Keep On Keepin’ On

I think we can all relate to this. What a comfort to see the others who’ve “failed” somewhere along the line too, only to get back in there and fight! Endurance, persistence, and perhaps a little stubbornness can make all the difference in the world. This also reminds of the line from Neil Diamond’s “Done Too Soon.” (I know, I know… you never realized how much we can get out of Neil D. huh?) He lists a vast array of people from throughout history and connects them all with this moving verse….

And each one there
Has one thing shared:
They have sweated beneath the same sun,
Looked up in wonder at the same moon,
And wept when it was all done
For bein’ done too soon,
For bein’ done too soon….

Let’s take a look today at the faces around us and beside us, family, friends; at the faces plastered on billboards and magazines and on the silver screen if we catch a movie this weekend. Are we any different on the inside? Are we not all seeking the same things in the end? Did we not all begin the same way, fumble, falter, feel at some point alone, abandoned, rejected, amazed, dazed, captured and captivated by this Journey called Life? We have more in common than we think. We are called to be one; one amazing, holy, and happy communion of persons! The only thing that can separate this is sin. The only thing that can keep us from finding ourselves is the refusal to give ourselves as a gift to each other!

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

Change We Can Believe In

We’ve all heard those dramatic movie trailers that start off in shadowy, ominous tones…. “In a world full of darkness…. in a time of war…. in a city torn by hatred and violence…. ONE MAN stood for justice…” etc etc.

Then we get all fired up watching Mr. Biceps (insert the latest Hollywood toughie) fight the powers that be and WIN, and the moral is once again… “One man can make a difference.”

One man, that is, toting a large semi-automatic weapon.

But these remedies in the fight against Evil are always short-lived, aren’t they? Lots of explosions and hairpin turns and sweet moves, but only a temporary peace is established…. until…. The Sequel!

I believe one Man did make a difference, once and for all. And He not only changed the exterior, but more importantly, the interior realms of the human heart. After all, that’s where all of this wickedness is stemming from, isn’t it?

No external structure can save us, let’s face it. No economic stimulus is strong enough to stimulate the heart to Goodness. That takes a certain kind of grace. And no Democrat or Republican can save us either, not even one born “on Krypton.” (hmmm, that may explain why he’s so out of touch with things on earth). It’s not a machine or a mechanism or a mortal man that can save us. This job of redemption must be done by the God-Man, Jesus Christ. If sin is an assault on Infinite Love, then it will take an Infinite Love to repair the breach. And Jesus is Infinite Love. He is Divinity united to Humanity. He is, as Pope John Paul II out it, “the human face of God and the Divine face of Man.”

These events of Holy Week are both ancient history and present to us at the same time. They are history, and hisstory, and herstory. How is this possible? How is it that the Church in Her liturgy can dwell in a kind of Eternal Now for these three days? The answer is wrapped in the Mystery of the Man Who was God enfleshed; in this God Who gave us His flesh in the Eucharist to be our food, to be one with us, and to give us that grace that can finally change our hearts.

“This is my body, given up for you.”

Pope recently said that this Week of Weeks “offers us the opportunity to be immersed in the central events of Redemption, to relive the Paschal Mystery, the great mystery of the faith.”

From the Garden of Gethsemane to the hill of Calvary, every step and every drop of precious blood had an infinite merit. And it would merit us greatly to receive its value. The door is open now, the first steps have been taken, and even now He is about to embrace that Cross anew for us, in His timeless act of unselfish love. And in every unselfish act of ours, every moment we become a gift for others, united to Him, we can lighten that load; ease that weight. So let’s walk with Him now, like Simon, like Veronica, like John, and Mary, and the countless saints and mystics of ages past.

May His Passion find its sequel in us.

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

Let’s Get Mystical!

OK, this is old school. Olivia Newton John, the early years. She played the lovely Sandy in the movie Grease. As a recording artist, one of her more famous tunes was “Let’s Get Physical.” How’s that for blunt? The lyrics went like this:

I’m saying all the things that I know you’ll like
Making good conversation
I gotta handle you just right
You know what I mean
I took you to an intimate restaurant
Then to a suggestive movie
There’s nothing left to talk about
Unless it’s horizontally

Let’s get physical, physical I wanna get physical …
Let me hear your body talk

OK then. This sounds like the mating ritual of something in a Brazilian rainforest. I’d like to suggest that we’re made for a bit more than only the physical. I think real love goes a bit further than that. Let’s Get Mystical!

The truth revealed in Scripture, and echoed in our hearts through our human experience, is that we are actually a beautiful and mysterious harmony of spirit and matter. We are “sacraments” in the broad understanding of the word; visible signs of an invisible reality. This is part of the brilliant plan of God in making the universe… that there should be things visible and invisible, and that we humans would be the bridges between the two worlds. This explains our restlessness, our deep yearnings for More. It explains why we are at the same time both like and unlike the animals we share the planet with.

You see, the animals are the ones who get physical…. they eat and sleep and forage for food and build their little dwellings in the bush. They mate, they reproduce. But we humans dine, we rest, we create…. cathedrals, symphonies, prayers, poems and promises (a little John Denver reference there). And we make love…. though sadly, even this phrase is being stripped from the vocabulary today. People just have sex. Having sex used to mean being male or female, and checking the appropriate box. It went from a noun to a verb in just a generation or two.

These mystical phenomena we experience as humans set us worlds apart from the animals…..

Read more at the Twisted Mystics blog!

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

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.

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

“Where Are You?”

It’s one of the perennial questions we ask ourselves throughout the whole of life, as we live and sweat and work out our salvation, both as individuals and as a human family – “Where am I? Where are we?” We look into the deep pool of our human experience (again, as individuals and as a human family), and we hope that we find an answer in our reflection.

We hope that we are where we are “supposed to be.” We hope we are happy, at peace, at home with ourselves. Too often, though, we discover that we are exiles. We are, for all of our efforts at settling down, strangers in a strange land. Nomads…. homo viator – man on the journey.

How did it come to this? When we look to the book of Genesis we find the answer, and we discover the golden key to finding our way back home as well. God’s plan from the beginning was that we find our home in His Heart – that we find our peace in His Will. That Will, that Eternal Heart, is the model for every person, every family, and every home; it’s a will and a heart for others, for a community of Love and Communion. A place where there is a vibrant exchange of self-giving that moves always in the perfection of the circle. This Love is the dance, the whirlwind that feeds the Other and at the same time is fed by the Love of that Other. God laid out the blueprint for this Dynamic of Love in the Garden of Eden. To the first man and the first woman, created naked in a garden paradise, He spoke the first commandment – “Be fruitful and multiply!” (Notice the lack of any thou shalt not ’s in this directive, by the way). This command is a joy-filled call to Love as God loves! It has the same ring to our ears as that first word given after a bride and groom pledge their love at the altar – “Kiss the bride!”

This call to be fruitful and multiply, to give and receive each other completely as a gift, holds within it the key to the question “Where am I?” The answer is, or should be, I am in You. And you are in me. Isn’t this the last wish of the true Bridegroom before He laid down His love on the altar of the Cross for us?

“As the Father has loved me, so I love you. Live on in my love.”

Our founding father and mother, Adam and Eve, were invited into this dance of self-giving love. But through fear and mistrust, or pride and a grasping at self-autonomy, they failed to step to that Rhythm, to let go and let God take them up and away. After the fall, Genesis tells us, they cover up in shame the very signs of that self-giving love that God called them too, stamped right into their bodies. And through fear, they hide from God. Times are hard, and suffering comes in varied forms for us all. We wonder where we are, where we’ve been, where we’re going. We often retreat to the shadows in our minds, shadows made darker by the abuse of power around us, or by the failure of love to save us. We question God. “Where are You?” I wonder though if the question is misdirected. Has He moved, or been removed by our lack of faith? In Genesis, the first question God asks our first parents after they betray Him is “Where are You?” It is not for His sake that He asks, for He sees all. God asks the question for them, huddled in the dark, so that they can speak it to themselves and step out into the Light again.

“Where am I?”

Adam and Eve unveil their fear as a reason for hiding from God. Is it fear that locks us in today? Fear in its many splintered forms? Speak it. Step out and make it known. His mercy pours forth in Genesis 3:15, for He is a Loving Father, and we are promised a Redeemer. What door will open for us today, if we just take the time to ask this question of questions? Perhaps opening up to the question will lead us back into the Answer, into that Circle of Love again, that Garden enclosed? For perfect love casts out all fear… and in love we find our way home.

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

Our Amazing Grace

I’ve shared about our story of adoption, both with our baby boy (so new and so beloved to us), and of our little ones over the last few years, 12 of whom went to God before ever seeing the light of day. I’m so happy to say that, for a short while, Little 13 saw that light.

Baby Grace Elizabeth came to us early on Sunday, the feast of the Epiphany and of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton (we think Gracie planned it that way). We waited, praying, while the c-section proceeded. Someone sneezed and we all whispered “God bless you.” And the doctor said “That was Grace.” What a way to come into the world! Blessed in her very first seconds.

She cried and squeezed our fingers, she turned her fragile head towards the light more than once. I baptized her with water from a tiny cup and we prayed, not knowing how long she would live in her condition. Then she fought for 10 hours before going back to God. She gave up her spirit just after the Angelus bells at 6pm.

For how this day unfolded in the plan of Our Father, we could not have asked for more. We had the tremendous blessing of family, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins around her, hugging and kissing her all day. Photographs and videos were taken, our pastor came and blessed her, and a dear friend from Maryland came too; he and his wife having lost their own precious daughter at birth, and truly knowing our pain.

We sang “Amazing Grace,” we prayed together, and Gracie met her big brother too. We wept, wishing she could stay, but at the end of the day we had a sense that she was going. Family left the room after saying their goodbyes, (over 20 people who had shared time with Grace), and then in our dimly lit room, Rebecca, S., Grace and I huddled up. We kissed her and sang hymns, and prayed some more. S. rested peacefully beside his sister for an hour, allowing his parents the grace to cherish every breath Grace took. For an hour, a holy hour, we kept vigil. And then she went home, and now she is whole.

We are so thankful for all of the prayers of people near and far. Messages have come literally from all over. What does this mean? That life is precious, that one little life so fragile and so fair as Grace’s can have such an impact on our hearts. Grace Elizabeth lived just 10 hours but filled our hearts with enough memories for a lifetime. Every little move she made was magic.

We have truly felt “carried” this week by so much love and support. So now, from the hospital, we’re just resting, reflecting, and praying. God has been with us at the foot of this Cross; on it in fact with Grace, we believe. We prayed for one miracle and got so much more…. “grace upon grace.”

Grace Elizabeth Donaghy
Born – January 4, 2009, 8:04am
Died – January 4, 2009, 6:08pm

Baptized, Beloved, and Beautiful. We will NEVER forget you, our little saint. Rest now in your Father’s arms. Love you forever, Mommy, Daddy, and your big brother S.

“Every human life is sacred, because every human person is sacred.”

– Pope John Paul II

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Read all the posts on Grace’s Story
Listen to Rebecca’s Song for Grace
Embryo Adoption
Amazing Grace

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

The Forest for the Trees

The other day at school, one of the theology teachers was trying to determine an answer on a crossword puzzle that his students were given in class. The question was “What is the fundamental norm of Christian morality and the fullness of the law.”

The answer had 5 letters, the second to the last letter was “u.”

_ _ _ u _

Now there were a few of us in the department hanging around St. Rita’s before class, and we all puzzled over it. We laughed, because no one could figure it out. A combined mass of Masters degrees in Philosophy, Systematic Theology, Church History, etc. Clueless! How the heck are the kids gonna get this if we can’t?

This got me thinking about how often we scramble and scratch and work incessantly to get an answer for the blank spaces in life. And we feel so limited. It’s just a couple of blanks! How could we not guess the answer? Why won’t this word fit, or this one? The book must be wrong. It’s a typo. It’s impossible!

I think all of the questions we have ultimately have one Answer, but we think it can’t possibly be that simple. And yet it is.

The answer was Jesus.

Ouch.

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

Happy Birthday Humanae Vitae!

This year the Church “celebrates” the fortieth anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s theological lighthouse, Humanae Vitae, a brief letter highlighting what human life is all about and what human love is meant to reflect. It materialized like a beacon atop a pillar of rock in the midst of the fog kicked up from a so-called sexual revolution in the 1960’s. I call it a lighthouse because today, anyone with half a brain can see that the revolution shipwrecked in turning away from it; the Yellow Submarine sank just as soon as it set sail, and we’ve been floating through some pretty dark wreckage ever since. The proof is in the statistics.

Forty years ago, public and parochial reactions to Paul VI’s letter were said to have broken his heart. Souls abandoned the Bark of Peter in droves and chose rather to find their own way through the deep and mysterious waters of human sexuality. But we have paid a high price for jumping ship…

Dr. Janet Smith (click here for the complete text) recently wrote an article highlighting the prophecies that Pope Paul VI made concerning what would happen if the Church’s teaching on contraception were ignored. For one, he said that the widespread use of contraception would lead to more cases of adultery and a general lowering of morality (anyone want to argue with that one?) The Pope predicted that men would lose respect for women and “no longer (care) for her physical and psychological equilibrium,” coming at last to “the point of considering her as a mere instrument of selfish enjoyment and no longer as his respected and beloved companion.” Paul VI also foresaw that the widespread allowance of contraception would put a “dangerous weapon . . . in the hands of those public authorities who take no heed of moral exigencies.” (enter China’s one child policy, for example). Finally, contraception could lead humanity into a distorted sense of dominion over our own bodies. As Dr. Smith mentions, “sterilization is now the most widely used form of contraception in the U.S.; individuals are so convinced of their rights to control their own bodies that they do not hesitate to alter even their own physical make-up.”

Despite these forty subsequent years of tragically fulfilled prophecies, many still cling to the hope that condoms and the Pill will somehow tame the teenagers and bring us “adults” a marital tranquility that won’t be “interrupted” or “disturbed” by expensive and intrusive children. Forgive us Father, we know not what we do. *

Humanae Vitae hit the culture like a bomb, and many are still picking pieces of its razor sharp clarity out of their shattered dreams of sexual license and reproductive autonomy. This teaching still burrows into the skin of many Catholics, like a piece of metal the spin doctors missed. We can’t figure out why the Church won’t “stay out of the bedroom” – as if the Church were a building built apart from flesh and blood. Perhaps we should recall that the Church is born in the bedroom, for it’s a living body after all. Where else would the Church be found?

Humanae Vitae told the world that the natural and sometimes fertile flow of love from man to woman that held the power to unify hearts and bring new life into the world should never be blocked, barricaded, or belittled into something merely biological, or merely pleasurable. Sex should (and could) always be knit to love and life, pleasure and procreation, bonding and babies. Our biology is never separate from our theology. That would be a divorce. What God has brought together, let no man separate.

What the world wanted to divide, Pope Paul VI announced, the Church would hold together. And I’m so glad he did. But he paid a price too, like Gandalf facing his enemy, standing on the bridge between life and death. The rather intense image in this post was inspired by a talk of Christopher West’s I attended this summer. I was given permission by the artist Ted Nasmith, himself a non-Catholic, who was gracious enough to let me “alter” his work.

What a hero we have in Pope Paul VI, for his courage in holding fast to the beauty of the sexual embrace, of fertility, of life, of its sacred character from womb to tomb. May it be soon that his spirit of love and sacrifice resurrects like the Grey Pilgrim from the abyss in which our culture is falling. That a true Culture of Life prevail…. free, fruitful, and full of hope.

Pope Paul VI, pray for us…

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* I recognize the strong tone of this post may offend certain readers who disagree with the Church’s teaching on contraception. It is certainly a very personal and sensitive issue. I would like to welcome any comments or questions and I pray that a fruitful dialogue might come from it. This is a teaching that I and the Church I love feel very strongly about. For a deeper understanding of the issue, please read the letter of Pope Paul VI first, found here.

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

10,000 Years

When we’ve been here ten thousand years Bright shining as the sun. We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise Than when we’ve first begun. – Amazing Grace

When I was in college seminary, our rector gave a homily that I’ve never forgotten. Well, at least the line I’ll quote today. I remember it so well because I thought it was goofy when I first heard it. Really goofy. And I think he said the line three times.

We all thought it was goofy, and had a good laugh afterwards (wasn’t that very Christian of us?), thinking it was one of those “how not to preach” moments to keep in mind, should we be called all the way to ordination. But now, years later, having left those studies and discerned this beautiful vocation to marriage, having experienced so many joys and sorrows already that Life has spilled out before us, watching five fast years unfold like delicate wrapping paper from each “present” moment, the phrase from that homily has come back to me.

“The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.”

That was it. Want to hear it again? OK. “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” You can sort of put your inflection anywhere, which is fun. For example, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” Though, personally, I think I like “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” This sentence, of course, begs the question: What is the “main thing”?

Right now, it’s easier for me to see than ever. In the midst of the fires of our sorrow, of possibly losing our unborn child, all the plans, desires, dreams, worries and wants of a lifetime just melt away, like paper tossed onto a burning wood. What matters most? The main thing is life with God in it; with God all around it, surrounding it… because this life and this suffering make no sense without Him. Honestly, this suffering makes no sense with Him.

I think suffering falls sometimes without rhyme or reason; it can be random and reckless. Sometimes we bring it on ourselves, it’s the friction caused by the scraping of sin in the world against God’s original dream for us. But mostly I think it’s the fallout or aftershock of that rebellion, sending rippling waves throughout the universe. “Thorns and thistles grew,” nature rocks and rolls and reeks havoc, from the macro to the micro, the physical and the spiritual, and even into the tiny cells of a little baby that should be healthy and whole.

I don’t know what it is keeping me afloat. I’m not angry at the world or God. I’m just in a white-hot furnace of sorrow. Barring a miracle, our baby will die. This is insane and this is burning us. I’m not carrying the baby, but I’m doing my best to carry Rebecca and the baby. I don’t know what to say. But I know God isn’t doing it to us. It’s not His fault. It’s not our fault.

His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither he nor his parents sinned; it is so that the works of God might be made visible through him.
– John 9

The main thing, it seems to me, is a life with God in it. The kind of God Who Himself entered into this mess, bore suffering to the extreme, and redeemed it. He tells us to carry on, the way He did unto the Cross itself. The main thing is for us to know we need God. We pray that this suffering might end in a miraculous healing so that the works of God might be made visible through our baby. We are fervently praying for this. But in it all, I remember the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. Love is here, burning us in sorrow. But in 10,000 years this sorrow will have passed, have been redeemed, transformed. In eternity we pray that we will be surrounded by the beautiful little ones we’ve adopted and lost. And the destiny of our 13th little child, who soon will be given a name, we don’t yet know. We live in hope for life here and now, to have the grace to walk a little life through the beauty and the brokenness of this world, and we hope for life in its fullness in the world to come for all of us.

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

Pope John Paul II, intercede for us.

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

Survey Says….

Yesterday’s gospel reading from Matthew 16 contained one of my favorite dialogues in all of the New Testament. For me, it’s like one of those “grasshopper” moments from Kung Fu.

A great mystery is encountered, and questions like fingers fumble their way through the mind’s knot. Possible answers start to unravel and shimmer on the surface of the soul, each inviting one to take hold of them. But which train of thought carries the precious cargo of the Truth?

THE QUESTION: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

Jesus, the Master Teacher, leads them into the Mystery. He doesn’t blast a trumpet, pass out literature, get a lush campaign going to get everybody to follow Him. He just lives… exists… each day, preaching and teaching and walking and breathing, being Who He Is in utter simplicity. And those miracles aren’t like flashy fireworks you know. Read the gospels. They fall from His fingertips so nonchalantly. No airs, just His actions. Wasn’t this all prophesied anyway?

This is how Jesus begins His “campaign.” Not very conventional, eh? And then He invites some feedback. The first Gallup poll. How incredible, how humble, how disarming is it that He wants to know what we think of Him? This could be the beginning of a beautiful relationship! And He wants us to take a really good look at what He’s saying and doing, He wants us to get to know Him so we can give an informed answer when it’s time to vote.

I know that for us today, the invitation still stands (it always has and always will, until the curtain falls in the western sky). Now all we have to do is sit down for a little while each day and read the gospels to illuminate our minds, to experience what He said and did ourselves (because He is still doing it). May we discover in this sincere quest for the truth what so many others have found…

Simon Peter said in reply, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

Yes, Grasshopper, you have chosen… wisely!

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