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?

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Originally published on The Publican

Visit the online journal here.

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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

The Promise

Remembering
Your touch, your kiss
Your warm embrace
I’ll find my way back to you
If you’ll be waiting…

Think of times in your life you’ve waited for Love’s reply. Will the call come, will the heart respond to mine, will that face I’ve longed for turn the bend and come to me, turn her face and look on me.

I’ve longed for you and I have desired
To see your face your smile
To be with you wherever you are

Waiting…. hoping, and with it comes such a surge of emotion, tied inseparably to the deepest cords of the soul (for our bodies and souls are one). Longing not just for the physical sensation of nearness, but for the mystical, the spiritual, the infinite of which human love touches only the hem.

These days before Pentecost are the days of waiting, this is the age of the Holy Spirit… remembering those expectant hearts of those ancient men and women of Israel; Peter, John, Mary, James. Seeing them, hearing them; warm breath, beating hearts, fearful, clustered together like birds in shadows.

“Wait….” Jesus had said. This is all they knew to do. Not knowing they lie at the turning point of human history, those happy few, soon to be quickened by the Breath of Divinity and numbering in the billions! Here at the embryonic level, the Mystical Body of Christ was sewn together again by the grace of God through the Virgin of Galilee; this Body of believers was “knit together in its Mother’s womb.” For Mary knew about waiting, about being open to receive the Holy Spirit.

Together again
It would feel so good to be
In your arms
Where all my journeys end
If you can make a promise

If it’s one that you can keep,

I vow to come for you
If you wait for me and say you’ll hold
A place for me in your heart.

Let’s look up as the Wind builds and the Flames gather on the eastern rim of the world. A Divine Heart is beating, ageless as the sea, coming with Water and Fire and Wind to wash, burn and break over us again. That’s the Promise…

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

Put THIS in Your Stimulus Package

I have a great idea for a Stimulus Package that will save us $800 billion dollars. Get this…. It’s called the Love Your Neighbor and Quit Being Greedy Action Plan.

Here’s how it works:

– In all of your decisions, don’t make profit, expansion, progress, or power the end. Use them as a means to another end…

– and that end is, get this… people. Us. Men and women.

It’s a crazy idea, I know, but I got to thinking that the most precious resource, the greatest asset, the golden fire that makes the world go ’round is actually NOT money. It’s people and a passion for people – men and women and children, in all of their manifold appearances of poverty, sickness, oppression, beauty, talent, gifts and contributions.

So the fuel to drive this Stimulus Package, whose end would not be spending but the idea of giving for the revitalization of men and women and families who are the living stones that make up businesses, factories, and corporations, would be… Love.

Yes, it’s a little old school, a little archaic. But give it a whirl and you’ll be amazed at how much a little of that love your neighbor stuff can carry you, and carry others.

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

Augustine’s Restless Heart

What better way to celebrate this great feast of St. Augustine, than to let him speak for himself. This excerpt from his classic book “Confessions” is by far my favorite of his, and one of my favorite writings from all of the saints. Learn more about his amazing story at American Catholic’s link here.

“Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace. “
– St. Augustine of Hippo

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

Is God a Big Meanie… or Something Else?

I don’t know why but it seems so many of us still hold a 7th grade image of God in our minds. Maybe it comes from the misconception that Christianity is “all about rules and commandments and this is a sin and that’s a sin and man, what’s left… GOSH!” (insert Napoleon Dynamite accent).

Remember the movie Pleasantville that showed sin as being the great liberator, the thing that brings fun and color and woohoo! to life where the boring, rigid, dress pants wearing self-righteous only see black and white? Ugh… what a twisted movie. As twisted as sin.

Ooo there it is! Sin… that nasty three letter word is the quick answer as to why we have to struggle and work and sweat it out to get the true image of God back into our cloudy heads. Sin has distorted our vision; it tricks us into choosing lust for a pleasure over the love that we know really satisfies. It’s that slippery slope that always and everywhere puts me first instead of the Other, like kids pushing around for “first” on the sliding board of life.

The scandalously beautiful truth of God as a Lover, as the Youth of Eternal Summers and the Ancient of Days (you go Van Morrison), has still not taken root and traveled deep into our hearts. WHY?

A COUPLE OF GUESSES

#1. LAZINESS….. You see, rules are easy to follow, easy to break, easy to water down, and build back up again. But when someone says “I love you” right in your face…. ooooo. We have to respond in a whole different way. It’s become personal. I have to get up off of the couch and do something, be someone… for someone other than me.

#2. FEAR….. What is the first thing Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden when they broke off their personal covenant relationship with God? They were afraid, so they hid themselves. Sin tells us that people are only out to do one of two things to me: manipulate or dominate. They can’t honestly be thinking only of my happiness, can they?

“Hark! my lover – here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices.”
– Song of Songs 2:8-9

Maybe all along God has been peering out at us, not to check up on us and see if we’ve screwed it up yet so He can toss some lighting bolt of suffering at us, but He’s looking through the lattices of the walls we’ve built up like a Romeo looking for his Juliet…

In the Christian tradition, the Song of Songs (the book that’s right smack dab in the middle of the whole Bible) has been interpreted not just as love poetry between a bride and groom, but as the ultimate Love Song between Christ and the Church. The saints and mystics saw it more as the union between Christ and me. Where the two become one flesh, where Divinity marries humanity! It was their favorite book.

“O my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you, let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely.”

Don’t we all, tough guys to tenderfoots, sweethearts to the old and soured, wooed and wounded hearts, all long for this kind of love? This intimacy? To love this way and to be loved?

“On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves – I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek Him whom my heart loves.”

Are we afraid of what we might find? Are we too lazy to make the move into this dark night? Perhaps God is bigger than the Big Judge with the Book of Rules we once envisioned Him to be. Perhaps God is less a featureless cloud of bright and biblical proportions and more like the Love in our dreams and our quiet walks and wanderings on the way home from school, down the empty alleys from the pub, the club, and the movie halls where we paint our dreams in high density and shocking intensity. Maybe God’s love is bigger than we can possibly ask or imagine.

If we seek, we will find.

“Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go…”

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

The Death of Marriage

DISCLAIMER:
This is not a gloomy post. Sure, the “death of marriage” is a pretty dramatic title, but I just needed to catch your eyes. This one is meant to edify! To fire up husbands and wives and prospective husbands and wives! To lead them up the Mountain of Love that is Calvary, not down some primrose path with a white-picket fence that just feels nice. Those of us in the club know what I’m talking about: the secret to a joy-filled married life is… death.

So yeah…. Today, Rebecca and I celebrate 4 years of marriage… woohoo! So I went digging through the ‘ole journals and this is something I found, written a few months before the BIG DAY…

“I am going to die.” (I was ridiculous back then, wasn’t I?) “It’s not long now; just a couple of months. August 9th, to be exact. I’m getting married. Now this thought may not seem like your traditional “jitters” or cold feet. It’s a wee bit extreme, huh? But it’s true. I am going to die. I am mounting the hill of Calvary, and like Christ, I am called to lay down my life for my bride. His was the Church, mine is a symbol of the Church. But death it must be, if there is to be Real Life in our new life together. This isn’t poetry, it’s reality! To put it scientifically, no two objects can occupy the same space at the same time. In order to become a “one flesh union” we have to die to our old selves. Imagine if this was how engaged couples were viewing their wedding day! It would bring a radical simplicity to the plans, wouldn’t it? “We are going to die… Okay then, I guess we can’t take it with us, as they say. So what do we leave behind? The ego… yes, let’s die to that one. And the “Me First” attitude. That has to go too.”

Marriage is about service to the other (I know this, despite the many times I turn it around). Before Jesus died, He washed the feet of his friends. A couple years ago, we went to a wedding of friends who were once Franciscan Volunteers (they were housemates of Rebecca when she lived and served in Kensington). At one point in the liturgy, they actually washed each other’s feet…. is that awesome or what? We got the point! At our wedding, after Communion, Rebecca got up and sang to me the Servant Song…. it was RIDICULOUSLY BEAUTIFUL and I don’t think there was a dry eye in the house!

So if this whole marriage thing is a call to die like Christ did for His Bride, to serve like Christ for the Beloved, then we discover that our union should be deeply “Eucharistic.”

A Little Somethin’ from Christopher West
When we receive the Eucharist worthily, it bears new life in the whole of our lives. When we receive it unworthily, we eat and drink our condemnation (1 Co 11:29). Similarly, when spouses open their union to the Holy Spirit, their whole marriage continually bears new life in the Spirit. However, if spouses close their union to the Spirit, they undermine the whole reality of their marriage and their family life. (Read the full article)

It is therefore fitting that the spouses should seal their consent to give themselves to each other through the offering of their own lives by uniting it to the offering of Christ for his Church made present in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and by receiving the Eucharist so that, communicating in the same Body and the same Blood of Christ, they may form but “one body” in Christ. – CCC 1621

Now that’s deep stuff. I can only say that I’m beginning to get it more and more. We have a beautiful reminder of this call to Communion in our marriage. It’s a paten…. and was given to us by two dear friends on our wedding day. Our names our written within it. The priest who married us, Fr. Scott, was taken aback when he discovered, right before the wedding mass began, that this was a gift of ours. He had planned to preach on the very idea of this Eucharistic aspect of marriage for us, and saw in his prayer, a silver paten! (play Twilight Zone music here). A paten is a shallow dish or plate that holds the consecrated host, the material that God has transformed into Himself at the words of the priest and the power of the Spirit. Fr. Scott said that’s where we belong, right in that paten. If we keep ourselves there, with the hands of Jesus hovering over the material of our marriage, then we can expect a transformation. Amen to that!

So God help us when we try and wiggle out of that place of transformation, as we so often do. God help all husbands and wives who share in this amazing, perplexing, impossible, crazy collaboration of hearts that is marriage.

Now it’s off to grab some roses and a little vino 😉

…. Cheers!

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

Love One Another…. That’s It?

One of the Gospel readings from daily mass last week had some spiritual dynamite in it. We heard from John, chapter 15:

Jesus said to his disciples: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends…. This I command you: love one another.”

I remember hearing a story about St. John the Apostle, who in his older days was exiled to the island of Patmos. Legend says the local community would carry him out each week for prayer, supporting his aging and frail body, like Simons bearing a human cross. Then St. John, the last of the Twelve Apostles, would simply say to the crowds around him “Love one another.”

That’s it.

A new member of the community grew a little impatient with these seemingly tedious and unoriginal sermons, mumbled softly every week. So he asked if John ever said anything else.

“What else is there to say?” said a woman beside him.

Whoa…. what else IS there to say? If we stop and think about all the nonsense, the bickering, the sarcasm, the anger, fear, lust, laxity and indifference in the world, and asked ourselves what’s missing here, what’s the antidote to this poison of angst and indifference, the answer would be love. Oh yes it would.

What the world needs now is love, sweet love. The sad thing is, it’s the only thing that there’s just too little of!

I think sometimes we imagine we know what “luv” is and assume it just hasn’t worked. But remember, it’s not “Be nice to one another, as I have been nice to you.” Laying down your life for someone isn’t “nice.” When Ben Kenobi took a lightsaber for the team and the Star Wars gang escaped from the Death Star, Luke Skywalker didn’t yell “Ben! That was so nice of you!” He just yelled “Beeeeeeeennnnnnn!!!!!”

I’m learning about this real love more and more each day. Marriage is teaching me this in a very real way. Marriage is a school of love. And this can be a messy classroom. More like a workshop actually. I’m learning that I can try to love on my own, using my own tools, but I’m a greedy guy and a selfish one. I think the power tool is always the way to go, but sometimes love just needs a hammer and a nail, if you know what I mean.
When my attempts at real love fail, I turn to Jesus. Here’s the source of Love. When I sit with Him, read the gospels in His presence, letting Him slip in between the words of the scriptures, or let my heart get filled up with Him in the Eucharist…. then BLAM! that power comes too. His power to love.

As Rebecca always says, “It takes three to get married” …. oooo, ponder that one!

I still get in the way, a lot (ask my wife). But I know I must look to Jesus if this love revolution is to be successful, triumphant, victorious! (in me first, then anyone in my vicinity) I think the saints are like love grenades…. boom. They hit those nasty encampments of sin with a dynamo of selfless love, blast ’em with beatific love, and the shrapnel of sanctity goes flying.

Like a peeled orange people look up when real love is in the room. “Who’s peeling an orange?” We smell it and know it, and it diffuses so quickly! Faster than the rancid smell of sin. Love is like a fragrant wine. Is this making any sense?

Maybe I should have just said “Love one another?”

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

Crazy Love

Today is the day! Holy Thursday is the Catholic Valentine’s Day! This is the day Jesus longed for. He “eagerly desired to eat this Passover” with His disciples. His Sacred Heart was bursting to bring them this greatest of gifts. It was, and is, the gift of His crazy love for us.

Only Jesus Himself could have thought of this gift. Catholics believe (and this is apostolic baby!) that the Eucharist is not a little trinket or a keychain that says “Jesus loves you” – it’s not just a memory or a symbol, like a painting of Him or a crucifix – not a little photo album of snapshots from the old days of miracles and wanderings and teachings from Galilee. It’s…. Him, in the FLESH. When we open up the present of the Eucharist, surprise! It’s His Real Presence!

This gift is so real, so present, that I fear many of us might be afraid to open it.

The Eucharist is such an expensive, exotic, exorbitant gift that sometimes I think we don’t know what to do with It… Him…. this gift! “Wow… thank you. Thank you, thanks…” And we put this gift in a safe, dust-free place in our heads or hearts (or on a shelf in our churches) and we move on to the next thing.

The Eucharist is scandalous love. The Eucharist is crazy. As the saints and mystics have told us, It is love to the point of folly! I believe that’s why we either get it or we don’t. We’re lost in this love (like the Air Supply song) or we’re embarrassed by it and feel like we’d rather just say “amen” and scurry back to our pew and read the bulletin or something.

Now sometimes the love of my wife completely overwhelms me. What did I do to deserve this much attention, this much devotion, this much care and concern? I’m just a goofy guy from New Jersey! Then I sit back and say, “Thank you… thanks… for loving me, even in all of my unloveableness.” Other times, I just sit back and wonder. Love is a crazy thing, isn’t it?

When I sit down and think about the Eucharist…. oiy! I once heard a kind old priest on a retreat talking about some topic of faith. He said “Don’t even get me started on the Eucharist! You’ll have to get out the mop and clean me up off the floor!” Wow, that guy was in love. Even after so many years of service at the altar, he was IN love. Because the Eucharist IS Love. Love magnified and multiplied. Love dropped like an atom bomb or blossoming like a supernova in the center of our being. When we get it, we can’t resist It. Worries and fears of worthiness are blown away, and we enter into the burning love of the Father and the Son; we’re caught up in the dance of the Holy Spirit.

Tonight we can hear, in a thousand churches, the Heartbeat of God. And if we’re ready, if the heart is washed in the showers of Reconciliation, and the table cleared of clutter as best we can clear it, we can enter into this embrace. Let’s not turn away in shame or embarrassment thinking His Love is too much or our hearts are too distracted. Tonight, He beckons us to come and eat.

“Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, then I will enter his house and dine with him, and he with me.”
– Revelations 3:20

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

The Office

For all its political incorrectness, socially inept characters, and inappropriate innuendos, the Office has moments of both hilarity and tenderness. Case in point: the Jim and Pam Scenario, captured nicely in this video (before it all hits the fan on April 5th).

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