COOPERATING WITH GOD

THWARTING GOD'S PLAN?

Tomorrow, the Second Sunday of Advent, John the Baptist features John the Baptist. I like to revisit a post from many years ago the still speaks to me. Letś begin with Jesus´referring to John:

I tell you, among those born of women no one is greater than John; yet the least in the kingdom of God is greater than he.’ (And all the people who heard this, including the tax-collectors, acknowledged the justice of God, because they had been baptized with John’s baptism. But by refusing to be baptized by him, the Pharisees and the lawyers rejected God’s purpose for themselves.) (Lk 7:28-30)

I was struck by the phrase, “[they] rejected God’s purpose for themselves.”
Other translations include: “[they] frustrated God’s purpose for them (Phillips Bible)” and “[they] thwarted God's plan for them (NJB).

When I was reflecting on this passage about the people who “frustrated God’s plan for them” and applying it to myself I decided that instead of looking at the hundreds of ways I frustrate God’s plans for me, I would take a more positive approach and look at what happens when it DO cooperate with God’s plan for me. The exercise was tremendously gratifying.

I discovered that the events or periods in my life that have been most satisfying usually show one of two characteristics: risk-taking or putting myself second. And these just happen to be the characteristics of the two principle personalities of the Advent season: The Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

THE VIRGIN MARY’S COURAGE

The Gospel for the Fourth Sunday of Advent (Dec. 18) is the story of the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel gets Mary’s consent: “Mary said, I am the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me as you have said.” Mary is the perfect example of willingness to cooperate with God’s plan. But of course, Mary had an angel appear to her and tell her what God expected of her. That made it a lot easier, right? We keep wishing that God would just send US an angel the way He did to Mary, and tell us what he wants. Then we’d be able to do God’s will much more easily.

But Luke makes it pretty clear that Mary was in fact uncertain about what was happening and what she was getting herself involved in. Think about it: She was saying yes to something that was unheard of, unthinkable in fact, that she would conceive through the Holy Spirit 'the Son of the Most High God." This makes her “Let it be done to me” that much more impressive. She had to keep “pondering all these things in her heart,” trying to discern God’s will for her. She is actually a good model for us who are living with uncertainty in our lives and who have to take risks without the security of knowing for certain if this is the right thing to do.

So, in my own reflections I found that two of the most blessed times of my life involved risk-taking, venturing out of the comfortable circle of the given into alien, unknown places. Specifically, when we decided to re-open St. Benedict’s Prep in 1973 we were leaping into the dark because it seemed to be what God was asking us to do at the time. The second life-changing event was when I left the security and routine of monastery for an eleven-month sabbatical, traveling to completely new places both physically and spiritually. There’s no doubt in my mind that these two decisions were part of “God’s plan” for me.

JOHN THE BAPTIST’S HUMILITY

As I reflected on how I’ve managed to “follow God’s plan for me,” I found that often this involved putting myself second. This seems, in fact, like a universal property of life at least in my experience, like one of Newton’s three laws of motion: the less self-centered I am, the more satisfying my life becomes. When I go out of my way to stop and pay attention to a little child who wants to say something to me, that is always rewarding – and it’s clearly God’s will for me. When I skip my afternoon walk to talk with a troubled student who needs a sympathetic listener and a word of encouragement, that is always a rewarding experience – and it feels like God’s will for me.

The Advent model for putting myself second is, of course, John the Baptist. The gospel for the Second Sunday of Advent (Dec.11, 2011) tells of how John bore witness to Christ. “I am not the Christ,” he told those who asked him. His job was to decrease so that Christ could increase, to point out to people “Look! There is the Lamb of God.”

John is the perfect model for “It’s not about me!” If I want to follow “God’s plan for me,” then, I need to follow John’s lead and remove myself from the center of the stage so that Christ can become visible to people through my actions, words and attitudes.

ADVENT ADVERBS

“Does God want me to put the house on the market now?” “Does God want me to start looking for a new job?” “Does God want us to take our daughter out of the school she’s attending and transfer her to another one?” We shouldn’t expect help from God in the form of answers to these questions. (Sorry!) The answers are simply not going to come.

But we can be sure of THE WAY in which God wants us to approach those questions. We get two good adverbs from the example of the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist.

The first adverb is “confidently:” “Does God want me to trust in his goodness as I try to decide to accept this job offer?” “Does God want me to wait in joyful hope as I wait for the results my medical test?”

The second adverb is "humbly:" “Does God want me to grab the limelight and make myself the center of attention as the family is grieving over the death of my aunt, or does He expect me to help people meet Christ through my humble loving words and my quiet sharing in their various ways of dealing with their grief?”

It’s clear HOW God expects me to act in these cases even if I don’t know exactly WHAT I should do. But it’s the “how” that I'm going to be judged on, it seems to me. Did you act humbly? Generously? Openly? Considerately? These ways of acting are without any doubt “God’s plan for me.”

And I’ve found that they are also the keys to living a life that is rewarding, fruitful and life-giving..


,,,,,Henry Owassa Turner "The Annunciation"
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BEWARE OF SCAMS!

If you're like me, you get a lot of calls on your cell phone from numbers that you do not recognize. My phone tells me the location of the caller, which is very helpful. When I get a call from Pascagoula, Mississippi, say, or Waco, Texas, I don’t answer it. I have become very suspicious. If the person really needs to speak to me, they will leave me a voicemail message.

Recently I have gotten voicemail messages from some nice lady who is offering to help me with my serious problems with the IRS over my back taxes. Since I have never filed income tax in my life, I don’t bother to return her call. The same with someone who is warning me that my auto insurance is about to be canceled. I don’t have a car, nor do I have insurance for a car so I don’t bother to respond.

We are becoming more and more wary every day of scams. 

Living in the in-between time

The first Christians were expecting Jesus to return in glory within a matter of weeks or maybe months. As time went on, however, it became apparent that Christ was not returning right away, and Christians had to adjust their hopes. If Christ is not coming back immediately, then what do we do in the meantime? This is the situation that Saint Paul addresses in his letter do the Thessalonians in today’s second Reading. He writes to his readers,

May the Lord make you increase and abound in love

for one another and for all,

just as we have for you, 

so as to strengthen your hearts, 

to be blameless in holiness before our God and Father at the coming of our Lord Jesus with all his holy ones.  Amen.

Every Christian knows how we are supposed to live as we wait for the coming of our Lord: Loving one another, being just and generous, meek and forgiving, and so forth.

However, our culture is constantly trying to trick us with false messages about how to fill up emptiness we feel inside -- an emptiness that only God can fill. So we are constantly bombarded with scams every bit as phony and sleazy as any telephone scam you could Imagine. 

¨You will feel happy and satisfied if you have enough possessions. So go shopping for more stuff¨ That is a scam!

¨You will be fulfilled if everybody respects and envies you when they see the luxury car that you are driving or the designer clothes that you are wearing.¨ That, too, is a scam, a lie.

We are bombarded every day by scams offering to make us fulfilled, happy and content. They are all lies! Don’t listen to them! Just keep deleting those false messages.

Today, the first Sunday of Advent, encourages us to prepare our hearts for the coming of Christ, to make sure that we are living our lives In accord with Jesus’s teaching as we wait in joyful hope for his coming. His promises are true, they are not scams.

Let us pray for one another during this holy season that we can get better at ignoring those calls from unknown callers, calls that lead to nothing but trouble.

Come, Lord Jesus!

CLEANSING THE TEMPLE

The gospel reading at mass earlier this week he told of Jesus entering the temple in Jerusalem. A footnote in the new American Bible says “Immediately upon entering the holy city, Jesus in a display of his authority, enters the temple and lays claim to it after cleansing it, that it might become a proper place for his teaching ministry in Jerusalem (Lk 19:47).

Now take the image of Jesus cleansing the temple and combine it with the idea that each of us is a temple of God. When Jesus wishes to come into your heart, into his temple ¨cleansing it that it might become a proper place for his teaching¨ what does he find there? Does the place need to be purified of all sorts of foreign stuff do not belong there? well, does Jesus need to push his way in past some disordered passions, step over a pile of your favorite distractions, and elbow aside a few little vices that you allow yourself?

With the celebration of the Solemnity Of Christ the King this coming Sunday we are reaching the end of the liturgical year. It’s a good time to inspect the temple of your heart and look for things that might be cluttering it.

When the first Sunday of advent comes on December 1, we want to be able to welcome Jesus into a Beautiful place repaired for his coming.

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?