yet
always joyful. How much more so must it be
for the people the Lord first chose to be His own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt;">Although the Risen Christ has in the Paschal Mystery brought the
law of Moses to its completion and liberated us from the onerous tangle of its
prescriptions and proscriptions, He has nonetheless freed us for the Christian
life of grace. This new life entails---as
St. Thérèse of Lisieux so delicately yet pointedly and exactingly puts
it---“doing little things with great love.”
Hooking and unhooking---daily attaching ourselves to what saves and detaching
ourselves from what damns---we are even more strictly obliged to follow the Way
of the Cross, walking each step with the Lord through the little things. Small as one of the thorns on His Head or as
great as the span of His crucified and risen embrace of all things, our whole
life is ultimately kept in His loving observance. He remains forever the Alpha and Omega, both
the Law’s beginning and its end.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-69995163512401193352015-03-10T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-10T00:00:06.142-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 15.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Mercy and the Forgiveness of Debt: This is Not a Bill </span></b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
today’s Gospel, the Apostle Peter comes to Jesus with a straightforward
question about how many times he has to forgive his brother: Seven times?
His initial proposal seems at once to be that of a good fishmonger
(propose a quantity and start bargaining) as well as that of a generous Jewish
believer (the number seven recalls the covenant---beginning with the divine
commitment which creates the world in “seven days;” in Hebrew, the word “oath”
literally means “to seven oneself”). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Perhaps
Peter’s new life as an Apostle bound in the Lord to his ten new “brothers” (his
sibling Andrew plus the other ten) has prompted his question about forgiveness;
or maybe the growing misunderstandings and rejections by his Master’s
interlocutors has made the issue acute for him.
Whatever the case, one gets the sense that Peter’s intuitive
quantification of mercy’s optimal dispensation expresses a deep and urgent desire
to find the “right dose” of mercy for spiritually healthy fraternal relations
or perhaps even a prudential limit before surgically “cutting off” a diseased
member.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Christ’s
explanation of forgiving seventy-seven (or seventy times seven) times paradoxically
upends Peter’s calculations by situating them squarely in the realm of relative
quantities of debt. In Jesus’ parable, a
man initially finds himself in a nexus of mutual but asymmetrical obligations
of owing and being owed. On the one
hand, he is in debt to the “King” for a “huge amount”---so large that “there is
no way of paying it back.” By contrast,
what the man is himself owed is merely an ordinary matter between “servants,”
involving a “much smaller amount” (presumably capable of actually being repaid,
incrementally). It is precisely this
dizzying disproportion---the Lord teaches those who would follow Him---which divinely
recalibrates the human measure of mercy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Given
the signs of our times, the disorienting nature of what is rightly owed is ever
before us. My TMJ surgery, for example,
plunged me into a labyrinthine world of extravagant medical debt and niggling
insurance repayment that has all of the maddening logic and utter incomprehensibility
of Alice’s adventures in Wonderland.
Every several days, I receive the latest in an unending raft of copied
paperwork exchanges between my hospital (with its litany of differentiated but
generic “professional fees” for the attending physician [who was already paid
fully and directly before the surgery---with cashier’s check!],
anesthesiologist, radiologist, pathologist, etc.) and my insurance carrier
(with its ridiculously titled “Explanation of Benefits” explaining exactly
nothing but always reassuring: “This is
Not a Bill”). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">On
a single statement, for example, there were detailed <i>thirty</i> separate charges for my 24-hour hospital stay---each and
every one helpfully labeled in the “Description” column as simply “Hospital
Services”---ranging wildly from charges of $53,032.70 (and seventy cents!) to
$9.75. None of these amounts “charged”
has, of course, anything whatsoever to do with (a) the actual cost of the
service rendered to me, (b) what the insurance carrier allows, (c) what the insurance
carrier pays, or even (d) what I as the patient am ultimately liable for
paying. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
overriding and underlying truth of contemporary health care economics that is <i>not</i> stated on any communication from
either the hospital or the insurance company is that there is apparently no straightforward
way to separate out what any given individual justly owes from the tangle of
debts accrued by the totality of those who use our health care system; for
better or worse, sustainably or unsustainably, we are in this together and become
responsible---one way or another---for contributing to, or helping to subsidize
payment of, someone else’s debt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">For
me it is a relief to know that---thanks to Bishop Rhoades’ care for his
Priests---the Church in our Diocese covers the extraordinary medical expenses
of my jaw surgery. This means that I
literally owe my restored health to the sacrificial generosity of the people of
God. Spiritually and materially, I am
more than ever a debtor both to the flock I have explicitly been given to serve,
as well as to the goodness of countless people whom I shall never meet until
Judgment Day. This gift has saved---and
continues to sustain---my life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Thus,
in the encounter in today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus ultimately wants to teach
Peter more than a simple calculation of forgiveness; He gives the “Rock” on
whom He will build His Church a foundational introduction on how interconnected
human lives actually are in the endlessly variegated giving and receiving of
grace. We are formed as Christians by
this unquantifiably wondrous exchange of mercy and its extension in the life of
the Church. Christ gives to Peter not a
number (with an implied limit) but the very keys to the salvific Passion of His
own Person. On the Cross and from the
empty tomb, the Crucified and Risen One will reveal the new calculus of
infinitely gratuitous love, which transcends mere earthly multiplication (even
seventy times seven) through a qualitative leap into heavenly integration. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-47218934594662195702015-03-09T00:00:00.000-07:002015-03-09T00:00:01.720-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-line-height-alt: 15.0pt; mso-outline-level: 1; text-align: center;">
<b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;">Contending With the Beast </span></b><span style="color: #714b40; font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 16.0pt; letter-spacing: -.75pt; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-font-kerning: 18.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">In
today’s Gospel, Jesus addresses the formative (and formidable) assembly of His
little hometown of Nazareth. Teaching in
the synagogue in which He grew in His human nature to full stature, Christ
essentially speaks the difficult truth to them that His ministry of furthering
the Kingdom does not exist for the indulgence of their expectations. The Lord’s miracles are to be distributed
more widely and for greater purposes than the self-aggrandizement of one’s own.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">The
reaction to this news was collective and hostile. Those who once listened to Jesus---perhaps
for years---with pleasure “were all filled with fury” and together “rose up,
drove Him out of the town, and led Him to the brow of the hill on which their
town had been built, to hurl Him down headlong.” The visceral and
vicious rejection by Nazareth's "body politic" of one of its own
demonstrates a corporate untrustworthiness---at least for a time---with the
mystery of the Gospel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">During
the period in which I was contending with the very painful unknowns of my jaw’s
deterioration, I came upon the following poem by Joe Wenderoth entitled, “My
Life.” Published in <i>Poetry 180: A Turning Back to
Poetry </i>(Random House, 2003), it reads:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Somehow
it got into my room.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
found it, and it was, naturally, trapped.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">It
was nothing more than a frightened animal.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since
then I raised it up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
kept it for myself, kept it in my room,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Kept
it for its own good.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
named the animal, My Life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
found food for it and fed it with my bare hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
let it into my bed, and let it breathe in my sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
the animal, in my love, in my constant care,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Grew
up to be strong, and capable of many clever tricks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">One
day, quite recently,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
was running my hand over the animal’s side<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
I came to understand<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">That
it could very easily kill me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
realized, further, that it would kill me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">This
is why it exists, why I raised it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Since
then I have not known what to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
stopped feeding it,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Only
to find that its growth<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Has
nothing to do with food.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
stopped cleaning it<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
found that it cleans itself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
stopped singing it to sleep<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And
found that it falls asleep faster without my song.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
don’t know what to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
no longer make My Life do tricks.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
leave the animal alone<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">And,
for now, it leaves me alone, too.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">I
have nothing to say, nothing to do.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Between
My Life and me,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">A
silence is coming.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Together,
we will not get through this.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">Rather
than parse and reduce (and ultimately violate) Wenderoth’s work with my
exegesis, suffice it to say that I found in his words a very penetrating
description of what I felt---through my chronic TMJ problem---to be my body’s
inner rebellion. Not only could my body
not repair itself; in its desperately angry pain, it was turning against
me. It took a doctor’s professional examination,
anesthesia, surgery, and on-going splint therapy to resolve this
contention. And even with this happy
outcome, one’s animality is what it is; one’s mortality (and accompanying
anguish, in its various rational and unrational forms) also is what it is.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12.0pt;">But
the hope and glory of these Forty Days of contending in the
wilderness---surrounded by beasts and angels---is that Jesus Christ is Who He
is. Indeed, He is “I AM Who I AM.” He is Emmanuel---God with us. Thus the Lord experiences the reaction of
Nazareth as the fevered rebellion of His own Body; yet as God He passes
peacefully and sovereignly (yet literally and ultimately redemptively) through
this pain. The Good News is that in
moving beyond self-indulgence, Christ is restoring and extending His Mystical
Body, the Church, in all of its members.
The plentiful gifts of divine healing do in fact come in the bigger
picture and over the greater span of time leading beyond time to the fullness
of time. But the required operation of
the Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Savior remains what it is: The deeper necessity of conversion to the
Gospel imposes its own timetable on “My Life.”
The sooner we stop fighting with our Head, the sooner we actually will
get through this together, fully alive, finally immortal, and happy in the End.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6020002035725769508.post-68384475914121930782015-03-08T00:00:00.001-08:002015-03-08T13:14:21.425-07:00<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-size: 16.0pt;">Like the Rest of Humanity<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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When Christ shares with us today the parable of the Pharisee
and the Publican, it is worth pondering the differing placement of each figure in
the temple area, as well as their contrasting prayers. Jesus notes that the Pharisee “took up his position”---presumably
at the front---because, by contrast, the Publican (or tax collector) “stood off
at a distance.” As for their respective
prayers, the Pharisee “spoke [his] prayer to himself,” while the Publican “would
not even raise his eyes to heaven.”
Moreover, the content of the Pharisee’s prayer is the supremely absurd
statement: “O God, I thank you that I am
not like the rest of humanity;” the Publican speaks simply and honestly, “O
God, be merciful to me a sinner.” And
lest anyone miss the moral of this story, it concludes with the maxim: “[E]veryone who
exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be
exalted.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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My liturgical task and position as
an ordained Priest is to preside “at the front” of the assembly, <i>“in persona Christi”</i>---in the person of
Christ---no less! On the day of my
Ordination, November 3, 2001 in the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception,
there was a particular moment immediately following Bishop D’Arcy’s invocation
of the Holy Spirit and laying on of hands in which I received a curious, almost
prophetic admonition that I shall never forget.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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One of my seminary professors, Fr.
Romanus Cessario, O.P., was vesting me for the first time in my chasuble, the
outer garment worn by Priests when they celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass. Apparently noticing that my head
had been bowed toward the ground throughout the Sacred Liturgy (because that
was the habitual posture of my prayer at Mass to which I had grown most
comfortable over the years), he whispered in my ear with firm and almost
scolding authority: “Keep your head <i>up</i>!”
No hug, no tears, no sentimentality---just implicitly the bracing commission: You are a shepherd now and must exercise
oversight---eyes fixed on the people for whom you must lay down your life; on
the danger-filled horizon to guard against wolves intent on slaughter; and on
the Lord from Whose divine shepherding you will receive necessary guidance by a
gaze relentlessly focused on the “Big Picture” of eternal salvation.<o:p></o:p></div>
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About eleven years into my
Priesthood---when I made my first visit last September to the Piper Clinic in
Florida for the initial evaluation of the severity of my TMJ problem---I shared
with the medical staff my narrative of excruciating jaw pain and its probable
cause. Dr. Mark Piper listened intently
and sympathetically, spoke to me about joint displacement and cartilage deterioration,
and then looked me in the eye and (from seemingly out of nowhere) asked about
my neck. He noted that my head was bowed
forward and that this downward bent was both a symptom and a contributing cause
of my jaw pain. Moreover, he insisted on
physical therapy for this condition, both immediately following surgery and as
part of a lifetime of rehabilitation. I
was stunned and incredulous. For the
second time in my life, I was essentially being told by a specialist of utmost
competence: Keep your head <i>up</i>!<o:p></o:p></div>
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Since returning to Queen of Peace
and taking my place in silence beside Fr. John Eze---the principal celebrant
of, and preacher at, all of the Masses of my beloved pastorate---I have had
plenty of opportunities to ponder my simultaneously exalted and humbled
position. There I am in the sanctuary
for all to see but none to hear, my dumbly protruding mouth plugged with
plastic and metal, feeling like a piece of ecclesiastical furniture. But I also ponder the astounding grace of
being the beneficiary of so much sympathy and kind indulgence---an avalanche of
get-well cards, buckets of soup, and countless prayers and words of
encouragement. I have received more
support to "lift me up" than most people who have suffered and
continue to suffer problems deeper than my own---including many parishioners at
Queen of Peace---who may lack such a visibly extended network which often
eagerly comes to the assistance of a public figure like a Pastor. I am tempted
for more reasons than ever to bow my head and close my eyes to pray, brought
closer beyond my choosing to the Eucharistic Lord, Who chose in His silent
abiding in the Tabernacle to be both adored and ignored as “a piece of
ecclesiastical furniture.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In my prayer during these days of
the <i>sede vacante</i> as we await the
election of a new Pope, I also cannot help but think of the contrast in the
bodily posture of prayer between Bl. John Paul II and Benedict XVI. The Polish Pope (and former actor) would ever
lift his eyes to the crowds he loved but would always bow his head and close
his eyes when he prayed, all the more poignantly when Parkinson’s disease
cruelly bent his neck and humiliatingly bowed his back with the burden of the
Cross of infirmity. Benedict, by
contrast, continually attempted before the crowds to direct attention away from
himself, finally---in his abdication of the papacy---taking his place (like the
Publican) “off at a distance” to pray.
But when Benedict prayed in public, his normal stance was with head up
and eyes wide open. In the membership of
Christ’s Body, humility can take as many different postures and expressions of prayer
as there are persons. <o:p></o:p></div>
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I conclude this meditation by
reflecting on the public prayer of last evening at Queen of Peace, which was a
historic moment in the life of our Parish.
Earlier in the day, the hand-carved Stations of the Cross to be newly
hung in our church finally arrived from Italy.
Throughout yesterday’s special Friday Stations liturgy, a different
Knight of Columbus processed in with each Station, one by one. After the corresponding meditation and prayer
led by Deacon Bill Gallagher (another one of my substitute “voices”), I blessed
and kissed each Station, escorting the one who carried it to the exact position
in church in which it would eventually be fixed in its permanent place. In carrying the Stations, the Knights were
instructed to hold each one high enough for the faithful to see, for the public
veneration of this beautiful image of the Lord.
As it so happened, the face of each Knight was discretely shielded by
the very humanly shaped, divinely conceived mystery he was holding.<o:p></o:p></div>
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After the placement of the 14<sup>th</sup>
Station, the final prayers, and the singing of “When I Survey the Wondrous
Cross,” I was filled with such joy---the happiness of a father beaming with
pride---as I looked around the church with head raised high to see my people
literally holding the tokens of the Lord’s Passion in their own hands. They were more than pieces of ecclesiastical
furniture; I saw the “living stones” which, St. Peter assures us, constitute
Christ’s exalted temple, His Holy and Beloved Church (1 Pt 2:5). Keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus “lifted up”
on the Cross, we see together the love of God, which humbly abased itself
precisely to be revealed as “like the rest of humanity.” But in so doing, our Crucified Savior opens
the way to our divine exaltation, that---keeping our heads up---we might, as
St. Paul admonishes in the light and power of the Risen Christ, “seek the
things that are above” (Col 3:1). <o:p></o:p></div>
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13282454298838943471noreply@blogger.com0