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 PR, 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

Even though his decision will affect his parents as well as himself, Andre’s father wants the boy to make up his own mind. So Andre goes out for a walk, and when he returns he tells his parents that he has decided not to throw stones. The father is obviously proud of his son, but lets him know that he and his mother discussed the situation, and they came to the conclusion that if Andre’s decision was not to throw stones, the family would leave Germany right away. And so they do leave the very next day.

The question is why so many others just went along with the persecution.  Fear, of course, is the most obvious reason.  Andre’s parents knew his decision not to participate was dangerous.

But what about situations that carry less risk, in which the danger is not loss of life but perhaps loss of a job or even simply disapproval?  Why do we ourselves so often rationalize injustice or turn a blind eye to conditions that exclude or that do violence to others? It is crucial to put a halt to oppression when it is small — if oppression can ever be called small. How tempting it is to say, “I can’t allow myself to get involved,” or “This one incident isn’t important. It won’t go any farther.”

But oppression tends not to stop on its own. On the contrary, it tends to escalate.

At some point each of us is faced with the decision to say Yes or No to oppression and injustice. How we do it in our own context is a matter for prayer and discernment. But it is important to remember that to refuse the No is to assent.

“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?”
[God] has told you. . . what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

Micah 6:6,8

__________

(*Harvard University Press, 1989)

Photograph: Jewish shop in Berlin, April 1, 1933
Source: Yad Vashem (Item ID 30312; Archival signature 4613/224); Encyclopedia of the Holocaust,  Hebrew Edition 1990
Photographer unknown.

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).

It is unfortunate that this expression has become in too many cases a shibboleth used to divide Catholics.  It seems to imply that while we know that we are real Catholics, we are not at all sure about you.

When we consider the history of the Church, we see that the understanding of fidelity as unquestioning docility is contrary to Catholic tradition.  Respectful challenge has been a part of Christian faithfulness to authority beginning as early as the Saint Paul’s challenge to the first pope, Saint Peter, as recounted in Galatians 2.  Paul writes that he opposed Peter “to his face,” as Peter appeared to be wobbling regarding the decision not to require Christians to become Jews according to the law.

The fact is that saints can tend to be troublesome to Church authorities.

• Saint Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) carried on a lively correspondence with Pope Gregory XVI.  Her letters were both respectful and affectionate, but at times very challenging.  She urged him to return the papacy to Rome from Avignon.  Not long before his departure, however, he received a warning that he would be poisoned in Rome.  Catherine would not accept even the threat of death as a reason for remaining in Avignon.  She wrote, “I beg you in the name of Christ crucified not to be a timid child but a courageous man.”

See The Letters of Catherine of Siena,
translated with introduction and notes by Suzanne Noffke
(Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2000).

Today Catherine might well be accused of not being faithful to the magisterium.  But for her, fidelity was not the same thing as agreement with everything the pope said or did.  In her case, fidelity to Pope Gregory meant challenging him to do the right thing for the people of God.

• Saint Joan of Arc, we remember, was tried for heresy and burned at the stake in 1431.  It didn’t help her case that she was considered a cross-dresser.
• Saint Ignatius of Loyola (1491-1556) was imprisoned by the Inquisition.
• It was announced in December that Mary Ward (1585-1645) is declared venerable, a step in the process toward being officially named a saint.   Mary Ward founded the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary (IBVM), but her apostolic vision was ahead of its time and not in accord with the subservient role of women in her day.  She was charged with heresy and imprisoned.
• Mary MacKillop (1842 – 1909) is to be the first canonized Australian saint.  She founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart, who established many schools for poor children.  Mary was  excommunicated for a period of several months, supposedly for insubordination.

That Mary Ward and Mary MacKillop are on the way to canonization is a heartening development, considering the events of their lives, but it is not really surprising, for many saints were considered difficult – and sometimes even heretical – in their day.

Did this mean that they and the other vexatious saints just did whatever they wanted and called it God’s will?

No, they would not be called venerable and blessed and saint today if that were the case.  On the other hand, having carefully discerned, it is also unlikely that they would be canonized if they had yielded to the pressure put upon them to act in a way contrary to God’s call.

Saints have to assume, as we also must, that our bishops and popes are men of good will, trying, like us, to be faithful to Christ and intent on proclaiming only the truth of God — just as they must assume that we are trying to be faithful.

Our presumption must also be that other ordinary Catholics are, like us, trying to be faithful.    To quote the “Presupposition” found at the beginning of the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola:

…it should be presupposed that every good Christian ought to be more eager to put a good interpretation on a neighbor’s statement than to condemn it.

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius, A Translation and Commentary by George E. Ganss, S.J.
(Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1992).

One last word, this time from John Henry Newman (whose beatification has been approved by Pope Benedict XVI with the recognition of a miracle resulting from Newman’s intercession):

In On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine, Newman pointed out that during the time of the Arian heresy, orthodoxy “was maintained during the greater part of the fourth century not by the unswerving firmness of the Holy See, Councils, or bishops [many of whom had been swayed by Arianism], but by the consensus fidelium,” that is, primarily by the laity.

In the case of the Arian heresy, much of the magisterium was in error.  More often in the history of the Church, it has not been a question of the magisterium straying, rather of occasionally needing a nudge in order to recognize the movement of the Holy Spirit.  To acknowledge this is not to denigrate either the authority or the holiness of bishops and popes.  It is simply to accept the fact that God often works through unexpected people and in unexpected ways.  And sometimes, so we learn from our history, one generation is not sufficient for the action of God to become clear to the whole Church.

We are called to be faithful to Christ along with the magisterium who are called to teach us.  The surest way to be faithful to the magisterium, then as now, is to grow in union with Christ in his divinity and in his humanity.

We honor best the teaching authority of the Church when our whole being joins in that wondrous prayer which is said quietly in our name by the priest or deacon at Mass as he adds a small amount of water to the wine:

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.

This prayer expresses both the path of fidelity and the ultimate purpose of our lives.

____________________

Icon of Saint Paul from Holy Stavronikita Monastery
Painting of Joan of Arc, Miniature, 1450-1500, Centre Historique des Archives Nationales, Paris
Portrait of John Henry Newman by Sir John Everett Millais, 1829-1886, London, National Portrait Gallery

May the peace that passes all understanding, the peace of Emmanuel, God-with-us, be yours during this holy season.

For a child has been born for us,
a son given to us;
authority rests upon his shoulders;
and he is named
Wonderful Counsellor,
Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
(Isaiah 9:6)

To return, however, to the opening verses of the Canto: these are St. Bernard’s prayer to the Blessed Virgin, a beautiful and adoring paean. There is one verse, though, which jars me. In spite of the sublimity of the poetry, I believe Dante is mistaken when he has Bernard say to Mary:

you are the one who so ennobled
human nature that the maker of it
condescended to be made of it.

It was not because Mary was so good that God became human, but because you and I were (and are) in such need — because so often we debase rather than ennoble our human nature. Jesus comes to us out of that “love which moves the sun and the other stars,” a love so encompassing that it freely enfolds us in our sinfulness and our brokenness.

At the end of the Paradiso the poet experiences his own desire and will “turned already, / like a wheel that is moved evenly, / by the love which moves the sun and the other stars.”

In our truest self, each one of us is also moved by this love. Let us pray that through Jesus, God-with-us, our whole being might be in harmony with the divine love.

O loving God,
may I wait in peace for you,
and waiting
enter the place in my heart
where like the sun and the stars
I am moved only by your love,
and there find you
already with me,
waiting for me.

 

I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope;
my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning.
(Psalm 130:5-6)

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.

Am I the only one who has had this experience?  I wondered: Do my glasses need changing?  No. Was the sharpness set too high on the television?  I don’t think so.

I think the problem is that real life just doesn’t happen in high definition.

Part of the beauty of the world around us is that human faces do not reveal every flaw to the casual glance, and objects are not always distinct from each other.

Outside my window right now I see live oak branches covered with resurrection ferns and draped with Spanish moss.  The whole effect is one of graceful softness, highlighted and sharpened here and there by splotches of sunlight that make leaves, fronds, and moss glow.  In spots, the details are completely overwhelmed by the brilliance of light.

If every green frond were distinct from the other and from the branch, if each gray strand of moss in shadow appeared just as clearly defined as the ones in gentle sunlight, much of the beauty would be lost.

In our own lives as well, we move from day to day in a state of blessed blurriness, though we may often long for a higher resolution monitor, so to speak.

• The future is unknown in its details – though we know, through the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, that there is a happy ending to the human story.
• In many cases, it is not even clear to us what our next step should be – we have to trust in the guidance and good will of God as we navigate the ambiguities of life.
• The deepest truths of human existence are in the form of paradox and mystery – and when we try to codify them in high-definition propositions, we may take pride in our certainty and forget the mystery inherent in what we were attempting to clarify.

I find this quotation from Gerald May helpful:

When we were children, most of us were good friends with mystery.  The world was full of it and we loved it.  Then as we grew older, we slowly accepted the indoctrination that mystery exists only to be solved.  For many of us, mystery became an adversary; unknowing became a weakness.  The contemplative spiritual life is an ongoing reversal of this adjustment.  It is a slow and sometimes painful process of becoming “as little children” again, in which we first make friends with mystery and finally fall in love again with it.  And in that love we find an ever increasing freedom to be who we really are in an identity that is continually emerging and never defined.  We are freed to join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are.

Gerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul (New York: Harper, 2003), 132-3.

The obscurity is blessed, because we are indeed dwelling in divine Mystery, and that is where we are meant to be.  It is there that we find goodness, love, mercy, and peace.  It is there that we “join the dance of life in fullness without having a clue about what the steps are.”

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)