Year of Favor - Ordinary Time (Wk 4 Cycle A) Feb 02 2014

ATTITUDE OF COMPASSION

1.  The Decalogue is the face of God’s justice. The Beatitudes are the face of God’s love. On the one hand, divine justice is synonymous with altitude—the ascent of man on the narrow and hard path that leads to life.  [cf. Mt 7:13-14]  The Holy One of Israel  [Isa 10:20]  calls his human creation to a holy way of life:  “For I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves therefore, and be holy, for I am holy.”  [Lev 11:44]

2.  On the other hand, divine love is correspondent to an disposition or attitude to compassion, the length and breadth which our gracious God will traverse to rescue fallen man. Jesus’ parable of the lost sheep clearly is a story of beatitude:

WHAT DO you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray?

AND IF he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish.  [Mt 18:12-14]

GEOGRAPHY OF DISTRESS

3.  The lamb, having gone astray, is incapable of scaling heights and attaining expectations. Weak and helpless apart from the shepherd’s vigilant care, it falls into perilous circumstances. The shepherd leaves his flock on the mountains—emblematic of loftiness and stature, struggle and accomplishment—and searches, not in obvious or comfortable places but in the geography of distress and darkness.

4.  When searching for the lost sheep, the shepherd looks beyond pasture to wilderness. Hills give way to crevices. A single sheep, alone and disoriented, attracts the predator. Many of us remember the familiar illustrations of the parable of the lost sheep—the shepherd leaning far down into a dark ravine of briars, uses the crook of his staff to grasp the lamb.

SIN OF POWERFUL MEN

5.  The human soul is a vast and uncharted realm. Many persons refuse to explore the soul that God has given them. They may think it irrelevant to the attractions of a material world or that its formidable topography is benign and impervious to injury. How easy it is to fall out of green pastures into a terrifying wilderness! Abandon the shepherd and embrace the sin! With one lesser wrong decision piling up on another, the human person is impelled toward evil consequences which he neither grasps or intended from the beginning.

6.  Not consciously choosing evil for its own sake, man nevertheless mystifyingly chooses to do the wrong in the mistaken hope that good will come from it. He hopes that the possibility of proximate good will absolve him—not his soul, for he is ignorant of this, but his disturbing memories. Ignorant of his soul, he possesses neither conscious awareness of it or the vocabulary to speak about it. He is deaf to the groanings of his battered, neglected conscience.

7.  Powerful men scorn the sovereignty of God, hence giving to the innocent and helpless what they are due in God’s eyes. Hence, the innocent person may despair of God’s deliverance, which is to say, his mercy. The sin of powerful men therefore is great, for added to their provocations against God’s mercy is an egregious contempt for the divine image and likeness intrinsic in the human personhood of those whom they exploit:  “Many shepherds have destroyed my vineyard, they have trampled down my portion, they have made my pleasant portion a desolate wilderness.”  [Jer 10:10]

"Where Are You?" - Ordinary Time (Wk 3 Cycle A) Jan 26 2014

SAILING OF ANOTHER SORT

1.  Jesus, walking along the Sea of Galilee touches the hearts of Peter and his brother Andrew, and the sons of Zebedee, John and James. Amenable to Our Lord's authoritative call  (Gk. exousia), these fishermen abandon their boats and provincial aspirations to cast their nets in the realm of the spirit. Still, the disciples will return to fish on the Sea of Galilee any number of times in the years ahead.

2.  What then, did the disciples actually relinquish when they agreed to follow Jesus as disciples? James and John, Andrew and Peter certainly surrendered personal control of their destinies. They walked away from the rhythmic, orderly, habitual life of fishing to learn sailing and fishing of another sort. “Do not be afraid; henceforth you will be catching men,” said Jesus to Simon. The gospel suggests that the fishermen were decisive in abandoning the sea to follow the Lord.

3.  The gospel does not say that they were devoid of uncertainty. But the Holy Spirit has a way welding such disparate things together, and despite their reservations and the inevitable resentments of family members for having made such impulsive, radical life changes, Jesus' new disciples intuit that following him was crucial to the meaning of their lives, the realization of which, it would seem, of their individual aspirations and human dignity. By accepting Jesus’ invitation, the new disciples signal their readiness to enter the procession of God's saving plan wherever that might lead.

DIVINE PROCESSION

4.  The apostles were reasonably convinced that Israel's fate and the world's destiny depended on the divine procession which has, as its head, Jesus. All who enter this procession with Christ move from potency to act, from latency to fulfillment, from nature to Spirit. This is not to suggest, however, that human fulfillment is formulaic, made up of parts or halves, or that conflict and uncertainty are necessary pre-conditions to understanding the meaning of human personhood.

5.  To the contrary. Integration of body and spirit, trust and worthiness, love and sacrifice, seeking and finding, words and deeds, reality and dreams, present and future, mortality and eternity—indeed all these and countless other incipient signs of God's Kingdom are planted in every human soul at the moment of conception. Moreover, these incipient signs are magnified in the Law—the Decalogue its highest expression—and are brought to fulfillment by the more perfect ministry of Jesus Christ the high priest, one “who is seated at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven”  [Heb 8:1]  who proclaimed a new covenant in his own name.

INSTRUMENT OF REVELATION

6.  The new covenant made in Christ's name lays bare what is concealed under signs, unveiling the truth hidden in parables. It illuminates the mysteries of salvation and propels the Kingdom of God suddenly near to human beings. While not disclosing fully the mysteries of faith, the new covenant makes their existence self-evident. Moreover, the believer’s covenant bond with Christ is the relationship through which the sacred order of God's kingdom is revealed to humbles hearts.

7.  Lest any disciple fail to see things as they really are and assume that Jesus’ is proposing a new comfortableness, he declares unequivocally:  "Think not that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets; I have come not to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until all is accomplished."  [Mt 5:17-18]

Give Jesus Permission

FEW DISEASES were more feared or reviled than leprosy. Before man and God, it was presumed, a leper was the lowest of the low. His disease was proof he was less than nothing before God’s eternal, absolute and omnipotent perfection.

HOW REMARKABLE and touching that a distraught leper would kneel before Jesus—fully God and fully man—to give him permission to heal him. "If you will, you can make me clean,” he said. [Mk 1:40-45] Jesus was moved with pity. He embraced the sick man as he would his own mother. He touched him, saying, I do will it. He healed him.

TO BE moved with pity is to permit the compassion of your heart to carry you into the experience of someone who suffers. To be moved means to reach out and embrace. It means speaking and touching. Compassion is medicine for the spirit. It sets the scene for healing and the renewal of relationships. It makes possible the regeneration of human hope. Compassion liberates the soul from the clench of the present moment and quiets its trembling.

THE COMPASSION of Jesus Christ is a stirring reminder that Christianity is more than a glimpse of old light or the nimbus of an ambiguous future. Christ is immediate and radiant. This immediacy has a name—the Holy Spirit—who speaks what he hears. [cf. Jn 16:13] Become aware of your own poverty, now. Embrace the one who suffers, now. Open yourself to healing, now.

PERHAPS YOU'LL speak freely about all this, spreading the news everywhere. The Mother of God counsels us that truth is vindicated by silence. Yet, we are not to worry. If a ruckus ensues in your heart or in your household, go quickly into the desert to pray with Jesus. There in solitude you will be little. Make yourself less than nothing before God. Give Jesus permission to touch you and heal you.

Pope Leo XIII - Unaided Human Reason Is Dangerous

"ONCE ASCRIBED to the human reason the only authority to decide what is true and what is good, the real distinction between good and evil is destroyed; honor and dishonor differ not in their nature, but in the opinion and judgment of each one; pleasure is the measure of what is lawful; and, given a code of morality which can have little or no power to restrain or quiet the unruly propensities of man, a way is naturally opened to universal corruption.

"WITH REFERENCE also to public affairs: authority is severed from the true and natural principle whence it derives all its efficacy for the common good; and the law determining what it is right to do and avoid doing is at the mercy of a majority. Now, this is simply a road leading straight to tyranny.

"WHEN ANYTHING is commanded which is plainly at variance with the will of God, there is a wide departure from this divinely constituted order, and at the same time a direct conflict with divine authority; therefore, it is right not to obey.

"BY THE patrons of liberalism, however, who make the State absolute and omnipotent, and proclaim that man should live altogether independently of God, the liberty of which We speak, which goes hand in hand with virtue and religion, is not admitted; and whatever is done for its preservation is accounted an injury and an offense against the State. Indeed, if what they say were really true, there would be no tyranny, no matter how monstrous, which we should not be bound to endure and submit to."

Pope Leo XIII

Libertas

June 20, 1888

Love, Generosity, Healing

God created us in his own image and likeness,

            he loves us more than we know.

God created for us the whole world,

            his generosity is boundless as his love.

Jesus Christ chose the way of sorrows

            to renew us with God’s healing mercy. 

"It Is No Desert"

Stephen Crane’s poem XLII (“The Black Riders”) expresses the bleakness of a suffering heart—

I walked in a desert.

And I cried,

“Ah, God take me from this place!”

A voice said, “It is no desert.”

I cried, “Well, but—

The sand, the heat, the vacant horizon.

A voice said, “It is no desert.”  ^[1]  

Father Thomas Merton observes in NEW SEEDS OF CONTEMPLATION that of these three—aridity, obscurity and tranquility—we discover ourselves experiencing aridity most of the time. While such a state may be a cause for longing, it need not be the cause of distress. In aridity is found sanctity and the hidden lives of saints. The scriptures tell us, “But (Jesus) withdrew to the wilderness and prayed.”  [Lk 5:16] The person who eschews the desert never sees or knows these things.

When a person enters the desert for the first time (or rarely), he sees only a wasteland and nothing there. The man who embraces the desert, however, knows it as a sanctuary of temporal and spiritual beauty and the great wonders of God. This makes sense. Our Lord Jesus Christ spent most of his time in the wilderness, there communing with his heavenly father. It was the city and its builders, not the desert, who betrayed Jesus.

No, dear disciple, you are not off. You build on solid rock, that is to say, holiness. With the carpenter of Nazareth to help you, you are building a house of love on this foundation. You may be rebuked or condemned for being holy. Do not look to the right or the left. Keep your eyes on the Blessed Trinity and the heavenly city Jerusalem not made by human hands.

The spiritual man is the living sign of the marvelous visible works flowing from the invisible love of the most holy Trinity. It is an irony that human beings actually don’t “enter” the desert in this life; we are in the desert from the beginning. One advances far in spiritual life when he consciously embraces the desert which surrounds us always. There, like Jesus, pray to God the Father. There like Jesus, allow God’s Spirit to minister to you and defend you.

If you thirst to live a holy way of life, return to the Sacrament of Confession—the springs of life-giving water. The Spirit’s voice speaks—“It is no desert!” In this sacramental oasis you will find refreshment, regeneration and the spiritual strength to care for your brothers.

__________________________________________

^[1]  Stephen Crane, THE COLLECTED POEMS OF STEPHEN CRANE, "The Black Riders", XLII, ed. Wilson Follett (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1941) 45. 

Photo courtesy of Ookaboo.

The Whole World

When one child in the whole world is happy,

            the whole world is joyful.

When one artist’s song or painting in the world is beautiful,

            the world itself is attractive.

If one laborer in the world enjoys a single day of leisure,

            the entire world is at ease.

If one young person in the whole world is in love

            the world itself is lovely.

When one marriage in the world is celebrated,

            the whole world is festive.

If one person in the world tries to be holy,

            the risen Jesus offers the whole world salvation.

Should one Christian in the whole world devoutly pray,

            the world entire kneels before God. 

Brave Men and Women

WHEN A young American enters a recruiting station to sign up, he walks in as an individual who has made a private and personal decision. At the instant he voices the oath of service and affixes his signature, his personal decision becomes very public. 

ENTRUSTING HIS life to our elected government, the young recruit joins thousands of other young men and women in the mission of protecting the United States of America. Their service to God and country will require unwavering loyalty and obedience. 

MILITARY PERSONNEL must be confident that what is expected of them by their nation, president and commanding officers is prudent and just for friend and foe alike. From superiors and fellow service members, military men and women should expect excellence in all things.

WITH FULL knowledge that true heroism in the service of one’s country arises from the day-to-day hard work of duty and strenuous labor, we beseech our gracious and provident heavenly Father to grant our soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines a lively faith, a gallant heart and a serene acceptance of his unsearchable will. 

THOUGH IT brings sadness to the human spirit, we must acknowledge the dangers that men and women face in the defense of their nation. Many are gravely injured or killed and many more will suffer silently in the years after conflict is ended. In time of war, we continue to stand in solidarity with our soldiers, our airmen, our sailors and our marines who have pledged their lives for the well-being of all the families of our nation.

OUR LIVES depend on the cooperation and respect we give the soldier on the ground, the airman in the sky, the sailor and marine, and national guard. We civilians would do well to plant this truth deep in out hearts and to live our lives in such a way as to be worthy of being defended.

OUR YOUNG service men and women depend on Christian families who remember their sacred duty of interceding to God on their behalf. May the names of these brave men and women and the record of their noble service to God and country not be forgotten.  

MAY THE peace of Christ become the peace of nations: “For we are not contending against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world rulers of this present darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places.” [Eph 6:12] 

Photo courtesy of Ookaboo.

Elegant Recovery

Young altar servers and acolytes advance far when they learn this important lesson about the liturgy:  Don’t try to be perfect. Rather, strive to make an elegant recovery. The most wonderful example of this, of course, is Jesus' resurrection on the third day. I am convinced that for all human beings, life in this broken world is lived authentically in the "recovery" zone.

Young persons who serve the altar, may you receive this healing truth and enjoy the most elegant recovery of life—the holiness of your mind, heart, soul and strength. I pray that you will value your very own personhood as a treasure and see yourselves as God sees you—worthy of love and redemption. I ask God to lead and guide you into a holy life well-lived. 

St. Patrick Cathedral Basilica, New York City

For a Moment

WHERE THERE is great love there are always miracles...One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are . . . I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.  
[Willa Cather, DEATH COMES FOR THE ARCHBISHOP (1927) Book I, p. 49] 

Mystery of Salvation - Ordinary Time Wk 2 Cycle A - Jan 19 2014

KEEPING WATCH

1.  Your fidelity and devotion to the third commandment—”remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy”  [Exo 20:8]—is a testimony to your faith. Many of you have sacrificed to be here. Your presence in the House of God is itself a gift to the Most High. What you have sacrificed in order to worship this day is also your gift to our loving, provident Father.

2.  Your steadfast example of keeping watch with the Lord inspires and invigorates all those who gather in his name. You, as the Bride of Christ, strengthen the determination of those whose faith is weak. May they repent and turn again to God with all their heart, soul, and might, “that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord”.  [Acts 3:19] 

MYSTERY OF THINGS

3.  In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, we appeal to the Father through the divine personhood and merits of his son, our Lord Jesus—upon whom the Spirit descended and came to rest.  [cf. Jn 1:33]  We offer the unworthy yet earnest desires of a people united in faith: “But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself”.  [Psa 4:3]  Many of our prayers petition God for specific and difficult things.

4.  We “earnestly desire the higher gifts”. This “still more excellent way”  [1Cor 12:31]  is the mystery of things that are known but not fully understood. We ask the Lord to grant us a share of his divine attributes, gifts that endure, things that cannot be seen:  “...so faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love”.  [1Cor 13:13]  Our enduring Christian mission is the sharing of our faith.

SHARING AND WITNESSING

5.  You are sharing and witnessing it to others at this very celebration of Holy Eucharist. Every individual, indeed every generation through whom God shows his glory, must discover anew the baptismal mystery of Christ. It is the “secret and hidden wisdom of God which God decreed before the ages for our glorification”  [1Cor 2:7]  that we might possess “. . . full awareness of (man's) dignity, of the heights to which he is raised, of the surpassing worth of his own humanity, and of the meaning of his existence”.[2]

6.  The Holy Spirit enables us to see for ourselves what the baptizer saw, and to bear witness as his spiritual heirs that Jesus Christ is the “Son of God”.  [Jn 1:34]  St. Jude entreats us in Sacred Scripture, in his exquisite little one-chapter epistle, to “contend for the faith which was once for all delivered to the saints”.  [Jude 1:1]  

Gladiator

/I mind the invincible

actus of the fiery ant who

in campaign for easy food

found my colossal arm

oddwise to its forage plan:

/who battled cross its hairy top

to make of me a Sophocles

by jaw and poison barb—

mocking my flaming wound

and sapient stink-eye.

/this tiny rooster offed the plank

of the picnic table, a pirate

whose olympic prank

throws the darwin switch

to acids of a million larvae

close-hauled in rubbery decks below.

August 18 2013

Heaven's Ecology

MOST CHRISTIANS today assume much but know little about their Christian religion. This generation assumes that Christianity’s two fundamental virtues are ignorance and self-interest. Sin is non-existent, God’s judgment becomes irrelevant and the Christian religion is an easy-to-break throw-away ornament.

BUT FOR Christians who cling to their religion while assuming much and knowing little, some real thinking about sin and judgment is needed and fast. If you are acting on the (even implicit) assumption that you can slipstream from this world to the next carrying a boatload of sins, expecting to offload them at God's throne and sail right into heaven because your "friend" died on a cross, you're not thinking.

HEAVEN’S ECOLOGY is not going to be fouled by a toxic dump of sins—yours or anyone else’s—at the foot of God’s throne. If God shows you mercy at the moment of your personal judgment and intends you to share life with him forever, AND you are carrying not-reconciled sins and have done little or nothing in this present life about it, then you’re going to have to take your sins somewhere else and deal with them before you come back. 

(ACTUALLY, WILLFUL ignorance is not a virtue or bliss but stupidity. Neither is squalid self-interest a virtue in God’s sight but always wicked. Thinking Christianity has nothing to do with such stupidity and wickedness.)

THAT "SOMEWHERE else" is purgatory, a cleanup site where your soul is going to have to be scoured clean of debris and become presentable before you can sit down at heaven’s banquet table. We have known this teaching and taught it for 2,000 years. It is thoroughly attested by the Scriptures, the Magisterium and the Tradition—the three great witnesses standing on the rock of Peter.  [cf. Mt 16:18]  

THE SAINTS of heaven are persons reconciled to God on earth. What are the good works of the elect? They are the gold, silver and precious stones of the heavenly city Jerusalem.  [Rev 21:18-21]  What are not-reconciledsins but wood, hay and straw, cast forthand withered, gathered and thrown into the fire and burned.  [Jn 15:6]  

FOR NO other foundation can any one lay than that which is laid, which is Jesus Christ. Now if any one builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw—each man's work will become manifest; for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire (purgatory) will test what sort of work each one has done.

IF THE work which any man has built on the foundation survives, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.  [1Cor 3:11-15]

AS SURELY as heaven exists for perfect souls to praise God, there is a purgatory for imperfect souls whose not-reconciled sins are the lumber, hay and straw that will be used to fuel the fire that purifies them. "If any one will not work, let him not eat."  [2Thess 3:10]  

Perhaps There's Still Time

Pope St. Leo the Great who reigned for 21 years in the mid-5th century wrote: “The Lord’s passion is prolonged until the end of the world.”

As long as there exists in this world a single tear on the cheek of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to bear our human grief, and by so doing, sorrows with us. As long as there exists in this world the impoverishment of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to pray for “our daily bread”, and by so doing, hungers with us. As long as there exists in this world the injury of one of his “little ones”, our risen Lord Jesus Christ continues to heal us with the medicine of mercy, and by so doing, suffers with us.

Is any human being so well off, so insulated from ordinary experience, so estranged from his own heart that he truthfully can say I’ve never cried, I’ve never been hurt, I've never been so alone? In the name of heaven, then, why do so many Christians attempt to carry their sorrows, impoverishment and injuries alone and apart from the Body of Christ? 

When the Church prays the Stations of the Cross, all members of the Body of Christ pray these words for Christ:

COME ALL you who pass by the way, look and see whether there is any suffering like my suffering. At this I weep, my eyes run with tears: far from me are all who could console me, far away are any who might revive me.  [Lam 1:12,16]

Our Lord Jesus Christ suffers for you, and he suffers your holding back from him. Perhaps there is still time for you to pause, reflect and surrender your whole heart to our crucified Lord. If you sincerely desire to console Jesus, to revive him in the midst of his suffering for you, then bring him your tears, your hunger and your distress. And let him heal you! “The Spirit is the witness, because the Spirit is the truth!”  [1Jn 5:7]  

Entrust yourself to the Good Physician whose clinic is the Church, whose office is the Cross, whose license is the Gospel, and whose medicine of mercy is his Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity. The Lord himself has given you life by the blood and water which flowed from his side as he hung upon the cross:  “Beloved, let us love one another; for love is of God, and he who loves is born of God and knows God.”  [1Jn 4:7] 

Dance of the Stripes

For two or three days after a zebra birth, the mare does not permit her foal to gaze at other members of the herd or the harem stallion standing guard nearby. Her offspring must learn to recognize her alone. More effective than sound or scent is nature's visual marker—the mare's own stripe pattern. 

A foal needs time, however, to imprint this unique design in its brain before mother and baby can mingle freely in the herd. This is not casual play but a matter of life or death. The herd cannot remain stationary for long. Moreover, the baby's window of receptivity "closes" after the short period of confinement. 

The many harems of a migratory zebra herd typically graze a short distance away from birthing females. The approach of any curious adult, therefore, is cause for alarm to the new mother. The mare quickly blocks her foal from gazing on the visitor's stripes. This task can be exhausting for the new mother. If the baby is distracted from memorizing its mother's stripe pattern, it will never recognize her among the herd population. 

Such failure is always deadly. A confused and disoriented foal is ostracized by the harem. Herd members, rebuffing its cries, will drive the baby away. Wandering helplessly, the infant zebra quickly succumbs to starvation or attack by predators.

A baby zebra, from the moment of its birth, engages in a poignant life and death struggle. To have a chance, it must recognize the stripe pattern of its birth mother with invincible accuracy. A human being, contemplating the desperate urgency of this bonding imperative, may be inclined to perceive it as a cruel lottery. Perhaps it is in some sense. Nevertheless, a certain inevitability—one may call it perspective—reasserts itself in the human mind.

Nature is relentlessly even pitilessly what it is. No, not pitilessly. The word pity belongs to our peculiarly human capacity for poignant self-reflection. Such impulses are anathema to nature's ecological machinery. Nevertheless, the reality is that most zebra foals mature successfully, find food and survive predation to experience the ultimate imperative—procreation. The dance of the stripes is performed again. 

(Photo courtesy of Ookaboo.)

Who Will Save the Nations?

SIMILARLY, ONCE the hope and expectation of eternal happiness is taken away, temporal goods will be greedily sought after. Every man will strive to secure the largest share for himself. Hence arise envy, jealousy, hatred. The consequences are conspiracy, anarchy, nihilism. There is neither peace abroad nor security at home. Public life is stained with crime.

SO GREAT is this struggle of the passions and so serious the dangers involved, that we must either anticipate ultimate ruin or seek for an efficient remedy. It is of course both right and necessary to punish malefactors, to educate the masses, and by legislation to prevent crime in every possible way: but all this is by no means sufficient. The salvation of the nations must be looked for higher.

Pope Leo XIII

Tametsi futura prospicientibus

November 1, 1900

Fourteenth Station: Both Old and New

During the year before my adult confirmation in the Catholic Church, I desired to pray the Stations of the Cross. Scarcely aware of this venerable devotion, I entered the solemn nave of St. Anne Church one Friday afternoon to pray with a singular purpose. Everything else could wait outside in the glare and heat of day. 

The Church was quiet and empty of people. Hesitant and unsure of myself, I was thankful to be alone in the stillness of the Church. With a little book in hand, I walked the Via Dolorosa tentatively at first, concentrating on kneeling and the rhythm of the devotion. The First Station. Jesus Is Condemned to Death.

The events of Jesus’ passion and death moved me deeply as I prayed each station. Jesus meets his mother, Veronica and the women of Jerusalem—the cross crushes him to the ground—stripped and nailed, he is lifted up—dying, he is taken down. Until at last, I knelt before the Fourteenth Station. Jesus Is Laid in the Tomb. I took a deep breath.

The words poured from my heart. For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand elsewhere. I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.  [Psa 84:10]  I prayed silently, Father in heaven, I ask for the hand of your daughter the Church. Will you permit me to be a priest?

I remained on my knees for some time. No sight or sound or insight altered the holy silence. Nothing disturbed the serenity of the nave or the sunlight filtering through the stained-glass windows. I dared to ask God too much, too soon. The stillness, however, did not discourage me. I pictured a father glowering over his daughter’s puny and unacceptable suitor. You’d better toughen up your knees. You’ll have to let go of many things.

You can’t go any lower than the grave, and I suppose that’s why petitioners pour their hearts out in this spiritual pilgrimage. I never went back to the Fourteenth Station to ask for priesthood again. Once was sufficient. But my friends—all but one of whom would disavow me—knew where to find me. I was always in the Church.

It’s not a matter of adroitness or merit or even personal need but rather the impossible—daring to ask for that which no human excellence suffices, pleading God’s own unfathomable reasons when human thought fails and prayerful silence looms like a mountain before human frailty.

Inevitably, all human experiences give way to forgetfulness, rarely to be illuminated by conscious reflection and shared in the present moment. This may seem to be cause for distress, especially when the loveliest events of life begin to fade, and one fears losing them altogether.

The stillness doesn’t mean oblivion for as David wrote, But as for me, my prayer is to thee, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of thy steadfast love answer me.God recalls to the soul the things of faith like a householder who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old.  [Mt 13:52]  Not new or old, but rather the good things in God’s time that are always old and always new.  

Pope Leo XIII - Political Campaign against Christianity

"WE HAVE but too much evidence of the value and result of a morality divorced from divine faith. How is it that, in spite of all the zeal for the welfare of the masses, nations are in such straits and even distress, and that the evil is daily on the increase? We are told that society is quite able to help itself; that it can flourish without the assistance of Christianity, and attain its end by its own unaided efforts. 

"PUBLIC ADMINISTRATORS prefer a purely secular system of government. All traces of the religion of our forefathers are daily disappearing from political life and administration. What blindness! Once the idea of the authority of God as the Judge of right and wrong is forgotten, law must necessarily lose its primary authority and justice must perish: and these are the two most powerful and most necessary bonds of society."

Pope Leo XIII

Tametsi futura prospicientibus

November 1, 1900

"Everything Must Change" Christmas Cycle A, Baptism of Lord Jan 12 2014

ALTHOUGH NOT a vessel of beauty, nonetheless John the Baptist was a vessel of mercy. Although hesitant to baptize Jesus—it is you who should be baptizing me—Jesus replies mysteriously to the baptizer's consternation: "Let it be so now; for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness."  [Mt 3:15]

AS A sign of contradiction, the baptizer reluctantly casts water on the Divine Fire to fulfill all righteousness: He baptizes Jesus in the Jordan River. In a scene contemplated by holy priests who ponder their judgment before God, the heavens opened above Jesus and the Spirit of peace descends upon the Son of God.

TO THE sign of water was added the divine benediction from heaven, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."  [Mt 3:17]  Thus the ritual of sign and blessing was completed by Jesus as an example of holiness for the people and the empowerment of his ministry.

THE OLD year comes to an end; a new one commences. Utterly untouched by human chronology, the procession of time continues uninterrupted until Christ's return in glory. The days and seasons drift by and man is left to reflect on the fact of his mortality and his life's meaning. If he is wise, man will interpret lessons and experiences in a fruitful way, and he will contemplate the purpose of that which has ended or continues to unfold.

THE PASSING of a year helps one to thresh accomplishments and regrets, to winnow promises fulfilled and unfulfilled, and to store in the barn a harvest against future uncertainty. The evocative ballad Everything Must Changeurges mortal man to contemplate the mystery he cannot master: "Everything must change; nothing stays the same. The young become the old, and mysteries do unfold, for that's the way of time:  No one and nothing goes unchanged.” 

THERE ARE as many ways of letting go as there are leaves on a tree. In the past year, each of us has bid farewell to something or someone, and in many instances, not without great sorrow. We detach and say goodbye, this sometimes against our will. We are compelled to accept the inevitability that time and space will separate those who sail away on the unseen wind and those who come to rest firmly in the earth.

MY HEART goes out to you who persevere in faith, to you who love Christ, who worship the Father wholeheartedly, and walk in the Spirit. And I implore our heavenly Father with all my soul that this new year of grace will bring times of refreshing for the Church and his faithful people. I pray, too, that when your self-assurance is a bruised reed and your strength of will is a dimly burning wick, you will behold the "Spirit of God descending like a dove"  [Mt 3:16]  to bring you peace and contentment.

MAY YOU realize in the depths of your soul, as God's beloved children of faith, that Christ the Light of the World has purchased your salvation at a great price and that every good gift comes from God. For he who was baptized in the fire of his holy passion, death and resurrection has won for his Church the fatherhood of the God of mercy and clothed us with the glorious garment of his abiding pleasure.