December 31, 2010

Time, Eternity and a Blessed New Year

Time is not simply duration of a cycle that repeats itself over and over.  It is linear.  It marches in a direction, pregnant with hidden purpose and deep meaning.  We hunger for this spiritual meaning because we are not at home when limited by the mere succession of visible and predictable life events.

Faith offers another experience of time.  Elisabeth of the Trinity says that time is eternity begun and still in progress.  This means that eternity is exploding through each moment of our life, permeating every instant and transforming this physical duration.    This way sees each moment as an unrepeatable gift from God, breaking forth with the specific gravity of his unfolding love, pulling us toward Him, on pilgrimage.   But this force of love requires our decision, our readiness to offer ourselves to love, for love, by love - believing in love to the end.

This is because the form of love, the threshold of eternity in time is the Cross.  This is the pathway to the Lord.   Faith helps us see this, and prayer is the most beautiful response to it.  May this new year take us closer into the heart of the Living God!

December 29, 2010

The Mother of God and the Mystery of Prayer

Christians have called Mary the Mother of God since ancient times.  'Mother of God' is how the Church in the West understood the title Theotokos (God-bearer) attributed to Mary by the Eastern Churches.  This title protects the great mystery of our faith.  The Word became flesh: this means a total recapitulation of true, historical, concrete, human reality - raising our life, our dignity, our family and our motherhood far above merely natural purposes, to a greater unimaginable end.  Mary is the first sign of this.  This truth, at the heart of the Gospel, was safeguarded at the Council of Ephesus in 431 which affirmed the title Mother of God used in the prayer of the Church as definitive for the Christian faith.

When we affirm Mary is the Mother of God, we are proclaiming all at once that Jesus, begotten of the Father from all eternity, is the Son who "emptied Himself" to be become man "born of a woman" in "the fullness of time" (Phil. 2:6, Gal. 4:4).  By this affirmation we bind ourselves to the truth that the incarnation was no mere appearance or myth, but rather a living reality transforming all of human history and each one's personal life story.  This is the form and pattern of our prayer.  It too must become a real, living reality in our lives.  This mystery of God entrusting himself to a mother contains the truth about all that is good, true and beautiful in humanity and the truth about the Father's wisdom, love and goodness.

Affirming this helps us ponder the radical confidence God has in us when He entrusts his Mystery to us, and when we see this we can begin to learn to have the same kind of confidence in Him.   We have hope because the Eternal Son of God entered so fully into our humanity that He delighted to be conceived in the womb of a woman and dwelling in her to be born as her vulnerable baby, yearning to be totally reliant on her maternal love for his life so that He could be like us in all things but sin.  He humbly let her form his human heart with her maternal love.  What drew God to subject himself to such love was not our mighty achievements or self-sufficiency or worldly cleverness.  It was the humility and trust of a woman pure of heart who generously responded with intense faith and confidence in Him who had even more confidence in her.  What unlocks this capacity in the human but prayerful contemplation of the ever surpassing love of God?

According to Augustine, Mary bore Christ in her heart before she bore him in her womb.  This means her physical motherhood is first and foremost a spiritual reality, the fruit of loving obedience, the masterpiece of profound contemplation.  Conformed to Him whose body was formed in his mother's womb, Christian prayer continues to reach for fruition in flesh and blood, the here and now: that determined, obedient and humble effort to love God and all those God entrusts to us, come what come may, because what He did for us was so much more.  It means that our faith, our prayer, goes way beyond nice ideas, happy wishes and comfortable feelings.  As Pope Benedict teaches, our faith is above all performative, it makes real love possible.  Here is the greatness of the mystery of our piety, the devotion that flows from Christ!  Our faith can offer itself in true sacrifice because it bleeds with the love of a real man, the True Man, who was bloodied for our sakes, and we know He is the True Man because his mother's faith permitted Him to become flesh and blood.

To affirm Mary as Mother of God is an affirmation of a great truth concerning human life, dignity, family, and motherhood - there is something divine in these most holy human things which must be honored, cherished and protected.    Today these most sacred things are trampled on to such an extent our world is fast forgetting its humanity, and we are at the very brink of disaster, not for the first time.  What a great gift that our calendar year begins in the middle of the Christmas Season with the Solemnity of  the Mother of God.  Against forces that hate what is truly human, we remember the woman who bore the Son of the Most High, who prays for us even now, even when we stand in the face of great evil and personal weakness.  And, we join our prayers together with hers that all the most holy human things of this present life might not perish, but instead, by the blood of her Son, be saved for the glory of God the Father.

December 24, 2010

The Christmas Mystery and Masses

The Christmas mystery is about the incarnation of the Word made flesh, the Light sent into the darkness, the God who empties himself and becomes a man - so that, as the ancient Fathers taught, men might become as gods.  All the dimensions of the cosmos and the human heart are caught up in this mystery.  What is temporal is infused with eternal, and the fecundity of the supernatural order obedient to love and truth manifests the glory of God in the futility of the natural world subject to sin and death.  A celebration of such proportions has required the Church to develop different liturgies on Christmas Day so that the faithful can begin to trace the outlines of this inexhaustible mystery.  

Although mass times very from parish to parish, there are three different masses for Christmas plus a vigil mass.  At Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve, the Church celebrates how the angels announced the birth of Christ in Luke 2:1-14.  The first mass at dawn celebrates the joy of the shepherds who found the Messiah in a manger from Luke 2:15-20.   The other masses on Christmas Day proclaim John 1:1-18 "In the beginning was the Word" to celebrate the Incarnation of the Lord manifest for the salvation of the world.  There is also a vigil mass on Christmas Eve before midnight in which the genealogy of Christ is read and the Sign of the Virgin for the Davidic Dynasty is recalled (Matthew 1: 1-25).   

The celebration of Christmas, through these different masses, takes up the heights of heaven and the depths of the earth, visible concrete historical particulars and invisible eternal realities, the mystery of Israel and the salvation of all the Nations.  Our spirituality echoes in these dimensions.  Christians do not escape from the world - they are its leaven, its salt, its light.   Yet they are not limited by this world.  They are pilgrims, following the Day-star, making a pathway for others to their true homeland in the footsteps of their Crucified God- the Kingdom that will have no end.

December 23, 2010

The Lord Hears the Cry of the Poor, Blessed be the Lord!

Contemplation of the mystery of Christmas, almost upon us, sees the Lord's attentiveness to the plight of the poor. He who came into our poverty, in silence and obscurity, also comes into the hidden plights of every man and woman.  Though He seems powerless or even absent, his love is the gravity that holds together not only the world but every heart that avails itself to its presence, a force so strong that it constantly pulls us back from the brink, and even today in a world irrationally against God reminds us anew of what it is to be human.  While this is true for everyone, it is especially true for those who feel they are on the brink, who do not know where to turn, who struggle to hope against all hope.   Such people are the truly poor and live an existence not unlike that of the prophets and John the Baptist, Joseph and Mary, the Shepherds, and the Magi - a life pregnant with deep faith.

Those whose poverty makes it a struggle to live, these come to rely on the Lord in everything because they have no one else to rely on, not even themselves. The person facing death or the uncertainty of severe illness or aggressive cancer or permanent disability knows something of this kind of poverty.  Then there is the grieving widow struggling to be a good mom in the face of uncertainty, so totally alone even in the midst of friends. The orphaned baby, the abused child, the distraught teenager, the addict who lost his family, the lonely neighbor, the weary laborer, the farmer who lost everything, even the despairing young professional whose lifetime ambitions were shattered in an instant through both familial and financial disaster: these are the poor for whom the Lord comes. It is these the Lord is especially concerned for and to whom belongs in the most unique way the whole Christmas mystery. He feels a deep solidarity with them. Even when they, not knowing, reject Him, He will not reject them and suffers their suffering with them to the end - because He knows the truth about them and believes that they are worth whatever it takes.

If we really want to find Him, if we want real Christmas joy, then we must enter into solidarity with with those who struggle to live, make their plights our plight, and humbly search for Him in their midst. This journey requires deep prayer, seeking forgiveness and forgiving, sacrificial kindness even towards one's enemies, and that generosity which is inclined to see everyone as one's own neighbor, someone for whom I am responsible in some way. Left to our own devices, this journey is impossible. But that is why the Lord is coming and the reason we will find Him - for He is drawn to those who put themselves in places where they must rely on Him alone.

December 21, 2010

The Gospel in Holiday Music and Christmas Carols

In these days before Christmas, at once beautifully enchanting but also haunted by a note of sorrow, commercial holiday music celebrates a nostalgic yearning for intimate fellowship lost.  I distinguish commercial holiday music from Christmas carols.  Commercial holiday music is meant to enchant and warm the heart whether or not someone has faith.   It is commercial because it is on commercial TV and radio - produced for the sake of selling and buying things, especially gifts.  Christmas carols tell of serious things about life, death and the coming of the Living God in darkened world.  Christmas carols are about the Gospel of Christ.  Such songs are not as good at stimulating commercial activity.  Holiday music does stimulate this activity.  It does so by exploring the vestiges of Christian feelings in a post Christian time.   


In making this distinction, I am not attacking holiday music.  It has its place and something for us to think about.  Commercial holiday music helps us call to mind the deep yearning God has sewn into the human heart.  It also suggests many broken ways we attempt to deal with this deep yearning: sentimentality, self-pity, nostalgic preoccupations, insobriety, sensuality, gluttony, judgmentalism, resentment, competiveness, and unforgiveness.  That is why the holidays around Christmas, as beautiful as it may be for many people, is also a time when families struggle to be together.   Despite all our best efforts, at some point, if only for a moment we quickly forget, we discover our real poverty even in the midst of so many things.  We cannot love - at least not the way we know we were meant to.  


The cold and darkness of this season highlight this sense of vulnerability.  We are faced with just how frail and subject to futility our lives actually are.  Primal human experiences, that awareness of things not being the way they ought, that feeling of paradise lost, are overwhelming. All that is good, noble and true feels even more as if it were on the brink.  We feel the need to draw close to one another, to take shelter together, to encourage one another not to lose hope in the face of darkness.


The producers of commercial holiday music know that such dark holes are dangerous.  So these new high priests of our culture also try to bandage these dark feelings with stories geared to entertain, warm the heart,  give a little light or at lest serve as a diversion. The intentions behind this effort are benevolent, for the most part.   But there is a danger: we can easily be enchanted by all kinds of myths holding out the promise of consoling of our unsatisfied and insecure hearts.   But myths are always dehumanizing.  Those who believe them become delusional, out of touch with our real plight, imprisoned in a fantasy.  Only the truth sets us free - only the truth helps us deal with the desire for something more that burns within us.

Besides holiday music, the most beautiful musical achievements in the West for the Christmas Season also consider the restless state of human existence in this dark and cold time of year.  They celebrate the fact that, in the face of all the suffering and evil we see - and all the sorrow that our restless hearts must bear, God created us for joy and has found a way that our joy might be full.  Joy is love possessing what it desires - and in Christian joy, the human person possesses the greatest object of all desires, God himself.  This possession of God is superabundant because in Him, we also possess all our other loves.  This is because He holds even dearer than we do those He has entrusted to our hearts.   How did He achieve this for us?  How did He open this possibility?  The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.  He entered into our poverty, embraced it and made it his own.  

All this points to something beautiful about the mystery of the human person and the possibility of keeping hope for what is good, noble and true alive in him.  The pagans understood this experience, and so celebrated fire and light to encourage themselves in these dark days.  In some ways, our commercial holiday music tries to do the same.  Christians, however, learned to look beyond the world, struggling against the desire to escape,  the desire for the merely comfortable, to search with the eyes of faith for the light of Christ who shines in the darkness, and warms the world with the Fire of his Love.  In fact, what the pagans sought was a mere shadow of  what the Christian finds in Christ Jesus.  

Christ Jesus reveals the truth about the desires of our hearts, not only showing us to ourselves, but also showing how much we are loved by God.  And, He reveals how much God yearns for our friendship - and He came in poverty, in the dark winter of our world, not grasping, emptying himself, humbling himself in love to become a sign of hope, and not just a sign, but also a threshold.  And to prepare to cross this threshold again, we have these final days before Christmas, days of prayer, sacrifice and love.


December 16, 2010

Our Lady of the New Advent and Contemplation

As an advocate for contemplative prayer, Elisabeth of the Trinity invites us to identify with Mary, the Virgin Mother.  Mary, in fact, becomes a dominate figure in the liturgies of the Church in this part of Advent as we draw near to Christmas.  In Denver, there is even devotion to Our Lady of the New Advent - because we believe she continues to prepare the Church and the world for the coming of the Lord.

In the Gospels, Mary is identified as the one who fulfills the prophecy of Isaiah to King Ahaz (Matthew 1:23 and Isaiah 7:14).  In a desperate attempt to gain mastery over nature and history, Ahaz had sacrificed his son to Baal only to discover that what he believed about the world was a dehumanizing myth (2 Kings 16:2-4).  (Some of the stories out there make it difficult not to see abortion in this same light.)  He despaired of having more children until Isaiah reassured him that despite his rash unfaithfulness and distrust of the one true God, the living God would be faithful to him and his dynasty.  

As a sign of God's faithfulness to the Sons of David, Isaiah foretold a virgin maiden would be with child, and he child's name would be "Emmanuel - God is with us".  At the time, many might have thought that this prophecy was fulfilled with the birth of Hezekiah, who was a good king (2 Kings 18:1-6).  In fact, his birth and reign foreshadowed the coming of a messiah who would surpass all expectation, who is "God is with us" in a manner that no one could have anticipated.   

Yet this is exactly the way the Lord works with us in faith - always surpassing our limited understanding and imagination, always opening us to something greater beyond our feeble expectations.  To do this, the Lord needs our obedience and trust.  But so often we are like Ahaz, trying to grasp for control by any means, even if it destroys those we most love.  This is why the prophecy to Ahaz is also a prophecy for us, especially in this time of Advent, a time of making straight our pathways and preparing the way of the Lord. 

On this point, the message of Elisabeth of the Trinity is helpful.  She advocates that there is another way, a pathway to hope.  To travel down this pathway, the pathway of our Advent journey, we must identify with Mary.  Mary, by her example, teaches how to pray and this prayerfulness is the source of her generous obedience to God.  Her prayer is so simple, so straightforward, so trusting.  When we pray like her, we find ourselves freed from our limited expectations and  imagination. Enchanting myths have no power over us for we are freed from our own big fat ego, free for Someone greater:

When I read the Gospel "that Mary went in haste to the hill country of Judea" to perform her loving service for her cousin Elisabeth, I imagine her passing by so beautiful, so calm and so majestic, so absorbed in recollection of the Word of God within her.  Like Him, her prayer was always this: "Ecce, here I am!"  Who? "The servant of the Lord," the lowliest of His creatures: she, His Mother!  Her humility was so real for she was always forgetful, unaware, freed from self.  And she could sing: "The Almighty has done great things for me, henceforth all peoples will call me blessed."  Elisabeth of the Trinity, Last Retreat #40 as translated by Aletheia Kane, O.C.D. in Complete Works, vol. I, Washington D.C.: ICS (1984) p. 160.

December 14, 2010

John of the Cross: Seek Christ in Whom Are the Treasures of God

This remarkable priest prayed for hours every day while carrying on an active ministry, directing hundreds of souls, leading academic institutions, going in and out of imprisonment and helping to reform of the Carmelite Order in the 16th Century.  His writings are filled with beautiful poetry and solid teaching for the spiritual life.  His doctrine constantly focuses on Christ Jesus, and he invites his readers to ponder Christ in everything that happens to them, in all the different experiences of prayer, even the most arid.

It is in living in solidarity with what Christ suffered for oursakes that his doctrine takes on its riches proportions.  In the mystery of Christ, John of the Cross teaches that there are the most precious treasures of wisdom and knowledge of God waiting to be discovered.  To see the world, those we love, and even oneself with the eyes of God: nothing in life is as precious as this kind of knowing, this vision of the whole.  

This is why contemplation, beholding the mystery of Christ in our hearts, is for him the most important human activity - so essential that all other human activity finds its fullest meaning in being directed to this end.  This means life should be ordered around prayer.  (But how often do we approach prayer as something to fit into our busy lives instead?) No matter how much we know about Christ, there is always more beautiful and wonderful to know in Him - truths He knows we need and that he yearns to share.  His mystery is inexhaustible and holds everything we need to thrive, to live life to the full.

John of the Cross is a realist about this achievement and what it costs - although it is primarily God's work, the soul must cooperate in faith even in the most difficult trials.  No matter the cost, he insists, what is to be gained is worth it - for we gain the Lord himself.  In the Office of Readings, the whole Church ponders his words on this point:

The soul cannot enter into these treasures, nor attain them, unless it first crosses into and enters the thicket of suffering, enduring interior and exterior labors, and unless it first recieves from God very many blessings in the intellect and in the senses, and has undergone long spiritual training ... it is quite impossible to reach the thicket of riches and wisdom of God except by first entering the thicket of much suffering, in such a way that the soul finds there consolation and desire.  The soul that longs for divine wisdom chooses first, and in truth, the thicket  of the cross.  
Spiritual Canticle, 36-37.

December 13, 2010

John of the Cross - the Advent Saint

We celebrate the feast of John of the Cross in Advent.   One finds in his spiritual doctrine certain themes that encourage contemplative prayer in Advent.  One of these themes is that of the The Dark Night.  In Ascent of Mount Carmel, Book II, he describes the journey of faith as a pilgrimage through a kind of spiritual night from sunset to sunrise - it is a pilgrimage to the coming of the Lord, an advent journey.

The sunset is our old way of life which we must leave behind.  When we were limited by sin and death, we viewed the things of this world in a manner not commensurate with their true purpose - and in doing so, we prevented ourselves from realizing our true destiny, and with that lost the happiness, the beatitude God designed us to have.   Now, by faith in the Lord and his great love for us we can let the sun set on the personal emptiness we felt when we limited ourselves to the visible, tangible comforts and pleasures we once let drive us.

As the evening progresses, St. John of the Cross tells us that we discover dark contemplation, complete vulnerability to the Lord in prayer.  He calls this prayer spiritual nakedness and it normally comes with all kinds of trials and afflictions.  Such prayer leads us to trust the Lord completely with everything in our lives.  The effects of such prayer bring a deeper peace to our soul and an invincible confidence in his love so that we can stand strong in the darkest hour of our life, our personal midnight.

The final stage of the night of faith is just like the early morning before sunrise.  He says there is a certain joy the permeates everything because the soul sees signs that already anticipate Christ's coming.   The joyful excitement we see in children this time of year as school ends and Christmas break begins suggests something of what St. John of the Cross means.  If we stay in prayer, it is a time of patience, joyful expectation and great hope.

Advent and the Road to Zion

Isaiah 2:2-5 prepares us for the coming of the Messiah by directing our attention to spiritual realities on the mountain of the Lord. Today, as been the case for millennia, pilgrimage to Jerusalem is not only a physical journey, but above all a spiritual one. At least this was the experience of my family and the pilgrims we journeyed with this last summer. The cultures and history of Israel we were exposed to were so rich and beautiful. Even more important was the faith we saw. Even in poverty, in contention, and in all kinds of trials and persecution there blossomed genuine love of God, true devotion to Him and the very best of humanity. The earthly Jerusalem and our physical pilgrimage could not account for the spiritual realities that were shining through. Something spiritual was going on, and continues to go on for everyone who searches for the Lord to worship Him and to understand His ways.  

This spiritual journey is renewed every Advent in the liturgies of the Church.  According to Isaiah, Mt. Zion is where true worship is offered to God and in the midst of this true worship, true teaching.  Such worship is of the heart.  Such teaching is for the heart.  The heart was made for such things, and advent is a time to take care of these needs of the heart.  Without the truth, the heart suffers - this is why basing one's spiritual life in prosaic myths, especially secular ones, always dehumanizes and limits true human potential.  With the truth - our whole being flourishes.  That is why those who find the road to Zion in their hearts are called blessed in Psalm 84.  Isaiah's prophecy encourages hope: those who seek to worship the Lord in spirit and truth are never disappointed - for the light of the Lord guides them.   

For Christians, the earthly Jerusalem is a sign and shadow of the heavenly Jerusalem, a living reality in their relationship with the Lord. This is true for everyone with faith and baptism in Christ.  How do we find the spiritual Mt. Zion?  Where do we worship the Lord and listen to his teaching?  
St. John describes the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem into our space and time like a Bride in procession to her Bridegroom (Rev. 21:2).  This description of true Christian worship is realized and experienced whenever we repent of sin and lift up our hearts to the Lord - such movements of the heart are always with and in the Bride of Christ, the Church.   In a powerful and unrepeatable way, this same reality is realized in the Mass, the thanksgiving sacrifice of Christ renewed in our lives today.   The Road to Zion we tread in our hearts leads to His Heart - this is the journey of Advent.



Isaiah 2:2-5 prepares us for the coming of the Messiah by directing our attention to spiritual realities on the mountain of the Lord. Today, as been the case for millennia, pilgrimage to Jerusalem is not only a physical journey, but above all a spiritual one. At least this was the experience of my family and the pilgrims we journeyed with this last summer. The culture and history of Israel we were exposed to were so rich and beautiful. Even more important was the faith we saw. Even in poverty, in contention, and in all kinds of trials and persecution there blossomed genuine love of God, true devotion to Him and the very best of humanity. The earthly Jerusalem and our physical pilgrimage could not account for the spiritual realities that were shining through. Something spiritual was going on, and continues to go on for everyone who searches for the Lord to worship Him and to understand His ways.  

This spiritual journey is renewed every Advent in the liturgies of the Church.  According to Isaiah, Mt. Zion is where true worship is offered to God and in the midst of this true worship, true teaching.  Such worship is of the heart.  Such teaching is for the heart.  That is why those who find the road to Zion in their hearts are called blessed in Psalm 84.  Isaiah's prophecy encourages hope: those who seek to worship the Lord in spirit and truth are never disappointed - for the light of the Lord guides them.   

For Christians, the earthly Jerusalem is a sign and shadow of the heavenly Jerusalem, a living reality in their relationship with the Lord. This is true for everyone with faith and baptism in Christ.  How do we find the spiritual Mt. Zion?  Where do we worship the Lord and listen to his teaching?  
St. John describes the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem into our space and time like a Bride in procession to her Bridegroom (Rev. 21:2).  This description of true Christian worship is realized and experienced whenever we repent of sin and lift up our hearts to the Lord - such movements of the heart are always with and in the Bride of Christ, the Church.   In a powerful and unrepeatable way, this same reality is realized in the Mass, the thanksgiving sacrifice of Christ renewed in our lives today.   And Christ comes to us in poverty, in persecution, in rejection, in all kinds of trials - all of this is part of the mystery of the Heavenly Jerusalem to which we pilgrimage in faith. What a wonderous encounter: the Road to Zion we tread in our hearts leads to His Heart - this, the journey of Advent.

Madonna and Child, Southern France

December 11, 2010

Our Lady of Guadalupe and the Mystical Rose

The famous image and story of  Our Lady of Guadalupe is an important part of the history of the Evangelization of the America - a continent evangelized more quickly than any other in all of Church history.  Mary appeared to a poor Indian with a message for the local bishop - that a church should be built.  As a sign, he collected beautiful rare roses which she pointed out to him.  When he brought these gifts to the bishop, a miraculous image of Our Lady appeared on his tilma (a kind of poncho) in which the roses were carried.  She became a sign of hope for a demoralized people in the midst of the trials and tribulations of being colonized by Europe.  Interestingly enough, her image is honored in many Churches around the world today, even throughout Europe, during a time when many believers feel demoralized and under attack.

Guadalupe may be the transliteration of a Nahuatl word which means "who crushes the serpent."   This makes a wonderful connection with Genesis 3:15.  Ancient liturgical texts have celebrated the Mother of  the Lord with the one who crushes the serpent's head.  Along these same lines, asking Mary to pray for us during times of spiritual battle, especially at the hour of death, may have always been part of the Christian tradition of prayer - just as the Scriptures say that all generations will call her blessed.   Whatever the meaning of the name Guadalupe, it would be difficult to dispute that under this title, Mary has helped many come to believe in her Son, giving hope in sometimes the most hopeless situations.

Our Lady of Guadalupe has also been associated with the title Mystical Rose - a title associated with the words of the beloved in Canticle of Canticles 2:1, "I am the Rose of Sharon.  I am the Lily of the valleys."  Tradition has understood the beloved of this biblical love poem to be not only an image of Israel, but also of the Church, the new Israel.  Mary, because she signifies the Church by her very person, has also been associated with these words as has every soul that is generous in responding to the love of God.  For Saint Bernard, the delicate beauty of a rose is in contrast to its thorns and signifies the spiritual passion and purity of charity friendship love of God.  He teaches that in contrast with Eve's disobedience by which we lost access to God, Mary's obedience gave us Christ Jesus - the image of the invisible God, the One who is our total access to all true worship of the Lord.

The mystical life - beautiful, passionate and pure - is a participation in the life of Christ by faith.  This life progresses by way of the Cross - by following our crucified God.  The inexhaustible mystery of his risen life not only purifies us of sin but fills us with certain truth, deep holy desires and great confidence.   Mary is part of this mystical life, the rose of this mystical life, because the Virgin Mother Mary is an inseparable part of the life of her Son.

"Let it be done to me according to your word."  These words of Mary to Gabriel betray a holy audacity which informs the Christian faith.  The mission of the Mystical Rose - to be part of our life of faith in Christ Jesus, and the mission of Guadalupe - to crush the head of the serpent, coincide in the life of prayer.  Mary not only exemplifies the kind of faith we must have in the Lord, she also prays for our life of faith - and through her mysterious maternity, helps us realize the victory of good over evil so that we might not lose hope in the face of trials and tribulation.

December 8, 2010

Mary, True Freedom and Prayer

Today we celebrate the Immaculate Conception - Mary through the redemption of Christ and a special outpouring of the Spirit at the moment she was concieved is the first human person to have perfect freedom.  We thank God for the most beautiful realization of our humanity.  She, like all the wonderful gifts given to us by Him, is completely unmerited, a wonderful sign to us of his unfathomable love.  By sheer grace, she was completely free to thrive in the face of God, to be fully alive.  And because she lived life to the full, she shows us what it means to be fully ourselves, to really live, to be truly free.    

The Virgin shows us that the freedom we have in the grace of God allows us to tread a pathway beyond anything our limited imagination could possibly anticipate or our feeble intellects calculate or even of which our intuition might provide some remote suggestion.  Such freedom goes beyond feeling and instinct.  For it is the essence of humanity to go beyond its self and all its natural capicities in giving itself in love - in love to God and in love for one another. 

Mary, the Mother of God, needed this freedom in order to fully respond to God and we can even say this beautiful freedom drew the Lord to her.   There is a hidden greatness in the authenticity of the truly human - the Lord actually delights in the innocent vulnerability, endless trust and undaunted determination manifest in this particular work of his Hand.  This is why through the words of Gabriel He declared her "full of grace."  And, what He sees in her, He sees also in us when we turn to Him in living faith, faith guided by love -- he makes us free and in this freedom, authentically our true self. 

The freedom given her at her conception was just the beginning.  It is like the freedom we have when we first believe.  Such freedom still needs to mature - it is only the beginning.  How did she grow in this freedom?  How did it come into maturity in her?  If we consider this question carefully, we will understand what St. Augustine meant when he said she concieved Christ first in her heart before she concieved Him in her womb.  We must use our freedom like she did - opening our hearts to the power of the Holy Spirit - ready to obey Him in everything and in this loving obedience and trust, ponder all these things in our heart.  Prayer - silence before the mystery of God who makes us free - this is where Mary, concieved without sin, always leads.

December 6, 2010

Saint Peter Chrysologus and Advent

Advent is a time to seek Christ who comes into our poverty with the Fire of Love.  John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph, Gabriel and many others are special messengers who help us learn to listen for angel choirs and to follow the signs of heaven.  The Church also invites the faithful to ponder the writings of many others saints during the Advent season.  One beautiful reading from the Office of Readings comes from a homily by a 5th Century bishop of Ravenna, St. Peter Chrysologus or Peter the Golden-Worded.

In one sermon, he reflects how the Lord would not abandon us after we sinned against Him, but rather acted in power to stir up in our hearts the desire to see God.  The love God has for Fallen Humanity stirs us, even in our sinfulness, to seek Him, to want to see Him.  This Father of the Church unfolds this insight by showing how the Lord gently guided us since time primordial from the beginnings of a kind of servile fear - unto the full filial love of sons and daughters of God.  Chrysologus suggests that even the pagans were touched by this movement of God to us.  God's love ignites in the human heart an intoxicating divine eros which moves people to what seems to be irrational - that is to want to see God with our own eyes:

But the Law of Eros is not concerned with what will be, what ought to be, what can be.  Eros-Love does not reflect; it is unreasonable and knows no moderation.  Such love refuses to be consoled when its goal proves impossible, despises all hindrances to the attainment of its object.    Eros destroys the lover if he cannot obtain what he loves; such passion follows its own promptings, and does not think of right and wrong.  The yearning of love inflames desire which impels it toward things that are forbidden.  But why continue? It is intolerable for love not to see the object of its longing. That is why whatever reward they merited was nothing to the saints if they could not see the Lord.

I have modified the translation provided in the Office of Readings to emphasize the Fire of God's love permeating this text.  Anyone who has fallen in love understands the passion pushing beyond all reason that St. Peter is attributing to the saints - because to fall in love is to be seized by movements of the heart that our frail reason scarcely glimpses. This anticipates the wonderful modern proverb, the heart has its reasons that reason cannot know.  And, we can also say, this reflection of Chrysologus suggests something much more.  For if we look closely at his words, they suggest that, whatever divine passion has been stirred in the hearts of men, this powerful yearning was caused by an even more passionate God whose life is an unceasing circumcession of love.

There is something of the mystery of the cross in St. Peter's insight into love destroying the lover.  But God's love is more powerful than death - and Christ who so passionately loved us to the end has saved human love and made it glorious in the eyes of the Father.  And just as He is beheld, his human eyes behold the Father - the fulfillment of all desire.  The Father in turn yearns that we should see the Son.   It is this great movement of love in the heart of God - eternal, undying, unchanging, never ceasing, ever new - this eros pulses in the heart of advent, the heart of this season in which we await his coming.   Such love is waiting to explode in those who silence themselves in prayerful receptivity before the Word made flesh, who seek Him in the poverty of Bethlehem, who listen for angel choirs in the night.

December 5, 2010

St. Nicholas and Advent

St. Nicholas had a deep devotion to Jesus.  This devotion made him a compassionate leader in the Church who fearlessly procliamed the Gospel of Christ.  In the mystery of Advent, he continues to point to Christ.  His feast day on December 6 has long been a beautiful occasion for generosity to the unfortunate and the vulnerable, and to prepare children for the real meaning of Christmas.  For more on this wonderful bishop and miracle worker, check out:  The St. Nicholas Center.