We nod our heads when we read in the Gospel of Matthew:

Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me. (18:5)

Where do we find hope as members of this church whose leaders have too often not received the child as Christ?

Yes, we may reasonably ask why the media must focus on the Catholic Church, when respectable fathers of families travel to Indonesia and other countries to have sex with children, thereby supporting the lucrative human trafficking and child prostitution industries.  And when many others simply stay home and rape their own daughters.

It is undeniable that the Catholic Church is the organization that people love to hate.  However, in the Church we lay claim to a higher sort of life.  It is doubly shocking when persons who proclaim goodness are found to have wallowed in or abetted evil.  So perhaps the media can be forgiven for being particularly hard on those who represent the Church.

“Where was God?” countless victims ask.  “Where was God when I was being abused?”

We must not attempt a facile response, and indeed any words seem inadequate in the face of such heartache.  The only response, I believe – though it is not an answer to the question of why it happened – is that God was where God always is when the beloved is being betrayed and harmed: right there, in sorrow, in pain.  Right where God was when Jesus was being crucified.

As for a reason why, Christianity offers us no answer except for the reality of human freedom – a gift which is too often misused.

Sin, even when we think it is private, is always communal in its effects.  While those who have not been abused can never totally understand the experience of those who were, still we all share in some way – though a far lesser way to be sure – in the consequences of the evil.  We are a wounded Church this Easter season.

But if in the Crucifixion of Christ we are given a promise of presence – of a God who shares in the grief and pain – in the Resurrection we are also offered the assurance that evil does not have the last word.  Evil will never have the last word. In spite of all appearances to the contrary, the love, goodness, and holiness of God are stronger than even the most horrendous evil.

Do we just sit around and wait for that day when all tears will be wiped away?  No, of course not.  We must take strong, practical action to prevent abuse – and where possible to ease the suffering of those who have been abused – even if that means changing time-honored ecclesial structures.  And we must nurture the spiritual life, so as to grow in union with the Risen Christ, for this is the only way that the divine goodness and loving-kindness will be more clearly manifested in the daily life of the Church.

“By his holy and glorious wounds,
may Christ our Lord guard us and keep us.”

Preparation of the Paschal Candle at the Easter Vigil

The long corridor brought back with a vengeance the terror of war.

Then something else came back to her, something she had read – that the early desert monks had walked about all day reciting the first verse of Psalm 70: “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.”*  She began to follow their example.

Descending into the corridor, Sister Elizabeth prayed, over and over, “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.”  Walking through the corridor, she prayed, “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.”  And eventually, throughout the day, she would pray, “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me.”

Gradually, the terror dissipated.

Here is a brief portion of what John Cassian (ca. 360 – 435) says about this verse:

And so for keeping up continual recollection of God this pious formula is to be ever set before you. “O God, come to my assistance; O Lord, make haste to help me,” for this verse has not unreasonably been picked out from the whole of Scripture for this purpose. For it embraces all the feelings which can be implanted in human nature, and can be fitly and satisfactorily adapted to every condition, and all assaults. It contains an invocation of God against every danger, it contains humble and pious confession, it contains the watchfulness of anxiety and continual fear, it contains the thought of one’s own weakness, confidence in the answer, and the assurance of a present and ever ready help. For those who call constantly on their protector are sure of having him always at hand.

John Cassian (ca. 360 – 435), Conferences, X

For a helpful reflection on the same verse, see Father Pat Collins, CM, “Learning to Pray at All Times.”

_____
* Douay-Rheims version.  This is the translation of Psalm 70:1 used at the beginning of each hour of the Divine Office (the Liturgy of the Hours).

The only thing to be done now,
now that the waves of our undoing have begun to strike on us,
is to contain ourselves.

To keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

Among all the smashed debris of myself,
Keep quiet, and wait.
For the word is Resurrection.
And even the sea of seas will have to give up its dead.

D. H. Lawrence, “Be Still!” D. H. Lawrence: Complete Poems,
Edited by Vivian de Sola Pinto and Warren F. Roberts

What are our own waves of undoing? What are the waves that feel as if they would smash us into oblivion?

• Exterior circumstances beyond our control?
• Profound loss, grief?
• Personal attitudes?
• Illness?
• Deep interior wounds?
• Discouragement or fear?
• Our own weakness or sinfulness?
• Aging or diminishment?

D. H. Lawrence says that the only thing to be done is to contain ourselves.  If this is so, how are we to contain ourselves?

Does this mean giving up on life?  No, not at all.  Does it mean adopting a fortress mentality – walling ourselves round about so that nothing can touch us?  No, just the contrary, I believe.

It means turning to what is most vital and most true to ourselves.

According to the poet, when we are feeling helpless against the waves of destiny, we must:

…keep still, and let the wreckage of ourselves go,
let everything go, as the wave smashes us,
yet keep still, and hold
the tiny grain of something that no wave can wash away,
not even the most massive wave of destiny.

When the ship we are on is sinking, we do not weigh ourselves down with stacks of old magazines or a closetful of clothes and shoes. If the house is on fire, we do not dally long enough to carry out the rubbish or even to pile up our favorite books or retrieve the jewelry.  We hold to nothing but the essential.

This “tiny grain of something” can only be the essential core of ourselves, what we have named in a Cenacle assembly as the mystical dimension of our life – that part of ourselves both as individuals and as corporate body that knows God, that is never apart from God, that sees God face to face even when our conscious life perceives nothing and is overwhelmed by the waves, even as we tumble over and over helplessly on the dark shore. Here the Holy Spirit prays in us and intercedes for us (see Romans 8). It is in this tiny grain that we are who we truly are.

LIke the widow’s mite (Mark 12), this grain may seem of little account, but in reality it represents all we are and all we have.  So we must let the “wreckage of ourselves go,” be still, and claim nothing but this indestructible grain.

• It is in this quintessential kernel of being that we are able to “keep quiet and wait,” though there may appear to be nothing left to wait for;
• It is here that sighs and murmurs, creakings and groans, once fearful, do not foretell destruction, but Resurrection;
• It is from this core that the Spirit at times surprises us with glimpses of beauty or goodness.

It is this tiny grain:

• that whispers in us that in all things God works for good with those who love God (Romans 8:28);
• that reveals to us that while our own love for God and neighbor is insufficient, we may love rightly and serve well from that same central grain through which we love with the love of Christ.

In truth each of us is being undone in one way or another.  If nothing else manages to undo us, time and age most certainly will accomplish the task.  The only tragic outcome would be not to yield to our remaking through that “tiny grain of something,” through the mystical core of ourselves where God is known.

The captions started me thinking about which human needs can rightfully be withheld if they are are not earned.

Is food, for example, something that one must deserve in order to receive?

What about housing?

Or health care?

And these questions inevitably bring up others.

Does having money make a person more worthy of food, housing, and medical care than someone who has none?

Does having millions of dollars that you have earned by the sweat of your brow make you more worthy than someone who has earned only a few thousand, or a few hundred thousand?

Does having millions of dollars that you have not earned, but inherited, make you more worthy than a struggling school teacher with a burdensome debt – or a homeless person with nothing?

Is a person who is unable to work for one reason or another less worthy than someone who holds down two jobs to make ends meet – or than someone who with one relatively unburdensome job earns more than enough to pay for the necessities and the superfluities of life?

When you get right down to it, no one is worthy of God or of God’s gifts. We are all unworthy, but we are all of infinite worth.

Our value lies not in what we possess, or how much we earn, or whether or not we have a job, or whether we are even capable of holding a job. Our worth is not calculated according to whether we are sober or blind drunk, illiterate or highly educated, fortunate or unfortunate in our genetic makeup. The truth is that our value resides in the fact that we are beloved of God, infinitely treasured, infinitely cherished.

Rejoicing in the love of God, we must also be humble, for as Saint Paul says,

What do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if it were not a gift?
(1 Corinthians 4:7)

When at the age of four or five I would indulge in a bout of inconsolable weeping – sometimes because I had skinned a knee, other times because my feelings were hurt, but more often because something had made me mad – my father would say, “Wait a minute! Let me get a milk bottle to catch those tears.”

And off he would go to the kitchen.

Have you ever tried to have a satisfying cry while someone is holding a bottle under your chin? This is especially frustrating if you are hoping to elicit sympathy.

At the time I didn’t know about Psalm 56, where the psalmist complains to God that “people trample on me.” The situation causes him not only distress, but tears. He finds comfort, however, in God’s attentiveness:

You have kept count of my tossings;
put my tears in your bottle.
Are they not in your record?
(56:8)

While the purpose of the milk bottle was to get me laughing or at least to distract me from whatever had made me sad or angry, the bottle in this psalm, I believe, assures us that our tears are important to God. Our sorrow is engraved in the divine heart. We can be confident that we are neither forgotten nor abandoned in our pain. I don’t believe it is too strong to say that our tears are mingled with God’s own tears – for us, for the poor, for the oppressed, for the hungry and the abused – tears that will flow until that day when “mourning and crying and pain will be no more” (Revelation 21:4).

Please join us in praying for rain. See the prayers on the Cenacle Journal page.

The following is a prayer for the hurricane season by Maurice Schexnayder (1895-1981), the second Bishop of Lafayette, Louisiana:

O God, Master of this passing world, hear the humble voices of your children.
The sea of Galilee obeyed your order and returned to its former quietude; You are still the Master of land and sea.

We live in the shadow of danger over which we have no control; the Gulf, like a provoked and angry giant, can awake from its seeming lethargy, overstep its conventional boundaries, invade our land and spread chaos and disaster.

During this hurricane season we turn to You, O loving Father. Spare us from past tragedies whose memories are still so vivid and whose wounds seem to refuse to heal with passing time.

O Virgin Mary, Star of the Sea, Our Beloved Mother, we ask you to plead with your Son in our behalf, so that spared from the calamities common to this area and animated with a true spirit of gratitude, we will walk in the footsteps of your Divine Son to reach the heavenly Jerusalem where a stormless eternity awaits us.
Amen.

Two New Orleans area pictures
a year after the storm

Sister Elizabeth and I recently returned from New Orleans, our first visit there since Hurricane Katrina.

Our own house, the Cenacle Retreat House on the lakefront in Metairie, was spared major damage. Unlike other parts of town — Lakeview and St. Bernard Parish in particular— most buildings in our neighborhood look unchanged — except that the street is lined with FEMA trailers, so you know the houses were flooded and are unlivable.

One day Sisters Rosalie, Elizabeth, and I drove to Pass Christian, Mississippi, where Sister Rosalie’s family home was located before Katrina. The house was completely destroyed by the storm surge. Now when you walk where the house used to be, you see not only beach poppies and Easter lilies sprouting in the sandy soil, but also spoons and forks and pieces of broken china. The Pass Christian town center is made up primarily of trailers housing banks, library, and city government.

For a good part of the next day I felt like weeping, and my stomach was upset — a delayed reaction to the hundreds of miles of devastation we had seen the day before. I can only try to imagine what it is like for the people who live with it every day, for whom wreckage is the new normalcy. Listening to some of them, I had the impression of a citizenry that had survived a war, with the resulting damage to property and wounds to the psyche.

While we were there, the Times-Picayune printed an article about modern-day “carpetbaggers,” who, after first looting the damaged houses in New Orleans, are now back, stealing shutters, doors, and other historic architectural elements. And this week the National Guard has been called back in, following the murders of five teenagers and an adult.

Where is goodness amid the destruction?

We had just gotten out of the car at the empty lot where Sister Rosalie’s family home had been when a man stopped to ask us if we needed help.

“No,” we said, pointing to Sister, “she’s just come to see the old homestead.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” was his reply, full of understanding and sympathy.

Simple acts of kindness have abounded, although the crimes, true to the pattern of the news media, have received more attention.

Less than two months after the storm, Daniel P. Aldrich, writing on the Jewish web site, aish.com, said:

In explaining what happened to us, I have sought to show my children that our losses provided us with a chance to experience chesed — kindness — from others…

Aldrich added that the experience of Katrina “has reinforced our belief in the innate goodness and kindness not only of Jews but of the American people as a whole”; and he goes on to tell about an incident in Atlanta, when he was trying to buy gas and having trouble with his credit card.

As a nearby woman heard my wife and me talking with the sales clerk about leaving New Orleans, she walked up, smiled, and said, “I want to give you this.” In her hand was a winning lottery ticket and her collected earnings. … This was one of the myriad of kindnesses showered upon us by strangers, friends, and family alike.

Goodness is found, too, in the courage of people carrying on with life amid the pain. In the neighborhood of the Cenacle, residents tend their lawns, mowing around the FEMA trailers. In Pass Christian, the townspeople rejoice over the opening of their new trailer library.

Life goes on.

My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
. . . . . . . . . .
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God;
for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

(Psalm 42:6-7, 11)

When we stop to think about it, it becomes obvious that hurricane victims are just like the rest of the us: some are peaceful, some violent; most are honest, some are out to steal whatever they can; some are filled with love for neighbor; others couldn’t care less about anyone but self; most are upstanding citizens, some would do better behind bars.

Since Katrina and Rita, we have also witnessed remarkable signs of altruism and goodness, both on the individual and the international levels. Some of these are shining examples of what we might call the spirit of the widow’s mite (see Luke 21:1-4). I read about a poor woman, for instance, who donated a single jug of water to collection efforts in her local community.

In addition, some of the neediest countries in the world have offered aid to the United States. Here are only a few of the more than 115 offers:

- Bangladesh, itself struck with disaster after disaster, has offered $1 million and said it would send 160 disaster management experts, including doctors, nurses, and engineers. According to the CIA’s website, “About a third of this extremely poor country floods annually during the monsoon rainy season, hampering economic development.”* This is a country experienced in disaster management.

- Afghanistan, ravaged by war, with the second highest infant mortality rate in the world, and a life expectancy of slightly less than 43 years, has offered $100,000.

- Albania, troubled and poor, offered $300,000.

- Cuba, which has not been considered our friend, has offered more than 1500 doctors and tons of medicine. (The last I have heard, this offer has neither been accepted nor officially declined).

- The tiny Caribbean island of Dominica, with a population of less than 70,000, offered police to help bring control to hurricane-affected areas.

- Djibouti, in eastern Africa, a country where only .04 % of the land is arable, where the infant mortality rate is one of the highest in the world, and where the population has a life expectancy at birth of only 43 years, pledged $50,000.

- Sri Lanka , itself devastated by the 2004 tsunami, promised $25,000 to American Red Cross.

- Thailand has offered at least 60 doctors and nurses, along with rice (very appropriate, as many Southerners consider rice a staple).

- Vietnam pledged $100,000.

Such generosity is humbling. But graciousness in receiving is also a type of generosity, a gift that we offer the giver. The U.S. State Department web site has an article dated September 7 and entitled, “Nearly 100 Countries Send Money, Assistance to U.S. Hurricane Victims,” which leads me to hope that our generosity in receiving will match the generosity of the givers.

Finally, I would like to quote Glynn Stevenson, whose philosophy of life in times of upheaval is to be admired. The Associated Press reported that after swimming out of his New Orleans house, “with belongings taped to his body,” and as he was just beginning to settle into a FEMA trailer in New Iberia, he had to evacuate again for Rita. His response: “Just keep a cool attitude and help your brothers.”

There is much to be said for keeping cool and helping our brothers and sisters. This approach might well make the world a better place, even amid hurricanes.

[Jesus] looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’ (Luke 21:1-4)

When the light turned green and I followed the flow of traffic around the corner, I saw that the person in question was a woman of 40 years or so, wearing blue jeans, and looking as if she might drive home after her stint on the corner and change clothes for an evening PTA meeting. The sign she held read — not “Will work for food” — but “I NEED ANGELS.”

What was the meaning of this curious sign? Was it simply a more poetic way of saying “Will work for food”? Or had the woman’s life reached such a state of fierce desperation that she felt only divine intervention could help? For my part, all I knew to do was to pray that God would send whatever angels she needed.

Most of us find ourselves at a point of wretchedness of one sort or another, sometime in our lives, but how many of us proclaim it so directly or so publicly? For that matter, how many of us ask for help at all? What would it be like it if we cried out to all who could hear, “I need angels!” Or on the other hand, if we simply whispered over and over in our hearts, “Help, Lord Jesus!”

For all who need angels, O God,
send them quickly.
For those who need to ask for help,
give them courage and guidance.
For persons whom God would send as messengers,*
may they hasten to respond.

[* messenger: Gk., angelos]

The Lord is near to the brokenhearted,
and saves the crushed in spirit.
(Psalm 34:18)