Don’t Just Do Something! Sit There!

“Run, run, run” said the automobile, and we ran. “Run for your life. Take to your heels…. Foolish school of fish on wheels…”
– James Taylor

Hmm. I am guilty of this. I move too fast, even in the summa’time! I get up early, my mind swimming through a swarm of ideas. In the words of Henry David Thoreau, I “live too fast just as we eat too fast and do not savor the true taste of food.“ I am often awakened to the fact that I don’t make enough time for prayer. Real prayer; the real crying out to God and opening up to God that makes us look like little birds in a big nest, wide mouthed and waiting for Him to feed us. I keep picking at the nest, milling around for scraps. My saving grace and the fuel for my soul is daily Mass (which I missed this morning, dang it). There’s the most real prayer of all, the Perfect Prayer, as the saints and mystics tell us. They also say that all of life should be either a preparation for or a thanksgiving after Holy Mass. That’s where Life becomes a rhythm around the Song of the Lord’s Supper, a ring around the altar.

Fr. Paul Dressler (stationed in Rome for studies, and boy is he missed by the Philly crowd!) once said in a talk that when he was young he’d hear that famous phrase “Don’t just sit there, do something!” But when it comes to Grace, it’s best to flip that phrase around. “Don’t just do something! Sit there!”

St. Dominic used to say (back when Latin was cool, and I think it still is):
“Contemplari et contemplata aliis tradere.”
Contemplate and hand on to others the fruit of your contemplation.

Imagine if that well of prayer and meditation was the source and step from which we launched into every thought, word, and action of the day? Whoa, what a world it would be.

EXODUS, STAGE RIGHT
Moses answered the people, “Fear not! Stand your ground, and you will see the victory the LORD will win for you today. These Egyptians whom you see today you will never see again. The LORD himself will fight for you; you have only to keep still.”

The answer God gives through Moses to these poor, unarmed, homeless, afraid People who are under attack is:

“Stand still!” Be Still… and Know that I am God. From the perspective of the world, this is INSANE. Imagine the initial reactions of the Israelites! Moses, what have you been smoking? And can we have some. All hell is breaking loose, the Egyptians are about to wash over us like a tidal wave, and you say…. Stand still?

I love this. I stink at this, but I love this.

This is our entrance into ABSOLUTE TRUST – into the Mystery of God and His Power – our entry into Eucharistic Adoration!

In the midst of our crazy culture, the Church says to us: Stand still! Now, some think that Eucharistic Adoration is akin to “doing nothing.” I once met a priest (a priest God help us) who called Adoration “bread watching”… UGH. Does he believe in the Real Presence?

Moses reminded the Israelites that there was Another Presence with them, besides the rumbling charioteers who were about to mow them down. God was with them! And they needed to see Him, own their relationship with Him, BE with Him.

TO ENTER INTO THIS EUCHARISTIC MYSTERY, WE MUST LEARN TO STAND STILL….
– to calm down and see things for what they are
– to let God be God
– to hear his Voice like Elijah in the cave

This is how we enter into His Stillness. This is how we enter Eucharistic Adoration. Our culture is nuts! There are 130 billion e-mail messages transmitted worldwide every day. We can’t sit still. We need detox. We need to enter the White-Hot Furnace of Silence. But let’s understand what this therapy of silence means. We don’t mean silence as a vacuum, just the absence of sound… Silence is not an absence but a presence, your presence of mind & heart to Life and God and creation! My favorite quote from Scripture may well be Isaiah 30:15….. By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies.

We are living in a world that is starving for TRUE LOVE, and Love is tasted in silence, like a cool stream seeping into the heart through the eyes and ears. Love is an interior gaze. We MUST enter into this Mystery, give witness to the Real Love of the Eucharist through this silent, still gaze.

The presence of Jesus in the tabernacle must be a kind of magnetic pole attracting an ever greater number of souls enamoured of him, ready to wait patiently to hear his voice and, as it were, to sense the beating of his heart. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” (Ps 34:8).
– Pope John Paul II, Mane Nobiscum Domine

Amen.

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

If Jesus Preached Today…

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

Going Home

Well, my home parish has invited me back to lead the Triduum for St. Ann next week. The mission runs in the evenings from Monday to Wednesday (July 23-25). If you’re in that neck of the woods, feel free to stop in!

I’m very excited, despite the fact that Jesus said “Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.” (yikes) … and then they tried to throw Him off of a cliff. Nah, I’m not nervous…. because South Jersey has no cliffs! Hah Ha! That’s right, we’re flat-landers! The Pine Barrens, where I used to wander as a youth, has to be one of the flattest, most monotonous, and deeply beautiful stretches of God’s green earth I’ve ever seen.

What a gift and an honor to be invited home! To offer some reflections on living a life of faith, of seeing this world of wonders, and each other, as gifts as well. Not to say the talks won’t challenge us too… Would it be the Gospel if it didn’t stir us up, shake us from our comfort zones, expand our horizons and call us to a journey into the deep, perhaps into Mordor itself! It’s all about conversion, turning around, facing His Face again, and letting Him look deeply into our hearts. Please say a prayer that I voice the sweet summons of the Gospel, and only what He wants to be spoken. May the words of St. John the Baptist become my mantra: “He must increase, I must decrease.”

Anyhoo, we’ll be heading over to Jersey this weekend…. back to the home turf, the ‘ole stompin’ grounds. I hope to visit one of my old haunts to get ready for the mission (no, not Alba’s Pizza, home of the greatest Sicilian Pie ever crafted by human hands). I mean White’s Bogs, that desert of pine trees and cranberry pools that formed me; the Fortress of Solitude that made my brother and I look not only up to the Creator but down to the Master Dreamer Who showed us the intricately carved beauties of His works. And in those wild and wide open vistas, in all kinds of weather, we treasured the gifts the Master Painter gave us.

I’m looking forward to the smell of the cedar water, the shrill cries of the red-winged black bird, the egret, and the laughter of the chickadee. I couldn’t tell you how many hours we spent wandering those quiet places, and every season turned a new page; the tundra swans in early winter, the warblers in the spring, swimming in the clear back lake, and driving the dirt roads in the summer, laughing and singing John Cougar Mellencamp, as the sun tipped and set the heads of the white pines ablaze on the horizon, like matches to warm the cool and scented night. The bogs became a book we knew well, and we weathered every page.

So what’s your story? What are the pages in the book of your life? Do you ever go back to read them from where you are today? There are lessons we can learn from our past, every moment like a stone we can hold and polish smooth with our thoughts and prayers. Were there wounds and sorrow? Thoughtful prayer can smooth them over. Is there loss and regret? Grace can fill up the deepest valley. Was there joy that has since been left untapped? Reflecting in that pool of memories can bring refreshment again. Our youth still belongs to us, and each experience is uniquely our own and belongs to no one else. So going home, like going on vacation, is a chance for reflection, growth, and gratitude. Let’s seize the opportunity! In the immortal words of Ferris Bueller, “Life moves pretty fast…. you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.”

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Check out Michael Hogan’s beautiful pictures of the Pine Barrens!

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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