John Paul II and the Paschal Christ

John Paul II had an enormous impact on my own spiritual journey and today marks the 4th anniversary of his death. This picture is from my friend James Baca of the Denver Catholic Register. It is a statue outside the Cathedral in Denver - where the pope visited in '93. My parish, Good Shepherd (and the surrounding neighborhood), helped host about 5,000 of the c. 300,000 people who particpated in World Youth Day. The Holy Father told us to be bold in proclaiming the Gospel of Christ - "Shout it from the rooftops ... of the modern metropolis"

I like to reflect on his apostolic zeal and special concern for young people. I especially love his teaching. Some of Pope John Paul II's most powerful theological insights included his vision of mercy. Mercy, he explains, is love that suffers the brokeness of another so as to affirm that person's dignity. This idea is beautifully explored in his encyclical on Mercy (http://www.vatican.va/edocs/ENG0215/__P9.HTM).

"In His resurrection Christ has revealed the God of merciful love, precisely because He accepted the cross as the way to the resurrection. And it is for this reason that-when we recall the cross of Christ, His passion and death-our faith and hope are centered on the Risen One: on that Christ who "on the evening of that day, the first day of the week, . . .stood among them" in the upper Room, "where the disciples were, ...breathed on them, and said to them: 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.'"99
Here is the Son of God, who in His resurrection experienced in a radical way mercy shown to Himself, that is to say the love of the Father which is more powerful than death. And it is also the same Christ, the Son of God, who at the end of His messianic mission - and, in a certain sense, even beyond the end - reveals Himself as the inexhaustible source of mercy, of the same love that, in a subsequent perspective of the history of salvation in the Church, is to be everlastingly confirmed as more powerful than sin. The paschal Christ is the definitive incarnation of mercy, its living sign in salvation history and in eschatology. In the same spirit, the liturgy of Eastertide places on our lips the words of the Psalm: Misericordias Domini in aeternum cantabo.100 "

Coming into Lent's Home Stretch

As we come into the end of Lent, its time to renew our resolutions for the Lord and to draw closer to Him. One way of doing this is by renewing our efforts to love those who are closest to us, and this is best done with the help of prayer. This kind of goes with the traditional connection between prayer, fasting and almsgiving. Let me explain.

Prayer is bound to an authentic love of neighbor. Prayer that does not lead into the hearts of others remains immature and is inclined to selfish preoccupation. Love of neighbor without prayer cannot draw strength from God and is inclined to hubris. True prayer informs charitable works for others so that those needs much deeper than the merely material can be met. Such prayer is already in itself a supreme act of charity, a profound experience of mercy. It goes deep into the sufferings of others and suffers with them, even when nothing else seems to be possible to do.

Through prayer, sometimes by prayer alone, those in distress discover that they are not alone and that their existence matters. This is because prayer is essentially a movement of divine love, or at least a movement in response to such love, even when that love seems absent. It is also true, however, that sometimes prayer is not enough by itself. Sometimes prayer needs to be expressed in action - and this is especially true for those who do not know they are loved.

But prayer is not something purely subjective - it is rather inter-subjective by nature. I mean that prayer involves persons - not only me and God, but me God and neighbor. This is an aspect of prayer that comes in handy as we close in on the end of Lent.

St. John Bosco says it is not enough to love children, children need to know they are loved. What is true of children is also true of about everybody in our life. When we join prayer and love for others together, a question that I like to ask, "Lord, how can I let your love be known."

To be honest, the answer is not always clear when I ask the question. But when I find myself in a situation, what needs to be done becomes very clear. It is a matter of being attentive, of being vigilant about what the Lord is doing in a given situation.

Recognizing how to be an instrument of God's love for someone is exponentially easier when it involves someone we do not know. When it is someone we know, I find myself not as willing. This might be because people we know expect more from us, especially when we do not feel like giving anything. Quite often when an acquaintance or stranger is involved, their expectations are pretty low. Then, after one has given what one has to give, there is the safe escape. This kind of love, the love we can escape from, is not a great love.

Those who are dear to us demand a great love, that is why we do not like letting others get close to us. From those who are bound to us in love, there is no safe escape. The needs of the human heart are infinite and the greater its expectations, the more we will disappoint. Long after our hands are completely empty, I see those whom I love the most need more than I have to give.

This is a great place to be. It is the place where God calls us beyond our human limitations and into the greatness of his Love. God the Father wants us to love like the widow Jesus praises. So this characterizes the kind of almsgiving that goes with prayer and love of neighbor. While everyone else gives from the extra they do not need, Christ calls Christians to give out of their own need, like the widow. This means, He commands us to love beyond our human capacity to love. This transforming place is so very painful, but it is also our finest moment, the moment when we are most like God, when we image God perfectly. God the Father stands before us with empty hands because he has given everything to us in his Son. When love demands everything from us, we become the living icon of God the Father - for we too stand before him with empty hands.

How do we do this? When we have reached the end of our humanity, beyond which there is nothing more to give, what else can we do but go to prayer? Only through prayer can we go beyond the limits of our self-reliance to rely on the Lord alone. Prayer opens up the possibility of a new kind of love, a supernatural love - which loves beyond what our human nature can give. This is very humbling to experience. To allow this kind of love requires we create room in our hearts, space that can only be created through self-denial. This is where fasting comes into the mix. Here it is not only a fasting from food or abstaining from meat. This kind of fasting also includes fasting from what is comfortable for me to do, allowing myself to be pushed into those uncomfortable sacrifices others need if they are to know they our loved. Such sacrifice is impossible without prayer.

When we love with this kind of love, God is in control. It is Him, not us, His power, not ours. That is why our prayer must be constant. Prayer is an act whereby we rely on the Lord and draw our strength from Him, from doing his will. So this is the acseticism I propose for this home stretch of Lent.

The Annunciation and the Undivided Heart in Prayer

Today we celebrate the Annunciation -- when Gabriel announced to Mary that she was favored to be the Mother of the Messiah. (see http://tiny.cc/mCylH.) This is the moment when the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It is also the finest moment of humanity - a moment when one of us was able to say "yes" to God with an undivided heart.

Permeating the celebration of this occasion is the very nature of Christian prayer's efficacy. So often we pray for things and are disappointed by the results. It seems like our prayers a re not doing anything, like we wasted our time. I suppose cultural thinkers like Hitchens and Dawkins would say, "Why, in fact, you have." Some people even lose their faith because prayers seem to go unanswered, especially when they have come to God with their anxieties for those they love. Why is it that our prayers do not seem efficacious at times?

The efficacy of Christian prayer is based on discovering the will of the Lord through a conversation with Him. In his own mysterious plan there are things that He yearns to give us, only if we ask. One of the problems is that when we pray, we are not usually concerned about what God wants to give. Rather, we are occupied with what we want. This makes for a tough dialogue - especially when what we want and what the Lord wants to give are not the same.

Thus, one sure way to begin to pray more effectively is to consider what God wants. This is revealed in the Scriptures. Jesus expressed profound concern that his followers intimately know the Father and, at the same time, share a deep communion with one another. Mystics like Elisabeth of the Trinity see this as the Lord's supreme desire. For example, in the Gospel of John, the night before He died, Jesus offers his great prayer to the Father, "that they may be one as we are one."

Now, as we come to understand what this means, it has an impact on our prayer - we have a standard to judge whether what we want is really what God wants. As long as our heart is divided, wanting God but also wanting things he does not want for us, the Lord's ability to answer our prayer is impeded. We are not free to ask for the gift He really desires to give, the gift that is greater than what we think we want. What we want is the lesser thing, and as long as we are attached to that we are not free for what is greater. The greatest thing God yearns to give is his very life and love.

Mary seems to have learned this lesson and that is why she is a model of efficacious prayer. The Archeangel who greets her calls her "full of grace." Grace is God's pure gift - a sharing in his very life and love. Mary was full of this life and love when Gabriel spoke to her - and she is even more so now. Because she was filled with this life and love, her heart was undivided. She was free to yearn for what God desired, "Let it be done to me according to your word."

The Sign of the Cross

No one knows how old this sign really is. It may well go back to the apostles. Jean Danielou discusses its origins in The Bible and the Liturgy. Suffice to say that for Catholics, prayer begins and ends with this sign of blessing. This sign is where one traces the cross from head to gut, from left shoulder to right shoulder while declaring that the blessing is given in the name of the revealed Trinity. This blessing is entrusted to us before our baptism and traced on our foreheads. As a blessing, it confers identity and mission - whenever we make this sign, we renew our awareness of who we are and the great purpose that God has for us.

The sign itself recalls what Christ has done for us: he died for us and gave his life for our sakes. The death of Christ for our sakes is a dynamic gift, a supreme value, evoking a response of total faith, of conversion to God. Conversion involves a certain kind of death, and a new kind of life: we must die to what naturally motivates us so that we may be moved by God alone.

In addition to the physical sign, we bind ourselves in the name of the Triune God by declaring Him the very source of the blessing. By this declaration, we recall that God has given himself to us, that his very presence lives in our hearts. At the same time, these words recall our baptismal promises. In these promises, we pledge our whole lives to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This pledge means that we live for the Trinity, that this communion of love has the ultimate call on our existence, that it is the final purpose of our life.

Some are a little squeamish over making such a sign - the sign in fact is an act of surrendering to God the whole of our lives. But for most Christians, especially the persecuted and those who are facing death, this sign is an occasion of hope and a source of strength. For them, there is no other sign which is worthy of Christian prayer. It is the sign of their forefathers - of countless men and women who courageously accepted every trial, persecution, rejection, imprisonment, torture and even death. When we make this sign, we also join ourselves to these holy men and women who went before us -- we enjoy a certain solidarity with them in their sacrfice to God. Their complete trust in God all the way to the end helps us to see that God Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit is worthy of the whole of our lives and the depths of our hearts. Thus, we too find the courage to accept this blessing and to stand firm in our faith.

Making a Good Beginning Each Day

In his book, Path to Rome, Hilaire Belloc starts out by criticizing a French proverb that basically asserts that the most important thing about doing anything is getting started. Belloc believes this to be basically false. From his perspective, getting started is easy. Persevering is hard. And this is how he begins his book on his 750 mile walk from France to Rome over the Alps and the Appenines.

Belloc's sobering insight goes with something that Antony of the Desert explained in his own teaching on how to live the Christian life. He said that each day we must take up the discipline of the Christian life as if for the first time. Every day is like a new beginning, as if we were beginning to pray for the first time. If we have this attitude, we do not get so discouraged when we fail - for we often will. The Christian life is not one of instant success but rather constant effort, the effort to begin to love because of the love that has been given us. This very effort glorifies the Lord even when it seems like we have utterly failed. The Apostle Paul indicated something like this when he explained that the power of God is made perfect in our weakness.

How do we make this new beginning a persevere in it? The secret of course is prayer. Prayer was at the center of Antony's view of the the discipline of the Christian life. It is also the unspoken heart of Belloc's pilgrimage. When we take time to turn our hearts to God in the midst of triumph and tragedy - we find a strength to hang in there, even when we do not feel we can.