Peace and Pain

“Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
– John 20

“Peace be with you”…

Peace is what we all long for, deep down. Often we imagine it lies on some white sandy shore or on the winning side of a Powerball ticket. But ironically, peace is often found not in the absence of sorrows and responsibilities but in the quiet acceptance of them. So often, it’s in the still center, the eye of the storm, where there is peace.

The story of Thomas above is a powerful reminder of this truth. Jesus returns. He is glorious, alive, healed. But he has scars. Good Friday cannot be separated from Easter Sunday. Incidentally, it’s been said that there is only one man-made thing in Heaven: Christ’s wounds. What a sobering thought. Christians are not living in a fantasy world. Dreaming up pipe dreams. Walks through rose gardens. In the immortal words of Guns ‘n Roses, we know that “every rose has its thorn…”

Unconditional Love, the force that Jesus unleashed upon the world by his life and death, is a curious mix of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. So even in the midst of that first Easter, that shockingly beautiful, scandalously incredible, dream of all dreams miracle of the Master’s return from Death, there was death’s reminder. Scarred hands. A pierced and open side. So let’s not deceive ourselves. Love is pain. Love hurts. Peace has a price. Without this wound of Love could we ever peer in and behold the very real, beating and pleading Heart of our incarnate God?

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

Jesus versus Vampires

Just the other day, I was rounding the corner of our church parking lot to head into daily Mass, when a Septa bus drove down the street. On the side of the bus was an ad for a TV series about vampires called “True Blood.” There was a smiling, fanged young women lying beside a gruesome, lifeless young man. I thought of our culture’s increasing obsession with death, then turned and entered the church, looking towards the crucifix and the wounds of Christ. Hmmm, I thought, here’s the True Blood, isn’t it? I’m “celebrating” another kind of death in the Body of Christ. I couldn’t stop thinking that day of the parallels between the two images, both involving great violence. But which image holds real power? It was Jesus versus the Vampires.

It seems the media is dripping with the lore of vampires, especially these days just before Halloween. Websites, books, video games… Years ago, we saw the success of TV shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now the more recent True Blood. There’s also the wildly popular Twilight series now turned movies. So what’s the attraction? I think, at the end of the day, it’s a twisted desire for the Eucharist.

The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God. 


– St. Thomas Aquinas

Cloaked beneath the surface of vampire mythology is a desire for eternal life, which I would affirm. We all have an innate desire for Life to continue, to indeed flourish. And in fact, we want even more than that. “I wanna live forever! I wanna learn how to fly… high!” We want to lose ourselves in eternal realities, which are actually attributes of God: Life, Beauty, Truth, Immortality. We want a fountain of youth. We want a feast, the banquet so often imaged in the Bible. But when we’re unwilling to make the sacrifice of our lives in love for that gift (which is the key to all happiness and self-discovery) we degenerate into sacrificing others. Our love that’s meant to go out in service is twisted to a lust that folds in and serves only me.

Vampires are a greedy bunch. Rather than shed their blood in a total self-gift for others, like Jesus, they selfishly draw the very life-blood out of others. Vampires are not givers, they are takers. But he who grasps at his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake, will find it…. and with it, life everlasting.

When it comes to restoring us to that life again, it is Jesus alone who gives us the True Blood, the Divine transfusion that alone can save us.

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Originally published in the Catholic Standard and Times

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

Joyness

“Brothers and sisters: Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil. May the God of peace make you perfectly holy…. spirit, soul, and body…”
– 1 Thessalonians 5:16…

I believe joy should be the undercurrent in the soul of every Christian. That’s what this third Sunday of Advent is about, and so it’s traditionally called “Rejoice” Sunday (Gaudete). After all, compared to the horrific death of Jesus on Calvary, to the crucifixion of Love Himself at the hands of His creatures, is there any sorrow that cannot be undone? So our crosses all combine and meet and meld into One at Calvary, and this is communion. And then they are buried in the earth, break open in the darkness and then push, pine, and blossom forth in the Spring into something holy beyond our wildest dreams. And this is redemption! The joy it births is evangelization….

“Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls.”
– Blessed Teresa of Calcutta

Again, everything that happened to Jesus must happen to us. And didn’t He say that He came to give us joy, and joy in abundance? So rejoice always. Mind the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. He was a realist, not an idealist, and he himself knew sorrow, and beatings, abandonment, imprisonment, rejection, and hunger. And in them he rejoiced for what was to come. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him! Rejoice! In the words of the French sculptor Rodin “The victory of Truth is certain.”

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

King Me!

On Sunday, the Church celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. Now at first glance you might be thinking…. Wow, what an outdated concept! How completely irrelevant to my life and to talk at the water cooler on Monday.

“Hey Bob, what you’d do this weekend?”
“We celebrated the Feast of Christ the King.”
“The King? Huh… Sounds kinda medieval, Bob. When are you Catholics gonna wake up and smell the 21st century?”

Then you hang your head and slink back to your little patch of serfdom behind some flimsy beige partition and think, “yeah, that does sound totally medieval.”

I mean come on…. this is America! We’re a democracy! We don’t want some archaic flashback to a time of fairy tales, princesses, dragons, and kings! Right? I mean WE the People! After all, we know what’s best! Look around: isn’t it working out perfectly in this new City of Man, this Brave New World? Finally, there’s peace and justice for all! In the immortal words of Laverne and Shirley, “Give us any chance, we’ll take it. Give us any rule, we’ll break it. We’re gonna make our dreams come true. Doin’ it our way.”

Yeah, right. Truth is, the naive dreams of “our way” have hit the cold, hard highway and turned into a nightmare…. now we’re singing “Welcome to the Jungle.”

Why can’t we get it right? Because we’re incapable of fixing ourselves. There’s a disorientation within each of us that can only be reoriented by the Maker of our hearts. And doesn’t that make sense? We didn’t create ourselves, so how can we complete ourselves? We don’t have a clue. We’re unruly. We need a Ruler. But instead of humbly admitting this truth, we grab the “reigns” from the rightful King and we don’t even know how to steer this carriage. It’s as if Cinderella decided to make a hard left and skip out on the Royal Ball, settling instead for a “happy meal” at McDonald’s.

But this King has a much better meal prepared for us!

I suppose the trap for “we the people” is a fear that the King will become a Tyrant (wasn’t this the twisted lie of the Serpent right from the beginning of our story, in the Garden of Eden?) Granted, earthly manifestations of kings have clearly transformed into just that over the millenia. It’s quite logical to want to rebel when your monarch becomes a monster. But here’s the thing: Jesus isn’t a monster.

Jesus isn’t a king who will sit on a golden throne waving an iron mace. Jesus came as a poor man wearing His Heart on His sleeve. Jesus is not a King who will crush and kill your freedom. He comes to be crushed and killed Himself, to give us all true freedom! When Matthew closes off his gospel, he points us to the Face of the True King, and it is a Face that we never expected.

“For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.”

My King is a hungry, thirsty, broken man. My King is a King of Pain. He directs my eyes into the shadows and into the wounded places of the human condition so that I can learn compassion and love. He is not faraway in a polished palace but deep in the slums, among the “rabble.”

At the end of the day, governors govern, administrators administrate, and presidents preside, but always seemingly from a distance. I need a King close at hand to rule over me, to set my heart right again. A Ruler by which to measure my love. And I find it all in Christ my King, Who is not afraid to walk among the least of my brothers. In fact that is what He has become for me. For it is who I am…

“The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us – that is all He asks.”
– St. Therese of Lisieux

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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?

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

Jawdroppin’ Jesus

What’s the most exciting adjective ever hurled at you?

Funny?
Crazy?
Caring?
Compassionate?
Nice… ?

How about spellbinding. Now that’s an adjective for ya.

This rarely used word is the one used in today’s gospel from Luke 4. Jesus is making his rounds around the towns and villages of Galilee (the sea of which is pictured above), and this time he’s in Capernaum. The people are “spellbound” by his teaching. What a great word…. spellbound. It means “entranced by or as if by a spell; fascinated.” But why were the people so entranced, you ask? Because he spoke with authority.

Now there’s something we need desparately today but are afraid to take, like nasty medicine that we know is going to heal but it hurts to go down; words of authority.

The funny thing is, they only taste nasty when we are sick, that is, need to get out of unhealthy situations of self-righteousness and autonomy. When we are arrogant, anarchists, or anti-authority, words of authority come storming towards us, shining with all of the clarity, force, and power of a waterfall or a flash of lightning. They quite literally rock our world, like the words of Jesus did to the powers that be (or were) in his own time. But the truth is, we need a shock to our systems, so dulled as they are by soupy words, wishy washy words that dribble out from our lips or in opinion polls or from the media. We need a center of gravity. We need a Son to revolve around. In the me-o-centric universes that we can construct for ourselves, we simply end up floating through space like asteroids, bound sooner or later to crash into something.

But it takes alot to convince us of this truth. To assure us that there is an Authority and a Law, and that we need to obey it (Him) just like the planets follow the rules. But we have the added challenge of doing so willingly, of placing our hearts and wills into His system. Falling in line with the Law of Love is the surest way of finding ourselves, of discovering our ryhthm, our pace, our deepest identity. All else is chaos. To resist his words of authority is to fall prey to the black hole of self-absorption, to lose all sense of space and time, to be bent… to be lost.

The prayer today is to realign ourselves, reorient ourselves under His authority. So God, make our crooked ways straight. Draw us in and bind us to Your Truth. Then we can truly be spellbound, and in that binding we will truly be set free.

“In His will, our peace.”
– Dante

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

Man Attacked by Flowers Survives, Barely

Thursday night, Rebecca and I made a visit to our local parish church for a little adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. We both recognized that we need to do this more often; to pour out our troubles to the Lord, just as a Hannah did in the Temple so long ago. Funny how I deliberated before we made the decision to just do it. There was the Freshmen retreat to plan, grading, a plane ticket to order for next Saturday, grading, the bug in my podcast that I can’t seem to fix, (but I still love you iTunes!) and there was some grading.

In the end we just went to Him, and of course, it was awesome. And that’s all He wanted… for us to go, in the midst of our busyness or “tiredness” at the end of a long day; to come to Him when we are weary and heavy-burdened. And guess what… He gave us rest. For just a few minutes, we did nothing but BE with Him, and pray.

One of things I love about the Easter Season is the INSANE amount of flowers that explode into the sanctuaries of churches all over the world after the Resurrection of Christ. The world may hate us and persecute us just as Jesus predicted, but I know that, secretly, at least the florists love us. (I wonder if they intentionally look for shop space next to Catholic churches? They could survive just on lily and poinsettia sales!)

As we knelt down to unpack our hearts before the One Who knows them best, an odoriferous wave of delight poured over us. It was crazy. There were flowers under the altar, over the altar, popping out of the pulpit, pouring out of the pews, climbing up the choir loft… and all of them screaming with pistils and petals waving “Watch out world! He is RISEN!”

So we just drank it in, sniffed it up, basked in the pungent scent of New Life in the Garden of the Resurrection…. and there we prayed for Life… life to the full. We can’t wait for kids. CAN’T WAIT. And it brings to mind a line from Blessed Mother Teresa: “Saying there are too many children in the world is like saying there are too many flowers.”

In our hearts, as in our church this Easter season, there can never be enough flowers.

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

The Real Jesus

The song is by “downhere” and the video from Kelly Wicoff, who packs a powerful lesson in the images she chooses…

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

God Sleeps in the Womb of the Earth

Yesterday Christ died. He said “It is finished,” and He gave up His spirit. The great Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Morning Star was Himself extinguished by the Darkness.

So now we wait, and weep, and wonder. Has Death won? Is faith just a futile attempt to hold off the inevitable night, like a match lit for a brief moment, surrounded by impenetrable shadow, for a few seconds of illumination, until all is night? We wonder if there’s more. We wait, we watch, like Mary by the tomb.

I see her sitting there, still stunned by the events of that Dark Friday, a whole cut into her heart, scraped clean. Open hands, cupped, lying on her lap, still breathing out the sweet smell of myrhh and oils from the Jewish burial custom. She stares blankly over the distance between the shade of an olive tree and the Roman guards moving about their watch, mumbling in a language she doesn’t know. She is there keeping vigil, but she is not there. She is nowhere, she is no one. Her thoughts can only find rest on a few random phrases of His, like a bird alighting on swaying reeds.

“Destroy this temple…. And I will raise it up.”
“Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man….”
“I am the Resurrection and the Life…”

But then the winds of memory and sorrow and unspeakable torture blow through her mind again, and the bird of her heart must fly away, for this wind is too strong. After all, she saw His broken body, washed those wounds with His Mother. She saw the marks, the gaping hole in His chest. “It is finished,” she whispers to the wind. And her tears drop into the dusty earth.

But Holy Saturday is a day pregnant with possibility….

“Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man….”

Yesterday, Words that can remake the world were spoken, dropped from the mouth of Jesus like seeds full of paradoxical promise. They were spoken the night before as well, at a supper His heart longed to celebrate. These Words convey to the human heart the very secret of human life, the way to the truth of who we are and what we can become. These Words and only these Words, like a magic spell, can rebuild the shattered Dream of Eden, and create a Civilization of Life and Love. These Words have unspeakable power in them.

“This is My Body, given up for you…. Take and eat, take and drink.”

To the barren fields of fallen man, the God-Man has given His body as grain. To the earth that has shared in our sorrow, drink. Where thorns and thistles grew now the seed in the blood of Jesus flows. In the dark womb of the earth, He lies broken, sleeps, and germinates, sending out the small, green shoots of promise…And with Mary, we watch and wait for Morning.

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

Passion Reflection #3 – Veronica’s Veil

(Kindnesses small as seeds can stand as long as mountains, and be remembered until the end of an age… Such is the motion of a woman’s veil, cupped in trembling hands upon the Face of the Man of Sorrows).

She stood out in a crowd.
It was the eyes above all
A stream of compassion
That flowed through the wall
Of hatred and anger
Jealousy and fear
Veronica saw Suffering
and dared to draw near.

Here the drama unfolded that has since been remembered, through time and through tales her act has engendered the same look, the same leap
Out of self, out to others,
To the small and the sorrowful, to the least of our brothers.

To ease the world’s wounds is the saint’s vocation.
To make a veil of the heart and the mind is our mission.
To catch tears and calm fears turns our pride to submission.
And in every small act of mercy or compassion,
His Face shines again from the servant-heart’s passion.

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