Saint du Jour – The Porter of Paradise

How often do we stop and really look at one another? How often do we really listen to each other’s stories, as opposed to waiting for them to stop talking so we can “one up” them? Do we notice the face of the person at the pharmacy, the Wawa cashier, the drive-thru window as we drive through our lives at often break-neck speeds? Our fast-paced culture is almost conditioning us to miss many face to face encounters, and many souls are slipping through the cracks.

Enter Blessed André Bessette, born in 1845 near Montreal, Canada. His story as it pans out would appear to be one of total insignificance. He could have gone unnoticed, could have felt unwanted, lost in the shuffle, just another number… but it was not so. André is the voice of the Invisible Man, he is the shadow cast by the little ones who seemingly don’t matter in this culture. The eighth of 12 children, he was weak and sickly from birth. When both parents had died, he was adopted at age 12, worked as a farmhand, then slipped into a variety of unsuccessful trade careers: shoemaker, baker, blacksmith. He was a factory worker in the US during the Civil War.

At 25, André tried to enter the Congregation of the Holy Cross. He was rejected at first because of his poor health, but at the request of a kind Bishop Bourget, he was finally received into the Order. He was given the obscure job of doorkeeper at Notre Dame College in Montreal (with some additional duties). “When I joined this community,” André once said, “the superiors showed me the door, and I remained 40 years.”

A listening heart, a prayerful demeanor, and a deep compassion for all he encountered at that door is what changed things. André had a strong devotion to St. Joseph and would visit the sick, applying oil for healing to their bodies. When an epidemic exploded at a local college, he nursed the infirm. Not one person died in his care. A stream of sick people began to move towards his door, and soon it became a gushing river of souls. “I do not cure,” he said. “St. Joseph cures.” At the end of his life, four secretaries were hired to handle the 80,000 letters he received every year!

André saw people by the hundreds and he listened. He was a magnet whose holiness and compassion were the main attraction. With 65,000,000 Catholics in the USA alone, what would happen if just a handful of us had that listening heart? That attentiveness to the needs and the experiences and the stories and the sad news and the joyful news of the other? What if we really looked and listened, like the children’s books always told us? What would we see?

André, the 8th child in a dozen, the weak one, the uneducated porter who held the door open for people, died at the ripe old age of 92. And I’m sure at his death a Door was opened for him. The Door to Paradise.

Blessed André Bessette, pray for us, and at our death, may we see you at your post again, with the light of the Son streaming through that Open Door that leads into Life Eternal!

______________________________________

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

Fire in the Hole

How gently and lovingly
you wake in my heart,
where in secret you dwell alone;
and in your sweet breathing,
filled with good and glory,
how tenderly you swell my heart with love.

– St. John of the Cross, Living Flame of Love

I seriously doubt that God’s dream for us, the reason He created us male and female and called us into a life-giving, ecstatic union of soul, mind, and body in a Garden Paradise at the beginning of the human story was so that He could eventually “lord” it over us with a list of oppressive rules and commandments.

We were not made for law, we were made for love.

However, when it comes to living out our eros, our God-given passion for all that is good, true, and beautiful, it seems many of us don’t even equate it with Christianity anymore. We feel that eros is less than holy, and are content with continence not consummation – so we divorce passion from purity and just tough it out, trying to stay clean, in a kind of legalistic contract with God that will keep us on the “Big Guy’s” good side. This is a sad existence to say the least; a life lived in quiet desperation.

Truth is, we are here in this visible world to make the invisible, incredible love of God manifest! And until we open up heart, mind, and body to the power of Divine Love and let God have His way with us, the Kingdom of God is not within us. The dream of God for humanity is unrealized. Until we learn to break out of the paradigm of niceness, of merely following the rules just enough to stay out of hell, there will be no revolution. God does not want us to be nice. God wants us to be madly in love.

“We who have received the grace of believing in Christ, the revealer of the Father and the Savior of the world, have a duty to show to what depths the relationship with Christ can lead. The great mystical tradition of the Church of both East and West has much to say in this regard. It shows how prayer can progress, as a genuine dialogue of love, to the point of rendering the person wholly possessed by the divine Beloved, vibrating at the Spirit’s touch, resting filially within the Father’s heart…”
– Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 33

Wow. I never heard that one in Sunday School! The pinnacle of our prayer life is possession by the Divine? Amazing! And this is in a letter written not only for cloistered religious, but for all Christians!

“It is a journey totally sustained by grace, which nonetheless demands an intense spiritual commitment and is no stranger to painful purifications (the “dark night”). But it leads, in various possible ways, to the ineffable joy experienced by the mystics as “nuptial union”. How can we forget here, among the many shining examples, the teachings of Saint John of the Cross and Saint Teresa of Avila?”
– Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 33

The spirituality of Carmel has its roots deep in the Old Testament. In figures like Moses and Elijah, Hosea and Isaiah, we see souls climbing up the holy mountain, not content with living a kind of suburban, comfortable distance from the City of God. These mystics plunge into the Mystery of the Heavenly Jerusalem, and they toss out ropes and life-lines for us to scale the holy mountain too. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, Therese of Lisieux, Edith Stein… all invite us beyond mere legalism into the Love that fires the heavens.

Carmelite spirituality influenced the work of Pope John Paul II. It’s fragrance broke into his heart and he has allowed that odor of sanctity to permeate his letters, addresses, and most especially, deep into his teaching on the Theology of the Body.

Yes, dear brothers and sisters, our Christian communities must become genuine “schools” of prayer, where the meeting with Christ is expressed not just in imploring help but also in thanksgiving, praise, adoration, contemplation, listening and ardent devotion, until the heart truly “falls in love.”

– Pope John Paul II, Novo Millennio Ineunte, 33

A famous and very learned Catholic theologian was once asked about the most profound thought he had ever had. He said it was simply “Jesus loves me.”

I think I’m just starting to see the real Jesus and to feel His love for me. According to Pope Benedict XVI (God is Love, 10), this Sacred Heart, this Bridegroom, in fact has an eros for us, for me! Sometimes the thought comes like a blast of wind through the old dusty alleyways of my own interior castle; Jesus loves me. I get the sense that He is knocking on more doors than just one. That from the moment that I first let Him in, He’s been exploring other rooms; deeper levels of me than I ever knew I had. Jesus comes to love us in every one of them, and always as a gentlemen; He knocks first. I think this love then, elicits our response.

Will I let Him in? And how far? Beyond the foyer, past the pews of our Sunday “obligation?” Right into the tabernacle of His Presence among us?

St. Edith Stein, a Carmelite, knew the passion of our God for her heart. She found the flames burning brightest in the Eucharist. She said:

“In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, the kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life. This heart is the heart of the Triune Divinity, and the center of all human hearts… It draws us to itself with secret power, it conceals us in itself in the Father’s bosom and floods us with the Holy Spirit. This heart, it beats for us in a small tabernacle where it remains mysteriously hidden in that still, white host.”

This heart has become our food! And why? The Carmelite mystics knew why; because this is the very nature of love, to be poured out, to be consumed and to consume! Many of us have grown up hearing that God loves us, but have we heard that God wants to consume us? Be consumed by us? For many of us, I fear, that kind of love doesn’t fit with our image of God. Perhaps those old images we have need to be smashed at the base of the holy mountain…

Giving a talk this summer, I was approached by a woman in her late 50’s. “I’m really struggling with the image of God as a lover.” But this is Who He Is. He is an “eternal exchange of love, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and He has destined us to share in that exchange.” (CCC, 221)

God is More than a Lawgiver, or a Judge, or a Friend…. “Our God is a consuming fire…” (Hebrews 12) He wants to be the Burning Bush at the center of our interior castle. Will you let Him in? Will you give Him your heart?

______________________________

Originally published on The Publican

Visit the online journal here.

______________________________________

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

Wanna Be

Do you wanna be happy, whole, integrated, joyful, successful, at peace, part of something amazing, purposeful, powerful, confident, loved, loving, redeemed, relaxed, realized, real? Then you wanna become a saint.

Do you wanna be a person in touch, in truth, inspired, desired, magnetic, magnanimous, moved, and moving? Then you wanna become a saint.

There is only one tragedy in the end – not to have been a saint.
– Leon Bloy

So save yourself all the yogi guru self-help hullabaloo. Wholeness is simpler than that – it’s found in holiness! Let’s cut through all the plaster cast, plastic past, Campbell’s Soup Kid lookin’ holy card pictures of saints for a moment. What does it really mean to become a saint?

It means to become vulnerable. To be open. To receive all things from the Hand of God in trust and in love. A saint is synonymous with what’s sane. A saint is the ultimate realist, for there is nothing more real than the Cross and the Broken Body stretched upon it. And there’s no place for vanity. The hollow of the heart is open to the Mystery, the metal of the mind is sharpened by this Truth…. We are small, we are creatures, but we are made for the Infinite, and nothing in this finite world can satisfy us. And our deepest dignity lies in this longing…

I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.
– C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

______________________________________

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

Flower Power

“I prefer the monotony of obscure sacrifice to all ecstasies. To pick up a pin for love can convert a soul.”

Thérèse Martin was not a sissy saint. It wasn’t all roses and buttercups for this young women of 19th century France, though the language of early writers, and her own words at times, can seem like sweet saccharine.

She was a rock of faith, broken and remade by the reality of suffering. All of her life… from the death of her mother at the tender age of 4, through the fits of delirium, fever, prolonged fainting spells, the ravages of tuberculosis, and in the end a total deprivation of the consolation of the Presence of God, she was faithful.

She entered the convent at the age of 15, boldly asking permission from the Pope himself to do so, and spent 9 years in a cloister, working long and hard at domestic chores, to the humdrum daily tick of the clock. Nothing extraordinary, seemingly from the outside. But on the inside she was a powerhouse of prayer and an icon of burning union with God. She taught us how to make the ordinary extraordinary.

So take your crazy 4th period class, or that business meeting, or the price of gas, or that cranky baby, or that back pain, or those pesky telemarket’ers today, and smile, and give them up to God. Suffering need not be wasted or in vain, pain can become priceless when offered up for another.

Thérèse died in 1897 at the age of 24. She felt the vacuum of atheism in her soul in the closing days of her battle with tuberculosis, but still she held on to her faith and trust in God. Like Mother Teresa in her final days, they each took on the post-modern aftertaste of nihilism, and offered its seemingly meaningless despair up as a sacrifice for souls. That’s flower power, that’s the power of this Rose of Jesus.

St. Thérèse, Little Flower of Carmel, pray for us!

______________________________________

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

Wicked Good

Good and Evil. Remember them? Many believe they were invented by theologians in the Middle Ages and later popularized by animated angels and demons on the shoulders of cartoons and comedic actors. But check this out: they are really real, and really old, and always present to the soul in every choice.

But we live in an age where words like Good and Evil just sound so…. awkward. They are so glaringly crisp; their edges so…. sharp. We prefer a nice dulled handle on things today, don’t we? Something curvy and cushy; kind of like a “sport grip” that contours to our particular touch. “Oooo, nice. This works for me!”

This talk of things being objectively Good or Evil just feels so heavy in the hand, so cold to the touch, like the hilt of a sword. We like things to “give a little” today. Now call me crazy but I have this sense that we’re dead wrong here (oops, another awkward word… I mean non-right). I think western civilization is up to its neck in a quicksand of relativity. We’re just looking at each other saying “Isn’t it nice and warm in here? So niiiice!” as we slouch deeper into a Quagmire of Comfortability. Soon we’ll completely lose our heads in this quicksand. Many already have it seems.

Am I being judgmental? Heck yes I am. We have to make judgements all the time. It’s not a dirty word. When approaching quicksand my reason dictates that walking on it would be a poor judgement, because we’re made to walk on solid ground. The solid earth, like everything in nature, is meant to remind us of its supernatural counterpart – the moral universe. Right and Wrong, Good and Evil.

We must do the Good, we must walk in its Way, and trying to negate it only creates dead air. It removes the bridge and leaves an infinite abyss. We must make solid choices again, simply because they are Good. They are True. We must steer clear of certain places and situations today because they are Evil or Wicked. Decisions must be made not just because they “make me happy” but rather because than make me holy. Not just because they feel good, but because they are Good.

At the end of the day, let’s remember (or discover) that this objective truth about the Good is not an enemy, but a remedy. Objective truth actually corresponds to the deepest yearnings of our subjective experiences. And although it may take awhile to get our “land legs” back after living on this sea of relativity, every solid step we take takes us closer to the deepest peace. And that peace is a GOOD thing.

______________________________________

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

The Power of a Word

Fire and Reign

There’s good fire, and there’s bad fire. “Our God is a consuming fire” says the Letter to the Hebrews. That’s good fire. Hell is the flipside, the outside of the Heart of God, and it scorches us. That’s bad fire. We’ve all had a taste of both fires, I’m sure. But the Fire we’re made for is the fire in God’s own Heart, the fire we see atop the Sacred Heart of Jesus. When we give ourselves to it, making a gift of our life and leaping out of the pit of selfishness, we dance in the fiery furnace of God’s Love. We burn with the same Passion that filled the dark void in the beginning, that spilled stars and planets and a plethora of forms into being. When we let His Fire burn us, we are purified, made clean, whole, and happy. We are in the Light, so to speak. We are on fire.

But when we reject this idea of superfluous, self-giving, self-sacrificing love, we grow cold. Talk of God might in fact singe us, embitter us, and cause us to “simmer” and resent the idea of total self-giving as a bit extreme or even “fanatical.” Jesus said in the gospels that he has come to spread a fire on the earth, and how he longs that it be kindled!

Selfishness puts us on the outside of the flame where it reduces us to ashes. Love puts us in the flame, and we are purified like gold.

We all discover our passion in life sooner or later, and aren’t they always things that get us outside of our own heads for a change? I think that’s part of the Divine Design, and why God stamped such passion within us. Pope Benedict XVI has written recently that “eros tends to rise “in ecstasy” towards the Divine, to lead us beyond ourselves; yet for this very reason it calls for a path of ascent, renunciation, purification and healing.”(Deus Caritas Est, n.2)

“Ascent, renunciation, purification and healing”… Sounds like Lent to me. It’s a season that’s meant to purify our eros, our passion, not stifle it or smother it. It’s meant primarily to be a wholehearted YES, not a list of NOs. It’s a YES to love; the real love that transforms our lusts; lifts them up and redirects them to their proper end. Lent is a journey into God’s Fire.

______________________________________

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

Jesus Loves Me

A famous Catholic theologian, whose name escapes me right now, was once asked about the most profound thought he had ever had. He said it was simply “Jesus loves me.”Isn’t it crazy to consider that in the whole visible creation, you are the most priceless work of art to him? Even when we take the brush of self-determination he’s given us and deface this work of God, smearing the paint of pride in garrish colors across the canvas of our lives, the Master still sees the good in us, and our potential for reaching our purpose: finding our home in his heart again.

I think the Father sees with “Jesus-colored glasses.” I think from the beginning He knew that Jesus would be that bridge for us, that “human face of God” so that we could remember the “Divine face of man.” St.
Paul says this was always the plan, that in the fullness of time, all things be summed up in Christ, brought to completion, recapitulated! The Father always knew that our Ring of Power and self-absorbtion would be broken, undone, and remade into a Cross with beams that could reach out to all the world (thanks Peter Kreeft for that analogy!)Jesus loves me. Not like my aunt or my grandpa, or Sr. Nativitas from grade school (that brief year or two in Catholic school, and I still remember her name!) Jesus loves me with a wild fire in his eyes, with a burning torch atop his sacred heart. His love is a blazing inferno!

What a tragedy that he is pictured as an anemic, pasty “nice man” in so many insipid cartoons and films today. Scripture and human experience have painted him quite differently – a Lion, an Earthquake, a Hound of Heaven, a Thief, a King, Hunter, Husband, a Living Flame of Love.

I am nearly 40 years old now, and I am just starting to see the real Jesus. It’s a bit scary to be loved this much. It’s actually shocking. I sit there in my chair drinking coffee every morning, reading those gospel stories, and sometimes the thought comes like a blast of wind through the old dusty alleyways of my mind; Jesus loves me. And I sometimes get the sense that he is knocking on more doors than just one. That since I let him in back at the age of 15 or so, he’s been exploring other rooms, deeper levels of me than I ever knew I had. St. Theresa of Avila spoke of these rooms in our “interior castles.” Jesus comes to love us in every one of them, and always as a gentlemen; he knocks first. I think this love then, elicits our response.

Will I let him in? And how far? Let’s go beyond the foyer, past the pews of our Sunday “obligation”… Right into the tabernacle of His Presence among us! Into that heart of fire!Let’s ask ourselves: Where is he knocking today? What door can I open to this God of love?

______________________________________

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

Barnabas: The Patron Saint of Sidekicks

So the Year of Saint Paul has dawned upon us! Pope Benedict XVI has announced that from this month of June until June 2009 (when summer rears it’s perspiring head again) the Church will be focusing on this Dynamic Disciple, this Super Apostle, this Tower of Power who was beaten, stoned, ridiculed and practically barbecued (wait, that was St. Lawrence) all for the love of Jesus and the blossoming New Way known to us now as Christianity!

But what’s a Super Apostle without a Sidekick? What’s Batman without Robin, Woody without Buzz Lightyear, Captain America without Bucky? (I don’t know who this is either but it was on Wikipedia).

Well…. not a heck of a lot friends!

Because, truth is, behind every Super Apostle there lies a “son of encouragement.” And that’s our man Barnabas, who’s feast we celebrate today! He introduced Paul to Peter and the Apostles. He was present at the miracle in Lystra that led some of the people to claim he and Paul as gods – Barnabas being Zeus, and Paul, Hermes (how cool that Barnabas gets called Zeus, King of the gods, and Paul gets his son Hermes who was just a herald! I can just picture them years later, sipping goat’s milk, telling stories… “They thought you were Zeus! Bah hah!” Goat’s milk sprays all over.)

Barnabas was the great Encourager, the Right Hand Man, the Patron Saint of Sidekicks, and yet so much more! When doubt surfaced, he floated his faith. When tension knotted the air between Gentiles and Jews, he unraveled it with peace. When Paul went out on a mission, Barnabas made the sandwiches… and he did his own fair share of preaching to boot. Good ‘ole “Behind the Scenes” Barnabas… He was a man of humility, filled with the Spirit.

THUS SAYETH THE WEBSITE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA:

With the exception of St. Paul and certain of the Twelve, Barnabas appears to have been the most esteemed man of the first Christian generation. St. Luke, breaking his habit of reserve, speaks of him with affection, “for he was a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of Faith”. His title to glory comes not only from his kindliness of heart, his personal sanctity, and his missionary labours, but also from his readiness to lay aside his Jewish prejudices, in this anticipating certain of the Twelve; from his large-hearted welcome of the Gentiles, and from his early perception of Paul’s worth, to which the Christian Church is indebted, in large part at least, for its great Apostle.

So you see, you don’t have to be a superstar, or a Super Apostle, to be a saint. You just have to love, tremendously, and do the task at hand. Different gifts, the same Spirit.

There are countless Barnabasessess in our Church’s history. Find St. Francis and there was Brother Leo in his shadow, St. Dominic and there were two nephews of his who were pretty dang saintly themselves. Mother Teresa was surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses who still touch countless lives today all over the world. Behind the scenes of every parish, there are the sidekicks: kneeling in pews after daily Mass, praying countless rosaries, clutching rubber-banded novena booklets chock full of yellowed holy cards, passing baskets around the church at collection time, running the Bingo, baking casseroles, stuffing envelopes… there are thousands of “encouragers”… doing little things with much love; and these are the makings of Great Big Saints.

Today, our smallest word of encouragement is exponentially greater because of the benevolent benediction of St. Barnabas. So power to the Sidekicks, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.

______________________________________

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

Why This Friday is So GOOD

From an Ancient Homily…

“What is happening? Today there is a great silence over the earth, a great silence, and stillness, a great silence because the King sleeps; the earth was in terror and was still, because God slept in the flesh and raised up those who were sleeping from the ages. God has died in the flesh, and the underworld has trembled.

Truly he goes to seek out our first parent like a lost sheep; he wishes to visit those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death. He goes to free the prisoner Adam and his fellow-prisoner Eve from their pains, he who is God, and Adam’s son.

The Lord goes in to them holding his victorious weapon, his cross. When Adam, the first created man, sees him, he strikes his breast in terror and calls out to all: ‘My Lord be with you all.’ And Christ in reply says to Adam: ‘And with your spirit.’ And grasping his hand he raises him up, saying: ‘Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.

‘I am your God, who for your sake became your son, who for you and your descendants now speak and command with authority those in prison: Come forth, and those in darkness: Have light, and those who sleep: Rise. ‘I command you: Awake, sleeper, I have not made you to be held a prisoner in the underworld. Arise from the dead; I am the life of the dead. Arise, O man, work of my hands, arise, you who were fashioned in my image. Rise, let us go hence; for you in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person.

‘For you, I your God became your son; for you, I the Master took on your form; that of slave; for you, I who am above the heavens came on earth and under the earth; for you, man, I became as a man without help, free among the dead; for you, who left a garden, I was handed over to Jews from a garden and crucified in a garden. ‘Look at the spittle on my face, which I received because of you, in order to restore you to that first divine inbreathing at creation. See the blows on my cheeks, which I accepted in order to refashion your distorted form to my own image. ‘See the scourging of my back, which I accepted in order to disperse the load of your sins which was laid upon your back. See my hands nailed to the tree for a good purpose, for you, who stretched out your hand to the tree for an evil one. `I slept on the cross and a sword pierced my side, for you, who slept in paradise and brought forth Eve from your side. My side healed the pain of your side; my sleep will release you from your sleep in Hades; my sword has checked the sword which was turned against you.

‘But arise, let us go hence. The enemy brought you out of the land of paradise; I will reinstate you, no longer in paradise, but on the throne of heaven. I denied you the tree of life, which was a figure, but now I myself am united to you, I who am life. I posted the cherubim to guard you as they would slaves; now I make the cherubim worship you as they would God. “The cherubim throne has been prepared, the bearers are ready and waiting, the bridal chamber is in order, the food is provided, the everlasting houses and rooms are in readiness; the treasures of good things have been opened; the kingdom of heaven has been prepared before the ages.”

– author unknown

______________________________________

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