All Souls, Many of Whom Are Dear to Me

All Souls Day.

Indeed, it is the beginning of a month dedicated especially to prayer for the souls of our faithfully departed brothers and sisters. I am glad to have a month, because the older I get, the more loved ones and friends I have who have passed from this present life onto the final journey from death to eternity, and into the mysterious "refiner's fire" through which God's mercy brings them to Himself.

I want to remember them all, and to be remembered by them.

Lord, grant to those who have gone before us eternal rest and peace in Your presence, and at our journey's end bring us also to You, that we might all "merrily meet" in the fullness of Your joy.

Mercy Beyond Our Sight

Georges Rouault, Crown of Thorns

Mental illness is so complicated and so difficult for people to perceive even within themselves, because it afflicts the organic components that are involved with the great human capacities of knowledge, judgment, and freedom. These afflictions touch upon the way we regard ourselves and present ourselves to others.

For this reason, they can be especially destructive. I know this only too well. I know how much my own life has been drawn back from the edge, how often my survival has been a "close call."

I also know -- and still weep for -- people I have loved who didn't survive, whose lives were shattered beyond our sight and beyond this world. Their loss leaves a wound in me, and in others, that will last as long as our journey through this present age.

These wounds will remain open, but their affliction is ultimately made of love, and of a raw hope that the mercy of God really is beyond anything we can imagine or conceive.

Hope in the Face of Death

Marko Rupnik, mosaic (detail) of crucified Jesus

My hope in the face of death is Jesus.

My hope is that I will recognize Jesus in my own death: He who died for me and who "dies with me" -- really it's more correct to say that I am going to "die His death."

The drama of life and death is to abandon myself totally and completely to Him, or at least to throw my whole self -- however wildly and desperately -- upon His infinite mercy.

For me, hope in the face of death doesn't come from trying to isolate my "I" exclusively in the spiritual aspect of myself, while suppressing and devaluing the whole reality of being a bodily person. Sometimes we imagine that in death we become angels, and the human body is shed like a casing that never really belonged to us.

But that is not who we are.

I am a bodily person. My spiritual, immortal soul is also by nature the form of my body. My body is an aspect of me. That is why death, in itself, is such an impenetrable mystery.

But Jesus transforms death, and my hope is that in dying I will "lose myself" only to discover myself fully in Him. In death I shall "lose" my body of this present age in order to live fully, face to face with Infinite Love, as a member of Christ's mystical body (a member of "the Church Triumphant").

This is my hope.

The ultimate fullness of His victory will therefore include my own resurrection, so that the God who is Love might indeed be all, in all.

Something Has Happened

We are going to die.

Let's just take our human hearts and confront them with this stark fact.

Each of us has a heart, with all its aspirations and desires, hopes and persistence, all its wanting and not yet being satisfied. Where does death fit into the picture?

If any of us were given a choice between death and total fulfillment of the heart -- that elusive thing called happiness -- we know what we would choose.

We want permanent happiness.

But everyone who has ever lived has ended up dead, and so will each one of us. Still, my heart -- that stubborn thing -- insists on wanting and seeking permanent happiness. The whole world lures us with the promise of happiness. But it is as if we are trapped and cannot get there.

Either our hearts and the whole universe are a lie, or happiness does exist, but we cannot achieve it, we cannot find it. As Kafka said, "the destination exists but there is no road."

Is this the dilemma? "Unto dust you shall return" -- is this the final word on human existence?

Is it?

"No," says the human heart. In the midst of conflicting circumstances and no perceivable hope, the heart still expects happiness. And so we keep on going.

Why?

There is a whispering in the depths of every human heart. Something has happened. No living human being has entirely lost the memory of the echo of that secret: Something has happened. Already the heart is hiddenly drawn forth.

Something has happened.

The mystery of grace opens the heart to this hope. And the eyes that look upon reality and history discover the fact that confirms it: A man has risen from the dead. He has himself died and destroyed death for all of us, and in rising has glorified the dust. This fact is called Christianity.

It is not Christianity unless it is a fact. A myth about a dying and rising redeemer to comfort our sentiments or symbolize some vague afterlife is not Christianity. Nor is Christianity the story of an ethical teacher who died for his beliefs and left us a lasting inspiration.

Christianity is a fact: Happiness became a man.

"That-Mystery-For-Which-Our-Hearts-Have-Been-Made" has become a man -- a man who lived and died and rose from the dead.

And this man gathered other men around him and began of movement of life in history that continues to this day -- an identifiable movement of life that can be seen and heard and touched: the "Church," ekklesia, the "gathering," the community of people who adhere to him through space and time unto this very day.

We have entered upon a season of remembering, but also a season of hope. We are moving toward death. We are returning to dust. But something has happened to the dust. The dust has been transfigured by Glory.

The truth, the reality, the fact about the dust is that it has been changed: even as dust, even as weakness and disappointment, even as frustration, even as death, it has been changed. It has become the road to happiness because Happiness Himself has taken it as His own.

My dust. He has taken my dust as His very own.

And I seek to walk in silence, to focus, to withdraw from distraction, to sacrifice ordinary comforts in order to listen more carefully to that heart where the whispering continues: Something has happened. Something has happened. Something has happened.

Something REALLY Happens

We are called by God to a new birth. The struggle of this life is the mysterious and dramatic transformation by which mortal, broken human beings become children of God in Jesus Christ.

But there is so much that I cannot see yet, that I don't understand. So much struggle that seems futile, because I'm so small. I'm like the dying seed in the earth. I can't imagine the fruit that will emerge from my being broken open and emptied. The truth of life is this passing through death to resurrection, and even when we follow this passage with trust in Jesus, the whole "death" thing is still dark.

God lifts us up to His Kingdom, where "glory" is the radiance of Infinite Love. It sounds great on paper, but suffering reminds me that this transformation is something that happens to me. I am afraid, I feel powerless, I need to be carried. God is a consuming Fire -- and I believe that this fire is love and mercy, but I need a tenderness, a gentle presence, a great inspiration, an implacable dedication, and a unique sympathy for me, as a person, so that I can give myself and let myself be carried by God's fire.

From the depths of His own heart pouring out His love on the cross, Jesus entrusts each of us to His mother. "When Jesus saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing beside her, He said to His mother, ‘Woman, behold your son.’ Then He said to the disciple, ‘Behold your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home" (John 19:26-27). Every word Jesus speaks from the cross is relevant to the whole mystery of our salvation. If Jesus really matters for every single person, then we must recognize that the gift of His love encompasses every person being entrusted to this woman.

Mary is my mother. Even when I forget, she doesn't forget. She remains at the cross till the end, and so she remains with me. She has always a mother's heart for me, for you, for everyone. Through her we learn to be children. Through her we learn to let go of all the fear.

Mary, help me in the dark. Be with me at the hour of my death, and through all the moments of my dying. Remind me that I am loved. Remind me that I am small and that you are carrying me, with a tenderness that won't let go.

Edith Stein: Light in the Darkness of the World

Today the Roman calendar observes the memorial of St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, known in the world as Edith Stein (1891-1942). Hers is a great story, from her Jewish roots, through atheism, to the search for truth in philosophy, to conversion to Christ in the Catholic Church, to teaching and advocating the dignity and vocation of women, to the cloister of Carmel where she continued to write philosophical and spiritual works, and finally to Auschwitz where she gave her life.

Edith Stein is a special saint and helper for the world we live in today. Her death in the Holocaust links her forever to her own Jewish people, whose endurance through all of history remains a mysterious sign of the irrevocable faithfulness of the gifts and the call of God (see Romans 11:29). She is also a martyr of charity, a witness to God's love for the human person, and to the fact that no state or society or human idea has the right to build itself on the dead bodies of other innocent human beings.

And especially, she is one of the children of Carmel, who wear the mantle of Elijah and listen for the still, small voice of the Lord, who know the hunger for God and the fire that comes from heaven. She knows what it means to search, and to find. She also knows the darkness -- the terrible affliction in this past century of a world that cannot find God and cannot find satisfaction or hope in anything else, a world that protests against its own nothingness by an endless spiral of violence.

She knows the darkness, and she knows that God is present there, not to be grasped by our human powers, but to reveal Himself as the companion of our weakness who leads us on hidden pathways through faith, hope, and love.

She knows human life in its frailty, summoned by the Mystery of God infinitely beyond itself, but also carried by Him day by day in the conquest of fear and the promise of hope. Her prayer speaks to everyone who travels the path of life:

"O my God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You. Enkindle Your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me. I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon now closes down, a new prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace" (Edith Stein [St. Teresa Benedicta of the Cross]).

Jesus, Death... and Taxes

And so, it's April 15th. Less than two hours to go.

If you are an American, no further comment is necessary. You know that today is a day of penance, even when it doesn't fall during Holy Week. Of course, not everyone waits until the last minute. Maybe you filed weeks ago. Maybe you're getting a refund.

Still, today is a day that we all must remember the fragility of our lives at the hands of the powers of this world. Even those who benefit from the system know that it is a ponderous, ambivalent, and sometimes capricious patron.

They say that there are two things that cannot be avoided in this life: Death and Taxes. It seems to me not insignificant that the One who embraced death for us all began His life by being enrolled in the census. The Savior of the world was born in Bethlehem with the help of the Roman imperial bureaucracy and its tax system.

Joseph the Builder paid taxes. Jesus paid them too, in the many years of His quiet labor. When God took human nature, He became one of the multitude in the empire of Caesar. He Himself bid us to pay lawful taxes, to "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's" (Mark 12:17).

So today, even as we recognize Caesar's authority to tax our money, we remember also that we must render to God what belongs to God, our consciences. Yet God seems so far away when the forces of the world loom over us. It would seem like nothing for worldly power to crush the human conscience if it could not corrupt it.

And if there were nothing but worldly power and then death, what hope would we have? Where would we, who sin for the sake of convenience, find the strength to adhere to truth at all costs?

Only Jesus has defeated death, and in so doing has affirmed that the relationship of the human person to God is greater than every earthly power. Our strength is in Him.

Cherry Blossoms and Holy Week Together: Must I Be Sad?

If I take their picture, will they last forever?

The cherry blossoms are finally in their glory.

I saw the pictures from the banks of the Potomac river in Washington D.C., but we have them here too, 70 miles away, lining Main Street Front Royal and popping up in clusters, here and there, all over town.

They are always a sign that Spring is taking hold. Some types have the cherry streaks, but many are bright white, as if the touch of warm air has transformed the very snow into flowers.

I realize that the lovely weather of recent days is going to cool off this week, and even bring some frost. Poor folk in the northeast and midwest are even supposed to get more snow! Oh, but it will melt right up.

While life bursts all around us, we walk the path of Holy Week. Perhaps that seems incongruous. Spring has finally come, and now we must be gloomy and think about death?

At this time of year, life is new and fresh and full of promise, but only for a season. The promise is fulfilled in growth and fruit and harvest, and then there is the sleep of Winter again. The beauty of things wounds us with longing. It whispers "forever" to our hearts and then it fades. Perhaps we should just not think about all that and simply enjoy the flowers. Still, the flowers will fade. The time will pass. The "forever" that life whispers... where in this world can we find it?

Holy Week is not a time to brood upon death. Death haunts us all the time (whether we brood or not). Death presses everywhere against the limits of our lives, in the exhaustion of our paltry loves, in the inexorable advance of weakness as all the seasons pass and the beauties fade.

Holy Week does not come to haunt us with death. It comes to awaken us to a greater hope.

Mothers of the Secret Pain

Today, I would like to tell a story about an event that happened some years ago.

It is pertinent to what many of us in the United States commemorated with sorrow, prayer, and penance last week. But it also pertains to a reality that is worldwide.

Its a story about the mysterious and enduring bond between a mother and her child.

Some would have us believe that this bond can be cast aside or terminated by a procedure that in reality is a terrible act of violence. This act, known as abortion, succeeds in killing an innocent human being.

But it fails, utterly, to break the bond between the mother and child, a bond that is more profound than physical death.

The mother remains, in the depths of herself, mother of the child that never sees daylight. She remains a mother, and she lives with this fact no matter how much she may deny it, and even if no one else knows about it. The relationship remains; it is greater than any human power, and it cannot be unmade by any human power.

These mothers are everywhere; they live on your street, they pass you on the sidewalk or in the aisles of the grocery story, they are your co-workers, they are sitting in the subways you ride, they are at the gym, the restaurant, the tennis court, the pool. They are in every crowded room, in the building where you work, they are your doctors, lawyers, teachers, classmates, they are members of your church, they are your friends.

They are often accomplished women; they may be full of warmth, genuine affection, and empathy. They may be social, outgoing, witty, expressive and full of laughter and smiles. They hide from us their dreams and their tears. Sometimes they succeed in blocking it from their own awareness for years. But it never goes away.

Millions of these people wander through all the world: the mothers of the lost, the mothers of the nameless ones. We hear statistics, and we should remember that behind every one of those numbers there is a mother who has failed, and who carries the weight of that failure. It has become her awful burden. But it also remains as a possibility for hope.

The relationship between mother and child remains, and so there is the possibility for reconciliation and healing. Still, the mother needs help. She needs someone to listen to the agony and sorrow that pour out of her soul. She needs to know that she is loved, not in a condescending way, but in a humble companionship that affirms that we all depend on an ineffable and inexhaustible mercy.

I hesitate to tell this story, because it touches upon a kind of suffering so profound and so personal that I do not wish to presume to expose anyone's pain "from the outside." I tell this story only because I am willing to share the burden with them, and walk with them on the road to healing.

There are roads to healing, and I believe that we must devote much energy and sacrifice to building up these roads and being companions with those who are traveling them. We must indeed seek out so many who don't even know these roads exist. There are so many who bury their anguish, distract themselves, and pass through life with a dark sense that their loss is forever, that they carry a deep and excruciating pain that must remain hidden, that they cannot speak about even to themselves.

But there are roads to healing, and places of healing. We must all do what we can to help people find the way. We must invite them to be with us and to walk with us on the path of Love. But there is no place on this path for the self-righteous, for we all stumble, and we all fail in our responsibility to accept and bring to fruition the gifts that have been given to us.

We cannot "help" anyone except out of the awareness that we ourselves need forgiveness and healing for so many things. Our task is not to put ourselves forward as superior to others, but rather to indicate--in poverty and humility, but also with unshakable conviction--where hope can be found.

Who am I to speak of any of this? I'm just a poor man with a blog, a disabled man, still crushed by the fact that he is incapable of doing the job he loves. What do I have to offer? I've tasted the bitterness of life, but I have been healed and wounded (in a different way) by Mercy; I have a heart, I can listen, I am not shocked or surprised by anything, and I condemn no one.

I know that every person I meet is broken and yet loved by an Infinite Love. I haven't always known this. I've had to learn it, and I continue to learn it every day. This story is about a particular moment in this learning process, a moment that has grown deeper with time and the unfolding of events. Here is the story:

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student living in Texas, I used to meet on Saturday mornings with a church group. We would pray the Rosary together in front of the local Women's Health Clinic. It was a small building with a path from the sidewalk directly to the front door. Next to it was a parking lot.

We were gathering in a public space in front of the clinic to pray. We also brought literature from a nearby Crisis Pregnancy Center, where some of us had connections. The brochures of the center were not shocking or upsetting. They offered other possibilities, concrete possibilities for pregnant mothers facing all sorts of difficulties. They offered committed personal support, as well as financial and other life-situation support, real support for the mother and her child.

Many pregnant mothers are driven to desperation because they don't know that there are people who will stand by them and help them. And it can be very difficult to reach these mothers to offer this kind of help. For us, the only practical way was to approach, gently, the women who were walking on the sidewalk from the parking lot to the clinic entrance, listen to them and talk with them if possible, or at least hope that they would take the brochure and consider it.

What we had to offer was real help, from a network of good and loving people. Its sad this offer was sometimes misunderstood, and that it was necessary to present it in such an awkward manner. But here were these women, these pregnant mothers, wrestling with so many pressures and influences: the pressures of insecurity and self-image, of society's expectations, or even the pressure of those who were supposed to be loving and taking care of them. Or perhaps they were ashamed, or angry, or afraid, or simply allowing themselves to believe the lie, and falling into the abyss of violence that opens up under the thin veneer of apparently easy solutions offered by this brutal and manipulative society. In such circumstances, one must risk offering help, even at the price of being awkward or misunderstood.

Not many women came to this particular clinic on Saturday mornings, as I remember. Still we prayed. Sometimes our turnout was small too. On this one Saturday morning, it was just myself and a little Hispanic woman who barely spoke English. After a little while, she told me that she had to go.

It would just be me, alone, with the brochures. It hardly seemed worth staying. But before she left, the woman held out a card to me and said, "take this."

The card had a picture of Jesus on it, patterned after the painting of St. Faustina, with the inscription "Jesus I trust in You." There were prayers on the back of the card. The image was of the blood and water pouring forth from the heart of Jesus. The image of the Divine Mercy, the inexhaustible fountain of forgiveness and healing. Mercy.

Today, this icon, its prayers, and the chaplet of mercy are central to my life. But back then I did not know much. I thought, "Oh, another one of these cards; I have some of these at home and I really don't need...." But I took the card and thanked her. I wanted to be polite. After a moment of fiddling with the card, I stuck it in my back pocket and forgot about it.

Really, I just wanted to go home. I was not an experienced "sidewalk counselor" and I am not confrontational by nature. As I mentioned before, offering this literature was awkward. It was a gesture all to easily misunderstood.

Then a car pulled into the lot and parked. A woman got out of the car and began walking towards the clinic. I was terrified. "Why am I here by myself!?" I thought. But somewhere in the midst of all this I remembered that I was not alone. I represented the Pregnancy Center; I was there on behalf of a community of people who cherished the mother and her child, and were dedicated to fostering this relationship--with friendship and with material assistance--from the beginning. So I held out my trembling hand....

The woman was smartly dressed, and walked with a confident stride. She was probably in her thirties. I felt a certain relief just looking at her. And then she gave me something like a smile, and said, "Oh you don't need to worry about me. I'm just here for a pregnancy test." She looked at me with a bright, benevolent face and nodded to me.

I won't deny that I breathed a sigh of relief. She seemed kind, and very self-assured. A few minutes later she came out the door, and seemed to nod and smile at me again. I smiled back as she walked toward the parking lot. And I remained standing there, with my brochures and my rosary beads, looking at the clinic and thinking about how I really should be going home. The place was closing soon and there wasn't any reason to hang around....

"Excuse me," I heard suddenly, from the parking lot. "Excuse me, I want to ask you a question."

I looked over at the parking lot, and there she was, the nice woman who had come for a pregnancy test. She was sitting in her car with her window down. She must have been waiting in the car for several minutes, but I had not noticed.

"Sure," I replied.

"Who the hell do you think you are?"

 I was taken aback. "Sorry, what?" I replied, a little confused.

The kindness and the smile were gone. Instead it was controlled (but very strong) anger and confrontation. "Who the hell do you think you are?" She yelled from the car.

Oh boy, I was thinking. This lady sat in the car for five minutes and then decided to have an argument with me? As I said, I'm not the confrontation type, but I knew my facts and I was ready to have an argument if that's what she wanted. So I walked toward the car in the parking lot and said something like, "What do you mean?"

The woman's features had changed. Her expression was full of righteous anger, and she was positively intimidating to this graduate school kid who spent most of his time reading books. Still, I went right up to the window of her car.

"Who the hell do you think you are?" She roared at me. "Trying to impose your beliefs on other people!"

I can't really explain what happened inside me at that moment. Part of it, frankly, was that I didn't want to get into a verbal slugging match with this lady. She was angry with me, I thought. But there was also something else; something inside me gave me the sense that this frequently hashed out "argument" that seemed about to begin wasn't really an argument. It was something else.

Who do I think I am? I wondered. Not much, but I am here to represent the pregnancy center. I don't  even work at the pregnancy center, but I'm here to deliver their invitation, their offer of love.

And then some very gentle, unpremeditated words came out of my mouth. I spoke without any tint of argument, and I realized that I was speaking sincerely: "We are here to offer opportunities for the mother and the child. All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

She was not impressed, and continued to speak angry and confrontational words that I don't remember. Again and again I said (as if I were somehow being moved to say it), "All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

Her anger began to abate slightly. "Well," she said, "You don't sound like most pro-lifers I run into!"

I was not going to go down that road. I only had one thing to say, and every time I said it, it came straight from the heart and filled with some mysterious compassion that was not my own. Love.

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

"Well," she said, "if more pro-lifers talked like you, maybe people would listen." She had calmed down, and was making an effort to continue her remonstrative tone.

I didn't know anything about who she may have encountered in the past. I just kept listening to her, and spoke quietly about giving help and love and support to the mother and the child. I was just a kid barely out of college who didn't know much about life, whose own heart was crying out for mercy, leaning at the car window of a professional, accomplished woman who looked like she could have been any of the women that I see every day.

It seemed like she was having a burst of temper about issues and people who bothered her. But she was cooling off. It was clear that, really, she was a nice lady.

She was just a human person. 

I was someone who gave out literature for the pregnancy center. I didn't work there. I was someone who read (and occasionally wrote) articles, and voted pro-life. I also prayed and carried signs. I'd prayed at many clinic buildings, but someone else was almost always giving out literature, trying to communicate with the women, the mothers. All of these were worthwhile activities.

I knew the issues. I had read many things. I certainly had empathy for the poor women, in a kind of abstract way. 

But I had no experience whatsoever to prepare me for what was about to happen. I had no idea.... 

"All we want to do is to love both the mother and her child."

The falling water came suddenly, like the bursting of a dam. The water gushed. Suddenly this woman was crying and sobbing, crying with a deep sadness, weeping, sobbing. I was stunned. What was happening? I had never in my life seen a person weep with such desperation and pain and sorrow.

I said nothing, but I found that I was not "uncomfortable" or embarrassed. I simply stayed there with her, present to her, a companion to her anguish. At some point I had begun to realize that grace was at work. This was grace. I was a stupid sinner, but it didn't matter. The Holy Spirit wasn't being picky. God wanted this woman to know that she was loved.

She slowly struggled, attempting to regain the control that she had practiced for so long. She struggled, kept weeping, then breathed and tried to speak to me.

"When I was... ... ... in high school... ... ... ... ... I had... ... ... ... I had an abortion."

And she wept more. And with the tears she continued, "my parents... I was so afraid... I just couldn't tell my parents... I couldn't...."

Then she looked at me with her great wet eyes and asked, "What can I do?"

I didn't know anything about the beautiful ministries that help women to find healing after abortion (see links below). This was many years ago; I'm not sure what was even available for something like this. I certainly didn't know about it. I stood in front of the unimaginable pain of another person who was seeking something from me. Where had it all come from?

"Love the mother and the child."

Love. Was it really so powerful, after all? Was this what was at the root of everything, this starvation for real love? What would we discover if we could all see behind the faces of one another for a moment? How poor we are in front of each other. We want to love and be loved, but the hunger seems overwhelming. Its not surprising that we are so afraid of life, so afraid of love, so afraid of one another. Such a vast hunger. How can we be fed? What do we have to give?

"Ask God to forgive you," I said, "pray to God and ask Him for forgiveness." The words came very simply. Ask God.

And then I suddenly remembered. The little Hispanic lady. She gave a card with the image of Divine Mercy. The image of Jesus. It was in my back pocket. I grabbed it.

"Here," I said. "Take this. Pray to Jesus. Ask Jesus to forgive you."

"I will," she answered, looking at the card, at that Face. "Thank you."

"I'll pray for you," I said.

"Thank you." And she drove away. I don't remember, but its possible that the motor had been running all along.

She drove off into the enormous city, so many years ago. I never saw her or heard anything about her again. I am ashamed to say that, over these many years, I have too often forgotten to pray for her, for this woman, this broken mother whose name I never knew. I pray for her now.

Since then I've come to know quite a few women who have had abortions. They are among my friends and family. I probably know many more than I realize, because there are so many, and it remains such a secret pain in a society where "everything is permitted but nothing is forgiven."

I've also learned about the tremendous healing work done by ministries such as Project Rachel and Rachel's Vineyard (please click these links, look at them, and go to them if you or someone you know has need). Forgiveness, reconciliation, and healing really can happen for mothers, and also for their husbands or boyfriends (i.e. fathers), or anyone else who has shared in this kind of trauma.

Please pray for my friend in the parking lot on that day long ago, and for all mothers of the secret pain.

Death Opens To Something Completely New

But how do we Christians respond to th[e] question of death?

We respond with faith in God,

with a look firm with hope

founded on the Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So death opens to life,

to eternal life,

which is not an infinite doubling of the present time

but something completely new.

Faith tells us that the true immortality to which we aspire

is not an idea, a concept,

but a relation of full communion with the living God:

it is being in his hands, in his love,

and becoming in him one with all our brothers and sisters

that he has created and redeemed,

with the whole of creation.

Our hope, then, rests in God’s love

which shines on the Cross of Christ....

This is life that has reached its fullness,

life in God;

it is a life that now we can only glimpse

as one glimpses calm skies through the clouds.

Benedict XVI (Homily, 11/4/12)

There Are No Shortcuts

I have nothing to say. I have been staring at a blank screen for over an hour. Staring. Really.

Lots of ideas have gone through my mind. The Amerisphere is full of ideas, because we have all been provoked in recent days. Why do these mass killings keep happening? People argue about gun laws. People argue about whether or not these shooters are "mentally ill." People talk about our violent society, our narcissistic culture, the effects of violent video games, the degradation of masculinity, social isolation, family breakdowns, and so on.

Some of these reflections have value. Some of them are rather silly. Many of them are, in part, ways of distracting ourselves. We want to reduce the fundamental questions of life to social and political problems that can be fixed somehow.

Let's figure out what causes this, and fix it!

But many of us are just shaken up and confused. I work in the office of a children's center. Eileen teaches there. We have a six year old daughter. My gosh! There are no words for this.

We have prayers and sorrow and deep sympathy for the families, certainly.

We are also reminded of our own vulnerability, how we have invested ourselves so profoundly in relationships and circumstances that seem to hang by a thread. We are reminded of the presence of the faces we love so much, how dear they are to us, but also how fragile everything is...how easily we might lose our loved ones, even our children.

"Why do people have to die? Why this darkness, this absence, this wrenching separation from someone I love?"

The big questions. We all experience them sooner or later. Even if we are convinced that we "know the answers," our guts will still be torn by their pain.

Christians need to remember this.

Of course, our faith reassures us that there is eternal life, that death has been conquered. There is comfort here; indeed, when life seems incomprehensible we are reminded that our trust in Jesus must be radical and total. We must trust, because it is through love that faith holds on in the most obscure places, the inexpressibly personal places where ideas can seem so cold.

[If I continue writing words here, it is only with the understanding that I'm just stammering, and that I hardly know what I'm talking about. If I write, its only to point to a reality that is infinitely more important than anything I can say.]

Christianity is not "cheap answers to the fundamental questions of life." Christianity is a Person who loves us and endures our vulnerability to the very end, transforming it from within. The "answer" is the way He embraces each of our lives. We are changed by living with Him. We are not changed by a satisfying explanation. We are changed by Him.

There are no shortcuts. We must live through everything, trusting in Him. Especially when we feel powerless and He seems absent. We may not even feel any trust, but still we must trust, we must beg to be able to trust, we must continue to hope even if it all seems wild and impossible. Because He Himself really endures with us all the tears, the separations, the crushed hearts. Really.

He has made it all His own.

For the Children who Died....

In prayer and remembrance.

Sandy Hook Elementary School, Newtown, Connecticut.

December 14, 2012.

For the children who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the teachers and staff who died, Jesus have mercy.

For the parents in their grief, Jesus have mercy.

For the families who have endured loss, Jesus have mercy.

For the children who witnessed this horror, Jesus have mercy.

Jesus have mercy, and protect the sanctuaries of the child from all this monstrous violence.

Protect the classroom, and every learning environment.

Protect the home, and the families who build the home.

Protect that inner, sacred space of the child's emerging awareness.

Protect children in every place where they are vulnerable and defenseless. Grant that they might find love, and be nurtured, and supported in every step of their growth.

Protect every child, from the dawn, in that intimate space beneath the heart of his or her mother.

Protect the mother and the child, and the sanctity and inviolability of their relationship, which is always a gift from God.

Give us the strength to love and support the lives of every mother and child, from the beginning, in whatever crises they may face.

Protect the children, from the beginning, from their first moment through all the moments of their epiphany, their opening up to reality, their expression of themselves as persons, created uniquely in the image of God.

Jesus have mercy on us.

Give us hearts that cherish Your beauty reflected in every child.

Give us reverence and humility in our care for the children entrusted to us.

Help us to remember that every child belongs to You.

From whence comes this unearthly, unspeakable violence that invades the human soul, and drives it to killing? So much killing.

So much blood.

Jesus, have mercy on us all. Have mercy on the whole world.

Suffering With Us

"Bernard of Clairvaux coined the marvelous expression: Impassibilis est Deus, sed non incompassibilis—God cannot suffer, but he can suffer with. Man is worth so much to God that he himself became man in order to suffer with man in an utterly real way—in flesh and blood—as is revealed to us in the account of Jesus's Passion. Hence in all human suffering we are joined by one who experiences and carries that suffering with us; hence con-solatio is present in all suffering, the consolation of God's compassionate love" (Benedict XVI, encyclical Spe Salvi, 39).

Blessed Chiara (1971-1990): A "Light" For Us All

Today is the feast day of Blessed Chiara "Luce" Badano, an Italian girl of our own time who died of bone cancer in 1990, a few weeks short of her 19th birthday.

A devoted member of Focolare, Chiara Luce is the first person to be beatified from the "new ecclesial movements" that flourish today with so much vitality in the Church. Thus, she is a particular witness to the depth of Christian life that the following of a charism can generate.

There are many charisms in the Church, through which Christ seeks to enter the concrete circumstances of people today, especially young people. They are as various as the vast freedom of the Holy Spirit, and some are still in the process of development. What they share in common are their extraordinary fruits, and their profound obedience and love for the Church.

Chiara Luce Badano amazes me. I find myself dizzy and powerless, gasping for air in the atmosphere she inhabits. But I am also drawn in my heart, fascinated and filled with longing even in front of the things that seem frightening and incomprehensible.

I do indeed have a glimpse of my destiny in the love and sacrifice of Chiara, though I have been entrusted to a different charism, another path that leads to the same place.

I acknowledge that I am far from God, broken, and above all proud. Only the humility that trusts in the transforming presence of Christ in my life can change me. I don't know how to "imitate" a saint like this. I can only beg for the grace of Christ to awaken and deepen in me the awareness that the circumstances of my own life are His gift through which He draws me to Himself. Blessed Chiara, pray for me. Pray for us.

I offer my nothingness

so that the Holy Spirit can bestow his gifts

of love, light and peace
upon the youth;

so that everybody can understand

what a free and immense gift life is,

and how important it is to live every instant

in the fullness of God.

I feel so little and the road ahead is so arduous

that I often feel overwhelmed with pain!

But that’s the Spouse coming to meet me.

Yes, I repeat it: “If you want it Jesus, so do I”.

--Blessed Chiara Badano (1990)

In Memory of a Friend

"He didn't seem like he was depressed and was always smiling. This is shocking" (Anon).

A bright autumn day

colors

crisp

sunlight flashing on the windows.

A clear day, blue with painted hues of leaf.

I stood strong and tall

in the breezy wind

and felt life once again

like great power

from my head flowing down through me.

With large strides

I passed over the fields

drinking fountains of expansive air.

And with the red sun playing on my head,

I burst through the door

but her face was bloodless white.

I stopped, and suddenly

the October air froze on my skin.

She searched my face

with a gaze of shiny wet cheeks

and spoke your name,

and this single word

had a weight

that said everything.

Fire arose in my bones

and spread all over me

until it found my eyes.

And the sun flickered in the shadows.

              --in memoriam, jp, +october 17, 2005