How Deep is the Water

Learning to swim as a 5 year old was an enormous challenge for me.  The moment my feet could no longer touch the river bottom or swimming pool surface was instantly different.  Immediately every part of my body became engaged in staying afloat, legs and arms scissoring in unison, struggling to keep my head above water, where I could breathe the air essential to my living. When we wade into the water, we can measure out our courage, and as long as our feet can touch the bottom, we have no need of faith. We can experience the water, with our feet touching, but it isn’t the “full water experience”.  We don’t really “know” the water, what the essence of the water is. We experience it, we can say what it is “like,” we can move in harmony with it, partially aligned with it, but we are less likely to “be” it. So, also, is this the way we encounter God.  We can experience God, but God is unknowable. We can experience qualities we know to be god-like, in ourselves and in others. We can experience God’s immanence in Nature. But to really know God, to be authentically ourselves as a manifestation of God – well, that’s a different matter entirely.

Learning to swim

In Louisiana where I grew up, the athletic department of the local university sponsored a swimming program for young children taught by members of the university’s football team.  The Olympic size pool literally bubbled with tiny bodies, in a constant litany of above and below water exercises.  Children clung noisily to the overhang at the shallow side of the pool.  Taking turns we practiced with our instructors, tall, heavily-muscled young men looking, in form and function not unlike welcome ports in a storm, or rocks of Gibraltar, as though they could weight lift several of us simultaneously with each arm. The teachers inspired confidence. With each practice session the teachers moved a few steps further away.  This incremental “distancing” was not lost on the children, who wondered at each encounter, whether or not they could “make it.”  Each effort, too, had variability – sometimes one would hit a “flow” when all limb and breathing elements seemed to function in unison.  Sometimes an effort presented itself as a flailing disaster and one had to be scooped up by the teacher and returned to the side for “a rest” and “a think.”

The goal for the summer was to swim the “long way,” the length of the pool. There was a personalized gold certificate for those who achieved that goal. It wasn’t hard when focusing on the goal, to focus simultaneously on a fear of the “deep end.” For a 5 year old, the “other side” was far, far away, maybe even miles, a dim horizon.  And to swim length of the pool, to reach the “other end,” it was necessary to swim through water well over my head.

Physical Water and Spiritual Water

There is a wonderful, old African-American spiritual called “Wade in the Water.” It references both the Israelites, led by Moses, fleeing from Egypt and American slaves, led by the “Holy Ghost” fleeing by way of the Underground Railroad to cross the new “River Jordan” into the land of freedom.  I love this song and look forward to it each Lenten season. It stirs something deep inside me – maybe it’s the sonorous notes of the refrain or what seems to be a desperate crying out of the soul for something deeply yearned for.  At the very least in the lyrics for both cases above, it is the ostensible need for freedom. But, I believe it speaks to much more, though one might consider that true freedom is synonymous with the purpose of the spiritual journey.

The refrain is particularly interesting:

Wade in the water, children.  Wade in the water.

God’s a-going to trouble the water.

This is our first hint that this “water” isn’t just physical water. We’re not just traversing the Red Sea or a swift creek or river currents on the long road north. Our escape is just the beginning – not the whole journey. Nevertheless, we are asked to wade in the water – to get to know the water.  As we get to know the water, we will find that it changes from moment to moment. Change is the nature of the water. Water has many faces.

Look over yonder, what do you see?

The Holy Ghost a-coming on me

We have experienced the Holy Ghost, that is, we have experienced a transformational moment of grace. We have awakened to something larger than ourselves, something we have been missing and yearning for, an emptiness physical, sensual life with all its bounty, does not entirely fill. And so the spiritual journey/quest begins for something to fill us, nurture us, and bring us ultimately peace.

And, yet, there is the haunting refrain – at the same time both intriguing and frightening,

Wade in the water, children.  Wade in the water.

God’s a-going to trouble the water.

What does it mean that God’s a-going to trouble the water? What does that phrase mean for the spiritual seeker and in what ways does it describe the spiritual journey? Why doesGod trouble the water?

In the Gospel of Thomas, the reason becomes clearer,

Jesus said, “Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]”

In Thomas, we read Jesus outlining the birth and the journey of the spiritual seeker. We seek an answer to our spiritual loneliness.  Jesus says do not stop seeking, until you find.  To not seek, one must actively suppress our natural inclination.  When we find, we will be disturbed.  Things will not be what we expected; life as we “knew” it may fall away.  We may lose friends; we may be criticized and become discouraged. We may even lose the feeling of longing that created our journey in the first place. But, with our eyes open, there will be so much more, that we will be amazed at the extraordinary complexity of life and living.  There are many “faces” to the spiritual seeker and the journey. Each venturing further, each extension out in our swimming “the long way” to the other end of the pool presents a new face of ourselves and the reality we experience. We eventually develop spiritual “gills” – at once at home in our expanding reality and in the protective hand of God. We are simply awestruck and speechless.  From that place of awe, we encounter true peace and joy.

So, why does God trouble the water?  To shake us up, to wake us up, to allow us to see what we would be unwilling to look at and work with on our own, were we given the choice.

The spiritual journey is a true journey – we can’t see around the bend, we don’t know the view from the “other side” of the pool, until they get there. We know that each practice run “distances” us a little more from the safety, the known reality, of the shallow side of the pool. We wonder, will we make it? We depend on those who teach us, challenge us, shelter us and comfort us on the way. And, most importantly, we are frightened at times by the depth of the water.  What happens when our toes no longer touch. Will we drown?

How deep is the water?

I don’t know the answer to that question.  I expect it varies for each of us, in the same way that our deepest personal challenges take different forms for each of us. Universally I believe and from experience I know that the journey requires more than a little courage and faith. It isn’t easy to release ourselves fully into the water,  to release ourselves into God – no longer holding back,  no tiptoes, no bouncing from foot to foot to stay in contact with the safe ground.

And, I believe, that releasing may not be, in fact, the final step. But, rather, I believe that conscious, joyful immersion is the final step. How difficult is it to experience and to acknowledge how “good” it feels to be in the flow, yet not fear “floating away?”

Perhaps the answer is to simply abide in the flow with a new “ability” to think, speak and act with full consciousness, in full self-realization, fully awake!

A Solution for a Fragmented America

In his masterwork, The City of God, Saint Augustine offers a definition of a people that can shed some light on why we are so fragmented today. He states that a people is “a gathered multitude of rational beings united by agreeing to share the things they love.”

In the face of a growing social disintegration, this definition points to the source of our discord. It is not only differences in opinion about economic systems or political policies that divide the nation. Rather, it lies in the fact that we no longer unite to agree, share or love.

Agreeing, sharing and loving are by their nature social acts that unify. They presuppose principles around which we might gather. Such activities also assume social institutions that serve as a point of reference where we might unite. Clearly the principles and social platform upon which we used to share the things we loved have declined and eroded.

What Has Happen to Freedom?

Ironically, the cause of this disunity can be found in today’s twisted notions of freedom.

If there is one thing that has always united, and can even still unite Americans, it is our love for freedom. Indeed, the mere mention of freedom has always served as an inebriating rallying cry that opens up seemingly infinite possibilities of realizing dreams. This concept is found in our myths and is intertwined in our national narratives. Soldiers fight and die for freedom.

However, the idea of freedom that so united us in the past now divides us. Freedom used to be the means by which we celebrated our diversity. Today, it splinters us up and sets us in radical discord with each other. It has become the point of contention that is tearing the country apart.

The problem is not freedom itself. It is what freedom has come to mean.

Freedom Inside a Framework

In the classical sense, freedom is not the act of doing whatever one wants. Rather, freedom has long been defined in terms of self-restraint whereby individuals avoid being enslaved by their passions. It involves choosing the means toward something judged to be good. Freedom presupposes a moral order that helps us discern the good. Freedom buttresses the rule of law; it does not undermine it.

Perhaps a better way to understand freedom is that which allows us to live fully inside a broad framework of family, community and faith. These social institutions serve as benevolent handrails not odious fetters upon our future. They facilitate freedom and enable us to be a people by helping us unite to “share the things we agree to love.”

America was founded in this context of ordered liberty. It served as a point of unity that allowed Americans to prosper and express themselves with amazing variety. Inside this context, it is also understood that freedom is not without cost. It must often be bought with sacrifice and even blood.

Freedom Without Restraint

The traditional notion of freedom has long been in conflict with the more modern ideal that came from the Enlightenment. This concept is a freedom without rules or restraint best expressed in the rambling impressions of French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Rousseau saw freedom as obedience to the law one gives oneself. Law originates in the individual who is the supreme judge of right and wrong. Each is deemed autonomous and self-determining. The ultimate goal in life is the remaking of the “self” to achieve self-realization and self-fulfillment. There is a denial of any limits or boundaries to experience; nothing is forbidden.

This distorted vision of freedom repudiates social institutions as obstacles that inhibit individual expression. It proclaims a freedom from God and His law. It is constantly undermining its foundations by introducing elements of chaos and frenetic intemperance, which it labels diversity. This freedom denies duty and demands entitlement.

This individualist notion of freedom helps explain why we cannot be united as a people. It is because, in this lonely regime, one cannot agree to share the things we love for so little is shared or loved together. It also explains why we are so divided. In a regime where all make their own rules, there is no limit to the fantasies and illusions that serve to justify sin, vice and discord. we cannot agree to love.

A Fragmented Nation

Thus, we are fragmented because this second notion of freedom now dominates the culture. We can no longer live off the legacy of ordered liberty, a fruit of Christian civilization that has sustained our society. Our social capital has been spent. Things are breaking down.

Properly speaking, it has not resulted in the polarization of the nation since there are not two clearly defined poles. Rather what we are seeing is the splintering up of America as postmodern individualists self-identify into innumerable groups, genders and categories.

That is why the Culture War is so important. With the splintering of society, many Americans are searching for what we lost. With the grace of God, the institutions and principles of Christian society can have amazing regenerating qualities if strongly affirmed. If we are to be a people once again, we must rally around what Russell Kirk called those “permanent things” that we once loved and agreed to share.

St. Thomas: An Apostle Who Was Sent

Modern readers tend to see the Gospel through a filter of tradition. We see individual characters as we have been trained to see them: as the sum of the sermons preached about them. The text may present them as complex, with a variety of competing virtues and failings, but our mental shorthand reduces them to a single quality.

Take Doubting Thomas. His memory (like his nickname) rests largely on a single scene near the end of the fourth Gospel. The scene begins with the disciples hiding behind locked doors (John 20:19). They were afraid. They had already received the news of Jesus’ Resurrection, but still they dared not show their faces outside. The locks on the door presented no obstacle to the glorified body of the risen Jesus. He suddenly stood among the disciples. He blessed them, and he endowed them with power to forgive sins. All this took place, however, while Thomas was away.

Now Thomas, one of the twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails, and place my finger in the mark of the nails, and place my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. The doors were shut, but Jesus came and stood among them, and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (John 20:24–29)

This article is from The Apostles and Their Times.

Perhaps Thomas can be forgiven for disbelieving his fellow disciples. They had hardly proven themselves reliable over that Passover holiday. They had all fled the Master — all except John, who, tradition tells us, was the youngest of them.

Thomas was indeed incredulous, and his retort had the same quirky combination of courage and pessimism that he had shown at other moments in Jesus’ ministry. When the Master informed the Twelve that he would be going onward to Judea, Thomas said to the others: “Let us also go, that we may die with him” (John 11:16). On another occasion, when Jesus asked his disciples to follow after him, Thomas raised the obvious question that no one else dared to ask: “Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?” To which Jesus replied: “I am the way, and the truth, and the life;

no one comes to the Father, but by me” (John 14:5–6). Thomas was brooding and could be downbeat; and yet he managed to elicit some of Jesus’ most stunning acts of self-revelation.

None was more stunning than Thomas’s encounter with the risen Lord. Jesus did not merely identify himself— which would have been enough — but invited Thomas to make the most invasive verification: “Put your finger here . . . put your hand in my side.” The moment bespoke an intimacy between Jesus and those chosen disciples. In the encounter we see a bond of fellowship and friendship all the more remarkable because those men had, only days before, abandoned Jesus when he was suffering.

The Apostles: Those Who Are Sent

The Apostles were more than administrators in the Church, more than merely functionaries and overseers.

The word apostle itself has a dynamic quality. It denotes a sending, a mission, a movement outward. The Apostles’ lives were marked by activity; their story is told, appropriately enough, in the book titled the Acts of the Apostles.

The word Apostle indicates a certain dynamism in the office and in the Church. The Church of Christ was not to be (as Israel had been) a reserve of purity, insulated from the world; it was rather an overflow of purity into the world, touching all the nations. As Jesus sent the Apostles forth on their mission, he said: “you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8).

The New Testament tells some of the story of some of their travels. In the centuries immediately afterward, the earliest Christian historians set down the stories (and legends) of all of the Apostles’ missionary journeys. Many of these were gathered together in books modeled after the New Testament’s history: the Acts of John, Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul, and Acts of Andrew — all were likely set down before the year 200.

If these early accounts are to be trusted, perhaps no one carried out Jesus’ command as literally as Doubting Thomas did. Jesus told his Apostles to be his witnesses “to the end of the earth,” and all the early traditions agree that Thomas went to the limits of the known world: he brought the gospel to India. The testimony of this is consistent in the most ancient histories and the sermons and letters of the early Church Fathers. When Pantaenus, a second-century missionary, traveled from Egypt to India, he found the Church already established there. When later missionaries (and explorers such as Marco Polo) arrived, they found Christians who honored Thomas as their patron. For centuries, epic poems about Thomas were handed down not only in Christian families, but also in Hindu families!

Witness to India is a fitting end to the life of the man who dared to go abroad in Jerusalem in the days after Jesus’ death.

It seems as if the earth itself— and human events — had conspired for centuries to make way for the acts of the Apostles. Such missions would have been difficult or impossible before Alexander the Great had opened up the Silk Road to the Far East and before the Romans had laid down thousands of miles of roads in the West.

Travel to India, in fact, was arduous until the time of Christ. It was right around then that Caesar Augustus suppressed piracy on the high seas. It was right around then that a sailor named Hippalus discovered the trade winds, enabling ships to travel on the open ocean from the Red Sea to the Indian peninsula.

The world, it seems, was waiting for someone to be sent.

image: Dominus Meus et Deus Meus by Fr. Lawrence Lew, O.P. / Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

Editor’s note: This article is an excerpt from The Apostles and Their Times, which is available from Sophia Institute Press. 

This is how much God loves you, according to Mother Teresa

"He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy."

Mother Teresa was one of the most gifted souls in recent history, piercing the darkness of this life to discover the unfathomable love God has for us. Her very life was a visible manifestation of God’s love for humanity, but she also left us a profound reflection that should be read over and over again on a daily basis.

She wrote a letter to her “spiritual family” dated March 25, 1993, asking the question, “Why does Jesus say ‘I Thirst’? What does it mean? Something so heard to explain in words.” Mother Teresa went on to write, “He thirsts for you. He loves you always, even when you don’t feel worthy. When not accepted by others, even by yourself sometimes—He is the one who always accepts you.”

Mother Teresa continues, “The devil may try to use the hurts of life, and sometimes our own mistakes—to make you feel it is impossible that Jesus really loves you, is really cleaving to you. This is a danger for all of us. And so sad, because it is completely opposite of what Jesus is really wanting, waiting to tell you. Not only that He loves you, but even more—He longs for you. He misses you when you don’t come close.”

Inspired by these words, Father Joseph Langford, MC, co-founder of Mother Teresa’s priests’ community, wrote his own reflection (often mistakenly attributed to Mother Teresa) that takes the viewpoint of God and how he thirsts for us.

It is a profound reflection, one that expands on Mother Teresa’s message and goes deeper. Here are a few excepts that should be read slowly and carefully, allowing God to speak to your soul.

It is true. I stand at the door of your heart, day and night. Even when you are not listening, even when you doubt it could be Me, I am there. I await even the smallest sign of your response, even the least whispered invitation that will allow Me to enter.

I know what is in your heart – I know your loneliness and all your hurts – the rejections, the judgments, the humiliations, I carried it all before you. And I carried it all for you, so you might share My strength and victory. I know especially your need for love – how you are thirsting to be loved and cherished. But how often have you thirsted in vain, by seeking that love selfishly, striving to fill the emptiness inside you with passing pleasures – with the even greater emptiness of sin. Do you thirst for love? “Come to Me all you who thirst …” (Jn. 7: 37). I will satisfy you and fill you. Do you thirst to be cherished? I cherish you more than you can imagine – to the point of dying on a cross for you.

I Thirst for You. Yes, that is the only way to even begin to describe My love for you. I THIRST FOR YOU. I thirst to love you and to be loved by you – that is how precious you are to Me. I THIRST FOR YOU. Come to Me, and I will fill your heart and heal your wounds. I will make you a new creation, and give you peace, even in all your trials I THIRST FOR YOU. You must never doubt My mercy, My acceptance of you, My desire to forgive, My longing to bless you and live My life in you. I THIRST FOR YOU. If you feel unimportant in the eyes of the world, that matters not at all. For Me, there is no one any more important in the entire world than you. I THIRST FOR YOU. Open to Me, come to Me, thirst for Me, give me your life – and I will prove to you how important you are to My Heart.

Whenever you do open the door of your heart, whenever you come close enough, you will hear Me say to you again and again, not in mere human words but in spirit. “No matter what you have done, I love you for your own sake Come to Me with your misery and your sins, with your troubles and needs, and with all your longing to be loved. I stand at the door of your heart and knock. Open to Me, for I THIRST FOR YOU …”

Why are the wicked joyful?

Why are the wicked often prosperous and happy, while the righteous struggle? It’s because they’re not in the game, says St. Ambrose. The spectators loaf about in their luxury boxes, but the athletes who do all the work win all the prizes.

Perhaps you are saying, “Why are the wicked joyful? Why do they live in luxury? Why do they not toil with me?”

It is because those who have not put down their names to strive for the crown are not bound to undergo the labors of the contest. Those who have not gone down into the race-course do not anoint themselves with oil or get covered with dust. For those whom glory awaits, trouble is at hand.

The perfumed spectators look on; they do not join in the struggle or endure the sun, the heat, the dust, and the showers. If the athletes say to them: “Come, strive with us,” the spectators will only answer, “We sit here now to decide about you, but you, if you conquer, will gain the glory of the crown and we shall not.”

So those who have devoted themselves to pleasures, luxury, robbery, gain, or honors are spectators rather than combatants. They have the profit of labor, but not the fruits of virtue. They love their ease; by cunning and wickedness they heap up riches; but they will pay the penalty of their iniquity, though it be late. Their rest will be in hell, yours in heaven; their home in the grave, yours in paradise. –St. Ambrose, On the Duties of the Clergy, 1.16

IN GOD’S PRESENCE, CONSIDER . . .

Do I sometimes envy the rich and famous?

Does it help to remember St. Ambrose’s sports analogy?

CLOSING PRAYER

Lord, look upon me in your mercy, and let your sheep not become a goat; for although I am not enough to justify myself, yet I do not will to sin.

Bishops travel to US-Mexico border to witness human ‘triage’

MCALLEN, Texas - Inside the Catholic Charities Respite Center in McAllen, Texas, Sister Norma Pimentel is giving her usual orders to volunteers. Except on this Sunday afternoon, they include bishops.

“We’re putting you to work, Cardinal,” says Pimentel to Houston Archbishop and United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ President Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, in front of dozens of Central American immigrants released by U.S. immigration authorities just hours before.

The cardinal follows his fellow bishops into a separate room at the makeshift halfway house to serve chicken soup and tortillas to children who have just arrived with their parents from a local detainment center run by the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement Center.

The scene inside the cramped Respite Center run by Pimentel is a form of organized chaos. Some children play with toy cars while an episode of Curious George plays on a TV screen. Others are spread out on mats, still exhausted from the weeks-long journey from Honduras or El Salvador and their days spent at ICE detainment centers. Adult men try to sleep nesting their heads against the chair in front of them, while young women look for outlets to charge their ICE-issued GPS ankle bracelet monitors.

When the children are invited to eat first in the adjacent dining room, some refuse to leave the arms of their parents, even while being offered their first hot meal in days or weeks.

This is the reality in the Rio Grande Valley that a delegation of bishops has traveled from as far as Long Island and Scranton, Pennsylvania, to see for themselves, amid an immigration crisis that has garnered increased media attention in recent months with reports of more than 2,000 children forcibly separated from their parents by the government on orders from the White House.

“We’re in constant triage - that’s the word that comes to mind,” remarked Brenda Riojas, Diocesan Relations Director for the Diocese of Brownsville, as a toddler scuttled past her on the floor.

It was the uproar over the consequences of the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance” policy that prompted the U.S. bishops to organize this visit, the fruit of an idea suggested by Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark at the USCCB’s annual spring meeting in Florida last month.

But for Riojas and Catholic officials in the Brownsville-McAllen area such as Pimentel and Brownsville Bishop Daniel Flores, the situation has looked like this for quite some time.

“You have to be adaptable,” said Flores while serving water to recently arrived children, repeating a theme he stressed earlier that morning in his Sunday Mass homily at the Basilica of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle.

At the Mass presided by DiNardo, the South Texas native connected Jesus Christ’s healing of a woman with a flow of blood to the need for Christians to respond to new events.

“The plan of the Lord is to always be attentive to what’s right in front of Him,” he said during the bilingual homily. “That’s Jesus’ way.”

On Sunday, the bishops were treated to up-close reminders that while political developments on this side of the border are in constant flux, the reality faced by people in Central America isn’t expected to change anytime soon.

Along with DiNardo and Flores, Bishop Joseph Bambera of Scranton, Pennsylvania, and Auxiliary Bishop Robert Brennan of Rockville Centre, New York, spent two hours visiting the rented storefront staffed by volunteers from as far as Seattle. Also accompanying them was Brownsville Auxiliary Bishop Mario Avilés. U.S. Bishops’ Vice President and Archbishop of Los Angeles José H. Gomez arrived later that evening.

As many as 250 migrants pass through the building each day, according to Pimentel. During their visit, each of the bishops pulled up chairs to chat with the immigrants scattered throughout the room.

Three men from Honduras explained to Bambera why they’d made the perilous, three-week journey with their children.

“The maras make it impossible to live,” said Pedro Marquez from Intibucá Department, Honduras, referencing the street gangs that he says grow stronger in number any time the government tries to crackdown on them. Sitting between him and the bishop was his 11-year-old daughter Yamilet.

“They tax us to live in our own house, tax us to have a business, and if we don’t pay, we get killed,” said Marquez, who on Monday would take a Greyhound bus to be with family members in Philadelphia, just two hours south of Bambera’s diocese.

The two other Hondurans, Germán and Hernán, were headed to Chicago and North Carolina, bringing few belongings but wearing the GPS ankle bracelets placed on them as they left a nearby ICE detention center. The devices are a way of tracking the migrants to help ensure they show up for their immigration court date nearest to their destination in the U.S.

Their worries were briefly forgotten when a birthday cake was brought out to celebrate Pimentel’s birthday. At the end, none was left for her nor Flores, who both took their time serving slices and cupcakes to eager children.

At the Mass earlier that day, DiNardo had to explain his choice of one piece of ecclesiastical attire: the lamb wool pallium belonging to the Archbishop of the Metropolitan See of Galveston-Houston, which includes Brownsville.

“I’m not in charge of him [Flores], but he has to be careful with me,” the cardinal joked at the start of the Mass.

Known as a gifted theologian and an active Twitter user among his fellow bishops, Flores tried to set the tone of the visit as a pastoral one, not political theatrics.

“The bishops are visiting here so they can stop, look, talk to people and understand the suffering of many who are amongst us,” Flores said. “It’s part of the purpose of Christian life to talk to people and hear their suffering.”

On Monday, the bishops were scheduled to visit the U.S. Custom and Border Protection’s Ursula Processing Center in McAllen, as well as the infamous Southwest Key Casa Padre detention center in Brownsville.

The visit, according to Flores, was part of the bishops’ desire to better grasp the human side of what’s going on near Texas’s busiest border crossing.

“To talk, to see, because that’s what the Lord shows us,” said Flores. “And then respond.”

Pablo Kay is associate editor of Angelus News, the multimedia news platform of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.

On What Is Required for Jesus to Heal Us

‘To have access to His heart, to the heart of Jesus, only this is required: to feel in need of healing and to entrust himself to HIm'

Below is a ZENIT translation of Pope Francis’ Angelus address today at noon to the faithful in St. Peter’s Square:

Dear brothers and sisters, good morning!

The Gospel of this Sunday (cf. Mk 5,21-43) presents two prodigies worked by Jesus, describing them almost as a sort of triumphal march towards life.

First, the Evangelist tells of a certain Jairus, one of the synagogue leaders, who comes to Jesus and begs Him to go to his house because his twelve-year-old daughter was dying. Jesus accepts and goes with him; but, along the way, comes the news that the girl is dead. We can imagine that father’s reaction. But Jesus tells him: “Do not be afraid, only believe !” (v. 36). Upon arriving at the house of Jairus, Jesus sends out those who had been weeping – there were also the women who were screaming loudly – and enters the room only with the parents and the three disciples. Addressing the deceased, He says: «Little girl, I say to you: get up ! “(V.41). And immediately the girl gets up, as if waking up from a deep sleep (v. 42).

Inside the story of this miracle, Mark inserts another: the healing of a woman who suffered from bleeding [hemorrhages] and was healed as soon as she touched Jesus’ mantle (v. 27). Here strikes the fact that the faith of this woman attracts – I want to say “steals” – the divine saving power that exists in Christ, who, feeling that a force “had come out of Him”, tries to understand who it had been. And when the woman, with so much shame, comes forward and confesses everything, He tells her: ‘Daughter, your faith has saved you’ (v.34).

These are two interlocking stories, with a single center: faith; and show Jesus as the source of life, as the One who gives back life to those who trust Him fully. The two protagonists, the father of the girl and the sick woman, are not disciples of Jesus and yet they [are restored] because of their faith. They have faith in that Man. From this, we understand that everyone is admitted on the path of the Lord: no one should feel like an intruder, an abusive person or someone who has no right. To have access to His heart, to the heart of Jesus, there is only this required: to feel in need of healing and to entrust himself to Him. I ask you: does each one of you feel in need of healing? Of something, some sin, some problem? And, if you hear this, do you have faith in Jesus? These are the two requirements to be healed, to have access to His heart: to feel oneself in need of healing and to entrust oneself to Him. Jesus goes to discover these people in the crowd and takes them away from anonymity, freeing them from the fear of living and daring. He does it with a look and with a word that puts them on the road again after so much suffering and humiliation. We too are called to learn and to imitate these words that liberate, and these looks that give back, to those who are not [liberated], the desire to live.

In this Gospel reading, the themes of faith and new life, that Jesus came to offer everyone, are intertwined. Entering the house where the girl lies dead, He drives out those who are agitating and lamenting (v.40) and says: “The child is not dead, she is asleep” (v. 39). Jesus is the Lord, and before Him, physical death is like a sleep: there is no reason to despair. Another ‘death’ is to be afraid of: that of the heart hardened by evil! Of that, yes, we must be afraid! When we feel that our hearts are hardened, our hearts harden and, I allow myself to say ‘the mummified heart,’ we must be afraid of this. This is the death of the heart. But even sin, even ‘the mummified heart,’ for Jesus is never the last word, because He has brought us the infinite mercy of the Father. And even if we fell down, His soft and strong voice reaches us: “I tell you: get up!” It is beautiful to hear that word of Jesus addressed to each one of us: “I tell you: stand up! Go. Stand up, be brave, get up! ” And Jesus restores the girl to life and gives life back to the healed woman: life and faith to both.

We ask the Virgin Mary to accompany our journey of faith and concrete love, especially towards those in need. And let us invoke her maternal intercession for our brothers who suffer in body and spirit.

A saint born of blood. What we can learn from Catherine of Siena

When I became Catholic and picked a confirmation saint, I had two criteria.

First, I didn’t want a woman — because I felt I was expected to pick one and because most women saints, who seemed to have begun their life of piety from the cradle, intimidated me.

And second, I didn’t want a Dominican, because my spiritual life was already rife with Dominicans and I didn’t think I needed another.

So naturally I ended up with Catherine of Siena, a Dominican tertiary who vowed virginity at the age of seven and used to lead her playmates in flagellation exercises.

As intimidating as they are, I still love these women with their enthusiastic dedication to mortification of the body. Angela of Foligno drank the water she washed lepers in and stripped herself naked before a crucifix to vow chastity.

Veronica Giuliani licked walls clean. Mary Magdalene de’ Pazzi walked barefoot in the winter, whipped herself with a crown of thorns, and encouraged her fellow nuns to step on her.

Beatrice of Ornacieux drove a nail through her palm. And Catherine of Siena — in addition to her other bodily mortifications, which were many — famously ate almost nothing.

I do not resemble these women. The priest I met with in lieu of RCIA wrote a book about how to build a healthy spiritual life.

The first step: waking up with your alarm clock. I’m still stuck there. (Catherine slept on wooden planks.) The howls I let out when I stub a toe make me think that I’m not quite ready to hammer a nail into my palm.

I anticipated my reception into the church by getting a nice haircut and a new dress, not cutting off all my hair (Clare of Assisi, Catherine) or scalding myself (Catherine again). But I admire and even envy them the way I love and envy snake handlers.

These wares are not for all markets, however, as André Vauchez makes clear in the introduction to his newly translated book, Catherine of Siena: A Life of Passion and Purpose.

He quotes two of her previous biographers, one of whom perceives in her “a kind of overpowering spirit, an element of tyranny that put me off” and the other who believes that the saint was “not particularly pleasant.” (They prefer Francis of Assisi and Teresa of Avila, respectively.)

Vauchez notes that he, too, is not very fond of Catherine, who he finds self-promoting and naïve. But if we don’t let ourselves “get sidetracked by her personality,” we’ll find—well, it’s not clear.

Vauchez is quick to note that Catherine is, as a theologian, not original. (Is originality the best grounds on which to judge medieval spiritual writing, I ask myself?)

In any case, once he’s dispatched with her work on those grounds there’s really very little left of her except her personality.

All the same, one can learn a lot from Vauchez’s book, because even if he’s dubious about Catherine’s persona, he’s clarifying when it comes to Catherine’s context.

This in turn underscores the aspects of her character that made her so strange to her contemporaries, and the ways in which those she won over in her lifetime had to spin some of her more eccentric behaviors to critics after her death.

Catherine, for instance, was indeed a Dominican tertiary and did wear a habit. But she wasn’t a member of an order and remained a layperson all her life, not least because formal membership would have required her to be cloistered.

Instead, Catherine created an informal family for herself, made up of men and women, religious and laypeople, who often traveled with her. She lived with her parents when she was in Siena, and with her admirers when she was elsewhere.

Though this might not seem odd to us, it was scandalous at the time, and Vauchez draws attention to the ways in which Raymond of Capua, Catherine’s confessor and first biographer, softens the aspects of her behavior that would have stood in the way of her sainthood.

Thus, while on the one hand Catherine confessed to Raymond that she seriously considered cross-dressing in order to join a men’s order, on the other hand she offered this protest to God:

How can I, wretched and frail as I am, be of use to souls? My sex, as you know, is against it in many ways, both because it is not highly considered by men, and also because it is not good, for decency’s sake, for a woman to mix with men.

To this God replies: “In my eyes there is neither male nor female, rich nor poor, but all are equal.” (That settles that.) Catherine’s unique position, as Vauchez writes, meant that she “lived especially in the heart of the world and in the midst of its contradictions” in a way that few of her contemporaries were able to achieve.

Similarly, Vauchez’s portrayal of Catherine’s involvement in getting the pope to return to Rome from Avignon doesn’t attribute to her power that she did not really possess, but also doesn’t write her out of the story entirely. This is a welcome, even-handed way of understanding the role Catherine played in political affairs.

It’s when Vauchez moves from Catherine’s context to Catherine’s work and her troublesome personality that the book starts to lose me. Her visions and images are always coming up short for him—not original enough (as noted above), or impressive enough, or in good enough taste.

At the same time, he does remark on the same things in her work that I myself find truly wonderful: her emphasis on love, particularly love physically manifested as Christ’s blood, and her conviction that “mystical life and involvement in the affairs of this world are really two faces of one and the same love.”

The latter is expressed in her involvement in politics, the former perhaps most beautifully to me by a passage from The Dialogue in which God tells her that those who have turned away from him have encrusted their heart in a diamond rock that can never be shattered except by blood.

Still, I tell you, in spite of their hardness, let them while they still have time and freedom to choose to seek the blood of my son and with that same hand let them pour it over the hardness of their heart: It will shatter the diamond and they will know the fruit of that blood which was paid out for them.

But about that irksome personality… I agree with her various critics that Catherine was, indeed, a difficult person.

Her will, as friends and critics alike say, was inflexible and overpowering. She seemed to know no fear or self-doubt; if she could stick her oar in, she would. She did what suited her because what suited her suited God.

Anyone who stood in her way seems have been run over, and most of her contemporary critics — including, according to Vauchez, Raymond himself — were converted into friends.

But in truth, it’s her difficulty that made me fall in love with her. Catherine reminds me of the woman who reaches out to touch Christ’s cloak in the crowd, of the Canaanite woman who insisted on her right to eat the crumbs that fall from the table.

She gripped whatever was in front of her and didn’t let go; she was, indeed, incapable of letting go. When Catherine’s mother died before receiving the sacraments, she went to God and demanded her mother back — successfully, apparently.

Catherine was the saint I needed: not so serene and so distant that her existence felt more like reproach than encouragement, but obstinate, strange, at times almost monomaniacal, unaccommodating, high-handed, and loving. Not a plaster saint, but — as she’d put it herself — a saint born of blood.

B.D. McClay is senior editor of the Hedgehog Review, and a contributing writer to Commonweal. She lives in New York.

The Missions of Saints Peter and Paul Passed On to Us

Christian devotion to Saints Peter and Paul is of a most ancient origin. The special Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul has always been celebrated in Rome, at least since the reign of the emperor Constantine. Some Roman catacombs from this time period possess graffiti asking for the prayers of these great saints. One scribbled inscription reads, “Paul and Peter, make intercession for Victor”. On June 29, every year, Catholics around the world also ask for the intercession of these saints before our Lord’s throne.

But as many great saints do, these apostles have nicknames. St. Peter is often called the “Prince of the Apostles” while St. Paul is typically called the “Apostle to the Gentiles”. While we celebrate both men on the same day, they both played different roles in the life of the early Church.

Prince of the Apostles

Of course, we all know full well that St. Peter was the rock upon which Christ founded his Church. While he preached the gospel to many different peoples as St. Paul did, it’s clear that his main role in the life of the Church is an ecclesial one. As the first pope, it’s very fitting that St. Peter is called the “Prince of the Apostles”. Keep in mind that he isn’t a prince in the same way the Prince of England is. Instead, the word “prince” comes from the Latin princeps, which simply means “supreme head” or “ruler”. As Christ’s vicar on earth, he and his successors have been given temporal authority, and the power to “bind and loose” as our Lord said. We see this with St. Peter presiding over the Council of Jerusalem in the Acts of the Apostles.

Apostle to the Gentiles

As for St. Paul, we see that he clearly traveled a little bit more than St. Peter. Just take a look inside any Bible from the middle of the twentieth century and you’ll more often than not find a map detailing St. Paul’s travels from Corinth to Galatia. Because he made so many contacts, it’s most fitting that we commemorate him as the “Apostle to the Gentiles”. Keep in mind that it was also him who rebuked St. Peter during the controversy stemming from whether or not Gentiles needed to be circumcised. Whenever one reads any of St. Paul’s letters, it’s pretty clear that he’s driving home the point that salvation comes through Jesus Christ, not through works of the Torah.

The Magisterium and the Mission

But what’s beautiful about this special solemnity is that we focus on two specific roles of the Church. One role of the Church is to govern. That’s why we have the Magisterium. It ensures us that we are living in God’s truth. When all the bishops are united with the pope, we can be assured that a certain teaching is true. We were promised this certitude by Jesus himself before he ascended into heaven. This is embodied in St. Peter, and it really is comforting to know that no matter what, the gates of hell will never prevail against this Church that Jesus founded. It is continually the pillar and bulwark of truth.

And then on the other hand, the Church is meant to go out to others. Since we are the Church, the members of Christ the Head, we have a duty to go out and spread the gospel message. We may not all have as much success as St. Paul did, but that doesn’t mean we have to stop trying. Don’t we live in a world that has become largely “Gentile”? That is, a world that really doesn’t know God much at all?

Our world is much like the one that Saints Peter and Paul lived in. There’s a lot of work to do here in the twenty-first century in regards to building the kingdom of God. But it’s not impossible. If these two great apostles could do so much on their own, just think what 200, or even 2,000 Catholics with a similar mindset could do! Like St. Paul, we need to be an apostle to the “Gentiles” of our age, and like St. Peter, we need to stand firmly on the “rock” upon which Jesus founded his Church. If there’s anything to take from this week’s solemnity, it’s that each and every one of us Catholics are called to do what St. Peter and St. Paul were called to do. If we haven’t really answered that call yet, now is a perfect time to resolve ourselves to do so.

Christian Principles Inherent in the Immigration Debate

On the issue of immigration, the Catechism of the Catholic Church states, “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin” (CCC 2241). While elaborating on that teaching, in this video Fr. Mike also points out that a nation has a right and responsibility to protect its borders. While it’s impossible to avoid politics completely on this issue, Fr. Mike addresses primarily the Christian principles inherent in the immigration debate.

No Human Is Merely Mortal; Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time

In Sunday’s Gospel, a synagogue official named Jairus falls at the feet of Jesus and begs for his dying daughter’s life.

Catholic Social Teaching: What It Is and Why It Is so Important!

In this first part of a two-part series on Catholic Social Teaching, we explore the seven main themes. This is a bird’s eye view of Catholic Social Teaching and only begins to scratch the surface.

The Heart of Christ

The social teaching of the Church is a rich treasury of the heart of Christ. As human beings, we are made to be social. Man cannot live without love, and love does not exist in isolation. The way that we navigate our society and live the call to holiness must be modeled after Christ Himself if we are to be authentic Catholic Christians.

So, what are the main themes of Catholic social teaching? They are:

1) the Life and Dignity of the Human Person,

2) the Call to Family, Community, and Participation,

3) Rights and Responsibilities,

4) the Option for the Poor and Vulnerable,

5) The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers,

6) Solidarity, 

7) Care for God’s Creation.

Many members of the worldwide Church for a few decades, in particular, have chosen to emphasize one or two causes rather than the cause of Christ. To His disciples, the members of the Body of Christ, Jesus says, “Amen, I say to you, whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me (Mt 25:40).” And He also says, “… what you did not do for one of these least ones, you did not do for me (Mt 25:45).” Therefore, we cannot work for one cause and remain inactive on the rest. In other words, we cannot be lukewarm, we must take the whole of Christ’s teaching or none of it.

There are those who often fight for the dignity of the life in the womb, and rightly so, but who do not take into consideration a stewardship of the environment. There are priorities, such as fighting the genocide of abortion, but the other themes cannot be forgotten. Each of these areas of consideration in Catholic social teaching flow from the heart of Christ.

We cannot pick and choose the doctrines we like or dislike. Therefore, the first step is to look at our own lives. Do we live in accordance with the teachings of Christ? Then, we look at our surroundings and work to effect change where it is needed. In doing this, we change the world and show Christ; we become the light of the world (cf. Mt 5:14).

The Life and Dignity of the Human Person

Human life is created in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, every single person has dignity and worth from the moment of conception in the womb until they draw their final breath. Human life is sacred, which means that it has been set apart. We have each been set apart to come into relationship with Christ and one day be with Him forever in Heaven.

Human life is under direct attack from the evils of abortion and euthanasia, which are unacceptable under any circumstance. There is a lot more to say on these topics, but this is more of a primer. For more, please read Evangelium Vitae by Pope St. John Paul II.

There is also a threat to the value of human life from embryonic stem cell research, cloning, and the imprudent use of the death penalty. There are also many unjust wars, acts of terrorism, and acts of violence in our world. Catholic social teaching exhorts nations to find peaceful solutions to disputes whenever possible. However, a nation or an individual has the right and obligation to protect innocent human life when it is threatened.

The Call to Family, Community, and Participation

In 1960, the global divorce rate was 12%. Divorce is also a violence to a couple because marriage is a lifelong union. There is no such thing as a clean divorce; someone is always harmed. For this reason, the Church tenderly reaches out to those who have suffered divorce to offer the healing of Christ. This past year, the global divorce rate was 44%. In the United States, the rate is 46%, 42% in the United Kingdom, and 38% in Australia.

With such high divorce rates, it is not uncommon to see broken families. Catholic social teaching upholds that the person is sacred, but that the person is also social. Our economics, politics, laws, policies, and social institutions must therefore defend marriage and the family. Without the family being at the core, these social institutions will erode and eventually break apart.

With crumbling families, the need for community has never been more important. It is our obligation as Catholics to reach out to our fellow man, especially the poor and vulnerable. All are called, regardless of race, religion, or ethnicity to seek the common good.

Our participation in community is not negotiable. We need our brothers and sisters and they need us. Our world has become increasingly individualized and people are finding themselves more and more isolated. This isolation is contrary to God’s design for us. As a result, rates of mental illness and suicide have skyrocketed. As Catholics, we are called to breathe life into our communities, in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Rights and Responsibilities

In order for our communities to thrive and be able to uphold and protect the dignity of human life, at all stages, rights must be protected and responsibilities met. St. John XXIII enumerates these rights: “We must speak of man’s rights. Man has the right to live.  He has the right to bodily integrity and to the means necessary for the proper development of life, particularly food, clothing, shelter, medical care, rest, and, finally, the necessary social services. In consequence, he has the right to be looked after in the event of ill health; disability stemming from his work; widowhood; old age; enforced unemployment; or whenever through no fault of his own he is deprived of the means of livelihood (Pacem in Terris, 11).”

Every natural right begins with the right to life. Therefore, the right to life must be protected above all else, because without life there are no other rights. The following natural rights, listed by Pope St. John XXIII lead to the duty of the state and individuals to protect the rights of others. There is also a responsibility to use these rights well in the service of God and man.

The Option for the Poor and Vulnerable

The greatest test of a society is how well vulnerable members of that community are doing. In nations ravaged by communism, there is an ever-widening gap between the super-rich and the ultra-poor. In areas of unfettered capitalism and many types of socialism, there is likewise a disappearing middle class. In other words, societies that do not care for the poor and vulnerable tend to lead to the poor getting poorer and rich getting richer.

The Catholic Church has always upheld the call of Christ Himself to the corporal works of mercy. The needs of the poor and vulnerable must come before our own. This is called the preferential option for the poor. Do I feed the hungry, give drink to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the ill, visit the imprisoned, and bury the dead? Notice I said “Do I?” It is not enough for our parish to do these things; in one way or another, we will be individually judged by God on whether we personally did these things in service of Christ.

The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

Work has dignity. The economy is there to serve the people, not the people to serve the economy. Work is a participation in the creation of God. We do not work simply to make money. If work has dignity, then the rights of workers should be protected.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops summarized the rights of workers very well: “All people have the right to economic initiative, to productive work, to just wages and benefits, to decent working conditions, as well as to organize and join unions or other associations. (United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, A Catholic Framework for Economic Life, no. 5).”

Solidarity

All of our earthly fathers share in the Fatherhood of God. Our Father in Heaven has called us His own through the waters of Baptism. Therefore, in Christ, we are all brothers and sisters; we have become co-heirs to the kingdom. Beyond our own belonging to the Mystical Body of Christ, we also share in our one Creator. Therefore, we all belong to one human family, regardless of nation, race, ethnicity, economic or ideological differences.

Recent technological shifts and globalization have made this reality all the clearer. We are connected. Our solidarity with our one human family spurs us to pursue true justice and peace. In the midst of sufferings, especially violence and conflict, we are called by the Church to work for peace.

Care for God’s Creation

Our Holy Father, Pope Francis, following suit after Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI, wrote beautifully on the care for our common home in his work, Laudato Si. In this document, he writes, “Once we start to think about the kind of world we are leaving to future generations, we look at things differently; we realize that the world is a gift which we have freely received and must share with others. Since the world has been given to us, we can no longer view reality in a purely utilitarian way, in which efficiency and productivity are entirely geared to our individual benefit (Laudato Si, 159).”

Caring for God’s Creation is part and parcel of the Catholic life. In our throw away culture, we realize that the environment is impacted by wastefulness and the dignity of human life is impacted by a disregard for the poor. Everything in God’s creation is connected, and we must seek to serve God and our fellow man in all things.

Want to know more? Check out this excellent video for more details on CST. 

Unpacking the Catechism on Immigration (And an Aspect That Rarely Makes the News)

Fr Matthew P. Schneider, LCJune 27, 2018

Believe it or not, the Catechism covers immigration in just one number, #2241. This number declares two duties which run in opposite directions. The USCCB does a good job of explaining both while quoting all of #2241.

The first duty is to welcome the foreigner out of charity and respect for the human person. Persons have the right to immigrate and thus government must accommodate this right to the greatest extent possible, especially financially blessed nations: “The more prosperous nations are obliged, to the extent they are able, to welcome the foreigner in search of the security and the means of livelihood which he cannot find in his country of origin. Public authorities should see to it that the natural right is respected that places a guest under the protection of those who receive him.” Catholic Catechism, 2241.

The second duty is to secure one’s border and enforce the law for the sake of the common good. Sovereign nations have the right to enforce their laws and all persons must respect the legitimate exercise of this right: “Political authorities, for the sake of the common good for which they are responsible may make the exercise of the right to immigrate subject to various juridical conditions, especially with regard to the immigrants’ duties toward their country of adoption. Immigrants are obliged to respect with gratitude the material and spiritual heritage of the country that receives them, to obey its laws and to assist in carrying civic burdens.” Catholic Catechism, 2241.

There is a challenge to maintain a balance between these two duties. The duty to welcome those immigrants we can welcome and the duty to regulate immigration and requiring immigrants to follow laws and customs of the new country.

USCCB Judgment

Back in 2013, the USCCB noted a big point where neither of these duties is really followed. We create a system that encourages a certain form of immigration without giving them legal status or protection.

Today’s unauthorized immigrants are largely low‐skilled workers who come to the United States for work to support their families. Over the past several decades, the demand by U.S. businesses, large and small, for low‐skilled workers has grown exponentially, while the supply of available workers for low‐skilled jobs has diminished. Yet, there are only 5,000 green cards available annually for low‐skilled workers to enter the United States lawfully to reside and work. The only alternative to this is a temporary work visa through the H‐2A (seasonal agricultural) or H2B (seasonal non‐agricultural) visa programs which provide temporary status to low‐skilled workers seeking to enter the country lawfully. While H‐2A visas are not numerically capped, the requirements are onerous. H‐2B visas are capped at 66,000 annually. Both only provide temporary status to work for a U.S. employer for one year. At their current numbers, these are woefully insufficient to provide legal means for the foreign‐born to enter the United States to live and work, and thereby meet our demand for foreign‐born labor.

We need hundreds of thousands of low skilled immigrants to cut lawns, pick crops, clean hotel rooms, etc. However, we don’t allow anywhere near that in legally. Thus, a system of underground immigration continues: we neither welcome immigrants and give them the protections of law nor do they follow regulated immigration.

Other Immigration Problems

The USCCB doesn’t mention it but legal immigration seems very complex and bureaucratic in the USA. I’m a Canadian citizen with 10 years of post-secondary education and a sponsor promising full-time employment who has consulted with a paralegal a few times, and I’ve still found the process difficult. I can only imagine someone with minimal education trying to work through it.

Fr Jonathan Morris analyzed the current situation well.

We should be ashamed by our current system in which we entice immigrants to come over, however they can, with assurance of clandestine employment, but with no assurances of safety or just treatment. In this sense, I don’t mind shaming our indifference and ignorance on this reality and trying to awaken our national conscience. […]

It is not enough to say we are in favor of “legal” immigration, as if the simple enforcement of present laws would be enough to solve our immigration crisis. Democrats and Republicans (including President Trump) have failed so far to rectify the hypocritical system we currently have. This system uses cheap labor by saying you can’t come without a visa, and you can’t get a visa if you are poor, but if you manage to get across the border you will find work when you get here. And when you are here and we give you work we will pay you very little and you will have to live in the shadows in fear of random ICE raids. Oh, and if a young child is brought here, with no fault of their own, and grows up here their whole lives, they will live in fear of being deported to a country they have never known.

It is an unfair and unsafe situation for all. But it continues because it is all too convenient for many of our small and big businesses, for example the restaurant, agricultural, landscaping, and construction industries, to name a few, who are profiting greatly and lobbying Congress to do nothing at all because the status quo means money. […]

Currently, if you live in Central America or Mexico, and are poor, it is almost impossible to get a work visa.

“Just get in line”, is a facile and offensive talking point because for most of the people crossing illegally, there is no line to get in. The same goes for the simplistic argument of blaming the countries of origin. Of course, these foreign governments are deserving of much blame, especially for corruption and violence, but complaining from afar doesn’t get us anywhere.

The problems we have we have with illegal/unauthorized/undocumented immigration stem from a problem with our legal immigration system. Our legal immigration system provides far less than the needed number of visas and makes those complex to get. The solution is not complaining, putting on Band-Aids or stalling in Congress, but reforming the system.

Discover your Soul and Hearts Desire

Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be. Jesus

Sometimes a good life keeps us from a better life, many of the things we crave in life will never satisfy our soul.  In fact, many good things have the power to destroy us like pain medications and even food which can take control of our lives.  There is nothing in the world that will make us happy and provide us with lasting satisfaction.

We will never accumulate enough power, money, possessions, or fame to quench the desire for something more than we have right now.

Many people are like a gambler with one more throw of the dice that the right person, the right job, or the right house will finally satisfy them even though a thousand other tries have already failed. The grim reality is many never discover there is nothing outside of themselves that will ever give lasting satisfaction or pleasure. Contentment and happiness are an inside job when it comes to finding lasting comfort and peace.

There is a longing in our soul for something that will give us lasting meaning and purpose in life.  Somehow we must learn to stop pursuing the things of the world and seek the presence of God. One description of our condition is we have a divine homesickness a divine discontentment with everything until we return home to God.  St. Augustine summarizes the return home best when he says; our hearts are restless till we find our rest in thee.

When we return home to God, we find rest in his presence. Not only do we rest in God we elevate our life to a higher level of spiritual living. As we let go of the desires of the world, we find that there’s a new life waiting for us to enjoy and experience.

The more we understand the strongholds of the physical attachments and hopes that never fulfill us we discover something unique in the presence of God. There is a hymn which says it is joy unspeakable and full of glory and the more we seek the glory of God the less we seek the temporary things to try and satisfy us. Instead, we discover the source of life and now are motivated to please the risen Christ.

In Christian thought, we are taught to pursue holiness defined as letting our life be set apart for God. When our hearts let go of everything but God, we find ourselves doing what God wants us to do instead of what we want to do.   When we become God conscious, we recognize our egocentric desires and pleasures rob us of what is best for us in life.  We come to appreciate that our appetites for the things of the world create our suffering and pain and they lead us into separation from God and everyone else.  Seeking the desires of the flesh our egos leave us broken but seeking the higher calling to love God and treat our fellow man as we would like to be treated, we find a spiritual reality for our existence and a definite reason for living.

The seeker, the contemplative, the Christian believer finds the pearl of great price which is the presence of God, and there is nothing in the world that compares to possessing God and God possessing us. The people of the world think it is a sacrifice to serve God but to the one who experiences the presence of God, there is no sacrifice. The apostle Paul proclaims in 1 Corinthians 4:11 this very hour we go hungry and thirsty, we are in rags, we are brutally treated, we are homeless. It was because of the love of God Paul goes the extra mile to share the gospel He was motivated by love not sacrifice.

The pleasures of the world wane and we grow restless in those pleasures that never satisfy. We give up those pleasures to enjoy the fullness of God. Jesus said to seek the kingdom of God first and all these things we need to sustain life will be ours.  We do not need to give up all the pleasures in the world.  All we need to do is put our desires in proper perspective, so we are freed from the attraction of the world to enjoy God and everything around us.

Reflection:

What truly matters to you?

What are the most critical aspects of your life?

What do you need to spend less time doing to be God conscious?

Prayer of the Heart is the Heart of Prayer

Scripture very bluntly tells us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God — and so, my brothers and sisters, I feel that I must begin today’s sermon by confessing one of my own sins.

When I was a little boy — and I am not proud to admit this, but it is the truth — when I was a little boy, maybe four or five years old, I was a thief — and the object of my nefarious activity was the sugar bowl in my mother’s kitchen.

Yes, my cunning little pre-school mind figured out that when no one was looking, I could take a spoon and help myself to a little bit of sugar. I don’t know how many times I committed this act of larceny — maybe just once or twice — but by the grace of God, my budding career as a hardened criminal was short-circuited when my mother confronted me.

Apparently I had not done a very good job at hiding the evidence of my underhanded deeds, and she asked me, point blank, if I had been sneaking some sugar without her permission.

Well, I may have been a thief, but I was not a liar, and so I admitted to the deed. After more than fifty years, I don’t remember the details of my punishment, but I suspect it fit the crime.

But what I do remember was her stern warning — that even if she were not watching me, God was — and God would know if I ever did wrong again.

Alas, to this day I still have more of a sweet tooth than is good for me, and while I opted out of the life of crime, I’m afraid I have found more subtle and nuanced ways to sin over the years. And even though my mother has gone to be with the Lord, her warning remains in force: for, as Saint Paul reminds us in today’s Epistle reading, God does indeed the heart.

When God Searches The Heart, What Is God Looking For?

Yes, God searches the heart. If you were like me, you may have grown up in a family and church environment that tended to stress how sinful and even how depraved the human condition is. The more we think of ourselves as sinful, the more ominous that statement may seem.

God searches the heart. There is no use hiding our sins, our temptations, our rationalizations, our envy and jealousy and bitterness. God knows it all.

But I believe it is a terrible distortion of the gospel, to jump to the conclusion that God searches our hearts only because God wants an inventory of our sin. In fact, I would be so bold as to say that when God searches our hearts, our sin is the least of God’s worries.

There was a saint of the seventh century who lived in Syria, called Saint Isaac of Ninevah, — yes, the same Ninevah that Jonah called to repentance. Saint Isaac’s sermons are classics of spiritual writing, and still seem relevant and meaningful here in the 21st century. In one of his writings, Saint Isaac makes this bold statement:

As a handful of sand thrown into the great sea, so are the sins of all flesh in comparison with the mind of God. And just as a strongly flowing spring is not obstructed by a handful of dust, so the mercy of the Creator is not stemmed by the vices of His creatures.

Think about that: the love of God is like the ocean, and the sins of all humanity, throughout all of history, is nothing more than a handful of sand by comparison.

Discovering this was an important step in my journey of healing — healing my way of thinking about God. I had to let go of the childish notion that God was like a watchdog, aggressively keeping an eye on me to make sure I did not sin.

Instead, I slowly began to recognize a much more Biblical perspective — that God is a vast ocean of love, endlessly merciful and wanting nothing more than to share Divine love with me, and with the world through me — and indeed, through all of us.

So if God does not search our hearts just to take inventory of our failings, why then does God search our hearts?

I would suggest that God searches our hearts because God wants to love us, and wants us to love God in return — and, of course, to love one another, sharing the love that God freely gives us with each other, in an endless circle of joy.

The Gifts of the Heart

You know, the Bible has a lot to say about the human heart. As it turns out, God is in the habit of giving us gifts in our hearts. Let me share with you three examples of how God has place gifts in our hearts — in every one of our hearts!

In Ecclesiastes 3:11 we read:

God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart.

Eternity is in our hearts! Other Bible translations render this as “God has put the world in the human heart” or even that God has put timelessness in our hearts.

The Hebrew word here is olam which means “eternity, forever, timelessness, that which has no beginning or no end.” The implication of this word is that the entirety of the space-item continuum, of the cosmos — all of this has been given to us, hidden in our hearts.

If you want to bring it back down to earth, consider the second chapter of Proverbs, which proclaims that “the Lord gives wisdom” and that “wisdom will come into your heart.” Alongside this we can add a passage from Jeremiah (31:33), where God speaks:

I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts; I will be their God, and they shall be my people.

God’s law and God’s wisdom: both gifts, given to us in our hearts. Even a small child understands the difference between fair and unfair. When my mother caught me with my hand in the sugar jar, I knew I had done something wrong.

Even though for centuries now human beings have become gifted at complexifying our thoughts about morality and right and wrong, hiding behind clouds of sophistication and rationalization, in our heart we all carry within us the intuitive ability to discern between right and wrong, fair and unfair, and justice and injustice.

Wisdom, meanwhile, is our God-given capacity to sort out even the thorniest of life’s problems. It may take time: it may not happen in a day, or a decade, or a lifetime. But God has given us the ability to discern God’s law and to discover how to apply the demands of love and charity, goodness and generosity, mercy and forgiveness, to every situation — even in today’s complicated world.

I don’t know about you, but to me the idea that my heart carries in it the world of eternity, the seeds of wisdom, and the law of God makes me think that my heart is pretty valuable indeed — although, certainly, that’s true for all of us.

But when we turn to the New Testament, Saint Paul reveals an ever greater gift has been given to us in our hearts.

The Heart’s Greatest Gift

In the fifth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, Saint Paul says,

Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

This bears repeating. “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.”

This puts the idea of God searching our heart into context, doesn’t it? Of course God searches our hearts: for God is in our hearts.

The Bible clearly teaches that the body is a temple of the Holy Spirit — which would make your heart the Holy of Holies, the throne of the Holy Spirit.

I just love the idea that God’s love has been poured into our hearts — think of your heart as a chalice, as the cup of salvation, as the Holy Grail. Your heart contains the love of God just as the communion cup contains the wine of the Lord’s Supper.

I’m emphasizing how our hearts contain the gifts of God for a very simple, but important, reason — because the heart is essential to the life of prayer.

The Heart and Prayer

In the fourteenth century, an anonymous English monk wrote a book about prayer called The Cloud of Unknowing. In this book, the author makes this bold statement:

Through God’s grace, our minds can explore, understand, and reflect on creation and even on God’s works but we can’t think our way to God. That’s why I’m willing to abandon everything I know, to love the one thing I cannot think. He can be loved, but not thought. By love, God can be embraced and held, but not by thinking. It is good sometimes to meditate on God’s amazing love as part of illumination and contemplation, but true contemplative work is something entirely different. Even meditating on God’s love must be put down and covered with a cloud of forgetting.

Wow. We cannot think our way to God.

If that became common knowledge in the church today, it would put a lot of theologians out of work. Don’t get me wrong: Jesus instructed us to love God with our whole minds, and that pretty much implies making the effort to cultivate careful knowledge about who God is, what God expects of us, and how we can most truly serve and worship God.

I don’t think even the author of The Cloud of Unknowing wants us to just settle for an uninformed faith. But his bold declaration: that the heart can take us to where the mind never can — is the essence of historical Christian spirituality, and, I believe, the secret to a meaningful and enriching life of prayer in our day.

In today’s Gospel Reading from the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus instructs his disciples to pray by going into their “inner room” where they would pray in secret. What I find interesting is that Jesus doesn’t say “and the Father who hears your secret prayers will reward you.” No, he says “and the Father who sees in secret will reward you.”

It’s right there in the original Greek. So the prayer that Jesus commends to us is not a prayer that God hears but a prayer that God sees. In other words, it is not a prayer of the lips, but of the heart.

Granted, Jesus goes on to teach his disciples the Lord’s Prayer. So this is not an either/or situation: we will always pray using our words, our lips, our thoughts. But that’s not the only way to pray.

This notion of the inner room has inspired many ideas over the centuries. Followers of Jesus talk about having a prayer closet, a war room, or even simply thinking of the soul as their “inner room.” What many people in the west don’t know is that, in ancient times, orthodox Christians insisted that the human heart is the inner room of which Jesus speaks.

Therefore, to pray, we must enter our hearts, close the door of whatever distracts us in the external world, and there we pray to God, in such a way that God receives our prayer, not by hearing, but by sight.

Indeed, Eastern Orthodox Christians speak of what they call the “Prayer of the Heart.” The Prayer of the Heart is one of the most ancient ways of Christian praying, with its roots going all the way back to the 3rd and fourth centuries, when monks and nuns in the deserts of Palestine and Egypt gave their entire lives to the pursuit of prayer.

The prayer of the heart began with the name of Jesus. Saint Paul promises us that “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” To the desert fathers and mothers, that made things exquisitely simple: there is no better way to pray than to pray the name of Jesus.

But the desert fathers and mothers were also inspired by the story of Jesus’s temptation in the desert, where he resists the beguiling offers from the devil by quoting scripture in response to each temptation. Following this, a tradition began in the desert of memorizing verses from scripture and using them as the content of regular, ongoing prayer.

Finally, a monk named John Cassian suggested that one verse from the Psalms was the perfect prayer: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.”

In a similar way, the monks who prayed the name of Jesus eventually took several verses from the New Testament, and wove them together to create what they considered the perfect prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me.” This is the Jesus Prayer: the Prayer of the Heart. It was immortalized in a book called The Way of a Pilgrim.

The Heart of Prayer is Making Your Heart a Prayer

What these different approaches to prayer have in common is a recognition that the heart of prayer is the heart. Since God searches our heart, the heart of prayer must be simply making ourselves available to God. Therefore, the words we pray — whether simply the name of Jesus, or a verse or two from Sacred Scripture — are meant to hold the heart like a frame holds a picture.

In other words, the words are not the heart of the prayer, no matter how beautiful or eloquent they might be. Rather, the silent love in our hearts — that is the heart of our prayer.

Almost from the beginning, proponents of the Prayer of the Heart encouraged Christians to repeat the name of Jesus, or to report their chosen verse of scripture, as a way of centering their attention on prayer, so that the mind does not just wander off into a thousand different distracting ideas.

This way of praying became the foundation of The Cloud of Unknowing, which I mentioned earlier, and has been revived in our time through the Centering Prayer movement that has emerged in the last four decades.

Many people will notice the similarity between the Prayer of the Heart, or Centering Prayer, and Roman Catholic practices like the Rosary, or, for that matter, the eastern meditation practice of reciting a mantra in order to meditate.

Repetition is Not a Problem (But Verbosity Is)

Even thought this kind of repetitive praying has been part of Christian spirituality for many centuries now, some Christians wonder if it is an appropriate way to pray, especially given Jesus’s warning not to “heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do” — or, in the older language of the King James Version, to avoid “vain repetition” while praying.

So let’s take a look at what Jesus is saying in the Sermon on the Mount, and see if it can shed light on our desire to pray to God in our time.

In Matthew 6:7, Jesus instructs his followers,

When you are praying, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard because of their many words.

The Greek word that the King James Bible translates as “vain repetitions” carries the meaning of “babbling” or “stammering.” What it implies is using lots of words to say what could just as easily be communicated in a more succinct manner. If you wanted to use a modern-day idiom, what Jesus is saying here is “don’t beat around the bush” when you pray.

He is not attacking repetition, nor is he criticizing the use of a short word or phrase to allow us to focus our heart on loving God in a way that goes deeper than words.

There is a long tradition in the Bible that commends silence as the essential ingredient in spirituality. “Be still and know that I am God,” says Psalm 46; and the prophet Habakkuk notes that “the Lord is in his holy temple, let all the earth keep silent before him.” Now, of course, Habakkuk was talking about the temple in the Jerusalem — but for followers of Jesus, where is the temple of God?

Well, it’s the human body of course! Remember the question Saint Paul asked the Corinthians: “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you?” As I said earlier: If the body is God’s temple, then the human heart is the holy of holies. And God searches our heart, for God has poured his holy spirit into our heart through love.

Since God searches our heart, the heart of prayer must be simply making ourselves available to God. For God is in the temple of our hearts, therefore let us keep silent before him. And we find the silence in our hearts when we pray using few words, and allowing love to be our compass and silence to be our north star.

Saint Paul acknowledges that we do not always even know how to pray. But even then, silence is our ally: for the “Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.”

When we do not know how to pray, the Spirit prays through us, and so we participate in the great dance of the Holy Trinity: for by our baptism we are members of the Body of Christ, we have received the Holy Spirit in our hearts, and by that very Spirit our lives become a prayer to God the Father.

A Final Thought

My home town is Decatur, Georgia, and a local artist named James Dean — no relation to the 1950s movie star — has become famous for creating a series of children’s books featuring a character called “PETE THE CAT.” Pete the Cat’s tagline is simple and beautiful: “It’s all good.”

It’s all good!

This is a snappy way of affirming what Saint Paul promises us: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” Yes, indeed, in Christ, it is all good. In our hearts, the home of the Holy Spirit, it’s all good. And so when we pray, even when we have no words, my brothers and sisters, it’s all good! Amen.

N.B. The above homily was delivered on Sunday, June 24, 2018 at the Hoover Auditorium Sunday Worship at the Lakeside Chautauqua, Lakeside, OH. Here are the lessons for this homily:

Romans 8:24-30

Matthew 6:5-8

What Bill Murray Can Teach Us About Life

A few years ago, there was an article in Rolling Stone titled “Being Bill Murray.” It told the story of how the now 67-year old actor has a habit of engaging in sometimes mischievous, often beguiling public acts.

For instance, there’s the time he stopped to read poetry to a group of construction workers in New York City. Or the tale of how, while in a cab in San Francisco, he engaged the driver in conversation and found out he was a fledgling saxophonist who never got the chance to play. Murray took over the wheel, driving himself to his destination so the cabbie could blow his sax in the back seat.

Why does Bill Murray do it? In a recent article published in Britain’s The Guardian newspaper, the actor explains himself this way:

I’m not acting like this for the purpose of being exciting – I do it because it’s fun. If there’s life happening and you run from it, you’re not doing the world a favor. You have to engage. It’s almost sad that people are not expecting others to engage, that it’s a surprise.

Murray believes that “no one has an easy life” so he goes out of his way to surprise and delight those around him. His aim is to help “lessen their load.” These small acts have an effect on those he encounters, making their worlds “a little weirder, the mundane routines of everyday life a little more exciting.” Murray states:

If I see someone who’s out cold on their feet, I’m going to try to wake that person up. It’s what I’d want someone to do for me. Wake me the hell up and come back to the planet.

Murray makes wake up calls everywhere he goes.

He has been known to stroll around Charleston, South Carolina, where he owns part of a minor-league baseball team, and make impromptu, spontaneous appearances at public and private events. He “photobombed” a couple taking wedding pictures in a local park; he stopped by a birthday party in a bar to give an off-the-cuff speech and toast.

But perhaps what is most interesting is the fact Murray performs these acts not just for the pleasure of others, but also for himself. In his words:

My hope, always, is that it’s going to wake me up. I’m only connected for seconds, minutes a day, sometimes. And suddenly, you go, ‘Holy cow, I’ve been asleep for two days. I’ve been doing things, but I’m just out.

Now you might say, this is Bill Murray and he can get away with this kind of wackadoodle behavior. But the fact is, we all have the ability to break away from our preconceived ideas of how we should act and behave in public. We all can engage in activities that add a little more light and joy to the world.

The businessman and life philosopher John Templeton tells the story of a friend who was sitting in a park one day when she noticed an elderly man stroll by wearing a bright red cardigan, red cap and checkered pants. He smiled and said hello, then proceeded to walk to a playground. There, he got on swing and began vigorously and joyfully swinging back and forth.

The dapper gent later stopped by to explain that while out on his daily walk he swung on that same swing exactly 50 times each day. The woman noticed that the man “glowed with the fullness of life” and that his eyes “sparkled with the joy of living.” His age was clearly of no concern to him, nor did he worry what others might think about his behavior.

Templeton points out that we often curtail our childlike wonder and joy.

We do this because we’re concerned about “our self-imposed limitations of age, the appropriateness of our behavior, the images we hold of ourselves”. This robs us of our ability to fully engage in life. He mentions the example of Jesus who asked us to “become as little children” so that we might enter into the fullness of life.

John Templeton was known by some as a staid businessman, but he also had a contrarian streak, zigging while others zagged. He showed that he is a kindred spirit with Bill Murray when he made the following challenge, one we might all take to heart.

When did you last do something “outrageous” that pushed you beyond your present boundaries and radiated to the world that you are fully alive? When did the childlike spirit within you run free in joy and excitement? Age is no excuse; other people’s opinion of you is no excuse; and your own limiting opinion of yourself is no excuse for not embracing the gift of life and living it to its fullest expression.

Why Finding God In All Things Leads to Fullness of Joy

One of the my favorite Christian writers is a woman who lived in fourteenth century England. We don’t even know her name. But we know her by the name of her church, which was St. Julian’s Church in Norwich, England. So she is forever known as Julian of Norwich.

Julian lived from about 1342 to about 1416. We don’t know a lot about her life, but we do know that when she was thirty years old, she became ill, so sick that the priest was called to administer her Last Rites. But instead of dying, Julian experienced a series of spiritual visions that filled her with a sense of God’s love, mercy, and compassion.

After that momentous night, she recuperated from her illness, and eventually wrote a book called Revelations of Divine Love. It was the first book written by a woman in the English language.

Revelations of Divine Love tells the story of Julian’s remarkable experience of God, but it also is filled with rich reflection and insight into what Julian came to know and believe about her God, who is all-loving and all-kind.

Remember, Julian lived in the heart of the late middle ages — a time marked by outbreaks of the Bubonic plague, by the burning of heretics at the stake, by bloody peasant uprisings and near constant war between England and France. When you think of it, maybe her time was not all that different from our own!

But it was a time when the popular image of God was harsh, wrathful, and punitive. Life, as they say, was nasty, brutish and short, and so for many people, God was little more than an autocratic king who ruled with an iron first — not only over England, but over all the universe. This was a god to be feared, not to be loved.

But thanks to Julian’s visions, she recognized that our God — the God of Jesus Christ — is in fact a God of love, a God of endless mercy and compassion. Very few people had access to the Bible in her day, so the privilege that we take for granted — the ability to go straight to the Bible and look something up for ourselves — was simply not widely available in her day.

The Bible bluntly tells us that God is love, but the average peasant in the middle ages probably never got the memo.

And yet, Julian did! And nowhere does the radical impact of Julian’s visionary insight into Divine Love become clearer than in this bold statement that Julian makes, in the 35th chapter of her book. She says, “For the fullness of joy is to behold God in all.”

Let me repeat that one for you! The fullness of joy is to behold God in all.

To Find Joy in God, We Need a Healthy Image of God

Julian suggests that God is a source of joy — not fear, not terror, not anxiety. I’m reminded of the well-worn phrase from Proverbs, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” What I think we often forget is that the end of wisdom — and by “end” I mean not only “completion,” but also “goal” — the end of wisdom is love.

Scripture, you see, is very clear: perfect love casts out fear, as the 1st Epistle of St. John boldly proclaims. The fear of the Lord may be where wisdom begins, but the love of God wants to replace fear in our hearts. As Julian points out, to behold God, ultimately, is not a cause for alarm, but an invitation into joy.

Notice also that Julian invites us to recognize that the fullness of joy is behold God in all. Some modern editions of Julian’s book translate the middle English as “the fullness of joy is to behold God in everything,” but the original middle English very specifically says the fullness of joy is to behold God in all. I like the word “all” because it implies not just all things but also, and perhaps more importantly, all people.

Julian seems to be suggesting that we need to look for God in each other — which only stands to reason, since it is a principle of the Christian faith that God is present in our hearts, thanks to the Holy Spirit who has been given to us — in our hearts. If the Holy Spirit is in our hearts, than our job is to discover the Holy Spirit, present in each and every person we encounter.

But, you may be wondering, can we truly find God in all people? What about someone who is violent, or abusive? What about people whose lives have been trapped by the horrors of addiction, and who act out their illness in ways that cause harm to others? How do we find God in those hearts?

An English writer named Caryll Houselander eloquently answered this question in her book called The Reed of God. In this book, she suggests that Christ is present in all people, but not necessarily alive in all people. Some of us carry Christ in our hearts like God in the Temple, but others carry the crucified Christ in our hearts like his body, lying in the tomb on Holy Saturday.

We know how the story ends. The Christ who died is the Christ who rose again. But for that one awful day, that Saturday after the crucifixion, his body lay in repose. What is interesting is that every year, Christians from all over the world travel to Israel to visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site traditionally believed to be the location of Christ’s tomb.

Caryll Houselander thought this was ironic. “We should never come to a sinner without the reverence that we would take to the Holy Sepulchre,” she wrote. “Pilgrims have travelled on foot for years to kiss the Holy Sepulchre, which is empty. In sinners we can kneel at the tomb in which the dead Christ lies.”

So God is in all of us, and some of us we easily discern the Divine presence, and for others the Holy Spirit seems hidden, like Christ in repose in the tomb — but awaiting resurrection. That’s the key. There is no one beyond the grace of God. And the sooner we recognize this in our hearts, the sooner we are invited into the fullness of joy.

A Recurring Theme

Julian of Norwich is not the only Christian thinker to have counseled us to find God in all. Saint Ignatius of Loyola, who was founder of the Society of Jesus, counseled his students to make a practcice of “finding God in all things.” A thousand years earlier, Saint Benedict, who did so much to establish the monastic way of life in the church, instructed his monks that they should receive all guests as if they were receiving Christ himself.

It’s a bit of spiritual advice that I think all of us would do well to heed, even if we have nothing to do with a monastery.

But how do we do this? How do we find God in all things? How do we behold God in all? How do we, in the words of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, “seek and serve Christ in all persons?”

One way to answer this question is to reflect on the wisdom found in Psalm 139. It begins with a humble recognition that God knows us inside out. Saint Paul says that God searches the heart, but here the Psalmist seems to suggest that God’s knowledge of us is even more comprehensive. God knows us, body and soul. God knows all that we do and even all that we think. God is acquainted with all our ways.

The logic here is breathtaking in its simplicity. To find God, inquire within.

Now, many well-meaning believers would hasten to insist that we should be careful, we should not trust ourselves, our egos are prone to pride and inflation, and that we are always capable of deceiving ourselves. And I suppose such warnings may have their place. But these caveats take us back to the fear which is the beginning, not the end, of wisdom.

We need to balance our capacity for fear with our trust in God.

You, and me, and every human being who has ever walked the earth, are all finite creatures. We can no more comprehend the fullness of God than a drop of water can contain the ocean. But even the tiniest drop of water can know the ocean, and can be contained within it. Likewise, every one of our hearts is a like a drop of water in the oceanic heart of God.

Once we begin to discover that God is truly present in our lives, the possibility of finding God in all things opens up dramatically. Like the Psalmist assures us, we soon realize that we cannot be apart from the presence of God!

Where can I go from your spirit?
Or where can I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there;
if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there.
If I take the wings of the morning
and settle at the farthest limits of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me fast.

Death cannot separate us from the presence of God. Sin cannot separate us from the presence of God. If we dedicate our lives to running away, we will sooner or later discover that we have simply run straight into the arms that love us, but that will never force us to love in return.

Putting the “All” in “All Things”

Somebody — I think it might have been Frank Lloyd Wright — once said, “I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” He actually wasn’t that far off the mark. Granted, every Christian proclaims that God is infinitely more than the splendors of nature, but one of the reasons why we love the natural world so much is because it’s a place where discerning the presence of God seems easier.

The ancient Celts even referred to places where God’s presence seemed especially close as “thin places.” More often than not, the thin places where places of tremendous natural beauty.

It’s easy to find God in a majestic sunset, or a beautiful lake, or an awe-inspiring mountain range. For that matter, God seems to sparkle in the laughter of a newborn baby, the glowing faces of a young couple in love, or the quiet wisdom of a beloved grandmother.

Our job, as followers of Jesus Christ, is to learn to discern the presence of God in all the places where it may be harder to find: in the midst of suffering, in dangerous neighborhoods, in the politics of someone who doesn’t vote the same way we do. Yes, I have it on good authority that God loves both Democrats and Republicans.

It takes practice to become a proficient musician, or a professional artist, or a competitive athlete. Likewise, I believe it takes practice to find God in all things and in all people. Our job is to seek God’s presence out. After all, beholding God in all is the fullness of joy.

I once saw a postcard that asked a very simple question: “If God is everywhere, then where are we?” To find God in all things is to find all things in God. This is not pantheism, for God remains greater than all things and the source of all goodness, all truth, and all beauty.

May we be open to discovering God’s truth, God’s goodness, God’s beauty — and most of all, God’s love — in our own hearts and in the hearts of all. And in doing so, may we find fullness of joy!

N.B. The above homily was delivered on Tuesday, June 26, 2018 during Vespers at the Lakeside Chautauqua, Lakeside, OH. The text for this homily is Psalm 139.

Sunday's Readings Help Us Get the Right Ideas about Our Lord and Suffering

Jairus’ Daughter, Miracles and the Enlightenment

God hates death and destroys it every chance he gets

This Sunday's readings help us get the right ideas about Our Lord and suffering.

It’s easy to get the wrong idea about God and suffering. This Sunday, the 13th Sunday in Ordinary Time, serves to correct our mistaken impression.

We look at the command to “Take up your cross each day and follow me,” and we think God likes it when we suffer. We look at the crucifix and think that God embraced death in general, and not just his own.

He doesn’t and he didn’t.

Jesus showed the family of a dead little girl what he thought of suffering and death.

In Sunday’s Gospel, a synagogue official named Jairus falls at the feet of Jesus and begs for his dying daughter’s life.

Jesus could cure his daughter with a word, but instead he walks to his house, and the Gospel shares lots of details – a crowd presses on him, he comes to a house surrounded by scoffers, and he takes the girl’s parents and a select few inside.

“Talitha koum,” he says — “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” And the 12-year-old does exactly that.

The mother and father must have rejoiced — but not as much as God did.

Sunday’s first reading is a remarkable summing up of what God thinks of death.

“God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living,” the book of Wisdom says. “For God formed man to be imperishable; in the image of his own nature he made him.”

God rejoices in each of his children, the way any good parent does. We can’t help but love the children made in our image. God can’t help but love us, either. 

He made us all to live forever, and hates it when any of us dies.

Death is unwelcome on earth. God didn’t intend it.

Also like any good parent, God knows the importance of giving his children freedom — real love requires choice — but he is sad, like us, when his children choose to drift away from him.

It is through this freedom that “by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”

When Adam and Eve believed the devil’s lie and decided to follow his advice rather than God’s commandment, they became part of his company and conformed to his image instead of God’s. They chose the way of death — physical death and spiritual death.

You probably don’t think of the 10 Commandments like this! Check out the pope’s amazing insight

Jesus wept twice in the Gospels — once at the physical death of his friend Lazarus, and once at the spiritual death of Jerusalem, which had not recognized its savior.

When we sin we make the same choice as Adam and Eve, with the same consequence — and the same sadness on God’s part.

Jesus didn’t embrace suffering and death because he liked it. He embraced it because he loves us.

Which brings us back to the cross. Jesus came to die not because he wanted to, but because it was the only way to defeat death. Like a parent shielding a child in a burning house, he knew that the only way to protect us from death was to die in our place.

Parents do that in much less dramatic ways all the time, making sacrifices of all kinds for their children. So did God. Jesus, “though he was rich,” writes St. Paul in today’s second reading, “for your sake he became poor, so that by poverty you might become rich.”

We are all Jairus’s daughter — and we are all the woman with a hemorrhage.

So each of us is like Jairus’s daughter, waiting for life from its only source. Or perhaps we are like the woman he meets on the way to Jairus’ house.

Mark tells us that for 12 years she has “suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors and had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.”

This is each of us, suffering and seeking healing in all the wrong places, in the ideologies and pleasures and promises that the world makes.

Finally, like her, we reach out to Jesus, in desperation.

We each need to have that moment with Jesus, realizing at last that he did not make us to be wounded and hurting and desperate. He made us to live. And none of us — even the spiritually dead — are beyond his healing touch.

Deacon Tom's Homily for Thursday June 28th 2018

By their fruits you will know them

While I was preparing for my homily today I came across a reflection that I found helpful to understand today’s readings. The reflection was by Blessed Columba Marmion, Abbot (1858-1923) He said that three spirits strive for mastery in every soul. There is the spirit of falsehood and blasphemy that, since the beginning, has always suggested the contrary to whatever God whispers in our ear. There is also the spirit of the world that inclines us to judge things according to our senses and lust of the flesh. But as St. Paul tells us, the wisdom of this world is foolishness in the eyes of God[1].By their fruits you will know them

Then there is the Spirit of God that inspires us to lift our hearts above nature and to live by faith. This Spirit focuses us towards a loving faith and the abandonment of ourselves into the hands of God. It brings forth the fruits of which Saint Paul speaks: love, joy, peace, discipline, kindness, goodness and faithfulness, Our Lord spoke to us yesterday: “By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thorn bushes, or figs from thistles?[2]” By your baptism and confirmation, the Holy Spirit is a living fountain in your soul. If you are faithful, the Holy Spirit will become your guide and will bear you along with him into the bosom of God.

Today’s passage from Second Kings is one key moment of the Babylonian captivity, portraying it as God’s punishment for the evil ways of Judah’s kings. A frequent figure of these ancient stories is a God who punishes through military defeat. But I don’t believe God punishes by violent enslavement to enemies. I believe God’s power saves and brings peace.

But we can be seized into captivity, however, as treasures of our spirits are looted. Something beautiful and valuable in us can be smashed, like Solomon’s golden vessels. We can be captive to resentments and addiction to self-righteousness.

Jesus' parables invite us to stake our lives on the coming of his kingdom or face the consequences of being unprepared when the day of testing and destruction will surely come. The significance of the parable for us is that we should examine ways to build our spiritual home on solid ground.

Doing the will of the Father means works of charity, of patience, of disinterested service. Real expressions of our faith demand that we give of ourselves. Real faith doesn't leave us feeling smug. Witnessing to our faith through our works is crucial. Faith in Christ means daily conversion, changing our lives in conformity to his will. Remember, Jesus said: "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven[3]".

Christ is the only rock that can save us. He can keep us from falsehood and spiritual disaster. A faith built only on feeling is weak and will soon collapse. But a faith fed with study, prayer and the sacraments and strengthened with obedience and good works will weather the storm. If we make the Lord Jesus and his word the rock and foundation of our lives, then nothing can shake us nor keep us from God's presence and protection.

Today and every day, make Jesus and his word the one sure foundation of your life.

[1] 1 Cor 3:19

[2] Matthew 7:16

[3] (Matthew 7:21)