Fire, Salt, and Light.

AH! TO BECOME MAD!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:31:00 +0000

It is a sign of the length of winter this far north, at the end of the shortest day of the year when we had barely seven hours of daylight, that today would be the beginning of longer days – yeah, by 8 seconds!

Contrast that with the approximately 12 hours of daylight in Somalia, with the attendant heat!

Famine still stalks that land and its people, though hardly a news outfit in the world, at least the major ones like BBC, CNN, seem to mention it anymore.

Egypt and Syria have around ten hours of daylight being further north than Somalia, while North Korea these days they get about 5 hours of daylight, though many would say the people live in perpetual darkness.

I mention those odd bits of information simply because, as we await the birth of the Holy Child, Light Himself born to shatter all darkness, in my prayer here in the hermitage I hear the cry of human beings for hope, for light, for love – these great yearnings only Jesus can truly satisfy so I pray, let us all pray, everyone will come to know Him, welcome Him into the manger of our hearts.

In the media these days, stories about economic matters seem to dominate, stories too about how anxious ‘the world’ is about what lies ahead: will the world economy collapse, will the Arab spring turn into an Arab winter, will North Korea start a war, will……………O Jesus how we need you!

Each day I walk a different area of the city, praying everyone will come to know him and yesterday I was wary of the ice on the sidewalk,[ the older I get the more cautious I am about ice when I walk, falling at my age leads to serious broken bones] so I was increasingly irritated at the man approaching, riding his bicycle towards me.

Irritated that someone would place my arthritic knees at risk by invading MY space with his bicycle.

As the man got closer I noticed he had the facial features common to a particular type of mental handicap and became more interiorly irritated, this time against myself for being such a sidewalk hog.

In that same instant the man past me, at a clip, as he said, with a great smile on his face: “Hello there! How are you? “

Not only a gift of light bursting into my interior self-preoccupied darkness, but a reminder the only way out of any darkness, economic crisis, oppression by dictators, step back from the precipice of war, to feed the hungry, is if, like that beaming man on his bicycle, my focus, our focus, like Jesus’, is on other and not self.

My youngest sister is clearing out my parents’ home, going through everything she keeps sending me packages of letters, photos, etc., she feels I might be interested in.

One such package contained the remains of my ration book from the war.

Millions of Americans today depend on food stamps, a modern variation of the old ration books.

We serve hundreds of hungry homeless people in the soup kitchen where I volunteer.

Over two millennia after the birth of Jesus, after Light Himself shattered the darkness, after the Holy Child came to teach us who we are, how to love, how to lay down our lives, how to touch and love Him by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and those in prison, welcoming the stranger we remain a world obsessed with power, money, pleasure and wonder why we are so anxious.

We live in a cult of celebrity so much so I dare say the average Catholic knows more about Jersey Shore than the great desert of the early hermits and monks, knows more about Lindsay Lohan than the Little Flower, more about ………………….

It is not simply that we Christians fail to tell the story of salvation, which granted in this culture takes great effort, but we fail to tell our own story, our own history, to each other.

Check, for example, how often from the pulpit you hear a homily about applying the Gospel to some social justice issue and how often you hear the story of the life of a saint!

I am not suggesting either/or, rather we need both.

How can we have a sense of purpose, courage, possibility to preach the Gospel with our lives without compromise if we are unawares other human beings like ourselves have lived such light filled, joyful lives, all the while embracing the cross, the ordinariness of human life?

Few days remain before the Holy Child will be placed in our midst, in the manger of our hearts, anew by our Blessed Mother.

Here are just three examples of faith lived:

He lived until he was over a hundred years old. He was born in Egypt of Christian parents but orphaned at an early age, with a younger sister to care for. One day in church his heart was broken open when he heard the words of the Gospel, spoken by Jesus to the rich young man. So moved, he immediately gave away all but what was needed to care for his sister. He gave away what was left, and went deep into the desert.

There he became the greatest of all spiritual warriors.

He is ABBA ANTHONY.

Divine Wisdom was fused into his heart in the crucible of decades of solitary life in the desert, battling evil spirits, being emptied of his false-self by the Holy Spirit, who illumined Abba Anthony and, with fire, configured him to Christ, so that this saint became known as ‘the friend of God!’

Abba Anthony famously said when asked about the future: A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, ‘You are mad, you are not like us. ‘

Does the surrounding culture think we Christians are mad because we are different or have we become so like others we pass among the throng unnoticed?

The Communion of Saints is part of the living treasury of the Church’s life, the storehouse of wondrous works of grace from which the Church brings forth models of hope and holiness for us, which are ever ancient and ever new.

Closer to our own time another saint emerged from that great tradition which has streamed across the millennia, developing into various forms of monastic-desert life, as well as various forms of religious orders of teachers, nurses, etc., and the modern new forms of consecrated community life in the Church today.

One of the more ancient, tracing itself back to Mount Carmel and Elijah, at least within pious memory if not hard fact, is the Carmelite order, from whose religious sisters in nineteenth century France came a woman known popularly as the Little Flower, whom Bl. Pope John Paul II made a Doctor of the Church, namely: St. Therese of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face.

On my journey of return to the faith, before I entered the seminary, her autobiography “The Story of a Soul” became a source of hope and courage.

A few words of wisdom from her: How sweet is the way of LOVE...True, one can fall or commit infidelities, but, knowing HOW TO DRAW PROFIT FROM EVERYTHING, love quickly consumes everything that can be displeasing to Jesus; it leaves nothing but a humble and profound peace in the depths of the heart.

This is the most difficult truth about actual conversion for many souls to accept: It is not the length of the journey, but the inward depth of the journey; it is not the quantity of the battles but the willingness to open wide the doors of our being to His transfiguring touch which enables us to become what He infuses within us at baptism, His own Light so we become light in the world.

Too often, infected as we Christians are with the Zeitgeist egocentric selfishness pervading our culture, we deny the reality of configuration to Christ by the Holy Spirit as meaning cross and death precede tomb and resurrection.

That contemporary Zeitgeist flays about in the quicksand error of love as what I experience from another, rather than soaring into the communion of joy which knows and lives love’s truth: love is gift of self to another first in imitation of God who is Love and first loves us, makes Himself First Gift!

St. Therese shows us how to respond to the culture of death, darkness, greed, power: In order to live one single act of perfect Love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your love, O my God!

In the lives of the Saints we see in concrete terms of human life the marvellous deeds of the Holy Spirit, brought to ultimate fruition in a manner which should encourage our wounded souls and hearts with the joyful acceptance in our own beings that nothing is impossible to God.

An even closer contemporary of this generation, whose importance in the deepening of Gospel life in the lives of ordinary Christians cannot be overly stressed, and herself a pioneer of the new forms of consecrated life in the Church, is the Servant of God Catherine Doherty.

Born in Czarist Russia, forged into adulthood as a nurse in the bloodletting of the First World War and the Russian Revolution, she was led by the Spirit into the desert of external poverty and service of the poor. Through those experiences she also was plunged into the purifying fire of internal poverty.

Often referring to herself as a poor woman, she was incredibly rich in her passionate love of Christ and all human beings, especially the anawim, those bent over by the burden of external or internal impoverishment.

From the mystery of Christ in the desert, through the life of Abba Anthony, the self-offering as victim of the Little Flower, to the treasury of practical spiritual wisdom from her own heart, Catherine Doherty poured herself out in service of the poor and filled with illumination from the Holy Spirit in her days spent in contemplation in her hermitage — always called by her according to its Russian name: Poustinia — comes clear wisdom: When God becomes a Child, then the wrong image of ourselves vanishes. Because in a cradle, in a crib, we see Love…..we look…and ask ourselves, “Why do I think that God does not love me? Here He is.”

Let us pick up the Holy Child and follow Abba Anthony into the solitude of our hearts and there pour ourselves out in prayer, with and through the Holy Child, for suffering humanity.

Let us hold the Holy Child deep in our hearts and with St. Therese offer ourselves, with and through the Holy Child as holocaust of love for those who do not know they are beloved.

Let us carry the Holy Child as Catherine Doherty did, bringing Him in person where possible, and always through ardent prayer, to the furthest corners of the earth to the homeless and hopeless, to the hungry and oppressed, bring He, Holy Light, to the places of darkness – yes – let us be so unlike others they shall declare we are mad!

And we will be absolutely, totally mad, nuts, crazy, insane, WITH JOY, and look, the Child is smiling upon us!

THE WONDER OF IT ALL!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 22:38:00 +0000

Today as we celebrate the solemnity of the Immaculate Conception of the Holy Mother of God I am struck by the awesome wonder of it all!

The “all” in this context means the beauty, holiness of this extraordinary woman, to be sure, but also of the exquisite tenderness of Love Himself, this Trinitarian bending towards all of creation, towards every single human being who ever has, who is, who shall ever be gifted with breath of life!

Each of us knows deep within the very core of our being, indeed in every fibre of our being, in soul’s yearning, mind’s seeking, and heart aching the immense impetus to seek to love and be beloved.

That is a most minuet ache, experience, of the infinite of infinite, if I might stretch the statement somewhat, ache, yearning, desire and active will flowing as immense fire of life and love from the Holy Trinity which, because God is love, in a sense compels creation, specifically creation of the human person, hence urges the self-gift of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity to become a man, a human person, in the wonder of the Incarnation, to pour Himself out in the selfless gift of Himself in His Passion, Death, Resurrection, and more to remain with us, nourishing us with love and holiness in the Holy Eucharist and flowing within this river of Trinitarian love-fire-life the Holy Spirit dwells within each of us, constantly setting alive within us the capacity and ability to love and be beloved.

All this Divine design hinges on a simple word from an ordinary yet extraordinary woman, a true woman of the ordinary people, of an ordinary family, a woman betrothed, living in a small village in an occupied country, a woman aware as are countless women on the face of the earth today of life as an oppressed and impoverished people – yes all the splendour of life, of love, of holiness of redemption, of the outpouring of the Holy Trinity hinging on one word, freely spoken, freely willed, freely chosen, love-gift: FIAT!

We accept, as almost so ordinary few reflect on the fact, that the paten and chalice upon which/in which bread and wine are placed to become by the power of the Holy Spirit the Body and Blood of Jesus, the reality of Jesus in the Holy Eucharist communing infinite of love-life-holiness to us, be made of gold, be blessed.

Hence this great solemnity, this creating of she who was to be the Mother of God, the very one who would give to Jesus the body and blood He would pour out for us, given to us as the critical food and drink essential for fullness of life, for our ability to love and be beloved, is as much celebration of the reality of the Immaculate Conception as it is celebration of preparation and purpose, of present and promise: preparation of the living vessel who would contain the One who cannot be contained; purpose of immediate, as it were, unfolding of redemption; in the present moment Mary is with us as icon of discipleship, trusting abandonment to the Holy Will of the Father, of intimate confidence in Jesus and taking up our cross and following Him, of communion of love animated by the Holy Spirit; promise too for in her assumption into heaven is revealed to comfort us the reality of Jesus as resurrection and life offering us too the everlasting embrace of Trinitarian love.

Yep, the wonder of it all!

JESUS: YESTERDAY, TODAY, FOREVER

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 00:26:00 +0000

On this day in 1994 Bl. Pope John Paul released his Apostolic Letter: Tertio Millennio Adveniente [As The Third Millennium Draws Near].

How quickly it seems we have arrived already near the end of the first year of the second decade of the millennium!

Over and over, leading up to the Great Jubilee Year 2000, Bl. John Paul reflected upon the words from Hebrews that Jesus is indeed the same yesterday, today and forever.

I have pondered this mystery in my heart today, recalling that time in my life when, indeed, Christ was making all things within me new through the mystery of the call to priesthood.

This afternoon I took a break from my prayer and spiritual reading to treat myself to the movie Titanic, which I had originally seen when it premiered.

My heart was struck how that disaster was truly a Babel experience for early twentieth century civilization, for it so traumatically demonstrated the limitations of technology because of human arrogance.

Then my heart reflected upon that other technological trauma, the atom bomb, and how it too showed us the dangers inherent in our misuse of what we discover.

These reflections led my heart to the Holy Rosary, the simple prayer of children and adults, of childlike hearts.

The Rosary weaves into our hearts contemplation of the mysteries of our redemption: the life, passion, death, glorification of Christ.

The Rosary invites us to place our hands in the hand of the Mother of the Redeemed.

Once again watching that movie, Titanic, my heart was struck by the powerful scene of the priest, holding desperately with one hand onto a ship’s cable stock, his other hand holding onto a desperate soul, she in turn being clung to by others.

The priest is first shown praying the Hail Mary and then quoting from Revelations.

Scene of a modern flood, a sinking tower of Babel, children crying out to their Heavenly Mother, confident she will speak to Jesus of them, the priest a living bridge between terror and peace, darkness and light, despair and hope, sin and mercy, death and eternal life.

This is the challenge for we priests to, like that priest on the deck of the Titanic — granted, a movie priest on a movie set, nonetheless a valid symbol — like that priest we are called, in spite of our own inner struggles with doubt, battle with fear, to stand firm, one hand holding the Anchor Himself, Jesus, the other, holding the hand of every human being.

It means, as at our ordination when we lay cruciform before the laying on of hands and our consecration by the Holy Spirit, the shape of our priestly lives, our very being, is the Cross.

It is the shape of Christ.

It is, no matter what may be happening on the surface of our beings, to dwell always in sheer joy!

So my heart was moved then to meditate upon the central phrase from Sacred Scripture Bl. Pope John Paul constantly repeated as the prism word through which the illumination of the Holy Spirit shines into souls: Jesus who was, is, always will be with us. [Hb. 13:8]

The great truth of this cry from Hebrews is found in the very mystery which is summit and the very source of our sacramental life: the Most Holy Eucharist.

Christ IS the same in His Real Presence, yesterday, today and forever.

In the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass we rightly proclaim, at Christmas, the today of His Birth, at Easter that this is the night of our redemption, the day of His Holy Resurrection.

Through the mystery of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, of His Real Presence, we can enter the Bethlehem cave as surely and as in reality as the shepherds and behold the Child; take the place of the woman, our sister, at His feet and bathe them with our own tears; the place of the blind man, the prodigal, the Good Thief, our brothers, of the woman at the well, the ointment bearing women at the Tomb; take our place among those in the room on Holy Thursday — as indeed happened at my ordination — in the Upper Room at Pentecost.

All men and women are invited to open wide the doors of their being and encounter Christ in all His mysteries.

This is the wisdom known to the childlike of heart when they pray the Rosary and contemplate the mysteries; enter into those same mysteries, led deeply by the hand of Mary.

This is the illumination granted each soul who participates in the communion of Love during Holy Mass.

This is the reality of life lived sacramentally.

Christ, like a divine leaven, always and ever more fully penetrates the life of humanity, spreading the work of salvation accomplished in the Paschal Mystery. What is more, He embraces within His redemptive power the whole past history of the human race, beginning with the first Adam.

The future also belongs to Him: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever “ (Heb.13:8). For her part the Church “seeks but a solitary goal: to carry forward the work of Christ Himself under the lead of the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. And Christ entered this world to give witness to the truth, to rescue and not to sit in judgement, to serve and not to be served “. [Ter. Mill. Adveniente: para. 56]

Standing on the shore looking out across the ocean, the burial place of thousands of souls over the millennia, walking amid the rubble of Hiroshima, hearing the cries of starving children, seeing the horrible films of death camps, it is understandable we can wonder, as the humble Rabbi who taught me about the theological challenge of the Holocaust did — as the equally humble woman survivor of Hiroshima also taught me — what of God, where God, when such things happen?

At such a moment, in the utter desperate depths of such a question, as the waters reach our necks and we sink in the mire without a foothold, when our throats are raw with crying out, eyes burned dimmed scanning the horizon as we seek our God-(Ps.69)-, the place to the Father is where His Son is, upon the Cross, within the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass — there Christ is in the depths of all human suffering, the desperation of every human shuddered ‘why?’ — His being there in fullness of His ‘ the same, yesterday and today and forever ‘, is also our awaiting at the mouth of the empty Tomb where we listen, for He approaches, calling us by name!

....it is helpful to recall the words of the Pastoral Constitution Guadium et Spes: “The Church believes that Christ, who died and was raised up for all, can through His Spirit offer man the light and the strength to measure up to his supreme destiny. Nor has any other name under heaven been given to man by which it is fitting for him to be saved. She likewise holds that in her most benign Lord and Master can be found the key, the focal point, and the goal of all human history. The Church also maintains that beneath all changes there are so many realities which do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ, who is the same yesterday and today and forever. [op.cit. para 59]

IN THE CAMP OF THE 99%

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 22:17:00 +0000

More than any other reading since it was released on October 24^th by the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, their statement on the global economy, I have been trying to come to grips with just what are they thinking?

Never before has a Vatican statement caused my being to shudder.

I am particularly uneasy about the call for a “world political authority”……”A supranational Authority……”

Immediately I thought of two books written in the last century, one near the beginning and one near the end: MR. BLUE by Myles Connelly and FATHER ELIJAH by Michael O’Brien.

I find it extremely difficult to agree with a document which frankly seems to me to miss the point: real people are suffering and arguing for more power over them by some supranational authority strikes me as bizarre.

Granted the so-self-named 99%, also known as the “Occupy Movement” appears not only bizarre in its own right but equally out of touch with the vast majority of the human family.

I visited the local camp.

I volunteer in a soup kitchen so am well experienced with the various smells of people unable to access clean clothes or showers, with people suffering all forms of mental/addiction pain, indeed often, as just the other day, helping a man who came to the door having just been savagely beaten and robbed of what little he had.

The local camp used to be a nice little park with green lawn, flowers, benches to sit on, an oasis in the desert of concrete towers.

Now the grass is gone replaced by mud and human debris, the smell is awful, the occupiers a mixture of ages, races, backgrounds, but mostly just angry and without a single cogent argument to clarify what they want.

Messages on cardboard span the whole spectrum of anti-just- about- everything and everyone, yet without clear suggested solutions to anything.

In a way it is just sad.

What again made me think of the two books mentioned above is the growing anti-Christian dimension among the 99% - witness the smashing of a statue of Our Blessed Mother by occupiers in Rome, seeking to disrupt Holy Mass and do damage inside the Cathedral in Vancouver.

No sane person can deny the global economy is in a mess or the degree to which greed, coupled with lax oversight of financial institutions and markets, makes not institutions but real people working in them responsible for the current crisis.

As a consequence real people, real families, indeed entire nations of real people, real families are suffering horribly and even those not hungry or out of work or who have lost the family home, suffer pernicious anxiety given how uncertain the future appears.

The Vatican document does, somewhat, reference the long tradition of social encyclicals – but all that remains somewhere in the ether unless bishops take the time to teach their priests in depth from this treasury and unless priests take the time, with in both cases competent faithful laity, with expertise in economic and social matters, to educate the wider Catholic community, indeed the entire Christian community so that, rather than a dangerous ‘supranational authority’ or the impotence of some ‘occupy’ movement, we have the birth of real energized by the Gospel of Life men and women, lay people, ordinary husbands and wives, widows and widowers, youth who will transform the world in the light and mercy, the teaching and life of Christ.

It is the sheer bigness of government and financial institutions, corporations and frankly of dioceses/parishes that is crushing people.

We need to learn from the sparrows: little, free, soaring yet industrious, communal yet never so huge a flock that they block out the light! [cf. Mt. 6:26; 10:29 & Lk.12:24]

BALLOONS & JESUS

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 15:14:00 +0000

One year ago today John and Lucille Everett, [http://blog.catholiclove.com/] and click on 2010 for their posts, experienced the immense pain and confusion of parents who suffer the earthly death of a child as that child is taken up into the eternal embrace, the everlasting communion of love, with the Most Holy Trinity.

John is my adopted son and thus in marriage Lucille is equally the child of my heart and so it was right that John called me just before two in the morning that fateful day and the Angels sure worked hard as the Everett family live in the next city over from this one, yet I made the trip as if somehow transported – of course by that I mean no red lights at intersections, for example.

It was a long and exhausting day especially for John and Lucille and for their other three children.

Their firstborn, a daughter, was just old enough to truly understand her little brother Dominic had just been born into heaven, but likewise she would not get to hold him here on earth.

Their third child, a son, was too young to grasp what had happened.

Their middle child, also a son, busied himself playing in the snow and did not say much, but I could tell he was feeling and sharing the pain of his parents.

I was granted a great grace of awareness of Dominic’s presence that day and every day since and each morning confidently ask his intercession for his family here on earth.

Yesterday, his brother the middle child, taught me a tremendous lesson about faith, about the tenderness of Jesus, about the Communion of Saints and reality of the gift of life, and yes about Jesus and balloons.

I can do no better than simply relate the dialogue without comment:

Grandson: “Papere we sent a yellow balloon up to heaven for Dominic to play with. He is with Jesus.”

Granddad: “Good for you. I know Jesus will play with the balloon too.”

Grandson: “Yeah. He likes Dominic. It is good for Jesus to have company.”

EXCLUSIVE - NOT!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 19:30:00 +0000

Recently I wrote about the jealousy of God who loves us so.

Today I confront something within my own life, more in my emotions than heart, which is not pleasant to face.

I see more deeply now areas within me which undoubtedly trigger Divine Jealousy, most often experienced as Him pulling away until I see what He wishes to have me willingly face and hand over to Him for transformation, conversion, healing.

Two events have prompted this reflection.

The second in an email from a priest, who writes frequently needing affirmation, something I am pleased to give him as best I can, always with assurance of fraternal affection and prayer.

Part of loving one another, as we know, as Christ loves us is to affirm one another, listen to each other, pray.

The first event and the one which has been a source of intense emotional upheaval, resistance to the Holy Spirit trying to inform, teach, touch, heal, and came in the form of a single word in the midst of another note.

One single word: exclusive!

The word was in a note from a friend of a friend about why I would not be included in a trip to the mountains, as in: “sometimes we need exclusive time together.”

First I was totally shocked by the word, then by its implications, and for days now by the emotionally explosive impact.

Many of us, in spite of repeated toe-stubbing experience to the contrary, continually figure we can make it to the kitchen for a middle of the night snack or to the bathroom in the dark.

Those who learned the lessons about the silliness of repeated toe-stubbing either use night lights or put on the main lights.

I will confess this stubborn old man still egotistically figures if he tries just one more time and stays utterly focused he will make it – not!

Like spouses, whose only exclusivity of relationship in the sanctity of marriage is sealed, rooted, lived, grows, in Christ – thus paradoxically because He is their shared bond, friend in that sense there is no exclusivity, priests vowed to chastity likewise have foresworn any ‘exclusive’ relationship other than with Jesus, and thus in and through and for Him have an all-inclusive relationship with every human being, some close such as parishioners, in my case the homeless, as well as family, personal friends and by extension every human being – but the moment any of those relationships be extra-Christ, that is either excluding Him directly or in the person of someone else seeking to be included, we have begun to forget who we are as priests, as baptized disciples of Jesus who calls us to love others as He loves us.

So what a shocker that word: exclusive.

A shocker not primarily because I was being excluded, rather my reaction.

Granted like thousands of priests these days I live in a type of perpetual exclusion, exiled and denied association and fraternity with other priests, for example.

Approaching seventy as more and more confreres, family members, friends die that is another type of ‘exclusion’ which unfolds. This is natural but I suspect, for me at least, not yet fully embraced.

Certainly the intensity of grief the other day when a beloved priest friend-brother died proves the point.

Though I suspected it was happening, and like the proverbial stubborn-nighttime-toe-stubber kept ignoring brut fact, I have been in denial that I have formed particular attachments.

What a pickle!

It is part of the work of the Holy Spirit in calling us to open ever wide the doors of our being to true purity of heart, detachment, to having Jesus as our love-focus, indeed forming us to be intimately the beloved of the Divine Bridegroom, that He, with a surgeons skill, though often it feels like He has skipped giving anesthetic – seeks to excise anything within us that is globs of darkness, not to mention sin.

Sure seems these days His scalpel, which is actually the laser like light of His love, is that word: exclusive.

I assumed, since 99% of the time it is true, whenever I am blessed to spent time with one or the other in particular of the two friends I always had Jesus with us and certainly when it is we three it is actually we four.

Clearly while that may be my prayer, my intent, in my old age, feeling more and more vulnerable and insecure a neediness has taken root, a type of dependency – no wonder I am experiencing the jealously of God!

So I have been praying this all be healed and thus for the grace NOT to resist the Divine Surgeon and my eyes fell on this word from the Servant of God Catherine Doherty, which prompted these reflections:

“What is friendship? It is never exclusive. It is two people, hand in hand, as it were, going to God – but never forming a closed circuit and simply feeding on each other. They always have one hand free to hold anyone who comes into that friendship.”

Ouch!

It is a word from the Tender Holy Spirit, a reminder, an invitation for me to be much more vigilant over my heart and emotions, indeed to imitate and be one with Jesus who is excluded from so many souls, to embrace in all its dimensions the pain of exclusion for love of Him, for souls.

“The word of God is something alive and active; it cuts like any double-edged sword but more finely; it can slip through the place where the soul is divided from the spirit, or joints from the marrow; it can judge the secret emotions and thoughts. No created thing can hide from Him; everything is uncovered and open to the eyes of the One to whom we must give account of ourselves. [Hb.4:12-13]

Uncomfortable!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 12 Sep 2011 18:30:00 +0000

I almost wrote above “uncomfortable reading!” – But that would be disingenuous.

The fact is I have been using: The Return of the Prodigal Son, by Henri Nouwen, for spiritual reading and meditation.

Pray for the people close to me because uncomfortable is really too tame a word.

I have been emotionally more erratic, needing way too much attention and just generally discombobulated of late.

Nouwen has written such a truthful series of reflections they leave you exposed, squirming, by the time you get towards the end of the book confronting inner poverty at its depths.

If grace is called for, if openness to the Holy Spirit takes place then great healing, restoration, takes root.

The journey between the depths of poverty and restoration in Christ is when an added grace is needed, to tread humbly near and with those we love: humbly by simply giving them a head’s up of the intensity of what is unfolding within self and loving them enough when we are in that tough place to decline invitations unless they are prepared to be like the Good Samaritan with the beat up traveller.

In the end, of course because nothing is impossible for God, all will be well.

Pray dear friends for I am a mere beginner on the journey and if you read the book hold tight to Our Blessed Mother while on the journey!

PIUS XII AND 9/11

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 21:59:00 +0000

Sometimes great feasts, such as the Nativity of Our Blessed Mother, which is today as I write, are easy to, as it were, enter into.

Other times it can be difficult what with the vagaries of daily life to stay focused on the wonder placed before us.

Praying before writing this afternoon I was focused on Our Blessed Mother and the stark reality of 9/11, the 10^th remembering of which approaches, and for the first time was able to recall that day, and the day some months later when I was at Ground Zero with a Firefighter friend from New York who asked my company so he could return there and truly grieve – having been there on the day and lost so many brothers – yes thinking of Our Blessed Mother my heart suddenly understood she was/is the mother of everyone on that day, each day, this day – finally now I can remember: without anger or fear.

One who throughout his life had immense trust in her maternal love, intercession and protection was the Venerable Pope Pius XII and in my own way of preparing to remember on Sunday the reality of 9/11 decided to reflect upon his encyclicals.

I have been surprised that in the end I made notes from only two: Summi Pontificatus, his first written in the early days of WWII, October 20^th, 1939 to be exact and what I believe was his last, Meminisse Iuvat, written July 14^th in 1958 a couple of months before he died.

To this day most people recall where we were, what we were doing on that horrific morning and day.

Perhaps, as someone mentioned to me, undoubtedly the time has come to focus more on 9/12 – the wisdom being that eventually the sun did set and the sun did rise again the next morning and we have had ten years of new days since.

The secular philosopher George Santayana is usually credited with the fatalistic statement: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to fulfill it.”

There is however, even within basic Christian common sense, a grain of truth in the statement, to wit: if we forget who we are and whose children we are, that is we are beloved children of God called to love as He loves, then likely we will forget the past, the lessons of the past, and may well make choices which, in the end, appear an inevitable fulfillment, or rather re-enacting of the past.

Usually not the better aspects of the past either.

Between his birth in 1876 and his death in 1958 Pope Pius witnessed civil disturbances throughout his homeland, wars among the European and other powers, and the unrelenting tensions of the Cold War.

As regards the two bloodiest of global conflicts, the First and Second World Wars, his priestly duties, culminating in pontifical responsibilities, had him thrust into the darkness and anguish, the immense human suffering of both.

During the same period of history he witnessed the rapid advances from cavalry charges to aerial bombardment of cities culminating in the devastation of atom bombs; likewise rapid changes in social structure, the sciences, politics, etc., etc., and the crushing anti-person power of states over whole populations from Fascism, Communism, Nazism and a post war world which gradually became enslaved to unbridled materialism, nihilism and countless other philosophies, movements, ideas which diminish the sacred dignity and freedom of the human person.

In the shadow of 9/11, ten years on, some of the Pope’s words, cries from the heart really, pleading prayers, bear re-discovering in light of the prayer request posed to me by my Firefighter friend at Ground Zero: “Pray Father we, the whole world, will be converted!”

From Pope Pius:

What age has been, for all its technical and purely civic progress, more tormented than ours by spiritual emptiness and deep-felt interior poverty?

What heart is not inflamed is not swept forward to help at the sight of so many brothers and sisters who, misled by error, passion, temptation and prejudice, have strayed away from faith in the true God and have lost contact with the joyful and life-giving message of Christ?

At the head of the road which leads to the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of the present day stand the nefarious efforts of not a few to dethrone Christ; the abandonment of the law of truth which He proclaimed and of the law of love which is the life breath of His Kingdom.

…..one must not forget the essential insufficiency and weakness of every principle of social life which rests upon a purely human foundation, is inspired by merely earthly motives and relies for its force on the sanction of a purely external authority. [ Summi Pontificatus]

………….a just peace does not yet prevail, nor do men live in concord founded on brotherly understanding. For the seeds of war either lurk in hiding or - from time to time - erupt threateningly and hold the hearts of men in frightened suspense, especially since human ingenuity has devised weapons so powerful that they can ravage and sink into general destruction, not only the vanquished, but the victors with them, and all mankind.
If we weigh carefully the causes of today's crises and those that are ahead, we shall soon find that human plans, human resources, and human endeavors are futile and will fail when Almighty God - He who enlightens, commands, and forbids; He who is the source and guarantor of justice, the fountainhead of truth, the basis of all laws - is esteemed but little, denied His proper place, or even completely disregarded. If a house is not built on a solid and sure foundation, it tumbles down; if a mind is not enlightened by the divine light, it strays more or less from the whole truth; if citizens, peoples, and nations are not animated by brotherly love, strife is born, waxes strong, and reaches full growth. [Meminisse Iuvat]

THE JEALOUSY OF GOD: AND SOME NOT HIS!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 23:53:00 +0000

There are times when I write and then, a neat advantage of using the computer, I hit delete either because the essay has been a mere rant with no charitable purpose, something utterly self-serving or so pedantic as it would either bore those who read it or have them hit delete for the entire blog!

There are times when I write, and this is rather humbling, I sense what has been written is minus my fingerprints: that is I have managed somehow to write words for the Word Himself.

Finally there are times, like right now, when the writing is a self-imposed cathartic exercise to try and get past emotional wounds, confusions, and resistance to the healing touch of Christ, to hear over the cacophony of my emotions or faith-doubts, the clear voice of the Holy Spirit asking trust, surrender, yes, conversion – that change of heart which seems never ending if we wish to be totally Christ’s.

I am at an age in life when: even if being banished by my bishop had not radically cut off from me most of those in my life I care for, removed me thousands of miles from the ‘where’ of life I felt at home, now death takes away even more treasured friends and family members and the circle gets smaller.

Likewise at the same time the growth of John and Lucille in their married union and the expanse of their family of growing children means the circle is even smaller – sure there are moments like babysitting or the very rare gathering where I am present but, mostly I believe they are unawares it happens, both family and friends present tend to relate among themselves and the old man is left watching the children.

Eventually you stop asking, though not expecting, for attention, for things important to you like a trip to the mountains or to a hockey game, because no longer able or comfortable doing such on your own, asking and it not happening, the pain of disappointment becomes too much – forgotten birthdays etc., you refrain from comment aware others are some busy and forget you not out of a failure to love, you tell yourself, it is just the way society is these days.

Of course none of those interior conversations ease a wit of the pain and, dangerously if not checked and handed over to Jesus through Mary, such painful interior conversations can slop over into doubts about whether God loves us or not.

Then comes the real shocker when some event you are excluded from smacks you so hard an emotion surfaces you don’t want to admit is even there until its raging tenacity seeking to be faced wears you down so much you unwittingly begin to cooperate with the feelings and thoughts which nourish them: insecurity, fear, resentment, anger – and once aware of them you are ready to be devoured by self-disgust.

The name of the shocker: jealousy.

There is a part of the brain called the amygdala which is like a storehouse the manger of which seems not to care a whit about housing in the same room, as it were, cats and dogs, lions and sheep, which are stand-ins for diametrically opposed emotions, some ferocious enemies of one another, all in the same place.

No wonder some days we humans feel like our interior lives are a perpetual war zone and that even before going to the deeper level wherein spiritually we seem to struggle simultaneously with God and the devil!

Of course the devil is capable of one thing only: hate.

Whatever else he may seem to express or talk about or suggest or do it all comes down to the single spawn of his cold, dark reality of pride: hate, hatred especially of the children of God: beloved children of the Father, beloved spouses of the Son, beloved temples of the Holy Spirit.

God who is love, pure love, says of Himself He has jealousy – hence the conundrum!

Divine jealousy, like divine anger, neither is an emotion, nor is divine love.

Each is an aspect of GOD IS LOVE, an expression of the infinite of infinite divine love-fire: for us!

If we wish to have our disordered emotions healed, embrace full and joyful surrender to whatever the Father wills or permits in our lives, whatever Jesus asks of us, wherever He asks us to be with Him, indeed to surrender to by whatever means the Holy Spirit heals, purifies, converts, sanctifies, then, I believe, we need to understand divine jealousy if we hope to grasp even an iota of the divine-love-fire-gift of our very being.

It is NOT as Descartes claims that I think and thus I am!

It IS that I AM beloved, thus capable of thought – all thought, the neat, nice, loving ones and those less so!

In Exodus, with the sound of His “I AM” still singing throughout creation and in human hearts God who is love states bluntly in His own words directly or through the mouths of others: I, the Lord, your God, am a jealous God…the Lord is ‘the Jealous One’….the Lord, your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God….your God….who is in your midst, is a jealous God. [cf. Ex. 20:5; 34:14; Deut. 4:24; 6:15].

In essence these words are the aching heart of love Himself who has created us as His beloved and He is virtually pleading with us to understand He loves us, to love Him, to love ourselves enough that all our human need for ‘other’ and any response from ‘other’, love returned for love, must be what they are intended for: means of embracing ever more His love for us – never a replacement.

But we do make those ‘others’ replacements for Him because they seem so real, tangible, closely present and so when they fail we think it is ‘our’ need not being met.

Sure there is some truth to that but the deeper, fuller reality is the pure-burning-white-light-truth we are ‘feeling/experiencing’, beneath the emotional chaos, IS the consuming fire of His jealous love for us.

Now I won’t quote them here, as in this moment it would cut to the emotional bone way too deeply, but now all those teachings of Jesus about how we have to leave dad and mom and son and daughter and place and can’t serve two masters and o yeah by the way when we fail to pay attention to each other, that one about declining the wedding invitation because we have places to go and fish to fry and other people to see…..that is a turning away from the Divine Bridegroom present in ‘other’ who is in front of us and……………….

It is all about love: His love, our love, my love, your love.

Now when Jesus tells us to love ‘other’ as we love ourselves the presumption is indeed that we truly love ourselves – that is we move and live and have our being rooted in the Trinity, rooted in God-love, knowing hey: it is not how I was accepted or rejected or whatever as a child that testifies to my Lovableness/not as a person; it is not how I am remembered for that family outing or whatever that testifies, etc., etc., - fill in your own pain, disappointment, rejection – it is my VERY living, breathing, heart beating, yes emotional turmoil, which testifies I am beloved of Love Himself, for He is incapable of creating a single person He would not love.

The difficult challenge, the never ending struggle then is both to embrace the purifying fire of Divine-Love-Jealously and that it burns most intensely when we are ‘jealous’, that is experience the pain of the failure of ‘other’ to affirm our existence.

Of course no husband, wife, son, daughter, parent, friend can ever affirm that in full – but it sure helps if they slake our thirst from time to time with a wee dram of their loving presence!

Finally, He Himself who is the living-water, the wellspring of life, of love, yearning to slake our thirst to the full, gives us the ultimate word about the infinite of infinite intensity of how God loves us as Jesus says to us with every one of our heartbeats: As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love {Jn.15:9}.

Why the silent scream?

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 01:14:00 +0000

Before dawn this morning I was checking the latest emails, of which two informed me of brother priests: one died peacefully in his 83^rd year, after 55 years of priesthood and the other died by his own hand.

Out of respect for the priest who committed suicide I include here no other details suffice to say his is the second suicide of a brother priest reported to me this week.

I knew the first priest personally, though we had not seen each other in more than 20 years as the country in which he was born, lived, served is far away and his health prevented travel and my own circumstances likewise.

Heart to heart, geography is irrelevant since at the altar, in prayer, we were/are always together in the Holy Hearts of Jesus and Mary.

The second priest, until today, was unknown to me by name, but every priest shares in unity at the altar and in the Holy Hearts.

Normally my reaction when I hear of a priest taking his own life is one of intense pain, and prayer for mercy to be lavished upon him – yet this morning I was suddenly gripped with utter fury and found myself asking God where all the real bishops are? Where have they gone? Why do the bishops we have seem lacking compassion, courage, enough manly fatherhood to hear the silent scream of their despairing priest sons?

It is now mid-afternoon and the fury has abated, mostly, and I have prayed with affection for our bishops but cannot shake this sense something has gone terribly wrong that bishops in particular, but frankly all priests and yes anyone who knows a despairing priest, well somehow we are missing the clues, or don’t love enough or………..

There was a time when, it is said of St. John Chrysostom, that alone of all the bishops he refused to kowtow to the Emperor and spoke rather bluntly to the imperial personage who apparently told the saintly bishop: “No bishop has ever spoken like this to me!”

To which St. John replied: “Then clearly you have never met a real bishop!”

Courage!

The bishop who ordained me saw himself as father-servant of his priests.

For example when we would be on retreat the bishop insisted on being sacristan, laying out vestments, preparing the altar. As well in the evening he would walk around praying his rosary and, stopping by each priests’ room, gently asking about how we were – not how our parish was but how we personally were.

One final example: even though he had to act as required when I was falsely accused he stanchly defended my innocence and when I was convicted of something I did not do paid for an appeal and once I was acquitted restored me to active ministry.

He has since died but I sense always his fatherly presence.

Compassion!

Eventually I settled down even more before I began to write this and was praying for all despairing priests when suddenly I remembered the first time I saw a copy of “The Scream” and how transfixed I was and yet how it seemed incomprehensible to me any human being could be in such apparent despair.

Each time a priest commits suicide I admit I tremble while praying for his immortal soul, always with intimate confidence in Divine Mercy, yet aware every one of us might also fall into despair.

I am blessed to have a loving and supportive family, loving and supportive confreres, each of whom keeps a close eye and checks, especially when I am stressed, offering all needed support – and – they never believe me if I claim to be okay when I am not.

To quote from the diary of Edvard Munch who painted “The Scream”: “I was walking along a path with two friends – the sun was setting – suddenly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feeling exhausted, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trembling with anxiety – and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature. “

All of us: bishops, priests, laity need urgently to beg Christ to have His heart with which to see, His ears with which to hear the silent scream of despairing priests.

Indeed we should be trembling, not so much with anxiety but with the intensity of our courageous, compassionate, active attentiveness and concern.

We need hearts and smarts, that is the wisdom to gently, yet if needed also firmly, to check that our priests are taking proper physical, emotional, spiritual care of themselves and if not then we need to intervene, to help them – for the silence around priestly suicide is itself the cry of our Mother the Church for her children who are no more.

THE FATHER'S LOVE LETTER

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 02:21:00 +0000

My Child,

You may not know me,
but I know everything about you.
Psalm 139:1

I know when you sit down and when you rise up.
Psalm 139:2

I am familiar with all your ways.
Psalm 139:3

Even the very hairs on your head are numbered.
Matthew 10:29-31

For you were made in my image.
Genesis 1:27

In me you live and move and have your being.
Acts 17:28

For you are my offspring.
Acts 17:28

I knew you even before you were conceived.
Jeremiah 1:4-5

I chose you when I planned creation.
Ephesians 1:11-12

You were not a mistake,
for all your days are written in my book.
Psalm 139:15-16

I determined the exact time of your birth
and where you would live.
Acts 17:26

You are fearfully and wonderfully made.
Psalm 139:14

I knit you together in your mother's womb.
Psalm 139:13

And brought you forth on the day you were born.
Psalm 71:6

I have been misrepresented
by those who don't know me.
John 8:41-44

I am not distant and angry,
but am the complete expression of love.
1 John 4:16

And it is my desire to lavish my love on you.
1 John 3:1

Simply because you are my child
and I am your Father.
1 John 3:1

I offer you more than your earthly father ever could.
Matthew 7:11

For I am the perfect father.
Matthew 5:48

Every good gift that you receive comes from my hand.
James 1:17

For I am your provider and I meet all your needs.
Matthew 6:31-33

My plan for your future has always been filled with hope.
Jeremiah 29:11

Because I love you with an everlasting love.
Jeremiah 31:3

My thoughts toward you are countless
as the sand on the seashore.
Psalms 139:17-18

And I rejoice over you with singing.
Zephaniah 3:17

I will never stop doing good to you.
Jeremiah 32:40

For you are my treasured possession.
Exodus 19:5

I desire to establish you
with all my heart and all my soul.
Jeremiah 32:41

And I want to show you great and marvelous things.
Jeremiah 33:3

If you seek me with all your heart,
you will find me.
Deuteronomy 4:29

Delight in me and I will give you
the desires of your heart.
Psalm 37:4

For it is I who gave you those desires.
Philippians 2:13

I am able to do more for you
than you could possibly imagine.
Ephesians 3:20

For I am your greatest encourager.
2 Thessalonians 2:16-17

I am also the Father who comforts you
in all your troubles.
2 Corinthians 1:3-4

When you are brokenhearted,
I am close to you.
Psalm 34:18

As a shepherd carries a lamb,
I have carried you close to my heart.
Isaiah 40:11

One day I will wipe away
every tear from your eyes.
Revelation 21:3-4

And I'll take away all the pain
you have suffered on this earth.
Revelation 21:3-4

I am your Father, and I love you
even as I love my son, Jesus.
John 17:23

For in Jesus, my love for you is revealed.
John 17:26

He is the exact representation of my being.
Hebrews 1:3

He came to demonstrate that I am for you,
not against you.
Romans 8:31

And to tell you that I am not counting your sins.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19

Jesus died so that you and I could be reconciled.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19

His death was the ultimate expression
of my love for you.
1 John 4:10

I gave up everything I loved
that I might gain your love.
Romans 8:31-32

If you receive the gift of my son Jesus,
you receive me.
1 John 2:23

And nothing will ever separate you
from my love again.
Romans 8:38-39

Come home and I'll throw the biggest party
heaven has ever seen.
Luke 15:7

I have always been Father,
and will always be Father.
Ephesians 3:14-15

My question is…
Will you be my child?
John 1:12-13

I am waiting for you.
Luke 15:11-32

Love, Your Father,
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THE GAZE

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 21:53:00 +0000

Recently I was sent a prayer card and then the digital image taken and enhanced from the image on the Shroud of Turin.

Contemplating this gaze, in prayer, reading, meditation I kept asking Jesus to teach me anew.

Various notes from my reading, yes the famous scraps of paper I have mentioned or quoted in previous posts, have been places where I have found fragments of the answer.

For example Metropolitan Philaretes of Moscow, teaches us that: “The Father is crucifying love, the Son is crucified love, the Holy Spirit is the invincible love of the Cross.”

Immediately I recalled Jesus’ own words that whoever sees Him sees the Father!

In a word then if I contemplate any image, an icon, painting, statue of Jesus, before such tenderness and beauty, be it of Jesus on the Cross or Risen, of Sacred Heart or Divine mercy, most especially if I contemplate Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament – then before me too are the Father and the Holy Spirit.

The gaze upon us then is Trinitarian.

Bl. Pope John Paul notes that: “In contemplating Christ’s face….on the Cross.”, we are before sacred mystery, moved to adoration, love, gratitude, but we do not stop there for Jesus is Risen and “It is the Risen Christ to whom the Church now looks.”

Archbishop Martinez of holy memory notes that the gaze of Jesus is priestly and is the look of one who loves and “..is immolated for the glory of the Father, one who implores graces for souls.”

There is within me, perhaps within you, a natural yearning to ‘see’ Jesus face to face – and no not in some vision, that’s like looking at a hologram – ethereal. You can’t hug a hologram nor be held by one.

Nah I’d like to see Jesus in the flesh, see in the beauty of His eyes, which are the colour of glory, a reflection of the tender gaze towards me of the Father and the Holy Spirit, experience in the depths of my being the closeness of Jesus’s gaze.

He answers that desire 24/7, as the saying goes, for since Jesus says whatever we do to one another is done to Him, for Him, Jesus is of many disguises, thus we encounter Him in each other, are caught up into His tender and love gaze through the eyes of those we meet.

To know the real beauty of His Face, of the Face of the Triune God, I must ask to have the eyes of Jesus, to see every human being as He sees.

Yes, to contemplate any image of Jesus is to open my heart to everyone, to see as Jesus sees, to love and rejoice as He does in the presence of beauty, the beauty of each human being in the image and likeness of God.

SEAL OF CONFESSION

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 24 Jul 2011 01:15:00 +0000

The Government of Ireland wants to force priests to violate the seal of confession.

Others have tried, others will try.

My purpose here is not to argue the matter – as a wise man once said: “For those who refuse to believe no arguments suffice.”

Across the centuries governments and kings, state security apparatus under the Soviets, the Gestapo under the Nazis, by torture or imprisonment have all tried to force priests to violate the seal.

In the 14^th century St. John Nepomucene was martyred because he would not violate the seal.

In the 20^th century St. Mateo Magallanes was martyred because he would not violate the seal.

Every priest must be willing to face martyrdom by blood or by imprisonment by modern courts rather than violate the seal.

One of the things Jesus did which so infuriated His enemies was to forgive sins.

In face of this latest assault on the Priesthood let us simply turn to Jesus through the intercessions of those priests known and unknown who have, like Sts. John and Mateo, by blood or other suffering, like St. John Vianney, laid down their lives that the Sacrament of Forgiveness remains intact and inviolate.

TARES, HEAT, FAMINE AND LOVE

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 23:02:00 +0000

According to one of the free on line dictionaries, that’s a picture of “tares”, a word sometimes used in translations of Matthew 13: 1-23, the follow-up teaching of Jesus after the parable of the Sower and the Seed.

Jesus is teaching us on the mystery of the Kingdom of Heaven and the daily struggle to be faithful disciples, so Jesus notes that once the good seed has been planted “while people slept”, an enemy comes and sows what is bad seed: tares, darnel, weeds.

Of course the natural instinct is to pull the weeds, the summer obsession of people for example who see dandelions as enemy of the perfect lawn!

Jesus however urges patience, letting good and bad seed grow together, knowing the former is more filled with life than the latter, and hence at harvest time the few weeds will be removed, bundled and burned, while the wheat, the glorious fullness of the good will be gathered into heaven.

A friend, commenting on the previous blog, asked me to write about preventing the spreading of bad seed.

Reality is, as any farmer or home gardener can attest, between wind and birds and even just stuff clinging to our clothing, unwanted plants, weeds, whatever, stopping them ending up amongst the pristine expanse of lawn so well cared for or in the midst of huge fields of wheat, is for all intents and purposes impossible.

When it comes to the field of our souls, those of people around us, satan is certainly the enemy who seeks to overwhelm the good seed with the evil seed he sows – but we are not like unmoveable earthen fields or backyard gardens or lawns.

We can ask for grace to be kind, gentle, meek, and charitable, and if we should, by word or action, cast unholy seed into the heart of another we have access to grace yet again, to beg forgiveness, to ask pardon, to struggle and begin anew.

Life in this ancient painting appears somewhat like an idyll, peaceful companionship while at work, gathering the bountiful harvest so family is fed.

These women also reveal life is hard work, struggle – never more so these days than for those mothers seeking to ease the discomfort of children as the persistent heatwave covers most of North America, even greater is the suffering of mothers in East Africa where there is no harvest to gather and where the enemy has sown famine.

In Canada and the United States we celebrate Thanksgiving each fall by gathering with family and, if we be honest, frequently gorging ourselves for most of us have plenty, but even in our midst there is hunger: for food, for hope, for love.

Rather than overly focus on how from time to time we may lack charity or be a downer for others, in a word on the paucity of weeds in the enclosed garden of our beings, where Jesus sits with us in constant dialogue of love, it seems to me we should trust the harvest will be a good one and focus on loving Him in each other.

Certainly we need to labour in the field of the spiritual life, certainly we need to struggle to overcome any lack of goodness within our lives, but with intimate confidence in Him, in His love, for His tender mercy is greater than our sins, our wounds, our fears.

Love Himself has created us to be His beloved, and we are.

Love Himself has placed within us the good seed of His love, His grace, indeed permeates our very being with Himself in every Holy Communion and a significant aspect of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass is the reality of thanksgiving.

Bl. Pope John Paul reminds us that:

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This, as has already been said, is why Christ the Redeemer "fully reveals man to himself". … In the mystery of the Redemption man becomes newly "expressed" and, in a way, is newly created. He is newly created! "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus". The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly-and not just in accordance with immediate, partial, often superficial, and even illusory standards and measures of his being -he must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into him with all his own self, he must "appropriate" and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process takes place within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he "gained so great a Redeemer", and if God "gave his only Son "in order that man "should not perish but have eternal life"{Redeemer of Man, Para. 10.1}

Of Sowing: Matthew 13: 1-23

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 21:48:00 +0000

All week long, since Sunday, I have been meditating on one of my favourite passages from the Holy Gospel, the parable Jesus teaches of the sower and the seeds.

It is one for which I have a visceral, as well as spiritual, appreciation.

Once when I was a teenager there were several acres in the midst of a massive wheat field needing to be seeded, but those acres were too wet for the heavy machinery and so the old farm manager told me to go and seed the field by hand.

In those days, not that long after the war, there were still men around who knew the proper way, a type almost of ballet arm and hand movement, a single forward and backward gesture, which flung the seed in an arc up into the air, where the hundreds of seeds seemed to hang for a moment to be caressed by the sun, before plummeting to earth, just deep enough in the soil to be safely hidden, most of them, to rest and then take root.

Sure some seed landed in little pockets of muddy water or on rock, some stayed on the surface, feeding the crows and sparrows, but most landed and took root in the good soil.

All the while I walked up and down that field the Gospel parable of the sower and his seed was singing in my heart.

Over the remaining weeks of spring and throughout the summer, whenever I could, which usually was Sunday afternoon, my only ‘day’ off, I’d visit the field.

At first when I would walk the field the little green shoots only came up to my ankles but then, so quickly it seemed over the summer, each time I would walk the field the bright green stalks would be higher until late summer when, the full heads of grain now waist high, were golden ripe.

The old man came to me one day and told me it was time to combine the grain, the harvest was on!

Over the winter he would assign me to the small mill to grind the grain into flour.

Some thirty years later when I was a seminarian one of my duties was to bake simple flour and water bread to be used in Holy Mass and then one day I was a priest and to this day, each time I pray: “…….we have this bread to offer which earth has given and human hands have made…….”, well those words sure have meaning.

Jesus Himself is the true Sower and His words, His grace are the real Seeds.

Jesus, especially in the Holy Eucharist, in a sense, seeds Himself within us and makes of us in our turn seeds that grow and bear much fruit.

Baptism and the work of the Holy Spirit are the ways in which we are both grafted onto Christ and are formed by the Holy Spirit to be one with Jesus in His mission.

Knowingly, or not, we are all sowing various seeds all the time – and depending on the type of seed we sow there comes forth either good, indeed beautiful and holy fruit or terrible brambles that ensnare our brothers and sisters in darkness.

When a man and woman pour themselves out for each other in Holy Marriage they are seeding love which, God willing, bears fruit in the beauty of a child, another human being/immortal soul and throughout their lives as spouses and parents they sow the seeds of love over and over, the seeds of faith, of learning.

Whenever we human beings converse with one another it is another moment of sowing – but what seeds are we casting forth?

Affirmation of other: love of Jesus, good news – or gossip, putdowns, negativity?

Indeed when we are alone with our memories and thoughts there is a type of sowing unfolding and so what seeds am I scattering across the fields of my mind, imagination, memory?

News media choke us with their obsessive seeding of negative news stories, their frequent assaults on church, priesthood, marriage, life and so many people in their daily conversation emulate the media and sow negativity as well, a negativity which points to the way people think when alone!

“Listen! A sower went out to sow.”

GOD, CANADA AND THE UNITED STATES

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 03 Jul 2011 23:59:00 +0000

Every year since Canada Day, which is July 1 and Independence Day, July 4 are both at the beginning of the month dedicated to His Most Precious Blood, it is my custom to spend several days in prayer for both our nations: Precious Blood of Jesus sanctify us!

We two nations share much in common, most important of which is our shared Christian heritage – fundamentally this remains fact even if through the turbulence of history, the reality of authentic recognition of the freedom to worship granted all religions, this Christian fabric of our lives may be a bit stretched, not to mention because of the enormous pressure of the dark culture of death in some ways that very fabric is rather tattered.

Nations such as ours have developed, as it were, non-religious forms of communal “liturgy”, hence events such as the opening of parliament or the inauguration of a president seek to embody a sense of nationhood and a reminder of the very freedoms for which so many of our sons and daughters have fought for, do fight for, lay down their lives for.

However men and women do not, at least not when they leave the security of our nations, head off to the battlefield simply to defend a system of government, or a body politic.

They go forth for family, for the whole fabric of national life, which includes a priori freedom not only to worship, that is celebrate authentic liturgy, but also for the right and freedom to unswervingly witness to Jesus and His Gospel of Life.

Bl. John Paul stresses we Christians are to be like Jesus and His Holy Cross, a sign of contradiction, that is to be seen to be other than the culture of death, materialism, etc., by being witness to the Light through the luminous holiness of our lives.

We see countless of our brothers and sisters of another faith placing their lives on the line in what the media refers to as the “Arab Spring”, and Nato is helping, at least in Libya.

Our sons and daughters, from both our countries, from the militaries, diplomatic corps, NGOs, in countless countries around the world in innumerable ways are seeking to help the oppressed achieve true freedom, the poor to be cared for.

In motion a revolution is a turning; in society it is an upheaval that seeks to overturn an oppressive system to one of freedom.

Christians, by virtue of baptism, must, as Bonheoffer reminds us, be revolutionaries, that is taking always “..a stronger stand in favour of the weak…”!

If as our nations celebrate we wish to truly honour our ancestors, truly show gratitude to the men and women of our Armed Forces who lay down their lives for us, we should remember our Christian origins, to be sure, but even more urgently we should reclaim and begin to live with ardent fidelity our faith.

Who are the truly weak among us? – the unborn children, the impoverished homeless, the wounded and traumatized warriors, the lonely and abandoned elderly, the…….

The template of Christian revolutionary transformation of the culture of death into the Gospel of Life is the word of Jesus to love one another as He loves us.

Yes Happy Canada Day and Happy Independence Day – the challenge is to strive going forward to the point where they become Holy Days.

CORPUS CHRISTI AND THE OLD WOMAN AND CHILD

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 22:39:00 +0000

It is Corpus Christi, the Solemnity of the Body and Blood of Christ – the sacrament of love, the sacrament which enables us to love one another, to be transformed by the Holy Spirit into Christ-bearers.

Do I love someone purely to love them, or because I am a human being, do I love because I too need love?

Frankly I leave such questions in the heart and hands of Our Blessed Mother, confident she does as mothers do: that if my face is dirty, if my hands hold tight something I am reluctant to share, if my motives are mixed, well mothers are rather good at cleaning dirty faces, unclenching little hands and hearts, teaching sharing, thereby purifying our intent.

In a famous Easter Homily St. John Chrysostom notes how some have spent Lent truly preparing for Easter and Holy Communion, some not so much, how some are purified and holy, some not so much, but he calls everyone forth because Christ IS Risen!

When Mel Gibson’s movie on the Passion came out John Everett ignored my reluctance to go with him to see it as I had already seen it and once was enough, but I went because it was important to him and it was during the second viewing that a scene penetrated my heart: when Jesus meets His mother, battered and bloodied as He is, weighed down with His cross, steps from His execution, He looks at Mary with absolute peaceful, tender love and says to her: “See I am making all things new.”

It was after seeing that film my heart opened to Lucille’s urging, seconded by John, that I move to this city, near to them as family, to live this hermitical life.

St. Paul reminds us that because we participate in, share, the one bread and one cup, we thus are all one body.

Therefore, not just one as in members of the Mystical Body of Christ, but because it is Jesus Incarnate and Risen who, in Holy Communion is not food like ‘regular’ food that my body transforms into myself, rather Jesus as Bread of Life is the REAL food which transforms me into oneness with Him and therefore, like Jesus, I become more truly one with every human being.

Hence, as St. Thomas Aquinas reminds us about the purposeful reality of Holy Mass as the constancy of His love being given to us by Jesus it is at the same time “…to impress the vastness of this love more firmly upon…” our hearts.

Love is God and God gives and we become beloved and the Holy Eucharist is Love Himself gifting Himself to us and this divine love within us urges us to love one another.

In Holy Communion, in the monstrance during Adoration, Jesus is real, His presence is real.

This is His real sacramental presence.

However our Divine Lover likes disguises and makes Himself present to us, if we have heart eyes to see, in others, that is in other human beings, our brothers and sisters, in an old woman and the child.

Yes I met them again, the Grandmother and her little Granddaughter.

Today!

After Holy Mass and Holy Communion when I was out in the neighbourhood for some fresh air.

This time they were not in the alley, the little one not in bunny pj’s!

This time both had colour in their cheeks, both were radiant, Grandma had on clean and bright clothes, as did the little one who was carrying a small, bright yellow balloon.

We had a nice chat, the Grandmother and I, the little one just smiled.

Corpus Christi!

What a great mystery, what a great gift.

OLD WOMAN AND CHILD

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 22:19:00 +0000

OLD WOMAN AND CHILD

There is something so tender, peaceful, loving in the image of St. Anne and her daughter Mary.

Mother of Mary, the Mother of God, St. Anne is also the Grandmother of Jesus!

Grandmothers are supposed to be persons, indeed a place, of tenderness and peace.

In their old age, cared for and given the particular freedom of the elderly to simply be and love.

It is a reality throughout the world where children in their thousands are orphaned by AIDS, war, terrorism, oppression or the demands of survival which take both parents from home to field or factory, office or increasingly in this dangerous world into the military, more and more Grandmothers are in loco parentis.

Presidents and Prime Ministers, pundits and professional theorists of matters economic and social, wax on and on whenever oil spikes or gas prices force people to make choices, when unemployment increases, when food becomes expensive, invariably those with power and those who comment speak in dispassionate tones meant to convey sincere panic laced with hopeful clucks about how things will turn around.

Rarely do they speak in the voice or with the voice of, nor even for, the Grandmothers of the earth.

When John and Lucille Everett’s [ see: http://blog.catholiclove.com/ ] daughter was three she began a game where either she would go grocery shopping and any adult present would be the storekeeper or she’d reverse roles.

Either way the game was always announced as: “Let’s go shopping.”

In a home full of love and food, of course, money to the child was no big deal and in her imagination, housed in a little being well cared for, for whom hunger and cold were/are unknown, you could always ‘buy’ all the food you wanted.

So hearing through the open window a child’s voice saying: “I like shopping.” is normal enough.

Looking out the window and seeing a little girl in red bunny pj’s carrying a little blue shopping bag, holding the hand of an elderly woman, her Grandmother, seeing the child filled with joy as she and Grandma stopped at each of the dumpsters in the alley, and when there were no bottles or milk jugs to be had say plaintively to her Grandmother: “Well, no shopping here!”, is to observe not a child at play but the face of Jesus in the Old Woman and Child, Jesus hungry, Jesus worn out and tired yet loving and serving, Jesus in red pj’s.

That the wise Grandmother has made dumpster diving into a shopping spree shows the wisdom of love.

That in our overfed nation, spending billions on ways to get rid of our bloated tonnage, rather than being a game of pretend in the heart of a warm, safe from hunger home, a child should have to go shopping with Grandma by dumpster diving……………….

VATICAN GUIDELINES

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Tue, 17 May 2011 22:22:00 +0000

Yesterday the Vatican issued a statement of guidelines for dealing with cases of abuse against minors.

It is a terrible fact that in the past real victims of abuse where mostly ignored, priests moved around.

It is a horrific fact that this added to the immense pain of victims and perpetuated abuse.

It is a stark reality that the damage done will likely never be healed, or at least not for generations.

Now in these days there are mechanisms in place which, if we be truthful, while they may reduce such crime, will not eliminate it completely.

To think otherwise is naive; to claim otherwise is a lie.

What can be stated truthfully is that now, at least, victims are listened to, their accusations investigated, justice and due compensation of all forms is rendered to them.

This is a good.

What is not so good is that those with power in the Church from the Pope down to the local Bishop have swung the pendulum so far to the opposite side from failing victims to an obsession with tossing priests under the bus.

Since 1066, at least in most English speaking countries, there has been a constant struggle for justice, for civil rights, for due process.

What is happening within the Church, well not within the Mystical Body of Christ to be sure, but certainly within the Vatican is the persistent erosion of any adherence to fundamental human rights, to due process.

Rather than cases being dealt with by the normal tribunal process, it is the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith which handles all cases where there is an accusation of the crime and sin of abuse by a priest, religious or any lay person over whom the ‘church’ can exercise power.

A few points: 1] there is no appeal of a decision by the Roman Pontiff; 2] the appeal ‘judges’ in the CDF are the very same persons who hand down the initial judgement [unlike in most legal systems where appeal is made to a higher court composed of different judges]; 3] the CDF has its equivalent of a prosecutor but no one to defend priests; 4] cases are handled in written form – it is as if an American charged with a crime in Buffalo had his case handled by a court in Paris, in abstentia; 5] finally while bishops can draw whatever funds they want from the diocesan treasury to mount a case against a priest, canon lawyers in Rome charge thousands of dollars to defend a priest, a fee beyond the meagre resources of most priests.

While I will not deal with the Vatican Guidelines in total, there are few points I will raise which should give every priest, indeed anyone who believes in the rule of law, in unbiased justice, indeed in the Gospel of compassion, reconciliation, conversion, serious pause.

[The direct quotes are in capitals and the full document is available online.]

IF THE ACCUSATION IS CONSIDERED CREDIBLE……

Nowhere are there clarifications of what the terms are for an accusation to be considered credible.

This is a serious flaw and throws the doors wide open to immense damage being done to priests because it is an invitation to anyone to accuse and for any bishop to toss the case to Rome, even when church law does not compel him to do so.

Further down there is the assertion that: THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION, AS WELL AS THE ENTIRE PROCESS, OUGHT TO BE CARRIED OUT WITH DUE RESPECT FOR THE PRIVACY OF THE PERSONS INVOLVED AND DUE ATTENTION TO THEIR REPUTATIONS.

Whom are they kidding?

With the modern media in a feeding frenzy against the church and priests as it is, with various social media spreading unfiltered and unverified information willy-nilly, with various well-funded and very hostile groups on the watch for any whisper of an accusation and bishops who publicly pull priests from their parishes the above assertion is not only untenable but is cruel.

Further it states: THE PRUDENCE OF THE BISHOP WILL DETERMINE WHAT INFORMATION WILL BE COMMUNICATED TO THE ACCUSED IN THE COURSE OF THE PRELIMINARY INVESTIGATION.

Since bishops tend also to be the primary prosecutor and judge we have truly now entered the realm of Star Chamber machinations.

Early on in the document the assertion is made that: THE ACCUSED CLERIC IS PRESUMED INNOCENT UNTIL THE CONTRARY IS PROVEN.

It does seem those with power in the Vatican have their heads in the sand when it comes to conviction by media, by being pulled from the parish.

Finally the last quote I will reference is this: THE BISHOP HAS THE DUTY TO TREAT ALL HIS PRIESTS AS FATHER AND BROTHER.

Really: priests are summarily removed from their parishes, in the main not given an alternate place to live, frequently have their salaries and benefits cut, rarely can afford defense attorneys or canonical advocates, bishops tend NOT to visit priests in prison, bishops tend even when the accusation is false to abandon priests, tossing them onto the public welfare rolls rather than care for them, indeed the church has to date done absolutely nothing for accused priests.

The Vatican cannot chastise governments or politicians who fail to ensure respect for human rights and due process when it continues down this dark and dangerous road, eroding more and more due process for priests.

You do not ensure the safety of a single child by holus-bolus tossing accused priests under the bus, dumping them onto secular welfare rolls, in essence hiding them under the radar.

You do not ensure your credibility in the face of victims of abuse when you dismiss priests from the clerical state and effectively lose any control over them.

You do not witness to the wider world the critical dignity of the human person, the foundational importance of natural law, due process, human rights when you turn the CDF into a Star Chamber.

In such a climate you do ensure that truly twisted and evil priests, not yet found out, will become more adept at hiding their crimes and disorder and you further ensure that all accused priests, in particular the falsely accused, will be prone to depression, loss of faith, suicide.

In the face of all this my prayer is very simple: Grant O Jesus to Your Church and those with power in Her the grace of compassion and courage, compassion for victims and sinners, courage to spare no expense in caring for victims, courage to ensure transparent due process for the accused and grant O Jesus most critical of all an end to all priestly crime and sin and our complete sanctification.

HITLER/OSAMA: WHERE IS THE BACK OF GOD?

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Fri, 13 May 2011 23:11:00 +0000

Throughout this past Lent, during Holy Week and leading up to and since Divine Mercy Sunday I have been meditating a lot on the mercy of God.

In many respects somewhat incomprehensible for we mere human beings, living in a culture with such an angry, vengeful, punitive mindset, to wit the extreme attitudes people have towards those we presume to be evil incarnate: Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Osama,…………yeah and that person/persons/group you are thinking of right now.

“For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.” [Mt.7:2}, Jesus tells us – yet how often throughout any given day do we judge?

How about that hat she is wearing, the way he drives, what he looks like, what she says, what the bishop does, what Father said – on and on it goes in miniscule matters and those of truly serious import: like assuming we know who is a sinner and how they sin and what should happen to them.

Gossip is unbridled judging of another.

Listen sometimes to conversations and attitudes during an election campaign or a parish council meeting or a pro-life march, or what we think while watching the news or reading the paper about events in some other nation, culture, religion.

Either we believe Jesus comes to us in every human being, humans being His preferred mode of disguise, or we don’t.

Either we take Him seriously when He bluntly tell us: 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.' [cf. all of Matthew 25], or we really don’t believe Him!

Most of us expect tender, divine, mercy when we shall appear before Him – so why do we so blithely wander about the face of the earth, in and amongst our brothers and sisters in such a cranky, judging, rejecting, condemning mode?

Scripture cries out to Him in our own voice: “in love you have delivered my life from the pit of destruction, for you have cast all my sins behind your back.” [Is. 38:17”

Have you ever wondered where the back of God is?

What an expression of the infinite of infinite generosity of Divine Mercy!

God Himself promises us, every repentant one: “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more."[Hb. 8.12]

Wow!

How is it possible for God to forget?

We hardly, if ever, forget even the most picayune affront, yet here is the Most Holy Trinity, God Himself who is love, promising to forget our sins!

We all know what evil acts Osama did in the public domain in his life on earth, the enormous toll in human lives, the disruption of societies around the world, but we know nothing about what transpired in his heart and soul at the moment of his death.

Indeed we have no idea what transpires during the last moment of any human being, no matter what we might think we know because of what is visible to our eyes – we only see surface.

Standing on the shore of the ocean we think we see the ocean, when it truth all we are able to see is the agitation of the waves, that is, what is happening on the surface of the ocean, and even then we only see a tiny bit of the whole surface, most of it is hidden to our gaze beyond the horizon.

The human heart is far wider than any ocean, the human soul far deeper.

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you.” [Jn. 15:12]

SUDDENLY JESUS!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 24 Apr 2011 16:03:00 +0000

CHRIST IS RISEN! GLORIFY HIM! ALLELUIA!

ABORTION GRAPHICS: LIFE & DIGNITY

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 23:08:00 +0000

Any discussion of abortion triggers great reaction, not just between those for and against life and the sacred dignity of the human person, but likewise certain opinions on the matter trigger a huge, angry, backlash if you are pro-life but not of the same ilk as others who equally view themselves as pro-life.

Case in point: recently in the province of Alberta Canada, comprised of three dioceses and one archdiocese, the Archbishop posted a blog: note, not a pastoral letter, not a statement on his official website, but a brief blog stating in part that “The Alberta Bishops have decided not to participate in the 2011 Alberta March for Life.”

The statement stresses this is because of the use of “…large, graphic images of aborted babies…”.

Finally the statement notes support for the cause of life, a vigil and Mass for life will be held.

Now while I agree in principle with the position taken by the Bishops I must admit the temerity shown by only one of them posting it, and even then on a blog not all that easy to find, and also given that over the forty years since abortion was legalized in Canada the majority of Bishops have been noteworthy by their absence from public protests against abortion, and rarely have made strong pastoral statements, surely the Bishops should have issued at the very least a joint pastoral stressing the sacred dignity of the human person and also made themselves available to the media to teach clearly on the sacredness and dignity of human life.

But none of that has happened and so on Lifesite Canada the vast majority of comments, some of them really lacking charity, have slammed the bishops and sought to justify the use of graphic images of aborted children.

Only four people, from what I read, stand with the bishops and offered reasonable arguments defending the bishops’ position.

What seems to be lost in this whole debate, or perhaps even bishops these days are unsure how to articulate it, is that fundamentally abortion is not just about the murder of unborn children, which it certainly is, but rather abortion in the first instance is axiomatic of the loss of a real appreciation of, understanding of, faith in the Incarnation of Jesus Christ: ALL THAT CAME TO BE HAD LIFE IN HIM, as St. John tells us.

We easily say we are created in the image and likeness of God, but how deeply do we go with this?

Do we truly appreciate what we say so easily? More do we believe it, really?

Even further: do I truly see every other human being, irrespective of their race, religion, economic status, goodness or lack thereof, in a word WITHOUT any exception, as equally one like myself, endowed with an immortal soul, in His image and likeness, endowed with life and dignity as I am?

This sacred participation in the reality of being in the image and likeness of God is not just within our souls, it is fleshy too, bodily – indeed it is our very bodies that through Baptism become living temples of the Holy Spirit and it is not just in our souls that we live out the sacredness of Sacramental Marriage, that very sacrament depends upon the bodies, and their capacity to cooperate physically with God in the creation of a new sacred and dignified human life AND Holy Communion is not just some ‘spiritual’ experience but is the REAL consumption of the Body and Blood of Christ – real stuff if you will – which permeates my physical being.

We seem to somehow disconnect the earthiness of, the fleshiness if you will, of life on earth, life as members of the Mystical Body of Christ – again because we do not contemplate deeply enough, often enough, long enough [and I dare say an entire life would not be long enough] the overarching import of His Holy Incarnation.

The ancient Christians got it – by way of example contemplate a crucifix.

We know the Romans preferred to crucify Jewish men in particular totally naked, because the Romans knew this was the ultimate humiliation for a Jewish man of faith.

Christian artists understood even more deeply, contemplating Jesus, the absolute sacredness and dignity of the bodily human person and so placed a cloth that we contemplate Jesus to this day on the cross without dishonouring His dignity.

It is because of Jesus, Son of God Incarnate and Risen, Jesus Eucharist, that we should each in regards to our own body, but equally in regards to the body of every other human being, treat the body with respect, dignity – be that body of someone alive, that is walking, talking, or perhaps elderly, ill, handicapped, it matters not, or that body of someone in the repose of death, irrespective of the manner of their death.

We have become a culture of voyeurs, a culture addicted to graphic images of the latest celebrity caught in scandal, of the latest human tragedy, watching pictures of tsunami devastation over and over until we are mesmerized and simultaneously desensitized to the weeping faces of real human beings, a culture which addicts its young and not so young to computer games which celebrate violence and the aggressive murder of other human beings, even if these are disguised as fictional characters from some imaginary universe.

Perhaps forty years ago, when we were not so desensitized, images of aborted children might, though I seriously doubt it, have accomplished the goal advocates of such images purport and motivated some woman not to abort her child.

However nowadays in a culture drowning in graphic images it certainly seems to me they are not only counterproductive but an insult to the sacred dignity of the very murdered children they claim to defend.

This is the culture of pornography, of a generation that tattoos and staples it’s body to bits, a generation of total gender confusion, a generation which has almost completely lost the ability to see, understand, appreciate real beauty.

We all know the old saying you attract more flies with honey than vinegar – put more bluntly ugliness repels, beauty attracts.

There are thousands of beautiful images available of little children in the womb throughout the gestation period; the parents who bring their children to participate in pro-life marches surely have pictures of their beautiful newborn, most families have neat pictures of baptisms and marriages – and of elders celebrating fifty, sixty years of marriage or even a hundred years of life!

If we are truly pro-life then we should ONLY celebrate life, not death!

“In Jesus we contemplate beauty and splendour at their source……Christ encounters us, attracts us and delights us, enabling us to emerge from ourselves and drawing us towards our true vocation, which is love….Jesus Christ shows us how the truth of love can transform even the dark mystery of death into the radiant light of the resurrection.” [Pope Benedict XVI]

WHO IS SHE?

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 22:09:00 +0000

Anyone who has seriously taken theatre acting classes knows that the text of most plays does not contain a detailed background story on the character you are about to portray.

You study the lines you are to read/speak, the actions, the inter-action with other characters and develop our own background of the character which you keep within you as you act on stage.

Ever since I began Mass preparation for this 3^rd Sunday of Lent, with the Gospel of the Samaritan Woman, I have posed to my heart, mind, imagination, as really wanting to know her, the simple question: Who is she?

The more I have come to know her the more I have come to understand she is me – perhaps you too.

The more I have ‘learned’ about her, the greater the urgency within me to approach the well, to meet the man sitting there.

The longer I linger with Him at the well, paradoxically, the more, it seems, He wants me to not so much ‘take’ His place as be myself ‘in’ Him as place for others.

So who is she to me and how then is she me?

When I was a boy growing up in the last years of, and the years immediately after WWII, I lived in a poor neighbourhood where there were many widows – older ones from WWI, younger ones of WWII, and some women who simply had been abandoned.

There were of course married women with children besides the widows, some of whom had children, and there were single women many of whom, as munitions production and other direct war work slowed down returned to offices or department stores or what is often referred to as the world’s oldest profession.

So I know all those women of my childhood, and the women of my youth, university and working days, women who worked or taught in the seminary, women from the various parishes I was assigned to, women who come to the soup kitchen – yes somehow each of these women, my beloved sisters in Christ, somehow are part of the answer to: who is she?

Clearly in her deep personal history as a child and young girl events unfolded, things happened which disordered her personality so that her ability to form covenant with a man eludes her – likewise then she is not perceived by the other women as someone they wish to be close to. She is not part of the unique communal experience of women working, moving, walking to the well as a group inter-connected, chatting, empathizing with one another, affirming and encouraging one another, looking out for one another.

The other women both fear and disdain her – yet there is goodness about her.

She can be counted on because no matter how they treat her, if any of the other women is ill, she is there to serve; if any of the other women need help hauling the water, working the fields, tending the children she is always there.

True her unspoken motive is this desperate need for acceptance, to be part of, and she well knows that will never happen, that once she has fulfilled the need which had them allow her to approach she will be cast aside again, for she is obviously too needy – well just look at all the men she goes with!

How then is she me?

My covenant relationship is with Jesus, as a priest – but I am a human being just like my sister at the well and like her I have a back-story, the scars/wounds of which, to be honest about it, are not yet completely healed – and so, for example, when I am under stress I am extremely needy and seek affirmation and acceptance.

The trouble with following my outcast and lonely sister in the quest for water at the well is we end up finding a man is sitting there, a man whom at first we do not recognize and expect from him more of the pain we have grown used to even, while deep in our beings, because there is something about him different from others, the old yearning for affirmation, to be loved really, aches beyond belief!

Of course he starts off by asking to be taken care of.

Well we’re used to that.

Everyone accepts us while do as they ask.

But my sister, this time, perhaps has just had enough, or the sum pain of her life has finally started to overflow the brim of her being, because her reaction and words are not of the desperate-to-be-given-a crumb of acceptance, normally her response, but a challenge, a ‘How dare you’ barely couched in defining the prevailing social mores.

He is different.

He does not respond in kind.

This is not what she is/I am, used to.

He speaks tenderly, offers gift – a gift which contains within all the healing, all the dignity, all the affirmation, all the love ever yearned for!

I look at my sister, so weighed down with so much, her wounded heart so heavy she is as one who moves bent over, yet as He speaks she is transformed before my eyes and quiet dignity, a glow of joy, a straightness of being, a lightness of heart take hold.

Then she is gone!

She has run to where she came from, to speak about the One whom she has met.

Now, it is just He and I.

He invites me to sit with Him, to ask Him, the question: Who is she?

His answer is telling, but not as I expect, for He tells me nothing about her, nor really about me, but about everyone else!

He tells without words, shows really, countless people!

Some are intimately close to me heart and He shows me how much of her is in them – how blind I have been to that.

He shows me others whom I know but am not close to. People I meet on the bus or in the neighbourhood or the soup kitchen or see in news reports about Japan or Libya or……“She” is everywhere!

I get it – well am starting to get it.

True Jesus revealed His thirst first but that disappears quickly, His apparent thirst, because His real thirst is for her, His daughter, a soul in need of His gift.

Ah, Jesus – I am so in bondage to my own thirstiness I have forgotten my prime thirst should be for You, yes – but should be Yours for others too!

That is why You have me sitting here, showing me I will only be slaked if I forget my need and thirst to satisfy the need which is hers/others/Yours.

Now I understand why You have shown me she is present in everyone.

[John 4:5-42]

Thirst!

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 23:54:00 +0000

Among the day’s emails was one from a seminarian who, like most of us this Lent, even though we have begun week two in the splendour and light of the Transfiguration, seem to be more aware of shadows than of light, of uncertainty than the Father’s love, given and spoken to us through Jesus, fearful – and who is not in these days of earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, revolutions, war – not fully embracing Jesus’ word: “Get up and do not be afraid.”

In many respects that is the great challenge of Lent, the getting up – up from whatever weighs us down, whatever has us hesitant to follow Him.

Today we are invited to get up, go up if you will, to the heights of Tabor – in a few weeks we will be invited to go up with Him to the height of the Cross, for in baptism we are plunged into His death and brought up into His Holy Resurrection.

St. Isaac the Syrian urges us: “Thirst after Jesus. He will satisfy you with His love.”

When I was a boy I was given a holy card, an image of Jesus on the Cross, eyes open, gazing towards us, me.

There was one word on the card: SITIO! [I thirst!]: Jn.19:28.

Jesus thirsts for us, for our love to be sure, but for us as a person – His thirst is, if I might use the expression, the Divine, the Trinitarian yearning for us.

We are given breath of life, an immortal soul, in a word given existence by the Holy Trinity first and foremost to be beloved of God.

Sin is our separating ourselves from being beloved.

Jesus suffers and dies, redeems us so that we might ‘get up’ and re-enter the love relationship for which we have been created.

The wonderful gift of sacramental reconciliation, of Eucharist, of each new day is that again and again when we rupture the relationship through sin or hesitancy or whatever we can heed His call and strive beyond fear – by getting up again and again.

His thirst for us becomes our thirst for Him!

GOD ACTS

noreply@blogger.com (Arthur Joseph) — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 19:04:00 +0000

It is the solemnity of St. Joseph who, among his other titles, is both Patron of the Universal Church and of Priests.

Giving thanks to this wonderful man, on earth of such dignity, faith, selflessness, it is also a day, with the tragedy still unfolding in Japan and in Libya, among so much other suffering on the face of the earth, to beg his intercession for peace and healing for the entire human family.

It is a day also to pray for increase of faith.

To help increase our faith I offer the following excerpts from a homily, preached recently by a beloved brother, mentor and friend, Msgr. Thomas Rowland.

By way of introduction Msgr. Rowland was one of the first priest members of the Madonna House Lay Apostolate. He was later recalled to work in his home diocese and after decades of generous service there was able to return to Madonna House where he currently lives and serves:

“…..a thought about the two basilicas of Our Lady of Guadalupe kept coming into my mind….[the] Gospel states so clearly that everything in our lives must be founded on the Rock who is Christ…..We try to keep our life centered in Christ, the Sacramental life of the Church……the two great basilicas…of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City. The older one….half of the building was built on rock and the other half on sand….half began to sink…..eventually it had to be closed. Could this be, in some way a picture of our lives – partly centered on Christ and partly on other devotions and interests?

…..the new Basilica….goes back to the words of Her Son, Our Lord Jesus – build your building on a rock foundation! This is what they did; a careful testing of the area found a solid rock foundation….

….In our Gospel for today, the devil’s temptations were refuted by the repeated message of Christ: “Man does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God; Do not put the Lord your God to the test; Worship the Lord your God and serve Him only.” CHRIST MUST BE THE ABSOLUTE CENTER OF OUR SPIRITUAL LIVES! HE IS THE ROCK, THE FOUNDATION, THE REASON FOR LIVING!”

After years of pastoral service in various parishes and his extensive training and work in the area of liturgical practice, Msgr. Rowland wrote a wonderful and easy to read book on liturgical prayer with the title: GOD ACTS WE REACT.

This work is both a tremendous resource for personal meditation and growth in participation in the prayer life of the Church and an excellent resource for parish liturgical teams.

I recommend it highly.

The book is available at: http://www.madonnahouse.org/publications/rowland/gawr.htm