TWO WOMEN AND THE KINGDOM

Today, November 16, the Church´s calendar commemorates two women saints: Gertrude the Great and Margaret of Scotland. The two form an interesting contrast.

Saint Gertrude the Great. Franciscan Media tells us the following: Gertrude (1256-1302), a

Benedictine nun in Helfta, Saxony, was one of the great mystics of the 13th century. Together with her friend and teacher Saint Mechtild, she practiced a spirituality called “nuptial mysticism,” that is, she came to see herself as the bride of Christ. Her spiritual life was a deeply personal union with Jesus and his Sacred Heart, leading her into the very life of the Trinity.

But this was no individualistic piety. Gertrude lived the rhythm of the liturgy, where she found Christ. In the liturgy and in Scripture she found the themes and images to enrich and express her piety. There was no clash between her personal prayer life and the liturgy. 

Saint Margaret of Scotland. The website Simply Catholic provides the following details about Margaret: St. Margaret of Scotland (1045-1093), the granddaughter of an English king, was born in Hungary due to her father’s exile there as a child. Her early years were spent in the Hungarian court, among pious and observant Catholic royals.

Her great-uncle, St. Edward the Confessor, who had succeeded her grandfather, was near death in 1057, and Margaret’s family returned to their native England since her own father was considered a possible successor to his childless uncle. Hardship struck the family yet again when her father died immediately upon arriving back to the land from which he had been exiled years before.

Through a succession of battles and shifts of power, her family lost the English throne, and Margaret’s family fled for safety to Scotland. There, in 1070, Malcom III, King of Scots, married Margaret, desiring a bride who was as a descendant of the Anglo-Saxon throne. Together they had eight children, three of whom would succeed their father on the Scottish throne.

St. Margaret would perform charitable acts for the poor. In loving and honoring them, she was loving and honoring Christ. These included washing their feet and serving them food.

St. Margaret was always quick to make a connection between her acts of service to the lowly as an act of sacrifice and worship. She often would be found going to the church so that she could offer up her service in praise of God. The Scottish royal couple set an example for their guests when typically they chose to serve guests before they would eat themselves. 

St. Margaret of Scotland is a patron saint for service to the poor.

WHERE IS THE KINGDOM?

The gospel for this past Thursday (Luke 17:20-25) includes the Greek preposition entos, which can be translated either ¨within¨ or ¨among.¨ Thus some translations of Jesus' words have ¨The Kingdom of God is within you,¨ and others have ¨The Kingdom of God is among you.¨ 

Which translation is preferable? Is the Kingdom inside us or is it among us, in the spaces between us, in our relationships of love and compassion? Our pair of holy women whom we honored at mass on November 16 would suggest that we need to hold on to both images of the Kingdom.

St. Margaret of Scotland, a patron saint of service to the poor, surely saw the Kingdom ¨among" us as she lovingly provided for the needs of the poor, pilgrims and others less fortunate than herself. Here is the oration that is said at the mass on her feast:  

O God, who made Saint Margaret of Scotland wonderful in her outstanding charity towards the poor, grant that through intercession and example we may reflect among all humanity the image of your divine goodness. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, ...

Saint Gertrude, on the other hand, found the fulfillment of the Kingdom deep within her heart, in the mystical love she shared with Christ. Compare the the oration the Church prays for her feast day:

O God, who prepared a delightful dwelling for yourself in the heart of the Virgin Saint Gertrude, graciously bring light, through her intercession, to the darkness of our hearts that we may joyfully experience you present and at work within us. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, ... 

BOTH AND ...

Something I found truly interesting, however, in reading the brief biographies in the two websites I consulted (named above), is that each of these holy women also embodied the other aspect of the Kingdom in her life: Margaret, the patron saint of those working with the poor, had an incredible inner life of prayer, and on the other hand, one source I consulted said of the great mystic Gertrude, ¨Her boundless charity embraced rich and poor, learned and simple, the monarch on his throne and the peasant on his field.¨

So, these two great saints team up each November 16 to give us a complete view of the Kingdom of God, a Kingdom that is both among us and within us. We need to actively love our neighbor while at the same time welcoming Christ into our hearts through deeply felt, intimate prayer.

Saint Gertrude and Saint Margaret, Pray for us!

SECONDARY COVERAGE

Your secondary insurance?

When I go to a doctor‘s office for the first time, they always ask: “what’s your insurance?“ The next question is “what is your secondary insurance?“

When someone asks me “what religion are you of course answer “ Roman Catholic. What if the next question were “What is your secondary religion?“

What is your backup religion? What do you use to fill in the emptiness when God is not enough? The possible answers are a short list that is as old and as widespread as you can imagine: Possessions, power, prestige, and pleasure.

These are the things that we seek after when God does not answer as quickly as we might want, or when God leaves us still hungry and feeling incomplete.

The central insight of Judaism is there there are not many gods, but only one. A very important prayer that all Jews still repeat every day is Shema Israel, (Deuteronomy Chapter 6 verses 4-5): “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone! Therefore, you shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength.“ 

These verses show up again in the gospels. For example Mark chapter 12 verses 29-31.

Look closely at this passage For a moment. It seems logical that if there is only this one God, then we should love this God with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength.

I would be much more comfortable with the command to love God with “ most” of my heart or “most¨ of my soul or “most” of my strength. But that is not the deal! Unfortunately. I am to love God with all of myself, without falling back on any kind of secondary insurance policy, trying to fill the aching void inside my with possessions, power, prestige or pleasure. 

A good way to examine my conscience is for me to ask myself “what is my secondary insurance?” And “have I fallen back onto my secondary insurance policy lately?“

Let’s pray for one another that through the gift of faith we will be able to rely only on this God who indeed is “God alone.“

A GOOD QUESTION

This past Sunday, October 27, presented us with the powerful scene of Jesus healing the blind beggar,Bartimaeus. One of the many interesting details in this miracle story occurs when the blind man stands in front of Jesus and Jesus asks him “What do you want me to do for you?” 

I reflected on Jesus‘s question and wondered why he had to ask such an obvious thing of a blind man who had cried out to him “Son of David have pity on me.“ 

It wasn’t long before my meditation shifted from that scene in Jericho and landed squarely in my heart. I heard Jesus directing his question not to Bartimaeus but to me: “Albert what do you want me to do for you?¨ I was caught off guard by the offer

Of course I was pleased at the love and generosity that lay behind the question, but I was at a loss as to what to ask for.

After going through a couple of possibilities, however, I soon enough settled on one. As I answered the question I realized that I had never before asked for God´s help with that particular matter.

But then I said to myself, ¨Why stop with just one request?” That´s when I went on a roll, and started placing before the Lord all sorts of concerns and problems. It was a very intimate moment, as I stood before Jesus with completely empty hands, asking his help.

Taking Jesus up on his offer, I had told him lots of things that he could do for me if he wished. If you have not tried this recently, I can recommend it as a great approach to prayer: putting yourself in the place of Bartimaeus and answering Jesus´ question with your own wants and needs.

What do you want me to do for you?

THOUGHTS ON SUFFERING

During the past week or so I have been meditating on a couple of passages from Richard Rohr's “The Divine Dance.” I would like to share a few of these thoughts with you in the hope that you may want to read the complete version in the book itself:

Awe and wonder are terms that are often correlative with mystery. All fundamentalist religion is terribly uncomfortable with mystery; it likes to take full control of the data, and mystery by definition leaves you out of control. Such moments of vulnerability are the very space where God can most easily break in with fresh experience; in fact, I doubt if God can break through in any other way.   …

Suffering is the only thing strong enough to break down your control systems, explanatory mechanisms, logical paradigms, desire to be in charge, and carefully maintained sense of control. Both God and the guided soul know to trust suffering, it seems. 

God normally has to lead you to the limits of your private resources. Some event, person, or moral situation must force you to admit, I cannot do this in my present state. This is our suffering.

Or your understanding of “what it all means“ has to fail you in a very personal way: I can’t make sense of this. I can’t get through today.

This often happens when there has been a physical death, or the death of a marriage, a reputation, or an occupation. But you always feel both afraid and trapped. “How?” You cry out with ten levels of anguish and impossibility.

A good spiritual Director might say quietly to themselves (not to the sufferer), Hallelujah! Now we’re going to begin the real spiritual journey. P.125

I hope that something in this post will catch your attention and challenge you the way I have been challenged myself.

Can you let go and let God catch you?

"Seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you" (Mt 7:7).

I don’t know about you, but this passage about the effectiveness of prayer usually leaves me uncomfortable. When I knock, the door is not always opened to me, and when I ask, I don’t always receive.

While I was preaching on this passage recently, however, a vivid image came to me: there I was knocking repeatedly on a door, but no one was answering. It turns out that I was knocking on the wrong door!

When I knock on the door of material wealth, or power, for example, expecting that behind such a door I will find ultimate satisfaction, then no wonder that the door never opens.

Then there are surely times when I seek desperately but do not find what I am looking for. But these are undoubtedly the times when I am seeking in the wrong place! It’s a tale as old as the story of Adam and Eve, and which keeps repeating itself through the ages: we race around, looking for meaning in our lives in such things as possessions, power, and prestige. But in the end, we are still left feeling incomplete, with that inner hollowness still there, unfilled.

Looking in the wrong place and knocking on the wrong door end up leaving us frustrated and disappointed in God who does not answer our prayers.

“Why doesn’t God open the door? I have been knocking on it for years!” Well, it’s always a good idea to be sure that I am knocking on the right door and not on one that leads nowhere. Once I'm sure that I've got the right door, then I'm faced with the mystery of unanswered prayer. Saint Paul writes about this problem when he reminds his readers that when our prayers are not answered, one reason may be because we do not ask properly, or do not ask for the right things.

But that's a topic for another post or two.

I have found these two images, of seeking in the wrong place and knocking on the wrong door, helpful in approaching that complex question of why God does not seem to answer our prayers.

Tree of Life and Crucifixion

CRITERIA FOR SUCCESS

 

This past weekend was taken up with the celebration of Br. Bruno's solemn vows celebration, so my weekly blog post got postponed.  A week ago I attended our now biennial St. Benedict's Prep Hall of Fame dinner. So with your permission I am re-posting something from November 2011 related to the Hall of Fame.

A DIFFERENT CELEBRATION
Thursday evening I attended the Saint Benedict’s Prep Hall of Fame dinner. We honored athletes from all various decades, from the 1950s to the 1990s.

At these school events I’m one of the lucky ones for whom the evening is not simply one of nostalgia, not a matter of suddenly jumping back over a chasm of twenty or forty years to revisit some golden bygone days of ghostly schoolboy glories. For me these banquets are not homecomings at all -- I’m already home after all --rather they’re celebrations of community and continuity.

On Thursday night as I moved around the huge banquet room saying hello to people I hadn’t seen in decades, I was gliding back and forth along a single unbroken strand extending back in time, along which the years and the people flow together to form one single plot, one story from my days as a freshman in 1956 through my returning to teach in 1969, the closing and re-opening of the school in the early 1970’s right up until 2011. I experienced a feeling of wholeness, a sense of being carried along by the dynamic life of a beautiful community.

We also have an annual banquet at which we honor people who have contributed in various ways to our school, while the Hall of Fame Dinner, which happens only every few years, is pretty much restricted to athletes. The printed program of the latter always includes a list of the impressive athletic accomplishments of each inductee to show why the committee chose them to be honored.

THE ONE CRITERION

But later on as I flipped through the biographies in this year’s Hall of Fame program I wondered what God sees when looking at my life. What are God’s criteria for success? I already knew the answer, of course, so last night I started perusing an old copy of Ernesto Cardenale’s Vida en el Amor (1970) (translated into English in 1972 as “To Live Is to Love.” ), looking for a good way of expressing the criteria needed to get into God's Hall of Fame. After just a minute or two I found the following few sentences that seemed a pretty good summary of the criteria that are important to God [my translation]:

Man was created for love, only to love his creator. And whatever time he does not spend in this love is wasted time.

Love is the single law that governs the universe. That law that moves the sun and the other stars, as Dante says, because it is the law of cohesion uniting all things. The material out of which the universe is made is love.”

I sensed this love present in the vast banquet room as I shared stories and jokes with dozens of people. Love was the single thread "uniting all things:" God’s divine love uniting teammates, athletes and coaches, and also uniting the years and the experiences of my life, the triumphs and the trials (mine and those of my brothers and sisters), helping make sense of everything.

I came away as I always do after one of those dinners, thankful to be part of a monastery and a school community that has provided the possibility for this much love to pour itself out on the earth among so many varied people. “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven.”

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A HINT FROM HEROD

Herod Antipas

Herod the tetrarch heard about all that was happening,

and he was greatly perplexed because some were saying,

“John has been raised from the dead”;

others were saying, “Elijah has appeared”;

still others, “One of the ancient prophets has arisen.”

But Herod said, “John I beheaded.

Who then is this about whom I hear such things?”

And he kept trying to see him. (Luke 9:7-9)

The passage above was the gospel at mass this past Thursday. The celebrant, Fr. Edwin, pointed out in his homily the last sentence: “Herod kept trying to see Jesus.”

That little sentence is really worth reflecting on. This evil, pagan king is trying to see Jesus. The verb “trying” is in the imperfect tense in Greek, implying a repeated or continuous action in the past; this was not just a one time feeling for Herod. The verb has a few different meanings, another possible one is “desiring.”

And what about me? Could I honestly say that I myself keep "trying to see Jesus?” How badly do I “want to see Jesus?”

My faith tells me that God is constantly seeking me, pursuing me, inviting me to a relationship of intimacy with Him. But, do I do the same thing toward the Lord? Do I truly seek a close, intimate relationship with Jesus, or am I satisfied with saying routine prayers, and celebrating sacraments that give me grace? Although I may well be doing these things, but meanwhile the Lord keeps wanting to draw closer and closer to me in quiet meditation, in prayerful meditation on scripture, on self-sacrificing love of my brothers and sisters,

I can manage to keep God at a safe distance by doing lots of good works, and by reciting lots of prayers. But this is not the path that the Lord invites me to travel. He wants something a lot closer, a lot deeper: a relationship of love.

Back to the tetrarch Herod, who keeps trying to see Jesus. It seems a little odd to take this awful character as a model for my Christian life, but in his own way he is on to something. Maybe his example can shame me into seeking a deeper relationship with Jesus, and to keep seeking, to keep wanting to be closer to Him.