“Jesus coming soon!” she said.  “Have a blessed day!”

With two hurricanes already having hit the state, and a third seeming to be on the way, one’s thoughts might indeed turn toward the Endtime.   Was the Second Coming imminent?  Should we put on white garments and go up to the mountain? Or since we have no mountains in Florida, should we at least repent in sackcloth and ashes? What about the various threats that may be facing us today?  Shouldn’t we be asking the same questions?

Jesus is indeed coming soon, but perhaps not yet as the Second Coming, of which we are told that we know neither the day nor the hour.

Our call, therefore, is not to go up on the mountain, but to be attentive. “Watch therefore,” Jesus tells us (Matthew 25:13). And we are to watch not only for the Second Coming, but for the coming of Christ in each moment of our lives.

We are to pay attention to how he draws near to us in the storms of life, in the moments of calm, in the people we meet, in the depths of our heart. He comes to us as Presence, and sometimes he comes in what we perceive as Absence. While Christ is always there whether or not we cry, “Come, Lord Jesus,” we may not notice unless we are alert.

Should we repent in sackcloth and ashes?

We can be assured that God does not take revenge on us by sending hurricanes (or earthquakes or disease or any other sorrow).  Nevertheless it is always appropriate to pray with the tax collector in the Gospel of Luke, “God, be merciful to me a sinner.” We are continually being called to repentance — to metanoia — to that complete turning of our whole lives to God.

And here again, we are to be attentive, both to our constant need for mercy and to God’s free gift of the mercy we need. We walk through the day bathed in mercy.  We sleep wrapped in the tender mercy of God.  God’s mercy is there when the tree comes crashing through the roof and when the electricity goes out and when it comes back on.

God is not wreaking vengeance on us by the bad things that happen in our lives, but God does work in them – as in everything else – to draw us to the divine and, if we are willing, to make us more like the Christ for whom we wait.

The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who hears say, ‘Come.’
And let everyone who is thirsty come.
Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.
…

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

(Revelation 22:17, 20b)

“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.

- – - – -

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.
(Philippians 4:4)

- – - – -

It was an all day affair.
I knew God was looking deeply into the depths of me and seeing all.
Depths unavailable to me.
There was my Utmost poverty
I thought that day that
God was wanting me to know myself well.
A sinner. Shameful. Petty. I could see them all.

It was only a prelude.

God took it all away. Never to be seen by another eye.
Now I stand on street corners in a way
And shout for joy.
What God reveals is mercy.
The Risen Christ breathes only love and forgiveness.
There is in him
No recrimination.
Ever.
No violence.
Only mercy.
No darkness at all.

Only light transforming all.
Mostly too bright to be seen.
A glimpse was enough to settle me in joy.

- Elizabeth Hillmann

O God, as you once gazed on all you had made and found it good,
look now on us, your weak and cherished people,
created in the beauty of your own image.

Have mercy on us as we begin a new year.

We have fouled your creation through heedlessness and greed.
We have defaced your image by making war.
We have reached out, not for you, but for possessions, honors, and power.
We have hearkened to the noise of our fears, instead of to your gracious and transforming silence.

O divine Mercy, have mercy on us.

Consider our woundedness and heal us, for we are helpless to heal ourselves.
Consider our smallness and comfort us, for we have known sorrow.

Teach us again, as a child is taught,
that peace is found by resting in your ample heart,
that bounty flows through love of neighbor,
and that while perfect security in this life is an illusion,
we need not fear,
for you hold us, always and for all eternity, in your everlasting arms.

We pray through Jesus Christ,
Amen.

- – - – -

God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. (Genesis 1:31)

The eternal God is your dwelling place, and underneath are the everlasting arms.
(Deuteronomy 33:27 RSV)

(1. Soul of Christ, sanctify me.)

(2. Body of Christ, save me.)

(3. Blood of Christ, inebriate me.)

- – - – -

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.

Who of us is not aware of the need for cleansing?  We are all sinners, and all in need of mercy.  As Sister Elizabeth is fond of saying, “Everyone is 100% in need of mercy!  There is no one who is just 99% in need of mercy.”

Who is worthy of Christ?

I ran across a website called “Long Hair Care Forum,” where one post was from a woman who expressed her own feelings of unworthiness.  (I can’t give you a link to this discussion, as the thread seems to have been deleted.) She wants desperately to entrust herself to God, but is holding back as she feels undeserving of Jesus and of happiness.

A wise and holy response comes from someone who calls herself “Your Mary Kay Consultant.”

“Sugar,” she says, “we are all unworthy.”

She goes on to point out that no one deserves God’s love, and that it is Satan who tries to make us forget that Christ died for us.  But Satan, she adds, has already been defeated.

And it is true — feeling that we are unworthy is normal, because before the grandeur and goodness of God, we are indeed all unworthy.  But the feeling that we are too unworthy to come into God’s presence is not from God — it is from the evil one who wants us to stay away from God.

And the feeling that we are worthless is not from God.  There is a big difference between unworthiness and worthlessness.  We are of infinite worth.  “You were bought with a price,” Saint Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7.

From the cross Jesus says, “It is finished.”

There is nothing more to give.  The name of the water from the side of Christ is: totality.  The sheltering sac around the heart has been pierced and the heart itself rent.  The water and the blood now announce together: “All is given.”

(Mother Mary Francis, Anima Christi: Soul of Christ, p 40)

Jesus has given all for you and for me. We are accepted without reserve.  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound!

So we pray, not in despair, but in gratitude:

Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Aqua lateris Christi, lava me.

- – - – - – - – - -

Photograph, Waterfall at the Butterfly Rainforest, by Rose Hoover, rc

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

“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.”

However, there is an unfortunate contingent of Catholics who think that the embrace of the church should be more restricted. Specifically, she should weed out those who do not believe precisely the way they do. Most parishes seem to have a few of this unhappy group. They take upon themselves the role of God’s constables, alert to any sign of straying from the narrow way. When they detect a whiff of transgression, they rush to point it out, sometimes in the least courageous way, to the bishop rather than to the offender.

I notice that I am saying “they”; however, I must recognize that none of us is exempt from the temptation to exclude others — usually for what we see as the holiest of reasons. Otherwise Jesus would not have had to warn us against judging. Even with the best intentions, over-alertness to the sin of others is itself an offense against the love of Christ. There is a difference between a town that has, say, healthy enforcement of traffic regulations for the sake of the welfare of both residents and visitors, and one that is a speed trap, hyper-vigilant to the least infraction.

It is true that whenever there is as much diversity as we have in the Catholic family, there is likely to be some error. For that reason, dialogue is important, as well as sound teaching and preaching and continuing education for all ages. But there is a heresy which pops up every so often in church history (most famously under the name of Donatism) and into which it is all too easy to fall: the claim that church membership is reserved to the pure. Unfortunately, there is no one who fits that requirement, either in the realm of morality or of thought.

We are a church of sinners, dependent at every moment on the mercy of God shown to us in Jesus Christ. I am convinced that Christians who are aware of their own need for mercy and who are humble before the mystery of the incomprehensible God — these are the ones who make the best teachers of sound doctrine, while being unlikely to take on the role of orthodoxy’s constables.

‘Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgment you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get. Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? Or how can you say to your neighbor, “Let me take the speck out of your eye”, while the log is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye. (Matthew 7:1-5)

At the resurrection, what the apostolic group began to understand was that there is no violence in God, no wrath, no desire for retribution, no need for vengeance or satisfaction” (James Alison, “Befriending a Vengeful God,” Encounter, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, October 24, 2004).

Violence and vengeance are not to be found in the heart of God. One cannot be a maker of violence and at the same time claim to be following Christ.

Violence, we are told in the letter to the Galatians, is not the fruit of the Holy Spirit, but is rather the work of the “flesh,” that is, belonging to the order contrary to the Spirit of Christ. Included in the list of those contrary works (Galatians 5) are enmity and strife. Those words are sometimes translated hatred and discord, and can also be rendered as hostility and fighting. No matter how they are translated, they stand in sharp contrast to the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

We also read that “those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21). There is violence in each of us, of course, because we are all sinners. But we mustn’t let the violence in us become the lens through which we view the world. And when we claim that the violence we do is God’s will, we add to the shame of the action.

What does the fact that there is no violence in God say about a Christian’s stance toward war, or capital punishment, or abortion? What about domestic violence, or coercion, or emotional violence in all of its forms? What about hours spent gazing at violent television programs or playing violent video games, since ancient wisdom tells us we become what we gaze on?

Thanks be to God for the mercy shown us in Jesus Christ, without which we would be lost! Blessed be the Spirit of Christ, who works in us to transform us into peacemakers, whom Jesus calls the children of God.