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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.

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

(Part 1)

(Part 2)

Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

We remember gruesomely colored crucifixes, or the blood dripping from Jim Caviezel’s face in Mel Gibson’s movie, “The Passion of the Christ.”  But this petition draws us away from the gore, enticing us toward the joy that is God’s gift to us through the self-giving of Christ.

It may sound shocking at first to beg, “Blood of Christ, inebriate me.”  Not blood of Christ, drown me in your sorrow; or blood of Christ, unite me with your suffering.  No, here we express our longing to drink deeply of something akin to a fine, rare wine.  We pray for a holy intoxication.  We acknowledge the hope of joy, even amid the pain of life.

Psalm 104:14-15 praises God for many gifts, including wine:

You cause the grass to grow for the cattle,
and plants for people to use,
to bring forth food from the earth,
and wine to gladden the human heart,
oil to make the face shine,
and bread to strengthen the human heart.

But the wine for which we pray is one that gladdens the heart without causing traffic accidents, costing jobs, ruining health, or breaking up families.

The inebriation for which we pray is

“…that of which the poets and mystics have written when they said that they were drunk with the love of Christ, inebriated with God, set reeling with the thought of God’s glory and of God’s love for them.”

Mother Mary Francis, Anima Christi: Soul of Christ (Ignatius Press, 2001), 29-30.

As Psalm 4:7 says:

You have put gladness in my heart
more than when their grain and wine abound.

Christianity is not a religion that finds its ultimate meaning in sadness, in spite of the fact that Jesus went to the cross and invites us to take up our own cross.  We have been made for peace and joy in the love of Christ. Paradoxically, Christ’s offering of himself and our own self-offering in Christ are what bring this peace and joy.  Even as we struggle, even as we stumble and fall, we know that joy is our destination.

So we pray with boldness,

Blood of Christ, inebriate me!
Sanguis Christi, inebria me.

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Red wine photograph by Rose Hoover, rc

(Click here for Part 1)

Body of Christ, save me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.

We are learning more and more about the connections between body and mind, body and spirit.  I read in the newspaper recently that up to 90 percent of groups such as combat veterans and rape victims have nightmares.  What affects the body affects the spirit, and vice versa.

At the same time, I am more than my body. What I can accomplish physically may be limited by the kind of body I have (my 110 pounds would never get my toe in the door of the NFL, for example). But who I am is not irrevocably determined by my physical makeup. I am more than this mortal coil that I will shuffle off at death, as Hamlet puts it. I am also more than what happens to my body in this life, whether it be violence, illness, abuse, or injury.

But is my body irrelevant?

Jesus, once incarnate, is forever and always human as well as divine.  At his Resurrection, Jesus does not abandon his body and become pure spirit.  He is raised as what Paul – in his effort to explain the unexplainable – calls a “spiritual body” – σωμα πνευματικον (1 Cor 15:44).

The body is anything but irrelevant, but as we learn from the helplessness of Christ with hands and feet nailed to the cross – Jesus the bread of life, who can now not even scratch his own nose, much less feed anyone – neither Jesus nor we ourselves can be finally determined by our own weakness or woundedness. The crucifixion shows us that physical violence or even destruction of the body can never ultimately define human life.

God’s purpose for our lives is not to be thwarted.

I am helpless:

• to save myself
• to heal myself
• to save or heal anyone else

Yet the body of Christ, through the mystery of the Cross and Resurrection, does save.  The body of Christ is efficacious where my own efforts are not.  The body of Christ, as we know from the Eucharist, is totally and joyfully present to us, whereas our own presence (to God, to ourselves, to others) can be momentary or partial or reluctant.

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.”

“Salva me” can also be translated “heal me.” The body of Christ often heals through the Christian community or the medical professions.  But not all healings are medical, and the presence of Christ heals, even when there is not a medical cure. The body of Christ heals and transforms, though there may be wounds that I carry with me in my body, in my body/spirit connection, to death.

Body of Christ, save me, heal me.
Corpus Christi, salva me.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Body of Christ, save me.
Blood of Christ, inebriate me.
Water from the side of Christ, wash me.
Passion of Christ, strengthen me.
O good Jesus, hear me:
Within thy wounds hide me;
Let me never be separated from thee.
From the wicked foe defend me.
At the hour of my death, call me
And bid me come to thee,
That with thy saints I may praise thee
For ever and ever. Amen.

- 14th century prayer

Lately I have been praying the “Anima Christi” and would like to share with you some reflections on this beautiful prayer, both in this post and the ones to follow. Today I will stick with the first line, because the richness of these few words, I believe, encompasses and prepares us for the rest of the prayer.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.
Anima Christi, sanctifica me.

We tend today to think of soul as contrasted with body. The ancient Hebrews did not split the soul from the body. So even though this prayer dates from the Middle Ages, it helps me to consider the word “soul” as signifying the whole person. (We still hear echoes of this meaning in phrases such as “There was not a soul in sight.”)

The soul is who one most truly is.  According to Ron Hansen, in his book, A Stay Against Confusion:

We could put Anima Christi this way then: Wind of Christ, Air that we breathe of Christ, Thereness of Christ, Is-ness of Christ, Truth of Christ, Self-consciousness of Christ, What we do not know of Christ, Christ’s understanding of himself: sanctify me.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

To sanctify is to make holy.

“For I am the Lord who brought you up from the land of Egypt, to be your God; you shall be holy, for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:45).

On an essential level, we are already holy, made in God’s image and baptized into Christ.  On another, existential level, we pray for that sanctification which is the total transformation of our hearts and our lives.

J. K. S. Reid, in the venerable Theological Wordbook of the Bible, speaks of the “constant disposition of God to sanctify things and persons for his purposes.” It is not with reluctance that we are sanctified: God wants to sanctify us. God desires to recreate us through Christ.

Not only that, but we ourselves long for this sanctification in Christ, whether or not we are aware of it. In fact, every day at Mass, the priest prays quietly in our name, putting our desire into words: “By the mystery of this water and wine may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.”

We cannot sanctify ourselves, but we must cooperate in the work of sanctification, which turns out – wonder of wonders – to be our own sharing in the divinity of Christ.And so we pray:

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

May your holy being sanctify my whole being, weak and broken though I may be. May you transform me into what I am called to be, which is what you are, “for the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father” (Hebrews 2:11). Soul of Christ, may I share your divine life, your holiness, your consecration, whatever that means for my own life.

Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

O Christ, in your wholeness, make me whole. In your goodness, make me good; in your compassion, make me compassionate; in your mercy, may I become mercy for the world. O Christ in me and around me and filling the whole universe, fill me and transform me so that nothing in my own soul (which has never been my own), nothing in who I am, is untouched by the beauty of your most holy, loving, and gracious soul.

Anima Christi, sanctifica me.
Soul of Christ, sanctify me.

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Crucifix from the Houston Cenacle
Photo copyright © Rose Hoover, rc

Hawk under umbrella

I was in the kitchen when I heard a wild beating and clattering.  All I could see from the window was a confusion of feathers and very large wings under the patio bench.  Since the feathers appeared to belong to a hawk, I put on my raincoat and gloves (even though the temperature was hovering around 90 degrees), as I have a deep respect for the talons and beak of even an injured hawk.  Thus protected (probably inadequately), I went out and pulled one of the potted tomato plants away from the bench, hoping this would help the bird escape its confines, and then backed away.

Our good neighbors, working on the house across the street, saw the hubbub, and came over.  By this time the hawk was lying still and was panting open-beaked on the hot concrete.  She (at least we called it “she”) looked for all the world as if she were dying. One person suggested that we shade her with an umbrella, which we did.  And since she seemed unlikely to pose a threat at this point, I removed my raincoat and gloves in order to avoid my own heat stroke.

Meanwhile I had called Alachua County Animal Services, and before long a nice young man who knew much more about hawks than we did, arrived.  By this time, though, the hawk had begun to revive, and after a few minutes of sitting under the umbrella and then on the patio wall, gave a great cry and flew into one of our huge live oaks.  She rested there for a while, and eventually disappeared.

Second hawk
The second hawk arrived quietly (unlike the first one) four days later, early in the morning.  I tried to call Animal Services again, but it was Memorial Day, and the office was closed.

Juvenile hawk on patio wall

This time it was a juvenile.  She sat on the patio wall for a while and observed us.  She moved to the driveway, then to the bushes, and from there flew to the roof.  We were relieved that she had moved to a higher realm, because while the hawk was watching us, a large neighborhood cat was watching the hawk. (However, I do think the cat would have gotten an unpleasant surprise had he actually tried to grab this birdie.)

Anyhow, we were hoping the young hawk had flown home, but after lunch, there she was again, on the edge of the carport and later on the railing of the deck on the other side of the house.  In fact, she hung around most of the day.  We put water out for her on the railing, while she mildly kept an eye on us and on her surroundings, seemingly unafraid.

The next day she was gone.

Now let me tell you something strange. The first hawk – the injured one who eventually flew away – clattered onto the patio at a time when a friend had recently moved into hospice to die.  The second hawk – the young one who hung around all day – came without disturbance the day after our friend had peacefully died.

I don’t believe that the dead – or the dying – come to us literally in the form of animals. But this I do believe:

• That everyday life sometimes works in symbols, and that the symbols, if we are paying attention, can at times reveal to us a truth deeper than what our senses can perceive.
• That there is a mysterious communion among God’s holy creatures, living and dead, human or not.  (See “With a Little Help from My Friends” for a quote from Saint Ignatius of Loyola.  See also Romans 8:18-23 for an example of the relationship between humanity and the rest of creation.)

Were the hawks showing us something about our friend, first dying, then reborn in the peace of God?  Or were they just hawks who, without any significance, blundered into our yard? Who can say for sure?  What we can say is that these wild creatures brought consolation and delight in a time of sadness.

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Is it by your wisdom that the hawk soars,
and spreads its wings towards the south?
(From God’s words to Job, 39:26)

As they were growing this year, I noticed that one especially tall plant was leaning precariously toward the sidewalk. I knew I would have to stake it, if it were not to topple over onto the concrete. But I procrastinated, and as it grew and the buds got larger and heavier, I wondered why it was still upright. So one day I walked over to take a look.

What I saw was both simple and wonderful. The nearby cabbage palm had caught the lily in a loop of fiber and held it up – an almost invisible support. (When you see the pictures, you might think that I had tied a string to the lily, but it was all done without any human intervention.)

We have been witness lately, directly or indirectly, to enormous disruption and destruction: war, earthquakes, volcano, a cataclysmic oil spill. Is this disharmony within nature (including human nature) the ultimate reality, we may ask?

No. I am convinced that each small glimpse of beauty or harmony is a pledge of the beauty and harmony at the heart of all things.

“I get by with a little help from my friends,” sang the Beatles. And so do we all, whether we know it or not – even if we think we have no friends. This interdependence, which we human beings (or perhaps more to the point, we lift-yourself-up-by-your-own-bootstrap-Americans) tend to forget, is part of the loveliness of creation.

Saint Ignatius of Loyola might agree with the Beatles on this point: we do somehow make it through life with the help of both human and non-human friends. During the First Week of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, there is an intense awareness of personal sinfulness and also an awareness of the blessed relationship between the sinner and the rest of creation:

Ignatius speaks of “a cry of wonder accompanied by surging emotion as I pass in review all creatures. How is it that they have permitted me to live, and have sustained me in life! Why have the angels, though they are the sword of God’s justice, tolerated me, guarded me, and prayed for me! Why have the saints interceded for me and asked favours for me! And the heavens, sun, moon, stars, and the elements; the fruits, birds, fishes and other animals–why have they all been at my service!

The spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago: Loyola, 1951) [60].

The deeper reality at the core of creation is not our sinfulness, nor the very real pain and disturbances that can shake us to the core, nor the sorrows that can weigh on us until we feel we must break apart – but the beauty and harmony of God, as experienced in the communion of God’s holy creatures.

We get by, in spite of everything, even in spite of death, by the grace of God – and like the lily, with a little help from our friends.

Should we be groping in darkness,
may it be only your cloud
overshadowing us
to bring us to birth.

Should our hearts shrink in fear,
send your tongues of fire
to make them bold.

And when the familiar has lost its welcome,
then breathe us into your future,
and be there
waiting to embrace us.

AMEN.

And there is a darkness that is in reality light, but in our limited perception, it seems dark to us. This is a darkness that is as necessary for our growth and spiritual health as nighttime darkness is necessary for some plants to bloom.

This we may call a blessed darkness, a holy darkness.

It may be experienced simply as not being able to see or understand, because we are human and the realm of God is the realm of Holy Mystery. While God is closer to us than we are to ourselves, God is also Other.  God is not like us.  “My thoughts are not your thoughts,” God tells us, “nor are your ways my ways” (Isaiah 55:8).   Sometimes we are given the grace to see how God is working in our lives and to experience in our prayer the light of God’s presence.  But often we can’t see.

One form of this darkness is the experience of waiting on God.

We see an important example of this near the end of the Easter season, after the Ascension of Jesus into heaven.   For a time, the disciples and friends of Jesus, along with Mary his mother, must wait in holy darkness.

Jesus has left them.  At least it seems that way.  Luke tells us in the first chapter of Acts that “a cloud took him out of their sight.”  Before leaving, Jesus had cautioned his disciples “not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait there for the promise of the Father.”  So they go to the Upper Room, the Cenacle, and pray together.  They don’t know what they are supposed to do otherwise.  They don’t know what their mission is to be.  They don’t know how they are supposed to deal with the lack of Jesus’ visible presence in their lives.

This is the holy darkness of waiting in prayer. It means waiting in total dependence on God, since they are helpless on their own to bring about that for which they long.  This is the blessed darkness of Mystery, an obscurity that in reality is the Light and presence of Christ in newness, though experienced as absence and as emptiness and as unknowing, because it can’t yet be perceived until the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.

There is a necessary waiting that brings us face to face with our own weakness and need and desire for God, and with the fact that we can’t control God or save ourselves.  It is a waiting that removes our conceit, along with any pride in our spiritual experiences.  We then accept the obscurity of this prayer as sacred, for when we are truly waiting on God, the unknowing that feels like darkness is filled with the invisible light of Christ.

God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.
(1 John 1:5)

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord.  Live as children of light…
Ephesians 5:8

When I was a child, my dad, who taught aerospace engineering, would talk to me about “time dilation,” which I still find fascinating these many years later.

I learned that you could start out on a space ship to a distant planet and be away for a only a few years; but when you got home, everyone you knew would be long dead and gone, because time would have slowed down for you in relation to how they were experiencing time on earth.  Time, for a moving object – or a moving person – slows down more and more the closer the speed of the object approaches the speed of light.

Star Trek never seemed to me to take this into account in its adventures.  But in case you’re a Trekkie, I just learned that the Warp Drive on the spaceship Enterprise somehow creates an artificial time-space bubble that solves the problem.

Back on this earth, Einstein showed us that time is not constant.  Time is not an absolute.  It is light, the speed of light that is the constant (but even that is constant only in a vacuum).  And for a moving object, time theoretically would stop at the speed of light – if it were possible for it to reach the speed of light.

Light, not the speed, but light itself, rather than time, is the constant for us as Christians too, for Christ is our light. Christ is the light that never fails: unchanging, unwavering, undimmed.

What is more, we are called to become light.

In the gospel of John, we hear Jesus saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8:12)

In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says, “You are the light of the world. … let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven” (5:14, 16)

Being light is not automatic, however.  It doesn’t happen just because we call ourselves Christian.  If we are light, it is because we are united with Christ, our Light.  We are light because we walk in the light of Christ, even as we stumble and fall and let ourselves be raised up again.  We are light because we are growing in becoming who Christ is – growing in love, mercy, and compassion; becoming peacemakers; becoming comforters of those who mourn; becoming a healing presence, rather than one of division; taking on the mind and heart of Christ, so that our lives are radiant with the holy Light that dwells within us.

Watch Cybernun’s video illustrating the lyrics of the Russian hymn,
“God, You Are Clothed in Light“

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