MATTHEW KEEPS LEAVING HIS POST

 

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Today the Church in invites us to celebrate the faith of Saint Matthew. You know the story of how he was converted from a sinner to a disciple in the blink of an eye:

As Jesus passed by,

he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the customs post.

He said to him, "Follow me."

And he got up and followed him. (Mt 9:9)

Matthew's response is an extreme example of someone following the invitation that Jesus extends to each one of us:

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,

wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.....
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26, 27, 33)

The last verse interesting, especially the verb that's translated here as "renounce." In Greek, the word apotassomai means "to say farewell, to take leave of." In an earlier chapter of Luke, Jesus invites a man to follow him, and the fellow responds, "Let me go first and say good-bye to (apotassomai) my father." But in the above passage, the word is used in the extended sense of "to part with possessions."

This morning I asked myself, "What are the things that I need to say good-bye to in order to follow Jesus?" Each of us has his or her unique list, obviously, that may include worrying, trying to control other people, being preoccupied about material goods or money, and so on. The verb apotassomai  gave me pause: "unless you say good-bye to whatever you have..."  Okay, so let's say that I decide to give up my habit of trying to control everything, so that I can follow Christ. Let's say, further, that my resolution works and that I find myself walking across the wilderness with Jesus as a faithful follower. Then, I imagined the following scene this morning: As I'm following Jesus, I glance behind me and I see a little cloud of dust on the horizon, but I don't think anything of it. Ten minutes later, though, I look again and the cloud has gotten much bigger, and much closer. Clearly it's being caused by something travelling across the dusty wilderness -- something that's following us. I begin to wonder what it could be. The next time I look over my shoulder, I can make out what it is that's following us: it's my need to control all the people around me! The very thing that I left behind in order to walk with Jesus. The very thing that I "said goodbye to" not so long ago.

The problem is twofold: First, that although I had said good-bye to the habit, the habit hadn't said goodbye to me, and second, that I thought I was doing this all on my own, like spiritual a do-it-yourself project. Both of these are bad mistakes. Think of this image: You say goodbye to someone who you've come to realize is a bad influence on you; you leave them with a sigh of relief, not intending to see them ever again. But shortly thereafter, this person comes ringing your doorbell or starts texting you, clearly thinking that they're still part of your life. How frustrating! And you thought you were rid of this problem person! It seems that "saying goodbye" is not always enough to finish the job of separating from that other.

So, I've "said goodbye" to some practice or habit that could hold me back from following Jesus more closely. I think of Matthew having to constantly give up his former life as a tax-collector. My "conversion" project is not as dramatic as Matthews's was. But I bet that he was a lot like me in this: one goodbye wasn't enough: I need to keep repeating the same goodbye every day, I need to be converted not just once but constantly.


Clearly this can get frustrating and tiring -- which is why Jesus tells me to keep walking close to him: After all, this isn't my project as much as it is His.

I pray on the feast of St. Matthew for the gift of humility so that I can keep admitting that I depend on the Lord's help to keep converting every day of my life. I hope that I'll be able to accept his help and hear his words,"Do not be afraid. I am with you!"

A TALE OF TWO BRIDGES

Bridge #1

Le pont de l'Europe

The Pont de 'l'Europe was built in 1975 to carry the traffic of the national highway N100 across the Rhône River at Avignon in southern France. As I drove across it on my way to visit the Palace of the Popes, I glanced to my left to catch a glimpse of a far more famous bridge. This second one, although famous, is disappointing in this: it ends partway across the river!

Bridge #2

This second brdge has been made famous because of the charming children's song called Sur le Pont d'Avignon ("On the Bridge of Avignon") written in the mid-1800's.

Also known as le Pont Saint-Bénézet , the Pont d'Avignon was a medieval wooden bridge constructed between 1177 and 1185. It was soon replaced by a stone one composed of 22 arches, an engineering feat 900 meters long. Because of the frequent powerful floods that came down the Rhône, the bridge was in constant need of repair as various arches would collapse and fall into the river. The task of constant repairs became more and more burdensome until by the 1600's the bridge was abandoned, and its arches were dismantled or simply allowed to wash away until today only four of those twenty-two arches are left. And this is the "bridge" that the children sing about in the song.

Learning from the bridges

St. Monica

The remaining four arches hold a powerful lesson when compared to the sleek bridge of the N100 nearby.The contrast is perfect for the celebration of today's feast of Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo. She was a peasant woman whose Christian faith was so deep and strong that her unceasing prayers for the conversion of her son were finally answered, giving the Church one of her greatest thinkers and theologians.

Her unwavering faith was like the Pont de l'Europe, reaching, as it were, all the way to the Lord in heaven. Meanwhile her brilliant but wayward son was, so to speak, wandering lost on the old Pont d'Avignon, using only his intellect to get to Ultimate Truth. 

Finally, thanks to Monica's prayerful tears, he received the grace of conversion. Gradually he began to seethat the bridge he was on could never get him to where he so desperately desired to go, because it stops in midstream. He would later write, "You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you." 

It seems that millions of people today are stuck, like Augustine was, on the bridge to nowhere. Their hearts are restless, and they keep seeking for Ultimate happiness and meaning in the material world, and exclude God from the picture. Given all these people wandering on the bridge that can't take them anywhere, the catastrophic results we see around us are not surprising. 

Let us pray to Saint Monica and her son that more and more of our brothers and sisters may be given the gift of conversion and so come to faith in God in whom alone their hearts can find rest.

Saints Monica and Augustine, pray for us!

  

MY ROLE AT CANA

The gospel for this Sunday, Jan. 16, 2022, is John's account of the miracle at the wedding feast of Cana (Jn 2:1-11). John's is the only gospel that recounts this beautiful story, so rich in symbolism and encouragement. In this post, however, instead of offering yet one more analysis of the miracle of Jesus' changing water into wine I'd like to offer my own rather offbeat look at the miracle. 

On the Sunday after Christmas, the CCD children of St. Augustine's Parish in Newark presented their annual Christmas pageant, including Roman soldiers, shepherds, angels, magi, as well as Mary and Joseph.  One of the show-stopping moments was the appearance of the Star in the East: the part of the star was a blond five year old girl whose role was to hold up the golden star on a white stick. She seemed to enjoy being the "star" of the pageant.

As I began reflecting on the story of the miracle at Cana this morning, I was about to imagine myself in the role of each of the different characters in the scene: the servants, Mary, and so forth. Then I thought to myself (probably influenced by remembering the little girl who played the part of the star of Bethlehem) "Why not be a water jar?"

So I became one of those six stone jars, holding about thirty gallons of water. A very noble and honest task, if a little humdrum. People hardly notice me sitting here off to the side, minding my own business. Just a big container of well water. But suddenly something happens to me. I don't know how -- it isn't anything that I've done -- but now I've become  source of joy and pleasure for people who encounter me.  My role has changed from being a jar of water to a jar of wonderful wine. 

The gospel tells us that this is the first of Jesus' "signs." I've become, then, a sign of the breaking in of the Kingdom, a sign that the Lord is on the move again, entering history to transform it and us. 

How does this transformation happen? In countless ways, I suppose.  For instance, when I receive theHoly Eucharist I become what I eat. When the Holy Spirit whispers to me in a comment made by a friend, say, or calls to me in the words of some writer, or when I experience someone's loving act toward me. The Lord intends that each of these should transform me. The change is happening over and over, all the time, provided that I'm open to it. 

But there's more: This process of transformation runs in both directions. If the Lord Jesus uses people and events to transform the water of my life into wine, then he asks me, in my role as a jar of wine at the feast to be an active sign of his love for others. Every time I encounter someone, Jesus is asking me to be a sign of his boundless, unconditional love, a source of joy for that person. The bible says somewhere that "wine cheers the heart" of us humans. That's the role the Lord is casting me in right now, to be a source and a cause of joy, to "cheer the heart "of those around me, to be a sign of the Kingdom of Love that has broken in on the world with the arrival of the Messiah.

Will you try out for the role along with me? 

TESTING OUR FAITH

I have a holy card at my place in the monastic choir where we pray the Liturgy of the Hours. The card says, in French, "Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau."  "Rejoice! God is preparing a new world." 

Waiting for the vaccine.

I keep this card there all through advent each year. Our advent waiting and longing and preparing is to be done, we believe, in a spirit of rejoicing. But as the weeks go by, I've been looking at that card with an increasingly jaundiced eye. 

Rejoice during this advent time? Good luck with that! Eight-hundred thousand people in America alone have died from the corona virus, with the Omicron variant promising a new wave of sickness. Happy advent!

The town of Mayfield KY, Dec. 2021

Tornadoes have ripped through several states in the south, obliterating entire towns with names like Mayfield, Kentucky. Rejoice, folks! God is preparing a new world!

Any of us could easily add to this list of depressing reports of rising crime rates in our cities, people dying of starvation, and on and on.

In the face of all this misery, I sometimes stare at my holy card and ask myself how we're supposed to understand its joyful message, "Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau."   

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If you are reading this blog, then chances are that you are not an atheist or an agnostic; but that doesn't mean that you aren't troubled by the presence of so much evil assailing us these days. As a person of faith, you already know that the meaning of your life does not lie on scientific, provable certainties, but rather in the world of mystery, a world that lies infinitely beyond the reach of your intellect.

Still, sometimes you and I find our faith shaken in the face of tragedies and evils. But I know you're not expecting this post to offer you nice definite answers to the problem of evil. What I can offer, though, are a couple of ways to thinking about the question. I hope they might be of some help.

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WHAT'S THE STORY?

First, instead of calling on science and reason in the face of horrible evils, try thinking in terms of the narrative that our Christian faith presents us with. The bible tells us that we are part of a single sacred saga of God's love, extending from before creation until the end of time. God's way of loving is often mysterious, and the story line seems to us to disappear from time to time. (Ask the Jews who experienced the holocaust.) Some people lose their faith as a result of these atrocities, feeling that the story of a Loving God makes no sense under the circumstances. The best you and  can do is be aware of the fact that our faith is itself a gift. 

THE CENTRAL SECRET

Second, The heart of the Story of God's love is "The Paschal Mystery." This central mystery of our faith includes not only the resurrection on Easter Sunday, but also what preceded it: the awful torture and crucifixion and death of our Savior on Good Friday. It's all one single "mystery:" Christ's suffering-death-resurrection. You can't separate them from one another. This means that to the eyes of faith, even the worst of evils in our own lives will one day be transformed by Christ's death and resurrection: Suffering is transformed in the means of salvation, defeat is transformed into victory, and death itself is transformed into New Life. 

Once again, no one can prove this to you rationally; belief in the transformative power of the Paschal Mystery is a gift. How come God doesn't give that gift to everyone equally? How come some folks are left behind, crushed under the weight of absurd evil in their lives? The answer is already contained in the notion of "mystery." It's a mystery why God distributes that gift the way God does. Once again, you and I cannot fathom God's ways by using our intellects.  

Trusting in God is clearly a question of a personal relationship: Do I trust God enough to believe that the evils around me will one day be transformed 9nto Salvation for the whole world?

A FINAL WORD

Third, started this post with a couple of French sentences. Let me finish with a fascinating verb I encountered when traveling in France. Several times I was asked, "Patientez, s'il vous plaît." I was struck by the way that French makes "patient" into a verb: "Would you kindly patient while we check our records." 

So, while God is "preparing a new world," let's you and I try to "patient" together, supporting each other when times are bad as we wait for the coming of Our Lord Jesus Christ! 

"Réjouissons-nous! Dieu prépare un monde nouveau. -- Patientez!" 

Br. Bruno and the Frog

 

My apologies if you were looking for my post yesterday morning. I was giving a retreat to Brother Bruno at our house up in the mountains of Sussex County, N.J. The following is a slightly edited version of my final conference to him this afternoon. It may be familiar t0 s90me of you, but its message bears repeating.

The front of the main building of the University of Salamanca is decorated with its ornate façade, made up of carved stone panels towering three stories above the twin wooden doors, is one of the masterpieces of plateresque carving. Commissioned by Ferdinand and Isabella in the late 1520s, it is crowded with floral motifs, royal portraits, characters from pagan mythology, and secret symbols.

Scholars disagree on the exact identity of many of the figures: is that Isabel of Portugal or is it the goddess Hebe? Is that couple in the upper right corner Eve and Cain or Venus and Mars? In any case, it seems likely that many of the figures tell the story of the painful process by which a student in the middle ages would, by dint of long, hard work, pass through various stages and long years of study until he finally reached his goal and became a doctor of law or philosophy. 

You can easily pick out Hercules, for example, in his lion-skin disguise, holding a club. He’s there to remind the students that university studies are as difficult as the twelve labors of Hercules. 

Can you see the frog?

The most beloved of all those carved figures is almost hidden down in the lower right-hand corner: a little stone frog, known as la rana buena suerte, “the frog of good luck,” is Salamanca’s unofficial mascot. Squatting there on top of a human skull, however, it is not a sign of good luck at all, nor a symbol of gradual success or hard work. This tiny creature is one of the most powerful symbols on the whole façade. It’s a symbol of transformation.

Transformation is the central driving force in the world of living things, yet it is so common that we take it for granted. We’re used to the idea that seeds become flowers, caterpillars turn into butterflies, and acorns become oak trees. As common as this process is, however, it remains one of the great mysteries of nature: a creature actually stops being one thing in order to become something else.

No one thinks of a flower as just a big seed, or an oak tree as simply an overgrown acorn. A flower happens only because some seed stops being a seed. An oak tree happens only when some acorn, buried in the cold, dark earth, stops being an acorn, bursts open, and becomes something new.

This, then, is the symbolism of la rana. A frog begins life as something else, a tadpole. The purpose of a tadpole is to stop being a tadpole one day in order to become a frog. A tadpole whose life’s goal was to become the biggest, fattest, shiniest tadpole in the world would be missing the whole reason for being a tadpole in the first place—and would probably end up a very unhappy little creature. The tadpole has to die to its wiggling tail and sleek shape so that a new frog can come into the pond. 

Jesus uses an image of transformation to teach one of his central ideas: “Unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat.” What’s true of seeds, acorns, and tadpoles, he is saying, is true of me as well. Jesus never challenges me to be a better Christian, never asks me to improve, to become holier or more saintly. He never asks me to grow. He simply keeps asking me to be transformed—to die.

It’s clear enough that a caterpillar is meant to be transformed into a butterfly, and a tadpole into a frog. But what kind of being am I supposed to be transformed into? Saint Basil of Caesarea answers boldly: “A human being is a creature whose purpose is to become God.” Saint Paul announces the same thing to the Galatians, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.”

In order to be transformed into a new being, however, I have to follow Jesus’ example, and do what he did on the cross: let go of everything I am, everything I have, everything I’m familiar with. If I try to hold onto the comfortable predictability of gradual growth, I’ll be like the tadpole who just wants to be a bigger tadpole, and my life will have no real purpose. I can become Christ only in the dozens of daily deaths I die to my old self: when I reach out in love to someone at the risk of being rejected or hurt, or when I gamble everything in deep, self-abandoning prayer, or when I surrender to God’s will for me in some disagreeable task. 

This is why Brother Bruno’s monastic vows ceremony on Sunday, Oct. 17, 2021 is modeled on the baptismal rite, complete with the clothing in a new garment (at solemn vows the rite includes the praying of the litany of the saints) to remind him that he is leaving behind an old life to take up a new and different one. We become who we really are only when we let go of the security and safety of the known and allow the Spirit to make something entirely new out of us. 

So, pray for Br. Bruno, that the Lord will be able to transform him next Sunday!

A GOD TOO SMALL

For my lectio this morning I spent time with the sentence "[Jesus'] heart was moved with pity for them." As I put myself in the scene, and felt Jesus wrap his arms around me the way a shepherd might a little lamb, I started to notice a familiar disconnect. I've been confronting it more intensely recently in various books I happen to be reading. I'll try to unpack at least some of what I've been wrestling with.

Forty years ago J.B. Philips wrote a book with the catchy title "Your God is Too Small." Although I didn't read the book, I've never forgotten the title. It's only very recently that I've started to realize that the challenge in that title is not addressed just to others but to me. My God seems to be getting smaller every day! Here are two indicators that I've been faced with in the past few days: 

- The great Catholic theologian Karl Rahner reminds me that "God" cannot be thought of as one more object within my perceived world, alongside everything else in creation. The idea of "God" has to go beyond (transcend) the limits not just of my senses, but even of my limited intellect. Jesus took on flesh and dwelt among us to bring this transcendent God within our experience, revealing something of God's inner mysterious Trinitarian life of Love. But the mystery of God still remains too big for me to simply latch on to. Beware of people who have God in their pocket!

The God of Moralism at work

-- The Franciscan Richard Rohr keeps throwing down various versions of a certain challenge all the time. Most recently I came across it in his "Immortal Diamond." Religion, he contends, always makes God into an object of some kind, and reduces God to the role of manager of a great System of rewards and punishments. "Moralism" offers you the goal of heaven if you obey the rules scrupulously. From the perspective of "moralism" God's love and compassion revealed by Jesus are suddenly restricted to a few people who follow the moral formula. As for the rest of humanity, well, sorry, Jesus, but they don't qualify. The system of "moralism" seems to be what religion has usually been reduced to. What, then, becomes of the Jesus of the gospel whose heart is moved with pity at the sight of all the tired and hungry people who are like sheep without a shepherd? 

Is this a perfect caterpillar? 

Jesus doesn't call me to moralistic perfection but rather to transformation, Transformation means letting go of my individualistic project of earning my way to heaven by following rules and measuring up to various minimum standards. The "Good News" that's presented from the pulpit is almost always from the perspective of "moralistic" religion supervised by a God who calculates and measures everyone's worthiness or unworthiness. Do I dare to push back and object that this God is way too small! Again, where is the Jesus of the Gospel?  

Only seldom do we hear about the foreboding challenge of "transformative" religion as opposed to "moralistic" religion. One big stumbling block to "transformative" religion is that the latter requires me to let go of my comfortable well-understood God. The total letting go required by transformative religion requires complete trust in a mysterious God who loves me and everyone unconditionally and infinitely and intimately. A God who does not follow our human rules. Most of us have never been invited by the Church to a personal intimate friendship with God, a friendship that can ultimately transform us into someone totally new.

Instead we are presented with at God who is way too small for that kind of intimacy: a God whomeasures, who gets even with people who screw up, who is concerned about the rules being followed. so that no one unworthy can share in the Eternal Reward that is due only to those who merit it. This is a human-scale God, a God who is way, way too small. No wonder so many good people are no longer interested in dealing with such a God.

Because of time constraints, let me leave the problem hanging here for a week, if you don't mind.

Meanwhile, try praying with the scriptures and receiving the Eucharist and encountering others with the idea of encountering a mysterious loving God who is incredibly bigger than the one you may be familiar with and are comfortable doing business with.

The God of Transformation at Work

SMALL RELIGION, SMALL GOD

 I'm rereading Richard Rohr's "Things Hidden: Scripture as Spirituality," which I highly recommend. On page 148 he offers an example of how God forgives and transforms us. Here are a few lines:

Paul, of course, in the New Testament, is presented as a transformed accuser, a converted persecutor, maybe even a mass-murderer, whom we now call a saint. No one had been more pious, Jewish and law-abiding than Paul (Philippians 3:5-16). He was a perfect Pharisee, as he said, and suddenly he realized that in the name of love he had become hate, in the name of religion he had become a murderer, in the name of goodness he had become evil.

Paul was set up to recognize the dark side of religion, the scape-goating mechanism, the self-serving laws of small religion. He went global and that changed everything, and is probably why most of us are reading the bible today." 148

During the Easter season the daily mass lectionary has been taking us through the story of the early church with readings from the Acts of the Apostles, so we're familiar with the story of Saul's conversion as well as the opposition of the Pharisees and Scribes. One phrase in the above passage caught my eye, however, and gave me pause: "the self-serving laws of small religion." 

What does "small religion" look like? I'm afraid that a description might start hitting pretty close to home for some of us. "Small religion" limits God's sphere of action only to members of the particular in-group, those who have the legal formulas for pleasing God and the moral laws that, if obeyed, guarantee ones entrance into eternal reward. 

The first Christians were, as we know, all Jews. When non-Jews began being converted to Christ and seeking Baptism, these Jewish Christians faced a momentous decision: Should non-Jews be required to become Jews first and follow Jewish dietary laws and observe the sabbath? The principles of "small religion" were telling many of these Jewish Christians to insist that any convert must observe Jewish laws (Acts 15:1). But Peter, Paul and others, seeing how the Holy Spirit had come down upon these gentile converts, insisted that there be no such restrictions placed on the gentile converts. Thanks in great part to Paul, who had once been a champion of "small religion," the temptation to make Christianity a "small religion" of exclusivity and self-serving laws had been overcome, and the Good News could then begin to spread throughout the Gentile world with a speed that still to this day amazes even atheistic historians and scholars.  

To what extent is my religion a "small religion?" The answer is not a matter of black-or-white, but one of degree. For example, to what extent am I so preoccupied with obeying rules and regulations that I overlook any intimate personal relationship with God? To what extent is my God a fearsome enforcer who punishes us sinners (the contrary of the loving Father revealed to us by Jesus in the parables)? What is my God's attitude toward atheists, or Buddhists or Jews or Protestants? To what extent is my religion confined merely to Church and its clear boundaries, obligations, authority structure and so forth? I'm afraid that there are Catholics who take great comfort in the "small religion" aspects of our church, and ignore the saving message of the Universal Christ who came to save the whole of humanity. We could all do well to listen (again?) to the message of a certain visionary priest and scholar. 

The French Jesuit, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955), was a priest, scientist, paleontologist, theologian and philosopher who taught that the idea of evolution was at the center of God's ongoing plan for the world, and that everything in the universe was taking part in this development; the Universal Christ and his mystical body were part of this evolution that was heading toward one ultimate goal. His vision of the Holy Eucharist is a perfect antidote to "small religion's" view of the world.

When he gazed at the host as he elevated it during mass, he saw not God captured in a small wafer of bread for the benefit of the people attending mass, but a point from which infinite energy of divine love radiated out  beyond the farthest galaxies into the entire universe, and into every electron and every atom in every molecule in the universe. This is not "small religion!" He encourages us to see ourselves as members of the Body of the Universal Christ, the One who loves all of creation with unbounded love. This is the Christ that Saint Paul spent the rest of his life preaching.

May the graces of the Easter Season open our hearts and minds to this vision of a universal Christ and a universal Church!

KEEP SAYING GOODBYE!

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Sunday's gospel passage gives us Jesus' instructions to his disciples about the cost of following him. It includes these verses:

“If anyone comes to me without hating his father and mother,

wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life,
he cannot be my disciple.
Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me
cannot be my disciple.....
anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions
cannot be my disciple.” (Lk 14:26, 27, 33)

The last verse interesting, especially the verb that's translated here as "renounce." In Greek, the word apotassomai means "to say farewell, to take leave of." In an earlier chapter of Luke, Jesus invites a man to follow him, and the fellow responds, "Let me go first and say good-bye to (apotassomai) my father." But in this Sunday's passage, the word is used in the extended sense of "to part with possessions."

This morning I asked myself, "What are the things that I need to say good-bye to in order to follow Jesus?" Each of us has his or her unique list, obviously, that may include worrying, trying to control other people, being preoccupied about material goods or money, and so on. The verb apotassomai  gave me pause: "unless you say good-bye to whatever you have..."  Okay, so let's say that I decide to give up my habit of trying to control everything, so that I can follow Christ. Let's say, further, that my resolution works and that I find myself walking across the wilderness with Jesus as a faithful follower. Then, I imagined the following scene this morning: As I'm following Jesus, I glance behind me and I see a little cloud of dust on the horizon, but I don't think anything of it. Ten minutes later, though, I look again and the cloud has gotten much bigger, and much closer. Clearly it's being caused by something travelling across the dusty wilderness -- something that's following us. I begin to wonder what it could be. The next time I look over my shoulder, I can make out what it is that's following us: it's my need to control all the people around me! The very thing that I left behind in order to walk with Jesus. The very thing that I "said goodbye to" not so long ago.

The problem is twofold: First, that although I had said good-bye to the habit, the habit hadn't said goodbye to me, and second, that I thought I was doing this all on my own, like spiritual a do-it-yourself project. Both of these are bad mistakes. Think of this image: You say goodbye to someone who you've come to realize is a bad influence on you; you leave them with a sigh of relief, not intending to see them ever again. But shortly thereafter, this person comes ringing your doorbell or starts texting you, clearly thinking that they're still part of your life. How frustrating! And you thought you were rid of this problem person! It seems that "saying goodbye" is not always enough to finish the job of separating from that other.

So, I've "said goodbye" to some practice or habit that could hold me back from following Jesus more closely. That's my "conversion" project. But then I begin to realize that one goodbye isn't enough: I need to keep repeating the same goodby every day, I need to be converted not just once but constantly.


Clearly this can get frustrating and tiring -- which is why Jesus tells me to keep walking close to him: After all, this isn't my project as much as it is his!

I pray for the gift of humility so that I can keep admitting that I depend on his help to keep converting every day of my life. I hope that I'll be able to accept his help and hear his words,"Do not be afraid. I am with you!"

CLICK TO DELETE?

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Earlier this week, in preparing a talk on the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I reflected on one common way of thinking about the sacrament: our souls are washed clean of guilt and, in the eyes of God, our sins are annihilated. I thought of the option on the pull-down menu in my computer’s search engine: “Erase Search History.” With a left-click all the searches I’ve made disappear as if  they’d never happened.

Then I came across this rather provocative idea: “In the strict sense, our sins are not obliterated as if they had never happened. God does not erase our history.”

Christ reigning from the cross

Think of the main idea of the Paschal Mystery, the central mystery of our faith: By means of his passion, death and resurrection, Christ has redeemed us. He overcame death, so that it no longer holds power over us. The best-known symbol of our religion, the cross, signifies that Christ’s death has become the means of our salvation. The Paschal Mystery does not say that Christ’s resurrection erased his suffering on the cross, nor does it say that the appearances of the risen Lord obliterated his death.

Christ’s horrible suffering and death, rather than being obliterated, have been completely transformed, and, incredibly, have become the very means of our salvation. St. Paul writes “We know that all things work for good for those who love God (Rom 8:28)”  and St. Augustine adds, “even their sins.” Even our sins work for good! Through Christ’s suffering and death, our sins our transformed, and God uses them as steps toward our salvation. Just as the Almighty draws life from death, he somehow manages to draw good from our sins.

As we begin the season of Lent this Wednesday, then, we might keep in mind the vision of the Sacrament of Reconciliation as a personal encounter between me and the Redeeming Christ, the Crucified and Living One. Once I humbly own my sins, he takes them and, far from obliterating them, makes them his own and transforms them into the means of my salvation.

 

INVITATION TO A PILGRIMAGE

During this Lent, I hope that many of you will join me once again on a forty-day pilgrimage from Ash Wednesday to Easter using the book Pilgrim Road: A Benedictine Journey Through Lent.

HAVE BLESSED, GRACE-FILLED LENT!

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIE?

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SOME HARD QUESTIONS

This morning the monks are celebrating our annual mass for the faithful departed of our wider family of friends, alumni, benefactors, relatives and so on. It seemed appropriate for me to spend my meditation time this morning reflecting on the question that we have all wondered about since we were little kids: “Just what happens after you die?”

We tend to answer in terms of the Greek philosophical mentality: Your body dies but your soul survives and goes to heaven.  We throw around the word soul pretty liberally when speaking about our heavenly reward.

But this language poses a problem for us Christians. In two words, the problem is “Jesus Christ.” The Creed says that he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. So, we believe that Jesus is “in heaven.” But earlier in the creed we say that he was born of the virgin Mary and became man. Jesus is not a soul, but a human, a body-soul composite; his bodiedness is an essential part of the Word-made-Flesh.

So, if Jesus is in heaven, that state must necessarily involve his body. We can safely conclude, then, that our existence in heaven will also involve our bodies and not just our souls. St. Thomas Aquinas said, “Anima mea non est ego,” “My soul is not me.” I am an embodied spirit, or an enspirited body, so somehow my eternal reward will involve my body. By the way, that is why we must be good to our bodies and treat them with reverence and care: they are going to be ours forever and ever.

Okay, but this belief poses a new set of questions. (The Sadducees were happy to point out one of them to Jesus in last Sunday’s gospel.) If my body will be mine in heaven, just how old will my body be? Twenty-five? Will my hair be black again? What about the widow who has remarried: whose wife will she be in heaven? The questions sound sensible, but lead to some ridiculous head-scratching.

A PIECE OF THE MYSTERY

So, we’re stuck, it seems. How does all this work? We do not understand, we cannot understand it. That’s the definition of a “mystery.” A mystery refers not to something completely incomprehensible, but rather to a truth which is so vast that we can only understand parts of it, and will never come to understand it completely. We have to be content with grasping pieces of it.

Those troubling questions such as “how old will I be in heaven” are based on a misunderstanding of the whole mystery of the resurrection of the body. I would like to offer one idea that might help us understand a piece of the mystery. It has to do with the ideas of “change” and “transformation.”  

A stalactite in a cavern "changes" by having minerals deposited on it over time: it gets bigger, but it’s still, no matter how big, just a stalactite. But living things change in a different way.

Think of an acorn. An acorn doesn't just get bigger and bigger. Its whole purpose is not to be the biggest acorn around, but rather to stop being an acorn and become an oak tree. It dies to being an acorn. Even little children understand this fact: you never hear a kid point to an oak tree and shout “Look at the big acorn.” We don’t look a a butterfly and call it a caterpillar, or listen to a frog and call it a tadpole.  What's involved here is a process called transformation: a thing stops being what it is in order to become something else.

This is true of us humans as well. St. Basil said, “Man is a being whose purpose is to become God.” The promise is not that we will each “come back to life” the way Lazarus did, or the widow’s son. Jesus did not come back to life, but rose glorious and immortal. He was transformed: He was somehow the same, but was transformed. The gospels wrestle with this mystery when Jesus shows the apostles his wounds (It’s really the same me!”) but then he can walk through closed doors, and is unrecognizable to Mary Magdalene (He is completely different!).

When we rise again one day with Jesus, we to will be transformed. We become something new, transformed in the dimension of God, where time and space are transcended; but our transformed bodies are definitely part of the deal: we are fulfilled beyond our ability to imagine right now, with a joy beyond all telling.

ACT NOW!

Transformation, though, is also a process. The process of becoming Christ, as it were, can and should start now by dying to ourselves through selfless actions, and dying to our base impulses through self-restraint.

November is the month when we remember our brothers and sisters who have gone before us, but it’s also the month when we think about our own mortality as the dead leaves start blowing at our feet. Thanksgiving Day, appropriately, gives us an opportunity to contribute to our own transformation in Christ, to die to ourselves, by being generous to people who are in need.

So, as we pray for those members of the communion of saints who have gone before us, let us be conscious of our need to cooperate with divine grace and begin our transformation today into what we will be one day: a transformed person in the Risen Lord.

THE RADIOACTIVE MONK

Recently I’ve been reading a wonderful chatty book that I’d seen some of our science students carrying around entitled The Disappearing Spoon and other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements, published in 2010. I heartily recommend it to anyone who like me is curious about science despite having had only a very basic introduction to physics or chemistry in school.

I especially enjoyed reading about the experiments people did bombarding nuclei with neutrons and then watching the startling results. The introduction of these tiniest of particles into an atom could unleash unimaginable power, millions of electron volts. Literally incredible amounts of energy were released in these reactions.

In the midst of my reading this book I heard at mass the gospel passage in Luke 17:5 that says “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you would say to [this] mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” 

It struck me that the Lord was telling me that if I were to let myself be touched by faith the size of even the tiniest particle, an incredible amount of energy could be released as a result.  Mulberry trees and mountains could be chucked into the ocean and all manner of wonders would be unleashed in the world.

Then I started to see myself as one of those elements that is extremely stable, but in a bad sense; God is constantly bombarding me with graces but I don’t react, or do so only very sluggishly and imperceptibly.

There’s a crucial difference,you see, between an element on the periodic table being bombarded with neutrons, and a person being showered with grace. While an atom of cobalt just sits there and gets pounded with particles and then has to react according to the laws of physics, I have a free will, so when God’s gifts are being showered on me I can decide to respond or not.

This is the difference between responding and reacting. God didn’t create me to react to grace; but gave me a free will so that I could choose to freely respond as a person to the invitation of grace. His grace invites me to an intimate personal relationship of love and trust, of vulnerability and open-endedness.That's much more exciting than being part of a predictable chemical reaction, wouldn't you say?

But I’m still intrigued and frightened by the comparison with those chemical elements as they get hit with an extra neutron. If only I were to allow God’s grace to really touch me and transform me in the way God intends, the explosion would be heard for miles around.

It might even start a chain reaction among my brother monks, the kids in my classroom and the parishioners at mass on Sunday.

  

The fallout would be marvelous. It would be exactly what Jesus was referring to when he told his disciples “The Kingdom of God is among you.”

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