Jubilee Year of Mercy: The Light of God's Love and Forgiveness

Pope Francis opens the Jubilee Door of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome (see Traces magazine HERE)

"The history of sin can only be understood

in the light of God’s love and forgiveness.

Were sin the only thing that mattered,

we would be the most desperate of creatures.

But the promised triumph of Christ’s love enfolds everything in the Father’s mercy....

The Immaculate Virgin stands before us

as a privileged witness of this promise

and its fulfillment."

~Pope Francis (Angelus for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the opening of the Holy Year of Mercy, December 8, 2015)

God Seeks Us Always, but He Doesn't Force Our Love

There are many reasons why people try to escape from God.

Sometimes you just have your own agenda. You prefer your own ideas to the wisdom and love of the God who created the whole universe. You think you know better than Him regarding what you need to be happy.

Or you're just bitter. You're angry with God because of pain or the deprivations of your life. Maybe you prefer to be at a distance from Him. You want the cold solitude that lets you hold onto your own misery.

You don't want to pray because you want to avoid God, to forget Him, to run away from Him and His mercy that would change your life. And you are a free person. You can say "no" to God.

But wait... you really don’t want His mercy? Well, watch out then, because He is going to come looking for you.

Where are you going to try to hide? He is, you know, infinitely clever. He will "outwit" you. He will write straight with all your crooked lines.

But God is a lover, not a bully. Love cannot be forced; it is freedom itself. Thus the mystery of evil entails the real possibility that we might succeed in escaping from His loving embrace forever. But we will not become free and independent by escaping from God’s love. Outside of God’s love there is nothing good, true, or beautiful.

How awful.

So lift the cover from your hiding place. Turn to Him. If you are still running away, then you haven’t yet gone too far. Turn back and cry out to Him. Ask for His help, His mercy.

God helps those who ask him. He even helps those who run away, as long as they don’t refuse to come home. He helps those who do not push Him away. He helps those who have been hiding from Him, if they are willing to let themselves be found.

Do not forget God. Let yourself be found.

Make Me a Channel of Your Peace... And Give Me Stuff Too?

Let me love. Even though I ask to be loved.
Let me understand. Even though I ask to be understood.
Let me console. Even though I ask to be consoled.
Something inside me prays, "Let me give myself away." But then I don't want to let go.

I ask to be a channel of His Peace.
I ask to be an instrument of His Mercy.

But all I find inside of myself is poverty.
And I don't mean the Holy Poverty of St. Francis.

It is the emptiness of someone who loves his own life too much. Who loves himself too much. Who loves his own satisfaction too much. Who loves his own comfort too much. Who loves his own reputation too much. Who loves his own illusions too much. Who loves his own laziness too much. Who loves his own opinion too much. Who loves his own will too much.

I love my own will too much.
I would rather do things my own way.
I would rather rationalize.
I want God's will and my will.
I want to serve two Masters and love them both.

I am a divided man.
I am not St. Francis.

So what is it within me that prays, nonetheless, to be His instrument, His love, His mercy in the lives of others, and especially in the lives of those who have been entrusted to me? In spite of all my foolishness, I call myself a teacher and a mentor and a father, and yet I do not think that I am a complete hypocrite. Why is this? Is it all, then, a delusion?

No! I know something that I must share.

I have been loved, and understood, and consoled.

And the beauty of this fact has wounded my heart. So I throw myself into a confused and troubled and complicated effort to communicate this fact, that I have been loved, that we all have been loved. And somewhere I am convinced that this Love is worthy of all my trust even as I struggle in so many ways to offer myself.

So here it is, Lord, the whole mess that is me.
It is far from a perfect offering.
But You can do the impossible, so make of me what You will.
Give me the will to change.
Change what needs changing in me.
Make me a channel of Your Peace.

Let others hear these words,
these words that express my struggle with You and Your changing of me,
Let them hear these words and see my wounded soul
and wonder at Your Mercy.

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.

SAINT John Paul II, Ten Years Later

2005 was ten years ago.

It was a hard year. I was pretty sick. During Saint John Paul II's final illness, I was especially sick. I didn't realize at the time that I was on my way to getting better (temporarily). First, however, I would get much worse, to a point which I can only describe (without going into details that no one wants to hear and I don't want to recall) as abject humiliation.

It was a bumpy ride that year.

But April 2, 2005 was not a bad day. Just as thousands had gathered beneath his window in St. Peter's Square, we were all "gathered together" in a mysterious way, within ourselves, in our homes, in our churches. The whole world gathered around his bed to keep vigil and pray and say goodbye. It seemed almost tangible in those final hours that the end of human life is an opening up to God's embrace.

When he died at 9:37 PM, ten years ago, we wept. Something had come to an end. But something new also had begun.

I began praying to him almost immediately. He gained a new availability and a new closeness. He has continued to be a mentor to me, and is now so much more a companion and friend. He is an intercessor, and boy do I need him.

He left us with one final lesson before he died. He taught us how to suffer, to become powerless, to live in a physical state of "abject humiliation." He showed us that -- even in a state of total weakness and vulnerability and dependence -- the human person always remains a gift.

It's a lesson I'm still trying to learn.

But today, I recall a passage from the great encyclical Dives in Misericordia, 14. In the practice of mercy, the one who does good and the one who receives it both "give mercy" to each other.

It is good to consider this mystery of mercy as we commemorate the crucified Love of Christ who saves us through His abject humiliation, His "powerlessness" in suffering and death.

"Merciful love," John Paul II teaches, "by its essence is a creative love. In reciprocal relationships between persons merciful love is never a unilateral act or process." Even when it seems that "only one party is giving and offering, and the other only receiving and taking... in reality the one who gives is always also a beneficiary." This is true above all because we "show mercy to others, knowing that Christ accepts it as if it were shown to Himself." Mercy is different from simple philanthropy: "An act of merciful love is only really such when we are deeply convinced at the moment that we perform it that we are at the same time receiving mercy from the people who are accepting it from us." Blessed are the merciful, in that mercy is expressive of "that conversion to which Christ has shown us the way by His words and example" and draws on "the magnificent source of merciful love that has been revealed to us by Him."

Building Houses With Stone Facades

I wrote about this topic not long ago, but I decided to expand on it a little more. At first I was just going to repost it, but that never really happens. I always end up working on older posts and developing them further. So hang in there even if some of this sounds "familiar":

We have heard that the Church is made up of "saints and sinners."

It would be useful to introduce a third category: hypocrites.

The difference between the latter two is that the sinners appear just as they are, whereas the hypocrites -- while not usually trying to pass themselves off as saints (this would hardly look humble) -- spend a great deal of energy trying to convince others and themselves that they are not in the "sinner" category.

The hypocrite scrubs the outside of the cup forcefully and energetically. The world is not going to think it sees a saint, but the hope is that it will see a "good person," an admirable person, perhaps even a person who is "making progress in spiritual growth" and who therefore deserves some credit. Indeed, most hypocrites like to see themselves this way.

I know all this stuff, because I'm a huge hypocrite.

[...ENTERING JJ's SEMI-CONSCIOUS MIND...] 

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ....but I admit it, so at least I'm not like those other hypocrites who don't even care about their hypocrisy. I'm humble about my hypocrisy, so at least I'm better than them!

"Thank you, God, for not making ME like the rest of those hypocrites. I openly admit my hypocrisy. I try to be better. I'm not judgmental, not like all those other judgmental and obnoxious people; I'm not like those people over there who run the 'Smash ALL The Bad Guys NOW' website and the 'Prudence and Compassion are for Wimps' blog, oh no, NOT ME. And I'm not like all those messed up immoral people in the secular Western culture, either. I'm good, basically. l follow the Church. I pray. I'm balanced and charitable. I'm...

Wait, what's happening here? Who do I sound like? Here I am, "in the back of the church" because I want to LOOK like the repentant tax collector, and meanwhile I'm saying, "Thank God I know I'm a sinner, not like that Pharisee up there in the front. And that I'm here at least, not like all those nasty people who don't come in at all!"

That's not what the real tax collector did....~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It seems that I'm the biggest hypocrite of all, because I want to fool everyone!

I can thank God for one thing: I'm also a terrible actor! Not many people are actually fooled by me (other than myself: I'm a master at fooling myself).

People who know me can easily see the wildly incoherent mess that I am as a human being, but also the good that is mixed into it (often in qualities and actions that are not the focus of my attention, that I don't particularly nurture in my efforts to construct my outward appearance).

They see it better than I do, because I'm desperately intent on fooling myself and I always at least partially believe the self-image that I try (or feel compelled) to construct.

Thank God, there are some people who love me anyway; they love the whole "package," and put up with my blindness as they try, gently, to lead me in the right direction. For me, there's no question that my wife ranks number one on the list of these people.

It's a patient and slow and long-suffering process for these people, to chip away at this hypocrisy that pains them because they can see how much it obscures the real beauty of the one they love. It's a great work of mercy.

Of course, I know I'm not the world's only hypocrite. Of the "saints, sinners, and hypocrites," the third category is probably the largest by far.

Hypocrisy can be a complex thing. There is the kind of hypocrisy that just plain fakes exterior goodness because it provides a disguise; a deceptive exterior allows greater freedom to rip people off and do all kinds of bad things without incurring suspicion.

But then there is a kind of hypocrisy that grows out of a genuine but desperate desire: people really want to be true heroes and saints. They see that it's good, it's beautiful, it's "what the world needs from them," but a subtle discouragement has worked its way into some deep places in their souls. They realize that they can't make themselves be really, truly holy. And yet, they know that's the way they're "supposed" to be, and the way they really wish they could be.

Most of us who consider ourselves "good Christians" probably know this feeling. We try to be "good," and we wish we could be "holy," but even with all the books and retreats and spiritual practices we just can't seem to make it happen.

So we try to do it on the cheap. We try to construct ourselves into the people we think we should at least "look like." So many of us are building houses of rotting wood with stone facades. There is real goodness in us, real aspirations, real gifts, but we try to use them to decorate the outside.

And we are afraid to look any deeper than this exterior, this facade, because we want to believe in our strength; we don't want to see the naked, cold, hungry, lonely person inside that house. We are afraid of that person -- that unsolved riddle that is at the deepest core of ourselves -- because we don't know what to do with that person, and we can't imagine that anyone else would want to love that person.

I know I'm being hypocritical in this way all the time, but I suspect that my experience is not uncommon. 

Really, who among us is not, in some way, in some respect, cheating (just a little bit?) in the project of building themselves? We're fibbing or we're faking or at the very least we're hiding the messy stuff.

We're hypocrites.

Woe unto us?

What can we do? After all, our Christian vocation and mission is all about witnessing not just with words, but with our lives. So if our lives are a mess, shouldn't we at least have a strategy to try to make them look good, y'know so as to "attract people..."?

What else is there? We can't just give up completely.

I think there is another place to start. None of us want to go there, because it means "going to the margins," to the furthest existential periphery, to the greatest real poverty we know. If we don't go there, then no matter how many things we do to help other people (even poor people), nothing will really change for us. 

We must seek out that one person whom we really wish more than anything would just go away, that cold, hungry, sorrowful person inside ourselves, that poor person. The person we are trying to make disappear behind walls of hypocrisy is our own self.

That person is starving for life, gasping for breath. Let us not suffocate that person entirely. Let that person breathe. Let that person show the wounds and admit the helplessness and feel some of the aching of the endless hunger and thirst.

But also, let the light of faith touch that person. Take the risk that Jesus has really gone all the way down... down even to there. Let that person cry out to God.

Because Jesus is there. He has already passed through all of our stones. He knows us behind all our hypocrisy and all our facades. He brings His love, especially, behind the walls.

Let that place inside us where there are no illusions be a place that begs for mercy. There is that place where we recognize that we are a total need for Him, and from that place let us cry out and give the whole mess and the hypocrisy and everything else to Him.

He will build us up.

God Does Not Explain Himself, But He Promises to Stay With Us

"I will lead the blind on a way they do not know;
by paths they do not know I will guide them.
I will turn darkness into light before them,
and make crooked ways straight.

These are the things I will do,
and I will not forsake them." (Isaiah 42:16).

I love this verse. It's probably one of the sources of the well known saying, "God writes straight with crooked lines." As a person who makes so many crooked lines, I am much consoled and encouraged by God's promises and by His presence.

O Lord, I have so little vision of the mystery of my own life that we might as well call me blind. I am blind. I do not see or feel or understand the deepest works of healing that You are carrying out within my person.

You are leading me, especially and most profoundly, in those 'ways I do not know," the 'places of darkness' and all the crookedness of the wounds of my sins. You are leading me through so many secret sufferings, through the pain of my truest prayer that so often cries out for You, trembling with hunger. 

There is always this hunger, this longing for You, Lord, that seems overwhelming. Temptations pretend that there are other ways to fill this hunger, and they come from all directions. Ultimately, they pretend to offer something of You that I can grasp and make my own. But what they offer is not You (as I have learned by bitter experience). I want You. 

Where are You, O Lord? 

Baptism has made me Your adopted son, and has enabled me to live with You in the midst of Your People, my brothers and sisters in Jesus the eternal Son, "gathered" (ekklesia) throughout history and today in Your Church. The Church and the sacraments have brought me forgiveness and reconciliation, healing, growth and strength in so many ways. 

But the crushing human weight of the effects of original sin and the scars of my own broken life remain in me in ways I don't understand. I am still so blind. 

Yet You do not forsake me. You are leading me through the anguish and loneliness that come from being a broken human being who lives in broken relationships, who remains a sinner even with all he has been given, who suffers disappointment and fears death. 

Father, I am Your child in eternal life, but I am like a newborn baby even after these many years: small, helpless, crying out, and not yet able to see.... 

I am blind... perhaps in part because of Your mercy. You shield my eyes from the things You know I could not bear to see. Or You let me have a very small glimpse: just enough to know that the pain is there so that I can abandon myself to Your loving hands, and just enough to see that Jesus is here with me. 

Father, I believe that Jesus is here in the suffering, in the places that seem senseless, in the wounds that never fully heal.

God makes a way here, a way that I do not know. He does not explain these hidden ways to me, but simply asks me to trust in Him, to persevere on the path and share in the darkness and suffering that remain in me but no longer belong to me.

He has made them His sufferings. They no longer belong to me, and no longer define me, because He has taken them through love.

Therefore, I must not try to hold onto them, as if the incomprehensible depths of suffering somehow might give me a claim against God, a pretext to turn away from Him, to doubt His promise that He "will never forsake" me. I must not hold them up in God's face and say, "I accept that You exist, but I don't accept Your world" (as Ivan Karamazov says in Dostoevsky's greatest book).

My very bones cry out, "Why?" And yet as our dear late Lorenzo Albacete put it, "God doesn't give you an answer. He just shows up."

The "answer" cannot be a solution or a formula or anything that I can grasp with my mind. My mind cannot turn this darkness into light.

The "answer" is a fact that I must adhere to with my mind, with trust. This adherence is called faith. Even in the deepest darkness, I must have faith that He is here, that He has not forsaken me, that He is leading me on paths unknown.

God's answer is not a "solution" in the sense we think we want. It's not the ultimate "self-improvement" manual. Nor is it a social or political or psychological or intellectual solution.

God's answer is Love. His Love. God's answer to my anguish and loneliness is the gift of Himself.

Infinite Love doesn't "answer the question" of my pain; it is a response that is beyond all the terms I use to try to ask the question, and all the loneliness and anguish that drive the question. Still, it corresponds to all my human questions; it even intensifies those questions while inviting me to live them within this Love. Love transforms my longing, my emptiness, my wounds.

Love turns darkness into light.

____________________________________

P.S. -- God gives Himself in Jesus. He is Gift. He who is Love and Freedom can only be freely received. My human reason and freedom are respected by the God who created me in His image, as a person. Infinite Love gives Himself totally as a free gift. He wants to raise me up in this gift, giving me the capacity to receive Him and share His life.

This raises a new "question" for my reason, a profoundly practical question that I cannot escape. Should I accept this Infinite Gift? 

I can choose to say, "No."

A gift by nature is offered freely. True love by nature is the opposite of coercion; when we love someone we seek a free response of love. Clearly this must be super-eminently true for the Infinite Gift who is Love Himself.

He wants me to say, "Yes!" He will even empower me to say a "Yes" that shares forever in His life. But He will not force me to accept Him.

Therefore, I can reject Him. There is a great mystery here, because His creative love sustains me in my very being, which means that "I" can never "totally" reject Him because then I would cease to exist. I cannot exist, I cannot be "me," without depending totally on His Love that gives me my very being, and remains always the Source of "me."

Still, He makes me free. I do not have to accept His gift of Himself, His Love and His "way of love" that He has crafted to bring me to my fulfillment. I can resist Infinite Love. I can remain blind forever, because I do not want to let go of my limitations, my nothingness, my way of measuring reality which ultimately comes down to my misery and dissatisfaction. And I can spin endless rationalizations for why refuse to let go.

I can refuse to let go of my sufferings.

But why would I resist the Infinite Gift (who gives me my being) freely offering Himself to me forever? Such a resistance is not only the ultimate misuse of freedom. It is also the ultimate failure of reason. It is the victory of fear.

I cry out in the darkness, "Where am I? Who am I? Why all this pain?" and the answer is "I am with you. I will lead you. No matter how hard, I am with you!"

I am not given "explanations" about the mysterious depths of my own life. I am given Someone who is worthy of my trust. I need to let Him pick me up and carry me. He will never forsake me.

And He will open my eyes, when the time is right.

Francis: Don't "Watch Humanity from a Glass Castle"

Here are two extended memes following recent statements by Pope Francis. The first is from a recent commemoration of the 100th anniversary of an Argentinian university, where Francis speaks specifically about the role of theology, and the motivations which should govern it. The second is from a recent general audience, when the Pope once again expressed in strong terms the neglect of the elderly that plagues wealthy societies.

Mercy Has the Last Word: Remembering Luigi Giussani

The tomb of Msgr. Luigi Giussani in Milan is visited each day by hundreds of people who
bring petitions and thanksgivings for favors received, which are recorded by the cause for
his beatification. The tombstone reads, "Oh our Lady, you are the security of our hope."

I have been thinking in these days of writing more of the story of the impact that Msgr. Luigi Giussani had (and continues to have) on my life. What he gave me has remained a focus for my life, a vocational commitment, and also the source of a suffering that I have been willing to endure, and -- at times -- even embrace.

But tonight, recalling the tenth anniversary of his funeral, I desire only to represent the compelling words I posted last year, along with the picture of his simple tomb. In an era of so much celebrity worship and personality cult (even in the Church), Don Giussani was something remarkable: he was the real deal.

He still is. I'm not the only one who thinks so.

The municipality of Milan has had to move Giussani's tomb to a more accessible place in the city cemetery to accommodate the crowds of pilgrims.

And I remember the man, the teacher, speaking with such passion in the years when he was still full of physical vitality, surrounded by a pile of dog-eared books on the desk and a bottle of mineral water.

He taught us the truth. He said things like these words:

"This is the ultimate embrace of the Mystery, against which man–even the most distant, the most perverse or the most obscured, the most in the dark–cannot oppose anything, can make no objection. He can abandon it, but in so doing he abandons himself and his own good. The Mystery as mercy remains the last word even on all the awful possibilities of history.

"For this reason existence expresses itself, as ultimate ideal, in begging. The real protagonist of history is the beggar: Christ who begs for man’s heart, and man’s heart that begs for Christ."

~ Luigi Giussani

Asking For God's "Help"

You're probably wondering what Josefina's gripping hand has to do with God's help, or the scribes and Pharisees or anything else that the post below might address.

First, let me clarify that this is a reflection posted a week ago in Magnificat.

This is not the "Great Conversion Story" for the month (which I'll reproduce on the blog next month, since it's "St. Patrick") but rather a daily reflection, which I also have in the magazine from time to time.

Many people seemed to appreciate it when it came up last week, so I thought I would reproduce it here. If you read all the way through, the graphic might reveal its meaning. (Even though Jojo is older than the child indicated, she is not above throwing a tantrum... and she is certainly looked upon with love.)

We All Need Forgiveness

One word that must never be forgotten: Forgiveness. We all need forgiveness.

In these late days of January, we hold up the dignity of every human being, the uniqueness and preciousness of every human life. We cry out against the violence of our "throwaway culture" where human persons are treated like things and the most intimate relationships of human love are reduced to mere convenient arrangements between autonomous egos.

We seek justice. We hope to make a difference. We want to build up the good. But realism compels us to acknowledge that the wounds are very deep. They have many origins and many levels of affliction. People are wounded and bleeding, and what is pouring out of them is the blood of the human spirit, the resources of human vitality, hope, attachment to real life, capacity to love.

Terrible wounds. How can they possibly be healed and restored? Where is forgiveness to be found?

There is a brokenness that we see manifested in the tragic violence of abortion, that destroys innocent human life, separates mothers from their own children, and robs our society of the awareness that human dignity is rooted in the gift of God's creative love. Brokenness is manifest in euthanasia, in the brutal neglect of the poor, in pervasive contentiousness and bitter conflict, in war as a way of life.

Yet this brokenness afflicts all of us in different ways. We all try to withdraw from other persons or push them away from ourselves. We try to escape from those we are called to love. We want to evade precisely those relationships that are most real, that are constructive, challenging, and promising; those relationships that are mysteriously given but that can only live from committed and responsible freedom.

We withdraw from the promise of real love because we are afraid to give ourselves. We are afraid of the risk, the loss of ourselves in giving, the loss of a "control" that we think we can keep by our own power.

We are afraid of suffering.

We are all human beings, strange and broken and unable to put ourselves back together. And a great portion of this fragility and incapacity and anguish is not our fault. We suffer already, from physiological and psychological limitations that we inherit, from the pain of our own experiences, from illnesses, from all the wounds inflicted by the failures of others.

Yet we also know that our freedom still lives within this debilitated frame. We know that our freedom has been summoned by the promise of love, by the beauty and attraction of a fulfillment that is mysteriously made possible, by a hope that we cannot extinguish.

And we know that sometimes, to some extent, we have freely chosen to hide in the shadows of ourselves. We have refused to take the next step on the path that the light indicates to us. We have chosen to draw back into darkness.

Something of the brokenness that each of us suffers right now is our own fault. In the immensely complicated fabric of every human life there are many events and circumstances, but there is also the willful misuse of freedom. There is sin.

We have all sinned.

We all need forgiveness.

We are able to recognize so many genuine excuses for our failures, and these are factors of our lives that need attention, compassion, and healing. All of this is important, but it is not enough. We need to acknowledge and perhaps feel the touch of the unbearable weight of our own responsibility, our yielding to weakness, indulgence, distraction and our taking up of the weapons of destruction of ourselves and others. We need to acknowledge that we really are sinners.

Each one of us needs to examine his or her conscience and seek forgiveness for our sins.

When we bring this ultimate vulnerability into the open and raise it up to the One who has created us and who sustains our being, then we can discover the wonder of mercy.

God's response to our sins is Jesus. God gives Himself, and the abyss of His love is infinitely "deeper" than any of our wounds. He can heal our brokenness if we turn to Him.

If we open ourselves up, concretely, to the forgiveness of God, it will become a radiance within us, a witness -- within our wounded and broken and healing humanity -- to the gift of redeeming love that He offers to everyone. We will become instruments of His mercy.

Then our witness to the world becomes a witness to the truth in love. It is able to address with realism all the desperation and all the evil in our society because it does not condemn other human persons. Rather it is a witness of hope.

When we are deeply forgiven, we can communicate to others the ardent desire of the heart of Jesus to forgive their sins and bring healing. When we witness from within the awareness of our own poverty and total dependence upon His mercy, then it is that mercy that shines through us.

The witness to God's mercy and love is already the beginning of something new in the world. It awakens hope in hearts that God wants to touch; it brings that hope to people who may have never known it.

We all need forgiveness. People in our world today desperately need forgiveness. They don't know where to look for it. They may not even know it's possible. Yet they need it. We all share this need.

Let us not be afraid to be forgiven, to let our lives show how God responds to our need with His loving embrace.

Then He can use our hearts to extend the inexhaustible reach of His mercy and the promise of His forgiveness to others. Love and healing will grow in the world.

Our Father eagerly longs to forgive every person and to clothe them in robes of healing. Turn to Him. Ask Him for the grace of true sorrow for your sins. Ask Him to work within your heart, to change what needs changing in you.

The Father has already answered that "asking" -- He has answered it beyond all measure. He has sent His Son to dwell with us. Jesus. His Holy Spirit works in us and changes us, opening up surprising new places in our hearts from which we can turn away from our sins, and turn to Jesus with trust. He will make it possible for us to change, to want His forgiveness.

It may seem impossible. That doesn't matter. All things are possible with God. Ask Him. Keep asking. Never give up asking. He will do it.

O Lord, convert my heart! Change what needs changing in me. Forgive me for my sins!

Jesus, I trust in You.

For Many, It Was a Lonely Holiday

Many, many people spent this past Christmas ... alone.

The atmosphere spoke of happiness and merriment, and yet many sought it in vain. Some searched for Christmas cheer in stores or at parties, in vacations or novelties, or on television, or on the internet, or at the movies. They may have distracted themselves for awhile from feelings of emptiness, but in the end they still found themselves alone.

Christmas alone.

This was certainly the experience of many homeless people, drug addicts, alcoholics, and people who have been abused and abandoned. Here is a terrible loneliness.

Then there were the people far from their homes, especially those who have dedicated themselves to service: to the defense of our homeland, the safety of our communities, the staffing of our hospitals. How much we depend on these people to remain strong even in solitude, even as they yearn for those they love. Let us not forget them. Let us love them and be grateful for their continuing sacrifices.

Christmas was also lonely for people whose hearts were heavy over the loss of parents, children, relatives, or friends. And then there were people whose hearts were cut into pieces by estrangement from one another.

How many of us have known this loneliness only too well?

Have we found healing and peace? Have we forgiven one another and been reconciled?

Christmas alone, for the sick, for those who have become strangers to their own minds, and for those who are neglected in their sufferings. There are more people like this than we realize, people near to us, people who waited helplessly for our compassion.

Then there are in our midst lonely people who have lost their faith, or who have never found it. People without hope. People who don't allow themselves to be loved.

People who need our presence, our witness. People who need us to take the risk of giving of ourselves, the risk of loving.

People who need our prayers, not simply in a formalistic way, but prayers from our heart, prayers that hold them and accompany them, prayers that seek the One who has made Himself the companion of every person, the One who has hidden Himself within every loneliness and made it His loneliness.

In this new year, let us pray for all those who have not known the light of these days. Let us also pray for one another and take the risk to give ourselves in love, to walk with one another. For we all depend on one another, we all need one another.

We have been given the time and space of this new year, of this life, so that we might show mercy to one another, so that we might be merciful and receive mercy.

Rescue My Soul

"Have mercy on me, Lord, I have no strength;
Lord, heal me, my body is racked;
my soul is racked with pain.
But You, O Lord, how long?
Return, Lord, rescue my soul.
Save me in Your merciful love" (Psalm 6:2-4).

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior,

have mercy on me, a sinner.

He is Already With Us

God searches deep into the heart of every human person, of every one of us, because he wants to find us and to save us. At this very moment He is already with us in our wretchedness. He is already mysteriously at work. Cry out to Him! Never give up!

Click the link for St. Faustina's prayer: All Humankind Calls Out from the Abyss of its Misery to Your Mercy

I Throw Myself Upon His Infinite Mercy

All the events of last week were set within the context of our annual Divine Mercy novena and the celebration of Mercy Sunday. Having journeyed through Lent and the Paschal Triduum, we culminate with the celebration of God's mercy. (Another thing for which we can thank St. John Paul II).

The mercy of God in Jesus Christ is where I find my roots. I don't know where else to stand. Mercy is the creative, forgiving, regenerating love of God beyond all measure. Mercy is the love that gives us what we lack, that empowers us to accomplish what we can't do by ourselves.

Mercy is where I must go, because I am a complete mess as a human being. I'm not happy about that. I want to change (although, frankly, I'm often glad to just be lazy). My love for God is weak. My desire to grow in love is weak. What do I have, really, that I can bring before God in prayer?

Jesus. Every day I pray, "Lord, I throw myself upon your infinite mercy!" After all is said and done, and I find my work and my prayer to be a sorry mixed bag, what's left? Jesus.

God gives Himself. He is the way and the truth and the life. He is my hope for healing and for attaining my destiny. Jesus gives Himself to save me from my sins, and also to give me a participation in the life of God. The life of God! Whoever even thinks about this? Whoever thinks about the fact that Jesus brings not only freedom from sin but also a radical elevation of life to the level of union with God?

Here I am, struggling day by day just to get by, to survive, to tread water in the ocean of my own sanity. And yet I am called to live forever with God. It's difficult even to understand what this means. Do I even want this, really? Yes, I have been created to want this, and yet I live on the surface of myself. I don't know what to do in the end except to throw myself upon the mercy of God.

And this "God" for whom I have been created: who is He? Who is God?

Infinite Giving, Infinite Giftedness and Giving, Infinitely Poured Out: Infinitely, Eternally, Transcending all possible created worlds of limitation and definition such as we have ever known or have ever experienced.

All these words of mine are baby talk; I aim sounds of speech and fall so short. Poor words.

God Is, and God Is Love.

The very inner life of God is love. The One God is a Trinity of Persons. God has revealed Himself as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Let us allow our beloved Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI to help us adore this mystery:

"Three Persons who are one God because the Father is love, the Son is love, the Spirit is love. God is wholly and only love, the purest, infinite and eternal love. He does not live in splendid solitude but rather is an inexhaustible source of life that is ceaselessly given and communicated" (General Audience for Trinity Sunday, 2009).

These Days Are Rich in Mercy

Especially through His lifestyle and through His actions,

Jesus revealed that love is present

in the world in which we live: 

an effective love,

a love that addresses itself to man

and embraces everything that makes up his humanity.

This love makes itself particularly noticed

in contact with suffering, injustice and poverty,

in contact with the whole historical "human condition,"

which in various ways manifests man's limitation and frailty,

both physical and moral.

It is precisely the mode and sphere

in which love manifests itself

that in biblical language is called "mercy."

        ~John Paul II

          Dives in Misericordia (1980), #3

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.