Mary, Martha, and the Primacy of Contemplation

As much as I hate to admit it, there is a certain hierarchy in the spiritual life, as in the physical world. It is, perhaps, the most uncomfortable thing about the faith, that some things are true, others are not, and there is no getting around them when they are. The second most uncomfortable thing is the knowledge that I am fallible, and therefore I never truly know when I am right, and when I am wrong. So, in yesterday's discussion of Martha and Mary, I came to the conclusion that the "one thing needful" was love and the trust that must follow it. This takes different shapes, depending on the situation, but love is always the central thing.

However, this does not fully explain the fact that Jesus did say that Mary chose the "better part." In fact, throughout the history of the Church Mary and Martha have been considered archetypes of the two broad vocational categories, if you will, the contemplative and the active lives. Mary, of course, is the proto-contemplative and Martha is the proto-active. A good deal was made out of this distinction by the Church over the ages, in holding up the celibate, contemplative life as the beau-ideal of the Christian life.

Ah, but isn't that rather an old fashioned way of thinking about it? Don't we now know that everyone Apostolic Letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte", the Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity, by Pope Paul VI, and Chapter V of Lumen Gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church.) Wasn't Vatican II all about increasing the role and responsibility of the laity in the Church?

Dorothy Day and Mother Teresa 1979

is called to be a saint, and lay-people are called to the same level (although not "style" for lack of a better word) of holiness as everyone else? (For reference to recent emphasis on the "Universal call to Holiness), see Article 30 of St. John Paul II's

Heck, go back to the beginning and didn't St. Paul say, "For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose" 1 Corinthians 12:14-18.

Yes, but this does not change the fact that St. Paul was also the author of 1 Corinthians 7:32-34. And Jesus definitely did say that Mary chose the better part. Is the active life really second best?

I think the key is to be found in the two great commandments. We all know them: "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength and all your soul," and "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." These are clearly hierarchically arranged. Love of God comes first, love of neighbor comes second. However, they are not arranged according to worth but according to primacy. First things first, if you will. Love of God comes first, love of everyone else comes second. 

For some reason, and I suspect it is diabolical in origin, almost everyone Christian I know will read that and hear, "Love of God is more important, love of neighbor is less important." The implication is that there is a competition for limited resources (love) and God has first claim so when there is not enough love to go around, well, sorry family, but God gets His first. This understanding is widespread, pervasive, but is a straight up lie. Hence my suspicion that it is diabolical in origin.  

In reality, there is not and can never be any sort of competition between creature and Creator, except in the imagination of the creature. "In Him we live, and move, and have our being!" There is no possible way in which we could ever have something that God needs, and there is no possible way God could ever not provide for His creatures what they truly need, and in any event, Love is the one thing that only multiplies the more you give it away.  The Creator vs. creature dynamic is not a valid construct. 

Competition, when it occurs, occurs in the imagination of the creature. The creature imagines that something is good for it, which God has warned is not, in fact, good for it. Promiscuous sexual activity or gossip, to pick two fairly common examples, one respectable, one slightly less so. These give pleasure, they make the creature feel good for the moment, so the creature thinks they are good. God says they are not, the creature does them anyway and reaps the consequences later on down the line. This is what we call "sin" and "punishment."

This brings me to what Fr. Michael E. Gaitley, MIC, calls "The Primacy of Contemplation." This is a concept that reconciles the two halves of the false dichotomy, admittedly by the rather mundane process of non-reinvention of the wheel. Simply put, pray first (commune with God), then go and do what He tells you (love your neighbor.) In the order of the Church as the Body of Christ we have contemplatives who listen to and commune with God, and we have actives who put that relationship into practice. This is an important area of study, but not really my topic at the moment. Right now I am concerned with the contemplative and active element in my own life.  

The Primacy of Contemplation means that my work must flow from my prayer. My relationship with people must flow from my relationship with God. This is not because God is more important than people (He is, but He doesn't insist on His importance) but because people are so important that anything but the best is not good enough for them. Therefore our service must be the highest, noblest and most loving service, which means is must be united with Christ's service (from Bethlehem to the Cross). To do this we must be united with Christ. As Vatican II proclaimed in Perfectae Caritatis, "Apostolic activity must spring from intimate union with Him."

This means that prayer, spiritual reading and the sacraments, while not the focus of our lives (for laity in general) need to be the foundation of our lives. As busy as we may become (and I have become very busy at various times in my life) we must never be too busy for dedicated time for prayer. The world attacks prayer time. It always will by design. When you make the decision to set aside time (five or ten minutes or an hour, it doesn't much matter) every day for prayer, the devil will attack that time. He will make you unusually tired in the morning, try to get you to stay up late so you will say, "Just this once I really need those extra ten minutes of sleep, so I am going to hit the snooze button. I'll make up for it tomorrow." He will wake the kids up early and send them to interrupt. He will offer distractions, diversions and downright despair of ever praying worthily. (I don't know whether all of those interferences are directly as a result of the devil or just coincidence, but I have noticed that they tend to occur with surprising regularity. I know as a matter of history that when my alarm goes off I can count on having at least one good reason not to pray every single morning.) 

The great thing is simply to keep trying, and not to be discouraged by failure. When prayer time is interrupted by tiredness, offer that as a sacrifice. When it is interrupted by other people, offer that to God. When you are secretly very glad that so-and-so came along and interrupted and got you off the prayer hook for today, and ashamed of that feeling, offer the feeling, and the shame and the interruption to God. Try again tomorrow, or later in the afternoon. 

Set an alarm on your phone for 3 PM, and when it goes off simply say the Divine Mercy prayer or a short form of it, such as, "For the sake of His sorrowful passion, have mercy on us, and on the whole world." Pause, center your awareness on God (who has not ceased to be aware of you for all eternity) and look at Him with love. 

Talk to Him like Tevye. 

Talk to Him, listen to Him, then do what He tells you, and you will become an active contemplative, probably without even knowing it. 

You will also become a saint. Sweet deal!

Martha and Mary: Failure and the Five Love Languages

Jesus entered a village
where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him.
She had a sister named Mary
who sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak.
Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said,
“Lord, do you not care
that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving?
Tell her to help me.”
The Lord said to her in reply,
“Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things.
There is need of only one thing.
Mary has chosen the better part
and it will not be taken from her.” Luke 10:38-42

The Gospel of the day: As a good friend of mine said in Bible Study last night, "I sometimes feel like this is one of those passages that has been beaten to death!" I also think, for priests and deacons, it may be the passage most likely to offend the middle-aged ladies of the parish who are probably more likely to relate to Martha than to Mary. After all, it's all well and good for Mary to choose the better part. But, as another friend commented, "Oh! That's how it is? My sister chose the better part, eh? Do you want to eat tonight, Jesus? I hear there's a kid down the street with some loaves and fishes..." Can you imagine her face after He said that to her?

(Meaning no disrespect to Martha at all. She reminds me too much of the women of my family whom I love dearly.)

One thing that a priest once pointed out in a homily, and which has stuck with me ever since, is that Jesus never rebuked Martha for serving Him, or for cooking, or for cleaning, or for any of the work she was doing. He rebuked her for being "worried and anxious." That is why I like this picture of the incident so much, because it captures something of the tenderness and playfulness of Jesus' response. He knows that she loves Him, and that she wants everything to be perfect for Him. The question is, does she know Him?

Gary Chapman in his book "The Five Love Languages" posits that human beings express and understand love in five main ways: Physical touch, quality time, words of affirmation, acts of service and gift giving. Everyone has one or maybe two main languages that they naturally gravitate towards, with the others being secondary or lesser importance. For instance, when I listed them above, I listed them more-or less in order of importance to me, with physical touch and quality time a tie for most importance, and gift-giving utterly meaningless to me.

Now it is easy to go from there and posit that Jesus (in His humanity, obviously, not His Divinity) acts of service, gifts, words of affirmation, and physical touch. Jesus was a whole and complete human being and He knew how to love as the situation needed.

Jesus knew how to love as the situation required.

was a "quality time" type and Martha was an "acts of service" type. He might have been saying something like, "Martha, a really big meal is all well and good but what I really want is just to spend some time with you." The problem with that is that it sets up a sort of false dichotomy between the two and it also misses the holistic nature of Jesus. The gospel has many examples of Jesus Himself loving with

No, it was the worry that was the problem. He says the same thing to me all the time when I complain about when am I going to have time for prayer, for spiritual reading, etc. I just have so much to do! "Peace!" He says to me. "You are worried about many things. One thing only is needful. Trust me."

Worry comes when we set goals for ourselves and measure our success or failure based on whether we achieve our goals. But, as I said last week, failure is almost the point of trying in the spiritual life. Jesus wants our goal to be loving Him, not achieving anything. Indeed, achievement of any kind, a goal of any kind, material or spiritual, or "for the Kingdom" or what have you, no matter how perfect is absolutely worthless without that one thing needful. As Saint Paul put it:

Earnestly desire the higher gifts.

And I will show you a still more excellent way.

If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.  

And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  

If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 

1 Corinthians 12:31-13:3

Love, then is the one thing needful, and trust as a consequence of that love; implicit trust, which

refuses to become distressed when our prayers are not answered, our evangelization efforts are met with indifference, and our attempts at love go unnoticed. This trust even extends to our efforts at trust, refusing to become distressed at our inability to remain trustful. In other words, even when we fall off the trust bandwagon and start worrying up a storm, we don't get worried about our worrying. We just pick ourselves back up, calm the body, then the mind, then the heart as best we can (it's a useful technique, remind me to tell you about it sometime) and leave the rest in the hands of God. This is the way to true mastery in the spiritual life, through loving, trusting acceptance of failure. Through it all we sit humbly on the ground like a little kid at story time, and look up at Jesus and wait for Him to explain the punchline. That is all that is required of us.

Isn't He great like that? :-D

The Greatest Compliment Ever Given

Yesterday our Bible study covered the readings for September 23, 2014. The gospel was Luke 8:19-21, a very short but very dense gospel.

The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him
but were unable to join him because of the crowd.
He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside
and they wish to see you.”
He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers
are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

Of course, the first question to address was whether Jesus really meant to dis His mother like that. Leaving aside the question of Jesus' "brothers," which is a predictable and necessary issue to address for Catholics, the statement still seems like a terrible thing to say. After His mother walked who knows how many miles to see her Son, who hadn't been in town for a long time and wasn't going to be around for a long time in all likelihood. After all that trouble, He doesn't even take the time to see her or say anything to her. He just keeps on doing what He is doing. The question in Matthew 12:48 is even harsher: "Who is my mother? And who are my brothers?"

But what if you "invert the question" as my brother would say? (He talks theology like it's a slightly more complicated math problem.) Instead of Jesus saying, "Mom? What Mom?" He is inverting the question. "My mother? Do you want to be like her? Listen to the word of God and do it. You are my mother, my brothers, my sister, my family, if you hear the Word of my Father. I am the Word that was in the beginning. Listen to what I say and do as I do, and you are my own. My family."

He is not bringing His mother down, He is raising us up.

But there is more to it. In a way He is also paying Her the greatest compliment that it is possible for

God to pay a human. Take a look at it from her point of view for a second. After not seeing her son for weeks or months, walking for hours, and likely not to see Him again for months more, she is turned away at the door, so to speak. How did she take it? The same way she responded to every other action of God in her life: "Be it done unto me, according to thy will."

Imagine you have a friend or family member, who is so close with you, loves you so much, that you can go over to his house any time you want, day or night. If he isn't home you can open it up with the spare key under the loose brick, help yourself to his food and drink his beer and read his books. When he gets home he is completely thrilled to see you (unless you drink his last beer, my brother points out.)

Or say that I go running with my brother, who is much faster than I am. He isn't going to leave me behind, but he isn't going to take it easy on me either. He is going to run as fast as I can follow, and he is going to expect me to suck up the pain and suffer through it. He expects suffering, he expects courage, he expects me to push myself. 

Or say I ask my wife to keep me on track regarding a habit of sarcasm. She will take me seriously, and she will expect me to take her reminders humbly and with good grace. She will expect me to grow.

Now go back to Jesus and Mary. She wanted to see her Son. Her desire was denied, because He had a mission. Dozens, or even hundreds of people needed Him at that moment, and He desired to give Himself to them. With all the Love in the Eternity of the Godhead, He desired to share Himself with each one of those people. His mother loved Him, so much that she desired for Him what He most desired for Himself. She loved all of those people because He loved them, and willingly sacrificed her desire to see Him. 

This would continue until she stood at the foot of the cross, suffering with her Son, offering Him to the world, to you and I, as the best she has to offer. This was the compliment He offered her, the greatest compliment possible for a good person. I hold, and always will hold, that the greatest compliment you can offer to a good person is to invite them to become better, to become the best they can be.

God offered Mary the opportunity to take part in His work, to accept along with Him the sufferings and self-donation. He offered her the hard road of the cross, as the greatest gift, the greatest compliment it was in His power to give, expecting Her to accept the loss of Him, because He knew that she was given the grace to accept it, and He trusted in her love and faith. Seen like this, this short gospel passage becomes even more beautiful and amazing. 

More amazing still, she invites us to join her in suffering with her Son. 

Mary, Mother of Our Savior, Pray for Us.

Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me

I saw a quote today from St. John Bosco (allegedly, one can never be 100% certain with these facebook things) that said, “It is not enough to love the children, it is necessary that they are aware that they are loved.”

On the same day I read this quote from Sr. Faustina:

“God's mercy sometimes touches the sinner at the last moment in a wondrous and mysterious way. Outwardly, it seems as if everything were lost, but it is not so. The soul, illumined by a ray of God's powerful, final grace, turns to God in the last moment with such a power of love that, in an instant, it receives from God forgiveness of sins and punishment, while outwardly it shows no signs either of repentance or contrition, because souls [at that stage] no longer react to external things. Oh, how beyond comprehension is God's mercy! (Diary, 1698).”

At the same time I was reading the book, “Not For Sale,” by David Batstone on one of my lifelong obsessions, the protection and care of abused, exploited or neglected children. Many of the activists, or abolitionists as he prefers to call them, emphasized the primary need of these children being the need to be loved.

It is a pattern that I have noticed in my life, that sometimes a number of different sources will all speak to me about the same thing at the same time. I try to pay attention to such things. The skeptic in me assumes that on some subconscious level I am looking for connections, and creating significance from random events. The man of faith in there somewhere likes to think that God is trying to speak to me.

(Oh, and Matthew 18:1-14 was emailed to me by my "Gospels in a year" subscription.)

 

There is a deep connection between the three sources above, which speaks to me very deep within my heart. There is a passage from 1 John 4:20 which I am fond of “misquoting.” The verse reads “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” I often misquote it saying, “How can anyone believe in the love of the God whom they have not seen if they have never known the love of the brother they can see.”

You see, I often think about all the children who will never know love. Most of them will probably end up dead, or as petty criminals, or perhaps not so petty. One has to wonder how much love was known in the Bin Laden or Hussein households, or the Stalin or Hitler households when those infamous men were growing up. I think also of the men who are not criminals, but who nevertheless take part in the subjugation, mutilation or sexual exploitation of women out of sheer ignorance. That is what they saw their fathers doing, that is all they know about manhood.

This is not a statement or even a speculation about their subjective guilt. On this level guilt or innocence is not of very much concern to me. My cousin and I were talking about C. S. Lewis the other day and he mentioned the hope that C. S. Lewis died in perfect intellectual honesty about his faith, given that he chose not to become Catholic. I countered that whether or not his intellectual honesty was perfect he died in need of mercy as we all will. The same is true of rapists, murderers, dictators and abusers. There is no human being who does not need mercy, and there is no person to whom mercy will not be offered at the moment of death. The question is whether or not we will be able to recognize and accept it.

Love can be a frightening thing. Even those who know what love is and have experienced it can very easily come to fear love, to feel unworthy of it, to become so caught up in their unworthiness that they refuse love, run away from it, deny it when it is offered. The technical word for that state of mind is “despair,” and a little imagination reveals it as not too far removed from pride.

Now imagine a terrible sinner, a crack whore who has been selling her body for drugs, who has aborted several of her own children and witnessed others of her children spiral into the same black pit she has lived in, raped and pimped by her boyfriends, starving, addicted, despairing, worse than dead. Lest you think that I am engaging in sensationalism, I am not. I am describing women that I have seen and treated, that my fiancée has seen and treated, and if you live in any major city in America I am describing your neighbor who lives within a few miles of you. I could as easily have described Pol Pot or St. Augustine or myself for all the difference it would have made.

This woman will die someday. In the moment of her death she will see God, and be exposed to pure, unadulterated love. As much as she may have loathed herself before, she will immediately see her sinfulness in all its ugliness, and if I may trust my own inclination, she will likely be overwhelmed with sorrow. The next question will be what she does with that sorrow. Will she recognize unconditional love and accept it, allow it to wash her clean, embrace it, even rejoice in her cleansing?

Will I be able to rejoice in my own shame, simply for the sake of the glory of God, for the opportunity it provides for Him to show His mercy?

I think that transition will be easier for those who have seen love. A few days ago in prayer with my fiancée (via video chat, which is an experience in and of itself) we prayed for those children who have never known love, that they would be shown enough love in their lives so that at the very end when God shows Himself they will recognize love. It will not be a total shock.

I suppose that is the whole purpose of human love.

What I did not realize until writing this last sentence is that in doing so we accomplished on some level what we were praying for. We loved them. I doubt they know that now, or knew it at the moment of our prayer (although you never know) but someday I have faith that they will know that they were loved even when they didn’t know it.

Questions and Questions

I was talking with some guys today about Judges 13, the chapter where Samson's parents get the message from the angel that they are going to have a baby. It was interesting that the general consensus among the guys present was that the angel came to the wife first because she was more willing to trust, rather like Hannah, Elizabeth and Mary (although not like Sarah.) One guy even said that God might find it easier to work through women because they don't question as much.

Now to me, perhaps because I am a natural born questioner, that raises the question of what the purpose of the men is, then. Throughout the Church there seems to be this assumption that women are "more spiritual" and somehow more naturally "religious" than men, and that this somehow accounts for, or even excuses, the fact that most of the Catechism teachers, parish staff and pre-daily-Mass Rosary sayers are women. There seems to be a hidden attitude that the spiritual, naturally religious women are going to put up with the coarser, more cynical, more "questioning" men and coax, nag and all but drag them into heaven.

So what is the point of men? If you grant that men are more likely to ask questions and be pigheaded (which I may or may not grant) then what is the purpose of that? It was not intended to be an obstacle, but rather an aid to doing God's will. No trait that exists in any gender, personality type, or individual was designed by God as an unfortunate byproduct, but rather as a glory and a stairway to heaven, if used correctly.

So for myself, it helps if I remember that there are two kinds of questioning that I typically engage in. I question either rhetorically, "What do you think you are doing?" or I question wonderingly, "What are you doing, Lord?" The first is a challenge. I am expecting God to justify Himself to me, explain His actions so that I may judge and approve or disapprove them. The second is a request for education. I want Him to enlighten my mind so that I understand His ways, so that my thoughts become more like His thoughts and my ways more like His ways.

That typically masculine curiosity, and the desire simply to know things for their own sake, to understand ways and means, is not a bad thing. It is a good thing, if the attitude is one of humility, acknowledging that there are limits to what we can understand. If the fundamental attitude is one of trust that God has a reason and that His ways are good, then all the questioning in the world can never harm us or prevent us from doing His will. It can only draw us closer to Him, make us better students, better friends, and better sons (and daughters) of Him who delights to teach. I believe that God will eventually answer all such questions, and I certainly believe He means us to ask them, and to keep asking and asking, so long as we leave room our minds for His answers, not for what we expect His answers to be.

In this sense, that questioning attitude is a means of emptying the mind to make it more capable of holding the Word that made the Universe. Never give up your questions, or the fundamental trust that leads you to ask them in the first place.

A Prophet's Reward

The Bible Study that I am a part of in Tacoma is a very successful Bible Study, as Bible Studies go. The reasons for this are simple, but effective. It is at a regular place and at a regular time every week, (Monday at 7:30 P.M. Panera Bread, Tacoma Mall.) It is led by an extremely passionate and dynamic woman with a strong knack for names, faces and stories and a powerful love of Jesus. The core is a group of very close friends who have been going there for years, and a few new arrivals like myself who have sort of been adopted into the group. Finally, it has a very simple and effective format. Every meeting starts off at 7:30-45-ish (whenever the Filipinos show up) with introductions and the question of the day, which can be anything from "What was the most memorable spiritual experience of your life," to "What was your worst ever haircut, and how did you end up with it?"

After that we pray and begin the actual Bible study portion. The plan is very simple. We read the readings of the day, meditate on them, and then discuss them. At about nine we do announcements and then go to Red Robin for bottomless fries, root beer (or real beer for the 21 or over) floats, and burgers.

Simple, but it works. I should do a Thugfang post about Bible studies sometime, but that isn't what I set out to write about. It was a bit of a digression. I set out to write about one of the thoughts that came out of discussion from last week.

The Gospel from last Monday was Matthew 10:34 - 11:1. Of course there are enough passages in that gospel to spend hours and hours meditating and discussing, but in the interests of keeping this a blog and not a book, I just want to focus on the one line that struck me most powerfully, "Whoever receives a prophet because he is a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever receives a righteous man because he is righteous will receive a righteous man’s reward." Matthew 10:41.

At first glance this seems unfair. All you have to do to earn a prophet's reward is find yourself a prophet and offer him some hospitality. You don't even have to be one yourself, which is a pretty sweet deal considering all the ostracism, shunning, stoning and whatnot that goes along with it. As my younger brother said, "Well, if that's the case, sign me up. Come on, all you prophets, free hospitality right here!"

Which is exactly what I would say myself.

On a deeper level, this passage challenges a good many of my deep set notions of what religion, salvation, and heaven are all about. I mean, I had always thought that there are levels of reward in Heaven. Each person rises to the level that he opens himself to. The more spiritually developed you become on earth, the more room you have for heaven, so to speak. The priest has a higher vocation than the layman. He gives more, and as a result he is emptier and has more room to be filled with joy.

This is an overly simplistic way of putting it.This passage tells me that in reality it is not so simple, or maybe it is simpler, but not in the same way. Of course everyone must be completely empty before they can enter the Kingdom. Some choose that emptiness as a way of life, and I had assumed that they would have a head start when they got to the pearly gates, but maybe that is not the case.

When I read this passage it reminded me of Mother Teresa. She started the order, the Missionaries of Charity, whom she described as contemplatives in the midst of the world. That is, their charism is both to develop the deep, intimate relationship with God which we would associate with a contemplative order, and also to engage in active service for the poorest of the poor. They are known for their work throughout the world, and I assume that Mother Teresa has a very high place in Heaven. Not that she earned it, per se, but that by the evidence of her life I can only assume that she had an unusually close and deep and rich relationship with God.

What a lot of people do not know is that Mother Teresa also started another group, which she envisioned as being as large as the MC itself, sort of an auxiliary MC. There were two groups, really. One was composed of terminally or chronically ill people, people who could not leave their beds, who could not lead an active life. Their mission was to "adopt" a Missionary of Charity, and to offer up for them all of their prayers and sufferings and the frustrated desires of their lives. The other group was composed of lay people, man, women, children, families, lawyers, businessmen, blue collar workers, teachers, just your ordinary everyday people. Their job was very similar, to adopt spiritually a Missionary of Charity. In addition they were to support them financially in their work through donations, volunteer work, whatever they could.

Both of these "auxiliary" groups seemed to be working the lesser missions on face value. The Missionary of Charity sister or brother or priest is out in the field, doing the real missions. They are the ones going out into the gutters and streets, touching the lepers, smelling the rotting flesh, witnessing all the horror of poverty and degradation. The two other groups are no doubt useful in their way, but really, aren't they just glorified ammo handlers, in the spiritual sense? Sitting at home, passing spiritual ammunition to the real spiritual warriors? How will they get a "holy man's" reward simply because they supported a holy man?

But that is not Mother Teresa saw it. She did not view them as supports for MC's work. Instead they and the missionaries were simply support for God's work, each tools in the hand of God, which He used as He saw fit. It was not the task that they were called to do it, but how freely and lovingly they did it which mattered. She said, "No one can do great things for Jesus. Only little things with great love." This from the woman who saved countless thousands of people from dying alone, friendless and despairing in the gutters and the slums around the world.

This is what I think Jesus meant in this passage. It is not the task that matters. The prophet's task may be higher than the bricklayer's task, but that does not mean that his reward is greater. Reward is not determined by task, since task is given by God, not earned by merits. The only possible thing that could be rewarded is response. The more wholeheartedly we open ourselves to the task that God gives us, the more we allow Him to empty us, stretch us, and fill us with Himself. That is the reward, as much of God as we can hold.

And this is how a man who gives a prophet a glass of water because he is a prophet can receive the prophet's reward because of it. It all depends on how much love goes into that glass of water.

Community

In January of 2012 I moved from Fort Bragg, North Carolina to Fort Lewis, Washington. I had been living within a 3 1/2 - 5 hour drive from Aunts, Uncles, cousins and grandparents, and now I was going to be three time zones, and three days of driving from anyone I knew or cared about. I wasn't too worried about that, but I knew that I never would have made it through the Q course without that regular presence of family, and I was equally certain I would not make it through my time in Special Forces without an equally strong support system. So I planned on:
1) Joining a Bible Study.
2) Being Active in a Parish
3) Building an active social life
4) Doing charity/volunteer work in my spare time
5) Read more books and start college.

With these goals in mind I set out across the country. I drove for 3 days by myself, doing 16-18 hours behind the wheel each day. I especially loved the Rockies and the high deserts of Wyoming and Eastern Washington, which were wide open, sunny, wild and beautiful. I loved that countryside and just driving through it made me happy, despite the fact that I was sleep deprived like crazy.

Then I hit the green belt. I crossed over Snoqualmie pass and dropped down into western Washington, and the whole world changed. The clouds crashed down in around me, the rain started, the trees and hills rose up on either side of me, the traffic turned thick. Then I hit the Seattle/Tacoma area and the buildings loomed around all gray and gloomy and sad looking, and the traffic was terrible and I was tired and homesick, and right then I was certain that I was going to hate living in Tacoma.

I spent the next week living in a hotel room, doing in-processing stuff on post, and playing World of Warcraft most of my spare time.When you move to a different duty station the Army gives you 10 days of leave free (meaning it doesn't come out of your ordinary 28 days of leave per year) to get settled in. On top of that, however, you have just signed out of your old unit, so while you are technically on their books they aren't keeping track of you. You haven't signed into the new unit yet, so they are not keeping track of you either. It's easy to fall between the cracks for a while and get a lot of free time off. I didn't do that, but there was a snow storm in Tacoma that closed post down for three days, and a four day weekend, so I had a lot of free time. I played a lot of World of Warcraft.

I moved into an apartment and kept playing WOW. Life was still miserable. Then one Monday I looked at myself and realized that I hadn't done any of the things I said I was going to do when I moved to Tacoma. Not one thing on that list was checked off. So I deleted WOW and Googled Catholic young adult groups in the Tacoma area.

It would turn out to be one of the best things I have ever done in my life. I walked into Panera bread at the Tacoma Mall on that Monday night, and met the group of young adults who would become my friends here. It wasn't immediate, or easy, but I built relationships within that group. I had to force myself out of my shell, just like I did the first time, many times over. There is a reluctance to reach out to other people which is pretty common for most people, I think. Even if it is just trying to get a couple of guys together to drink beer and smoke pipes, there is the fear that maybe they won't want to do it. No one likes to get rejected, so it is easier simply not to take that risk. If you have a group of friends that you can depend on, it is easy just to stick with that little group that never lets you down, never challenges you. But that is the way of death. That is how your soul dies, and your ability to love shrivels up.

So I forced myself to reach out, invite people out for coffee, or drinks, create events, host pizza parties, even a couple of dates. And you know what? It is fun! Being in community is fun! Sure there is some friction from time to time. Of course there are competing schedules and sometimes you can't make plans work, and sometimes you don't see so-and-so for weeks because they are just busy (I am usually that guy).  It cramps my style, in some ways, meaning it challenges selfishness. It changes priorities. Things that I used to spend time on (like WOW) I no longer even want to waste my time with. On the whole, however, it is good. It opens my eyes, and stretches my heart, and even fills up holes that I never knew were empty.

Since then I have been in and out of the area, Special Forcing here and there around the world. I was right, I don't much care for Special Forces, and I don't intend to re-enlist. However, through all the vagaries and pointlessness of military life, I have friends here who share the same values. When I come home I have folks I can drink a beer with without worrying that the evening is going to end up at a strip club. I have people I can invite over to pizza parties and serve good quality food and drink, and know that no one is going to end up puking all over the furniture. People I can pray with, or talk about God with.

It makes all the difference.

Count the Stars

Today I would like to share an insight into today's first reading that speaks to me in a special way. It is not my personal insight. I first heard it from Jeff Cavins in his Great Adventure video series.

The Lord God took Abram outside and said,
“Look up at the sky and count the stars, if you can.
Just so,” he added, “shall your descendants be.”
Abram put his faith in the LORD,
who credited it to him as an act of righteousness.

I had always imagined this part of the story very simply. Abram looks up at the stars, counts a handful of them, and then gives up and trusts that God knows how many descendants he will have, and leaves it at that. If you have ever had the opportunity to look up at the night sky in the middle of a desert without ambient lights, far away from any pollution, you will know how overwhelming it would be to have to count those stars.

But the reading continues. God talks to Abram some more and tells Him to set up a sacrifice. Abram sets it up, and then waits with the halves of the carcasses until the sun goes down!

There is a whole wealth of meaning in the way the sacrifice is set up and in Abram's waiting there with it and God passing between the animal halves, and I encourage you to read more about it. But right now I am just focusing on the fact that the sun went down. It's amazing how I never noticed that until Jeff Cavins pointed it out. What if it was not night time when God told him to count the stars.

Right now I am thinking a great deal about God's promises. Every day in the Morning Prayer from the Divine Office I recite the canticle of Zecharia in which he says, "This is the oath He swore to our Father Abraham, that He would set us free from the hands of our enemies; Free to worship Him without fear, holy and righteous in His sight all the days of our lives."

This promise of God means a great deal to me, because over the course of my life I have always been aware, and increasingly as I have gotten older, of how ensnared by various sins I really am. The sins that seemed so big and serious when I was a teenager, that gave me so much pain and grief, now seem to me just the tip of the iceberg. Underneath the individual acts are whole vast tectonic plates of attitudes, attitudes of entitlement, selfishness and pride. Even as God frees me continually more and more from many of the acts, I am becoming more aware of these foundations. I am powerless to remove them. I cannot even touch them

In the face of this, God's promise, indeed His Oath, to set me free from the hands of my enemies seems a long time coming to fruition. It's almost as if He were asking me to count the stars on a clear blue blazing summer day.

And yet the stars are there. Blessed be He.

Into the Desert

I posted this a few months ago, but the first reading from today for the feast of St. Cecilia brought it back to my mind, so I am reposting it.

Into the Desert

At last we go into the desert, my bride.

The moment is here, this moment, no time to waste.

Long you’ve run, and longer still I’ve chased

And now at last you’ve nowhere left to hide.

What do you have to lose? Unsatisfied

By strange, enticing lovers in whom you’ve placed

The trust you promised to me. Your heart, unchaste,

Is finally vomiting the poisons that you’ve tried.

So come and water the wilderness with your tears.

Leave your Assyrian lovers and drugs of choice

And over the noise let vast, dry silence fall.

In silence, without the Iphone, face your fears

This desert is not your home. I AM. My voice

Created you in a garden, after all.

Through the Gate

“Truly, Truly I say to you, he who does not enter the sheepfold by the door but climbs in another way, that man is a thief and a robber; but he who enters by the door is the shepherd of the sheep, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.” John 10:1-3

This passage has been on my mind since Saturday afternoon. I read it after confession on Saturday, again at Mass on Sunday, and again at Bible study last night. I didn’t really start forming any opinions about it until last night. I was trying simply to listen to it (the actual passage I had read was much longer, going all the way to verse 18.) After listening to all the points of view at Bible study last night I am full of amazement at this passage. It is so deep, so rich, so multi-layered. On the most obvious level there is the message that Jesus was conveying directly to the Pharisees and elders of a synagogue (see chapter 9). He was calling upon the rich religious and covenantal significance of the word “shepherd” and the image of the people of Israel as God’s chosen flock. He was tying together three themes from the Old Testament:

1)    God as the Shepherd of His people, (example Genesis 49:24, Psalm 23:1, Psalm 80:1, Ezekiel 34:11-15)

2)    The priests and prophets as the shepherds of Israel, (example Jeremiah 23)

3)    The ruler (especially David) as the shepherd of Israel, (example 2 Sam 5:2, 7:7, Psalm 78:71)

Jesus draws all of these themes together and unites them in Himself, casting his pharisaic listeners as the false shepherds of Israel declaimed by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and Himself as the Good Shepherd foretold by Ezekiel and Micah (Micah 5:2-4).

Jesus is never simple, though. If it were simply a message meant strictly for his immediate hearers it would never have been recorded since, presumably, the Pharisees never read the New Testament. It was recorded for our sake and so Jesus spoke with me and my friends specifically in mind. It is also a parable about the Church. We are the sheep, He is the good Shepherd who calls each of us by name. The sheepfold is the Church, but it is also the kingdom of Heaven. Any attempt to force our way into Heaven on our own merits is doomed to failure. Worse, we are thieves and liars if we try it. We are no different from Adam and Eve, reaching out to grasp and take what has not been freely offered. We must go in and out through the gate.

The idea of the gate, though, has been turning over and over in my head since last night. Some people might consider a gate a symbol of enclosing and limiting, but it isn’t. It is an image of freedom, specifically the only true path to freedom. It is a symbol of consent. When Jesus speaks those words about entering by the door and calling His own by name, the most powerful association in my mind is with the Song of Songs.

“You are a garden locked up, my sister, my bride;
you are a spring enclosed, a sealed fountain.
Your plants are an orchard of pomegranates
with choice fruits,
with henna and nard,
nard and saffron,
calamus and cinnamon,
with every kind of incense tree,
with myrrh and aloes
and all the finest spices.
You are a garden fountain,
a well of flowing water
streaming down from Lebanon. Song of Songs 4:12-15

These are the words of the bridegroom, who is variously either a human lover of a human woman, or Jesus, the lover of souls. Throughout the Song both interpretations are ever present, and in fact, inextricably united. One does not exist without the other. But for now let this be the voice of Jesus, calling His own by name.

She responds:

Awake, north wind,
and come, south wind!
Blow on my garden,
that its fragrance may spread everywhere.
Let my beloved come into his garden
and taste its choice fruits. Song of Songs 4:16

And again He speaks:

I come to my garden, My sister, My bride,
I gather my myrrh with my spice,
I eat my honeycomb with my honey,
I drink my wine with my milk. Song of Songs 5:1

No matter how many times I read through the Song of Songs it never ceases to amaze me. Amaze is the wrong word. It never ceases to captivate me.

This is the most amazing thing about our God. The image of the sealed and locked fountain (whether the soul that Jesus longs to enter or the heart of the woman the man in the poem loves) is an image of something that is unattainable; something that, no matter how hard you try, can never simply be achieved. I can achieve many things by my own efforts. I can learn a language, or a martial art, or a recipe. If I wanted to I could earn a million dollars, or save up to own a Ferrari, or a cabin in the woods, or a mansion by the sea. What I can never do, however, is achieve love. I can never compel someone to love me. I can only ask permission. It will be either given or not. If it is not free it is not love. If it is truly love that I want then that freedom is the only possible condition for it to exist.

This should not be surprising for me, a mere human, but for God? God is the creator of the universe, of All That Is! How is there anything that He cannot achieve simply by willing it? And yet, there is. In His love He has created something that is forever beyond the reach of even His power: the human heart. He cannot force entry into it. He cannot climb the fence, for that would destroy the very thing that He longs for, which is love. Love, by its very nature exists only when it is given freely. Unfree love is simply a no-thing, a thing which is not. So He does not force entry, or climb the walls, or dig under the fence. He stands outside and calls. And we answer. Or not.

“I slept, but my heart was waking.
Hark! My Beloved is knocking.
‘Open to me, my sister, my love,
My dove, my perfect one.” Song of Songs 5:2.

Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me. Revelations 3:20

There is so much more here, but this blog is already too long.