Most Holy Trinity Parish

2008-07-16T17:52:00.001-07:00

“To hold the note is to spoil the song.” Richard Paul Evans

When I read Evans’ words I thought about how we try to do this in our lives. Life is a series of notes that make up the melody of our lives. Sometimes the melody is melancholy, other times it is uplifting but the melody always moves along in tune with the events we experience.

There are many aspects to music—major and minor chords, harmony, counterpoint, and much more. The instrument also adds to the beauty of the song. Pitch and volume are important. As we look back on the past, we can see how we have experienced these different aspects of life.

When we are young, we can hardly wait for the next measure. The rhythm is fast and we don’t want too many rests between the notes of our years. As we mature, the rhythm does not slow down when we marry and have a family. We look forward to those rests and there are moments when we want to hold the notes a little longer.

Holding the notes to enjoy them is fine for a little while but impossible to sustain. The melody needs to go on, to bring fullness and completion to the song we are composing. We encounter those minor, sad-sounding chords at different intervals and try to hurry through them. These are not the notes we want to hold onto. Sometimes it seems as though they will go on indefinitely but eventually they move us to the major, happier chords. Our song fluctuates between major and minor melodies to show us that joys and sorrows are not the whole composition. It is the rests between the notes that allow us to continue writing our unique song.

In life, a pause helps us enjoy certain times. You’ve heard, “Take time to smell the roses.” We stop to enjoy the moments that bring us joy. We also need a pause to think about the difficulties we are experiencing. It is during those pauses and rests in the midst of difficulties that we can allow prayer to slow us down and help us with the interval of sorrows. Prayer allows us to go inward to listen to the deep stirrings in our hearts. Prayer is the answer to the call we have received from God to listen to Him. Listening brings us comfort and peace as we quiet the instruments banging in our minds. Harmony within comes as we silence the noises that prevent us from hearing the Eternal One Who has the unfinished song in His hands.

Prayer is essential so that we do not hold onto the note that appeals to us and miss the ones that will bring us to a greater understanding of the music from the Great Composer. There is purpose in each note and it moves us to the next stanza to reveal the special song made just for us.

Listen. The song is yours. Savor each note. Rest. Pause. Pick up the rhythm and flow with it. Whether long or short, the song will lead you to the final measure, the final note of the composition created just for you. As that note fades, you will hear a new composition, a new eternal song in harmony with all those whose earthly song was completed before yours. There will be no more minor chords of sorrow as we sing the joyous song our God prepared for us before time began. Sing, dance, rest and know that each note, whether long or short, is bringing you to the new song heard only when our earthly melody is silenced. Do not fear the final measure. It is only the beginning of a new song.

Alma Maish July 16, 2008

2007-12-04T16:51:00.000-07:00

COME BE MY LIGHT

Every Sunday I visit the poor in Calcutta’ slums. I cannot help them, because I do not have anything, but I go to give them joy…O God how easily I make them happy! Give me strength to be always the light of their lives and so lead them to You—Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Advent meditations)

Mother Teresa was the light of the lives of the poor she encountered. In the book by the title, “Come Be My Light,” it was Christ Who uttered these words to her (page 98). We always think of Christ as the light of the world, but only through us can his radiance shine in the darkness of our world. Mother Teresa was a supreme example of how we can all bring this light to the world by being the light of Christ Himself.

She struggled through the dark night of the soul as St. John of the Cross describes it. Where was Christ? Why had he left her? After seeing and hearing him so many times, suddenly He was not there to guide her through the struggles she went through to be His light in the slums of India. How could she continue to radiate his love and compassion and mercy without Him at her side? How could she follow in His footsteps if He did not show her the way? What words could she utter without hearing His Holy Spirit, the One Who promised He would be with us always and speak for us, pray for us and groan with us?

It was faith and hope and love that held her together during the years when she felt so alone. Faith that even though she no longer saw or heard her Lord, He was walking with her through the wards of the destitute and diseased that she and her Missionaries of Charity cared for. She saw Him in their faces, heard His cry as they suffered, saw their joy as they beheld her face radiating the face of Christ.

The hope of seeing Jesus again, whether in visions or in the eternal light after this life, kept her going when she felt so alone and had so many battles to win for Him. How could she do it? She had been content as a Loreto nun. Why could she not serve him in that capacity? Because he wanted “Indian Nuns, Missionaries of Charity, who would be my fire of love amongst the poor…” (page 98). This was His command—to bring souls to Him. And only she could do this for Him. Jesus kept asking her, “Wilt thou refuse?” as He explained how much He wanted to be with the poor and how He could be with them only through her. “…obey cheerfully and promptly and without any questions…I shall never leave you—if you obey.” How could she refuse her Lord? He promised never to leave her if she obeyed, therefore she did the work He chose for her knowing Jesus never breaks a promise. Hope is essential in all we do, no matter how long it takes. “Faith is the realization of what is hoped for and evidence of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) She struggled for the rest of her life because of “things not seen” nor heard. But her faith without evidence kept her hope alive as she lived in the dark night of the soul.

Love is what Mother Teresa knew and gave to the poorest of the poor and the world, the love of Christ that filled her and spilled out on others. “…in your love for Me—they will see Me, know Me, want Me.” Christ told her not to fear—“it is I in you, with you, for you.” Again Christ asked if she would refuse Him. Her answer was her life given fully, totally in faith, hope and love.

Much has been made of her feelings of being without Christ. They have tried to convince the public that she was an atheist, that God does not exist. Nothing could be farther from the truth. She compared this lack of natural and supernatural support to “hell.” She remained faithful knowing “that the work is His…” (page 250). Her hope was alive as she gave her life to the poor, seeing in them the fire of His love as she served Him by lighting this fire. “Come Be My Light,” He asked, and she said, “Yes.” May we all be His light in a dark and lonely world.

12-04-07 Alma Maish

2007-10-05T12:35:00.001-07:00

Did anyone see the report on Mother Teresa that aired near the end of The News Hour last night (Thursday, 4-Oct-07)? They talked about her feelings of God calling her into service and then leaving her alone.

Having seen and heard that, I feel compelled to share my thoughts with you and I wonder what you think.

You see, I think God, the best father there is, pays attention to His troubled children. Not that He doesn't think of those less troubled. But like a parent who tells one child "go do this" and they do it, and to a second child "go do that" and the second one struggles to do that, the parent gives attention to the one struggling. Even at the expense of the first feeling left out.

Remember, who, having lost one of 100 sheep would not leave the 99 to search for the lost one? And again, the parable of the prodigal son. In the latter case, the father appears to not focus on the "good" son, never throwing a party for him. Instead, he throws a party upon the return of the prodigal son. And what did the older brother say?

And so it would appear The Father was not focused on the "good" daughter, the good servant. But, yes, He was.

And so, I think, it was with Mother Teresa while she walked among us. A servant of God. Called to do a task. Wondering 'where are you Father?' but by faith, continueing the work she was called to do, while Our Father tended to others: seeking the lost, increasing our faith, working miracles so that we might see and believe.

Look ahead to Sundays readings.
http://www.usccb.org/nab/100707.shtml

2007-08-31T12:21:00.000-07:00

Have you heard of John Dear?

Not John Deere the tractor people. John Dear the Jesuit Priest, Peace Activist, Organizer, Lecturer, Retreat leader, and author/editor of 20 books on peace and nonviolence.

It just so happens that he will be in Tucson Wednesday, September 26, 2007, 7:00 pm at St. Cyril Catholic Church (4725 E. Pima).

If you are not familiar with him, you can learn more at http://johndear.org/ Check out some of the articles he has written, there is some good stuff there.

Then come to St. Cyril church on the 26th and hear him in person.

2007-08-28T05:41:00.001-07:00

SIGNS AND SYMBOLS

Growing Faith, our Tuesday morning class that uses the Catechism of the Catholic Church as a resource, was studying the liturgy and how important signs and symbols are because that is a way that God “speaks” to us. “Once these signs and symbols are used by us to express our faith, they are no longer common, but they become holy.”

A few days later, after preparing for Tuesday’s class, I attended Mass with a friend of mine at Saints Peter and Paul Church. As is my usual custom, I arrived early to pray and reflect and prepare myself for the celebration we would participate in. I looked around at the church and thought about our lesson regarding signs and symbols. I was surrounded by them! I had been at SSPP numerous times and always thought it was a beautiful church, but I had never really “seen” these signs and symbols the way I saw them that morning.

I scrutinized the huge crucifix behind the altar with its curtain backdrop and the surrounding gold décor. It was beautiful, impressive, and truly inspiring. I spent a few minutes gazing at it in wonder. The splendor almost took my breath away as I reflected on the Passion of our Lord.

My eyes turned to my left. On the wall next to the Sanctuary was a large imbedded sculpture of the Virgin Mary. “Mother Mary,” I whispered. Her humility, her love for the Baby Jesus in her arms came through so clearly. I had never truly “seen” this sculpture before. Chiseled in stone, her image and the image of our Lord were in a light cream color. Normally, a sculpture in one single color would not stand out against the backdrop of a wall of the same color, but in its simplicity, it brought out the love of Mary for us and for our Lord.

I looked on my right and there was St. Joseph with the tools of his trade. A carpenter, devoted to his tasks that supported his wife Mary, and her Son, Jesus. Acceptance, I thought. He accepted the dream sent to him, he accepted Mary as his wife, he accepted the Son that was hers and supported and loved them until he was no longer on earth. He loved. Love and acceptance. What a holy man he was!

Looking up I saw the sunlight streaming in through the stained glass windows in all its brilliance, illuminating the many colors outlining the Saints in our tradition. I was reminded that they were human, how they failed at times and sinned the way we do, but they loved the Lord in a much deeper way and were set apart by God the Father for their special role of being our models for a holy life. They prayed, they served, they adored the Trinity, and they truly loved their neighbors. Like our Lord, they lived with poverty, discrimination, humiliation and even death.

I could have spent more time contemplating and praying the Stations of the Cross but it was time for Mass to begin. I paid much closer attention to the signs and symbols presented through the robes of the priest, the Cross carried in and the Offertory gifts of bread and wine that were brought up. All ordinary things used to remind us of the extraordinary events occurring on the altar and in the church building. Like us, these ordinary things are consecrated and set apart through the Sacraments, which are also visible signs of God’s love for us. As ordinary human beings, we, too, are signs and symbols to others and they are signs and symbols to us. Let us be more aware of these ordinary, common things and know that God is with us in many ways. He lives among us and within us and we don’t have to look far to see Him in all things.

Alma Maish 8-28-07

2007-07-03T12:38:00.000-07:00

CONTROL

Stephen ponders “control.” He asks “Why do people seek control so often?” and “When is one’s control according to His will?”

Good questions. People seek control of others and situations in order to control their own lives. There is an insecurity in them that doesn’t let them accept themselves or others as they are and allow those they seek to control to make their own decisions and live according to their needs.

Perhaps fear of not being able to manage their own lives is the root of trying to control others. History is a series of control—controlling populations, nations, and events. Every day we hear of someone trying to control another through abuse, gangs, lies, even murder. What does this person fear that makes him/her try to dominate others? It is the fear of insecurity that drives people to do what will keep them on top. Being the best, the greatest, the icon, the idol, the boss is most important to them. By controlling others they feel the security of insecurity.

Their insecurity stems from a lack of trust in God. If they trust in God, what will happen to them? The great unknown is frightening. They need to take a leap into faith, the darkness that does not reveal the future, and allow God to catch them and bring them to the light of love. Their insecurity makes them fear love because love can lead them to give up control. When you love someone, you are vulnerable and put yourself in the hands of the one you trust. When that someone does not fulfill your expectations you are afraid to trust and love again. Therefore, it is easier to control others than to let them control you through the pain you carry inside from failed relationships.

John Powell, S. J. in his book, “Seasons of the Heart” (page 190) writes: Security is such a deep need in us…What will happen to me if I let go? Will I have enough—enough time, enough money, enough provisions for old age, enough people to care for me, enough intelligence, enough health…? And so I hold on tightly to my security banisters. They make me feel safe but they keep me stationary. They are an obstacle to grace.

Grace. A gift from God. Grace is peace with the Father and oneself. Lacking the peace within that the Father gives causes us to live in constant turmoil. Either we control or are controlled. As Powell writes, “(the security banisters) keep me stationary.” I cannot move forward, I cannot change, I cannot be whole. To remain in control means I have to remain as I am today. There cannot be any growth, emotional or spiritual, that will help me look deeply within and transform my inner self so that God can work in me. Change comes only within me, not in others, because that is where our Lord is and waiting for me to make that choice. He wants me to be the person He created, the one he loves, the one He wants to spend eternity with.

Control. A word filled with pain for both the controller and the one controlled. Love. An action filled with grace that leads to trust. Let go of fear, let go of insecurity, let go of control and let God bring you peace and freedom within as you allow Him to love you. It is His love that will show you His will to live your life the way He has chosen for you and how you can allow others to do the same.

Alma Maish

2007-06-20T16:33:00.000-07:00

This idea of control continues to be on my mind. I had read the speech Mother Teresa gave at the 1994 National Prayer breakfast some time ago and a portion of it came into my mind again as I contemplate control. So I’ll share that section with you now.

I had the most extraordinary experience of love of neighbor with a Hindu family. A gentleman came to our house and said: "Mother Teresa, there is a family who have not eaten for so long. Do something." So I took some rice and went there immediately. And I saw the children - their eyes shining with hunger. I don't know if you have ever seen hunger. But I have seen it very often. And the mother of the family took the rice I gave her and went out. When she came back, I asked her: "Where did you go? What did you do?" And she gave me a very simple answer: "They are hungry also." What struck me was that she knew - and who are they? A Muslim family - and she knew. I didn't bring any more rice that evening because I wanted them, Hindus and Muslims, to enjoy the joy of sharing. – Mother Teresa

What strikes me was how, by not bringing more rice, Mother Teresa doesn't mingle in controlling the joy of others sharing, that is, of another persons giving and another persons receiving.

control

2007-06-14T21:49:00.000-07:00

what about control?

when is ones control according to His will? Is it ever? or is ones controlling behavior a sort of the anti-spirit? Think about it.

How often are you seeking control? How about, how often are you letting things take there natural course of action. It sounds a little scary, even unsensible to just let things go, like letting a twig float down stream. Just let go.

Or is compulsive behavior the name of the game?

When one says things need to be in order, in control, what is behind it? Who is the one control is wished for?

Why do people seek control so often?

Tell me. Why?

I wonder why.

2007-05-19T08:23:00.001-07:00

I AM GIFT

They belonged to you, and you gave them to me… John 17:6

Have you ever thought of yourself as a gift from God the Father to Jesus His Son? The Creator has given us to Jesus so that we may believe in the love the Father has for His Son and the love they both have for us.

John 17 is known as “The Priestly Prayer” because John presents it as the prayer of Jesus before His arrest. Jesus prays for us, because we have been given to Him by God, His Father. How precious we are to our God! Knowing the love His Son has for us, He presents Him with the gift of the creatures He created!

A gift is given with no strings attached, a sign of a person’s love and esteem for the receiver. Gifts are treasured possessions, cherished as a reminder of the giver. When we receive a gift it is usually offered in pretty paper with perhaps a bow and a card included. We tear the paper off in anticipation of what is hidden. When Jesus received each one of us, we were wrapped in the grace of God, the most beautiful wrapping a gift could have. If we think of ourselves as a “gift” we should envision the beauty that enfolded us and realize how precious we were before we were presented to Jesus. Our beauty has been from the beginning and will last through all eternity.

The loveliness and value of the gift increased when Jesus accepted it from the Father. The Father’s grace enveloped each one and continues to enhance our beauty as Jesus holds us in his hands and heart. …everything of mine is yours and everything of yours is mine, and I have been glorified in them” (John 17:10). As gift, we glorify Jesus!

Do we believe these words of Jesus? Do we reveal and reflect the Son’s glory in our words and actions? In verse 22-23 Jesus goes on to say that I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one…so that the world may know that you sent me and that you loved them even as you loved me.

Reflect on this! We are glorified with Jesus! The Father loves us as much as He loves His Son! The love the Father has for us could not be kept to Himself, so He gave His beloved creatures to His Son. Now, just as Jesus and the Father are one, we are part of that oneness.

The gift has been received from and shared with the Giver. The Giver and the Receiver cherish each one of us because of their great love for each other. If we are one with them, we share in the Divine Love between the Father and the Son. We are gift, prayed for, protected, cherished, forgiven, never forgotten, glorified, and always one with the Father and the Son.

Alma Maish

2007-04-27T05:39:00.000-07:00

LORD?

“Lord” is fading at some churches.” (Headline, Arizona Daily Star, April 22, 2007)

Perhaps some of you saw this article and agree or disagree with the churches cited that no longer use the word, “Lord,” because it is too “hierarchical,” “non inclusive,” or “patriarchal.” First Congregational United Church of Christ states they are “suspicious” of the word.

I don’t understand their “suspicion” since it is clearly used (according to the Dictionary of the Bible, John L. McKenzie, S.J.) as a Hebrew word (‘adôn) in the Old Testament meaning “an honorific title of a king, a god, or a husband,” and also “an owner of a slave, and especially as a polite form of address, or applied to any person of superior rank.” To be suspicious according to the dictionary is to: 3. b) tending habitually to suspect, esp. to suspect evil. If we look up the word, suspicion, it refers to the act or an instance of suspecting guilt, a wrong, harmfulness, etc. with little or no supporting evidence.

Since the Bible Dictionary describes the word in the Old Testament as above, I have no problem with the word, “Lord.” After all, we call God “King,” he is God, and his relationship with Israel was often described as intimate, like the marriage in Hosea where Israel was unfaithful and the “Lord” (God) referred to himself as “her husband.” In the New Testament we find “Lord” used frequently by Paul in his letters and, in the gospels, “Lord” is a post-resurrection term referring to the Risen Jesus.

Jesus describes himself as a bridegroom (Luke 5:35; Matthew 9:15; Mark 2:19), and Paul echoes this in 2 Corinthians 11:2. The church is the bride in Revelation 19:7-9, 21:2, 22:17. If believers (the Church) are the “bride” does this mean we are all female? This thought is just as absurd as their reasons for not using the word, “Lord!”

In my personal opinion, I think the ones who object to the word, “Lord,” must be ego challenged if they can’t think of Jesus as Lord of their lives. He is God, describes himself as “husband,” we are his servants (slaves as Paul states), and he is a person of superior rank. He qualifies for that title and I do not feel diminished in the least when I refer to him this way.

I agree that God the Father and the Holy Spirit are not male or female. They are spirit and unseen but knowable because we carry their image within us, as Genesis 1:26, 27 tells us. Jesus definitely was male. Are these people so insecure in their own sexuality that they can’t see that the whole Bible is catholic, which means that it includes everyone, male and female? Catholic means “as a whole,” even universal, and God loves us all.

As for The Lord’s Prayer being renamed as “The Prayer of Our Creator,” the prayer was spoken by Jesus, so if they want to change “Lord” they should rename it “The Prayer of Jesus, the Son of God.”

I think what these people object to is the “patriarchy” or the hierarchy in the Church. They resent the male dominance of leadership. They forget that these “patriarchs” and “hierarchy” are servants of the people according to the example Jesus gave us in John 13:1-16. As Master, he was also Servant in his relationship to his disciples and states that a “slave” is not greater than his master. Since these churches already have women priests, they have no reason to complain about the hierarchy since they themselves are part of it.

I could go on with all the objections they have to the word, “Lord,” but for me, “Lord” encompasses all that the Trinity stands for: King, Creator, Father, Mother, Servant, Slave, Master, Teacher, Rabbi, and Bridegroom. Even these words are not enough to describe the faith and love I have for Yahweh God, Lord Sabaoth, Adonai; Jesus, Son of God, Second Person of the Trinity, Savior, Redeemer, Kyrios; Holy Spirit, Love, Counselor, Advocate, and Consoler.

We must never forget we are “the Temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God and that you are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19). If we are not our own, then we belong to God, the Lord and giver of life.

The Dictionary of the Bible sums it up this way: “Therefore he is to be universally confessed as Lord.” And, the Presbyterian pastor, Mark Roessler, stated in the article, “If we continue to water down and make ourselves politically correct, there won’t be anything left. God is the king of the universe. We are to bow before him. He is king, savior, Lord and master…God is the great patriarch of heaven and Earth.”

AMEN!

Alma Maish

2007-04-05T05:05:00.000-07:00

MASTER AND SERVANT

Enter into the mystery of being master and servant. Look at your neighbors and pick up the towel. With authority grounded in humility, kneel before them and wash off the dirt of daily living. If you are the neighbor in need of washing, lay aside your pride and, like Peter, accept the service of the one kneeling before you. Then go, and do likewise. Be blessed as you wash the feet of others and reveal the face of the Master through the towel in your hands.

Alma L. Maish—Excerpt from “Master and Servant,” published in Living Prayer Magazine and People’s Companion to the Breviary Volume I.

2007-04-02T05:57:00.000-07:00

MY GOD, MY GOD…

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew’s Gospel (27:46) records the most sorrowful words Jesus spoke during his life on earth. To read them is heartbreaking. Did he really feel abandoned and forgotten by his Father?

When we first read these words, we are shaken to the core. If the Father could abandon Jesus, his only beloved Son, in his final moments, then we, too, might be forgotten in our last moments on earth. Jesus was innocent, we are not. Therefore, it would seem just that the Father would leave us in our sins and let us die without any comfort or hope of eternal life.

If we say that God is love and He will never forget us, then how could He possibly leave us in our sins, wondering if we will have eternal life with Him and Jesus? We probably will not suffer a horrible death like Jesus did, but we all have to face death sometime in the future. Where is our hope if Jesus felt abandoned on the cross?

If we realize that Jesus was reciting Psalm 22 when he uttered these words of sorrow, we know that our hope lies in him. Jesus was praying to his Father! The first twenty-two verses describe the Messiah’s suffering at the hands of those depicted like wild animals tormenting him. Considering that this Psalm was written centuries before Jesus was on the cross, the description of the Messiah’s ordeal is chilling. How could the Psalmist have composed this Psalm without knowing Jesus and what he would suffer?

The animals in the Psalm are ferocious, eager to surround and bring down the Messiah. Reading these verses carefully, we see the Passion event the Gospels describe. If the Psalm stopped at verse 22, indeed this prayer would be one of someone helpless and alone.

However, note the change in verse 23 from a description of pain and suffering to one of reliance on the Lord. The Messiah “will proclaim” the name of the Lord and “praise” him. The following verses state “he has not spurned…did not turn his face away…he heard him.” Here is the hope Jesus had when he uttered his famous words of sorrow! His Father is not far away but very near. His Father hears his “cry.”

Like Jesus, we go through times when we feel very much alone. We wonder if we can get through the difficulties that come into our lives. We pray and our words are only sounds breathed into thin air. Where is my Lord? Why doesn’t he help me? Perhaps we should look again at Psalm 22:23—I will proclaim your name to my brethren; in the midst of the assembly I will praise you…

We are to proclaim and praise our God. Even in the midst of events thought too great to bear, we are to tell others about God’s great love for us and praise Him as our hope. He hears our cry and will answer our prayer in the way that is best for each one of us. Don’t give in to despair. Pray the way our Savior prayed on the cross and rely on the goodness and love of God the Father.

Alma Maish

2007-03-15T08:28:00.000-07:00

COMMENT RECEIVED ON “LISTEN”:

I agree with you 100 %; Although, for me, It is easy to say, and so hard to do.

Listening to God, requires total silence; it requires being able to stop the mind and focus your attention in listening. One issue that happens to me, is being afraid of not being able to listen to God, so the first reaction is to activate your mind and assume that He already did talk to me. So the question is how do you know what to listen for?

MY RESPONSE:

Listening does require total silence in prayer but that is not the only time we can listen to God’s Word. We listen to God and our Lord in others, in every day events, when we worship, as we admire creation, deal with difficulties, read Scripture and other spiritual readings—the list is endless. We are always listening!

If we are listening, does this mean that we hear the message God is sending us? We hear many things during the day—traffic noises, TV, radio, stereos, IPODS, people talking—but are we listening to these noises and paying attention to them? Probably not. They are background noises that are there and we hear them but we don’t take them in.

Listening to God is different. It is the amount of attention we pay to what we hear and take in that makes a difference. If a relative or friend or stranger comes up to us and asks for our time in order to talk to us about a concern, do we stop what we are doing to listen to them? Perhaps if we thought it was God speaking to us, we would!

When we read Scripture and a verse catches our attention and we need to think about it, do we realize this is God speaking to us?

At Mass, when we give the sign of peace to those around us, do we smile automatically as we shake their hand or do we look them in the eyes and inwardly bless them? Have we heard God deep within asking us to be sincere in our handshake and truly bless others?

Take a walk outside. Look at the mountains. Breathe in the dry desert air. Admire the blooms on plants. Take pleasure in the birds, butterflies, and insects flying around in the early morning air. Fill your eyes with the beauty of the blue sky and floating clouds and the night sky with its shining stars and glowing moon. God speaks in these ways, too.

Hug your wife and children. Tell your parents you love them. Say a kind word today to those you work with. Compliment someone who needs to be uplifted. Be patient with those who annoy you. God is asking for your attention. Yes! He is speaking to you to be God’s Word to others!

Pray and listen, we are told. We can pray wherever we are at any time of the day. Therefore, we can listen to God speak wherever we are at any time of the day. Awareness of the present moment is how we listen to God. He is here, now and always. Open the ears of your heart and listen to the Lord Who abides deep within.

Alma Maish

2007-03-13T19:16:00.000-07:00

LISTEN

In the beginning…God said…

Genesis is the first book of the Bible and makes it clear that God speaks to us as He begins the litany of His Word and creates the universe. The Scriptures continue with other references to the Word of God coming to us at different times in history. “God said…” the prophets warned the people when they had strayed from God. They refused to listen and suffered the consequences of indifference to their One True God.

What are we to do with God’s Word? We are to listen! In the Hebrew, to listen means to hear and obey. When you hear the Word of God and listen and obey, you will follow the path God has set before you. Your faith will be strong, your love shall be great, your thoughts pure, your words kind. Compassion will fill your heart. The beauty of God’s universe will overwhelm you. His unconditional love will humble you.

The Psalms also ask us to listen. Psalm 46:11 commands that we “Be still and know that I am God.” If we are “still” we are listening. If we are listening, wisdom comes to us (Psalm 49:4) and we know that God is our Father-Creator, the one who fights for us, our protector, the one who saves us through His Son, Jesus Christ.

King Solomon did not ask for riches when the Lord God appeared to him in a dream and informed him he could ask for something from God and it would be his (1 Kings 3:5). He asked for a “listening (understanding) heart” so that he could rule wisely. He chose to listen to God and was granted wisdom and built a beautiful temple to honor the Lord and where the Lord would dwell among His people.

We might not have a dream or vision in which God speaks to us directly, but as we pray we can ask for a listening heart. By listening in prayer we will know God in the Biblical sense, since intimacy with God means that He is within us. “Abide” is a word that John uses frequently in his Gospel to illustrate how the Father is always with us. Abide has a beautiful connotation of resting and remaining within a dwelling. Just as the Tabernacle Tent in the Exodus desert was a sanctuary where Yahweh God would “dwell in their midst,” in the very heart of their community, the dwelling became a sign of God’s love and protection as the Israelites trudged through the desert (Exodus 25:8).

When we pray, we are inviting our Lord to “abide” in us. He is literally setting up a “tent” or “tabernacle” in our heart where He remains with us always. Christ abides in the depths of our soul where He speaks to us and this is where we go in prayer to abide and listen to Him.

We can speak to God at different times, in different places and in many ways. After formal prayer or spontaneous requests, we should make time to listen to Him as well. “Be still,” the Psalmist asks of us. When we are still the silence can envelop us and surround us with the peace and quiet and calm we need to endure our every day experiences. Joy is in the silence of prayer as we abide in the presence of God.

It is fitting that after we listen, we conclude our quiet prayer time with a proclamation of gratitude and praise. We are to thank God for all His blessings, mercy and love. We are to praise him with all the love in our hearts.

Pray, listen, obey, and give thanks and praise. Enter the silence of prayer and rejoice in the Lord!

Alma Maish

2007-03-03T05:28:00.000-07:00

DEMAND FOR A SIGN

LUKE 11:29-32

"This generation is an evil generation; it seeks a sign, but no sign will be given it, except the sign of Jonah." Some take this to mean the three days and three nights that Jonah was inside the belly of the large fish, comparing it to the three days Jesus was in the darkness of the tomb after his crucifixion and death. But Jesus is not referring to his three days in the tomb, he is referring to the sign of the Ninevite's repentance after Jonah preached to them and they turned to the Lord God.

Jonah resented the Lord's love for the Ninevites because they were different, they were not the Chosen People, and did not deserve the Lord's attention. Only Jews deserved that honor and Jonah, as a Jew, was reluctant to preach to them. However, it took only a day of his preaching to make the Ninevites realize how far they were from the Lord and repented. Instead of celebrating his overnight success, Jonah was angry. He did not realize he was a sign of God's mercy and love.

Like the Jews in Luke's Gospel, we demand signs, too, so the Church has given them to us with different liturgical seasons. Lent is a sign that it is time for change, a time for repentance, a time to think about returning to the Lord with our whole heart. The first sign of Lent is putting ashes on our foreheads as a symbol of repentance and mourning. The Ninevites did something similar--they proclaimed a fast and wore sackcloth to show outwardly their repentance and mourning. Are we so different from the Ninevites? Obviously not, if we need the season of Lent to make us think about changing our daily lives.

Some take the putting on of ashes seriously and others think of it as only a symbol of something done for one day--Ash Wednesday. Our smudged foreheads show the world we are faithful Catholics. However, there are those who only come to church on Ash Wednesday, Easter and Christmas. They don't feel the need to repent, therefore, nothing changes in their lives. They wash their faces and continue the rest of the year as they were before Ash Wednesday.

Ashes should be the outward sign that we repent and look toward a new life with our Risen Lord. As we darken our foreheads, we should pray that we can overcome the darkness of sin in our everyday lives. Forty days is not enough time to accomplish this, so we should strive to change at least one thing about ourselves during Lent. Once the 40 days of Lent are over, will we forget the sign of ashes as a sign of a path to new life? Like those "faithful" Ash Wednesday Catholics, will we continue as though ashes are only an external symbol instead of a sign for inner change?

At Baptism, we were anointed on the forehead with oil after being plunged into the holy water as the sign of entering into the tomb with Christ and rising with him into a new life. On Ash Wednesday we acknowledge that we have not been true to our baptismal promises. There is no water, no entering of the tomb, no rising until Easter. There are only the dark ashes to remind us that we need to re-commit ourselves to follow Christ fully. May this Lent be a sign to you that you can overcome the darkness of sin and rise with Christ into a new life with Him.

Alma Maish

2007-02-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

MARY IN LENT

During Lent we reflect on Jesus and his passion. We attend the Stations of the Cross, hear Scripture readings leading up to Good Friday when the Passion is read and wonder how we can do something for Lent that will make us better Christians by the end of Lent.

Perhaps we can also reflect on how Mary is part of every day of Lent. Mary, as Mother of Jesus, was there before His birth, during His life, and at the foot of the Cross. Our 40 days of Lent are nothing compared to a lifetime with Jesus leading up to the Passion.

Mary experienced the joys, sufferings, disappointments and sorrows that only a mother knows and experiences with her children. As “Mother” she could not separate herself from her Son knowing He was born to suffer for the world, for all. Jesus’ divinity did not change the circumstances of these events to make them easier on her. If he would not avoid the Cup His Father had given Him to drink deeply of, there is no way Mary could avoid it either.

Simeon predicted that “a sword will pierce” Mary (Luke 2:35). What was Simeon saying to Mary with these words? From Scripture, we know that Mary never felt her flesh pierced in any way. Her body never suffered the torture her Son endured.

We know the “sword” was the suffering she would have to accept. Intense suffering is like a knife in our heart, as though the blood is draining from us leaving us weak and lifeless. Imagine Mary at the foot of the Cross with her heart pierced as the nails plunged into her Son’s hands and feet. She felt the blows of the hammer as it drove the nails into his flesh. The blood flowing from his head under the Crown of Thorns was her blood, the blood she had given him before his birth. His back, torn from the lashes he had sustained, burned like fire on her back, too.

Yes, Mary is present to us during Lent. When we pray the Rosary, let us meditate on the decades of the Sorrowful Mysteries and see Mary there with us as we go from the first Our Father to the Hail, Holy Queen at the end. These are the agonies she suffered as she lived her life with Jesus. Let us accompany her as she walks the Passion with Christ, and, like her, look beyond the suffering to the joy of the Resurrection.

Alma Maish

2007-02-20T14:51:00.000-07:00

ASH WEDNESDAY

...Jesus stressed the hidden life. Whether we give alms, pray, or fast, we are to do it in a hidden way, not to be praised by people but to enter into closer communion with God. Lent is a time of returning to God. It is a time to confess how we keep looking for joy, peace and satisfaction in the many people and things surrounding us, without really finding what we desire. Only God can give us what we want. So we must be reconciled with God, as Paul says, and let that reconciliation be the basis of our relationships with others. Lent is a time of refocusing, of re-entering the place of truth, of reclaiming our true identity.
Eternal Seasons--A Liturgical Journey with Henri J. M. Nouwen

submitted by Alma Maish

2007-01-15T12:54:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking about what it means to be a disciple. What is a Disciple? I asked one person and they told me very quickly, "follower of Christ". What does that mean?

Here are some of my thoughts.

Sometimes we might define disciple, follower of Christ, with a feeling we have in our heart, but our action might be out of step with that feeling. Think about the action of the Disciples.

Sometimes we hear the word disciple and think of the Twelve. Close your eyes for a moment and imagine Jesus and the fishermen: Simon (Peter) and Andrew, James and John. They were out fishing all day with nothing to show for it, their nets were empty. When Jesus told Simon to cast their nets again, they obeyed and this time pulled up so many fish, their boat was in jepordy of sinking. Amazed by what He had done for them, they abandonded their gear and followed Him. When God calls us to do something, how do we respond? And when we see evidence of His divine providence, how do we react?

I also think of Bartimaeus when I think of disciple, follower of Christ. Remember when he kept calling out, "Son of David, have pity on me." He just kept calling and calling and no one could silence him. "Son of David, have pity on me." Jesus said to him in reply, "What do you want me to do for you?" The blind man replied to him, "Master, I want to see."

What strikes me is how Bartimaeus just kept calling and how this relates to prayer in our daily lives. He just kept calling out. Just keep calling out. Pray always.

But then all the more, how Jesus told him, "Go your way; your faith has saved you." Imagine how one, in the year 2007, might respond to Christ saying 'go your way'. Sometimes just looking back on the days events gives evidence to this. Does todays action make manifest our faith? How could todays action be used as tomorrows guide to increase our faith and to follow Him on the way?

http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/luke/luke5.htm
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/matthew/matthew4.htm
http://www.usccb.org/nab/bible/mark/mark10.htm

2007-01-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

If today you hear his voice, harden not your hearts

Go To Jail

2007-01-01T09:09:00.000-07:00

The outcast, the poor, the little ones always come before the Church and
before each one of us holding a gift. It's the gift of those things we
hate: insecurity, disability, a not-so-smart mind, a sexual problem or
addiction. We shun anyone who isn't like us who hasn't succeeded in our
system---like people in jail.
We need the corporal works of mercy. Go to jail, we are told. Why? We
thought to help others or to be a 'good' Christian, but those aren't the
reasons. We need to go to jail to get converted ourselves. We must go to
the edges and discover what the questions really are, what true success
is, and we must face our own failure.
I was able to live with my illusions as long as I stayed out of the
jail. I mistakenly thought prisoners were the bad people.

from: Breathing Under Water:Spirituality and the 12 Steps (Fr. Richard Rohr)
thanks to Marti Flemming for the contribution

2006-12-15T09:29:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting website that goes over the daily readings. It offers some interesting reflection. I find myself going back to it and so I thought you might like it too.

http://www.yourdailytripod.blogspot.com/

Let me know what you think of the link.

If you have a favorite link, you can share it by posting it to this site by clicking on "comments" and then writing the web address in the window that opens up. Select "other" or "anonymous" then click on "publish post" and you're done!

thanks for sharing and enjoy the day!

2006-12-07T12:30:00.000-07:00

Virgin Mary, Queen of all the Saints, help us to be gentle and humble of heart like this fearless messenger of Love. Help us to serve every person we meet with joy and a smile. Help us to be missionaries of Christ, our peace and our hope. Amen!

excerpt from
BEATIFICATION OF MOTHER THERESA OF CALCUTTA
HOMILY OF HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II
World Mission SundaySunday, 19 October 2003

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/homilies/2003/documents/hf_jp-ii_hom_20031019_mother-theresa_en.html

2006-12-04T14:10:00.000-07:00

Has anyone seen the new release "The Nativity Story" yet?

Increase Our Faith

2006-11-15T12:28:00.000-07:00

Increase Our Faith

Oh! What marvels faith can work among peoples!

Many say that those people are superstitious and their faith is not sound. Instead, I say that their faith is very sound and there, more than any other place, we see it proven by extraordinary events. They believe with simplicity, and this is one of the wisest qualities of a true believer. They are uneducated, but posses within themselves good reason for their beliefs. God has infused it in them. They also are willing to be instructed. No, the faith of these people is not to be despised. They may not be able to express the reason for their faith, nor can they always defend it, but these reasons which they possess are deeply felt in their hearts, as though they had studied much. The reason for this faith is the heart’s highest good; the heart is judge of what is for its benefit, not the intellect. Everyone has a heart, the learned and the ignorant.

How many uneducated souls with pure hearts have raised themselves to God in blessed contemplation. Thus, even the mysteries that are beyond science and the mind were not superior to the vastness of their hearts. No, the mind does not comprehend the mysteries of faith, but, because they are mysteries of love, the heart of one who has the gift of faith feels, rather than understands them. Yes, the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the Eucharist are mysteries of a God who makes himself for us father, brother, victim, and food. They are proof of an infinite love; the heart perceives the truth because it needs to be infinitely loved. Oh, faith, oh, holy religion, how much you have benefited humanity! Appearing in the night of ignorance, you have crushed error and have assured reason and truth positions they will never lose. You will live for ever no matter how embattled, and error will never be a part of you. When error assails us, we will return to you and find truth under your beautiful mantle.

Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini

struggle - it's about Love

2006-11-03T13:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reflecting on struggle for some time now. In fact, I’ve recently been in struggle with writing this blog. What to say, is it good enough, what will people think?

As my week progressed, I faced lots of little struggles. Each one seemed to speak to me, at first subtly, but got more and more pointed as the week went on.

Early in the week, while writing a draft of this blog, I answered the rhetorical questions like this: ‘after careful consideration and reflection I realize it’s what I am called to do, to share myself with you’.

Then later in the week, I found myself driven to tell others ‘Are we not confident in the power of Love alone?’

But I still hadn’t fully gotten what was going on, what I was learning and having become more a part of me.

This morning I read today’s reading about Jesus asking “Who among you, if your son or ox falls into a cistern, would not immediately pull him out on the sabbath day?”

As I reflected, I thought, it’s not about the letter of the law but the spirit of the law, it’s about love.

When we enter into struggle, what do we do? How do we handle it? What does it teach us?

I think that if we enter our struggle in union with Jesus, we see that it’s about Love.

About “writing this blog”, it is so much more than simply that. It is me sharing myself with you, so that we can be in union with each other, one Church, in union with Him.

It’s about Love.

2006-10-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

I found myself wondering 'Am I doing what matters to God?'

Then I realized I must first ask 'What matters to God?'

What matters to God?

http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/102306.shtml

God's will?

2006-10-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

from time to time an email comes along that ends with somethings like

JESUS said, "If you are ashamed of ME before men, then I will be ashamed of you before MY FATHER."
If you are not ashamed, pass this on.

Perhaps you've read such an email.

Is it God's will that the email be passed on? If not passed on, is one who stopped the chain loved less by God? Are all the others before?

who is right?

who is wrong?

Who is Truth.

God First, Others Second, I am Third

2006-08-17T09:33:00.000-07:00

exerpt from Homily, August 1, 2004 (1st Reading: Eccl 1:2,2:21-23, 2nd Reading: Col 3:1-5,9-11, Gospel: Luke 12:13-31)
Pastor: Reverend Samuel L. Hose, Saint John Vianney Catholic Church, Round Rock, Texas

Let’s imagine for just a minute how that might work. Let’s start on the most basic level, the family. We hear a lot about family values from all sorts of sources. I think that what we are thinking about here today is at the very heart of family values just as it is at the very heart of societal and religious values. Let’s imagine just for a moment a family in which everyone lives according to (Gale)Sayers’ little motto, “I’m third.” That is to say each would always place God first, then each other second. A husband and father would say to his wife and children, “God is first in all things and you are an immediate second.” A wife and mother would say the same thing to her husband and children. And children would grow learning in all things that God is first and to place the good and well being, the needs of others before their own. Would that introduce some new dynamics in you family if everyone lived with each other in that way?

Now let’s extend that because Jesus told us to take care to avoid greed in all forms. That means in all aspects and times of our lives. What would this world be like if we all did this for each other. What if we responded out of this to children in need of decent education and health care? What if employers placed their employees before profit and the bottom line? What if all of us responded “God is first, you are second and I am third” to all who are sick, in prison, lonely or afraid. What would it be like if we practice that in every circumstance from traffic on the freeway to how we live our lives of faith? What changes would it bring about in our lives and in this world? Perhaps what would change would be this: selfishness would disappear. The world might move closer then to the image that God has for us—an image in which we all do live in peace with one another as brother and sister under God.

Love

2006-08-16T11:52:00.000-07:00

Excerpt from “An address at the National Prayer Breakfast (Sponsored by theU.S. Senate and House of Representatives) February 3, 1994” presented by Mother Teresa

I can never forget the experience I had in visiting a home where they kept all these old parents of sons and daughters who had just put them into an institution and forgotten them - maybe. I saw that in that home these old people had everything - good food, comfortable place, television, everything, but everyone was looking toward the door. And I did not see a single one with a smile on the face. I turned to Sister and I asked: "Why do these people who have every comfort here, why are they all looking toward the door? Why are they not smiling?"

I am so used to seeing the smiles on our people, even the dying ones smile. And Sister said: "This is the way it is nearly everyday. They are expecting, they are hoping that a son or daughter will come to visit them. They are hurt because they are forgotten." And see, this neglect to love brings spiritual poverty. Maybe in our own family we have somebody who is feeling lonely, who is feeling sick, who is feeling worried. Are we there? Are we willing to give until it hurts in order to be with our families, or do we put our own interests first? These are the questions we must ask ourselves, especially as we begin this year of the family. We must remember that love begins at home and we must also remember that 'the future of humanity passes through the family.'

I was surprised in the West to see so many young boys and girls given to drugs. And I tried to find out why. Why is it like that, when those in the West have so many more things than those in the East? And the answer was: 'Because there is no one in the family to receive them.' Our children depend on us for everything - their health, their nutrition, their security, their coming to know and love God. For all of this, they look to us with trust, hope and expectation. But often father and mother are so busy they have no time for their children, or perhaps they are not even married or have given up on their marriage. So their children go to the streets and get involved in drugs or other things. We are talking of love of the child, which is where love and peace must begin. These are the things that break peace.

"Fought-for Faith"

2006-04-06T16:25:00.000-07:00

"Fought-for Faith"
God gives us meaning, not answers. The suffering of life is the suffering of every marriage union, every love relationship, like the suffering of Job in his relationship with God. The Book of Job is a dialogue between institutional, respectable and impersonalized faith (Job's friends who come and give him reasonable intellectual answers) and the charismatic, gut-level, fought-for faith of Job. Job searches and struggles and receives his answer only in the tempest. And the answer always has the character of paradox: inconsistent, contradictory, but utterly true. So the answer will be the same for us. The answer will come, out of the tempest, an answer that cannot always be verbalized to your children and husband or wife. But it will be an answer that you know. It is a conviction that is deep and all-pervasive. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away: It is a gift from God. You cannot prove it to anybody, but you no longer need to. Believe me when I say it: The deepest levels of faith will still feel like confusion - but you are not longer confused by your confusion!
from The Great Themes of Scripture

2006-04-01T23:14:00.000-07:00

"Jesus Saves"

Once, when Peter and John were going up to the Temple for the prayers at the ninth hour, it happened that there was a man being carried past. He was a cripple from birth; and they used to put him down every day near the Temple entrance called the Beautiful Gate so that he could beg from the people going in. When this man saw Peter and John on their way into the Temple he begged from them. Both Peter and John looked straight at him and said, "Look at us." He turned to them expectantly, hoping to get something from them, but Peter said, "I have neither silver nor gold, but I will give you what I have: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, walk!" (Acts 3:1-6, JB) The lame of the world still come to the Body of Christ and look at us expectantly, as they looked at Peter and John, hoping to get something form us. What does the Church say to them in many and varied forms? "Silver and gold we have plenty of. Come, join our parish. We have a credit union, very democratic. We have a pastoral council. We have a guitar Mass. We're very avant-garde, hanging banners in our church. We're up to date and well meet your every need. We have a St. Vincent de Paul society." But no one has the courage to say: "May I talk to you about Jesus? Let me pray with you. The Lord will teach you the meaning of forgiveness. The Lord will teach you the meaning of Church, of the Scriptures. Come, follow Jesus!" Are we ashamed of Jesus? Do we share him? It feels naive, old-fashioned, pious, and a bit Protestant, to talk about Jesus. We have Church. We have sacraments, we have priests and bishops! Yet Jesus alone saves. The apostles speak with boldness and with fire. Jesus did it! In the name of Jesus all power is given to me! Every time they return they proclaim the name of Jesus Christ. What has happened to the Church that so many are no longer proud of Jesus?

from Richard Rohr The Great Themes of Scripture

"Real Prayer"

2006-03-24T20:09:00.000-07:00

Lets read Richard Rohr passage for today.

The most simple rule for good prayer is honestly and humility. One can never go wrong with those two. Talk honestly to God. Don't give God the self you think you're supposed to be. Give God yourself in your nakedness, who you really are, even if that means giving God your anger or distractions. We used to try to avoid distractions. But it's much better to use our distractions. If you're obsessed with a thought all afternoon, that's what you give to God. Lord, why am I so caught up in this fantasy? Why am I so caught up in this preoccupation? Why am I so worried about this bill or this mortgage or whatever it might be? Make that the subject of your prayer instead of trying to avoid it and getting into some spiritual or theological world. That's the meaning of integrated, incarnational prayer. St. Paul speaks of unceasing prayer. He's not talking about us spending time thinking spiritual thoughts or even spending time thinking about God. Prayer is seeing what is in front of us in all its fullness. This is a truly secular, biblical, Hebrew form of prayer. It's responding to life in a holistic way in the ways it comes to us. Instead of our life being a self-centered monologue, our life becomes a God-centered dialogue. Are your control needs, your fears, your guilt, your worries, your success needs in charge? Is Jesus your natural reference point so that he reigns over your life? Then you've accepted the lordship of Jesus. It's not a matter of having words, but of having a Center beyond yourself.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"Spirituality of Subtraction"

2006-03-23T07:56:00.000-07:00

from Richard Rohr's "Price of Peoplehood "

The notion of a spirituality of subtraction comes from Meister Eckhart, the medieval Dominican mystic. He said the spiritual life has much more to do with subtraction than it does with addition. Yet I think Christians today are involved in great part in a spirituality of addition. The capitalist worldview is the only world most of us have ever known. We see reality, experiences, events, other people, things - in fact, everything - as objects for consumption. The nature of the capitalist mind is that things (and often people!) are there for me. Finally, even God becomes an object for our consumption. Remember the bumper sticker "I found it"? The Holy One becomes "it," a pronoun, a thing. Even the Lord becomes a consumer object that I can privately possess. Now that is surely heresy in any religion. You almost wonder if true spirituality is even possible in this culture. Everything gets turned around so that we're in the driver's sear: God, the Bible, the sacraments, the Church, people and prayer. Everything is there to foster my own ego and its need to feel good about itself.

"The Self-revelation of God"

2006-03-22T07:13:00.000-07:00

Interesting passage from Richard Rohr book "the Price of Peoplehood"
enjoy.

"The Self-revelation of God"

The dialogue between God and humanity is the give-and-take of self-revelation and response. That's what's happening in every relationship. If you don't understand self-disclosure or the rules of relationship, you can't understand the rules of prayer. In prayer God is gradually disclosing himself, revealing herself. So revelation and faith are correlative: There cannot be faith without revelation. We cannot believe in a person who has not shared himself or herself with us. To the degree that person has shared with us, we can believe in that person. It's the same way with God. When we waste time with the Lord and listen, we're allowing God to reveal not information but self. This is what's symbolized on the cross: God is totally disclosed, God is the totally given God. But it takes us a lot of scraping and converting to open ourselves up to that disclosure. If we are filled with ourselves, there is, quite simply, no room for the other, and surely not The Other.

"Fear, the Enemy of Faith"

2005-10-10T20:43:00.000-07:00

"Fear, the Enemy of Faith"

(Recorded at the Mount of the Beatitudes) The greatest enemy of faith is not doubt; the greatest enemy of faith is fear. Most of the world is controlled by fear, petty and big. Petty fears control people; great fears control nations. We could feed all the people in this world if we would stop building arms, but we are afraid. So the great peacemaker sat on this hill and preached to the world. In the Beatitudes he said those of you who make peace will be happy (Matthew 5:9). You will be God’s own. Yet even we Christian people are preoccupied with fear and protecting ourselves because we don’t believe what Jesus said here. We read the Beatitudes in church once a year on the Feast of All Saints. But we don’t base our lives on it. Jesus preached the Beatitudes here as the inaugural sermon of all of his teachings. Teachers know how crucial your first sentence is. What is Jesus’ opener? “Happy the poor in spirit.” We don’t understand Jesus at all until we understand the absolute centrality of that line and the rest of the sermon he gave here. Yet I could make a strong case that the Sermon on the Mount has been and is the most neglected and rejected part of his teaching, even by the Church. The Sermon on the Mount is an antidote to fear. But we have never seen fear as the crucial issue, only “doubt.”

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

A Transitional Generation"

2005-10-09T20:12:00.000-07:00

A Transitional Generation"

We are in a transitional time, a hopeful bridge-building generation. Maybe every age is. Most little people born onto this planet have known that they are first the children of their parents and the parents of their children. We always stand in-between. We hold hands tightly and gratefully and know that we must finally let go. That is the fate of all humans. It is humble, partial, a mere link in a universal chain of being. For most folks it has been enough, and it is amazing that we baby boomers ever thought it would be different for us. All philosophy of progress, self-actualization and Yankee-can-do aside, we are overwhelmed by the amount of death and depression in our society. We are obviously mere tracings in a much larger history and a Mystery where only an Eternal God draws the final lines. That’s not a copout; it’s not denial. It’s the most courageous yes a human being can offer. After Gulf Wars for oil, catastrophic worldwide poverty and Churches that themselves run from the gospel, it might be the only yes that we can utter-and the only yes that will finally make a difference. Let’s try. It’s the only life that we have on this planet. I am content to build bridges that the next generation might possibly walk on. I am happy and even freed to be part of a merely transitional generation.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation

"Longing for Wholeness"

2005-10-08T12:12:00.000-07:00

"Longing for Wholeness"

In the polarity between man and woman, God is able to speak to us powerfully. We don’t know what’s going to happen. But it’s there, in what is opposite, hidden and scary for us: masculinity for the woman and femininity for the man. Contrary to popular opinion, men and women are not merely longing for warm bodies of the opposite sex; they’re longing for wholeness. Faithful friendship and true partnership teach us more than a shallow sexual encounter. As one minister told me after his many mistakes, “It took me a long time to admit that I can help people a lot more from my chair than by jumping in bed with them.”

from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family

"It’s OK to Be Human"

2005-10-05T20:59:00.000-07:00

"It’s OK to Be Human"

After the first couple months of living in community, many people fall apart. All of us have this skeleton in the closet, this bit of guilt, this big fear, this demon, whatever it might be, and in community we finally feel free to let it out. We finally feel free to yell and scream. To say, “I hate myself; I’m angry at God; I’m angry at the Church!” Or we might admit being restless in our marriage or other vows. Now that’s a messy way to live. If you’re looking for a comfortable, neat, proper way to live, don’t get involved in community. The great risk we have to take is the risk to be human, to realize it’s OK to be human. A healthy community allows us and protects us while we “fall apart”. We’ve been trained to follow scriptural advice to become “perfect” (Matthew 5:48). [This passage must be seen as the conclusion to Jesus’ teaching on the love of enemies, a seemingly impossible ideal.] So it’s very hard to love and accept ourselves when we are imperfect, messy, broken, angry, or sad. Sometimes it’s hard to accept one another. You know what I think God’s calling you to be? Simply a member of God’s family. That’s all. This is the training ground for heaven. Heaven is “forever-family” where God is father and mother, and we are brothers and sisters. God wants to know if you want family, and if you are willing to choose it now-and forever.

from The Spiritual Family and the Natural Family

"The Harder Way"

2005-10-01T20:12:00.000-07:00

"The Harder Way"

We’re not freed from our humanity; we’re freed in our humanity. We’re not freed from the flesh, which is what so many of us want; we’re freed in the flesh. It’s a matter of integration, of synthesis. That’s how grace works: in the flesh, in our humanity. Don’t try to climb over it; don’t try to deny it and tunnel underneath it; don’t try to run around it. Go through it. True, it’s the harder way. Both/and is for some reason much more demanding than either/or. It is an easy litmus test to distinguish the beginners from the more mature Christians.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"The Church and Civil Rights"

2005-09-30T22:52:00.001-07:00

"The Church and Civil Rights"

Our people, by and large, haven’t developed a sense of social conscience. It’s amazing when we look at the 1960’s. You know what attitudes were rather blandly accepted by all of us in the early 1960’s, let’s say, in regard to race relations. Here and there stood out a man or woman of obvious conscience, one who dealt with good and evil, with truth. But they were few and far between. To our forever shame, it was by and large the movement of history, the movement of culture that raised our consciousness to the evil involved in denying people civil rights. Most of us didn’t een know this stuff was going on! It was the Spirit in history (what the Germans call the zeitgeist), that for the most part formed our consciences. And the Church cam along, caught the wind and said, Yeah, we believe in that too, that’s right, that’s the gospel! It is the same for militarism, slavery, human rights, sexism and respect for the earth. We have been “Peter-come-latelys” on all of these. Notice in the twentieth chapter of John: Peter (the Church) gets to the tomb late (after the lover, John) and finally believes. It’s always been that way, I guess. Simple love sees and believes even before the Church. But at least we finally get there and back it up!

from The Price of Peoplehood

"The Church and Civil Rights"

2005-09-30T22:52:00.000-07:00

"We Need to Waste Time"

2005-09-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

"We Need to Waste Time"

I want to look at the experiences in your lives of people who’ve deeply touched you, who’ve deeply changed you. They’re always people who are not afraid to be personal. Ideas really don’t change people. People change people. Those who are truly bringing good news are people who know how to be in relationship, who know how to waste time with you. We need to waste time with the Lord, too. This is the foundation of our prayer lives. You’re not being unproductive when you wait for God, when you listen for and seek the Holy One. The Judeo-Christian tradition gives us the Sabbath, a sense of sacred time in which to be, to listen, to be personal and not to “work at it.” The Sabbath idea is that at least one-seventh of your life needs to be fallow, useless, empty and expectant-person to person. Cardinal Newman wrote, “So much sanctity is lost to the Church because brothers [sic] refuse to share the secrets of their hearts one with another.” He put that in his coat of arms (“cor ad cor loquitur”), which doesn’t sound like what a cardinal should put on his coat of arms. He’s no sloppy sentimentalist, but a great intellectual. But it’s obvious Newman was a man who put it together. He was speaking from an educated heart. He knew the power of sharing the personal. The truly personal is usually the most universal.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"A Way To Happiness"

2005-09-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

"A Way To Happiness"

(Recorded at the Mount of the Beatitudes) Beatitude means happiness. The Beatitudes could also be called the ways to happiness. But they are not prescriptions for happiness in the next world, as much as a daring description of happiness in this world. So notice that the first and last Beatitudes are in the present tense. He says for those who are poor in spirit, the Kingdom of Heaven is now (Matthew 5:3). For those of you who are persecuted in the cause of justice, the Kingdom of Heaven is now (5:10). The people must have been sitting here on this very hillside with their mouths open. They say, well, that’s not what they teach us. They teach us to be cunning and to be strong and to be self-assured. He says, oh yes, I’m telling you to be self-assured, but self-assured from within because of your awareness of who-you-are-in-God. Jesus knew that happiness is an inside job, to borrow a phrase. And then he points up to these trees and these birds that you hear chirping above you and he says, be like them. They’re not worried, so “Stop all your worrying. Tomorrow will take care of itself” (Matthew 6:34). It sounds a lot like the advice for happiness from the recovery movement: “One day at a time.”

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

"New Eyes for Truth"

2005-09-27T11:54:00.000-07:00

"New Eyes for Truth"

“Stop judging, that you may not be judged. For as you judge, so will you be judged, and the measure with which you measure will be measured out to you. Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye, but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me remove that splinter from you eye?’ You hypocrite, remove the wooden beam from your eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from your brother’s eye.” (Matthew 7:1-5, NAB)

Carl Jung, after many years as a psychologist, said this is how he’d sum up everything he’d learned: Humanity tends to project its inner world onto the outer world. If you’re always seeing people out there, let’s say, as two-faced, then very likely you’re two-faced. If you’re always seeing people as hard and demanding, I bet you’re hard and demanding on yourself and you believe God is hard and demanding on you.

We see out there what’s already in our minds. Yet the healing ministry of Jesus was to give us new eyes so we could begin to live in the truth and see the real. With the eyes of Christ we accept and forgive our real self instead of hating it in others.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Positive Sexuality"

2005-09-26T19:29:00.000-07:00

"Positive Sexuality"

If I can fault Catholic tradition in one area, it’s that there’s never been a single century in two thousand years when we have had positive teaching on our sexuality, or on our emotional and bodily selves. Despite the Song of Songs and a few enlightened saints, there’s never been general positive teaching on how to integrate our bodies, minds and feelings. So a lot of us, even the clergy, are emotional babies. We’re reacting and over-reacting, feeling, not knowing how to feel, repressing feelings, and therefore getting lots of ulcers, alcoholism and depression. We had Logic 101 in seminary; we had Metaphysics 101. Where was Emotions 101?

Affection, intellect and will: All three of these must be open to God. God can speak to us through our affections, through our emotions, through our experience of our bodiliness. We’ve allowed ourselves continuously to name our bodily functions, our passions, as humanity’s “fallen” part. Yet our emotions are no more fallen than intellect or will! Maybe we good Christians don’t sleep around, but a lot of us – priests and lay – go to bed with power, greed and superiority. That keeps us just as far from God as any sin of the flesh.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Grin and Bear It"

2005-09-24T20:53:00.000-07:00

"Grin and Bear It"

Real holiness doesn’t feel like holiness; it just feels like you’re dying. It feels like you’re losing it. And yet, you’re losing it from the center, from a place where all things are One, where you can joyously, graciously let go of it. You know God’s doing it when you can smile, when you can trust the letting go.

I’m not suggesting stoic, teeth-gritting tolerance; I mean grin and bear it. Unless the grin is there, unless the joy is there, it isn’t God’s work.

Many of us were taught the no without the yes, the joy. We were trained just to put up with it, to take it on the chin. That destroyed a lot of people in the Church. Saying no to the self does not necessarily please God. When God, by love and freedom, can create a joyous yes inside of you – so much so that you can absorb the no’s – then it’s God’s work.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"St. John of the Cross"

2005-09-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

"St. John of the Cross"

True spirituality is utterly countercultural because it’s non-merchandisable, non-measurable, non-provable. It is precisely nothing. Who wants to be nothing in this world? This culture’s goal is for us to be something, to be everything, to “win friends and influence people.”

St. John of the Cross puts it this way: “In order to come to pleasure you have not, you must go by a way that you will enjoy not. To come to the knowledge that you have not, you must go by a way that you know not. To come to the possession that you have not, you must go by a way in which you possess not. To come to be what you are not, you must go by a way that you are not” (Ascent of Mount Carmel, I, 13, #10).

We fear nothingness, of course. That’s why we fear death, too. I suspect that death is the shocking realization that everything I thought was me, everything I held onto so desperately, was precisely nothing. The nothingness we fear so much is, in fact, the treasure that we long for. We long for the space where there is nothing to prove and nothing to protect; where I am who I am, and it’s enough. Spirituality teaches us how to get naked ahead of time, so God can make love to us as we really are.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

Self Respect

2005-09-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

"Self-Respect"

You cannot give yourself away until you have a self. That’s why the gospel was meant primarily for adults. The most we can do with children is love them and touch them; cuddle, hug and believe in them. You can’t preach a full-fledged, heavy gospel to children because everything in their psyche and soul is saying grow, experience, develop, run, prove myself, be ambitious. A child’s psyche cannot understand the way of the cross.

Only adults are ready for the gospel. And, in fact, if we aren’t ready for it around age thirty we haven’t grown up. Thirty years should teach us that life is both merging and also separating, loving and letting go, yes and no. Both are sacred and necessary. It seems to me the people who have the best sense of self, who don’t constantly need to have it affirmed or stroked, are people with self-respecting boundaries. They are always people who, in some way or another, know how to set limits to their lives and know, quite simply, how to say no to themselves. They have an appropriate sense of boundaries and an instinctive sense of their own center.

That is precisely the way the ego is formed: not by pandering to the self, but in fact by setting limits to its voracious appetites. That gives ego the boundaries and the center that it needs. You are something, it tells you, because there is something there you can say no to. The “sacred no” to the self, ironically, gives us a sense of self-respect. Continual yeses to the self are actually a humiliation to the ego.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Spiritual Spectators"

2005-09-21T20:49:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual Spectators"

Western civilization has had such victory in terms of science, technology – the outer world – because we are able to objectify everything. But the price we’ve paid is our state of alienation. We’re over here apart from it. We analyze the world as an object over there.

Once consciousness surrenders to that subject/object split, quite frankly, prayer becomes very difficult, if not next to impossible. Prayer is unitive experience. Yet for us prayer has sometimes become confused with mere inner awarenesses, me analyzing my own inner states and feelings about God. Those of us who were raised in religious contexts, for example, are often inclined to give a value judgment to everything and to ourselves. That’s the guilt middle-class folks have. We have it because we are alienated from our own souls. We’re standing over here, apart from ourselves, analyzing: Is it good, better, best? It is venial sin, is it mortal sin?

When you’re in that stance of analyzing the self, you’re a spectator and you’re necessarily divided from your own soul. Maybe that’s why Jesus said, “Do not judge and you will not be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Our judgments separate us, alienate us and, therefore, condemn us.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Spiritual Fixes"

2005-09-19T19:45:00.000-07:00

"Spiritual Fixes"

So many people I met in Africa walk around with a calmness and a self-assurance and a sense of presence that many of our people no longer have. And you say, This doesn’t make any sense. We’ve tried so hard to be OK, to affirm one another and give ourselves “positive personal regard.” The self-esteem movement is a national business.

If what I’m seeing in the American Church is the fruit of all that stroking, I don’t think it’s working at all. In fact, it seems like these folks need a fix every few days. Many seem incapable of really grasping the good news, taking it into their hearts, standing with it and moving forward with it to lives of surrender, service or silence. Instead, it’s a world of noise and weak identity, where we need constant reassurance, someone to be holding our hand all the time and telling us, “You’re good. God loves you.”

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"We Need New Ways to Worship"

2005-09-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

"We Need New Ways to Worship"

As much as I love liturgy, it still reflects the pyramid structure of the Church. It suggests an official religious experience, from the pulpit to the people. There isn’t much chance for the community to feed on itself, to enrich and nurture itself. The priest’s religious experience becomes the only source. One result of this narrow sense of liturgy is a very limited view of the Scriptures. It is a celibate, male, clerical, sometimes academic reading of the Scriptures.

Part of the reason New Jerusalem Community grew strong is that we had formats for worshiping and praying other than priest-led liturgy. I think the Church of the future is going to have to discover these formats. You see the power of other prayer gatherings, for instance, in the communidades de base, or base communities, which began in Latin America. They have sharing of lay religious experience. They ask, What is Jesus saying to us through the Scriptures and our daily lives? There is an opportunity to share faith experiences. It’s non-academic; it’s non-male; it’s non-clerical. It’s much more homey and folksy; it’s much more alive, even if it’s also harder to control. But that shouldn’t be our main concern, should it?

from U.S. Catholic, “Recipes of a Gourmet Pray-er”

"The Power of the Cross"

2005-09-17T21:52:00.000-07:00

"The Power of the Cross"

The language of the cross may be illogical to those who are not on the way to salvation, but those of us who are on the way see it as God’s power to save. (1 Corinthians 1:18, JB)

When Christianity loses the doctrine and power of the cross as its central strategy, it becomes a false and impotent religion. When this happens, as it has again and again, Jesus renews his people by calling them back – usually in spite of themselves – to the “way of the cross.”

This is dramatically happening in our time in the Churches of the poor and persecuted, particularly those of Central and South America. Their lives and deaths appear to be a crisis and grace for the Churches of North America and Europe. Through their faith and forgiveness, Jesus is calling all of this Church back to the doctrine and power of his cross, “to tell us what God has guaranteed … only the knowledge of him as the crucified Christ” (1 Corinthians 2:1-2).

from Coalition for Public Sanctuary pamphlet “The Cross of Jesus and Human Suffering”

"Guadalupe: Evangelizing Woman"

2005-09-16T21:54:00.000-07:00

"Guadalupe: Evangelizing Woman"

In 1531 exactly ten years after the Spanish conquest of the native people of Mexico, there was an unprecedented “constellation of signs” that came at once from the heavens of Catholic Spain and the mythologies of the indigenous Americans: We call it the apparition of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Like all ongoing revelation, it has taken us four hundred years to being to unravel the depth of loving mystery that was revealed in this encounter between “a dear brown woman from heaven” (La Morenita) and Juan Diego, a poor Christianized Nahuatl Indian.

The oppressed Indians had lost everything: their land, their honor, their freedom, but most of all their gods. There was nothing left to do except die. But true to the biblical pattern, God’s way is not just to punish or destroy the misguided oppressors, but to surprise and subvert their explanation by creating a new and better reality through which they themselves could be converted and transformed. As always, God seems to be an expert in beating people at their own game.

In this case, the Lord speaks through the “Mother of the true God through whom one lives,” whom the Spanish call Mary. But she is dressed in the clothes of the Indians, speaks their Nahuatl language and uses Juan Diego, one of the poorest, to “repreach” the gospel back to the people who thought they had the gospel in the first place. It’s a classic example of God taking unexpected sides to usher in a new civilization – just when the Nahuatl thought it was all over!

In one generation, under this mother symbol, almost all of the native peoples accept Christianity. A new mestizo people, and I might say a new mestizo Christianity, unfolds. We are slowly, hesitatingly learning that there is no other kind. Christ always takes on the face and features of each people he loves. In this case God knew that the face and features had to be feminine and compassionate. There was no other sign that could convert both the Spanish machismo and the matriarchal religion of the Indians at the same time.

from Radical Grace, “Our Lady of Guadelupe”

"St. Therese"

2005-09-15T07:27:00.000-07:00

"St. Therese"

Saint Therese of Lisieux, toward the end of her life, had a beautiful image of salvation. It’s not in her autobiography so many have not heard of it. She describes salvation thus: All of her life she is a little girl. She is proud and happy to be a little girl. Her heavenly Father is standing at the top of the great staircase, always beckoning her, “Come Therese! Come! I ask more of you!” She lifts her little foot again and again by all the actions of her Catholic faith and religious life, trying to please God. She is trying to climb up to God.

God watches Therese and sees her desire to come. Then in one moment that we call grace, God rushes down the staircase, picks her up and takes her. She knows afterward by hindsight that God has done it, from beginning to end. But it was important for her to keep lifting up her little foot. Our struggle, our desire, our yes is significant and necessary. But in the end it is always grace that carries us up the staircase.

from The Great Themes of Scripture

"The Virtue of Obedience"

2005-09-13T21:31:00.000-07:00

"The Virtue of Obedience"

You can see all relationships and events in our Christian life as a training of the will, preparing it to say yes, to let go of itself. The utterly important thing is union, and this can only happen when the will is ready to let go of its ego boundaries. The virtue of obedience, and I use the word intentionally, is supremely important for the training of the will. All the great spiritual pastors, religious founders and mystics, without exception, spoke of the “virtue” of obedience. Now I don’t mean blind obedience. I don’t mean lying down and playing dead. But I do think that all Christians have to practice saying yes before they dare to say no.

In that sense the Church makes saints of us, although it’s somewhat different from the way we expected! We exist in a creative tension with the Body of Christ which challenges us, stretches us, calls us, makes demands on us and forces us into conflicts of conscience. This refines our conscience, “kicking against the goad” (Acts 26:14) until we realize we don’t need to kick. Church and obedience operate as a foil, against which our own Christian integrity is measured and too often found wanting.

Obedience is important. But I also believe in ways of listening for and hearing the Spirit beyond looking to the hierarchy or the Bible. No one else can do our homework for us.

from Catholic Agitator, “Creative Dissent”

Risk All for Love

2005-09-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

"Risk All for Love"

The Pharisee is one who demands a sign (Mark 8:11). The poor person is one who believes “that the promise made her by the Lord will be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). The Pharisee is the one who takes pride in being virtuous (Luke 18:9); the poor person is the one who cries to God day and night, even when God delays to help (Luke 18:7). The beggar who continues to pester the Lord is more pleasing than the dutiful and self-sufficient servant.

Jesus has reversed our human scale of values. He would rather have us live in the insecurity of traded money (Matthew 25:14-30) while trusting in the Master, than to place our hope in the sure thing that we have hidden out of fear in the field. Risk all for love, Jesus tells us, even your own life. Give that to me and let me save it. People who seek to save their own lives, doing a good job of saving themselves, are saying that God’s salvation is not needed. People who lose their lives for the sake of the Good News will find their lives. The healthy religious person is the one who allows God to save.

If this is the ideal Christian attitude toward God, then Mary is the ideal Christian of the Gospels. She sums up in herself the attitude of the poor one whom God is able to save. She is deeply aware of her own emptiness without God (Luke 1:52). She longs for the fulfillment of God’s promise (1:54); she has left her self open, available for God’s work (1:45, 49). And when the call comes, she makes a full personal surrender: “Let it be!” (1:38).

from The Great Themes of Scripture

"Action Please"

2005-09-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

"Action Please"

If the Bible is anything, it’s the word of God’s involvement in the action of history. A great image of this is Mary’s Visitation, as recorded in the first chapter of Luke. Last year I gave a retreat in the Holy Land to the Franciscans in Ain Karem, the town of John the Baptist. Right across the valley is the Church of the Visitation. Every night after I’d talk to the friars all day, I’d walk across the valley and sit on a beautiful wall and look over the area and try to picture Mary coming from Nazareth (which is quite a walk, by the way, and would have certainly taken some days) up through this valley and to this place where she met Elizabeth.

As I read this story, I was struck by how different her response was to what my response probably would have been. If I found out I was to be the mother of God, the first thing I would plan would be a thirty-day retreat or something. I’d say to myself, “I gotta go into solitude and get it together and purify my motives and work this out theologically.” I would go inside my head.

Yet read the passage. She is out of herself; she is free of her need to get it together. Immediately she set out for the hill country of Judea to help her cousin, whom she heard was pregnant, too (Luke 1:36-39).

Marian images are so simple that we can listen. They’re so right on; they’re so clear-cut and defined. And here it is, the primacy of action. God can reach me in my taking care of my pregnant cousin, in moving toward the world as it is. I think when we respond to need as it is right in front of us, usually we are not as susceptible to our egos. Life in front of us pulls us out of ourselves and we have to do it because it’s there. That’s how I see people being purified. That kind of spirituality I can trust.

If your life is not moving toward practical action in this real, living world, with other people, with the not-me, don’t trust your spirituality. But your engagement must happen in tandem with contemplation, the inner disengagement with ego and openness to God. Contemplation is the Divine therapy that purifies our work and involvement.

Action and contemplation are the two polarities that regulate and balance the faith-filled life. It saddens me that most Christianity is right in the middle. It’s neither radical interiority nor radical engagement. You don’t learn much in the mediocre middle, and you don’t have much to give.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Why the Apocalyptic?"

2005-09-10T21:45:00.000-07:00

"Why the Apocalyptic?"

The apocalyptic style emerges to free prophets from taking themselves or their role in history too seriously. It says that after all is said and done (the work of the prophet), give history back to God and be at peace in the transcendent truth. Don’t try so hard that you become part of the bigger problem. The prophet might appear to be saying, “Work as if it all depends on you.” The apocalyptic figure says, “Pray and trust as if it all depends on God.” At the end of the day, cool it; forget it, and give history back to the Holy One who is going to achieve the victory anyway.

The apocalyptic prophet has two simultaneous and self-correcting messages: (1) Everything matters immensely; (2) It doesn’t really matter at all. How many people do you know who can live out their lives on that pure and narrow path? I don’t know very many at all. It seems that some are called to take the strongly apocalyptic position and all of the accompanying criticism in order to free the rest of us from our over-engagement with and idolatry of “the way things are.”

Probably the most visible and effective witnesses to this position in our time are Dorothy Day, with her “holy anarchy,” and Thomas Merton, who left it all to sit in a hermitage in the hills of Kentucky. They will always be criticized for not doing more, but their absolute stance, as we have clearly seen, is the home and school for the emergence of true prophets.

Without the apocalyptic “No,” prophets are no more than high-energy and idealistic activists, often working out of their own denied anger or denied self-interest. Apocalypticists are willing to be seen as fanatic, anti-American, anti-anything so that the rest of us can rediscover the Absolute. They are bothered and bored by our relativities and rationalization. They demand an objective ground from which all else is judged and will not be nudged from their uncompromising stance,

I believe one has to be a true and lasting contemplative to maintain apocalyptic firmness and freedom, and to keep from becoming a righteous and defeated prophet.

from Radical Grace, “Christ Against Culture or Christ the Transformer of Culture?”

"Tradition"

2005-09-09T21:38:00.000-07:00

"Tradition"

We are called to know God personally, but we are essentially social beings. We only come to know who we are in the context of other people, in the context of living in a family, in a community. Would we be so arrogant to say that all the preceding centuries of Christians and Jews have not also known, listened to and followed the Lord? Did Christian history begin in America? With my conversion? Or in Waco, Texas, around 1962?

That is why the tradition of the Church is so important: We stand on the shoulders of all the wise persons and saints of the past. This is the true Tradition. Some historical accidents have been facilely passed on as universal tradition, yet are not the consistent coherent pattern. So we need the Body to keep us beyond cultural arrogance and tied to all the ancestors. We can’t each start from zero.

So many modern groups – street preachers, “Jesus” people – have lacked a sense of the Body, a sense of standing on the shoulders of the past. They have their God moment, and they try to move forward simply based on their private experience alone and on the “Book.” Often a small group of followers become so like-minded that they lose that sense of the larger wisdom, of histories and cultures of the centuries, they can be expected to support the local government over and against the universal good. We call it civil religion, where Christ becomes a tribal god and the Church a mere echo chamber of the state.

Both Catholics and Protestants have been guilty of this fundamentalism, but you would think Catholics would have known better by now.

from The Great Themes of Scripture

"Faces of Faith"

2005-09-08T09:04:00.000-07:00

"Faces of Faith"

Western Christianity has been largely in the head, although the masses never were inspired that way. Institutional Christianity is mistrustful of enthusiasm, although enthusiasm literally means “in God.” Conviction, passion, excitement changes lives much more than logic or theo-logic. If the salvation that we see in our Sunday-morning communities or congregations were the best that God could do, then we don’t have much of a God. If those bored, sad, tired faces that we priests look out at on Sunday – those who rush in late and leave early – if those are the message, then the Good News isn’t very good. Somehow it seems salvation should show in our faces, our lives; in our fire, conviction and zeal. Some kind of Pentecost is still the best way to begin, and the enthusiastic Churches will probably continue to evangelize, heal and gather commitment and resources much better than contemporary Catholicism.

from The Great Themes of Scripture

"The Power at the Bottom"

2005-09-06T20:49:00.000-07:00

"The Power at the Bottom"

The spirituality behind the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions is very similar to the phenomenon of the base communities in Latin America. It is a “low Church” approach to evangelization and healing that is probably our only hope in a suffering world of five-and-a-half billion people. Do we really need to verify belief in atonement doctrines and the Immaculate Conception when most of God’s physical, animal and human world is on the verge of mass suicide and extinction?

The Twelve-Step meetings are probably the First World answer to Third World base communities. Our suffering is psychological, relational and addictive: the suffering of people who are comfortable on the outside but oppressed and empty within. It is a crisis of meaninglessness and the false self, which had tried to find meaning in possessions, prestige and power. It doesn’t work. Se we turn to ingesting and buying to fill our empty souls.

The Twelve Steps walk us back out of our addictive society. Like all steps toward truth, they lead downward.

Bill Wilson and his A.A. movement have shown us that the real power is not at the top but at the bottom. Those who admit they are powerless have the only power that matters in the world or in the Church. Saint Bill W., pray for us.

from Radical Grace, “The Twelve Steps: An Amazing Gift of the Spirit”

"Saint Bill W."

2005-09-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

"Saint Bill W."

Saint Bill W.? Consider the spiritual fruit that his “Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous” is now bearing throughout the world. In 1939 Bill Wilson codified his program for recovery from alcoholism. It has been so successful that it is now used by overeaters, gamblers, neurotics and those addicted to religion, drugs, sex, money, shopping, relationships and worry. Beneficiaries of these programs are some of the most spiritually open and religiously mature people you will meet.

While denominations haggle over metaphysics and belief systems, argue about who is saved and righteous with God, defend their sacramental and scriptural turf, Bill Wilson and his followers have moved forward with a humble realism that is both rare and convincing. They begin at an honest place and end at the same without arguing, proving, defending or spouting religious jargon. They come together not as a gathering of the saved but wearing their “scarlet letter” for all to see. They don’t have to be talked into a salvation theory or a need for God out there.

Their broken and powerless humanity is all that they are sure of – like parched and weary earth waiting for rain. God is a felt need, no Sugar-Daddy-Answer-Giver but the very ground of their being. To be redeemed – “brought back” – is a daily gut and heart experience, not a liberal or conservative theology.

People in Twelve-Step programs, without knowing or intending it, have every likelihood of renewing the meaning of gospel in our time. The very word “Christian” has been so cheapened that probably the only way God could re-found the Churches was from the outside. But as Scripture says, “Who can know the mind of God or who can teach the Lord?” (Wisdom 9:13).

from Radical Grace, “The Twelve Steps: An Amazing Gift of the Spirit”

"Parents’ Prayer, Everyone’s Prayer: ‘Be Done Unto Me’"

2005-09-04T06:57:00.000-07:00

"Parents’ Prayer, Everyone’s Prayer: ‘Be Done Unto Me’"

A family came out to visit me in Albuquerque a few weeks ago, with three little ones sick with croup. The house sounded like barking dogs for three days! I did five full loads of laundry – they had vomited on everything in the house. I couldn’t believe life could be that hard. You couldn’t have one conversation or one meal undisturbed. And I thought we religious had the harder life. It’s not even in the same ballpark! What parents go through to raise children is above and beyond the call of duty. Yet they rise to the occasion, more often than not.

I can see why God ordered the continuation of the human race through parenting: God had to find a way for all of us to get out of ourselves. We need reality checks that are simply there, like a brick wall, that demand a response, with no room for choice or “discernment.” That’s the best way to become holy. It’s not what you do, it’s what you allow to be done to you.

Seeking God and holiness becomes too self-conscious unless you allow it to lead you farter than you intended, holiness comes from what you allow to be done to you by the circumstances of life, by the people who are there right in front of you. We don’t convert ourselves; we are converted.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"An Incarnation Analogy"

2005-09-03T20:32:00.000-07:00

"An Incarnation Analogy"

We need signs of salvation. We who are well off have been given signs of the cross among us like the poor and the handicapped. We have to enter their world on their terms to live them. And the beautiful thing we discover is that we become free. We come at last to know who we are by looking in their eyes.

There was a television show called Son Rise about a couple who had an autistic child. They wanted their son to change and enter into their space. And they did everything they could to get that child to enter into their world and to be like them, the normal people. And then one day they realized they would have to enter his world.

It was nonsensical and grueling to do so. The mother entered into the child’s world on his terms, day after day sitting on the floor, playing seemingly silly, goal-less games with this child, waving her hands and entering his world.

After years, many days and thousands of hours of this, her son spoke to her! There’s the incarnation. That’s the pattern of redemption. That’s the price that God paid. God entered our world on our terms to feel the grief of being human – so we could speak back to a God who would understand.

Jesus is the suffering of God. Jesus is the pain of God, the pity of God. He is the revelation of the heart of God. Somehow our own feelings, somehow our own pain and our own pleasure is a participation in who God is. God is in agony and delightful expectation until the end of time.

from Days of Renewal

"The Message of Job"

2005-09-02T08:20:00.000-07:00

If we meditate about this article, we might think that our times are different. The time Job lived and our time is not the same. That is true there is no time to meditate in our time; with so much marketing ringing in our ears, with so much information flowing in the world, with that desire to get and to have instead of give, we have lost a sense of belonging. We have lost that unity with God, that personal relationship with Him that we find in the old and New Testament. The challenge is to listen to God everywhere, every time and understand that everything belongs.

Have a nice day

"The Message of Job"
Job, from the Hebrew Scriptures, can be for Christians a beautiful symbol of the Calvary that each of us will go through. In the story’s first chapter Job is presented as the innocent man, confronted with evil and suffering. He has obeyed the law of God, he has been faithful. Satan comes before God and says: “Sure, he’s been faithful. You have blessed him. Take everything away from him and see if he still praises you” (1:9-11)
Very well, says Yahweh. So Yahweh takes everything away from him, and still Job says: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, naked I shall return. Yahweh gave, Yahweh has taken back. Blessed be the name of Yahweh” (1:21, JB).
So Satan goes again before Yahweh and says: “You took away just the external things. But destroy his bone and flesh. Make his body suffer, then see if Job will still not curse you” (2:4-5). So Yahweh gives Job ulcers and diseases of the skin. But still Job refuses to curse Yahweh. Now the stage is set for the drama. Job is tempted to curse his life. He struggles with the absurdity and the meaninglessness of life but finally says, “If we take happiness from God’s hand, must we not take sorrow too?” (2:10, JB).
Brothers and sisters, if you’re seeking to lead a good life, sooner or later every one of you is going to be led to that point. Every one of us is lead, sooner or later, to the ashpit with Job “picking at our own sores” (2:8). At that time you will hear many voices (symbolized by the various advice-giving friends of Job). Pray that you know which friends to listen to and which are being “reasonable” at the price of faith.
The Book of Job probably represents the greatest moral dialogue ever written. The final response of Job does not come from logical moral reasoning but from graced personal experience.
from The Great Themes of Scripture by Richard Rohr

"Gandhi’s Place"

2005-09-01T16:59:00.000-07:00

This great article explains the subtle charisma of a rose. The Author challenges all of us to stop for a moment and perceive that greatness of life; trust the world and ourselves. Just like the rose knows that she is magnificent, that way we should know that we are sons of god and we are that same fruit.

"Gandhi’s Place"

If you want to smell the aroma of Christianity, you must copy the rose. The rose irresistibly draws people to itself, and the scent remains with them. Even so, the aroma of Christianity is subtler even than that of the rose and should, therefore, be imparted in an even quieter and more imperceptible manner, if possible. – Mahatma Gandhi
Gandhi’s rose is a magnificent image. The quiet and imperceptible authority of the rose comes from its beauty and lovely fragrance. It does not need to prove itself or convert you to its side. It knows it is a rose, and it knows it is beautiful.
If you have a nose and an eye for beauty, you will recognize the inherent authority of the rose. In face, its inner authority might well be so pressing and demanding that you might say to the rose, as did St. Francis de Sales, “Stop shouting!”
If Christianity relied on its inner authority, the weight of its truth and the sheer power of genuine goodness, the world would also say to Christians, “I hear you – stop shouting!” And we would not have preached a sermon or spoken a single word.
The powers of the world, who are always fighting deadlines, management goals and profit scales, do not expect to be motivated from within. They must produce, fix and accomplish, and this is one helpful part of life.
What about us? The author of life bids us share in divine freedom and authority. This will take longer, but it will also last longer, and this God seems to be building for the long haul. God waits, as only God can wait, because God knows the whole picture. Those with true authority can believe because they know that they know. And the rose can both blossom and die because she knows that she is a rose.
from Sojourners, “Authors of Life Together”

"Grandfather Energy"

2005-08-31T16:30:00.000-07:00

Today, we have an interesting passage that talks about living. During our life, we learn about the many obstacles and problems life has. We learn that our health needs nurture; we learn about our day-to-day survival, we learn about unity. We learn about True Friendship and the absence of it. We are in a constant learning mode. We are always deciding how to react. In my opinion, those are the decisions that give us the experience. That life and death decision that we recognize when the eyes of those with experience identify.

Enjoy

"Grandfather Energy"
A man of deep male energy is a truster of life. To be trusting is not to be naïve; it is to make judgments, recognizing what is life and what is death. Once you clarify what is life and what is death, you will be able to trust both of them. People who can’t distinguish between death and life can’t trust reality.
Trust is not making a virtuous decision; it’s not a leap of faith without any evidence. It’s recognizing that every human situation is a mixture of both life and death, that the big truths usually are complicated truths. We are a mixture of darkness and light, life and death. Every action we perform has some quality of life to it, yet some quality of fear and self-protection. When we can accept that there is no perfect anything, we can find peace in this world. As Jesus put it, “God alone is good” (Mark 10:18).
It takes a monumental act of courage and a tremendous humility to accept a paradoxical world. I think that is what “grand” fathers (and “grand” mothers!) can do. You probably don’t come to this full balance much before fifty years of age.
from A Man’s Approach to God by Richard Rohr

"The Liberation of Men"

2005-08-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

"The Liberation of Men"

Our liberation as men is different from feminine liberation. What our sisters are fighting – patriarchal culture – has oppressed women in so many ways, but men didn’t realize it because we were on top. We must stand at our sisters’ side to begin to understand their struggle. Yet men have their own liberation agenda, too.

Western men need liberation from the whole set of expectations that culture puts upon us and we put upon ourselves: to be overachievers, competitive, focused and necessarily unfeeling, successful, hard-and-strong cannon fodder for wars. That pressure is instilled from boyhood, both by women and other men. Both men and women profit from it; both men and women suffer from it.

Our liberation is to recognize and counter these voices inside us that give us false definitions of success. That may be even a more difficult form of liberation than women’s. I think that is why men are behind in the process of liberation. One is more trapped at the top. At least that’s what the gospel says.

In family after family, the woman has moved in her masculine journey farther than most of us men have moved into our feminine journey. A lot of men intuitively recognize that their wife is stronger in many ways than they are. In many families she knows how to organize life or get things done better than her husband. That becomes the pattern of the family. She becomes an androgynous person, really in her own way much more liberated than the man. The man stands on the side, earning money to support the whole system and losing the respect of his children, his wife, and often himself.

It has been much harder, culturally, for men to journey into their feminine side than for women to integrate their masculine. We need our sisters to recognize our entrapment.

from A Man’s Approach to God

"What God Has to Work With"

2005-08-28T21:22:00.000-07:00

"What God Has to Work With"

The Lord cares, despite all of our silliness. We are the kind of being God loves. God’s love doesn’t depend on our doing nice or right things. Yet it’s an illusion to think that any of us would operate totally beyond self-interest. Realistically, every action of our life is filled with self. That’s human nature, and it’s probably OK as long as we’re honest about it.

For example, I have become tired of giving talks. As it does for everyone, my gift has become my curse. But at the same time I’d be lying if I didn’t say that I gain some kind of ego satisfaction: I stand in front of crowds, and it makes me feel good. That’s OK as long as I recognize my mixed motives and self-interest. That’s the only way God gets anyone to do anything! It’s legitimate and probably necessary self-interest.

What concerns me is when we say we’re doing it all for Jesus, or purely for love, or for our spouse or children, or for the Church. That’s usually a delusion. We’re doing it in part for ourselves, and God, in great love and humility, says, “That’s what I work with. That’s all I work with!” It’s the mustard seed with which God does great things. Thank God!

True recognition of our basic egotism is a humbling experience, but a liberating one too.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Beatitudes People"

2005-08-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

"Beatitudes People"

How blessed are the poor in spirit: the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are the gentile: they shall have the earth as inheritance.

Blessed are those who mourn: they shall be comforted.

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for uprightness: they shall have their fill.

Blessed are the merciful: they shall have mercy shown them.

Blessed are the pure in heart: they shall see God.

Blessed are the peacemakers: they shall be recognized as children of God.

Blessed are those who are persecuted in the cause of uprightness: the kingdom of heaven is theirs.

Blessed are you when people abuse you and persecute you and speak all kinds of calumny against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward will be great in heaven; this is how they persecuted the prophets before you. (Matthew 5:3-12, NJB).

(Recorded at Lourdes) Something is happening at Lourdes. And God wants to give us the eyes to see it and the ground to receive it. What are all these crippled and handicapped people telling us? What is the witness of all these nurses and life-bearers? It seems God wants us to live a vulnerable life, a life dependent on other people, a life that is unafraid to cry.

“Happy are those who hunger and thirst for justice,” Jesus says.

The little ones are able to see what is happening. These are the ones who, when there is something more, will be ready. Because the numb do not notice. The sophisticated will not suffer. The comfortable need not complain. But Jesus teaches us, in effect, how to suffer graciously. He actually increases our ability to suffer graciously. He actually increases our capacity for pain. This is the central message of the eight Beatitudes.

What kind of God is this? It is a God who increases our capacity to feel the pain of being human, a God who allows deformities and tragedies so we can all be bound together in a sisterhood of need, a brotherhood of need.

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

Sharing a Pig

2005-08-25T14:55:00.000-07:00

"Sharing the Pig"

I had an experience in Guatemala similar to many others I’ve had in other Third World countries: As soon as you come to the village, in a very short time you will hear the squeal of a pig or the squawk of a chicken. They’re killing it for you. They’ve been saving it for you. And sometimes you find out afterward that it was the last pig or chicken. The poor are so generous.

Hoarding traps you in a kind of scarcity mentality. But when you have a little, for some reason you’re willing to give it away and make a day of it. Saving and preserving is not your way of life. “This is it, the last pig. But Father came to town and we’re going to celebrate,” the people say. So they kill the pig, and then you sit there in that house for hours while they’re cleaning and cooking the pig.

After you’re finished eating with the people who were originally invited to the meal, there’s lots left over. What would we do in our country? We have Tupperware and refrigerators. To save it would be a good, responsible thing to do: Don’t waste food is our commandment. And we have the technology to do just that.

Here’s a perfect example of how technology has a good side and a bad side. What have we lost by our refrigerators and freezers? Guatemalans immediately have to share the pig, the chicken with other people. Bringing food from one house to the next, which creates family, is a daily experience. It creates community and interdependence.

We North Americans don’t need to do that because we can store it for ourselves. So it keeps us more and more inside our houses where everything is mine, and it needs to be protected from you. Our politics of scarcity and individual responsibility leads us to become more and more isolated, independent and competitive. The poor have an amazing politics of abundance precisely because they can rely upon the group and are not as tempted to securing for the future. Our biases see this as irresponsibility, but the poor actually are closer to faith, community and the Kingdom of God.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Checkbook Storytime"

2005-08-24T12:59:00.000-07:00

"Checkbook Storytime"

There is a couple I know who earn very good money, and yet they live simply, without any status symbols or luxuries, with money set aside for charity. It’s a trimmed-down life for them and their six children.

Every month the mother gathers the six children around the checkbook. For each check that she writes to whomever it might be, to whatever cause or charity, she tells them a story: “This is why these people need it more than we need it.” And so those kids actually know where the family money is going and that it isn’t there in the bank account for them to buy a new toy.

The parents themselves are making choices not to have always new, better, more things. When the parents share those choices, the children are more willing to buy into them. They begin a process of solidarity (not without struggle, however!). At this point they are some of the most mature and responsible – and yet alive and real – children I’m aware of in their community.

I think the mother’s check-writing process is probably the best form of religious education. The rubber has met the road. It’s not highly metaphysical and spiritual; it’s “Jesus means this. Commitment means this. Love means this.” That’s religious education.

Our checkbooks are probably our best theological statement about our real values. Jesus said, similarly, “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:21, JB).

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

Too Much Access

2005-08-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

"Too Much Access"

With so many time-saving devices, it doesn’t make sense that people are so rushed. People seem to have so little time to do what they want. We’ve created tremendous accessibility to one another through the telephone, the car, mass transit, telegrams, postal service.

When I moved to Albuquerque, I got a phone-answering machine because I’m gone so much. I said, I must be crazy to be doing this! Now I’ll go home and everybody I was able to get away from will still be able to get at me. Earlier generations didn’t – and other cultures still don’t – have that access to one another. Sometimes, within the same day, I am speaking in two different parts of the world that in any former age would have required weeks to travel between them. It must be taking a toll on the psyche, on what is real, on our spiritual home. It is friendship and wisdom that seem to suffer.

Material affluence, ironically, creates scarcity of non-material things. Pope John Paul II said that very well when he first spoke to the United Nations. In a culture of affluence, he said, you will predictably see a decrease of spiritual values: time, knowledge, wisdom, love and friendship. Those decrease almost in mathematical proportion as you move toward materialism.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"Respecting Our Experience"

2005-08-22T07:01:00.000-07:00

"Respecting Our American Experience"

The cultural experience of each country has to be respected and listened to, for God has spoken through the minds and hearts of each people. Each, I believe, holds different parts of the Great Mystery in special awareness.

If we’re going to listen to the experience of our brothers and sisters in the Third World, I think, in fairness, we have to grant the same privilege to ourselves. We have to respect and listen to the only experience that we Americans have had. We have to trust it, we have to say, somehow there’s some truth in it.

We must recognize the good in our society before we can eliminate the bad because good and evil are two sides of one coin. You can’t recognize evil without recognizing good. You can’t accept the one without, to some degree, accepting or at least understanding the other.

What is the American experience? What is our experience of life, for good and for ill? It’s the only experience you and I have. I would list the essentially good values of American culture as: personalism, freedom and self-determination, pluralism, up-front honesty, democratic self-criticism, a not-so-bad emphasis on productivity and practical effect, and a natural egalitarianism that disdains caste systems in any form. These are all potentially gospel and part of the cosmic mystery of the Body of Christ.

The American experience has formed our psyche. God is willing to use these values. We must be willing to work with them, too, recognizing both their gift and their temptation.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"The Baths at Lourdes"

2005-08-21T21:03:00.000-07:00

"The Baths at Lourdes"

(Recorded at Lourdes) Being lowered into the baths at Lourdes is an act of humiliation and trust, an act of faith. Your mind wants to say, Why do this? What does this mean? What is this going to do? It seems everything in our life has to have an immediate, visible effect, or it hasn’t “worked.”

That attitude is a terrible enemy of faith because faith is not in the realm of the practical; faith means entering into the world of mystery, where deeper energies are at work, where transformation takes place even though nothing appears to change.

If we can enter into a deeper surrender in faith, like a child who can rejoice entertaining itself before its mother, then we can truly experience prayer together. We have to let go of our working ideas to play before the Lord, and in this shrine of Lourdes, to play before Mary. Only our humble, goal-less inner child can understand that.

[In fact, I was healed of seven years of severe hypoglycemia at Lourdes the day this was recorded, October 2, 1980. God is good!]

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

"The Third Temptation of Christ (Control)"

2005-08-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

"The Third Temptation of Christ (Control)"

After the need to be successful and the need to think well of the self, the third human addiction is the need for control or power. So the devil tells Jesus to bow down before the systems of this world: “All of them you can have” (Matthew 4:8). Just buy them. Believe in them. Jesus refuses to bow down before the little kingdoms of this world, the corporations and the nation-states, the security systems, the idols of militarism. The price of this love of power is to “fall at Satan’s feet and worship him!” (Matthew4:9). That’s a very heavy judgement on “all the kingdoms of the world.” In all these systems, self-interest has to dominate. For Kingdom people, self-interest cannot dominate.

Simply put, the third temptation is the need to be in control, to be aligned with power and money. The three temptations that Jesus faces, in a certain sense, all become one: the addictive system, the great lie, the untouchable mythology, “the sin of the world” (John 1:29) that must be unmasked and dethroned. And I know nothing strong enough to break the mythology – not ideology, not liberalism, not conservatism – except the upside-down gospel of Jesus. You must re-found your life on a new foundation, the foundation, the foundation of your experienced union with God.

Jesus tells Satan,” ‘You must worship the Lord your God, and serve God alone.’ And the devil left him” (Matthew 4:10-11). When you have faced these three “biggies,” Satan doesn’t have a chance.

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The Second Temptation of Christ (Righteousness)"

2005-08-19T07:22:00.000-07:00

"The Second Temptation of Christ (Righteousness)"

The second temptation of Jesus: Satan takes him up to the pinnacle of the temple, symbolizing the religious world, and tells him to play righteousness games with God. “Throw yourself off and he’ll catch you” (Matthew 4:6). It’s the only time when the devil quotes Scripture. The second temptation is the need to be right and to think of the self as saved, superior, the moral elite standing on God and religion, and quoting arguable Scriptures for your own purpose.

More evil has come into the world by people of righteous ignorance than by people who’ve intentionally sinned: Being convinced that one has the whole truth and has God wrapped up in my denomination, my dogmas, and my right response (I am baptized, I made a personal decision for Jesus, I go to church).

It’s not wrong to be “right.” Once in a while if something works out, that’s sure nice. The spiritual problem is the need to be right. We are called to do the truth and then let go of the consequences. One stops asking the question of spiritual success, which is the egocentrism of the rich young man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” (Mark 10:17). Jesus refused to answer him because it is the wrong question. It is again “the devil” quoting Scripture and not really wanting an answer, only affirmation.

As Mother Teresa loves to say, “We were not created to be successful [even spiritually successful!] but to be obedient.” True obedience to God won’t always make us look or feel right. Faith is dangerous business!

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The First Temptation of Christ (Success)"

2005-08-18T17:12:00.000-07:00

"The First Temptation of Christ (Success)"

I believe that all would-be ministers must face the same three temptations as Jesus before they really can minister. The first temptation of Christ, to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3), is the need to be effective, successful, relevant, to make things happen. You’ve done something and people say, “Wow! Good job! You did it right. You’re OK.” When the crowds approve, it’s hard not to believe that we have done a good thing, and probably God’s will.

Usually when you buy into that too quickly, you’re feeding the false self and the system, which tells you what it immediately wants and seldom knows what it really needs. You can be a very popular and successful minister operating at that level. That is why Jesus has to face that temptation first, to move us beyond what we want to what we really need. In refusing to be relevant, in refusing to respond to people’s immediate requests, Jesus says, Go deeper. What’s the real question? What are you really after? What does the heart really hunger for? What do you really desire? “It’s not by bread alone that we live” (Matthew 4:4).

from Preparing for Christmas With Richard Rohr

"The Divine Pickpocket"

2005-08-17T10:10:00.000-07:00

"The Divine Pickpocket"

We can only dare to let go of evil in the presence of a perfect love. Don Quixote steals the shame of Aldonza by his continual respect for her. Love makes sin unnecessary and takes it away.

What do you think happens when God forgives your sin? Is it God changing suddenly, reassessing you? Is it God deciding to waive some eternal and required punishment? No! Nothing happens in God. God is a perfect given-ness, totally and always given, literally fore-given: ahead of time, before our act of faith.

God does not change; we change. Here is what’s happening in the experience of forgiveness: When God’s arms are tight enough around you, when for a moment you can believe in love, when you let God gaze into your eyes deeply enough and are ready to believe it, than you’re able to let God rob you of your sin. God pulls it out of your pocket while holding you in her gaze!

from Days of Renewal

"Child of the 60’s"

2005-08-16T19:26:00.000-07:00

"Child of the 60’s"

I do not know if it was an advantage or disadvantage to grow up in the 60’s. Vision, hope, optimism and positive social change were the mood of the times. It was easy to believe that the Age of Aquarius was indeed upon us with its apex being a Vatican II Church and an enlightened America that would surely be the threshold of the coming Kingdom. Idealism seemed almost unchecked, open-ended and wonderful. All we had to do was get everyone educated and converted, and that was just a matter of time.

Now in 1992, that five hundredth anniversary of the European invasion of the Americas, things look different. It is hard to believe that the world could appear so changed in one lifetime. The values that we thought were roundly accepted are now roundly denied: racism is chic, war is a substitute for worship, materialism is the watertight myth, the poor are blamed for their condition, and religion, largely, is unimportant.

Were we wrong, or is this the price that one pays for false innocence? Is there such a thing as social progress? Must we take two steps back for each step forward? As you probably suspect, I now answer each of these with a humble yes. But I am very happy that I was formed in the lens-opening 60’s, especially when I see the later alternatives. These alternatives threaten to close that lens through cynicism, discouragement, anger and darkness.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation”

"Transformation and Change"

2005-08-15T07:32:00.000-07:00

"Transformation and Change"

There is a difference between change and transformation. Change happens when something old dies and something new begins. I am told that planned change is as troublesome to the psyche as unplanned change, often more so. We feel manipulated, forced, and impute it to some evil authorities, the change agents! But change might or might not be accompanied by transformation of soul. I’m afraid it is usually not. If change does not invite personal transformation, we lose our souls. Such is the modern malaise. We mass-produce neurotics and narcissists because there are so few medicine men and healing women and Spirit guides to walk us through transformation.

At times of change, the agents of transformation must work overtime, even through few will hear them. The ego would sooner play victim or too-quick victor than take the ambiguous road of transformation. We change-agents need a simple virtue: faith. It still is the rarest of commodities because it feels like nothing, at least nothing that satisfies our need to know, to fix, to manage, to understand. Faith goes against the grain.

Transformation in times of change is the exception, but it is also the norm. Deutero-Isaiah was written in exile; Francis of Assisi emerged as the first clocks turned time into money; and the martyrs of El Salvador spilled their blood during the last gasps of colonial and economic oppression. Nothing new seems to happen except when the old dies. But the old does not die gracefully: It always takes hostages. These have the potential of building bridges to the next coming of Christ.

from Radical Grace, “A Transitional Generation”

"Your Name-place"

2005-08-14T08:09:00.000-07:00

"Your Name-place"

God gives you two names: yours and God’s. Listen for that place deep within where God has given you God’s own name, that name lovers reveal to one another in intimate moments, where God has told you who God is for you. Who is God for you? It’s unlike anybody else. You reflect a part of God that no one else will ever reflect. You reflect back to God a part of the mystery that no one else will understand.

Where God has given you God’s intimate name, you also have been given your own name. It takes awhile; it takes some listening, some silence, some suffering, probably. It takes some waiting, desiring; it takes some hoping. But finally we discover that place where we know who we are; we know what God said.

That place-where-the-names-are-One, God’s name and your name, that’s the place of inner authority. That’s the place where the Spirit is able to be heard and received. It’s the only place big enough and grand enough to be able to believe the daring gospel of Christ.

I hope someone has given you freedom and permission to trust your own experience, to listen, and believe your name. It speaks and evokes you and no one else.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"A Week of Prayers: Jesus Is Our Love"

2005-08-13T21:44:00.000-07:00

"A Week of Prayers: Jesus Is Our Love"

God of life, bless our days. Keep us alive and in love. Keep us listening. Keep us growing, Mother-God. Keep drawing us closer to you. Help our words, Father-God, not get in the way of your Spirit. Help the words we use not become too many or too confusing. Our faith, Holy One, is in you and not in any words or in any teaching. We just want these words to open us up to you and to your Spirit among us.

Help us not to be afraid of Jesus, the companion you have given us for our journey toward you. As St. Bernard prayed, “Jesus, our Lord, you are honey in our mouth. You are music in our ear. You are a leap of joy in our heart.”

from The Price of Peoplehood and Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: Make Us Signs of Hope"

2005-08-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

"A Week of Prayers: Make Us Signs of Hope"

Spirit of God, Lord, again we come as sons and we need you; we come as daughters and we ask for your life. You are our God. You are our creator. You have made us something out of nothing. Free us so we no longer complain about what is not given. We know, God, what is given and we can no longer deny it. Make signs of hope, Jesus, for this world, so that the world will not destroy itself. Give us faith to believe, Father, not in just some new, happy life, not in some good fortune in the future, but give us faith in the now that seems so empty.

Give us hope that you are what we suspect you should be: love as we understand it. Mother, perhaps there is something else giving on here. We dare to want to see it and want to believe it. Perhaps there is graciousness here. All we know is that we who were once nothing are now something, and you, God of life, have made it so. We are so grateful.

from Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: You Are Lord"

2005-08-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

"A Week of Prayers: You Are Lord"

Lord Christ, we salute you. We salute the love we do not understand. We wait for a love that we do not yet know. Help us, Lord, to stand under the cross and finally to understand. Give us, Lord, through the experiences of human life, the hearts to understand. We praise you. You are the loving Lord of history, and our knees will bend at your name, for you have created us out of nothing, loved us and saved us.

from Days of Renewal

"A Week of Prayers: Help Us to Be Universal"

2005-08-09T07:49:00.000-07:00

"A Week of Prayers: Help Us to Be Universal"

Loving Creator, we want to be your people. We want to be your universal people, your catholic people. We want to be brothers and sisters to all of our brothers and sisters who eat of the same bread and drink of the same cup that we enjoy. Teach us how, Holy Spirit. Help us not to get in the way of this always-bigger thing that you are doing. Help us, teach us how to be ready to be Catholic. We trust in you, Lord Christ, that you are the Lord of our history and the Lord of our lives. We pray, trusting that you are both hearing and creating this prayer. We pray in the name of Jesus, whose Body we are. Amen.

from Letting Go: A Spirituality of Subtraction

"A Week of Prayers: Teach Us to Pray"

2005-08-08T07:37:00.000-07:00

"A Week of Prayers: Teach Us to Pray"

Loving God, give us the gift of prayer. We want you to find us, and we want to find you. Teach us how to pray, Holy Spirit, and how not to be afraid of prayer. Give us the courage to reveal ourselves, because, Lord, you have not been afraid to reveal yourself. We need and want to expose our deepest heart to you, just as you have exposed your heart to us.

Free us from our fears. Put your arms around us and call us each by name. Call us daughter and son. Call us to yourself. Tell us it’s OK, because we’re so afraid, and we feel so bad about who we are. We long to be found out, Lord. Discover us, Lord. We want to reveal ourselves to you. And we want you to take us into your embrace. We pray together as your sons and daughters and we pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Prayer Advice"

2005-08-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

"Prayer Advice"

In order to discover the right rhythm of prayer for us, the prayer that works with our temperament, we must listen to the ways that God speaks to us. How do you best slow down and enter in to the dialogue of revelation and response? It’s different for each of us.

You may need a holy spot, perhaps a place where God has spoken to you before. Maybe it’s out in nature, maybe it’s a certain chair or before the Blessed Sacrament. Maybe it’s in the last pew in church. It’s that place where you can return to and sort of settle back and seek God’s face. That’s the simplest form of prayer: Each day simply seek, for a moment, if possible, the face of God. Know that you’ve looked at God eyeball to eyeball, and you’ve let God look at you.

If you’re more the thinking type, ideas will lead you into that revelation-and-faith-dialogue. Use a book, if that’s your style. But don’t think that reading the book is itself the dialogue. You’ve got to end by talking to God from your heart, person-to-person, with ordinary words like you’d talk to everybody else. Speak out of what you’re really feeling, not what you think you’re supposed to be feeling. If you’re feeling depression, failure, competition, that’s what you bring to God. Everything is data. There are no such things as distractions.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Weeds and Wheat"

2005-08-06T21:20:00.000-07:00

"Weeds and Wheat"

“The servants came to the owner of the field, and said, “There did the weeds come from?” “An enemy has done this to us,” he answered. And the servant said, “Do you want us to go and weed it out?” But he said, “No, because if you pull out the weeds, you will pull out the wheat with it. Let them both grow until the harvest, and at harvest time I will separate the two.” (Matthew 13:28-30)

This passage has to be one of the most overlooked, least influential, yet most needed of Jesus’ direct teachings. It presents the ambiguous character of reality in a way that we were not ready for, it seems. The image of the weeds and the wheat has had almost no effect on the development of our moral theology, our self-understanding, or our patience with all institutions and with one another. Folks now chase after the yin and yang of Eastern religions as if they are a new, honest teaching. As usual, Jesus already said it: We just didn’t hear.

We did, at least, speak of the “Paschal Mystery” as the mystery of faith, and the new liturgy proclaims, “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.” But even there, we don’t often translate mythic language into the human patterns that myths point to. Maybe it never computed into “Half will be dark, half will be light, again and again.” Or, “No matter where, when or what, life will be both agony and ecstasy.”

The field contains both weeds and wheat, and we must let them grow together. How much time I have wasted in trying to pull out my weeds! You cannot really pull them out, but don’t ever doubt that they are there! Thus, the Sacrament of Penance is not the sacrament of the annihilation of sin, or even getting rid of sin. It is more reconciliation with and forgiveness of those dang weeds in the field.

(from unpublished sermon notes)

"Freedom Versus Fear"

2005-08-05T07:34:00.000-07:00

"Freedom Versus Fear"

You can never bring about the Kingdom of God by means of fear (see Romans 14:16-17). It is not the Kingdom of God if it is brought about by fear or coercion. God allows and respects the freedom of creatures, even to the point of rebellion and blasphemy! The realm of freedom is a prerequisite of virtue, just as it is of sin. It is God’s great risk.

The freedom to fall is also the freedom to rise. It’s precisely in our failure, our experience of poverty, weakness, emptiness that we come to experience God’s restoration and healing love. You can say, Oh, that’s dangerous, it sounds like you’re justifying sin. But I’m just trying to be the ultimate realist. Salvation is sin overturned and outdone, as God expands and educates our true freedom. Free will and freedom of conscience are at the heart of the doctrine of grace and at the center of Christian morality.

from The Price of Peoplehood

"Render Unto Rome"

2005-08-04T07:46:00.000-07:00

"Render Unto Rome"

Don’t give Rome more authority than it was ever intended to have. Jesus told Peter to preserve the brothers in faith (see Luke 22:31-32). Jesus didn’t say anything to Peter about preserving them in love or hope. The role of the bishop of Rome is to keep us united in the tradition of faith. We are preserved in love by the example of the suffering people of the world. Hope is given to us by prophets – prophetic movements and communities. When we put all of that on Rome we asked to be disappointed.

Once I was able to accept Rome’s central, visible and important gift, while also realizing Rome does not have all the gifts, I didn’t need to get so angry and disappointed with the Vatican. I go ahead with my Christian life. I hope I’m free to say yes and give them a due hearing. However, I also have my own prayer life. I have my conscience; I have my own study of the Scripture that I’ve done together with my Franciscan community, scholars and my lay community. I have to trust these hearings. I have to trust my inner authority as a complement to that outer authority. As Cardinal Newman put it, “I toast the pope, but I toast human conscience first.”

My prayer is that they overlap as much as possible. But when they don’t, I have to go back to prayer and back to other wise people. That’s why we need wise and authentically obedient people like Charles Curran, Dorothy Day, and Archbishop Hunthausen – to help us form our consciences. The first principle of traditional Catholic morality is that “one must follow one’s conscience.”

from Catholic Agitator, “Creative Dissent”

"Positive Passion"

2005-08-03T06:41:00.000-07:00

"Positive Passion"

We live a long time in order to become lovers. God is like a good parent, refusing to do our homework for us. We must learn through trial and error. We have to do our homework ourselves, the homework of suffering, desiring, winning and losing, hundreds of times.

Loss is one of the greatest occasions of passionate feeling, and it’s one that is socially acceptable. When we lose a beloved friend, wife, husband, child, parent, or maybe a possession or a job, we feel OK to be passionate. But we must broaden that. We’ve got to get to a passion that is also experienced when we have it, not just when we’re losing it. And we have it all the time. Don’t wait for loss to feel, suffer, enjoy deeply.

from The Passion of God and the Passion Within

"Real Vacations"

2005-08-02T09:03:00.000-07:00

"Real Vacations"

There are two types of passivity. First, there’s laziness. That is largely avoidance, an aimless kind of moving around and saying, “I gotta rest.” Why is it that so much recreation we take is not really re-creation? It does not really renew our spirit. A lot that people call a vacation is simply diversion, or distraction from a life that is already one big distraction. It’s finding another kind of stimulation we have. We say, I’m not gonna do anything, I’m on vacation. But that isn’t the true recreation that re-creates, the true vacation that vacates the overstuffed apartment.

A real vacation should encourage real inner passivity. True leisure, true emptiness, is, in fact, a vigilance, a listening, a waiting. It’s a strong inner activity. And the irony is, this kind of passivity is the most disciplined activity. Thus the contemplatives were often the greatest activists.

Freedom comes when you can be and let be. Then you appear to be passive, but in fact you’re operating out of a strong inner activity. On the other hand, some people who are really moving and achieving are not really active people at all. They’re extremely passive people, following the collective herd of trends and dictated fashions, deaf and dumb inside.

from The Price of Peoplehood by Richard Rohr

"We Are Deeply Hurt People"

2005-08-01T07:20:00.000-07:00

"We Are Deeply Hurt People"

If there’s one teaching of the Church that I’ve grown to appreciate, it’s the concept of Original Sin. I have less and less doubt that all of us are infected with some kind of tragic flaw, that all of us are deeply wounded at the core.

I never really used to think that way. I came out of the very optimistic, Chardinian worldview. Now after seven years building community, I’ve seen too many jolly, fine, together people come on the scene and think they were perfect people. After three months, I’d see they’re just like all the rest of us. There hasn’t been an exception in seven years.

We all are deeply hurt people, and we’ve all been infected. People are not whole and yet they constantly long for holiness, for wholeness. That’s why Jesus’ call to holiness is paralleled by the healing ministry. In fact, you could say that’s almost all Jesus does: preach and heal, preach and heal, preach and heal. For the mature ones, the preaching is already healing and the healing is its own sermon.

from The Price of Peoplehood by Richard Rohr

"Woman: Half of God’s Work of Art"

2005-07-31T18:09:00.000-07:00

"Woman: Half of God’s Work of Art"

All this “women-stuff” is not only important, it is half of conversion, half of salvation, half of wholeness, half of God’s work of art. I believe this mystery is imaged in the Woman of the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse: “pregnant, and in labor, crying aloud in the pangs of childbirth…and finally escaping into the desert until her time” (12:1-6).

Could this be the time? It is always the time! The world is tired of Pentagons and pyramids, empires and corporations that only abort God’s child. This women-stuff is very important, and it’s always been important: more than this white male priest ever imagined or desired! My God was too small and too male. Much that the feminists are saying is very prophetic and necessary for the Church and the world. It is time for the woman to come out of her desert refuge and for the men to welcome her.

from Radical Grace, “Is This ‘Women-Stuff’ Important?”

"Women-Stuff"

2005-07-30T16:43:00.000-07:00

"Women-Stuff"

“Women-stuff” is the hidden energy behind almost all of the justice issues. The movement toward nonviolence and disarmament, the movement against homelessness and refugee problems, the raping of the earth and its resources, sexual and physical abuse, the idolatry of profit and the corporation, the rejection of the poor – none of these will move beyond the present impasse until the underlying issues of power, prestige and possessions are exposed for the lie that they are. Humanity’s capacity to disguise its own darkness seems endless. Patriarchal logic is only logic in favor of the system and the status quo – which is proudly called “real world.” Believe me, because I always hear it quoted to me after my sermons, usually from polite men in three-piece suits: “That was an interesting talk there ‘Father,’ but you know in the real world…” The fathers of the system hate nothing more than another father who refuses the rules of the game. That is precisely our role in proclaiming the new system that Jesus called the Reign of God.

from Radical Grace, “Is This ‘Women’Stuff’ Important?”

"The First Franciscan Community"

2005-07-29T20:27:00.000-07:00

"The First Franciscan Community"

(Recorded at the Portiuncula) There are many romantic pictures of Franciscans loving one another, praying together and lifting their hands to God. But I’m sure in this place, around this little chapel where their huts first stood, there were many days of complete doubt and disillusionment; feelings of dislike – maybe even of hatred – toward one another; doubt of the vocation in the Lord; feelings of anger; temptations of desire, lust, passion and fear – all the temptations that human beings experience. The first Franciscans were no different from any of us. But somehow, they remembered the one commandment that the Lord gave us, which is to love one another. How can we more deeply love one another? The first Franciscans put their lives together, and they remained together. They said we’re gonna stick with it until we become one. We’re gonna remain together until we can walk through these barriers to love. That will come up in every marriage, in every attempt at union and every attempt at community. We begin to see the dark parts of one another, those parts that we do not like. The way we learn to love is by walking through those: not around by avoidance, not underneath by spiritualizing, not over by denial – but though by incarnation.

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

"Lepers and Wolves"

2005-07-28T07:57:00.000-07:00

"Lepers and Wolves"

It’s wonderful news, brothers and sisters, that we come to God not by our perfection but by our imperfection. Because that gives all of us the only chance we’ll ever have. And it allows us to walk, instead of a sometimes-journey of repression or denial, a journey into truth, into ever-deeper sympathy with what’s going on inside of us. Deep within each of us live a leper and a wolf. Those are the two images that have caught the imagination of the world about Francis. We’ve pictured them but never internalized them. We always pictured meetings out there: Francis meeting the leper on the road, Francis taming the wolf in Gubbio. The stories did happen historically, but first they operate in the soul. It is on the inside that lepers and wolves are first to be found. If we haven’t been able to kiss many lepers, if we haven’t been able to tame many wolves, it’s probably because we haven’t made friends with our leper and wolf within. Name your poor leper within, today. Nurse and tend her wounds. Name your inner wolf. Tame him by gently forgiveness.

from Embracing Christ As Francis Did: In the Church of the Poor

"Francis Stands for Love Emptying Itself"

2005-07-27T10:30:00.000-07:00

"Francis Stands for Love Emptying Itself"

History eventually turns itself upside down. In the moment, the saint is never understood. So we had best be careful whom we name saint and devil. We had best listen because sometimes saints come in ways we are not prepared for. Francis wanted one thing above everything else: the poor Jesus. So he went to the caves, dressed in the ragged tunic and let the people call him foolish. Even in his age he saw the importance of being poor. He saw how the Church was being destroyed by its own riches. Above all else Francis stands for love, but love that empties itself, love that is so secure that it can be poor. It can let go of its reputation, securities, money. Francis in every age will be called the little poor man. He was free enough to be poor. He named his community “the brothers of the lower class” (friars minor). He changed sides intentionally: Today we call that taking a “preferential option for the poor.” We Americans stand for the upper class on this earth. Let us ask for ourselves and for our country the gift of poverty, the freedom to be poor. If we have not heard that, we have not heard Francis. All the rest is sentimentality – “birdbath Franciscanism.”

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr

"In the Land of Francis"

2005-07-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

"In the Land of Francis"

(Recorded at Assisi) St. Francis, at the end of his life, said if he had to do one thing over, he would treat Brother Ass, which is what he called his body, a little better. But what characterizes all saints is a sort of fanaticism, a single-mindedness. They know one thing is important, and they hold onto that with a kind of feverish urgency and concern. Being in Assisi helps us to see St. Francis as a real person. He had to walk back to that piazza in the clothes of a dropout and have his old friends laugh at him. He had to walk through these streets and not be received, even by most of the established Church here who thought he was a nut. A fool, they called him. And he called himself that after awhile, the “idiot of God.” After awhile he moved outside the walls. He rebuilt a little church at San Damiano and there he heard Jesus speak to him. He lived outside the city a little, at Rivotorto and at the Portiuncula because the people here thought he was useless and disrespectful of his father and the proven economic system. Little did they think that eight hundred years later they would still be living off of him, as tourists from all over the world buy pictures and statues of Francis of Assisi.

from On Pilgrimage With Father Richard Rohr