As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’  (Luke 9:57-58)

This week, as we prepare to share in the celebration of the Last Supper on Holy Thursday, and as we make ready our hearts to follow Jesus along the way of the cross, we remember the homeless residents of our town.

Saint Francis House, a homeless shelter and soup kitchen not far from us, is permitted to serve no more than 130 meals per day, no matter how much food is available or how many hungry adults and children are standing in line. I would like to share with you part of Arupa Freeman’s Home Van Newsletter regarding the “Meal Limit battle.” (To read the whole letter, go the the web site of the Home Van, which, in its own words, “delivers food, clothing, friendship, and other necessities of life to homeless people in Gainesville.”)

Sometime in the coming weeks, the Meal Limit battle will be fought in front of the City Commission.  Outraged citizens, along with wealthy downtown developers,  will inform the City Commission that St. Francis House, as well as other do gooders, are feeding junkies and hookers.

The theory is that if we stop feeding these ‘dregs of society’ (another phrase we hear at public meetings), they will go away, leaving us with a prosperous and vibrant downtown.

Yes, the Home Van feeds junkies and hookers and we are proud of it.  They are folks we have known for many years, and people who have taught us more about love and compassion than we ever learned anywhere else.  Two years ago, when a middle-aged woman was discharged from Shands hospital, into homelessness, with a feeding tube hanging out of her stomach and a bag of medicines that require refrigeration, she wound up in Lynch Park, since there was no bed available at St. Francis House.  The junkies and hookers took care of her, and brought her to our attention so that we could find a social worker to help her out.  I will  never forget the sight of Peanut, one of the Lynch Park junkies, on his knees grinding up her pills between two rocks and carefully pouring the grains into a bottle of water, as the directions from the hospital required.  Others take care of Maria, who has asthma and diabetes.  When newly homeless people find themselves on the dark street that runs behind St. Francis House, it is the junkies and hookers who orient them to their situation and tell them where to get help.  Two weeks ago an elderly couple, who looked very middle class and beyond terrified, were brought to the Home Van by our junkies and hookers.  Actually, the old man refused to come – he was too humiliated.  Charlene took the old woman by the arm, saying softly, “It’s okay.  They’re nice people.  They will help you.”

If only the City Commission were more like our junkies and hookers.

<http://homevan.blogspot.com>

As for myself, I need to look into my heart and question my own compassion.  Whom do I most resemble: the junkies and hookers, or on the other hand those who call the poorest among us the “dregs of society”?

Jesus said to them, ‘Truly I tell you, the tax-collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. (Matthew 21:31)

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’  (Matthew 11:28-30)

“My yoke is easy,” Jesus says.  Really?  Maybe so, but it doesn’t always feel easy.  Certainly life’s burdens are not always light.  “I will give you rest,” we hear Jesus assure us. How do we rest when we are in sorrow or in pain, whether the result of following the path of Jesus or simply of living a human life?

First, I want to say that I have no answers to the problem of pain.  I don’t know the secret to handling pain “well.”  I know that in practice, there are times when pain or sorrow can be so overwhelming that the suffering seems to take over our whole  being.

So what helps us?

I asked a number of people if they have special prayers that help them.

Many were mentioned, prayers that came to mind without effort, a sign that they had been often called upon: the 23rd Psalm, the Jesus Prayer, the Anima Christi, Psalm 70:1 (“God come to my assistance, Lord, make haste to help me”), the Memorare, the Rosary or the Hail Mary, the last line of the Te Deum (“O Lord, in Thee I have hoped; let me never be put to shame”) – and many others.

One thing I noticed was that the words of the prayer were not necessarily directed specifically toward release from suffering.  But these were well-worn prayers, known by heart, that had given consolation through the years and even through the ages.

But what about times when, in spite of all our prayer, God does not intervene in our lives to take away pain?

We remember that Jesus prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want.” (Matthew 26:39) – not a stoic prayer, but uttered after throwing himself on the ground, filled with grief and distress.  Nevertheless, the cup of suffering, the cross, was not taken away.

Perhaps there are moments when to be in harmony with God’s heart – I hesitate to call it resting in the heart of Christ, but that may be what it is – means to cry out with Jesus on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

The impossible is not required of us.

This fact in itself is restful.  We don’t have to pretend all is well when it is not.  We don’t have to deny pain or pretend to inhuman strength in the face of suffering.  We don’t have to stuff sorrow into some hidden container in order to be pleasing to God.  When the cup of sorrow or pain is not taken away, we can cry out with Christ, trusting, in the light of the resurrection, that like him we will be brought safely through to the other side of suffering and death.

“I’m sorry!” I said, turning toward him.

“You all right, you all right,” he assured me.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Yes, ma’am!”

And warmed by the driver’s gentle courtesy, I moved out of his way and continued my dash toward our own small car.

One of the regular practices of Lent is confession, both sacramental and informal. We say, “I’m sorry,” and hear God reply, “You all right, you all right!” – repeating it for emphasis, as we have such a hard time believing it – assuring us that our sins are wiped away.

• the blind see (Isaiah 29:18)
• the desert blooms and rejoices (Isaiah 35)
• the barren bear many children (Isaiah 54:1)
• the wolf shall dwell with the lamb [along with other unlikely companions] (Isaiah 11)
• the meek inherit the land (Psalm 37:11)

The primary example of the unexpected way in which God works is the cross.

How ridiculous it must have looked — that sign, “King of the Jews” above someone who was stripped, naked, and helpless on the cross!  The one who had claimed to be the bread of life, but now can’t even scratch his own nose, much less feed anyone!  Surely the invitation to take up our cross and follow Jesus is the height of folly.

This wasn’t even a noble death.  Crucifixion was the most shameful method of execution.  If Jesus had been a war hero dying in battle, it might have been considered an honorable death.  Even if he had been a great Greek or Roman philosopher who made a dramatic speech in his defense — that might have been less shameful.  But Jesus didn’t say much at all — a few words, a cry of anguish.  Even as a death, it was disappointing in human eyes.

But as Paul says:

The message of the cross is folly for those who are on the way to ruin, but for those of us who are on the road to salvation it is the power of God.

(1 Corinthians 1:18 NJB)

Who would have guessed that out of this weakness — when Jesus couldn’t use his hands, for they were nailed to the wood; couldn’t walk, for his feet were nailed; had wounds on his head from the thorns that were part of the clown costume that the soldiers had made him wear, and his chest wounded by the spear — who would guess that out of this weakness would come new life for the world, new life for each of us?

Who would guess that a public execution would show us the power of God?

Who would guess that God’s power would be made perfect in weakness?  (See 2 Cor 12:9.)

So I was in the yard, wielding the pitchfork, hefting piles of leaves into a bin, when a nice-looking young man called out from the sidewalk, “I could help you!”

“Thank you, but no,” I replied. “I’m getting my exercise.”

He walked over and persisted, “I could do that, and you could give me a couple of dollars. I need a beer real bad.”

I tried to explain that since the city no longer accepts leaves in plastic bags, and we have only two plastic cans, there wasn’t a lot that could be done in one day.

“I’ll do two bins, and you can give me three dollars!”

“No,” I said again. “The doctor wants me to exercise.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he responded, looking sympathetic, evidently commiserating with whatever grave medical condition would inspire doctor-ordered exercise. “But I need beer,” he added pleasantly. “I drink a lot.”

“Why do you drink a lot?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I guess I’m an alcoholic.”

“That’s not so good,” I said.

“Yeah, man. The stuff’ll kill you.”

“Yes, it can. It killed an uncle of mine.”

“For real, man?” (He sounded surprised, as if he had not seriously believed the danger up until now.)

“Yes, he got cirrhosis of the liver and died.”

After a few more moments of conversation, we shook hands, and he headed off toward downtown.

“Have a nice day. God bless you,” he called out.

“You have a nice evening,” I said. “And don’t drink too much beer!”

When I recounted the conversation to Sister Betty, she pointed out that he needs some lessons in marketing, if he really wants to be paid for yard work. I agreed that his sales pitch left something to be desired, but at least he didn’t claim that he needed the money to bury his dear grandma.

All of us are broken in one way or another. Most of us are just better at hiding it – or at least we think we are better at hiding it. And we are all helpless to mend ourselves.

Fertile powerlessness

The Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous are very spiritually sound. Here are the first three:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol [or substitute here another addiction]—that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

(For the rest of the Twelve Steps, click here.)

Some of us not in AA or other Twelve-Step programs still suffer under the illusion that we can manage our lives by ourselves. Saint Paul, though, knew that he could not.  He heard God telling him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

My power is made perfect, God says, not in your strength, but in your weakness.

Whether we are raking leaves or longing for beer or managing a Fortune 500 corporation, we stand in need of the powerful and tender mercies of the God who loves us.

The fallen spring leaves witness to the new life already emerging on the oaks, which will look scraggly and unkempt for a few weeks. Our own unkempt, ragged hearts, stripped of what we thought was our strength, offer the fertile weakness through which God’s grace brings new life — both for us and for the blessing of the world.

By what boundless mercy, my Savior,
have you allowed me to become a member of your body?
Me, the unclean, the defiled, the prodigal.
How is it that you have clothed me
in the brilliant garment,
radiant with the splendor of immortality,
that turns all my members into light?

Symeon the New Theologian, trans. by John Anthony McGuckin,
The Book of Mystical Chapters:
Meditations on the Soul’s Ascent from the Desert Fathers
and Other Early Christian Contemplatives

Faced with the grandeur and goodness of God, it is normal to feel unworthy. However, the feeling that we are worthless is not from God. There is a big difference between unworthiness and worthlessness. Each one of us is of infinite worth. “You were bought with a price,” says Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 6.

Where worthiness is concerned, there are, as I see it, at least three stances that are not what we are called to as Christians.

• The “I’m worthy, but it’s doubtful that you are” stance. This is the self-righteous position. I’m afraid that this false sense of worthiness too often raises its head among church people, especially where there is finger-pointing at those we don’t think are quite orthodox enough in their worship or their beliefs—all the while being assured that we ourselves are totally correct with no possibility of error.

• I may not be worthy now, but if I work really hard I can make myself worthy. If I just pray enough and discipline myself enough and do enough good works, I can make myself worthy. This is actually a form of an ancient heresy called Pelagianism, which says, basically, that human beings have the ability to choose the good apart from any movement of God in us, and therefore to save ourselves by our own efforts.

• Despair. The problem with thinking that we have to make ourselves worthy is that no matter how hard we try, we find it’s never enough. We can never be good enough. We can never be unselfish enough or generous enough or forgiving enough or attend enough masses or go to confession often enough or pray well enough to be worthy. So trying to make myself worthy can easily lead to discouragement and eventually to giving up. I can never be worthy, so why try?

But wonder of wonders, we don’t have to be worthy!

In Christ, we are offered the grace to entrust all to the heart of God, and there we are accepted — with our sins, our neuroses, our emotional quirks, our inadequacies, our divided heart — and in the spacious and welcoming heart of God we are shown that peace lies in the handing over of all to God who is always sufficient.

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God— not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.

Ephesians 2:8-10

In his homily on Sunday, Father Jose Mesa pointed out that the Transfiguration of Jesus prepares us less for the Crucifixion than it does for the Resurrection.  In both Matthew and Mark we read that Jesus cautions Peter, James, and John, who were witnesses to this manifestation of Jesus’ glory, not to tell anyone about it “until the Son of Man is raised from the dead” (Matthew 17:9).

Father Jose went on to say that in many ways the Resurrection is harder to deal with than the Crucifixion.  I nodded.  Yes, I do believe that is true.  Everyone has some experience of suffering.  And if as yet we have had no experience of death, we eventually will.

But resurrection? The victory of life over death?  The definitive triumph of goodness?  A radiance that will fill, not only Jesus, but us as well? How do we deal with this?  How do we even begin to describe it?  In the remarkable 15th chapter of 1 Corinthians, Saint Paul tries his best to tell us something of what the resurrection of the dead will be like, but ends up making it sound marvelously and totally incomprehensible.

When in the Presence of Mystery…

Faced with the dazzling glory of Jesus transfigured, Peter, who tends to rush in where angels fear to tread, says, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah” (Mark 9:5).

Whereupon the disciples hear a voice from the cloud.

What do they hear?  Not “Nice idea, Peter,” or even “Let’s sit down and discuss what you are experiencing.” No, all three synoptic gospels record that the voice says something to the effect of “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased;  listen to him!”

Or to be blunt, “Be quiet and pay attention to Jesus!”

What is the proper response when in the presence of great mystery —   whether we happen to be Peter the first pope, Benedict the current pope, or an ordinary person such as I am (and probably such you are, too)?

Stop talking and listen! Pay attention!  The time will come to proclaim the good news (for the Mystery of God is always good news).  But not yet.  Now is the time for listening.

_____

The following is Peter’s account.  Notice that he conveniently leaves out the part that suggests he was talking too much.

…we had been eyewitnesses of his majesty. For he received honor and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’ We ourselves heard this voice come from heaven, while we were with him on the holy mountain.

So we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.

2 Peter 1:16-19

“Oh, Mercy! … Wherever I turn my thoughts,
I find nothing but mercy.”
(St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogues 30)

Dear God,

Your mercy is like the air to me. I breathe mercy, I walk through mercy, I get up in the morning and go to bed at night wrapped in your mercy.

While my own hold on you is tenuous, your hold on me is solid and unbreakable. You are merciful when I am unmindful of you. You are merciful when I am clinging, not to you, but to past wrongdoing. You are merciful, even when my heart is filled with violence and vengeance.

Yet if I am unmerciful, does that not mean that I have refused to welcome your divine mercy, which is life to me? When I am unmerciful, am I not then making my own air less breathable? Am in not in danger of asphyxiation?

And so in your presence I breathe deeply, and I continue to pray, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

The cross is at the heart of God.

Does God Have a Heart?
For better or for worse, early Christian theology was strongly influenced by Greek philosophy. One (for me) infamous notion inherited from the philosophers is the impassibility of God. The belief that God is not capable of suffering was axiomatic for many Christian thinkers in the early centuries of the Church. It was later embraced by Thomas Aquinas, and it can still be found in the work of some contemporary theologians – this in spite of the biblical witness of a passionate God, a God who is afflicted in all our affliction (Isaiah 63:9, see RSV) and who grieves when we are unfaithful (Hosea 11:7-9).

If you believe that God cannot suffer, then it follows, as Thomas Aquinas says, that “Christ’s Passion did not pertain to his divinity” (Summa Theologica, III, Q 46, A 12). In this view, Jesus did suffer on the cross, but only in his humanity. If we carry this schema a step further, we are faced with a disturbing scenario: God the Father in no distress as he witnessed the Son in agony.

Suffering was viewed as a sign of imperfection.

However, we would probably argue — we who are made in the image of God — that the inability to suffer would itself constitute a grave flaw. It would certainly be a flaw in a human being. We know from our own experience that human maturity requires not only the ability to feel our own pain, but also the capacity for compassion, a word that literally means “suffering with.”

And from where does the ability to be compassionate come? Human beings receive this gift, like all good gifts, from God, whose own “compassion is over all that he has made” (Psalm 145:9).

If Jesus who died and was raised reveals God to us, who is the God whom he makes known?

Jesus reveals a God who is compassionate toward us like the best of fathers (Psalm 103:13), who loves us even more than a mother loves her child (Isaiah 49:15). Karl Rahner, speaking of the Incarnation, says that God’s Word who is Christ says to us: I am there. I am with you… I weep your tears. I am your joy… I am in your fear, because I have suffered it myself. I am in your death… I am your life.  (Kleines Kirchenjahr, Muenchen: Ars sacra, 1954)

We dwell in God. We are infused throughout our being with God who permeates every atom and electron and quark of our being.

The divine compassion assures us that whatever we do and experience, whether joyful or sorrowful, all is held and valued in the heart of God.

The divine omnipotence assures us that just as the pain and sorrow of Jesus were not wasted, neither will our own pain and sorrow be wasted.

The cross of Christ is at the heart of God. Our human life is in the heart of God.

How Shall I Go to God?

It is with our sins that we go to God, for we have nothing else to go with that we can call our own. This is one of the lessons that we are so slow to learn; yet without learning this we cannot take one right step in that which we call a religious life…

Yes; pardon, peace, life, are all of them gifts, Divine gifts, brought down from heaven by the Son of God, presented personally to each needy sinner by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. They are not to be bought, but received; as [people] receive the sunshine, complete and sure and free… They are not to be claimed on the ground of fitness or goodness, but of need and unworthiness, of poverty and emptiness.

Horatius Bonar (1808-1889), “How Shall I Go to God?”

Mercy

“Oh, Mercy! … Wherever I turn my thoughts, I find nothing but mercy.”

St. Catherine of Siena, Dialogues 30

And in this life mercy and forgiveness are our path and keep leading us on to grace.…
[F]or through the working of grace our fearful failing is transformed into abundant, eternal comfort, and through the working of grace our shameful falling is transformed into high, noble rising, and through the working of grace our sorrowful dying is transformed into holy, blessed life.

Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love,
translated by Elizabeth Spearing
(London: Penguin, 1998), LT, 50, 48.

Now I find myself quite devoid of virtues, I can even say that I see none in me, and it seems to me that if the Good God called me to give an account of my deeds to him, I would find myself with empty hands, having no other recourse than his great Mercy. And with that I hope, I have confidence, and I abandon myself to his good pleasure with a calmness and a peace which nothing disturbs and which it seems to me that he alone can give.

Saint Thérèse Couderc, Letter to Mother de Larochenégly, August 7, 1867

My Weakness

My own failures are many. My capacity for weakness on days seems undiminished. I am an embarrassment to myself and yet I am loved so wonderfully. There is perhaps one difference that my experiences with God have given me. I no longer weep tears of shame. I cry tears of joy and wonder. I am amazed by God and His power to love me. He makes all things work together for good. I’m not much of a challenge to His genius and creativity.

Graham Cooke, “Making the Most of Failure”