Philly Catholic Spirituality

More Resources: Awaking to the Presence of God

2009-11-27T16:20:00.000-08:00

This week the Catholic Standard and Times begins a 4-week series on praying the Liturgy of the Hours: We Wait in Prayer. Read Lou Baldwin's pieces on Morning Prayer and the celebration of the Hours with the Norbertine community at Daylesford Abbey in Paoli. My column on how the Liturgy of the Hours creates sacred space, and time, in my life is here.

If you are looking for resources to explore the Liturgy of the Hours, www.ebreviary.com has printable versions of the Hours for the Sundays and Fridays of Advent available for free. (A subscription is needed for the other days). Listen to a sample of The Anchoress praying Evening Prayer....or to a group praying Morning Prayer.

Join with Christians everywhere in the unceasing round of prayer as we begin this new year!

More Resources: Where is Your God?

2009-06-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Jesuit novice Matthew Spotts' reflections on his experiences with the homeless in Washington DC are thought provoking. I learned the story of the monks of Tibhirine from a poem by Marilyn Nelson, The Contemplative Life, published in Image (61, p. 15).

Abba Jacob wiped his eyes.
Interval of birdsong from the veranda.

He's seeing not an abstract God,
but a God who has assumed a face,
a God who shows him this face
in every one of those Muslim brothers and sisters,
including the one who kills him.

My tears became my bread day and night, as they said to me all the day long, “Where is your God?” — Ps. 42:3

We have the same conversation each time we meet. Most often he happens upon me sitting in the pews of the city church where my spiritual director lives, though once we met on the street outside.

“What is your parish?” he wants to know.

“Our Mother of Good Counsel.”

“In Bryn Mawr?”

“Yes.” I am terse as he.

“Why are you here?”

“To pray.”

“What are you praying for?” And here is where I inevitably falter, faced with a question I’m unwilling to answer, even to myself.

At first my reaction was irritation. I’m there to gather my thoughts before I see my director, to slow down, to be still before God. This felt like an intrusion. “Why are you here?” I would think. Until the day it occurred to me that I was walking out of this recurring, slightly exasperating conversation into a recurring one with my director that sounded the very same themes: “How is your prayer?” he asks.

Read the rest of the column.....

More Resources: Stretched Between Heaven and Earth

2009-06-04T18:52:00.001-07:00

You can read the text of Ancrene Wisse in both its original Old English and a modern translation.

The full column appeared on 4 June 2009 in the Catholic Standard and Times.

Let your thoughts be on things above, not on the things are on the earth, because you have died and now the life you have is hidden with Christ in God. — Col. 3:2-3

“If a mad lion was running through the streets, would not a sensible woman shut herself in?” So asks the author of the Ancrene Wisse, a 13^th century guide to life for anchoresses — women who elected to spend their lives in prayer, sealed into anchorholds within the walls of churches and monasteries.

There were waiting lists for some anchorholds. Frankly, at the moment, I’m not surprised. At quarter past eight, dinner cleared up, I went up to my study, leaving teens busy with homework and husband off to his night class. I imagined I might write this column. But…by 8:27, “Mom, can you help me?” At 8:49 settle squabble over computer; 9:19 locate clean socks; 9:31 bedtime; 9:42 phone rings.

Never mind the mad lion, this is enough to drive me to barricade myself in my room, if not seek an anchorhold within the walls of my parish church.

Anchoress derives not from anchor but from the Greek “anachorein,” to withdraw. Yet in some ways, the lives of these medieval women were no more or less withdrawn from the world than mine. Their cells had two windows, one looked into the church, the other out into the world....read the rest of the column here.

More Resources: Praying the Everyday

2009-05-14T20:54:00.000-07:00

The photo of my mother - crowning Mary after her First Communion.

....My theological library owes its start to my mother, who read the documents of Vatican II as avidly as she did the latest science fiction novel. Yet there was always a rosary to be found in her purse, and she never failed of saying grace at a meal, even when it was just the two of us in her hospital room. Faith was not just an academic stance for my mother; it was her whole way of being.

Jesuit Father Karl Rahner, one of the most eminent theologians of the 20th century, made Deuteronomy’s injunction manifest in his own preaching and life. He once cautioned a student, “Beware the person of no devotions and the person who does not pray.”....read the rest of the column.

Karl Rahner SJ's book: The Need and the Blessing of Prayer is a collection of homilies preached shortly after the end of World War II.

The text of Sacrosanctum Concilium from the Vatican's web site.

More Resources: The Face of God

2009-05-07T06:49:00.000-07:00

I will freely admit it was not the depth of my piety, but the depth of my aversion for the 5:30 a.m. train that drew me to the contemplation of this psalm a few weeks back. To avoid a before- dawn walk to the train station, I went down to Washington the afternoon before my conference began. So I had a bit of time to spare to see the exhibit on illuminated manuscripts at the National Gallery.

Hanging on the dark blue walls, the gold letters and brilliant colors lit up the space, as they must have in the dim churches 500 years in the past. Aptly enough, it was a cluster of three manuscript pages in an alcove that caught my eye. Each featured a slightly different representation of the Trinity. God the Father was drawn as the bearded patriarch seated on a throne, and the Spirit, a dove.

I was fascinated with the three depictions of Christ: first, as a full grown man, but the size of a child relative to the Father, held in the Father’s lap; second, on the cross between the viewer and the Father; and third, to me the most poignant of the three, kneeling next to the Father, bent over His cross, the Father’s hand on His shoulder. The faces of the Christ figures were expressive, in turns serene, impassioned and distraught. Behold, the face of God.

Read the rest of the column.

See a slide show of some of the pieces in the exhibit.

Cardinal Schoenborn's book: God's Human Face.

Paul Pearson's book on icon painting, A Brush with God, which encourages you to imagine the face of God through your own artistic endeavors, opens with two reflections on the spirituality of images, one from Andrew Ciferni, O. Praem. - a Norbertine from Daylesford Abbey.

More Resources: Does God have a sense of humor?

2009-04-30T11:33:00.000-07:00

There are days when I’d rather be taking on “Whether a multiplicity of angels can co-exist in the same place?” against St. Thomas Aquinas, than tackling the questions being disputed at my dinner table. “Does God have a sense of humor?” queries the younger. “He created you, didn’t he?” responds his older brother, mindful of the rules of the game, which require supporting evidence. “Mom…” Chris’ pleas drag me into the fray.

Prayers to St. Thomas arising, I pointed to this passage in Luke’s Gospel. Surely Jesus’ sense of humor was at play here? He let Cleopas and his companion go on at length about the happenings in Jerusalem before revealing the punch line — He is the person everyone has been talking about — and vanishing before their eyes.

The Word made flesh in Scripture isn’t averse to humor either in the form of puns and double meanings. The Old Testament is replete with plays on words, all but lost to us in the layers of translation...

Read the rest of the column at the Standard & Times.

Robert Alter's translation of the Psalms tries to give a flavor of the ancient Hebrew. The footnotes, far from leaving a dry and academic taste behind, offer some insight into the dilemmas of the translator when the words are so ancient no one grasps their meaning any longer, except as part of the poetic whole.

Marilyn Nelson is the former poet laureate of Connecticut - Abba Jacob and the Theologian is from her collection Magnificat, which is now out of print. It is also in this more recent anthology of her poetry.

St. Thomas Aquinas (who looks rather grumpy in this photo) had firm ideas about the worth of humor: "It is requisite for the relaxation of the mind that we make use, from time to time, of playful deeds and jokes." (from his Summa)

Recently, James Martin, S.J. reflection on God's sense of humor and our own in this piece on NPR.

More Resources: Slowing down to make room for God

2009-04-23T15:23:00.000-07:00

Leisure in the monastic sense is not time to do nothing, or to do what you like, but a time to slow down, to be still, to make room in your life to look toward God.

“Be still and know that I am God.” A translation of this verse from Psalm 46 that hews more closely to the original Hebrew is “Let go, and know that I am God.” The sense is that of unclenching your fist, even of releasing an enemy from your grasp. In my life, time often seems like the enemy, or at least my lack of it squeezes the life out of me. I hold tight to watch and calendar, hoarding time.....

If we were Carthusian monks, silence would be in the very air, and contemplation might be as easy as breathing. There would be no ringing phones, kitchen timers or teenagers chasing the cat, herself in hot pursuit of a mouse, through my study. Finding the necessary breathing room for my soul is a bit more of a challenge under these conditions.

Read the rest of the column...

A fuller set of Father Lombardi's comments is here. He is the director of the Vatican press office.

For a short daily time of prayer at your computer, Loyola press offers a three minute daily "retreat":

Ways to help kids (and adults!) learn to be still in prayer.

A news story about the Anglican bishop and the eggtimers is here.

More Resources: Passio

2009-04-08T19:38:00.000-07:00

The column in which I referred to this piece is "Entering totally into the Crucifixion" -- reflecting on the Passion in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.

Avro Pärt is a contemporary Estonian composer. He calls his approach to composition tintinnabulation – and it sounds very much like bells ringing. Though clearly modern, Pärt’s deep and longstanding engagement with medieval polyphony and plainchant infuses his music. If you have not heard Pärt before – listen to a snatch (see the link below), or even the whole thing. The third and fourth movements are marvelous.

Passio by Arvo Part

The voices on this setting are so clear, you can take out a copy of St. John's Passion, in Latin and follow along. If you lack a copy at home - here's the text! (Christ is the bass; Peter and Pilate the tenors.)
(The icon is 13th century from Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai, Egypt)

1. First Movement: Jesus is betrayed.
Hæc cum dixisset Jesus, egressus est cum discipulis suis trans torrentem Cedron, ubi erat hortus, in quem introivit ipse, et discipuli ejus.
Sciebat autem et Judas, qui tradebat eum, locum : quia frequenter Jesus convenerat illuc cum discipulis suis.
Judas ergo cum accepisset cohortem, et a pontificibus et pharisæis ministros, venit illuc cum laternis, et facibus, et armis.
Jesus itaque sciens omnia quæ ventura erant super eum, processit, et dixit eis : Quem quæritis ?
Responderunt ei : Jesum Nazarenum. Dicit eis Jesus : Ego sum. Stabat autem et Judas, qui tradebat eum, cum ipsis.
Ut ergo dixit eis : Ego sum : abierunt retrorsum, et ceciderunt in terram.
Iterum ergo interrogavit eos : Quem quæritis ? Illi autem dixerunt : Jesum Nazarenum.
Respondit Jesus : Dixi vobis, quia ego sum : si ergo me quæritis, sinite hos abire.
Ut impleretur sermo, quem dixit : Quia quos dedisti mihi, non perdidi ex eis quemquam.
Simon ergo Petrus habens gladium eduxit eum : et percussit pontificis servum, et abscidit auriculam ejus dexteram. Erat autem nomen servo Malchus.
Dixit ergo Jesus Petro : Mitte gladium tuum in vaginam. Calicem, quem dedit mihi Pater, non bibam illum ?
Cohors ergo, et tribunus, et ministri Judæorum comprehenderunt Jesum, et ligaverunt eum.

2. Second Movement: Jesus before the High Priest.
Et adduxerunt eum ad Annam primum : erat enim socer Caiphæ, qui erat pontifex anni illius.
Erat autem Caiphas, qui consilium dederat Judæis : Quia expedit unum hominem mori pro populo.
Sequebatur autem Jesum Simon Petrus, et alius discipulus. Discipulus autem ille erat notus pontifici, et introivit cum Jesu in atrium pontificis.
Petrus autem stabat ad ostium foris. Exivit ergo discipulus alius, qui erat notus pontifici, et dixit ostiariæ : et introduxit Petrum.
Dicit ergo Petro ancilla ostiaria : Numquid et tu ex discipulis es hominis istius ? Dicit ille : Non sum.
Stabant autem servi et ministri ad prunas, quia frigus erat, et calefaciebant se : erat autem cum eis et Petrus stans, et calefaciens se.
Pontifex ergo interrogavit Jesum de discipulis suis, et de doctrina ejus.
Respondit ei Jesus : Ego palam locutus sum mundo : ego semper docui in synagoga, et in templo, quo omnes Judæi conveniunt, et in occulto locutus sum nihil.
Quid me interrogas ? interroga eos qui audierunt quid locutus sim ipsis : ecce hi sciunt quæ dixerim ego.
Hæc autem cum dixisset, unus assistens ministrorum dedit alapam Jesu, dicens : Sic respondes pontifici ?
Respondit ei Jesus : Si male locutus sum, testimonium perhibe de malo : si autem bene, quid me cædis ?
Et misit eum Annas ligatum ad Caipham pontificem.
Erat autem Simon Petrus stans, et calefaciens se. Dixerunt ergo ei : Numquid et tu ex discipulis ejus es ? Negavit ille, et dixit : Non sum.
Dicit ei unus ex servis pontificis, cognatus ejus, cujus abscidit Petrus auriculam : Nonne ego te vidi in horto cum illo ?
Iterum ergo negavit Petrus : et statim gallus cantavit.
3. Third Movement: Jesus before Pilate.
Adducunt ergo Jesum a Caipha in prætorium. Erat autem mane : et ipsi non introierunt in prætorium, ut non contaminarentur, sed ut manducarent Pascha.
Exivit ergo Pilatus ad eos foras, et dixit : Quam accusationem affertis adversus hominem hunc ?
Responderunt, et dixerunt ei : Si non esset hic malefactor, non tibi tradidissemus eum.
Dixit ergo eis Pilatus : Accipite eum vos, et secundum legem vestram judicate eum. Dixerunt ergo ei Judæi : Nobis non licet interficere quemquam.
Ut sermo Jesu impleretur, quem dixit, significans qua morte esset moriturus.
Introivit ergo iterum in prætorium Pilatus : et vocavit Jesum, et dixit ei : Tu es rex Judæorum ?
Respondit Jesus : A temetipso hoc dicis, an alii dixerunt tibi de me ?
Respondit Pilatus : Numquid ego Judæus sum ? gens tua et pontifices tradiderunt te mihi : quid fecisti ?
Respondit Jesus : Regnum meum non est de hoc mundo. Si ex hoc mundo esset regnum meum, ministri mei utique decertarent ut non traderer Judæis : nunc autem regnum meum non est hinc.
Dixit itaque ei Pilatus : Ergo rex es tu ? Respondit Jesus : Tu dicis quia rex sum ego. Ego in hoc natus sum, et ad hoc veni in mundum, ut testimonium perhibeam veritati : omnis qui est ex veritate, audit vocem meam.
Dicit ei Pilatus : Quid est veritas ? Et cum hoc dixisset, iterum exivit ad Judæos, et dicit eis : Ego nullam invenio in eo causam.
Est autem consuetudo vobis ut unum dimittam vobis in Pascha : vultis ergo dimittam vobis regem Judæorum ?
Clamaverunt ergo rursum omnes, dicentes : Non hunc, sed Barabbam. Erat autem Barabbas latro.

Tunc ergo apprehendit Pilatus Jesum, et flagellavit.
Et milites plectentes coronam de spinis, imposuerunt capiti ejus : et veste purpurea circumdederunt eum.
Et veniebant ad eum, et dicebant : Ave, rex Judæorum : et dabant ei alapas.
Exivit ergo iterum Pilatus foras, et dicit eis : Ecce adduco vobis eum foras, ut cognoscatis quia nullam invenio in eo causam.
(Exivit ergo Jesus portans coronam spineam, et purpureum vestimentum.) Et dicit eis : Ecce homo.
Cum ergo vidissent eum pontifices et ministri, clamabant, dicentes : Crucifige, crucifige eum. Dicit eis Pilatus : Accipite eum vos, et crucifigite : ego enim non invenio in eo causam.
Responderunt ei Judæi : Nos legem habemus, et secundum legem debet mori, quia Filium Dei se fecit.
Cum ergo audisset Pilatus hunc sermonem, magis timuit.
Et ingressus est prætorium iterum : et dixit ad Jesum : Unde es tu ? Jesus autem responsum non dedit ei.
Dicit ergo ei Pilatus : Mihi non loqueris ? nescis quia potestatem habeo crucifigere te, et potestatem habeo dimittere te ?
Respondit Jesus : Non haberes potestatem adversum me ullam, nisi tibi datum esset desuper. Propterea qui me tradidit tibi, majus peccatum habet.
Et exinde quærebat Pilatus dimittere eum. Judæi autem clamabant dicentes : Si hunc dimittis, non es amicus Cæsaris. Omnis enim qui se regem facit, contradicit Cæsari.
Pilatus autem cum audisset hos sermones, adduxit foras Jesum : et sedit pro tribunali, in loco qui dicitur Lithostrotos, hebraice autem Gabbatha.
Erat enim parasceve Paschæ, hora quasi sexta, et dicit Judæis : Ecce rex vester.
Illi autem clamabant : Tolle, tolle, crucifige eum. Dicit eis Pilatus : Regem vestrum crucifigam ? Responderunt pontifices : Non habemus regem, nisi Cæsarem.

4. Fourth Movement: Jesus is crucified.
Tunc ergo tradidit eis illum ut crucifigeretur. Susceperunt autem Jesum, et eduxerunt.
Et bajulans sibi crucem exivit in eum, qui dicitur Calvariæ locum, hebraice autem Golgotha :
ubi crucifixerunt eum, et cum eo alios duos hinc et hinc, medium autem Jesum.
Scripsit autem et titulum Pilatus, et posuit super crucem. Erat autem scriptum : Jesus Nazarenus, Rex Judæorum.
Hunc ergo titulum multi Judæorum legerunt : quia prope civitatem erat locus, ubi crucifixus est Jesus, et erat scriptum hebraice, græce, et latine.
Dicebant ergo Pilato pontifices Judæorum : Noli scribere : Rex Judæorum : sed quia ipse dixit : Rex sum Judæorum.
Respondit Pilatus : Quod scripsi, scripsi.
Milites ergo cum crucifixissent eum, acceperunt vestimenta ejus (et fecerunt quatuor partes, unicuique militi partem) et tunicam. Erat autem tunica inconsutilis, desuper contexta per totum.
Dixerunt ergo ad invicem : Non scindamus eam, sed sortiamur de illa cujus sit. Ut Scriptura impleretur, dicens : Partiti sunt vestimenta mea sibi : et in vestem meam miserunt sortem. Et milites quidem hæc fecerunt.
Stabant autem juxta crucem Jesu mater ejus, et soror matris ejus, Maria Cleophæ, et Maria Magdalene.
Cum vidisset ergo Jesus matrem, et discipulum stantem, quem diligebat, dicit matri suæ : Mulier, ecce filius tuus.
Deinde dicit discipulo : Ecce mater tua. Et ex illa hora accepit eam discipulus in sua.
Postea sciens Jesus quia omnia consummata sunt, ut consummaretur Scriptura, dixit : Sitio.
Vas ergo erat positum aceto plenum. Illi autem spongiam plenam aceto, hyssopo circumponentes, obtulerunt ori ejus.
Cum ergo accepisset Jesus acetum, dixit : Consummatum est. Et inclinato capite tradidit spiritum.

More Resources: Miserere Mei

2009-02-26T00:19:00.000-08:00

Gregorio Allegri: Miserere mei, Deus - St. Johns College Choir, Cambridge

Listen to one of the two recordings of the Miserere Mei. Rumer Goden's novel of the Benedictine community at Brede (In This House of Brede) can be a wonderful Lenten read especially for a group - or find reflections on Psalm 51 in Remembering Your Deeds by Blaise Arminjon, SJ.

Trying a different translation of the psalms can be a delightful way to make them sound "anew". The new translation of the Psalms by Robert Alter has some powerful language, and insightful commentary on the Psalms.

A simple and short introduction to praying with the psalms (though the language might sound a bit dated) is Thomas Merton's Praying with the Psalms.

Gentle, reflective, slow reading of a text for spiritual benefit is called lectio divina. A very short introduction is here (by John Veltri SJ) and a fuller explanation can be found at the web site of the New Melleray Abbey.

More Resources: Long Before Dawn

2009-02-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

The very edge of dawn over Eastern Point in Massachusetts, where I made the Spiritual Exercises.

The Apophthegmata Patrum is a collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers, the hermits and monks who lived in the Egyptian desert in the early part of the 4th century. Some excerpts are here and here.

Two good books on the Desert Fathers are The Sayings of the Desert Fathers (a translation of a wide variety of wise sayings, organized by person, translated by Sr. Benedicta Ward) and The Wisdom of the Desert (an essay and small collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers by Thomas Merton).

More Resources: God among "the little ones"

2008-11-27T17:58:00.000-08:00

Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. was a 19th century English poet and Jesuit priest.

Pied Beauty written in sprung rhythm in the Summer of 1877 while Hopkins was at St. Beuno's in England begins:


GLORY be to God for dappled things—
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced—fold, fallow, and plough;	5
And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

God's Grandeur was also written in 1877.

Hopkins was famous for his use of "sprung rhythms" - the same rhythms that appear in the psalms (in the Hebrew, and resurrected in the 20th century by Joseph Gelineau, SJ).

More Resources: Paths Ancient and New

2008-11-13T08:01:00.000-08:00

More resources for the column Explore all paths to Jesus, old or new which appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 13 November 2008.

The British Jesuits' podcast offers a reflection on one of the readings from daily Mass, five days a week. They are ten to fifteen minutes in length and enable you to "Pray as you go". During Lent and Advent they often offer additional fare for the soul - last Lent it was the Stations of the Cross.

A brief introduction to the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius is here. You don't have to have 30-days away to make them, Ignatius offered an alternative method for those who cannot absent themselves from daily life for so long - often called the 19th Annotation (since Ignatius proposed it in the 19th explanatory note).

More Resources: The Gifts of Obedience

2008-11-06T10:31:00.001-08:00

Read the prologue to The Rule of St. Benedict, which begins with "Listen..." or read the whole rule. (You can find many of the classics of Christian writing at Christian Classics Ethereal Library.)

To learn more about St. Benedict's life, read St. Gregory the Great's Life of St. Benedict
hosted by Fordham University.

When Zechariah's silence ended he proclaimed this beautiful hymn - the Benedictus - recorded in Luke 1:68 -79. The Church also breaks its silence by proclaiming God's greatness with this prayer each morning at Morning Prayer. In the Latin, canticle begins: Benedictus Dominus Deus Israel (Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel...) - hence the name.

More Resources: In a Dry and Weary Land

2008-10-29T20:53:00.000-07:00

Thomas Merton's short book, Praying the Psalms, offers a brief look at the psalms by type. There is also a lovely essay on the psalms by Joseph Gelineau, S.J. in the introduction to the Grail psalter.

More Resources: Surrendering to God's grace

2008-10-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

Karl Rahner, S.J. was an eminent theologian, who also wrote deeply and passionately about the spiritual life. His essay, The Experience of Grace, is collected in Karl Rahner: Spiritual Writings. It's very short and well worth a read!

A short reflection on Fr. Rahner, marking his 100th birthday, was published in America Magazine in 2004: Losing Oneself and Finding God.

More Resources: Hope and prayer

2008-10-16T11:48:00.000-07:00

Read Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical on hope: Spe Salvi

Mary Oliver's poem Six Recognitions of Our Lord can be found in her collection Thirst.

More Resources: Infinite Capacity

2008-10-02T04:12:00.000-07:00

The full quote in Latin from St. Augustine (from his De Genesi ad litteram or On the literal meaning of Genesis) is

Quapropter bono christiano, sive mathematici, sive quilibet impie divinantium, maxime dicentes vera, cavendi sunt, ne consortio daemoniorum irretiant.

Though this is often translated as I did,

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians, and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and to confine man in the bonds of Hell.

a better translation might be

Hence, a devout Christian must avoid astrologers and all impious soothsayers, especially when they tell the truth, for fear of leading his soul into error by consorting with demons and entangling himself with the bonds of such association.

[Taken from John Hammond Taylor, S.J., Ancient Christian Writers (Volume 41), Newman Press, 1982.]

Tolle lege! Read more about St. Augustine.

Column: God pays our daily wage in His infinite love

2008-10-02T03:45:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 2 October 2008]

"These last ones worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us, who bore the day's burden and the heat."
"My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go. What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money? Are you envious because I am generous?"
Thus, the last will be first, and the first will be last. Mt 20:12-16

St. Augustine once counseled Christians to "beware of mathematicians...The danger already exists that the mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit."

Though I'm sure that there are times that my husband Victor's calculus students agree, in truth, Augustine's mathematici were not mathematicians in the modern sense, but astrologers and soothsayers, and Augustine himself used mathematics to illumine the mysteries of God's grace.

Reflecting on John's account of the miracle of the groaning nets in his Tractates on the Gospel of John, Augustine suggested that 153 fish appeared in the net because it was the sum of all the numbers from 1 to 17 and as all the individual numbers share in the total, so do we all share in God's grace. Augustine weaves the elegant mathematics of constructing 153 from various base numbers into a convincing illustration of the many ways God is at work in the world.

I listened this week to another accounting of God's abundant grace and to two impassioned homilies that gave me hope that even those of us who have not toiled as we should might yet receive the fullness of mercy.

When one homilist emphasized the symmetry of the first becoming last, and the last first, I envisioned the equations for a circle, where indeed the first point and the last point are not only interchangeable, but one and the same. God's ways are not our ways, but the equations led me to muse that perhaps God had left us a clue to His ways in the mathematics of this Gospel text. Like Augustine and the fish, mathematics opened another door into the Scripture.

Given that both parents and all four of their grandparents are scientists, it probably would''t surprise you that my kids enjoy odd math puzzles. One favorite is what number can you double and it will remain the same? One answer - infinity. Twice infinity is infinity. Divide it in half, still infinite. Add one to infinity and it remains unchanged; it's infinite. No arithmetic operation can change its unbounded nature.

Each group of workers that came forward put in more hours than the group that preceded them, yet the wage calculated for them was the same. If you apply my kids' mathematical logic, the base salary must therefore be infinite. Work twice as much, and your pay will still be infinite.

The 'usual wage' we are being offered is God's infinite love. I am struck not only by God's mercy to those who come up short, but his starting stance of limitless grace.

I read this gospel as a proof of God's infinite, unbounded, and unalterable love for us - for those of us who work through the heat of the day, for those of us who seek God in the cool of the evening, for those of us who are hoping God will find us before the end of the day. Nothing we can do can add to it, or thank God, lessen it.

Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, in Your unbounded mercy You have revealed the beauty of Your power through Your constant forgiveness of our sins. May the power of this love be in our hearts to bring Your pardon and Your kingdom to all we meet. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
(From the opening prayer for Mass on the 26th Sunday in Ordinary Time)

More Resources: Psalms in our bones

2008-09-27T17:24:00.000-07:00

Read the texts of Psalm 139 and Psalm 30.

An electronic version of the Liturgy of the Hours is here.

For more reflections on the psalms, try Thomas Merton's Praying the Psalms or read Fr. Joseph Gelineau's introduction to this edition of the Grail Psalter.

Read short bios of Joseph Gelineau and Andre Chouraqi.

The Psalms are in our bones

2008-09-25T16:40:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 25 September 2008]

At the sight of her tears, and those of the Jews who followed her, Jesus said in great distress, with a sigh that came straight from the heart, “Where have you put him?” They said, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus wept. — Jn. 11:33-35

A friend lost her son last week, dragged from a long awaited retreat in silence into a maelstrom of pain. Over and over people told her that they could not imagine her grief. Perhaps what we really meant was that we did not want to experience her grief ourselves.

Returning to Bethany to find his friends Martha and Mary mourning their brother Lazarus, Jesus did not fail to imagine their grief, to experience this pain, though He could, and would, wipe it away in an instant. Jesus wept.

My friend sought the psalms in her grief. Not the green pastures and clear streams of Psalm 23, but the penetrating, inescapable love of Psalm 139. “If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there,” she prays.

Father Joseph Gelineau, S.J., whose now familiar psalm tones regrounded us in our own ancient chant traditions, said in his introduction to the Grail Psalter, “[the psalms] force us to widen our hearts to the full dimensions of redemption."

The psalms give us a way to voice the anguishes we have not experienced, the joys that might have never been ours, the fears that besiege and beset those around us. They force us to widen our hearts, and like Christ with Martha and Mary, be willing to go beyond acknowledging another’s pain, and imagine it. The psalms let us weep with each other.

In this way the psalms become for us more than the sacred songs of a generation long past, they are our own voices ringing in the wilderness of everyday life. As Andre Chouraqi, a distinguished Jewish theologian and linguist, noted, “We were born with this book in our very bones … 150 poems … 150 mirrors of our agonies and our resurrections.”

Literally, of course, the psalms are the skeleton upon which the Liturgy of the Hours, the Church’s daily work of prayer, hangs. On a deeper level, I find this image of the psalms as bones reminds me that these “150 mirrors” are not a superstructure shielding us from the difficulties of each other’s lives, nor are they an exoskeleton that bounds our growth.

Instead, they hold up for us what we need to see in our own lives, in the lives of those around us. They support us while we grow, through these shared experiences of joys and sorrows, virtues and transgressions.

As I prayed Psalm 139 this week, for my friend and for her son, it brought me back to the dark hours of a Holy Thursday more than 20 years ago. I sat in a hospital waiting room, facing the news that my husband would not live to see the morning. My breviary had disappeared in the chaos of the night before, but the psalms turned out to be in my bones and therefore my memory. When I could not hope, Psalm 30 could hope for me: “At night there are tears, but joy comes with dawn.”

The psalms still give voice to my griefs, my joys, my angers, my failings, my triumphs — they hold me up. They are my very bones. Through them we hold each other up. They are our very bones.

Lord God, deepen our faith, strengthen our hope, enkindle our love: and so that we may obtain what you promise, make us love what you command. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.
— from Evening Prayer I, 30th Sunday in Ordinary time, Liturgy of the Hours

All Who Hunger

2008-09-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

The photo is of my mother - dressed in her First Communion finery, putting a crown of flowers on a statue of Mary. The veil was almost floor length on me (I was much shorter than my mom at the same age - or ever for that matter!)

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 18 September 2008]

“Sir,” they said, “give us that bread always.” Jesus answered: “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me shall not be hungry; He who believes in me shall never thirst.”
Jn. 6:34-35

Thinking back, I imagine my mother just wanted to reduce the odds for my father. She was teaching the CCD First Communion class on Sunday mornings, and taking me along meant my dad only had to chase after three little ones — not four. At 6, I, at least, could be counted on to sit quietly in the back of the classroom and read.

When spring came, bringing with it first confessions and Communions, I asked my mother why I wasn’t making my first Communion, too. “You’ll learn about it all next year and make yours next spring,” she comforted me.

“But I learned all about it this year,” I wailed. Which is when my mother discovered that instead of amusing myself with Dr. Seuss in the back, I’d been listening to her. I had learned along with her students, and like them, I was hungry to meet Christ in the Eucharist. Now. At 6, waiting another year seemed impossible.

An interview with the pastor convinced him I’d been paying attention, too. Forty-three years ago this week, on the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary, wearing the same veil my mother had, I received my first Communion with little fanfare and great joy at the regular Sunday Mass.

A few months ago, I stood as a sponsor for a young woman convert. Standing before the community who had shared daily Mass and morning prayer with her for the last year, she received her Lord for the first time. Afterward, as I knelt beside her, I struggled to remember my own longing for that moment, for the only bread that would satisfy.

Later this summer, two consecutive Sundays found me too far from civilization to be able to get to church. Mea culpa, I missed Mass. And miss it, I did; my hunger took me quite by surprise. So when a fellow scientist (an astronomer at the Vatican observatory, no less) leaned conspiratorially across the dinner table at a conference the following weekend, and said, “I found a parish with a 7 a.m. Mass — want to go?” I was ready. Even if it meant a two-mile walk each way — since neither of us had a car!

Here on my home ground, with five parishes within a few minutes drive, I can go to Mass and receive the Eucharist every Sunday and any day I wish. In the midst of such riches, I had forgotten how to hunger. It took an unintentional fast to help me rediscover it.

Alfred Delp was a Jesuit priest executed by the Nazis in 1945. He was beaten, sleep deprived and starved, of food and of the Eucharist. Two months after he was arrested, friends bribed a guard to bring him bread and wine to celebrate Mass with. In a letter smuggled out with the laundry he wrote, “[t]he experience that a piece of bread can be a great grace is a new one for me.” Physical hunger opened him to “discover ever new sides to God.”

This summer, God took advantage of my absence from the celebration of the Eucharist to remind me that there are graces to be discovered in hunger, as well as in plenty. Now, when I begin each morning with the Augustinian community, I can remember again what it is to long for life and its very source, as we pray together:

O Sacrament of love, sign of our unity, bond of our community, whoever longs for life, has here its very source, let him come here and believe, united with You and live. Whoever eats My flesh and drinks My blood, will live in Me and I in him.

MINI confessions

2008-09-11T17:10:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 11 September 2008]

Then some men appeared, carrying on a bed a paralyzed man whom they were trying to bring in and lay down in front of him. But as the crowd made it impossible to find a way of getting him in, they went up on to the flat roof and lowered him and his stretcher down through the tile into the middle of the gathering, in front of Jesus. Seeing their faith he said, “My friend, your sins are forgiven you.”
Lk 5:18-20

The house rules are posted on our refrigerator, ready for those not infrequent moments when someone needs reminding that if you take it out, you should put it away. The one rule my sons never forget is, “What happens in Mom’s Mini, stays in Mom’s Mini.” The seal on conversations in my car is nearly as sacrosanct as that of the confessional.

The questions the boys let fly as we traverse the Main Line are at times silly, and at times poignant: “Were you sad when Tom died?” Chris asked one day after a visit from my late husband’s father. Then, there are the questions for which I have no answers, as when stopped at a light on Montgomery Avenue last spring, Michael asked me why God let evil things happen.

The “ask anything” atmosphere in my car extends to their friends as well. Last spring, I was hauling home a load of young men from school when the conversation turned to confirmation. “I have to go to a penance service tonight!” grumbled one, unworried that I might report his reluctance to his mother. Sympathetic sighs emanated from his buddies, except for Mike. “Don’t go,” he urged.

To the astonishment of his friends (and me, I must confess), he regaled the car with the tale of how I had made him go to confession, rather than a communal penance service, before his own confirmation the previous year. And how much better it was — or at least shorter and less boring. “Just go to confession” was the moral of his story.

The men in the account of the paralytic in Luke’s Gospel remind me of Mike and his friends. I can imagine them scheming to find the best way to get their buddy in front of Jesus, chortling when they discover they can get around the crowd by taking off the roof. Their ingenuity on behalf of a friend knows no bounds.

St. Augustine’s teacher, Ambrose, reflecting on this passage in his exposition on Luke’s Gospel, reminds us “to call intercessors, call the church” even when we ourselves cannot see the way clear to find Christ. “Because of His regard for the church, the Lord forgives what He may refuse you.”

Watching Mike work to get his friends before Christ in the sacrament of Penance, delighted to have found a way “around” the crowd, I realized anew how much we depend on each other for our access to God’s forgiveness of our sins. Even in this most private of sacraments, we need each other.

Almighty, ever-living God,
Whose love surpasses all that we ask or deserve, open up for us the treasures of Your mercy.
Forgive us all that weighs on our conscience, and grant us more even than we dare to ask.
We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Photo credit to two stout monks.

Recycled Suffering

2008-09-04T17:12:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 4 September 2008.]

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the Church.
Col. 1:24

“One thousand and ninety five,” sighed my friend as he pushed his chair back from the dinner table. He was not referring to the date of the first Crusade, but the number of e-mails awaiting his attention after two weeks out of the office.

I winced in sympathy, recalling the piles of mail, real and virtual, that had greeted my own return from vacation. “Offer it up for the souls in purgatory?” I suggested, only half in jest. “For sure, it’s one piece of pre-Vatican II theology I still subscribe to!” bounced back across the table. “Suffering shouldn’t go to waste.”

My mother’s salve for the hurts of childhood she could not immediately remedy always included the injunction to “offer it up” in addition to the requisite Band-aids and gentle kisses. In my pre-Vatican II childhood, burned fingers and broken toes offered chances not only to be tended to, but also to tend. Little was wasted in a house full of kids, not even suffering.

The conversation led me to wonder if I’ve failed to pass on a key lesson to my own children. Mike, at 14, seems aware of the ascetic value of pain (or at least he is fond of reminding his younger brother, groaning under the weight of some hideous chore, that “suffering is good for the soul”). Rarely does Mike articulate the sense that his sufferings, or even the annoyances that come with having a younger brother, might be good for someone else’s soul, even teasingly.

Yet the concept of redirecting suffering to another end beyond the purification of one’s own soul might not be as foreign as we think to a generation for whom the catchphrase “recycle, reuse, repurpose” rolls so trippingly off the tongue. Waste is to be avoided.

My kids view the “repurposing” of old stuff as a creative activity. What can you do with an outgrown life jacket and a roll of duct tape? Amazing things, if you have the imagination to see it, and the patience to carry it through.

Pope John Paul II, reflecting on the passage above from St. Paul in his apostolic letter, Salvific Doloris, asserts that redemptive suffering is also a creative activity: “The sufferings of Christ created the good of the world’s redemption… . No man can add anything to it. But at the same time [Christ] opened his own redemptive suffering to all human suffering.” Paul’s outlook helps us imagine the “creative character of suffering.”

Maybe what I need to remind my sons, and myself, when our own pains wear us thin, is that we can creatively repurpose them, pouring our sufferings into the mystery that is Christ’s redeeming work, into His body, the Church.

It is certainly time to recycle and reuse my mother’s injunction to “offer it up” for this generation — so they, too, can imagine how to repurpose the pain.

O God, Creator and Redeemer of all the faithful, grant to the souls of our departed loved ones, the remission of all their sins, that by means of our pious supplications, they may obtain the joys of Heaven which they have ever earnestly desired. We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Putting God to the test

2008-08-28T17:17:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times on 28 August 2008]

If only you would listen to Him today, do not harden your hearts as at Meribah, as you did that day at Massah in the wilderness,when your ancestors challenged me, tested me, although they had seen what I could do.
Ps. 95: 8-9

Wars of words are few and far between in my corner of the Internet universe. I write a blog about science, not politics, and my most controversial post was about using inert gases like argon and xenon as anesthetics. Really.

As a group, science bloggers just aren’t all that edgy. At least that was the case until last month, when a professor of biology thought he was bringing science to bear on the theological realm and things rapidly got ugly.

Insisting, “it’s just a cracker,” he invited his readers to send him a consecrated host, which he proceeded to desecrate, along with Islamic and Jewish sacred texts, as a scientific test of the Real Presence. As science goes, it’s a terribly constructed experiment; to those, like us, who believe in Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist, it’s horrifying.

The immediate outcry was predictable — cheers from those who do not believe, outraged demands for his resignation from those who do. What I didn’t anticipate were my own reactions, realizing I had done the same, just in a different guise.

How often do I put my Lord God to the test? How often do I not only fail to honor Him, but hold Him in contempt? Certainly not in the Eucharist, but in other, more subtle ways.

In a homily I’ve had a hard time forgetting, a priest friend told the story of driving to daily Mass, stuck on a one-lane bridge behind an excruciatingly slow driver. Finally, reaching a passing lane, he pulled around the car and flashed a less than polite gesture.

After Communion, he was struck by the realization that if he’d made that same gesture at the altar during the consecration, he would have been dragged bodily from the church. If he truly believed that what was done even to the least, even annoyingly slow drivers, was done to Christ, how could he have been so disrespectful?

In the worn Jerusalem Bible I use for prayer, Psalm 95 carries the note: for daily use. It is the traditional invitatory psalm, used at the beginning of each day’s celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, so in fact I have prayed this psalm thousands of times in the last two decades.

For all these years I’ve focused on its invitation to praise God joyfully, to begin each day walking into His presence. Now I’m aware of the daily (perhaps much needed) reminder not to harden my heart, not to put God to the test, to reverence Him not only in the Eucharist, but in every person I encounter.

The biology professor concluded that the Eucharist could not be the real presence of Christ because nothing happened to him when he desecrated it. Perhaps not. But something happened to me.

God our Father, Your Son promised to be with all who gather in His name. Make us aware of His presence among us and fill us with His grace, mercy, and peace, so that we may live in truth and love. Grant this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, Who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit,One God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Grace in the dust

2008-08-21T17:15:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times 21 August 2008]

Jesus was at Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, when a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of the most expensive ointment, and she poured it on his head as he was at table. When they saw this, the disciples were indignant. “Why this waste?” they said. Mt. 26:6-9

Water is more precious than oil where my dad lives. Central California is parched and dry at this time of year, the golden brown broken only by the green stripes of the vineyards twining through the hills. Water is dragged up from 400 feet below the earth, and poured out only where it is truly needed.

Early one evening I walked the dirt roads near my dad’s farm, through olive groves and vineyards. As I reached the top of the ridge halfway between the farm and my aunt’s house, I could see a cloud of dust further down the valley. A line of heavy construction trucks wound their way slowly down the roads.

I groaned. Perched on this hillside path, I would be eating — and breathing — their dust long before I got to my aunt’s.

As the trucks lumbered up the hill, I picked my way through the thistles lining the embankment to wait them out. At least the lead driver spotted me and slowed down. The procession crept by.

As the last truck rolled past, I gasped. Gallons of water streamed from its back. Just as I began to frantically wave at the driver, the torrent stopped. What a waste, I thought, and turned to make my dusty way to my aunt’s.

But there was no roiling cloud of dust to trudge through. Instead, a damp ribbon began at the curve where the driver of the first truck had spotted me. All those gallons of water had been poured out for me, for my comfort, for an unknown women standing by the edge of an isolated road. The realization nearly brought me to my knees in the thistles.

It was a gift all out of proportion to my needs; dust does wash off after all. I had the same question as the disciples at Bethany. “Why this waste?” Wouldn’t this water have been better used on the vines?

There is something ultimately incomprehensible about using precious things with such abandon. Yet this is precisely the mystery we encounter in the sacraments.

The water that was so scarce a resource in many early Christian communities, the scant tablespoons of oil that a pound of olives would yield, bread from grain harvested and ground by hand, all spent freely, not to meet any practical physical need, but for the ease of our souls.
The abundant, overflowing grace of God is made visible.

We don’t expect to have sacramental encounters on dusty country roads, or on the Schuylkill Expressway for that matter, but in fact the world is inescapably sacramental.

As Jesuit scientist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote in The Divine Milieu, “By means of all created things … the divine assails us, penetrates us and moulds us. We imagined it as distant and inaccessible, whereas in fact we live steeped in its burning layers.”

God’s grace isn’t metered out to us in tiny portions at fixed times or hoarded behind closed doors, we dwell in it.

Not only is His grace devastatingly lavish, but it actively seeks us out, even if we try to step off the road.

God our Father, may we love You in all things and above all things and reach the joy You have prepared for us beyond all our imagining. We ask this through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

All things counter, original, spare, strange

2008-08-14T19:29:00.001-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times August 14, 2008]

For though the fig tree blossom not nor fruit be on the vines, though the yield of the olive fail and the terraces produce no nourishment, though the flocks disappear from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet will I rejoice in the Lord and exult in my saving God. God, my Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet swift as those of hinds and enables me to go upon the heights. Hab. 3:17-19

“There’s an amazing view when you get around the corner,” the woman ahead of me on the trail offers by way of encouragement. “Thanks,” I squeak out, “but I think I’ll wait ‘til I get to the top and be surprised.”

This is not a gentle trail through the woods; I’m clinging to an iron rung bolted to the cliff with a 250-foot drop to the ocean below, watching my son Chris hug the rock face and inch carefully around the corner on a ledge a few inches wide.

Chris is not afraid. He moves confidently forward to the hike leader waiting on the other side. He knows someone fell here a few years ago and died, but his step remains firm, his eyes trustingly on the leader.

As I follow him across, the words of the prophet Habakkuk rise unbidden to my lips. He makes my feet swift as a hind’s and sets me safe on the heights.

We safely reached the summit, where the views of Mt. Desert Island’s granite crags and the Atlantic surf were as magnificent as promised. God’s creation spread out before our eyes, sparkling in the sun.

On the bus ride back to camp, Chris is still marveling at the experience. “Were you scared?” asked a younger camper. “No, I knew if I fell the leader would catch me,” he declared authoritatively.

I am struck by his assurance. What makes it so easy for him and hard for me? I know I’m not alone in my struggles; the prophets and psalmists alike struggled with trust and doubt.

My imagination runs rampant. Like Habakkuk, I am full of “what ifs?” What if the fig tree failed to blossom or the flocks vanished from the fold? What if my foot were to slip? What if I couldn’t catch Christopher?

Just like I inched along the cliff face hoping to delight in the incredible view at the end, amidst all the uncertainties of life, Habakkuk moves forward in trust, rejoicing in his saving God.

Clinging to the mountainside, I was acutely aware of my physical frailties. My strength alone might not be enough to hold me up.

Opening my breviary the next morning, the memory of the cliff and the words of Psalm 51 provoked a deeper awareness of my spiritual imperfections: “My offenses truly I know them, and my sin is always before me.” Here, too, the psalmist seeks the remedy of “rejoicing and gladness.”

I suspect Chris' secret is the same as the psalmists and prophets — joy. He is attentive to God’s wondrous creation, to God in all things and experiences.

Like priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, Chris delights in all he discovers along the way — dusty trails, breathtaking views, fruit on the vines or not. He trusts it will all be marvelous.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise him.

From Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.

Where are the prophets among us?

2008-08-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times August 7, 2008]

The lion has roared; who will not fear? The Lord God has spoken; who can but prophesy? Amos 3:8

He was still on the corner of Canal and Chartres in New Orleans where I’d seen him on my visit five years before — ensconced on a folding chair, wearing a multicolored umbrella hat, and wielding a bullhorn. “Repent! Return to the Lord and he will save you,” he boomed in the cool April air.

The streets were empty in the early morning and I could hear him for blocks as I walked briskly off to satisfy my craving for a beignet slathered in powdered sugar. “Repent.” Later in the day, the street din would drown out his words, and parents would cross the street with their children to avoid the crazy preacher. Oblivious to his audience, or lack thereof, he continued to stay on message and decry the sinful ways of the world. “Turn to the Lord.”

I resisted crossing the street, but still felt slightly uncomfortable each time I passed by, my conscience itching at the edges. His words sounded harsh against the riotous jazz playing in New Orleans’ French Quarter, a prickly counterpoint to my twice daily indulgence in Cafe du Monde’s sweet fried dough.

As the haunting words of the prophet Amos poured forth at daily Mass a few weeks ago, the face of the New Orleans street preacher, incongruous hat and all, surfaced before my eyes. And I felt that same faint unease return.

Would I have dismissed Amos as a well meaning, but slightly demented soul on a street corner? Should I have been paying attention on that street corner in New Orleans?

Prophets, even those confronting people and events long past, can be hard to listen to. Isaiah promises destruction to an Israel that has strayed from God’s ways: Rebels and sinners alike shall be crushed; those who desert the Lord shall be consumed.

I tried to banish the unease that Amos’ words evoked by taking refuge in their historicity, crossing not just to the other side of the street, but to the other side of the chasm of time. I am not in Israel in the 8th century before Christ, nor are the warriors of Assyria assembled against me. Even so, the historical distance doesn’t quite dispel my interior qualms.

What do you mean by crushing my people, and grinding down the poor when they look to you? — the Lord asks Israel through Isaiah. It is a question that is as apt for me, perhaps, as it was for ancient Israel.

Amos and Isaiah’s original audiences are long gone. Yet courtesy of the Scriptures, they, like my street corner prophet, remain at their task, their message proclaimed heedless of their listeners’ presence or discomfort.

Where are the prophets among us now? Surely we still have need of their reminders to face God. Next time I hear a prophet preaching repentance, whether his words are drifting down the street or down the centuries, I will turn to the Lord — and listen.

Almighty Father, let your light so penetrate our minds, that walking by your commandments we may always follow you, our leader and guide. We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Column: Martyrs: Some face lions, others...

2008-07-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times July 24, 2008]

“You do not know what you are asking.” Jesus answered. “Can you drink the cup that I am going to drink?” James and John
replied, “We can.” Mt 20:22

I missed the sign on the door. “Enter at your own risk. Wake time: Never!” Still, in my second year of parenting teenaged sons, I was not taken entirely unaware when my Sunday morning foray into my youngest son’s room was met with a churlish, “What time is it?” Ten a.m. and we’re leaving for Mass in just under an hour. Things got a little frosty after that.

Chris’ face is an open book, and without a word (since he was not speaking to me) he let me know all the way to the church he was not pleased. He plopped down in the front pew and gave God the silent treatment as well. Not a note, not a word passed his lips.

I refrained from commenting, though I (silently) beseeched the Spirit for fortitude. As we reach the point in the creed, “by the power of the Holy Spirit, He was born of the Virgin Mary,” I noticed movement to my right. As I bow, so does my wordless son. It’s as if he can’t help himself. Chris mutely sits, stands and kneels with the rest of us.

The look Chris shot me during the sign of peace was not conciliatory, but he did voluntarily go to Communion. As the last note of the recessional rang out, he snagged my car keys and headed for the door. It would be another hour before he gave over torturing me and apologized.

My parish frequently sings the Litany of the Saints, and each time we reach Felicity and Perpetua, I wonder if I could die for the faith as these mothers did. Could I drink this cup if presented to me? In Matthew’s Gospel, James and John are certain. I’m not — at least not until Chris put me to the test. It would have been easier to let him sleep.

Martyr comes from the Greek root martys — or witness. While we associate it with death for the faith, its original sense is that of testifying publicly, or of a spectator at a trial. In the Acts of the Apostles, the word is used not only to describe Stephen’s death at the hands of the mob, but to refer to those who watched his death.

While I may never know if I could follow the martyrs to my own death, I learned from Chris that I could join their company in modest ways.

Perpetua and her companions’ behavior was such that their prison warden became a Christian. Chris bows, stands and kneels because this community and I have been martyrs for him, our faith made visible in our movements.

Like those who watched Stephen die, faithful to the end, I was a witness to Chris’ struggle with faith, and God’s ultimate victory. He may be angry with me, he may be caught in a battle between God and his pride, but he goes forward to meet Christ in the Eucharist, and says, “Amen.” I am humbled; we are both martyrs.

In recalling the early martyrs for the second century Church at Corinth, St. Clement enjoins them to “go straight to the glorious venerable norm which is our tradition.” Martyrdom is what we do — some face lions, others, tired teens.

He may not have been thinking of mothers or teens in the 21st century, but I take hope in his words and hope that my weekly martyrdoms and theirs will be as Clement hoped: “acceptable in the sight of Him who made us.”

Father, you sanctified the Church of Rome with the blood of its first martyrs. May we find strength from their courage and rejoice in their triumph.
We ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Column: Camp Ignatius

2008-07-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times July 17, 2008]

He instructed them to take nothing for their journey except a staff – no bread, no haversack, no coppers for their purses. They were to wear sandals but he added, “Do not take a spare tunic.” Mk 6: 8-9

As summer approached, the stack of letters on my desk grew. “Dear Michael and Chris, welcome to camp!” they began, and were inevitably followed by lists: when to come and leave, what to bring, what to leave home, what new and exciting things you will learn. Sailing camp, day camp, golf camp…the calendar filled up.

Finally, the letter I’d been waiting for arrived. “Dear Michelle, we are pleased to welcome you to Eastern Point,” complete with its own list of where’s, when’s and what’s. I’m headed off – not to sail or hike or work on my putting – but for an eight-day silent retreat.

Last week, as I packed to leave, it occurred to me I was embarking on an experience not so different from my sons. I was going, as my snarky 14-year-old put it, to God camp. The brochure might as well have read: Camp Ignatius — 500 years of experience in helping people find God in all things. Deepen your relationship with God — opportunities to practice simplicity and stillness offered daily.

Instead of the counselors assigned to cheer on the campers, to keep them from drowning and make sure they go to bed at a reasonable hour, I get a spiritual director. She offers guidance for my times of prayer — both the formal hours and the informal moments where the Holy Spirit decides to open my eyes in the midst of a walk, makes sure I come up for air periodically and insists I don’t get up too early.

What do we need to bring? The kids’ camp letters are clear: sunscreen and swimsuits top every list. It’s left to me to discern what belongs in my bags. One summer I gave another retreatant a ride home. As I stuffed two bulging bags, a pillow and a stack of books into the trunk, my passenger tucked one small bag behind the front seat. This year I pack my sandals, and leave the extra tunic and books behind.

Every camp reminds campers to leave cell phones and electronics home, and to put their name on everything. On retreat, the electronic paraphernalia of modern life is equally unwelcome, but the simplicity we are called to on retreat goes further than surrendering these material conveniences.

For this short time we leave behind our names, professions, communities and responsibilities. I have no idea if the man sitting next to me at Mass is a Bishop or high school teacher – I’ve been on retreat with both – and it doesn’t matter. We are all here to let God see us simply as we are, not as how we are cloaked in the world.

All this is profound practice for the ultimate moment when we face God at the end of this life, alone and stripped of all that we have and all that we think we are. Jesuit Walter Ciszek recalled realizing as he faced a firing squad, “in a fraction of a second I would stand before God, dumbfounded and unprepared” and how acutely aware he was in that moment that no matter who we are and how we’ve lived, we are finally utterly dependent on God for our redemption.

The kids and I are all back from our summer camp sojourns. We’re all three sun burnt around the edges, and perhaps a tad less dependent on our electronics and a bit more on the God who made us.

Lord God, by whom our lives are governed with unfailing wisdom and love, take away from us all that is harmful and give us all that will be for our good. We make our prayer through Christ our Lord. Amen.

Column: No matter the time, God is here and now

2008-07-11T14:28:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times July 10, 2008]

And another said, “I will follow you, Lord, but first let me say farewell to my family at home.” Jesus said, “No one who sets a hand to the plow and looks to what was left behind is fit for the kingdom of God.” Lk. 9:61-62

Every summer my parents would pour six sleepy kids and the dog into our turquoise unair-conditioned station wagon and drive us north through the cool morning hours to camp on the shores of Lake Michigan.

There were no video games, iPods or DVD players to while away the long drive. Instead, we played word games and tormented our siblings — undoubtedly leading my mother to contemplate the prophet Habakkuk: “How long, O Lord, will I call for help, and You will not hear? I cry out to You, ‘Violence!’ Yet You do not save.”

When these delights failed, we’d plead with my father: “How long?”

“Two more hours!” he would tease us, no matter how close we really were.

Yesterday, in the early morning coolness, I climbed into my tiny car for a summer sojourn. This trip there were no little brothers to annoy (or be annoyed by) and no dog panting in the back seat but a full complement of electronic devices to guide and entertain me.

Still, old habits die hard. I automatically brought up the directions on my navigation system. How much longer? “2 hrs.” shone on my dash.

Unlike my dad, the car wasn’t trying to tease me. But it occurred to me that its answer — while more precise — wasn’t any more helpful.

Would I get there any faster by knowing how much time is left? My mind seemed more on my destination than on my location, the journey just a means to an end. Was I like the disciple in this passage from Luke — looking to the furrows behind me, or worried about what lies ahead, but not present here and now? A bit chastened, I turned off the guidance.

Last winter I wrote a review of Nancy McGuire’s An Infinity of Little Hours, an account of the lives of five Carthusian novices. Carthusians seek to keep their hearts utterly open to God in each moment, to live, as they say, hic et nunc, here and now. I could empathize with the novices’ struggles to keep their eyes on God where He is — here and now.

Luke’s account of the hesitant disciple implies the contest is not a new one. Evagrius, a fourth century monastic, called it the noonday demon — acedia. It tempted a monk to watch the clock, “to gaze carefully at the sun to determine how far it stands from the ninth hour.”

We can look to the wisdom of the desert monastics for a way to drive out these time-obsessed spirits.

Amma Syncletica, herself a desert hermit of the early Church, advised reciting the psalms when acedia crept in the door. The psalmists call out to God in the moment, and are certain of His reply. “When he calls I shall answer: I am with you,” says Psalm 91 — not “I was here” or “I will come” but “I am here” — now.

When I returned home, I tucked a few lines from “Burnt Norton,” T.S. Eliot’s magnificent meditation on time, into my breviary at Psalm 91. Both are gentle reminders that even when I am preyed upon by time’s demons, God is ever here. Hic et nunc.

Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

T. S. Eliot

Lord God,
Open our hearts to Your grace.
Let it go before us and be with us,
that we may always be intent upon doing Your will.
We make our prayer through our Lord Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Column: Imprudent Lights

2008-06-19T17:49:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times June 19, 2008]

I have called to you, Lord; hasten to help me!
Hear my voice when I cry to you.
Let my prayer arise before you like incense…[Ps. 141:1-2]

Lit by Santa Fe’s late afternoon sun, the cathedral facade shimmered in the heat like melted gold. Walking through the warm ochre stone arches and into the cool interior, I joined a stream of tourists, hoping perhaps to see what inspired Willa Cather’s fictional archbishop.

What I was looking for wasn’t listed on the brochure that the charming docent at the door offered. Instead, I followed a trickle of locals to a small chapel tucked away to the side of the main altar, in what remained of the original adobe church. Flickering in the dimness, a veritable constellation of candles surrounded a rococo altar in which was enshrined a four-century-old Madonna.

I lit a candle, setting it amidst its tiny companions: prayers of remembrance, hope, thanksgiving and mercy rising like incense to mingle with the steady light of Christ, present on the altar. I knelt, as I have so many times before, in churches as far distant as Rome and as close as my parents’ parish, and prayed for the repose of my husband’s soul.

It’s getting harder to find a church where I can light a candle for Tom. I understand why — it’s not prudent to leave matches and flames unattended in a church. Still, I miss these liminal prayer spaces, and find electric candles that light with the drop of a coin or the flip of a switch to be unsatisfying substitutes.

Candles are sacramentals, tangible signs of God’s care for us, pointing to a reality beyond the reach of our seemingly sophisticated world. While the electric versions reproduce the most fundamental feature of the real thing — they light up — my sense of a real candle’s sacramental nature encompasses far more than the light it produces.

Candles are not safe. Prayer is an immoderate exercise, too. As Annie Dillard points out in her essay “Polar Expeditions,” if we truly grasped how encounters with God in prayer could change us, it would be “madness to wear ladies’ straw hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews.”

A burning candle is transformed from something thoroughly solid and bounded, into something ethereal and unseen. Our lives also should be oriented to what is unseen, to what is to come. When its time is up, the electric simulacrum goes out, unchanged by the experience.

Like our prayers, real candles require a bit of effort to start, and like God’s grace, even when you blow them out, a burning ember remains, ready to spring to life with the barest breath. God’s love is always present, burning beneath the surface even when we try to smother it. There is no off switch.

Real flames flicker unpredictably, a potent reminder that God’s response to our prayers may be beyond our capacity to imagine or anticipate. In their capricious light, we can see only dimly, as in St. Paul’s mirror.

We don’t pray alone, the Church prays with us and for us, and unceasingly. The multitude of candles that burn on even as I turn to leave, reassures that my prayers will not be forgotten.

Candles are risky, unpredictable things, but then so is prayer. We never know what God’s grace might make of us if we were only willing to cast prudence aside, light a candle and say a prayer.

Lord,
may the helper, the Spirit who comes from You,
fill our hearts with light
and lead us to all truth,
as Your Son promised,
for He lives and reigns with You and
the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Column: When Worlds Collide - Science intersects with faith

2008-06-12T17:39:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times June 12, 2008]

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.”
Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!”
Jn 20:27-28

“When Worlds Collide” sounds like the title of a campy 1950s science fiction film, which it is. But it could be the perfect title for my biography. Colliding worlds are my lot in life. My trajectory crisscrosses the orbits of family, students, science and faith. Most days I succeed in avoiding astronomical catastrophes, but last week two of my worlds came brushing past each other at warp speed. Science and God, reason and faith, intersected in the question: Is God truly present to us, here and now?

Early Saturday morning, at a conference in Santa Fe, N.M., a science writer whirled us through a tour of her new book. She ended by showing us evidence suggesting spiritual experiences are localized in one part of the brain. Religious people, she remarked, experience these moments as the presence of God, but it is just your neural network firing in a particular way. Science proves it. God is not here.

As it happens, it was the vigil of Corpus Christi and some of the late afternoon chatter in the plaza was about the upcoming Eucharistic procession through the streets. My scientist’s ears pricked up at the comment: “…They did a DNA test and it proved that it was Christ’s own blood in the chalice.” Science proves it. God is here.

Where was faith in all this? The science writer wants me to believe there is no one to have faith in; the murmurs in the streets seem to say science has made faith unnecessary.

This serendipitous juxtaposition of believers and unbelievers looking to science to address matters of faith sent me in prayer to the moment in the Gospels where faith and empirical evidence collide in the person of Thomas.

The scientist in me sympathizes with St. Thomas’ desire for proof he can literally lay his hands on: “Unless I can put my hand into his side, I refuse to believe.” Christ offers him the certainty of the experiment. But was the experiment alone sufficient to convince him? I wonder. John’s Gospel does not even tell us whether Thomas took Jesus up on the offer.

I think the mere appearance of a wounded man claiming to have risen from the dead would not have been enough to convince Thomas of the resurrection. He was instead confronted with a man he already knew intimately in life and death. To believe in Jesus risen, he had to have already known Jesus alive, known His voice and heard His Word. The tangible evidence could only take him so far, without the experience of God, without the existence of faith.

Scientific evidence may show that certain parts of our brains fire when we have a transcendent experience, but it is faith that tells us that this is God working through His own marvelous creation, touching our hearts through our minds. Not surprisingly, without faith, you might think it’s just your neurons.

The DNA proof of God hinges on faith as well. If you don’t have a sample of DNA known to come from Jesus, you can’t match it. We need to have already had an experience of God, a certain knowledge of God, to prove God in this way. What is this, but faith?

We believe. Not in spite of science, not because of science, but because we have encountered Christ, in Word and Flesh, and He has blessed us with faith.

Father,
Keep before us the wisdom and love
You have revealed in your Son.
Help us to be like Him
In word and deed,
For He lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Columns: God of My Daily Routine

2008-05-29T17:12:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times May 29, 2008]

Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” [Gn 28:16-17]

It was late, the sun had already set, and Jacob was tired enough to pillow his head on a rock - only to wake the next day from a dream of angels and ladders with the awestruck realization that he was in the presence of the Lord. Most of my mornings don’t begin quite this dramatically. Dawn more often finds me at the kitchen counter with a cup of tea, suspended in stillness before the kids scramble down their bunk bed ladders. But I am beginning to realize that in this mundane moment, I am no less in the presence of God than Jacob was.

I’m tired enough these days to pull up a handy rock and sleep, but no matter how exhausted I am, and how many papers remain to grade, my last fifteen waking minutes are sacrosanct. I use them as St. Ignatius advised - to look at my day with God.

The practice is called the examen, and begins with asking God to open my eyes to see my day as He might see it. I look for the times where I have failed to recognize God, where I have failed to follow Him, but I ask equally to be shown where God has revealed His strength, His presence, and His love to me.

God is not always where I expect, and sometimes I miss His trace the first time round. At the end of a very long day last week, the place God chose to show Himself at work in my life was my cup of tea. Recalling my first bracing sip that morning, and the warmth of the mug in my hand, I became aware that God had subtly offered me strength and ease for the difficult day I did not know was about to unfold.

In his reflection “God of My Daily Routine”, Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner hopes in his life to “see the few precious instances when the grace of Your love has succeeded in stealing into an obscure corner of my life”. The examen enabled me to see God slipping into my day in the corner of my kitchen. Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it.

Rahner goes on to remind us “if there is any path at all on which I can approach You, it must lead through the middle of my very ordinary daily life.” God is unlikely to reveal His role for me in the salvation of His people quite as grandly as he did for Jacob, yet a plan He does have. I am encouraged to keep rummaging through my routine days, looking for the path, trying to avoid the inevitable bumps and potholes, and alert to the unexpectedly sacred places.

Five hundred years ago, St. Ignatius advised overextended Jesuits that while they might neglect their breviary, never forgo making the examen. Our lives are no less busy today. Take Ignatius’ advice. Sit with God each night and ask Him to let you see the world around you as nothing less than His house and the gates of grace.

Touch my heart with this grace, O Lord. When I reach out in joy or in sorrow for the things of this world, grant that through them I may know and love You, their Maker and final home. You who are Love itself, give me the grace of love, give me Yourself, so that all my days may finally empty into the one day of Your eternal Life. Amen. [ from Karl Rahner, SJ's reflection, "The God of My Routine" in Encounters in Silence]

The photo is of the ceiling in Sant' Ignazio di Loyola a Campo Marzio. c. Br. Lawrence Lew, OP.

Column: Mary - Acceptance and obedience were not blind

2008-05-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times May 15, 2008]

My soul magnifies the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my savior;
so tenderly has he looked upon his servant,
humble as she is.
For from this forth
all generations will count me blessed,
so wonderfully has he dealt with me,
the Lord, the mighty one.
[Lk 1:46-48]

Rebellion is not a word that most of us would use to describe Mary, the Mother of God. In her response to the angel Gabriel, “I am the handmaid of the Lord, let your will be done in me.” she becomes for us the very model of submission to the will of God. Yet Maryam, the Gospels name her, a name which can be translated as “rebellion”.

Then, as now, Mary was a common name. Perhaps as many as one girl in four was named Maryam in first century Palestine, in honor of Miriam, prophet to Israel in the desert and the sister of Moses and Aaron. As any parent who has thumbed through books of baby names and searched the family tree for just the right name for a son or daughter knows, our choice embodies our hopes and dreams for the new child. What parent - then or now - hopes for rebellion?

The earliest Christian writers found it hard to imagine that any parent, let alone the parents of the Blessed Virgin, would give a child such an unsuitable name, and went to great lengths to find any other meaning besides that given in the book of the prophet Ezra: “rebellion”.

Could it be derived from the Aramaic mar or Lord and mean “Lady”? Or perhaps from the Hebrew for bitter, maror? In the fifth century, St. Jerome suggested, “mar” meant drop or star, and gave us Mary’s title as “Stella Maris” or Star of the Sea.

In truth, the origins of the name Miriam are lost in antiquity, and for the most part overshadowed by the lives of the women who bore it: Miriam, who led Israel rejoicing in its freedom; Mary, the virgin who bore a son to free us all; Mary of Magdala, who first carried the news of a risen Christ.

I’m not bothered by the possibility that the Virgin Mother wore the name “rebellion”, I find it to be a better mirror of the mystery of God at work in her and in us than “beautiful one” or “Lady”.

Mary shows me how to surrender to God, not in her ultimate words, “let your will be done in me,” but in her first moment of hesitation, “But how can this be?” Hers was not the surrender of unquestioning docility. Nor was it an inevitable surrender to an overwhelming power. Hers was the greater and more courageous surrender. A surrender of her free will, in the face of her doubts and amidst the seeds of rebellion.

At times I have doubts; at times I rebel. But I look to Mary and understand that uninformed obedience is not what is required of me, nor will God force me to do His bidding. I can, like Mary, ask to be shown the task and then to be granted the courage, the strength, the grace to trust God to provide all I will need along the way.

Just as her Son brought us life through death, it somehow seems fitting that we should learn surrender through “rebellion”, through Maryam, the handmaid of the Lord.

Photo c. 2007 by Br. Lawrence, OP. St. Mary's Church in Nottingham, UK.

Column: Litanies remind; God is with us

2008-05-08T18:11:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times May 8, 2008]

All you winds, bless the Lord.
Fire and heat, bless the Lord.
Lightnings and clouds, bless the Lord.
All you birds of the air, bless the Lord.
All you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord.
You sons of men, bless the Lord.
[Dn:65-66,73,80-82]

Thunder was rumbling ominously outside, the air heavy with impending tragedy. Chris, my 10-year-old, materialized in the kitchen.

“I think Rufus is dead, Mom.” Rufus is his hamster.

“What makes you think that?”

“He didn’t eat dinner and he’s not breathing.”

Rufus is downright ancient for a hamster, and unlike pre-teen boys, food is not always the first thing on his mind, so the lack of appetite was not, itself, worrisome. The not-breathing, however … I dried my hands on a towel and went to check. Requiescat in pacem, Rufus.

The next morning dawned bright and clear. While his brother prepared a box for Rufus’ mortal remains, Chris and his friends planned the ceremony.

Chris takes prayer seriously...

Read the rest of the column at the Catholic Standard & Times...

More Resources: Morning Prayer and St. Hilary

2008-04-24T19:10:00.000-07:00

People discover the Church's Liturgy of the Hours in many ways. An easy to use daily online psalter ("book" of psalms) is maintained by Universalis. The site is Roman Catholic, but British, so will not quite match what is in the American liturgy. If you just want to try the Hours, it's a a great spot to start. Print out one day's morning prayer (or night prayer) and tuck it somewhere to pray each day. If you want to experience the richness and variety that the Church provides for each day and season without getting lost in the ribbons and markers, a short version of the Hours is easy to follow.

St. Hilary was bishop of Poitiers in the middle of the 4th century. He is considered one of the Church's pre-eminent teachers and earned the sobriquet malleus Arianorum ("hammer against Arianism") for his dogged defense against the Arian heresies. He is reputed to have been the first Christian Latin hymnist - but the hymns themselves appear to be lost in antiquity.

The illustration depicts the ordination of St. Hilary and is from a 14th century manuscript.

Column: Don’t wait for ‘the right room’ to pray

2008-04-23T19:20:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times April 24, 2008]

But when you pray, go to your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will repay you. [Mt 6:6]

My brother John lives in Houston, where he doesn’t see The Catholic Standard & Times. That means I can write about him without fear of retribution — I hope.

Despite being separated by a time zone and more than 1,000 miles, John and I share a practice of prayer. Every morning at roughly the same time, we pray the Morning Prayer from the Liturgy of the Hours, the daily round of psalms and readings that the Church gives us to “make holy the day.”

But wait. Before you envision this faithful father of two young boys kneeling in a quiet, candlelit chapel with his prayer book, I need to tell you where John prays: locked in the bathroom — while the dog barks at the door and the kids are chasing each other down the stairs.

Admittedly, the bathroom is not the first place that comes to my mind when I contemplate this passage from Matthew’s Gospel. My idea of a good place to pray is decidedly more traditional.

A favored space for me is three floors up in the balcony of a chapel redolent of a century’s worth of prayer and incense, with a well worn breviary in hand. Alas, that is an hour-and-a-half drive from my house. Still, when I sit to pray each night, keeping one ear open for a kid needing a glass of water and playing tug-of-war with the cat for the ribbon markers in my breviary, I often long for that silent, secret spot.

Hard as it may to be to concede that my baby brother knows something I don’t, this glimpse into John’s prayer-life reminded me that we can idealize prayer. We imagine that prayer belongs only in certain places, and requires particular things.

We want our rosary, or that particular prayer book. We wait until we can get to church or for the bells to ring at noon. The conditions have to be just right. Instead of being present to God in the time and place where we are now, we pine for the setting of our dreams.

St. Hilary, the bishop of Poitiers in the 4th century, reflecting on this passage in Matthew, tells us not to worry if we don’t have the right room, or even a door to shut: “We are asked to pray with the bedroom door closed, as it were, and we are taught to pour out prayer in every place. The saints’ prayers were undertaken in the presence of wild animals, in prisons, in flames, from the depths of the sea and the belly of the beast.”

If Jonah could pray in the grumbling stomach of a whale, why shouldn’t John pray in the bathroom?

John doesn’t put off prayer until the right time or place. He doesn’t confine his relationship with God to the traditional sacred spaces, but pours out his prayers in the place he has.

I learn from him to rejoice in the space that I do have for prayer — kids, cats and dogs at the door notwithstanding.

Father,
Let the gift of Your life continue to grow in us
drawing us from death to faith, hope and love.
Keep us alive in Christ Jesus.
Keep us watchful in prayer and true to His teaching
until Your glory is revealed in us.
Grant this through Christ, our Lord.
Amen.

More information about St. Hilary and the Liturgy of the Hours is here.

More Resources: St. Ignatius and Praying with your Imagination

2008-04-10T14:32:00.000-07:00

Creighton University has a short introduction to praying with your imagination, as well as a series of Ignatian contemplations on different scripture passages.

Or try this audio series introducing Ignatian prayer produced by the British Jesuits.

Read more about the life of St. Ignatius.

Column: Let God Escape the Confines of the Holy Cards

2008-04-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times April 10, 2008]

He is like a shepherd feeding his flock, gathering lambs in his arms, holding them against his breast and leading to their rest the mother ewes. [Is 40:10]

My 75 year-old father’s faint call for help drifted over the top of the hill.

The clang of the kitchen garden’s iron gate echoed behind me as I pounded down the vineyard steps to the back pasture, worst-case scenarios flashing through my mind. Ducking under the huge cypress that shades the gates, I was momentarily taken aback to find my father on his feet and apparently fine.

“Here — take her.” He thrust a wet, bloody bundle of wool over the fence at me and jogged back down the hill. Heedless of my white shirt, I cradled a terrified newborn lamb against my chest, feeling her pounding heart slow as I held her close. Meanwhile, my father was trying, without much success, to corral her mother as she struggled to deliver my charge’s twin.

Holy cards of the Good Shepherd favor white robes, fluffy lambs and bucolic scenery. After my summer sojourn as a shepherdess, I realized we’d been sold the sanitized version. Newborn lambs are not fluffy and white, the ewes do not always trot sweetly along at your side, and those white robes will never be the same after a day in the pasture.

Our urbanized culture pulls a misty, nostalgic curtain over Isaiah’s images, impeding our ability to use this gate to enter into the mystery of God’s relationship with us. We become like the people that St. Gregory the Great once chided in a sermon about the Good Shepherd: “foolish travelers who are so distracted by the pleasant meadows … that they forget where they are going.”

In his Spiritual Exercises, St. Ignatius, the founder of the Jesuits, offers us a remedy for our tendency to fasten onto the pleasant superficialities of the rich and enduring images in Scripture: Pray with our imagination.

Ignatius encourages us to ask God for the grace to enter into the scene, itself. Don’t merely read a passage from Scripture, but take a part in it. Engage all your senses. Historical accuracy is not the point; opening yourself to hearing God at work in your own history is.

Slowly read the verse from Isaiah. Who are you in this encounter? Who else is there? What are you doing?

Smell the hay. Hear the ewe bleating for her lamb. Feel the dust tickle your nose. See the Good Shepherd try to charm the panicked ewe to His side — and never mind that he is wearing khaki shorts and a trout fishing t-shirt. Share His joy as He brings new life safely into being.

What does God want you to know? Ask God to reveal His will for you as the scene unfolds.

Ignatius challenges us to let ourselves be surprised by God in these lively, yet prayerful, encounters. Before the summer of the sheep, I had never quite understood how hard it was to lead a ewe. Now, when I pray with this passage, I wonder how hard God finds it to lead me.

Let God escape the confines of the holy cards. We need to move beyond our static, two-dimensional images of Creator, Redeemer and Spirit, and experience the reality of these Persons active in our lives.

Use your imagination. Allow the Word to become flesh in you.

Almighty God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, faith in Your word is the way to wisdom, and to ponder Your divine plan is to grow in the truth. Open our eyes to Your deeds, our ears to the sound of Your call, so that our every act may increase our sharing in the life You have offered us. Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.

More Resources: "Laundry and Liturgy" and Kathleen Norris

2008-04-02T19:51:00.000-07:00

Kathleen Norris is a poet and the author of several books. Her essay, The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work' was originally a lecture, given in 1998 at St. Mary's College in Indiana.

Column: Who Wants to Do the Dishes?

2008-03-27T19:44:00.000-07:00

[This column appeared in the Catholic Standard & Times March 27, 2008]

When they climbed out on shore, they saw a charcoal fire with fish on it and bread. Jesus said to them, “Bring some of the fish you just caught.” So Simon Peter went over and dragged the net ashore full of one hundred fifty-three large fish. Even though there were so many, the net was not torn. Jesus said to them, “Come, have breakfast.” [Jn 21:9-12]

It’s nearly 6 p.m. and the lab is dark. My students have gathered up their things and retreated to the dining halls for a well-deserved meal. I’m in the small departmental kitchen, up to my elbows in hot, soapy water, washing the mugs we used at the mid-afternoon break.

“You could use styrofoam cups,” offers a colleague, clearly perplexed at the sight of the department chair doing the dishes. My offhanded, “We’re trying to be green” satisfies her, though truthfully, the environment is the least of my reasons for taking on this mundane chore.

How else would I have known how many of my students this year drink milk, not coffee? Do they like chocolate chip or lemon cookies? Each week I brew less coffee and make an effort to pick up a quart of milk.

Slowly, over the course of the semester, I grow to anticipate what they need — I hold the signs in my hands, they’re not tossed aside in the trash. It’s in my power not to do the dishes, but I suspect I’m missing something critical if I don’t.

As I read this passage from John, I am caught not so much by the miracle of the groaning net, as I am by Jesus’ anticipation of the needs of the men He had called to serve His body, His Church.

The fire is lit, there is bread waiting — made ready with His own hands, not called down like manna from heaven. “Come, have breakfast.” Appended to a Gospel rich in theological reflection on the mysteries of the Eucharist and the mystery of the Incarnation, I wonder what inspired the author to record this decidedly unmiraculous encounter, this unadorned invitation.

In her essay “The Quotidian Mysteries: Laundry, Liturgy and ‘Women’s Work,’” Kathleen Norris remembers being struck how, in the Mass, “homage was being paid to the lowly truth that we human beings must wash the dishes after we eat and drink. The chalice, which had held the very blood of Christ, was no exception.”

She reflects that our culture’s ideal self aspires to be above the doing of “humble, everyday tasks.” If we must wash the dishes, we want to make the work as undemanding as possible — get paper plates and toss them. Let someone else take care of the trash.

I suspect that the early Christians hearing John’s Gospel struggled as much as we do with the uninspiring chores of daily life — with loaves of bread that do not multiply and nets that do not fill with fish at a word. And so John’s heady and mystical Gospel ends by reminding us of the sacredness of the quotidian, of the daily.

We follow Christ not only through His passion, death and resurrection, but in the everyday ways we tend to each other’s needs. “Come, have breakfast.”

As we join the Apostles in encountering the risen Lord in our daily lives, may we be inspired by Christ’s example to become quotidian mystics. Finding God in the dishes, the laundry and the making of breakfast.

God our Father,
work is your gift to us,
a call to reach new heights
by using our talents for the good of all.
Guide us as we work and teach us to live
in the spirit that has made us your sons and daughters,
in the love that has made us brothers and sisters.
Grant this through Christ our Lord. Amen.