Mount Anathemata: The Savage Trophy

The following is a poem by a Carthusian monk who helps us glimpse the mystery of Holy Week -

Hung on the battlements of heaven,
Hideous to exterior darkness,
These ultimate things devoted,
Objects of dread, deep wonder and exultation;
All citizens who sign their lips with freedom,
Dazed, eternally burn with veneration;
Corpse and Cross, plunged in desolation,
Love cut and murdered plumed humiliation,
Sin's cruel triumph, power and violation
Ceaseless upon the battlements creation
Awed breaks out in myriad voices,
     Fired by jubilation:

"Power to Love all conquering! Heaven
Bow in joy exceeding! Darkness,
Cower! O Christ exalted,
Behold our gratitude, our exultation!
Stunned by Love's extent of pain (in freedom
Died for freedom, forgave sin's foul corruption),
We wake from death in tears of warm compunction.
O Savage Trophy, Rood of desecration,
Streaming suffering your phial of consecration!
O King and Prophet, Priest of all creation!
O Corpse and Cross, intense our voices
     Sing of our Salvation!"

"O Bonitas!" Hushed to Silence: a selection of poems by a Carthusian Monk, chosen by Robin Bruce Lockhart, Herefordshire: Gracewing (2001) 62.

Prayer: A Pilgrimage through Difficult Wilderness

Is contemplation an uninteresting wilderness? Many religious who have dedicated their whole lives to prayer can speak like this, including authors like Thomas Merton. These kinds of expressions suggest those purgative experiences in prayer where our conversation with God takes on a kind of monotonous tone.  It is like that part of an adventure where nothing seems to be happening and everything looks the same.

Those who suffer this find themselves wandering, searching through a forest of unanswerable questions: Is He asleep?  Why isn't something happening when I pray?  Sometimes prayer can seem boring and can even feel like a complete waste of time. This can be dissatisfying and even discouraging. Yet this is a part of the journey of prayer and, as a character in a Tolkien story observes, not all who wander are lost.  In this real adventure, each step potentially unleashes into the world the transforming power of Divine Mercy if we allow ourselves to be guided by love.

Prayer can be extremely difficult when we do not understand or have real feeling about what God is doing. And, sometimes, the Lord can choose to keep us in the dark about his mysterious purposes for a very long time.  Only after we have grown accustomed to the vast expanses of unfamiliar horizons does the apparent lack of consolation begin to disclose its beauty to us.

We sometimes glimpse, if only for a rare and transitory moment, a greater interior freedom, a real humility, a deeper strength, and a firmer sense of purpose. A bold desire to glorify God with an unflinching resolve has taken hold. In our dryness, we know these movements of holiness in our heart did not come from ourselves - they are the fruit of Someone else's life born in us.

St. John of the Cross was so at home with this prayer, he came to see it as a sheer grace, a providential moment of pure luck. This is because abiding with God is our true home, the end of the journey we have undertaken. But He is "so totally other" than that with which we are comfortable, to find Him, He must lead us beyond what is comfortable and into a truly tedious vulnerability. It is as uninteresting as death on a Friday afternoon. Yet it is through this wilderness that we must pass if we are to live life to the full -- if we are to know the joy of possessing the One who longs to possess us in love.

A Heart on Fire - What America Needs

America needs hearts on fire with the Gospel of Christ-- and not just America, but the whole world.   Our faith is not merely about a moral ideal or the mastery of a body of information.   It is about a relationship with the Risen Lord and out of that relationship, a transformed way of life.  Christ dwelling in us by faith gives us victory over evil in our lives.  Freed from self-indugelnce and anxiety, Christ offers the possiblity of conforming ourselves to his perfect love.  But we must believe -- really believe.  There is a steep cost in true discipleship -- and God is never outdone by our generosity. Here Christian piety does not operate on the level of a nice feeling or a pleasant thought.  The very substance of our hope requires that we make room for Christ Crucified in our hearts.  Such living faith requires real repentance, ongoing conversion, renunciation, sacrifice, constant vigilance, endurance of all kinds of trials, and continual effort to patiently bear with one another - or else we have robbed our faith of the power of the Cross.  Archbishop Charles, in his just released ebook, diagnoses this great spiritual problem which has dampened the flame meant to ignite the world:

"The 'next america' we now see emerging--an America ignorant of or cynical toward religion in general and Christianity in particular--shouldn't really surprise anyone.  Its a new America, but its made in America.  We can blame the mass media, or the academy, or science, or special interest groups for creating the environment we now face.  But we Christians--including we Catholics--helped shape it with our eagerness to fit in, our distractions and overconfidence, and our own lukewarm faith. 

"Too many people who claim to be Christian simply don't know Jesus Christ.  They don't really believe in the Gospel.  They feel embarrassed by their religion and vaguely out of step with the times.  They may keep their religion for comfort value.  Or they may adjust it to fit their doubts.  But it doesn't reshape their lives because it isn't real.  And because it isn't real, it has no transforming effect on their personal behavior, no social force, and few public consequences...Whatever it once was, now it's dead."

A Heart on Fire: Catholic Witness in a New America is a easy read -- but tough medicine good to pray over in these final days of Lent.

The Freedom of the Annunciation

The heart has a sacred depth set aside for God which will not suffer the coercion and manipulation of any worldly power for long. Into this silent depth, the Word of God speaks and liberty is conceived. That Word shines with divine splendor, the fire which Moses beheld. The saving truth the Word reveals opens to the pure freedom Elijah heard whispered in the breeze. In Mary, this humble Word has wedded our weakness and our humanity is pregnant with a power not of this world.

When this Word of Truth comes to the heart, He gifts it with a sacred sovereignty, the ability to choose the most wonderful possibilities, unsurpassed blessings the whole world yearns to know. Here bursting with jubilation, we have at last a moment where real self-determination triumphs. Here overshadowed in unfathomable love, even if beset by all kinds of weakness and inadequacy, we find the courage we rise up and unreservedly offer ourselves. Such is our moment to thrive, to live to the full, to finally "be" who we really are, who we are meant to be - in assenting to this moment we stand in faith ablaze with the dignity of the children of God, we freely bow in adoration before the saving truth astonishing disclosed in the wonder of the Word, we joyfully cry "I have come to do your will."

When Gabriel disclosed the Lord's message to the Virgin of Nazareth, she was afforded this freedom in an amazing manner, for an astounding purpose. To the one who is "Full of Grace," God's message was not merely informative; it was pure transformative love, a moment of true human liberty. In that instant, all the fear and lack of trust that has haunted humanity and oppressed it was lifted. The promised victory of Good over Evil was at hand. The Daughter of Zion's decision to act, to trust, to love, to hope in God's promises opened the whole world to new life and restored all that is sacred about our humanity..

What her decision conceives lives deep in the heart of all those who yearn for the Truth. It is about the sovereign dignity of the son’s and daughters of God. It is about our bold access to His saving power which by this sacred liberty we must share. Because of this Woman's courage, the Light that shines forth in the darkness reveals the silent power of God's faithfulness against the cacophony of idols continually imposed on us by heartless systems of ideology and coldly calculated narratives of the entertainment industry. What dehumanizing myth or wicked power is not laid bare before the One who humbly suffered unto death for our sake? Because of his Mother’s trust, against every attempt of political, cultural and economic tyrants to coerce the consciences of men, the Word made flesh resounds in every generation as the inexhaustible source of a love no power on earth can long suppress.

Hiding in the Wounds of Christ

To hide in the wounds of Christ and to draw strength from his passion, this is what the mystery of the Mass opens to, and this is especially true for those who suffer.   The prayer Christ offered the night before He died is the source and summit of all prayer, even the feeble prayers of those who feel unable to pray at all.  This is why Christian prayer has a sacrificial character.  Since the Last Supper, all genuine prayer flows from and leads to the Cross, and it is the august mystery of Christ crucified into whose arms we are meant to be raised when we raise our hearts at Mass.

Devotion is not always something we feel or stir up, and when we are enduring hardship, often the greatest act of devotion is that we have made ourselves present, that we have made the effort to ponder when attending to anything at all seems all but impossible.  Attentive devotion at the Sacrificial Banquet does not exhaust the work of prayer -- the effort to pray before the liturgy and after the liturgy fans the flames of love that should burn during the liturgy, even when we cannot feel them.   When we consider the great price by which we have been redeemed, we know we must, no matter the burden we carry, constantly make the effort to meditate on the Word of God if we are to recognize Him in the Breaking of the Bread.  Yet it is during the liturgy as at no other moment that Christ gives himself to his Bride, the Church.  And we, his Mystical Body, are washed by the water that flowed from the side of Christ and here we are also inebriated with his Blood which has been poured out for us on the Cross.

In this mystery of Christian prayer, if only for a moment and if only imperfectly, we share in his suffering, a divine suffering which transforms human misery, including our own personal misery, into something beautiful for God.  Torrents of tender mercy are unleashed onto world when we pray with loved filled thanksgiving for so great a gift.  This is to hide in his wounds.  Hidden in his wounds, nothing - no power on the earth below or in the heavens above - can ever separate us from his inexhaustible love.  Filled with his love, those hiding in his wounds draw strength from his passion and become a source of invincible hope for the world.