Up, Up and Away!

Come on, America, you know you love Superman. You know you want to fly, be impervious to pain, have the strength of will to always seek the Good. I love the fact that the Man in Blue is back, and however the film turns out (we’ll see it in 46 hours and 19 minutes, or… Saturday), I’m sure the iconic qualities about the son of Jor-El will be clear as crystal. He’s Christological! No denying it! How ’bout this line from the new film’s teaser trailer:

The voice of Marlon Brando, Superman’s father from the 1978 film: “Even though you’ve been raised as a human being you are not one of them. They can be a great people Kal-El. They wish to be, they only lack the light to show the way. For this reason above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you, my only son.”

Wow. Now, this rather explicit typology is stirring up the anger of a few people in the secular press. They are upset that this comic icon is being morphed with “religion.” To which I respond, how could it not? We are a fallen race, a wounded band of travellers in a world that is dying, and we long for redemption. We seek Truth though all we see here is mingled with lies. We want the Good, though all we see here is compromised with evil. We pant after a Beauty that is infinite, though all we taste here is destined to decay. So we create myths and stories and fairy tales with superhuman characters that can lift us up out of our own weakness.But the Gospel is the true fairy tale. Here God steps into Our Story, and beyond our wildest dreams, he becomes one of us. And this is the best part! Jesus is not a Man of Steel, but a Man of Flesh…. a Man of Sorrows….

Jesus vs Superman?

Remember the debates we had as kids (I suppose this was more a boy thing. Ladies?) “Who could beat who in a contest… Batman or Spiderman, Torch or Iceman, Aqua Man or Green Lantern?” Who the heck is Green Lantern anyway?

Invariably, some kid would bring up Superman and the debate was over. Come on, no fair! He’s SUPERMAN!

Well, fine. He is super, but here’s where the Gospel has these guys beat. It’s the true fairy tale. God really steps into Our Story, and beyond our wildest dreams, he becomes one of us. Jesus is not a Man of Steel, but a Man of Flesh! A Man of Sorrows… and this is exactly how he saves us, not by deflecting bullets off of his chest, but by taking them right into his heart. He is the Pierced One, and as St. Bernard says “The piercing nail has become a key to unlock the door, that I may see the good will of the Lord. And what can I see as I look through the hole? Both the nail and the wound cry out that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself… Through these sacred wounds we can see the secret of his heart, the great mystery of love…” – St. Bernard

Throughout history, many have fallen into the trap of seeing Jesus as a kind of superman, impervious to suffering. Sure, he died for us to save us, but he was GOD. How could he feel pain? For the answer to that one, let’s read Isaiah 53:

He was spurned and avoided by men, a man of suffering, accustomed to infirmity, One of those from whom men hide their faces, spurned, and we held him in no esteem. Yet it was our infirmities that he bore, our sufferings that he endured, While we thought of him as stricken, as one smitten by God and afflicted. But he was pierced for our offenses, crushed for our sins, Upon him was the chastisement that makes us whole, by his stripes we were healed. We had all gone astray like sheep, each following his own way; But the LORD laid upon him the guilt of us all. Though he was harshly treated, he submitted and opened not his mouth; Like a lamb led to the slaughter or a sheep before the shearers, he was silent and opened not his mouth.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Don’t Mess with Star Wars!

I decided to show the classic Return of the Jedi in my study hall yesterday. What the heck, Easter break is here, and it’s Star Wars for the love of Yoda!!

Watching this classic brought me back to my own high school days. Actually the saga spanned throughout my elementary education and well into high school. We had to wait about three years for each sequel! What patience we had then! I could tell you some amazing trivia. I knew the actors and actresses behind the costumes, I knew the space systems, the creatures. I owned those classic action figures. Yes indeed, those were the salad days….

Now Return of the Jedi had “state of the art graphics.” We were blown away by the speeder-bike chase, the “new” Death Star, and the wild alien creatures that came creeping out of the mind of George Lucas. How ’bout that Sarlacc Pit? Nasty! Star Wars was COOLNESS PERSONIFIED.

As I was reflecting on this, I was suddenly sucked back from my 80’s nostalgia and into the present 2007 “everything’s digitally enhanced is that a real person\city\landscape I can’t tell the difference anymore” world. One of my 16 year old students mumbled “This is like a bad YouTube video.”

Ouch.

Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they say!

A bad YouTube video? OK, in all seriousness, compared to today’s special effects, sure, the Ewoks were a little cheesy, the Death Star did look like a big firecracker blowing up in space (would there be sparks?), and what was up with the Admiral Lobster Head Guy?

But we suspended our disbelief, we got lost in the story. And that was the missing link between the old school Star Wars movies and the new ones, so loaded with computer generated images that the actors were mostly working in front of a blue screen staring at nothing: the missing link was a good story.

I was quickly comforted after this blow to my beloved Star Wars by another student, who nailed it on the head; “If they had this story with the new effects, those movies would’ve been sick.” (this means “exceptionally spectacular, Mr. Donaghy!”)

So, wake up America! Let’s get back to those epic tales of good versus evil, cheering for the underdog, and the crushing complexity of the hero who learns to let go (finally!), putting others before himself. We’ve been super-soaked by special effects and we’re drowning in a blue pool of virtual reality. The kids are suffering from a numbing of the mind… a snuffing out of the sense of wonder. We need an appeal to the real, a drama we can enter into ourselves. We need to look and see that the best movie ever made is you and me. The REAL LIFE! And also we need Peter Jackson to make The Hobbit!! Yeah!!


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PS – Speaking of Star Wars, many of us hoped the latest “episodes”
would have recaptured the glory of the originals for a new generation,
and we were sorely disappointed. George must have had an accident
involving wet linoleum and the hanging of a clock. For a good laugh at
this sad reality, enjoy the following video wondering what the “new”
Lucas would have done if he directed the Lord of the Rings.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

What’s Wrong With You?

There is a moving scene (among many) in the film The Fellowship of the Ring where the character of Aragorn, known as Strider, struggles with his own mortal weakness. In the quiet of Rivendell, in a dimly lit chamber where ancient memories are held sacred, he gazes on a painting of his ancestor, Isildur. It was he who in ages long past cut the Ring from the Dark Lord’s finger and saved Middle-Earth from defeat. But it was by that same Ring that Isildur himself fell into weakness and death. The memory of that fatal flaw has haunted Aragorn his entire life.

As he turns to the shadows in this fog of fear and shame. He sees his love, Arwen approach and she speaks a word of confidence to him. “Why do you fear the past? You are Isildur’s heir, not Isildur himself. You are not bound to his fate.”

The future King replies “The same blood flows in my veins. The same weakness…”

What is it that “leads us into temptation”? Why do we so often do the evil that we hate, and not do the good we know we should do? The answers to questions about sin, suffering, death, neuroses and psychoses are all bound up and tightly packed in the simple phrase “Original Sin.” The sheer density of this reality is like the weight of galaxies. It’s like our collapsed star, a black hole in the human universe.

Original Sin is the sin at our origins. And it’s real. Painfully real. Other dogmas and doctrines in the Church sometimes need more expounding, more unfolding for us to see them more clearly. For the doctrine of Original Sin, we only need to look in the mirror, or to read a newspaper. Before we are tempted to dismiss it as something irrelevant to our everyday lives, another doctrine of the Church that’s all “spiritual and stuff,” let’s pause…. if we miss this, it will be impossible for us to ever truly know ourselves, others, or this beautiful but broken creation that has been dying and rising with us all our lives.

In the beginning, with the sin of Adam and Eve, there was a terrible break, a mortal wound that caused four major fractures in our relationships as human persons. These four Original Wounds are still experienced by every son or daughter of Adam and Eve. They are breaks in our relationships with God, within ourselves, with each other, and with creation. We all feel them, we all experience them in some fashion every day. They are our ancestral heritage. They are in the blood (which is why we need the blood of Jesus to be poured out for us in a Divine transfusion – that’s the Mass).

Think of your life. It’s a good examination of conscience every day to look at these four areas and to ask the question, “Have I been healed?” The good news is, we have the cure today. The blood of Jesus is with us. His Sacred Heart is here! The organ is ready to be transplanted within the hollow of our chest. New life, a strong heart, and reconciliation…. finally!

In Jesus ALONE is this reconciliation made… In Jesus ALONE is real union and communion. Has this truth really sunk in for us? Peace and reconciliation will NOT come from politics, the Republicans, the Democrats… economics, a new haircut, or a new job… a new car, a new relationship… It’s Jesus. It really is.

How strong a reaction are you having to this statement right now? Is it an “amen” or a whimper? A shrug of the shoulders or a surge of the heart? For me, it’s getting easier every day. I’m getting acclimated to this new heart and this new blood that comes to me every time I go to Mass. Sometimes it cuts. He’s that divisive. He’s a two-edged sword that slices us through like a surgeon’s knife. But this is the open heart surgery we need, or we’ll die. If we don’t have His Heart, than we suffer those mortal wounds and we’ll never accomplish our own mission or finish the journey…

Arwen the Beautiful held Aragorn’s weathered face in her hands. He was a Ranger and had seen many dangers in the wide world. She whispers “Your time will come. You will face the same evil, and you will defeat it…. The Shadow does not hold sway… Aragorn. Not over you and not over me.”

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Do You Want Dessert?

Silly question, I know. But this Lent, I made a rash decision: no snacks between meals, no desserts (except, of course, on special occasions, feasts, solemnities, and Sundays, which officially begin with the vigil on Saturday).

What?

I really like dessert. And dessert likes me. But let’s get to the Heart of Things, because that’s what this blog is all about.

In the realm of the spirit, which is of course intimately joined to the body, I think we can often fall into a “dessert spirituality.” We want prayer to taste good. We want our time with God to be sweet, to cleanse the palate as it were, and to make our mood fresh, clean and clear…. “Ah yes, here’s my list of wants and needs, Lord. And yes, whipped cream and a cherry on top would be great.”

But most of the time, I think our Loving Father wants us to have a “meat and potatoes” spirituality. Solid stuff….. stick to your ribs kinda food. Better still, He calls us into a “desert spirituality” more than a “dessert spirituality.” He longs for us to depend solely on Him, to step out on a journey into Him, to be fed by Him alone, and not to be weighed down by the baggage of excessive comfort. A mature Christian faith is called out of comfort and into the cross. Into the deep and into the mystery!

“It would be wrong to think that ordinary Christians can be content with a shallow prayer that is unable to fill their whole life. Especially in the face of the many trials to which today’s world subjects faith, they would be not only mediocre Christians but ‘Christians at risk’.”

– Pope John Paul II

God leads us into the desert. If we listen, and we let Him take us there, we will see that this “diet” and this fast are for our own good. To make us strong, to be a real gymnasium for the soul. So are we tough enough? Are we ready for a hike into this wilderness? Remember that He has gone before us even here. We have our guide, we have the water of grace, and the markers on this trail are in the shapes of little crosses.

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Mary’s Open Heart

Today the Church celebrates the Solemnity of the Annunciation of the Lord. It actually fell on Sunday, but that’s Resurrection Day, so it got the Biblical Bump. Fine by me… because a solemnity in Lent means all fasts are off! Woohoo! Bring on the snacks! It’s cool to be Catholic!

Just shy of nine months from now, we’ll celebrate the fruit of the womb that was conceived this day; the Word Made Flesh! Miracle of Miracles!

Now sometimes we can see Mary’s yes as such an easy thing, all roses and sweetness. Really, how difficult would it be to raise the Perfect Son? But let’s remember that Mary was a true Hebrew, and as such she would know the prophets and the prophecies by heart. She knew her people were searching for the Lamb of God who would take away the sins of the world. Mary had the tender heart to see that the Messiah would be this Suffering Servant that Isaiah alluded to, not a military man that the militant were hoping for.

So the shadow of the Cross fell over the cradle Joseph had built. In the light of this truth, Mary’s YES becomes so much more powerful, so much more of a sacrifice and a death to self. Her openness to God and to the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit was closer to the openness of the wound that Jerome Miller describes below (After all, it was her heart that Simeon the priest said would be pierced through even as she cradled the newborn Messiah in her arms that day).

This is a reflection I’ve had for years, stashed in my files of Spiritual Gems. I don’t know where I first found it or who it was who first gave it to me to ponder. But hear it now with the vision of Mary behind it all. Sweet Mother of Sorrows, pray for us! The path to wholeness and holiness, I believe, must begin with this radical vulnerability before God and the mystical movements of life….

“A more essential condition is the willingness to be devastated, by which I mean the willingness to let the mortal wounds penetrate one’s heart so deeply that it is broken completely open by it. This is, I think, a pregnant image. For it suggests that the deepest lessons the heart has to deliver to us become accessible only when it is ruptured. It is anguish that makes the heart an open book because the wound it causes pierces all the way through to the core. These are terrible lessons, the kind that fill one with nausea. We like to think our lives would be happier if we could find a way to avoid learning them; but the only way to do that is to close one’s heart and keep it closed, so that nothing gets in or out of it – to make oneself a heart of stone. It is terrible to put into words the one real alternative to this avoidance. But I see no way to get around what seems to be the harshest, the most merciless truth about the human heart – I mean the fact that, to keep it open, once it has been pierced, one must allow it to be an open wound.”

– Jerome Miller

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Planet Earth – The New Series on Discovery Channel

This is promising to be a sweet tribute, as far as I’m concerned, to the Creator’s genius and to the myriad beauties of this Blue World of ours! More trailers to come…

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Cutting Out the Sarcasm

Craig Ferguson, the late night funny man, takes a strong turn away from attacking the vulnerable. A beautiful confession about human weakness, his struggle with alcoholism, and getting sober…. (laced, of course, with laughs…. some crude, some hilarious, be warned).

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Hush Ya’self….

By the Sea – William Wordsworth

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free;
The holy time is quiet as a nun
Breathless with adoration; the broad sun
Is sinking down in its tranquillity;
The gentleness of heaven is on the sea:
Listen! the mighty Being is awake,
And doth with his eternal motion make
A sound like thunder – everlastingly.…
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This is a piece of Wordsworth’s poem that first grabbed me in my college days. Doesn’t it make you want to, in the words from a recent Paul Simon song, “sit down, shut up, think about God“?

Oh the power and the beauty and the sometimes awkwardness of SILENCE! Before Easter, in the next two weeks, can we find some time to be still in it? To wallow in silence for a good 30 minutes, or 20? There are deep mysteries within and without every heart. Can we drink from that chalice given to us by the Father in a wordless act of prayer and adoration?

Silence is GOLDEN. Catherine Doherty once said “Silence can be the greatest expression of love. Such silence is deep, unfathomable, and endless. It already partakes of eternity. Such silence touches the face of God…” Listen to the poets, the mystics, the saints. No need for fear here, because the Loving Father is closer to us than we know. Just walk out into silence and see what happens. Peer into the quiet pool of your heart when the water is still and see what you see.

Perhaps it will take some time before the last ripples of distraction dissipate, but let’s be patient (that’s why a good session of silence takes a solid 20 minutes or more). Maybe walking, sitting, driving… and remember, it’s not a “library” silence, not a vacuum, or a pall laying over everything and suffocating the heart. It’s a pregnant stillness. It’s the rhythm of breathing. It’s the ancient movement of exitus-reditus, the sending out and the return that is the very life-breath of the created world.

What will we discover in this place of silence?

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Jimmie vs. Creepy Bunny Man

When you stand back (or sit back on a bench like I did last night at the Cherry Hill Mall) and look at the wacky stuff we do in our culture, you might wonder why things aren’t actually worse than they already are.

Case in point…
We had a FANTASTIC dinner and conversation with mom last night in NJ (Bahama Breeze, 5 stars!). Afterwards, Rebecca and I just popped into the mall for a “quick walk.” As I was waiting for my lovely bride to exit a store, a six foot rabbit (Harvey?) walked past me and disappeared behind a large outcropping of plastic plants.

I was in the mall’s “oasis” area – this is where you can find large palm trees, various ferny plants, goats, and water coalesced in fountains or in pools, which are full of coins (why do we throw our money into their stores AND into these pools?). In the “oasis” you can hide from the heat of great sales and the storms of intense shoppers, finding peace, and sometimes large rabbits. I guess I had forgotten all about the Easter Bunny thing. Or maybe I repressed it. Well, here he/she/it was, hopping back into my life, and into little Jimmie’s life too. Poor kid.

There was a huge Bunny Throne Room set up in the “oasis.” Here kids could come and pay homage to the Great Rabbit. The throne had all sorts of colored streamers on it, and plastic flowers and gummi worms. Jimmie’s dad strode confidently through the fernage and exchanged a secret sign with the Easter Bunny’s henchwoman, who was crouched behind a podium, clutching a neon whirly toy in her hand like a weapon (This torture device was later used to make Jimmie, how did she say it?…. “smile.”)

“Smile, Jimmie! Smile!” They danced and jumped around, the dad and the Nasty Sidekick Lady, waving the torture device like a dagger. I thought of the old western movies where the bad guy’s yelling “DANCE!” Pow! Blam! Then it got serious, because Jimmie for some strange reason, caged in the furry embrace of Creepy Bunny Man and being taunted with a neon swirly to “smile” wasn’t smiling.

“Now why don’t he smile?” growled the Henchwoman.
“Daddy!” Jimmie cried.
“Smile, James! For the love of all that’s holy!! Just smile!!”

Whew…. spring and all. I know we get excited about the changes in the weather to come. I know rabbits are cute and candy is sweet. But the Easter Bunny is like… cute on steroids. It’s like a Cute Monster that’s grown out of its cage. I wonder if the things that are holy and sacred, like the true meaning of Easter and Christmas, I wonder if once we take away the holy we’re left with a mutated substitute? And we feel we have to keep feeding it every year. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

We wonder why kids start to doubt their faith and question us as they grow. Why not? Think of all the things that peel away as they grow up; Tooth Fairies, Santa Claus, Easter Bunnies…. who can blame them when they ask “Is God for real or just made up?”

Hmmm, we just hit deep waters. To be continued! In the meantime, “Smile America! SMILE!!”

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org

Spring Cleaning

Are you a back roads kinda person, or a main roads kinda person? Maybe a bit of both?

I had a great commute when I was studying for my associates degree. I’d stick to the back roads for as long as I could on that almost hour long drive; Georgetown to Sykesville, Chesterfield to 130, and sometimes Route 68, in the days before it was cluttered by golf courses and condos.
You see more life on the back roads. More trees, more fields, more bizarre lawn art. And there’s always the added bonus of those little mom and pop convenience stores (the ones that carry “Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies”… deeeelicious!).

I was on such a back road drive one day, in my classical-music-and-opera-are-actually-amazing phase, when I was seized by a flash of beauty. At the exact moment that Puccini’s “E Lucevan Le Stella” was roaring from my radio, I was passing a farmer’s field where soil was being peeled back by a rusty old tractor. It was the springtime of the year. The smell of earth lifted up like incense, just as a flock of white gulls hovered above the farmer in an earthy paraclesis. What a sight! The music was deep and mournful, the earth open and naked under heaven, and the mystical attentiveness of the birds over it all; the scene breathed like a sacrament.

I think we have seasons, like Lent, when Jesus wants to stir things up in us. Perhaps we’ve gone fallow as a field and the fruits of our labors have become a little scattered. Maybe the soil of our souls has grown old and cold from a winter away from Him and we need tilling.

Christ is the Divine Gardener, the Tiller of the Soil of our hearts. If we let ourselves be open to Him, then He can literally plant new life in us. He cares so deeply for us. He will show us the roots and stones that are causing us trouble. Sometimes we can move them together, sometimes He asks that we move around them. It takes patience. But the Holy Spirit will be working in us as well, hovering just above us, carefully removing the sin and the roots of sin, as the birds clear fields of what does not belong.

If we let Him have His way, what a fruitful harvest it will be!

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Inspiration for the New Evangelization
http://www.missionmoment.org