Passus Est

I remember when I was a teenager, singing in the choir at Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish in Verona, NY. We were one of the few choirs in the area that sang in Latin, thanks to Fr. Morelle's reverence for the beauty of the Latin liturgy and the old sacred music.

(Incidentally, Fr. Morelle perfectly modeled for me the proper attitude towards the Latin Mass. While he personally loved the extraordinary form, he never entertained any nonsense about the novus ordo being "invalid" or incapable of reverent, beautiful celebration. When asked about it he simply said that he obeyed his bishop, and celebrated as reverently as he could the form he was given. Perhaps this is why I have never understood the tension between the advocates of the two forms in some Catholic circles. But I digress.)

At any rate, I had enough Latin in school to have a solid grasp of the roots of the words, enough, at any rate, to be able to translate the parts of the Mass into English as we sang them. After years of singing them, eventually I no longer needed to translate them. Instead I sang them, thought, heard them, and prayed them in the Church Latin. Perhaps my love affair with words and language of all kind aided in this.

All this by way of trying to explain the impact of the phrase "passus est" from the Credo. The extended phrase was "Crucifixus etiam pro nobis, sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est." This is translated, "Crucified also for us, under Pontius Pilate, (he) suffered and buried was."

To me the impact of the word "passus" was mind blowing. Taken in the same vein as my last post, it is even heart-shattering. Passus!

We translate the word as "to suffer," but the translation loses something. Suffering tends to be an active verb, in English. "I suffer from delusions of erudition." "You suffer from boredom." "He she or it suffers me gladly to be a fool." "Passus" however, has a passive connotation. The word "passive" comes from the same root. When I hear, "passus est" I do not hear something that Christ did, but something that was done to Him.

This is phenomenal! Christ is God! I take it from basic theology 101 that God is the primum mobile, the uncaused cause, the mover of all things. He is all action, actor, doing, being. It is His nature to be. He initiates, we respond. He acts, we are acted upon. He gives, we receive. I have had this truth fixed into my brain from my youth. I almost take it for granted.

And yet, "passus est!" We do not have a direct translation, since I cannot think of an English verb which could be the passive of "to suffer". He was made to suffer. He was wounded. He was beaten. He was despised. He was rejected. All of these happened to Him. He was not acting. He was allowing His creatures to act upon Him. He let us do whatever we wanted to Him. He was passive. He allowed all these things to happen to Him.

The CREATOR BECAME A CREATURE, PEOPLE!!! How is it possible for anything to be the same ever again?

I may be going over old ground here. Very often I come upon (to me) startling new insights only to find that everyone else has been taking them for granted for a very long time. Of course, God came down to earth and suffered. It is just that the concept, the reality, of the incarnation is so truly mindblowing that whenever I am refocused on it it reshapes something in me.

Shusaku Endo got this, I think. His novel "Silence" asks hard questions about the nature of a God who is silence in the face of so much suffering. Only the cross makes sense of it. The power and silence of a God "somewhere out there" is of no help or comfort to the Catholic's being tortured in 16th century Japan. The only possible answer lies in the vulnerability of the God who became a creature, and became helpless.

Jesus on the cross. He appears so vulnerable (even the word "vulnerable" comes from the Latin "vulnerus" meaning to be wounded.) He hangs there passively allowing, suffering, His creatures to do unto Him whatever they want, whether we want to kill Him, or spit on Him, or worship Him, or love Him. Amazing! God be praised. But in the End He not only suffers the death to happen to Him, but actively embraces it and gives up His spirit.

Blessed be He!

Be Not Afraid

Today, while saying midday prayer in the Divine Office, this verse caught my attention:

Jesus was seized with fear and distress (Mark 14:33)

It was not one of the antiphons, it wasn't part of the psalms, or even part of the reading. It was one of the little "aside" verses that they put at the beginning of some of the psalms, as kind of a guide to meditation, or a suggestion. I confess I usually don't pay too much attention to them. This one, however, seemed to smack me upside the head with the image of Jesus being seized with fear and distress. 

I did not look up the context, as I already knew where it came from. This was the garden of Gethsemane. I am used to the translation, "He began to be saddened and exceedingly troubled." The unfamiliar translation is a good thing. It causes words familiar to me from literally hundreds of hearings and readings to reach me in new ways, and to say new things. 

What hit me now was an image. I cannot describe it visually. It was more of a startled realization, "Jesus? Afraid?!" It was a feeling of utter shock and dismay. I know what fear is. I have faced fear in many different shapes and forms, and in some ways I have been afraid all my life. It comes of having an overactive imagination, and a conscience. Fear is inescapable. I have learned that fear is less important than what I do with it, but I assume that I feel fear because I am imperfect. When I am perfect I will no longer feel fear. After all, "Perfect love casts out all fear." 

But here is Jesus, my hero, (I almost said, "my idol" except that that is the one thing He could not be) afraid. HE! The God/Man. The conqueror of death and sin! He cannot be afraid. I have thought of Him being saddened, in pain, in agony, but never afraid. Pain is one thing. Even the most intense pain ever is not half as bad as the fear of that pain. I don't know why I never thought of Jesus being afraid. I guess I assumed that because He knew how it was going to turn out, He already knew what He had to do, and knew that He would endure, knew that He would rise, fear would be out of the question. It is uncertainty, the weakness of the flesh that lacks trust and confidence that shrinks back in fear. That is why fear is so toxic, and so much worse than pain. Any amount of pain can be endured so long as you have hope. Fear, however, crushes the spirit because it attacks hope. I just could not conceive of Jesus being afraid. 

And my first thought was, "What would Socrates say?"

Socrates, like Jesus, was persecuted and ultimately killed for preaching a truth that those in authority did not want to hear. Like Jesus, Socrates could have escaped and chose not to. Unlike Jesus, Socrates showed no fear in the face of death. Of course his death was a lot less painful and horrific. He drank some hemlock and fell asleep, instead of being tortured to death. 

But there was more here than that. Socrates insisted that death could not be an evil to a just man, and died in a manner that proved the conviction of his words. Jesus was a perfect man, and yet He sweat blood in fear and distress, and prayed that the cup be taken away from Him.

This is important to me. Perhaps this is part of why Socrates has only ever been an inspiration to the elite few, the intellectuals with a strong sense of discipline and trust in their own natural righteousness. He appeals to the strong, old pagan sense of courage which insists that, whether or not man can achieve justice by his own efforts, he is honor bound to make the effort. 

Jesus appeals to the weak, the pathetic, the crushed, the downtrodden. He is the friend that I have turned to in all of my fears, uncertainties, and doubts, because I thought that He would be able to help me through them. After all, there is no fear in Him, right?

But if He truly was afraid, as I realize now He must have been, then I was wrong. (I wonder if maybe He truly can be an idol after all? Not Him, but my idea of Him?) It is not His fearlessness that aids me in my moments of fear, but His fearfulness. Which reveals how He chooses to help, not by removing the fear, but by joining me in the fear. He embraces it so intimately that our pain wounds Him more deeply than it wounds ourselves. No matter how deep into hopelessness we go, He has gone deeper, and He is waiting there to embrace us. He brings love into the depths of blackness, loneliness and despair, and as deep as the pit goes, His love will go deeper still.

Perfect love does cast out fear, because only perfect love is strong enough to embrace it and become one with it, and so rob it of its power.

Offer It Up!



Quit whining and offer it up!

If you ever saw the family dog whimpering in fright at a thunderstorm and told her to offer it up, you might be a Catholic homeschooler. If your Uncle told you that he was too tired to push you on the swing and you told him to offer it up, you might be a Catholic homeschooler. The Catholic homeschoolers know what I mean. That phrase that often sounded suspiciously like parent-speak for, “I don’t want to hear your whining. Keep it to yourself,” was handed out like candy for any and all hardships, grievances and complaints. Did you hate doing the dishes? Offer it up. Were you hungry an hour after lunch? Offer it up. Schoolwork getting you down? Offer it up. I think my Mom could have written a book on the subject. The Offer-it-up Lexicon: From Abrasions to Zucchini.

For the uninitiated, what does this strange phrase mean? Well, there was the kid understanding of it, which ranged from “If I offer it up to Jesus He’ll take me to Heaven,” to “You don’t understand me and you never listen!” Never having been the parent myself, I can only guess at what they meant by it, but I suspect there were levels of meaning even for them. The basic idea, as I came to understand it as a child, was that by offering our sufferings to Jesus we could obtain graces from Him, either for ourselves or for our beloved parents, (or anyone else we chose to benefit.)

What always intrigued me, however, were the mechanics of “offering it up.” It was not really covered in great detail in the Baltimore Catechism (yes, I am a product of that system.) I remember getting the vague notion that we would give our prayers and sacrifices to God, He would like them and give us graces in return. As you can easily see, that was only about two and a half very fine shades of gray away from believing that we could earn grace. It is even closer to the belief that the harder, tougher, less pleasant or less comfortable way is always automatically the morally superior way. In other words, I was not far off believing (not in so many words) that God expected us to be as miserable as possible in this life, and that the greater the degree of misery you could subject yourself to, the greater the reward would be.

I’m not sure when it was that I really started digging into that belief. It was inevitable that I should. I dug through everything else I was handed in order to figure out what I believed and why I believed it. It was only a matter of time before I had to take a look at that idea of meritorious suffering. I think it probably started when I went to Selection for the second time. I was old enough and mature enough to have started forming (or reforming) close relationships with people, and I was getting to the point in my career where suffering was about to occur. I remember in Airborne school, without any thought or deliberation, I found myself frantically offering up all the fear (I am terrified of heights) for the people I loved. It was the only way I could handle it, with the thought that somehow my hanging through it was doing someone else some good.

Over the years since then I have been blessed with plenty more things to offer up, and have put much more thought into how it works.

The first thing, obviously, was to get rid of the subconscious notion that we “trade” our sufferings for His favor. That’s the first thing, of course, but not an easy thing. As I said, it wasn’t a logical thought out conclusion, it was a subconscious attitude. To state the idea in plain English is all the refutation it requires, but the subconscious is a much tougher nut to crack. The problem with this attitude is that it tends to portray God as something of a cosmic ogre. Anything you really desire must therefore be bad, or “Not-God’s-Will-For-You.” Some people take this to such an extreme that for them there is only one real sin: the sin of enjoying things. Jokes, parties, alcohol, deserts, movies, secular songs, anything that isn’t obviously and explicitly religious are at best concessions to the weakness of our fleshly nature. Maybe they might not be technically a sin, but wouldn’t it be better if we gave them up instead?

Whether or not it might be better to exercise restraint is a question to be decided on its own merits, but the idea that the good things of earth are a concession to the weakness of our nature is something else entirely. It overlooks the fact that God Himself created that physical nature with its physical needs, not as a limitation to be overcome, but specifically as the mode by which we are supposed to encounter Him. Not only that, but apart from sin our lives would have been not less pleasurable, but infinitely more pleasurable. (Witness the wedding feast at Cana and the multiplication of the loaves and fishes.) God gave us pleasures galore, we are the ones who have abused them. God did not invent suffering!

So any discussion of “offering-it-up” must begin with the fact that suffering was never God’s will for us. It is the result of sin. Offering it up is our response to something that is unnatural, which should not have been in the first place.

Of course our ability to recognize that suffering can be anything other than something to avoid if possible, or endure if not, is itself a gift. It is only possible to us because of the redemptive work of God Himself, whereby He acts to restore our nature and the nature of the entire created universe. God’s work comes first, ours is a response to that work and a participation in it. Based on this I can recognize three modes in which “offering-it-up” is such a response, but it would take too long to go into all of them. So another time.

The Smile

In response to this writing challenge on lkjslain's site, I wrote this poem. I had no idea where I was going with it, I just started it and kept writing down what came to me. Then I liked it so much that I recorded myself reading it:

Enjoy!

The Smile

I walked alone at night, through streets of gray,
Content to be alone, chasing tales
Hidden, obscure, in corners of crooked paths.
Secrets of those who passed that way before.

The walls and stones see all, and plain as day

Reveal the stories to me, their long lost friend.

For years I wandered thus, full well content
To slip unnoticed around the edge of life
Untouched by the swirling blizzard of human flakes,
I watched, and listened; marveled and passed on.

Then one day a new tale came to me,

Borne on a breeze of ice from the blackest heart

Of the shadowy ways of the City of Dreadful Night

The darkness at the center of that tangled wild.

Somewhere in the labyrinth a woman walks,

Or so the black breeze whispered in my ear,
Pale and tall, fragile and great of heart,
Mighty in soul, shrouded in hood of black,
Walking the city, weeping for her child,
And then, with tears used up, she still walks on
Through dark, dry, hopeless aching night.

I loved her then. It is not too strong a word.
Her grief scored deep my heart, my spirit shrank
At the deadening weight of pain that crushed her soul.

I shrank away in fear, but could not run

For awesome fascination at her strength,
For even yet, (the breezes sighed) she hopes.
The candle is all but snuffed, and yet one spark
One pitiful, stubborn, glorious, relentless spark,
Will not be quenched. She will not fade away.
She loves. There it is. Even still she dares to love.

Just a tale, passed on the fickle wind, and yet,
The weight of its fantasy shocked my sleeping soul
All my actions, pale, transparent and flimsy
Vanished in the shadow of such a love,
Such pain. I slowly turned my trembling steps
Into the night. The darksome labyrinth
Loomed before me, moaned and sucked me in
Into the whirl of pain, despair and hate
Harpies like a pack of howling wolves
Tore at my ears and shivered my resolve,
But yet it held. By ever so little, it held.
I sought her. Through narrow, devious ways I searched
Peeked through cracks in walls and peered through bars
In cellar windows. I kept an eye for her,
And the other looking back, always aware
Of the way out. For I purposed when she was found
That I would take her hand, and gently lead the way

Back, through treacherous paths and hateful looks

And clutching, clawing keepers, to freer air
To a place where light and music, silence and peace
Can still exist, and stories all end well.
Once in those early days I saw a glimpse
Of her face across a crowded, sullen street.
She stepped through a sickly yellow pool of light
From the streetlamp, but she never even paused.
When I crossed and looked again, she was long gone.
I redoubled my efforts, and vowed oneday to bring
A smile to those fair, set, determined lips.

Then one day I saw a fallen child,

With broken wings and tangled dirty hair
Caught in a pit, thrown in an abandoned crypt.
Worn out dreams lay wasted ‘round her feet,
Scornfully plucked in the bud, never to bloom.
Dirty hands tossed cold hard cash her way
To make her dance, or sing, or play to please her crowd.
So ugly, she was. Not the Lady’s child.
That child was long since dead, I know, but still
Once that child had suffered, as now this girl
Suffers. “It won’t take long,” I thought.
“I’ll show her out, and then return to the search.”
I did. I returned to her late at night and broke the lock
And guided her through the well-known maze of streets
To the tangle’s edge, and set her free. She ran
And never once looked back. I turned back in.

I went back to my quest, but once again,
I came upon a child, and once more paused
My dogged search long enough to get him out.
Another glimpse of her, but when I arrived,
Not her, instead two more of these pitiable urchins.
By now the keepers had learned I knew the way.
This time I had to fight to make it through
To the edge, and then frantic I rushed back in.
These distractions had to stop, or I would never find
The Lady; but now whichever way I turned
Were pitiful faces, children, women, the old
The lame, the sick, the hungry and the weak.
I walked with them. One or two at a time I got them out.
I couldn’t turn them away. They told their tales

And I listened, and wept and fought to clear the way.

Every time was harder than the last,
These middle years were years of many scars.
The Keepers scarred my body, the children my heart
And both bled freely, but each time I went back.

And now I am old and tired, and winding down.
My back is bent, my beard is gray and wild
And my hands are crooked, gnarled and lined with scars.
My heart looks much the same, or so I’d guess,
Inscribed as it is with so many tales of pain.
I have not seen the Lady these many years,
Perhaps she lives no more, perhaps never did.
I might have made her up, a silly dream
That will not go away, but holds more firm
Than the rocks I hide behind. Pitiless is hope!
Weariness covers my soul like a hood of black.
I am dying. That’s how it is. I’m glad to go.
Even though there are still so many more,
But I am full of other people’s pains.
I’ve drained to the dregs that goblet of human sorrow.
From the first to the last the stories stay with me,
Of kept and keeper alike, and scars of both.
And now I’m done. Right now, this trip, my last.

I know this one is my last, because I fell,
Just like that, my face hits the city street.
I cannot rise to my feet, my breath is short,
My chest sinks like an anvil on my heart,
As it finally breaks.
                               I have never seen her smile.

But what is this? The falling darkness breaks

The sky goes gray, then teal, then blue, then gold
And light falls on my head with searing heat
And all the weight of gold, poured liquid hot.
Intolerable for one brief hellish breath, far worse
Than life itself, and then a gasp of air;
Only not air. Or rather, this is at last is air.
Before this moment I’ve never tasted air.
I’ve never yet known light before this day.
The brightest day of life was shades of gray,
And air before a vacuum next to this.
This air could make a meal, this light a bath,
A shower, an ocean of curling waves of gold
Washing over and through my broken frame
‘Til Every scar shines out with borrowed light
A gift, a jewel, a royal diadem.
I draw this joy up from the very grass
And a laugh rings from my chest, the very first
I ever truly laughed. Mirth pours out,
Sounding a mad, triumphant organ fugue,
Answered in kind, in brave bright jubilee
In the Lady’s eyes; for there, at last, she stands.

Beautiful as the glowing moon, radiant with light

Over, around, with and by and through

The Light is pleased to shine, and even thus
Lovingly tempered still it is too much.
She smiles.

                   Too much!


                                        I could almost die again.

She stands amid a joyful throng, a Queen
A Mother. Her children, whose stories now are mine
Keeper and kept alike, now whole and free.

Thus I lived and all my life was this.
Was bliss, for I have made my Lady smile.

Shadow Flower

You dwell so much in shadow; at times it seems
As if there is no hope, no peace, no strength.
And days and nights grind on in weary length,
Grueling days, and nights of restless dreams.
For rent and gas, utilities and counseling fees,
You last from one hard-earned check to the next,
No friends close by, not even a friendly text,
Living on Zoloft and lonely mac & cheese.

But in God’s eyes your soul is so much more,
A flower unseen that blooms in shadows dim
Seen only by Him and those who see like Him.
Instead of petals bright, your scent is your allure.
Flower of the King, sought out by scent alone
Hidden deep in shade, but healing balm
For those who seek you out. A quiet calm
Is growing in your heart right now unknown.

And through all time and space your heart is one
With all who suffer: future, present, past;
From the first tear ever shed, until the last,
With all who have endured the ache and done
What was required of them, again and again.
The dogged strength that falls back in the pit
And stubbornly from the mud, refuses to quit,
This silent solidarity of hidden pain.

You shadow flowers. Flowers of greasy smears
Of tiny fingers on dirty window glass
Looking out on fields of human trash
Too ignorant to see the need for tears.
Wretches toiling in the bowels of diamond pits,
Drop short-lived flowers of sweat, which bloom in dust
And are trampled underfoot. Flowers of rust
And soot and ash, in haunted chimneys at Auschwitz.

Each flower is precious. All are saved and drawn
Together into crimson teardrop flowers
On Gethsemane’s hallowed ground, the darkest hours
Of all the shadow children. He has gone
Where none of us can go, to be with you.
But in mystery most subtle, He also calls
You sufferers to join Him, as He breaks the walls
And cries, “Behold, all things I make anew.”

Ruck

“Tramp!” goes the boot as it crushes the ground,

“Stomp!” goes the heel, and “Slap” goes the toe.

The rucksack creaks and squeaks, the ponderous sounds

Of overloaded canvas, in time with the slow,

Slow, agonizing pace of too many pounds

At least a hundred, sagging from my spine.

I feel it in my shoulders, I feel it in my feet

Slapping down and down and yet again down,

Always slapping down.

With shockwaves like a hammer on hamburger meat

Plodding on clay, on shale, on grass, weed and bush

Trudging in the dust of the field or echoing on the street.

Pain from toe to heel, pain from heel to knee and then

Shooting up in grinding vibrations to hips and lumbar spine

As every one of these weary, dogged men

Stoop and limp and plod under the weight of the ruck;

That damned unwieldy tick that we’ve strapped on again;

To carry across the land.

                                        Through the night, through the rain,

Through the draws and hills and swamps and thorn;

Pitch black sticks in the pitch black night

That stab you in the eye with careless scorn.

The “wait-a-minute” vines that claw and clutch and drag

And lie in wait for our heels, in the dark before the morn,

As we curse our way onwards in pitch black

Sans moon and stars, and wish we were never born,

Or if born, at least born normal people, not the sort

Who volunteer for this tomfoolery!

                                                      But that awful ruck!

All else is really an afterthought, my mind always returns

To that creaking, sagging, soul crushing bundle of suck

Ninety pounds of gear on my back: ammo, water, food

Clothes, med bag, and explosives just for luck;

Then, to top it off a 25lb necklace! The iron pig,

Swinging in front of me by its sling.

80 clinking rounds in the feed tray, to start with,

“Carry as much ammo as you can bring.”

And then a bandoleer of 120 more, because hey, you never know!

Muzzle and bipod stick out like a broken wing,

Catching the brush and shifting, sliding canvas on my collar,

After a few hours that will start to sting.

But someone has to carry it, right?

                                                     It’s really just the weight.

I carry it, not on my spine, but on my soul like a brick.

My spirits sink as hour after painful hour drags on,

And from twenty-two to zero-two we’ve moved barely a klick

And left half our mojo behind, somewhere in the draw.

The wait-a-minute vines got it. The bush was just too thick.

We hit the tracks and make up some time,

Urging speed from battered limbs and trying our best

Not to twist our ankles between the ties,

Or in the gravel. Pushing on. Only a minute for a rest.

Behind schedule. Forget security, out on the road,

And run. We need to make link-up, so haul butt

With dogged, shuffling, comical steps under the load,

For half a mile of open blacktop,

Ready to dive into the brush if a glimmer showed.

Of headlight, but nothing comes. Civilized people

Are all asleep right now. We run

Praying there’s a ride at the end of this one.

But no.

             Alas, only an angry, nervous face,

And a stream, and a quick, “Follow us.”

Then lights running off into the darkness.

“Awww. Sad face.” Someone says, but no more fuss.

These guys are running light, and they know the way,

And they’re fresh. We barely have breath to cuss

And we have a guy with a sprained ankle.

Little things like that, you know, they add up.

Who’d have thought?

                                  The lights go on, and on, and on

Up the ravine. We fall behind, get separated.

Link back up, move out again, fall behind

And half our element moves on without us.

If it weren’t for the injured guy I wouldn’t mind.

I swear I’d still smoke half of them even now.

But this guy can barely limp, and I can’t find

The slightest glimmer of light ahead, just black.

“Crossload his gear.” Everyone gets something.

They wait for us, we link up again, move back out.

Farther and farther, up and down, on and on.

This is not much fun, I think, with a slight pout.

No one can see my face, so I’ll pout if I like,

I just want to be rid, once and for all, of this

Terrible,

Hideous,

Malignant,

Sneering

Hateful

Ruck!

But here we are.

Forming a perimeter, facing out, catching a breath

A quick meeting in the center and the word comes out,

“We’re stopping here tonight. Rucksack flop.”

Tonight, indeed? All two hours of it before it’s light?

But at least we can stop,

Face inward,

Crouch down,

And let the ruck do the work:

Sag,

Sway,

Pull,

Fall over backwards

And rest on the ground, leaning against that beast

Like a lazyboy recliner, as all the stress

And tension drift away and are released.

Every muscle and sinew are totally relaxed,

And light and warmth and pure endorphin high

Flood every corner of my being in a rushing flow

Of pure, unbridled bliss.

A bliss which, without the rucksack, I would never know.