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.

Tacloban, Part III

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I got an incredible opportunity recently to go to the typhoon disaster zone in the Philippines to help with relief efforts. The next few posts are going to be a series, things I wrote to kind of decompress after returning to my regular mission.  This is a long post, but I felt it was worthwhile to tell the whole story.

It is rare to meet someone who is truly unselfish. It is the most humbling thing in the world, and, hopefully, once you have seen it you will never be the same.

At the end of our second day on the airfield, as we were trying to load up one of the last C-130’s that would be landing during daylight hours, we almost lost control of the crowd. In fact, we did lose control. 500 people pushed through the main gate, onto the tarmac and began moving in a vast, desperate wave, straight for the front of the airplane. The police managed to run and form a cordon around them and box them in before they came anywhere near the running engines, but it was clearly too dangerous to continue loading planes, especially once night fell and we could no longer see the people. No pilot would even land with that many people on the tarmac.

We had to do something. The police tried to push the people back, outside the main gate, but they wouldn’t go. They had been standing in line all day, most of them, with no food or water, and now, having finally reached the front, the tarmac, with freedom and safety in sight, they could not bear the thought of spending the night there. Even worse, they refused to be pushed back outside the main gate where they would lose their places in line.

A Filipino lady named Gigi stepped out of the crowd at this point, and said to me in excellent English, “Sir, I know I am just a passenger, but these people do not want to go back out into line because they are afraid of losing their places. Can you at least tell us when the next plane is going to be here? We need to manage their expectations.”

“I do not know when the next plane is going to arrive, and I do not know if we are going to be allowed to load people. It will be too dangerous in the dark.” It was not a very convincing answer, but she passed it back, and began working to try to convince the people to cooperate. Another woman, named Didit, came out of the crowd to help, along with a man whose name I did not get. Between the three of them, they did more than the police to get everyone backed up. I found a room that used to be part of the terminal complex, perhaps 40’ by 40’ and we convinced the crowd to back into it. They didn’t all fit, and it must have been stiflingly hot and claustrophobic inside, but at least they were off the tarmac.

I went to take care of a bunch of other things, and when I came back, Gigi and Didit were busy organizing the people, trying to get them to collect together by family and sit quietly. They updated me on how the people were doing, (“Hungry, tired and thirsty,”) and then introduced me to another civilian who had volunteered to help. They yelled her name over the engine noise, so I didn’t quite catch it, but it had an “M” and an “R” in it so I thought it was “Marina.”

She was a tiny Filipino lady in a red cross shirt. She had been working her way through the crowd, organizing the crowd into families and getting feedback from them on what they needed, who had family or other contacts in Manila, and so forth. She was short. When I say short, I mean she was short even for a Filipino lady. The top of her head was about on a level with my chest, and she was completely invisible until she stepped out of the crowd. She came right over to me, grabbed my sleeve and pulled me down to her level so she could yell in my ear, “Sir! These people need water right away. They are very thirsty.”

I had to laugh. I am not used to being bossed around by people half my size, but she was taking their cause so completely to heart she did not hesitate. I thought to myself, “Good Lord, Woman, you are awesome.” Little did I know just how awesome she was, but I was going to find out.

I promised to get them water, and then had to break off to help unload the Malaysian planes that had just arrived. I talked to the Malaysians about getting the people some water, and they agreed to help, but they were taking their own sweet time about it. They came up with a plan to provide biscuits for the people, but it took them fully an hour to figure out that they had not brought any water in any of the pallets they had brought. At that point I decided to take matters into my own hands. I talked to the young US Marine Sergeant who was in charge of the forklift operators, since he knew where all the supply pallets that came through the camp went and had a solid idea what was on each one. I tell you what, that was a good kid. He knew right where to find a mostly used pallet of water, and he sent his forklift operator to go get it.

I talked to Gigi and explained that water was coming, but that we could not have people charging out onto the tarmac when it arrived. I needed her to come up with a system for distributing it in an organized manner, so that everyone can get some water, all the way to the back of the room. She said she would handle it, and she did. It was a thing of beauty. After standing in the sun all day, most with no water of their own, they passed the jugs all the way to the back first, disbursing them through the crowd before anyone took any water. Then each person took one of the gallon jugs, took what he needed for himself or his family, and passed it to his neighbors.

The Malaysian planes did not take anyone. When the two American planes arrived we tried to get permission to try to load some people, but it was denied. The camp commander still felt it was too dangerous. I passed the word to the civilian volunteers and they passed it to their people, that everyone should just get some sleep. I cut a deal with the Malaysians to get them some food, and they assured me they would get it very soon. I went to sleep.

When I got back at about 6:00 in the morning, Gigi and the other volunteers were gone. I don’t know where they went, and I never saw them again, but I am grateful for their help. We could not have gotten that crowd under control without them. Only one remained. The first person to greet me was the tiny volunteer in the red cross shirt, with the words, “Sir, these people still have not gotten any food.” I told her that the planes were going to start coming in a few hours and then I bullied, coaxed and coerced the Malaysians until they got food.

All the rest of the day I was running back and forth, back and forth across the flight line, trying to find Americans and other ex-pats, triaging the sick, wounded and elderly who wanted to get priority on flights, arranging people in order to get on airplanes. Every time I ran past her and her group I just saw more and more evidence of her awesomeness. She pulled some of the older people and some ladies with breastfeeding infants out of the crowd and constructed a little awning for them to sit under. She asked me to take her family out on the next plane because her sister’s baby was vomiting, but she assured me that she would stay behind to help organize people. Sure enough, that is exactly what she did. I put her family in the priority lane, and they were on the first plane out. She put together the groups who would board the plane and sent them up by line of ten when I asked her to.

The craziest rain I have ever seen hit without warning, sometime around mid-morning. It was so thick you could not see the planes on the tarmac. She simply stuck her purse (which was her only luggage) under her shirt and kept working.

After the rain she made a deal with the parents in the crowd. If they agreed to stay behind the gate and wait patiently she would let the kids get out on the open cement where they could have some fresh air and room to stretch their legs. Have you ever seen a group of forty or fifty children sitting cross-legged in rows of ten, smiling and happy, just because they can breathe freely? Sitting in one spot and not moving, kept in check by just one tiny woman they have never met before in their lives?

As the day wore on it became obvious that she had taken those people to heart, literally. They were her family and she took responsibility for them with all her might. Every group she sent out to get on the airplane was a victory for her and somehow she made it a victory for all of them. They were no longer fighting for their own survival. They had become a family. I don’t know how she did it. She just did.

About 5:30 PM, just as the sun was going down, she had another group of 40 people all set out in front of her gates, squatting in rows of ten, waiting for their turn to board the C-130 that was idling on the tarmac. Suddenly it happened again. The people at the main gate panicked, broke through, pushed past the police and flooded the tarmac. They completely swept past her and her group, blocking them off from the airplane. I was moving in trying to find some police to help me restore order, and she came rushing out to me with tears in her eyes. “Sir!” she cried. “Sir! These people!”

It was as if that was all she could say. She eyed the huge crowd spread out between her people and the airplane they had been waiting for for days and she looked on the verge of breaking down. Looking behind her I could see her people still waiting, squatting in rows of ten, frightened looks on their faces, but still waiting patiently, trusting her to get them out.

I yelled in her ear. “I know. I am sorry but there is nothing I can do about that. There are too many of them now.”

She shook her head in desperation. “Sir, my families?”

“Marina, there is nothing more you can do tonight. I need you to find a safe place to rest for the night. We probably won’t be loading any more planes, but you have been going all day and you need some rest. I will try to find you later, and make sure these people get food and water.”

She looked at me with a wry, half amused look on her face. “My name is Marilee,” she informed me.

Well don’t I feel like a doofus!

She fell back to her people and the crowd surged around her, and I lost track of her. For the next four hours we were all busy trying to regain control and impose some sort of order on the loading process. By the time I was able to look for her and her people again the whole area was hopelessly crowded and finding one short lady in that whole crowd was impossible. I simply had to pray that she was all right and leave her to her own devices.

That was the night we finally cracked the code and figured out how to load people at night without losing control of them. There were some scary moments, but it went really well. It was almost 1:00 AM before I got to bed, and then I was up again by 5:00. I had some food and did some work around our camp, cleaning up trash, reorganizing the makeshift latrine (Oh, the glamorous life of an SF Medic!). About 6:00 AM someone came to get me to tell me there was a local woman looking for me.

Sure enough it was Marilee. She was wearing a different outfit because she had gotten the police to give her a place to stay for the night and they had lent her some sweats to replace her old clothes. She thanked me for getting so many people out last night, and asked if more planes were coming in today. I said there were and told her that she was going to be on the first one. “Go back to the flight line, and walk about a hundred yards past where you were yesterday and you will see a gate marked arrivals. That is the American passport line. You are going to be in that line.”

“What if they don’t let me?” she asked.

“Tell them Sergeant Kraeger sent you,” I told her. “I will be along in an hour or so to make sure you get in that line.”

She thanked me and headed back to the airfield.

I headed back there about an hour later, but to my surprise, before I got to the American line I saw her standing at the same spot she had been standing yesterday, with a familiar looking group of 40 people seated in rows of ten around her.

“Marilee,” I said, “I told you I could get you out in the American line? What are you doing here?”

“Sir,” she said, “I found these families.” She gestured to the people waiting expectantly behind her. “They are the ones from yesterday. Can I stay and make sure they get out?”

I tell you, my jaw nearly hit the concrete. I don’t know if I have ever felt more humbled in my entire life. Here she was after a full day and a half of taking responsibility for the well-being of strangers she had never met before, coaxing them, encouraging them, bossing them, caring about them. Now she had an opportunity to get out, free and clear. She had earned it, as far as I was concerned, but she was willing to give it up, just to stay with the people that she had adopted.

There and then I vowed to myself that she and her whole group would be on the next flight if there was anything I could do about it. I grabbed up the Marine Sergeant who was now running the operation and introduced him to her and told him, “I don’t care what it takes, this woman and this whole group with her get on the next flight. I don’t care who is in the American line. She takes priority.”

That’s what happened. I was transitioning to other missions, but I took a break to come back to the flight line when the next American C-130 landed, to make sure she got on. That was the only time she almost broke. When we loaded the first group of twenty, she was left behind with the second group and a look of panic crossed her face. She started to argue with the police, telling him that she had been promised, she was with that group. When I came over to reassure her she was staring desperately at the plane and she said, “Sir, I cannot do this another day.”

“You won’t have to,” I promised. “You will be on that plane.”

The crew chief signaled, they sent the next group, and she boarded with the last of her people.

It was strange. At one point the day prior she had said to me in bewilderment, “I am not this kind of person. I don’t like to speak up to people. I do not know how I have the nerve to do this. I don’t know why they do what I tell them to. I am a nobody.”

I wish I had had time to explain that I feel the same way. Most effective leaders do. Deep down inside we are all faking it, pretending we know what we are doing, bewildered and intimidated by the weight of expectation and trust placed on us, wondering how the hell we ended up here. Why me? Why here? Why this job? Why not someone more dynamic, someone better trained, someone more confident?

I did not have time for that. All I had time to say was, “You care about them. People follow people who care.”

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.

Dignitas Magazine: For All Catholic Women and the Men who Love Them

Happy Easter Everyone! Just wanted to share my cousins' online magazine. First issue was released today! Check them out! (That's three exclamation point's in four sentences, by the way. Expect a corresponding level of awesomeness.)

Open publication - Free publishing - More catholic

When Men were Men and Could Pay for the Date

“The major concrete achievement of the women's movement of the 1970's was the Dutch treat.” -Nora Ephron.

This quote always makes me laugh a bit. Of all the things in the world to be hailed as a great achievement, seriously? But my initial amusement is something of a discredit to the woman who said it, because it does her the discourtesy of not listening to her. It interprets her words through my set of ideas and assumptions, which is the surest way to avoid ever hearing what a person is saying. Obviously to her it was no laughing matter (at least I don’t think it was. I can find no reference to her as a humorist.) She meant something by it.

It turns out, when you take the time to listen, that she saw it as a symbolic victory. In her mind, up until then, men have viewed women as helpless, fragile creatures who simply couldn’t manage to provide food for themselves if the big, strong, manly men didn’t give it to them. Worse still, the big, strong, manly men were intent on keeping it that way because, deep down inside, they were all afraid of these fragile little women. They couldn’t feel manly without someone to dominate, so to protect their own egos they had arbitrarily forced women into a position of subservience.

To her, the groundswell of support from countless women around the country saying “No thanks, I can pay for my own meal,” was a vindication. It was like Gandhi, refusing to walk in the gutter, insisting that there was room on the sidewalk for all people regardless of color. Every Hindu who followed his example and calmly and quietly walked on the sidewalk, even for a few steps, was a blow at the institution of oppression. In the same way, I think Nora Ephron saw every woman’s purchase of her own dinner as a small, but significant demonstration against the patriarchal establishment.

Whether she was right or wrong, is another thing entirely, and not the point of this blog. I will say briefly that while I cannot agree with her, I cannot completely disagree with her either.

Instead of worrying about that, for the moment, let’s fast forward thirty-odd years to the 2000’s and early ‘teens. Now we have the cultural phenomenon of blogging, and in that blogging world, the delicious irony of posts and comment threads like this one, in which the women are the ones reminiscing longingly over the days when men were men and could pay for the date. In still another stroke of genius, men are now the ones who are calling for “equality”. If they want equal rights as men, let those women share some responsibility. They are adults, let them pay for their own dang meal.

Lo! I fear we have created a monster!

Actually, no. We have created nothing. We have simply put an old problem in new clothes, and even the new clothes aren’t really new. They are just the old clothes, turned inside out.

Why were a few vocal, and admittedly often eloquent women, able to launch a movement that, with very little organization and almost no direct conflict, was able completely to change the face of a society in a few short decades? As a professional student of revolutionary tactics in general, I can tell you it was a pretty bit of work. They had a base of support. Their message hit home, and resonated with women. For one reason or another, deep down inside, thousands of women heard this message of liberation and it meshed with a fear in their hearts. They felt like their rights were not being met. They were being used.

Can we argue against it? Possibly, although every individual’s story is always different. That really is beside the point. The point is that they felt used and denied rights which should be theirs. There was a reason they felt that way. There always is!

And now that the tables have turned, and men choose not to pay because generations of women have told us, “No, thank-you, I have a job and I can afford it,” the cry is different. Women lament that men don’t think them worth the time or money it would take to treat them to a nice, thoughtful date. They feel used. I doubt any would argue that their rights are being violated. That is now the man’s cry. Why does the man always have to pay for everything? Why is it now our job to be gentlemen while women have apparent carte-blanche to pick and choose which of the traditionally lady-like gestures they will or will not use? Why do laws on anything and everything from divorce, to civil disputes, to domestic quarrels favor women?

The few men who can put this succinctly find an audience. There are murmurs of assent, that instant leaping of recognition, aggrieved to aggrieved. Men feel like their rights are being violated.

Like I said, old problem, new look, same clothes just turned inside out. The root of both issues was, and is, the fear of being used. We are inveterate cynics, we human beings. Always on the watch lest someone pull the wool over our eyes. Someone is out to deal us out of the game, cut us from the line where all the good bargains are. It isn’t that we are necessarily greedy. We don’t want to take anything that’s anyone else’s but I will not be gypped of what is rightfully mine. If you don’t look out four your rights, someone else is going take you for everything you have.

Mutual suspicion is as old as fig leaves.

So what is the solution? Simple. Let go of the fear. Give someone the benefit of the doubt, for a change (which is not the same thing as pretending there is a doubt when there isn’t). Speak honestly and sincerely, expect others to do the same. It’s okay to be surprised and hurt when someone lies to you. You should be surprised. It’s a surprising thing. It is utterly unnatural and unreasonable and you ought to rebel against it with every fiber of your being. But don’t believe that lie. You see, if you take one woman who lies to you, or ten, or fifty, or a hundred, and then extrapolate that all women are therefore liars, you have bought the lie, hook line and sinker. You really have been hoodwinked.

That is not the Truth! The truth is that people lie, from time to time. (Some people tell the truth from time to time.) But there are people who believe in the truth. There are people who believe in honor, integrity, and generosity. There are people who will guard your rights far more zealously than you ever could. Seek them out, take the years it takes to get to know them. Because when you can let your rights go, confident that they will be taken care of, it frees you to live something better. Rights exist and are important because they protect us from ourselves, but they are the lowest common denominator. In a relationship, if you have to worry about your rights, you are already behind the power curve. Relationship exists so that we can forget about our rights, and move deeper into the realm of self-gift.

This is what a man says by paying for a date, even a first date. He’s saying, “I don’t need to stand on my rights. I can give of myself, and I hope you can do the same. I don’t know, but I’m giving you the chance. You deserve it.”

The Greatness of a Lady

“She had that great femininity which demanded of her lover what her lover demanded of himself.”

I read this sentence last week in Charles Williams’ “The Figure of Beatrice,” and have been savoring it ever since. He wrote it of Dante’s oft-commented-on beloved, as she appears in the “Divine Comedy”, of which, I confess, I have read only the Inferno, and that only in high school. Despite my limited acquaintance with the heroine of which he spoke, or perhaps because of it, this sentence spoke to me. It called to me, and I swear verily resonated in my chest, like a basso profundo echo of a high, clear note heard afar off. It seemed to me that there, all in a sentence, was a beautiful expression of the heart of femininity at its highest, at least as it appears to me. It seems to be a reversal of the curse of Genesis 3:16, specifically where it says, “You shall desire after your husband, but he shall rule over you.”

I saw the movie, “Ladder 49” once, a long time ago. I liked it. It made me want to be a firefighter, even though I had been in the army for several years. The character of the firefighter played by Joaquin Phoenix was one that I could relate to. He lived to go into burning buildings and rescue people, and it was this quality of courage and reckless compassion that attracted his wife to him in the first half of the movie. By the second half of the movie she was tired of it, to the point that she wanted him to quit the Fire Department. More interesting still, I was watching the movie in the company of other soldiers, most of whom were married and they all said the same thing, “That’s how it is. When you first meet them they think it’s the most awesome thing in the world that you’re a soldier, but then once you’re married they hate it, and they are always scheming to keep you at home.”

A soldier I know, who graduated the course with me, joined up to go Special Forces with his wife’s blessing. As he got further into the course, though, and she realized what it really meant she began to be less and less thrilled with it. Now she hates it, and it is a continual source of tension between them. She hates it and resists it, so much so that I’ve heard her cut him down in public, telling him he’s not smart enough to make it as a medic, or she wouldn’t trust him if she were injured.

I listen, and I hear what she is saying. All of these women face the same trial, namely that their men are not wholly theirs. Each one has a mission that he feels is his, and he is committed to it even at the risk of his life. She, for her part, is worried sick that one day she’ll get that knock on the door and then she will be all alone with the children. Women tend to commit so completely. They want to belong completely to one man and one family, and even a hint that it might all come to an end is truly terrifying. I listen well enough to hear that fear, and I give it a good deal of weight. It is just as real and just as valid as the man’s need to fight fire, or deploy overseas, or whatever great thing he feels he must do.

But today we celebrated the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, one of the great Marian Holy Days of the Catholic Church, and I thought about this in connection with Mary. As Adam ruined betrayed and ruined masculinity by his weakness in the garden, so Eve betrayed and sabotaged femininity. Jesus came to restore the whole human race by obeying where Adam had disobeyed, but He chose to act through a human woman, and in so doing He allowed Mary to be the first and best example of redeemed femininity. Two episodes in particular came to my mind as pivotal moments in this redemption. First, obviously, the annunciation was the pivotal moment of human cooperation with Divine salvation. Mary blindly said her fiat, her “May it be” to the Will of God, without knowing what it would entail. This was the undoing of Eve’s disobedience, a choice made in the dark. Neither Eve nor Mary knew what was at stake. The issue was simply trust. Eve did not, Mary did.

But the second pivotal episode was both a little more obscure, and to my mind a little more relevant to the Charles Williams quote that started this whole train of thought. It comes from John 2:4-5. At the wedding feast at Cana Jesus says to His Mother, “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come.” She does not reply to Him directly, or if she does it is not recorded. Instead she simply tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you.”

Nothing in John’s gospel is arbitrary or aside. He does not do character development. Every word and saying is full of meaning, significant on many levels and this is no exception, but I find it more mysterious than most of his writing. I have heard a lot of different interpretations of it, most concerned with showing that Jesus was not really being disrespectful to His mother. A few of the Catholic ones use it as an example of how powerful Mary is, and how Jesus will do anything she asks of Him. The most interesting one I ever read was by Fulton Sheen, in which he speculated that what Jesus was really saying was that if He did this and manifested His power He would be setting out on a path from which there was no turning back, and it could only end with His crucifixion.

I suppose on some level there is truth to all of them, but today the idea of Fulton Sheen’s took on a reality in my mind that is convincing in its beauty and elegance. I am convinced that when Jesus said that to her, she knew what was at stake. He was giving her a chance… to do what? To hold Him back? To keep Him for herself? To say, “No, not you my Son. You know what the world will do to you. I just want you to be safe.” Could she have said this? Yes. Just as she could have said “No” to the angel at Nazareth thirty years earlier, she could have said “No” at Cana. The choice God gave her was real, to be the Mother of His Son, or to refuse. Salvation really did come about as the result of a fallible human being’s “Yes” to God. I think Cana was something similar, but more immediate. Now she was faced with an actual human being. She knew Him and loved Him. He was her son. She had born Him in her womb, nursed Him at her breast, held him while He learned to walk, taught Him, fed Him, clothed Him. He was truly flesh of her flesh. In all the years they had lived together they must have talked of His mission, and she knew the prophecy of Simeon concerning her beloved Son. Faced with that kind of choice, a daughter of Eve would have grasped after the one she loved. What kind of grace must have been poured out upon her, to enable her to exercise her redeemed femininity, that high and noble love which demanded of Jesus what He demanded of Himself!

This is that “Great Femininity” that Dante envisioned, that can look on the best of her man’s masculinity, and affirm it even when it takes him away from her. She does not seek to smooth every obstacle out of his path, she does not encourage him to take the safe, easy path. When he loses faith in himself and feels like giving up she gently affirms her faith in the best part of him. You can see it in the men who have wives that support them unconditionally. No matter what setbacks or failures he runs into at work or among his peers, his wife’s support and loyalty outweigh them all. He can conquer the world. I know a man who is a full time volunteer in a Catholic Men’s ministry, who lives entirely on whatever donations he can get. He is able to do this because his wife supports him. She believes in him and his mission so much that she and his children willingly live from donation to donation to enable him to do what he is called to do.

That is the power of this “Great Femininity.” You can see it in the man who is blessed by it. He will answer God’s call, whatever it is, and he will persevere. Such men will change the world, because of the women who love them.