Holy Week

We are at the beginning of the most special week of the year for Christendom; a week when the past becomes present, the present becomes a prayer, and the future is full of promise. It is like life itself, this week, we mustn’t shy away from the dark depths or we won’t be able to recognize the brightness of joy.

However, we shouldn’t trick ourselves into thinking that Christ’s suffering is in the past and we are only working up feelings of gratitude this week when we know the Body of Christ suffered a violent, deadly blow yesterday when bombs went off in two churches in Egypt during Palm Sunday worship. May their suffering be ours and may we join it with Christ’s suffering which leads to a glorious hope.

For those of us in RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults) this Holy Week holds a special promise and a heightened anticipation. On Saturday’s Easter Vigil we will be Confirmed and then receive the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist meal! Two Sacraments! (Some will be getting Baptized that night too so really three Sacraments)

I am in awe at the offer of so much undeserved grace and it is thrilling to think that at the end of Saturday I will literally have Christ inside me, bearing Him like the Virgin Mary bore him for nine months. I can only paraphrase Mary and say:

“Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. May it be done to me according to His word.”

I didn’t choose this path to Catholicism. Those six months of experiencing the broken, disunited nature of Christian churches, chronicled in this blog, sent me in search of something solid. I never felt like I lacked anything in the Lutheran church and am very grateful for the years I was there where the Holy Spirit was hard at work in me and in the people around me. But I was like a little kid, I only knew my home and loved it because it was my home. As I ventured out my idea of home changed; I ceased to see the church as my place, small and comfortable, but God’s place stretching out beyond my vision and understanding.

But this is Holy Week, it’s not about me so I’m going to stop musing about myself, my faith, and my journey which has got to be boring everyone to death by now and invite you all to reflect on God. Don’t think about what He is or why or who… all mysteries beyond our imaginations, but think about how He is, a loving God.

Meditate now on the love you see in the Nicene Creed as you reflect this week on Christ’s suffering, death and resurrection.

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

Healed to be a Healer

At an informal meeting over beer with several area church youth directors several years ago one of them told a story about his recent mission trip. On the drive across country in the vans a boy sent a graphic photo to a girl in another van. Somehow it was done anonymously but the girl was understandably upset and told Ric about it. Knowing this event would cloud the whole trip he had the boys come to his hotel room one at a time that night in the hopes that the one who did it would fess up and they could get it worked out. He expected to hear a lot of, it wasn’t me’s, but instead the boys began spontaneously confessing to all the things they felt guilty over that had nothing to do with the trip. For an hour he listened as the boys dumped their junk at his feet. He said it changed the whole tenor of the trip for the better and then he mused…

Maybe our Protestant churches have missed out on a powerful thing by not having the sacrament of confession.

Now that I have taken part in my first Sacrament of Reconciliation (or Sacrament of Healing or Sacrament of Penance or Sacrament of Confession) I have to say I agree with him.

But it’s not just a matter of dumping your junk.

Jesus told a weird parable about the guy who gets rid of a devil but is content to just be free of the problem and doesn’t fill the void with anything. So the devil comes back with friends and the guy is worse off than ever. As a Sacrament, Reconciliation is not just meant to make us feel better about ourselves or to give us relief from guilt but to make room in our lives for a fuller relationship with God.

To get there you have to spend some time in preparation, that’s what Lent is all about.

On three Sunday’s during Lent those of us seeking to enter the Catholic Church undergo… DUH Duh duhhhh! (that was spine-tingling music) The Scrutinies.  No doubt you’re imagining whips, chains and maybe some time for us on the rack. Sorry to disappoint you but the Scrutinies are a time of prayer and blessing. Those of us seeking to become part of the Catholic Church kneel while our sponsors beside us and the whole congregation put their hands over us while the priest prays that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to our sins and our hearts to contrition.

What a powerful blessing for anyone seeking a closer union with God.

In the first Scrutiny we ask God to reveal to us our personal sins. When we think of sin these are the kinds of things we normally think of, the personal failures and weaknesses that a deep meditation on the Ten Commandments will reveal to us. As I’ve discussed before no sin is personal in the sense that it effects only me. All sin is, at its core, damaging to relationships with both God and people. Whether we really like the sin or it makes us loath ourselves these are things that distance us from God and others so we ask God to sharpen our conscience so we can recognize them.

The next week we prayed that God reveals social sins to us. We’re not talking about using the wrong fork at the dinner table here. Social sins are those we do as a people, they’re part of the system and we blithely write them off because its not our fault, its just the way things are. Churches especially need to pray to have their eyes opened to these sins because it’s so easy for the culture of a church to become toxic, to become what an old Lutheran pastor friend used to call, The Frozen Chosen. These sins are more difficult to see but shatter love just as readily as any personal sin so God’s help is vital.

In the final Scrutiny we ask God to show us our cosmic sins. No, it’s not about all that garbage we left on the Moon nor is a study of Carl Sagan’s writings necessary. I was having a tough time putting my finger on this one until yesterday’s homily. Cosmic sins are about death but not the end-of-our-time-on-earth death…

This sin is about our living, breathing, walking around everyday death.

God made us in His image, He gave us gifts unique to each of us, He has a clear plan for how we fit into His awesome creation. That image, those gifts, that plan all combine to form a bright, good and glorious life.

LIFE!

Not mere existence, not limping along, not just happy to be here but life to its fullest. This is the life Christ came to make possible for us yet all too often out of fear, pain, doubt, or a broken past we don’t embrace this self that God intended, we shy away from the gifts lavished on us, we see ourselves as unworthy of being in His image and we don’t live that life. So we are dead.

How is this a cosmic sin? Think of Creation as a giant tapestry. If all the brightly colored threads let themselves be sewn into the picture they will be part of a thing of beauty. But imagine the threads saying things like:

“I don’t want to be red.”

“I just can’t make this pattern, it’s too hard.”

“I don’t deserve to be part of something beautiful.”

“I would rather drift on the wind on my own.”

“There’s no tapestry, there’s just the random threads that surround me.”

“The other threads aren’t doing what I want, I quit.”

It’s not just the individual thread that gets hurt, the whole tapestry is damaged. We are each here on purpose with a spectacular God-life to live that fits in with the whole of Creation so if we don’t live that life, if we are the walking dead, it is not just ourselves we are hurting but all of Creation. That sounds pretty cosmic to me.

It’s a little unnerving to spend a couple of weeks praying for your sins to be revealed to you and eye opening to seek a softened, contrite heart. I didn’t want to be but I was nervous when I went to Reconciliation. Nerves are a good thing though, tells you you’re approaching something real… important… sacred. There were no little dark booths, just two easy chairs facing each other.

Confession was a conversation… like prayer.

Absolution was awesome… like God.

I was left with the heady combination of elation and gratitude… like grace.

Before we lined up to take our turns in Reconciliation the priest reminded us that this was a Sacrament, it wasn’t just for us, it was meant to send us into the world forgiven so we could be forgivers because forgiving others is a big part of living LIFE and living it to the fullest.

 

Who Are Your Companions in Faith?

What’s in a name?

Sometimes we are named after family or friends to honor someone we know but kids are often named after someone famous or a favorite fictional character. Sometimes parents pick a name because they like the sound of it while now and then parents get really creative and make something up.

My daughter is named after a mountain.

Before we had kids Joy and I were driving through the mountains of eastern Oregon to visit family and we passed a sign for the road to Mt. Emily. Immediately Joy exclaimed that Emily is a pretty name and if we ever have a daughter we should call her Emily. So we did.

Names were important to the Jews in the Bible, they had meanings and helped define a person. On a couple occasions God even changed someones name to mark a turning point in their life, a transformation, a new identity.

In a similar way it is a tradition in the Catholic Church to pick a Confirmation name, usually chosen from among those who have been recognized as Saints by the church. Our choices could be made based on admiration, a desire to imitate, a shared passion, or someone you relate to. You don’t actually change your legal name, this is your Confirmation name, a statement that this is someone I hope to model my life on and whom I can turn to for guidance.

Of course Saints aren’t gods or substitutes for God as I have already discussed in a previous post.  The qualities Saints are known for are the qualities Christ modeled for us, therefore, what we admire in a Saint is their imitation of Christ. So it’s really all about Jesus.

The Sacrament of Confirmation is an extension and deepening of the grace of Baptism. In Confirmation we are “sealed with the gift of the Holy Spirit” and as I wrote before we are strengthened to serve. Once confirmed we will be able to participate in the Sacrament of the Eucharist so in many different ways this Confirmation marks a turning point, a transformation, a new identity and justifies a new name to remind us that what is happening is important.

I ended up with three Saints to choose from. It took me a long time to decide.

The first Saint I chose was St. Francis de Sales because he is the patron saint to writers. I admired his patience and fortitude, his struggles with family to become a priest, and the trials he endured in Switzerland to convert the Calvinists back to Catholicism. He knocked on thousands of doors and had those doors slammed in his face. He even got treed by wild dogs once and spent the night perched in the branches while the beasts prowled below. Finally he started writing pamphlets and slipped them under people’s doors. He was kind to and played with the children he came across which helped soften the parents reaction toward him so he ended up converting tens of thousands of people back to Catholicism. He even wrote a book called “Introduction to the Devout Life” written not for monks and priests but for the layman who wanted to know how to work AND be devoted to God. Add to all this the hilarious coincidence that St. Francis de Sales was bald and bearded like me and I was ready to choose him immediately. But the more I read about him the more I learned that he did not make quick decisions and instead thought it important to take his time, pray and wait for God be the sure guide. If I’m going to make this guy my patron saint I guess I’d better take his advice…

While using an Advent devotional booklet I came across my next saint, St. Philip Neri. What initially attracted me to him was he was dubbed the joyful saint and since I like to laugh, a lot, I decided to read up on the guy. Right away I found I liked him, he didn’t seek titles or the priesthood but jumped right in to serving God and the people around him as a layman. Eventually he was convinced to become a priest but sought to be a hermit. But since he had a rather unconventional church in Rome and obeyed his superiors who wanted him to stay, he became a hermit in the big city. He didn’t grouse about constant interruptions in his meditations but was famous for saying (something like) “I leave Christ to speak with Christ” whenever a need pulled him away from his prayers. He had unique ways of converting the young hipsters of his day and was always intent on showing people the supreme joy of following Christ.

Then my sponsor, Larry, said I should look into St. Charles Borromeo, a saint he was reminded of when he looked up the name of the church he was confirmed in as a boy. Right off the bat you notice his first name is the same as mine. Anyway, St. Charles dedicated himself to serving the church at a very young age and ended up in a very high and influential position in the church very quickly. He was a tireless worker, reliable and virtuous so the leadership roles kept getting heaped upon him. He became a dedicated reformer within the church and even survived an assassination attempt by a group that didn’t want things to change. He was influential in the Council of Trent that pointed out the errors of Luther and instituted many reforms. He went into deep personal debt helping people during an outbreak of the plague. His advice was sought by kings and other European leaders. If only Luther had sought to make reforms from within the church like St Charles Borromeo!

It struck me, as a Lutheran converting to Catholicism, that all three of these guys were part of the post-reformation Catholic church and all three fought against Protestantism’s ideas and influences. All three were also a challenge, a daunting challenge, to consider using as my Confirmation name.

I prayed, I read about them over and over but I still wasn’t getting any closer to picking one over another. Then I eliminated St. Charles because I did not see myself as becoming an influential part of church leadership nor was that a call I felt at all. But I was still torn, Francis or Philip, Francis or Philip, nothing was coming to me until…

Lent, that time of preparation for Easter when we seek to renew our commitment to Christ and deepen our faith, is a good time to try new ways of devotion to God. One of the things I adopted during this Lent was using the church’s little black devotional booklet on a daily basis. One of the entries talked about Saints and how, back in the day, Saints were looked on more as companions than patrons of certain activities. I had no doubt that both men would make fine companions but I also knew at the back of  my mind I would always see St. Francis de Sales as an aid to my writing which had the germ of a self serving choice hidden in it. St. Philip Neri is a challenge but also a cheerful companion that can show me how to serve as a layman and teach me how to use humor to serve the church without being foolish. So…

St. Phillip Neri it is!

I am not abandoning St. Charles Borromeo and St. Francis de Sales as friends and companions and patrons; along with St. Philip Neri maybe I should call them my Three Amigos or something. Nor will they be the last Saints I study and talk to because…

I need all the help I can get to live the Christ-life.

Is Human Life Sacred?

Stapling cardboard boxes together all day leaves a guy with plenty of time for conversation. That’s how I learned the life story of a young man in the loft above an Alaskan salmon cannery. I spent plenty of time that summer down in the cannery where you wear ear plugs to dull the racket from the machinery and conversation has to be short enough to shout directly in the ear. My day in the loft was luxury. I was dry, warm and it was quiet.

I had just graduated from college so was a young man myself but my companion was just out of high school. He was an Alaskan native from Juneau who was trying to earn enough money to buy a pinball machine so he could start a business leasing them to bars. I don’t remember his name or what tribe he belonged to but I remember his story.

He had never met his father.  His mom was a bartender and had a drinking problem, he was a result of a drunken one night stand. My own normal family life with a dad, mom and a bunch of older brothers left me reacting in shock to this admission. He shrugged, said his mom was great when she was sober and said his story was nothing compared to his sister’s. I was all ears.

One night after his mom had closed the bar and started staggering home, drunk as usual he said, she was grabbed by three sailors and dragged into an alley. She knew they were sailors in port with a merchant ship because they had been buying drinks from her in the bar that night. They beat her up, stripped her and took turns raping her. She passed out at some point in the ordeal and was found nearly dead from exposure in the morning. What with ships coming and going and her inability to describe them very well they were never caught.

“That,” he said, “is how my mom got pregnant with my sister.”

I was shocked. I was shocked that he told the story so openly and so matter-of-factly. I was shocked by the terrible circumstances, a reality I couldn’t imagine. I was also shocked by the outcome and said so.

“She got pregnant from a gang rape? Why didn’t she get an abortion?”

The look on his face told me he was the one in shock now, he even stopped putting the plastic liners in the cardboard boxes to reply.

“It wasn’t my sister’s fault!”

I was too stunned to reply. We worked in silence for awhile before changing the subject but his words “it wasn’t my sister’s fault” kept bouncing around in my head. It was at that moment that doubts in the conventional wisdom that says there are times abortion is justified and a right were formed in my mind. To this day whenever someone tries to tell me it’s good that abortion is legal I hear that guy’s words, “it wasn’t my sister’s fault.”

The Catholic teachings on the sacredness of human life are not wrapped around the issue of abortions and choice but they do inform the Church’s right-to-life stance as well as its understanding of marriage, human freedom, dignity and love. Our class on the sanctity of human life showed me these are more than just issues of our day but define who we are.

As always, it starts with God.

God created us. God decided who we are and what our purpose is. We were created with a dignity and value not tied to our life’s circumstances but inherent in who we are, a gift from God that can’t be taken away. Jesus entered into our world of circumstances, good and bad. He was born in a stable, yet his dignity and value were not diminished. This is part of why Jesus said…

“Love your enemies.”

The people that make our blood boil, that drive us to distraction, are children of God just like you and me. They have dignity, value and are loved by God. Jesus died for them too.

The problem is we live in a culture that wants to decide what is right and wrong for itself, that believes morality is something personal. Ever had someone say, “well that’s true for you but not for me”? Is truth relative? Does everybody get to decide what is true for themselves? God made us free but freedom does not consist in deciding what is right or wrong. God has established what is right and wrong and we are free to choose from his definitions, not make up our own. Our conscience is not meant to look for loopholes but to make judgments in agreement with God’s law.

Look at God’s caring presence to all creation. The abundance of our little blue planet is awesome to behold. God made life possible on this rock hurtling through space and continues to sustain it in ways we can’t even imagine. There isn’t starvation and poverty in the world because God is stingy with resources but because we are. You and I combine dirt, water, manure and light and we get… stinky mud.  When God combines them he gets abundance, green life that can feed us, house us, and leave us in awe.

God gave us life and gives us the means to live that life… with abundance. He made us in His image and our image of God is a communion of persons who perfectly love each other.

We were made to love others.

Not a love based on feelings or desires but we were made to give and thrive on authentic love, a love that seeks the best for the other person. This is why marriage is a sacrament, a sacred act within the Catholic Church, and just as God’s Trinitarian love resulted in Creation, marriages too can create new life.

Men and women do not create life out of nothing but through the process God made possible. The unique individual two people create through sexual union is therefore a result of God’s divine plan and that new life has dignity, value and a soul from the moment of conception. It’s not just a cluster of growing cells, it’s…

someones sister,

someone’s brother,

someone’s grandchild,

someone’s friend,

who all happen to be God’s child.

Our culture encourages us to focus on ourselves, our pleasures, to ask ourselves what is best for me. But we were designed to focus on others, to work for what is best for them as God defines “best.”

What makes people most fully  human?

Becoming more and more like Jesus Christ. Not an easy thing, not a thing we can do by sheer force of will. It is a lifetime of seeking God’s help, of desiring the Holy Spirit to work in our lives, of pursuing purity of heart. To be holy does not mean we are perfect but that we are actively seeking God’s holiness.

May you realize that God loves you and has given you a dignity and value no one can take away from you. May that assurance help you to see the dignity and worth of everyone around you so you may give them authentic love because you know they are your brothers and they are your sisters.

Why Become Catholic?

I love to hunt chukar with my dog Max. Max is an English Setter who hunts at a dead run and is rarely less than a quarter mile from me as he works the wind. Chukar live in steep, rocky country and their tough red legs like to climb. Where the chukar go is where Max and I go.

Imagine you’re with me. You’re no angel floating along observing things; you’re right there on the ground next to me loaded down with shotgun shells, water and gun. Max, his legs churning and his tail cracking like a whip, disappears over the top of the ridge in front of us. We climb. We push through sagebrush and step over rocks while shifting the heavy gun to a new position now and then. Our legs, lungs and hearts are screaming, you think to yourself so this is what a coronary feels like but keep climbing. Reaching the top is a triumph, we want to do a little dance but don’t dare waste the energy. Its only 40 degrees but the sweat is pouring off of us and we reach for our canteens but pause as we spot Max, a tiny white dot on the grey-green hillside, cresting the next ridge over. We follow Max.

Now imagine doing that for five hours and covering a dozen miles.  You want to shout “this is crazy!” Then we see Max standing still next to a rock outcrop, his nose stretched forward, his tail stiff as a fence post and suddenly we’re not tired. Yes he’s 300 yards away and straight uphill from us but our rubbery legs start chewing up the distance like we just got out of the truck. If we had tails they’d be wagging. As we get close we note with some satisfaction that Max’s legs are shaking. We walk past the dog following his nose, guns ready, our hearts full in our chest, ripe with anticipation. In an explosion of wings the covey flushes, our guns hit our shoulders, cheeks hard against the stock, eyes trying to focus on one bird, we don’t even hear the blasts. If we’re not too cross-eyed from the climb we might even hit one.

This may sound like the sport of fools and masochists but it occurred to me that chasing Max up and down those rough hills is a lot like following the Holy Spirit toward the Catholic Church. We follow the dog not because we like climbing hills or stumbling over rocks but because we know the dog is our only real chance of finding birds. Without the Holy Spirit I am just a fool with no chance to find anything worthwhile or true.

About six months ago I confessed that I felt called to become Catholic. I left a church I loved, disappointed friends and have hurt my wife; the hills have been steep. I’ve had a lot to learn, new understandings to grasp and different ways to master; my legs have worked hard. Just as a bird hunt would become a grind if the dog never found birds so too this spiritual hunt would wear me down without the Holy Spirit stopping on the way and pointing me toward the goal.

These stops are called rites.

Sometimes metaphors fall apart if you push them too far but this one keeps getting better. Max does all the important work, he finds the birds, points them out for me and waits until I catch up to shoot. But I don’t hand the shotgun to the dog or wait for him to catch a bird for me; I have to pay attention to his posture, make sure the gun is loaded and walk forward to flush the birds. In the same way the Holy Spirit does all the leading and pointing but there comes a time when I have to stand up and step up. That’s part of what happened in last weeks rites.

The Holy Spirit pointed, we were declared diligent, we were asked if we wanted to become part of the Church, we said yes and put our name in a book, and we were welcomed into the Catholic Church. We even shook hands with the bishop.

Just as faith isn’t merely a matter of intellectual assent but a total redefinition of who you are, becoming Catholic isn’t joining something or becoming a member but becoming something new.

Why become Catholic?

My core reasons that I stated back in August: my belief that Christ founded a united Church (not a thousand denominations) so His people would have an authoritative voice they could rely on and that such a Church would be rooted in Christ through history; those reasons have not changed. After six months of learning more about the Catholic Church and deepening my understanding of it those beliefs have become… convictions.

I know a relationship of love with God can be found in all those denominations; I also know that faith is a growth process, a journey with ups and downs, temptations and trials. I believe the Catholic Church can best lead us to grow most fully as we seek an ever closer union with God while guiding us through the many pitfalls of the world. The Catholic Church contains the whole richness of the Christian faith…

I want to be part of that wholeness.

The Holy Spirit has pointed me to the Catholic Church but I know that the rites last week or receiving the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist at the Easter Vigil will not be the end of the hunt. The Holy Spirit will take off again, speeding through draws and across ridges, over dry mountains and down long dark valleys and I, with God’s help, will keep following.

Forget your weary legs and burning lungs, the hunt of a lifetime is on!

Who Do You Trust?

“There is nothing more dangerous to the spiritual life than to wish to rule ourselves after our own way of thinking.”

St. Philip Neri

Getting Heaven Into Us

Ashes.

Sorrow. Mourning. Humility.

A celebration that something is going to die in us.

A desire to get heaven into us.

Lent.

 

We are awesome creations, full of dignity and value, a unity of body and soul, basking in harmony and freedom, having the power to know and love… but we are damaged. Our mind is clouded and our wills are weak. We suffer and die. We push each other away. God seems remote.

Wounded perfection.

We can’t be tinkered with, we can’t send away for new parts, duct tape and chewing gum are no help. Self medication makes things worse. We need to be saved.

In swoops Jesus wearing the rough cross for a cape, suffering and dying are his power, resurrection is his glory, he is our teacher, our guide, our God.

In the beginning heaven and earth overlapped in a harmony called Eden. Sundered by sin heaven and earth still wanted to intersect, that’s how things were meant to be. The Temple became a place of temporary overlap, a brief respite in a sin weary world until the true connection would arrive. And there is Christ, the fullness of that much desired intersection. Christ, the permanent and true intersection of heaven and earth, calls us to the overlap to be filled with heaven, to overflow with Christ. But there’s still…

Sin.

God doesn’t want us to be foul sinners wearing pretty Jesus costumes. He doesn’t want tarted up turds. He wants little Christs. He offers us all the gifts we need…

Love. Grace. Holy Spirit. Freedom. Sacraments. Church. Love.

The gifts have been freely given…

Respond.

Seek purity, holiness, righteousness, harmony, justice, knowledge, morality…

Eternity with God.

God isn’t some nice old guy with a long beard or a raging Zeus with thunder bolts in hand. But God is God, due all respect and honor and love and yes… fear. Dare we waltz into heaven hanging onto our sins yet hiding in our Jesus costume?

He said to him, ‘My friend, how is it that you came in here without a wedding garment?’ But he was reduced to silence. ¹³ Then the king said to his attendants, ‘Bind his hands and feet, and cast him into the darkness outside, where there will be wailing and grinding of teeth.’ ¹⁴ Many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Christs parable reminds us we are meant to come appropriately prepared, that we are to pursue virtues, seek to die to our vices, to allow the Holy Spirit to show in our lives. Yes, yes of course, no matter how holy we may become the effects of sin will  always be gnawing at us in this life. No of course we don’t earn heaven. But we are called to a moral life.

“The moral life requires grace.”

The moral life begins with loving God so it begins with a relationship. A moral life fosters relationships, preserves them even. Love is the foundation of a moral life but we need rules and laws to show us HOW love can be done in this world. Sure, love is enough in heaven but in this life we NEED moral guidance. Love without moral direction is sentimental and at the mercy of feelings. Love involves sacrifice… facing tough moral choices.

This is what Lent is all about.

Easter is coming: Christ resurrected, the intersection of heaven and earth, the place of overlap. We need to be prepared! We need to seek a change of direction and not just “give up chocolate.” Life is not a slow deterioration but a Christ guided development. We don’t want to wait to start this development, we want to get started now.

Behold, now is a very acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

Ash Wednesday reminds us our time is limited, it reminds us we are completely dependent on God and our moment is now. Lent then is a gift, a chance to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, a chance to allow heaven to blossom in our lives.

May our whole life be a celebration of Lent lived in the glory of Easter!

An Encounter With Healing

Remember the story we were told in our youth (do they still tell it in school?) of the young George Washington confessing to his father that he had cut down the cherry tree? The moral was clear: do you want to grow up to be a good person like our first president? Then always tell the truth!

How about the hilarious confession in the movie True Lies when Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character is under the influence of a truth serum and his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) grills him. The movie made sure we saw that having the truth out in the open improved their marriage.

But sometimes a confession is not beneficial as when Raskolnikov confessed to murder in Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and Punishment. Nagged by the women in his life, resentful and begrudging, seeing the confession as showing his superiority, Raskolnikov admitted to his crimes. Through the trial and the beginning of his imprisonment he looked with disdain on everyone around him including Sonia, the faithful woman who loved him and even followed him to the work camps. It wasn’t until he confessed to himself that he needed other people, that he needed their love to complete him, that he needed to love others, that his punishment and life took on any meaning.

Despite all that we have been taught, seen and experienced, that there is good in truth telling and confession, we still look at Catholic confession with fear and mistrust. To remind us of its healing intent the Church now calls it the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Confession is about restoring relationships.

We may want to object and say our sins are between us and God so there is no need for a priest to be involved. Tell us we NEED to go to the priest and we become indignant. But…

Sin is not a personal or private matter.

Christ taught us that the two greatest commandments, the two that sum up all other commandments, are: LOVE GOD and LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR. This is how God wants us to live, this is the life Jesus modeled for us, so SIN then is NOT living life this way. When we don’t put God first and when we put ourselves above the people around us we are sinning. By definition, therefore, sin harms relationships which is why it is not a personal/private matter.

The Catholic Church does not bar us from confessing our sins to God on our own, in fact, there are numerous personal prayers and daily devotions that help us do that very thing. But the Church doesn’t want us to leave it at that. Its not just me and God. I am part of the Body of Christ, a member in the sense that Paul tells us a hand is a member of our own body. When we are damaged by sin we damage the Body of Christ as well so healing must come in the context of the whole Body.

Have you ever worked on a car engine? When that frozen bolt suddenly gives and you bark your knuckles on that cold hard metal your whole body reacts. It won’t just be your knuckles that hurt and bleed, its your body that’s hurting and bleeding. In the same way it won’t just be your knuckles that heal but your body is healing.

One way we could do this with the church is to publicly confess our sins in front of our congregation… or we could sit down with a priest. As we heard in RCIA class, “a priest is better than Vegas” (as in “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas”) in that our confessions will never be told to anybody. The real key to understanding why we go to a priest for reconciliation is to remember this is a Sacrament. To quote the priest:

Sacraments are special moments of encounter with God.

What makes them special is they are given to us with both physical and spiritual elements because we are both physical and spiritual beings. So the priest, who we can see, acts in the person of Christ. We need to hear, audibly, that we are forgiven. This is a gift not a punishment.

We can object that only God can forgive sins, which the Catholic Church affirms but reminds us that Christ willed that the church should be an instrument of forgiveness on earth to help make it real to us. Speaking out loud to another real person makes our confession (and our sins) real to us. Hearing our absolution out loud makes it real to us. Being given ways to heal the damage our sin has done (penance) makes contrition real to us.

If these things are so good why to we fear and mistrust them?

We can talk about the Catholic Church and its rules or complain about priests but our rejection of this Sacrament really reveals a misunderstanding about God. Is He a God of wrath and punishment or a God of love? The Bible says “God is love” but what does that look like? It looks like Christ on the cross but how do I wrap my mind around that? Not many of us have had somebody take a bullet for us but we have all had parents so Christ’s parable of The Prodigal Son can really hit home.

Who hasn’t hurt their parent? Or if not a parent who hasn’t trod somebody else under foot to get what we want? Then comes the guilt, the sorrow, and the desire to mend the relationship. But deep down we know things will never be the same. Now imagine going back to that person we offended full of apologies but before we can get them out the person sprints to us, is so glad to see us, brushes aside our remorse and restores our relationship as if our offense had never happened. What a gift! What a miracle!

That is a picture of God. That is a picture of the Sacrament of Reconciliation. That is a picture of true healing. That is the kind of encounter with God we all want and need.

May we remember God wants to forgive us, He wants a restored relationship with us, so that we will not fear or mistrust the forgiveness He offers us through His Church.

 

On Having a Big Mouth

“One of the things that keep us at a distance from perfection is, without doubt, our tongue. For when one has gone so far as to commit no faults in speaking, the Holy Spirit Himself assures us that he is perfect. And since the worst way of speaking is to speak too much, speak little and well, little and gently, little and simply, little and charitably, little and amiably.” -St. Francis de Sales

The Presence of Life

We filed into the chapel, nervous, silent, nearly on tiptoes, but my knee popped when I genuflected. I sat on eggshells, alone in a pew built for two with the altar just there, right in front of me. On the white altar stood two candles bracketing the stand with its cross and metal beams radiating from the glass case at its center. Its called a monstrance and its meant to be a showcase, not the show itself. Inside the glass case is Christ, a tiny round wafer, a consecrated host, uneaten Communion bread, the God-of-the-cross, the presence of life. It seemed real but surreal at the same time, a paradox, so to stay paradoxical I prayed for understanding and blind faith.

My eyes wandered and found a verse on the wall, Ezekiel 36:26a

“I will give you a new heart and a new spirit I will put within you.”

That seemed like a better thing to pray for than blind faith or understanding, a new heart and spirit would change me, change my very substance even. It seemed significant that those words came from Ezekiel, the prophet of exile, the prophet of Israel’s humiliation and misery. It reminded me that my circumstances are not connected to God’s graces, there is no cause and effect, joy comes from being gifted with the Holy Spirit and not success or ease.

Our five minute class visit was over, we genuflected, some knelt with their heads touching the floor. There was more here than meets the eye.

A few days later on Sunday I stood behind a tiny old woman, she bowed then received the little wafer that had become Jesus Christ. I bowed and stepped forward, arms crossed on my chest as I do every week but this time I kept my eyes on the plate piled with beige wafers like so many poker chips, a winning haul, God’s riches there for us all. Everyone is dealt Christ’s royal flush so we can’t lose this hand unless we get up from the table and walk away or demand to be the dealer. With my eyes on the bread-become-Christ I received a blessing… a person’s voice, God’s grace present and real.

That the mysteries of the sacraments can’t be fully understood is a tricky truth. Does that mean we can decide for ourselves what they are all about? Can we confuse mystery with unknowable? Or does mystery mean that understanding doesn’t come first, faith does. If faith comes first then who do you believe?

Who do you trust?

The minute we discount the Church, that is, the people who have been guided by the Holy Spirit through the ages but guided in the context of what has come before… the second we set aside the Church and say we trust only God and the Bible we have declared…

I. Trust. My. Self.

Our interpretation of Scriptures, our judgement on which teachings are “biblical” and which are not, our personal guidance from God all become the basis of our beliefs. The Church is only trustworthy in so far as it conforms to our personal understanding. We become our own standard and our own pope. Is it any wonder there are thousands of different denominations in the world?

Our trust has been mislaid.

I don’t understand how but I trust that Christ is truly present in the Eucharist. I trust that the Eucharist is a sacrifice, that somehow I’m not just recalling to mind Christ’s death but it is being made real and present in Mass and that our sacrifices are joined with it. I trust it is truly a Holy Meal, a sacred act I must prepare for. I trust that I must wait to receive this Meal.

I don’t trust in these truths because they make sense or are easy or feel good. I trust them because they are rooted in Christ and have grown through the years with the guidance of the Holy Spirit in a Church, a Unity, a Communion of a WE and not a ME.

We look at the ancient Jewish sacrifices and shudder. So much blood, so much death. But the Hebrews saw blood as representing the presence of life so an animal sacrifice was not a loss but a communion with life.

When Jesus talked about our need to consume his blood he made many shudder and they gave up on him. They couldn’t just trust his words, they needed to understand and it separated them from their Savior.

Putting my trust outside of myself seems like a loss in so many ways and my mind wants to shudder and draw away. May the gift of being in the presence of the Way, the Truth and the Life keep me faithful and may we all seek out communion with that Life in His Church.