Let Us Make God in Our Image, After Our Likeness 'Cause It'd Be Awesome

This might hurt your brain, but stay with me friends.

Imagine if he came the way we wanted him to? Imagine if Jesus answered the problem of evil with a punch rather than his paschal mystery?

He would've kicked the devil's butt. He would've been ripped, with muscles on top of his muscles. A combination of brains and brawn. Bolder than Bourne, slicker than Spider-Man, more convicted than Captain America and every move in slo-mo. The lance set to pierce his heart on the Cross would've bounced off and snapped like a toothpick! Nothing would break him. He'd have busted up the Romans and religious leaders in a Divine Smackdown the likes of which the world had never seen!

"Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to consume them?" (Luke 9:54)

"Yes, I do. Let's kick some taḥat!" (Luke 9:55, revised)

Yes, if God were made in man's image... we'd all be wowed, then bored to tears. 

"That was awesome! What else is on?”

I saw the latest X-Men film this weekend, and it was awesome. Don't get me wrong, Rebecca and I will be watching this chain of films until we're 90 (because they'll still be making this franchise when we're 90)! Lots of fun, lots of flash and fireworks, classic good versus evil (though the characters are getting morally foggier these days, aren't they?) and then the credits rolled. Fade to black until another new translation of the same old, same old throws its glowing flashes on our sedentary faces. (There was a remarkable and refreshing gem in this X-Men film though.... wait for it ;)

Last night's movie, scheduled as a 9:10 viewing, didn't actually start until about 9:30. It was preceded by 20 minutes of previews. Most of these were coming attractions for the same perennial distractions. Stuff blowing up, slow motion acrobatics, killing, fighting, quelling evil forces with opposite force, which then ushers in a fragile peace until the sequel. Now, what I find reassuring as a "theological anthropologist" (my unofficial job title) is the recognition that bad needs to be broken. We must fight evil and rescue that which is good. This is a theme so deeply engrained in our stories. But "making right" has a better word and a more effective one than the firing of bullets; it's redemption. 

This word changes everything. and it all goes back to that paradigm shift when Christ first hit our "fault line" with the tectonic shift of gratuitous grace. Those aftershocks still reverberate throughout human history, backwards and forwards. Our realignment comes now by our allowing ourselves to be set into this new geographic configuration by faith, not fists. Retaliation and redemption are two very different answers to the problem of evil.

Point is this: There must be a fight. There will be blood. There must be. To quote the Princess Bride for the thirteenth time on this blog, "Life is pain... anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something." But it's all about what we do with the blood and pain and suffering that comes from that first punch. 

The amount of blood and violence and suffering in our blockbuster movies today is staggering, but honestly it's no more staggering than the battles and death in the Bible, especially, uh, the crucifixion. In this latest X-Men film, however, a powerful twist enters in and truly redeems suffering in a beautiful way.

In a climactic scene (slight spoiler alert here) between young Charles Xavier and old Charles Xavier, we receive a pearl of wisdom on how to treat our "enemy"... how to open up to a peace that just might have the power to stick, finally, after so much fighting; 




"The greatest gift we have is to bear their pain without breaking and it comes from your most human part, hope." 

- Charles Xavier

Wow. The scene has so much more to it, but I want you to go and taste it for yourself.

So back to Jesus... who is the quintessence of this kind of compassion (which means to suffer with).

Recall he came the way the Father wanted him to. He answered the problem of evil not with a punch, but with his paschal mystery. He took the punch, and let it penetrate him (literally in fact break him), through and through. "Rather, he emptied himself, taking the form of a slave... becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:7-8)

This is the "movie" that continues to truly move me. And with an ever building sense of joy and Easter hope, all the while trying to unite my own personal small bit of suffering to his, I'm looking forward to the sequel!

"In the world you will have trouble, but take courage, I have conquered the world.”

- John 16:33

Face It or Fear It

If we are to continue in this Lenten journey with sincere hearts intent on deepening our relationship with God and not just keeping the rules or requirements of our faith, then we have to continue our efforts at this authentic "FaceTime" with God. And today, in the second Sunday of Lent, we get it. Oh boy do we get it. 

"Jesus took Peter, James, and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. And he was transfigured before them; his face shone like the sun..."

- Matthew 17

What a heart-breaking, mind-blowing beauty must have overwhelmed these first century fishermen, standing before that Face. These blue-collar, blistered and hand-calloused men stood with their own weathered faces, creased by countless hours in the light of another sun. It's powerful light was merely the earthly antecedent and icon of the light of the Eternal Son whom they now beheld. 

Think of your own experiences with beauty. A walk in the woods, the piercing rays of a sunrise or sunset over water or mountain. Stepping into the splintered and multi-colored light from high windows, spilling over the marble floors of a great cathedral.... Better still, think of the faces that surround you every day. The unrepeatable people in your daily life. The faces and the names...

Thoreau once reflected in his meditations by the shores of Walden Pond, “To be awake is to be alive. I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I have looked him in the face?”

Now multiply that ray of beauty to an infinite degree, one that never fades but only increases with each Eternal and Unfolding Now Moment. And this Face of God, this Jesus the Incarnate Son, knit forever to our humanity by His own, is madly in love with you. His Divine Gaze falls (and will fall for all eternity) on your own face, your human face, through and with His human eyes. It's insane, it's completely gratuitous, superabundant madness. It's crazy love.

"Look at Him looking at you," St. Teresa of Avila encourages us. This is Heaven.

In Pope Benedict's encyclical on the virtue of hope, Spe Salvi, he sends us into the fire and the light of this Beautiful Face:

"Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God."- Pope Benedict XVI, Saved in Hope, 47

Lord of Light, grant us the grace day by day to enter more deeply into this Your Holy Gaze, and not to fear this holy fire. There all can be made new. Let us not be afraid to see Your true Face, and in that light to finally see our own.

"Look to him and be radiant, and your faces may not blush for shame." 
- Psalm 34

Joseph

Joseph... Worker. Builder. Earthly contractor of Heaven's Plans. A man with feet planted deep in Judean dust, hands gripping tools of earth, you built a home for Heaven's Son. You made a veil to shelter the Holy of Holies with your very life, Joseph.

You, Joseph, heart like a gem set deep in the Heart of God. You, a man, honored the Woman, cradled the Newborn, carried that green wood that would be weathered and one day be fit for a Cross. One day. And that day you missed... or did you?

You, Joseph, watched Him nurse at the breast of your bride.... the image of absolute beauty: a God nourished by His own creature. Humility wrapped in the alabaster arms of the humble virgin, the beloved, the dove, your beautiful one. You saw this, breathed it. Joseph. Sitting on a wooden stool whittling a wooden toy as He suckled at her breast. What thoughts moved you then? What hot tears mingling joy, awe, pain, wrapped in the swaddling clothes of your trembling humanity? Joseph...

Did you know? The sapling you carried, weak as willow wands, so supple, still a boy stretching toward Heaven, would one day be stretched by man's brutality, fixed on the very beams He helped you carry? A boy like any other, seemingly, and walking amidst others with a covered light you knew in more intimate hours that none can know until the Veil lifts: you, Joseph, bathed His tender feet, washed his little hands at day's end from the dust and dirt of His eager apprenticeship.

Those hands that shaped the universe you cradled in the callous tools of your own hands. Did you know, Joseph, the hammer He held for you, with bright eyes watching you work, would one day fall on His palms in pain unspeakable. Ah! How could you bear it? What irony! In His carrying iron nails to you with quickened pace as boys will help their fathers, did you hear the echo of the prophet's verse; "They have pierced my hands and my feet. They have numbered all my bones." How could you know, Joseph, and still work those tools, carry those beams, see that dust shimmer over wooden planks as the sun poured its golden oil over the shop at day's end? And the young Christ there, breathing, sweating, smiling up at you in those early years?

Your heart, then, not a sword must have pierced. But nails.

Peace and Pain

"Jesus came, although the doors were locked, and stood in their midst and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands, and bring your hand and put it into my side, and do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Thomas answered and said to him, “My Lord and my God!” - John 20 "Peace be with you"... Peace is what we all long for, deep down. Often we imagine it lies on some white sandy shore or on the winning side of a Powerball ticket. But ironically, peace is often found not in the absence of sorrows and responsibilities but in the quiet acceptance of them. So often, it's in the still center, the eye of the storm, where there is peace. The story of Thomas above is a powerful reminder of this truth. Jesus returns. He is glorious, alive, healed. But he has scars. Good Friday cannot be separated from Easter Sunday. Incidentally, it's been said that there is only one man-made thing in Heaven: Christ's wounds. What a sobering thought. Christians are not living in a fantasy world. Dreaming up pipe dreams. Walks through rose gardens. In the immortal words of Guns 'n Roses, we know that "every rose has its thorn..." Unconditional Love, the force that Jesus unleashed upon the world by his life and death, is a curious mix of pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow. So even in the midst of that first Easter, that shockingly beautiful, scandalously incredible, dream of all dreams miracle of the Master's return from Death, there was death's reminder. Scarred hands. A pierced and open side. So let's not deceive ourselves. Love is pain. Love hurts. Peace has a price. Without this wound of Love could we ever peer in and behold the very real, beating and pleading Heart of our incarnate God?

Jesus versus Vampires

Just the other day, I was rounding the corner of our church parking lot to head into daily Mass, when a Septa bus drove down the street. On the side of the bus was an ad for a TV series about vampires called "True Blood." There was a smiling, fanged young women lying beside a gruesome, lifeless young man. I thought of our culture’s increasing obsession with death, then turned and entered the church, looking towards the crucifix and the wounds of Christ. Hmmm, I thought, here's the True Blood, isn’t it? I’m “celebrating” another kind of death in the Body of Christ. I couldn't stop thinking that day of the parallels between the two images, both involving great violence. But which image holds real power? It was Jesus versus the Vampires. It seems the media is dripping with the lore of vampires, especially these days just before Halloween. Websites, books, video games… Years ago, we saw the success of TV shows like Angel and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and now the more recent True Blood. There’s also the wildly popular Twilight series now turned movies. So what's the attraction? I think, at the end of the day, it's a twisted desire for the Eucharist.

The proper effect of the Eucharist is the transformation of man into God. 

 - St. Thomas Aquinas

Cloaked beneath the surface of vampire mythology is a desire for eternal life, which I would affirm. We all have an innate desire for Life to continue, to indeed flourish. And in fact, we want even more than that. “I wanna live forever! I wanna learn how to fly… high!” We want to lose ourselves in eternal realities, which are actually attributes of God: Life, Beauty, Truth, Immortality. We want a fountain of youth. We want a feast, the banquet so often imaged in the Bible. But when we’re unwilling to make the sacrifice of our lives in love for that gift (which is the key to all happiness and self-discovery) we degenerate into sacrificing others. Our love that's meant to go out in service is twisted to a lust that folds in and serves only me. Vampires are a greedy bunch. Rather than shed their blood in a total self-gift for others, like Jesus, they selfishly draw the very life-blood out of others. Vampires are not givers, they are takers. But he who grasps at his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake, will find it…. and with it, life everlasting. When it comes to restoring us to that life again, it is Jesus alone who gives us the True Blood, the Divine transfusion that alone can save us.

________________________________________

Originally published in the Catholic Standard and Times

Joyness

"Brothers and sisters: Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise prophetic utterances. Test everything; retain what is good. Refrain from every kind of evil. May the God of peace make you perfectly holy.... spirit, soul, and body..." - 1 Thessalonians 5:16... I believe joy should be the undercurrent in the soul of every Christian. That's what this third Sunday of Advent is about, and so it's traditionally called "Rejoice" Sunday (Gaudete). After all, compared to the horrific death of Jesus on Calvary, to the crucifixion of Love Himself at the hands of His creatures, is there any sorrow that cannot be undone? So our crosses all combine and meet and meld into One at Calvary, and this is communion. And then they are buried in the earth, break open in the darkness and then push, pine, and blossom forth in the Spring into something holy beyond our wildest dreams. And this is redemption! The joy it births is evangelization.... "Joy is a net of love by which we catch souls." - Blessed Teresa of Calcutta Again, everything that happened to Jesus must happen to us. And didn't He say that He came to give us joy, and joy in abundance? So rejoice always. Mind the words of St. Paul to the Thessalonians. He was a realist, not an idealist, and he himself knew sorrow, and beatings, abandonment, imprisonment, rejection, and hunger. And in them he rejoiced for what was to come. Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, nor has it entered into the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love Him! Rejoice! In the words of the French sculptor Rodin "The victory of Truth is certain."

King Me!

On Sunday, the Church celebrated the Feast of Christ the King. Now at first glance you might be thinking.... Wow, what an outdated concept! How completely irrelevant to my life and to talk at the water cooler on Monday. "Hey Bob, what you'd do this weekend?" "We celebrated the Feast of Christ the King." "The King? Huh... Sounds kinda medieval, Bob. When are you Catholics gonna wake up and smell the 21st century?" Then you hang your head and slink back to your little patch of serfdom behind some flimsy beige partition and think, "yeah, that does sound totally medieval." I mean come on.... this is America! We're a democracy! We don't want some archaic flashback to a time of fairy tales, princesses, dragons, and kings! Right? I mean WE the People! After all, we know what's best! Look around: isn't it working out perfectly in this new City of Man, this Brave New World? Finally, there's peace and justice for all! In the immortal words of Laverne and Shirley, "Give us any chance, we'll take it. Give us any rule, we'll break it. We're gonna make our dreams come true. Doin' it our way." Yeah, right. Truth is, the naive dreams of "our way" have hit the cold, hard highway and turned into a nightmare.... now we're singing "Welcome to the Jungle." Why can't we get it right? Because we're incapable of fixing ourselves. There's a disorientation within each of us that can only be reoriented by the Maker of our hearts. And doesn't that make sense? We didn't create ourselves, so how can we complete ourselves? We don't have a clue. We're unruly. We need a Ruler. But instead of humbly admitting this truth, we grab the "reigns" from the rightful King and we don't even know how to steer this carriage. It's as if Cinderella decided to make a hard left and skip out on the Royal Ball, settling instead for a "happy meal" at McDonald's. But this King has a much better meal prepared for us! I suppose the trap for "we the people" is a fear that the King will become a Tyrant (wasn't this the twisted lie of the Serpent right from the beginning of our story, in the Garden of Eden?) Granted, earthly manifestations of kings have clearly transformed into just that over the millenia. It's quite logical to want to rebel when your monarch becomes a monster. But here's the thing: Jesus isn't a monster. Jesus isn't a king who will sit on a golden throne waving an iron mace. Jesus came as a poor man wearing His Heart on His sleeve. Jesus is not a King who will crush and kill your freedom. He comes to be crushed and killed Himself, to give us all true freedom! When Matthew closes off his gospel, he points us to the Face of the True King, and it is a Face that we never expected. "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me." My King is a hungry, thirsty, broken man. My King is a King of Pain. He directs my eyes into the shadows and into the wounded places of the human condition so that I can learn compassion and love. He is not faraway in a polished palace but deep in the slums, among the "rabble." At the end of the day, governors govern, administrators administrate, and presidents preside, but always seemingly from a distance. I need a King close at hand to rule over me, to set my heart right again. A Ruler by which to measure my love. And I find it all in Christ my King, Who is not afraid to walk among the least of my brothers. In fact that is what He has become for me. For it is who I am... "The guest of our soul knows our misery; He comes to find an empty tent within us - that is all He asks." - St. Therese of Lisieux

Jesus Loves Me

A famous Catholic theologian, whose name escapes me right now, was once asked about the most profound thought he had ever had. He said it was simply "Jesus loves me."Isn't it crazy to consider that in the whole visible creation, you are the most priceless work of art to him? Even when we take the brush of self-determination he's given us and deface this work of God, smearing the paint of pride in garrish colors across the canvas of our lives, the Master still sees the good in us, and our potential for reaching our purpose: finding our home in his heart again. I think the Father sees with "Jesus-colored glasses." I think from the beginning He knew that Jesus would be that bridge for us, that "human face of God" so that we could remember the "Divine face of man." St. Paul says this was always the plan, that in the fullness of time, all things be summed up in Christ, brought to completion, recapitulated! The Father always knew that our Ring of Power and self-absorbtion would be broken, undone, and remade into a Cross with beams that could reach out to all the world (thanks Peter Kreeft for that analogy!)Jesus loves me. Not like my aunt or my grandpa, or Sr. Nativitas from grade school (that brief year or two in Catholic school, and I still remember her name!) Jesus loves me with a wild fire in his eyes, with a burning torch atop his sacred heart. His love is a blazing inferno! What a tragedy that he is pictured as an anemic, pasty "nice man" in so many insipid cartoons and films today. Scripture and human experience have painted him quite differently - a Lion, an Earthquake, a Hound of Heaven, a Thief, a King, Hunter, Husband, a Living Flame of Love. I am nearly 40 years old now, and I am just starting to see the real Jesus. It's a bit scary to be loved this much. It's actually shocking. I sit there in my chair drinking coffee every morning, reading those gospel stories, and sometimes the thought comes like a blast of wind through the old dusty alleyways of my mind; Jesus loves me. And I sometimes get the sense that he is knocking on more doors than just one. That since I let him in back at the age of 15 or so, he's been exploring other rooms, deeper levels of me than I ever knew I had. St. Theresa of Avila spoke of these rooms in our "interior castles." Jesus comes to love us in every one of them, and always as a gentlemen; he knocks first. I think this love then, elicits our response. Will I let him in? And how far? Let's go beyond the foyer, past the pews of our Sunday "obligation"... Right into the tabernacle of His Presence among us! Into that heart of fire!Let's ask ourselves: Where is he knocking today? What door can I open to this God of love?

Jawdroppin' Jesus

What's the most exciting adjective ever hurled at you? Funny? Crazy? Caring? Compassionate? Nice... ? How about spellbinding. Now that's an adjective for ya. This rarely used word is the one used in today's gospel from Luke 4. Jesus is making his rounds around the towns and villages of Galilee (the sea of which is pictured above), and this time he's in Capernaum. The people are "spellbound" by his teaching. What a great word.... spellbound. It means "entranced by or as if by a spell; fascinated." But why were the people so entranced, you ask? Because he spoke with authority. Now there's something we need desparately today but are afraid to take, like nasty medicine that we know is going to heal but it hurts to go down; words of authority. The funny thing is, they only taste nasty when we are sick, that is, need to get out of unhealthy situations of self-righteousness and autonomy. When we are arrogant, anarchists, or anti-authority, words of authority come storming towards us, shining with all of the clarity, force, and power of a waterfall or a flash of lightning. They quite literally rock our world, like the words of Jesus did to the powers that be (or were) in his own time. But the truth is, we need a shock to our systems, so dulled as they are by soupy words, wishy washy words that dribble out from our lips or in opinion polls or from the media. We need a center of gravity. We need a Son to revolve around. In the me-o-centric universes that we can construct for ourselves, we simply end up floating through space like asteroids, bound sooner or later to crash into something. But it takes alot to convince us of this truth. To assure us that there is an Authority and a Law, and that we need to obey it (Him) just like the planets follow the rules. But we have the added challenge of doing so willingly, of placing our hearts and wills into His system. Falling in line with the Law of Love is the surest way of finding ourselves, of discovering our ryhthm, our pace, our deepest identity. All else is chaos. To resist his words of authority is to fall prey to the black hole of self-absorption, to lose all sense of space and time, to be bent... to be lost. The prayer today is to realign ourselves, reorient ourselves under His authority. So God, make our crooked ways straight. Draw us in and bind us to Your Truth. Then we can truly be spellbound, and in that binding we will truly be set free. "In His will, our peace." - Dante

Man Attacked by Flowers Survives, Barely

Thursday night, Rebecca and I made a visit to our local parish church for a little adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. We both recognized that we need to do this more often; to pour out our troubles to the Lord, just as a Hannah did in the Temple so long ago. Funny how I deliberated before we made the decision to just do it. There was the Freshmen retreat to plan, grading, a plane ticket to order for next Saturday, grading, the bug in my podcast that I can't seem to fix, (but I still love you iTunes!) and there was some grading.

In the end we just went to Him, and of course, it was awesome. And that's all He wanted... for us to go, in the midst of our busyness or "tiredness" at the end of a long day; to come to Him when we are weary and heavy-burdened. And guess what... He gave us rest. For just a few minutes, we did nothing but BE with Him, and pray.

One of things I love about the Easter Season is the INSANE amount of flowers that explode into the sanctuaries of churches all over the world after the Resurrection of Christ. The world may hate us and persecute us just as Jesus predicted, but I know that, secretly, at least the florists love us. (I wonder if they intentionally look for shop space next to Catholic churches? They could survive just on lily and poinsettia sales!)

As we knelt down to unpack our hearts before the One Who knows them best, an odoriferous wave of delight poured over us. It was crazy. There were flowers under the altar, over the altar, popping out of the pulpit, pouring out of the pews, climbing up the choir loft... and all of them screaming with pistils and petals waving "Watch out world! He is RISEN!"

So we just drank it in, sniffed it up, basked in the pungent scent of New Life in the Garden of the Resurrection.... and there we prayed for Life... life to the full. We can't wait for kids. CAN'T WAIT. And it brings to mind a line from Blessed Mother Teresa: "Saying there are too many children in the world is like saying there are too many flowers."

In our hearts, as in our church this Easter season, there can never be enough flowers.

The Real Jesus

The song is by "downhere" and the video from Kelly Wicoff, who packs a powerful lesson in the images she chooses...

God Sleeps in the Womb of the Earth

Yesterday Christ died. He said "It is finished," and He gave up His spirit. The great Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the Alpha and the Omega, the Morning Star was Himself extinguished by the Darkness.

So now we wait, and weep, and wonder. Has Death won? Is faith just a futile attempt to hold off the inevitable night, like a match lit for a brief moment, surrounded by impenetrable shadow, for a few seconds of illumination, until all is night? We wonder if there's more. We wait, we watch, like Mary by the tomb.

I see her sitting there, still stunned by the events of that Dark Friday, a whole cut into her heart, scraped clean. Open hands, cupped, lying on her lap, still breathing out the sweet smell of myrhh and oils from the Jewish burial custom. She stares blankly over the distance between the shade of an olive tree and the Roman guards moving about their watch, mumbling in a language she doesn't know. She is there keeping vigil, but she is not there. She is nowhere, she is no one. Her thoughts can only find rest on a few random phrases of His, like a bird alighting on swaying reeds.

"Destroy this temple.... And I will raise it up."
"Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man...."
"I am the Resurrection and the Life..."

But then the winds of memory and sorrow and unspeakable torture blow through her mind again, and the bird of her heart must fly away, for this wind is too strong. After all, she saw His broken body, washed those wounds with His Mother. She saw the marks, the gaping hole in His chest. "It is finished," she whispers to the wind. And her tears drop into the dusty earth.

But Holy Saturday is a day pregnant with possibility....

"Just as the seed falls to the earth and dies, so must the Son of Man...."

Yesterday, Words that can remake the world were spoken, dropped from the mouth of Jesus like seeds full of paradoxical promise. They were spoken the night before as well, at a supper His heart longed to celebrate. These Words convey to the human heart the very secret of human life, the way to the truth of who we are and what we can become. These Words and only these Words, like a magic spell, can rebuild the shattered Dream of Eden, and create a Civilization of Life and Love. These Words have unspeakable power in them.

"This is My Body, given up for you.... Take and eat, take and drink."

To the barren fields of fallen man, the God-Man has given His body as grain. To the earth that has shared in our sorrow, drink. Where thorns and thistles grew now the seed in the blood of Jesus flows. In the dark womb of the earth, He lies broken, sleeps, and germinates, sending out the small, green shoots of promise...And with Mary, we watch and wait for Morning.

Passion Reflection #3 - Veronica's Veil

(Kindnesses small as seeds can stand as long as mountains, and be remembered until the end of an age... Such is the motion of a woman's veil, cupped in trembling hands upon the Face of the Man of Sorrows).

She stood out in a crowd.
It was the eyes above all
A stream of compassion
That flowed through the wall
Of hatred and anger
Jealousy and fear
Veronica saw Suffering
and dared to draw near.

Here the drama unfolded that has since been remembered, through time and through tales her act has engendered the same look, the same leap
Out of self, out to others,
To the small and the sorrowful, to the least of our brothers.

To ease the world's wounds is the saint's vocation.
To make a veil of the heart and the mind is our mission.
To catch tears and calm fears turns our pride to submission.
And in every small act of mercy or compassion,
His Face shines again from the servant-heart's passion.

Passion Reflection #2 - Peter and the Battle of Prayer

What a scene the Passion of the Christ begins with; tension, fear, foreboding from the first few seconds of the film.

On the night Jesus was handed over, he made his way to the Garden of Gethsemane, taking with him his three closest friends; Peter, James, and John.

How beautiful that Our Lord has these levels of intimacy; the family friends of Bethany, the Twelve, and these three men who have walked with him now from the beginning. (What are the levels of intimacy in your life? Do you have a trinity of souls to share your sorrows with? Two friends? Even one is a tremendous blessing).

But in the mystical, moist night air of the Garden of Olives, Christ is alone. His friends sleep while he burns in the fires of sorrow. Pressed down by the weight of the world's sin, he is living out in his body what the name of this place embodies; Gethsemane is a Hebrew word meaning "olive press." Jesus is fully man, and fully God, and he knows what is coming. Yet blood flows from his anxiety. His capillaries break under the anguish and strain of what lies ahead. But not only blood; the sweet oil of mercy flows out. Oil rich enough to light the lamps of countless souls for a billion centuries.

Torches appear in the murky shadows. Peter awakens and comes to Our Lord. But he has not prayed, he has not been pressed. He is not ready for this encounter. His reaction to Jesus' arrest will be reprimanded by the Prince of Peace; "Put away your sword, Peter. For those who live by the sword, die by the sword."

Bishop Fulton Sheen once spoke of this moment of Peter's. Without that solitary encounter with God, that quiet communion with Him in prayer, we do not receive His oil to light our lamps. We are operating on our own devices. We move out of our own initiative, rather than by the spark of the Holy Spirit's.

Peter has been sleeping while Christ has been praying. If he had been in communion with the Lord, "watched one hour with him," what might have happened?

So for us.... What fuel are we running on? What impels us to do the things we do? Is it coming out of that stillness we have spent in the Garden of Prayer, or from somewhere else? Perhaps from our own busyness, our own agenda, our foot in the door and last word opinion?

Step into His stillness then. Sit and pray in this Garden of Shadows and watch one hour with Him. Let Him tell you when the time is right for action.

Passion Reflection #1 - From Palms to Poison

(The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson's blockbuster movie from 2004 focusing on the last 12 hours of the life of Christ, will be the source for this week's meditations. If you haven't seen the film yet.... shame on you. It's a priceless work of art).

SNAPSHOT:
There's a scene in the movie where Jesus first takes up his Cross, and in those first few steps, surrounded by a swirling, spitting, angry mob, we see his eyes, swollen and bloodied, looking out to see palm branches being laid at his feet. For just a few seconds, we see what he saw just five days before. Palms laid out before a King. Cheers and cloaks and green palms falling before the grey, stiff ears of the colt He's riding. Then, in a flash, we're back to the painful, poisonous glare of the crowds.

Five days. Just five short days was all the difference there was between praise and utter rejection. How fickle we can be. "How torturous is the human heart, who can understand it," one of the prophets once wrote.
The crowds quickly turn, like leaves in the wind, blowing from one side of the street to the other. No rhyme, no reason. The powers that be, the molders and shapers of the thought of the masses have declared that Jesus is no longer "in." Jesus is "out." And so he is.

I wonder if they ever talked to Jesus? Did they ever look for Him for themselves? Actually seek Him out? Or was the connection merely based on hearsay...

"They" say he's the Messiah.
"They" say he's John the Baptist.
He gave us bread and fish and miracles.

It's easy to go with the flow, to talk "about" Jesus and the Church at the watercoolers and in the cafeterias of the world. It's harder to talk "to" Jesus. To get beyond the shallow surface. To look him in the eye and ask him "Who are you?" And to wait for the answer.

We are too often like animals; we find safety in numbers. We give in to the herd instinct. Afraid of the great dark, cold, alone of standing up for someone, we huddle up in the warmth of compromise and comfortability. We'd rather "read the Times than read the eternities," and trust the most untrustworthy source for giving us the truth about anything (or anyone): the media monster.

But there were some in that crowd on that via dolorosa, that Walk that Remade the World, that stood out, and stood up for him. Unlike the faceless, nameless crowd, we remember them... Veronica, Simon, Mary, John.

The question for us today is the same as it was then, when the palms that praise are turned to poisonous accusation and bitterness: Where will we stand?

The Wound of Our Indifference

The other day a student of mine asked "What do you think would happen if Jesus came back today? Would people still follow him?" We had a little discussion about it, and this poem popped into my head. I first stumbled onto it through a tape I had of Bishop Fulton Sheen; he read it in the middle of a talk he was giving.

Indifference
by G. A. Studdert-Kennedy

When Jesus came to Golgotha,
They hanged Him on a tree,
They drove great nails through hands and feet,
And made a Calvary.
They crowned Him with a crown of thorns,
Red were His wounds and deep,
For those were crude and cruel days,
And human flesh was cheap.

When Jesus came to Birmingham
They simply passed Him by,
They never hurt a hair of Him,
They only let Him die;
For men have grown more tender,
And they would not give Him pain,
They only just passed down the street,
And left Him in the rain.

Still Jesus cried, 'Forgive them,
For they know not what they do!
And still it rained the winter rain
That drenched Him through and through;
The crowd went home and left the streets
Without a soul to see,
And Jesus crouched against a wall
And cried for Calvary.

What a profoundly sad reality it is that today we have become so indifferent. So blaise. So removed from "encounters" that could bring us life. "No thanks... I'm fine. I don't know... nuthin'.... I don't care... either way.... whatever."

Ugh...

There's a passage in Revelation (I think) where God mourns this luke-warmness... "Would that you were hot or cold...." We're like Cream of Wheat these days that has sat on a shelf just a few minutes too long. In the immortal words of John Cougar Mellencamp, it's "beige to beige.... that's all there is these days." The culture's practice of "safe s_x" (and how sad is it that I have to bleep that so it can bypass certain filters) has turned into a contraceptive life in general! Contracepted relationships and endeavors, across the boards we hold back and do not commit with all of the heart and blood and passion that makes us human. So Jesus longs for Calvary, where there was passion and blood and heart.... His Sacred Heart.

If we saw Him would we pass Him by? He is right beside you now, and down the street and in the house and on the train.

Is God a Big Meanie... or Something Else?

I don't know why but it seems so many of us still hold a 7th grade image of God in our minds. Maybe it comes from the misconception that Christianity is "all about rules and commandments and this is a sin and that's a sin and man, what's left... GOSH!" (insert Napoleon Dynamite accent).

Remember the movie Pleasantville that showed sin as being the great liberator, the thing that brings fun and color and woohoo! to life where the boring, rigid, dress pants wearing self-righteous only see black and white? Ugh... what a twisted movie. As twisted as sin.

Ooo there it is! Sin... that nasty three letter word is the quick answer as to why we have to struggle and work and sweat it out to get the true image of God back into our cloudy heads. Sin has distorted our vision; it tricks us into choosing lust for a pleasure over the love that we know really satisfies. It's that slippery slope that always and everywhere puts me first instead of the Other, like kids pushing around for "first" on the sliding board of life.

The scandalously beautiful truth of God as a Lover, as the Youth of Eternal Summers and the Ancient of Days (you go Van Morrison), has still not taken root and traveled deep into our hearts. WHY?

A COUPLE OF GUESSES

#1. LAZINESS..... You see, rules are easy to follow, easy to break, easy to water down, and build back up again. But when someone says "I love you" right in your face.... ooooo. We have to respond in a whole different way. It's become personal. I have to get up off of the couch and do something, be someone... for someone other than me.

#2. FEAR..... What is the first thing Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden when they broke off their personal covenant relationship with God? They were afraid, so they hid themselves. Sin tells us that people are only out to do one of two things to me: manipulate or dominate. They can't honestly be thinking only of my happiness, can they?

"Hark! my lover - here he comes springing across the mountains, leaping across the hills. My lover is like a gazelle or a young stag. Here he stands behind our wall, gazing through the windows, peering through the lattices."
- Song of Songs 2:8-9

Maybe all along God has been peering out at us, not to check up on us and see if we've screwed it up yet so He can toss some lighting bolt of suffering at us, but He's looking through the lattices of the walls we've built up like a Romeo looking for his Juliet...

In the Christian tradition, the Song of Songs (the book that's right smack dab in the middle of the whole Bible) has been interpreted not just as love poetry between a bride and groom, but as the ultimate Love Song between Christ and the Church. The saints and mystics saw it more as the union between Christ and me. Where the two become one flesh, where Divinity marries humanity! It was their favorite book.

"O my dove in the clefts of the rock, in the secret recesses of the cliff,
Let me see you, let me hear your voice,
For your voice is sweet, and you are lovely."

Don't we all, tough guys to tenderfoots, sweethearts to the old and soured, wooed and wounded hearts, all long for this kind of love? This intimacy? To love this way and to be loved?

"On my bed at night I sought him whom my heart loves - I sought him but I did not find him. I will rise then and go about the city; in the streets and crossings I will seek Him whom my heart loves."

Are we afraid of what we might find? Are we too lazy to make the move into this dark night? Perhaps God is bigger than the Big Judge with the Book of Rules we once envisioned Him to be. Perhaps God is less a featureless cloud of bright and biblical proportions and more like the Love in our dreams and our quiet walks and wanderings on the way home from school, down the empty alleys from the pub, the club, and the movie halls where we paint our dreams in high density and shocking intensity. Maybe God's love is bigger than we can possibly ask or imagine.

If we seek, we will find.

"Have you seen him whom my heart loves? I had hardly left them when I found him whom my heart loves. I took hold of him and would not let him go..."

A Scandalous Love

For a little reflection this Christmas Eve, I'd like to direct our eyes to some achingly beautiful, wonderfully scandalous passages in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. Here's a book that I think is too often passed over as heady, theologically dense, or something only for CCD teachers, sisters, priests, academics or theology students to ponder. But the Catechism is for believers, all believers, to leap into, pour over, pray over, and chew on as an essential part of one spiritually nutritious breakfast! The word catechism comes from the Greek root meaning simply "an echo." And that's all it is - an echo of the Truth and Beauty and Goodness of salvation given to us in the Bible. So here we go... chew slowly and enjoy!

SWEET EXCERPTS FROM ARTICLE 3, Paragraph 1.

457 "Sick, our nature demanded to be healed; fallen, to be raised up; dead, to rise again... Closed in the darkness, it was necessary to bring us the light; captives, we awaited a Savior... Are these things minor or insignificant? Did they not move God to descend to human nature and visit it, since humanity was in so miserable and unhappy a state?"
- St. Gregory of Nyssa

"For the Son of God became man so that we might become God."
- St. Athanasius

458 The Word became flesh so that thus we might know God's love: "In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him." "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life."

461 Taking up St. John's expression, "The Word became flesh", the Church calls "Incarnation" the fact that the Son of God assumed a human nature in order to accomplish our salvation in it. In a hymn cited by St. Paul, the Church sings the mystery of the Incarnation: "Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross."

What Does the 'Kingdom of Heaven' Look Like?

We've all grown up with pictures of Heaven in our heads; white robes, floppy little wings, Clarence, fluffy clouds, a harp maybe, Warren Beatty in a running suit, big shiny gates attached to.... more fluffy clouds?

One of the daily Gospel's this week was from Matthew 10. Jesus is sending out the 12 Apostles (like the 12 tribes of a New Israel) and He tells them to pass this on: "As you go, make this proclamation: 'The Kingdom of heaven is at hand.'"

Great! It is? Where would that be? As we look around, heaven is not always clearly seen. At least, not the vision of heaven that perhaps we thought heaven was...

A SWEET TANGENT....

I'm half way through Pope Benedict's new book (it's fantastic). With nearly every page I find myself pausing and going "whoa... I never thought of that before." The Pope weaves together both Old and New Testaments like a fisherman weaving his net, and according to one article I read, he's catching some new readers. Ones who never saw this quiet scholar with the heart of a father coming. A section I recently read talks all about what this "Kingdom of God" (aka Heaven) really looks like.

Here's what it's not:

- It's not a time shrouded in the future when we imagine all the people, living life in peace... woohoo aahaahaah... (little Lennon there)

- It's not a castle in the clouds, where nobody shouts or talks too loud.... although there is a lady all in white, who holds us and sings a lullaby ;) .... (Les Mis, anyone?)

- It's not even, primarily, a place where Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Catholics, Protestants, Jews and Muslims finally accept each other and we all just get along..... (...Rodney King?)

- and finally, the Kingdom of Heaven is not a palace with pillars, banners, and trumpets with the whole gaggle of humanity toting togas and sort of fanning God as He sits on a golden throne. (He likes to stoop down low and wash our feet, remember?)

The Pope says that the Kingdom of Heaven is.... a person. It's Jesus.

St. Edith Stein, that pillar of intellect and sanctity who was born Jewish, then became an atheist, then found Jesus, became a nun and was later killed in Auschwitz (what an amazing roller coaster ride that was!); she knew this truth about the Kingdom, that it's a person not a palace.

She said "In the heart of Jesus, which was pierced, the kingdom of heaven and the land of earth are bound together. Here is for us the source of life."

Our longing for love finds its home in a Sacred Heart, not gilded halls. This Kingdom has been misrepresented. I don't want golden streets as much as I want to kneel at His feet. Can I get a witness?

So let's hear this word of Jesus today as a word for us to come closer to Him, the One Whose love drove Him to take on a body for us. And a heartbeat that will never ever stop beating for us. Think about that one for a minute. Whoa.

"The kingdom of heaven is at hand" means here I am! Come and see!

Amen! Thy Kingdom come!

Empty. . .

Suffering scours and scrapes us clean.

Then alone, we are hollow.
Empty as the heart of a mountain,
rough-hewn by the cuts of sin and sorrow.

Sitting in our stone-carved solitudes, clattering, words falling like rocks, who does not ultimately long to be filled? To be answered?


We come of age and reach that "cross"-road where a choice must be made. A turn to the right or the left, a turn within or a turn without.

Do we believe? Is there a hand reaching into our wounded sides to touch our trembling hearts? Will it take hold of our fear and pour it out? Is this a hand we can trust?

Will we take it or will we fear again what this pierced hand holds out to us?
Will we run from Crucified Love?

Running will not heal the hurt. We must put aside the pills and ask for no more substitutes. No more Babelling Towers that rise up to our own hollow heavens. We must turn back to Love.

Love that was born in a cave in the earth.
Love that was buried in a tomb in the earth.

We find Him suffering too, scoured and scraped clean by sorrow,
our sorrow, all sorrow, heaped up and balanced on His back.

Didn't we notice He was there?
In the classroom, in the alleyway, on the gallows, under mortar fire and in the ocean deep and cold? Where else would Love be?

All death and sorrow has been swallowed up in His death.
All tears and madness are consumed in His dying.
All tombs will someday be empty because of Him.

So let's come before Crucified Love and weep; then let's peer inside and see.

Until we recognize Him in all of this, we are in the dark, alone, outside an empty tomb...
struggling to make sense of ourselves without Him.

Seeking the living among the dead.