Mystagogia Delta

Yesterday, an anonymous reader left this excellent comment:

"In addition to having preconceived ideas about God, I think we also have preconceived ideas about what the spiritual life is like. The recent reaction to the revelations about the dark night of the soul that Mother Teresa experienced shows that some people don't realize that darkness is not a sign that someone is not holy or has lost their faith; but rather, it is a very normal part of the spiritual life. "

Indeed. In community life, as the brothers attest, I frequently quote St. Paul's exhortation that we 'not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewal of your mind [Rom 12: 2]'. I interpret this to mean that we begin, in respect to the things of God and of the spirit, with the need for renewal. This is always going to be the case because we cannot exhaust God nor the spirit (the Holy Spirit or our own). We suffer still from the nineteenth-century Romanticizing and 'saccharinization' of the saints: there are many who are scandalized by the fact that St. Therese of Lisieux also went through a deep trial of faith as she was dying. This fact was cleansed from the first 'official' biography. Thus holiness is confused with conformity to a certain kind of genteel and cultured disposition. The idea that we might need to 'put on the armor of light' and take a few blows for God and the Kingdom is not popular. This is also why I so frequently recommend lectio divina: God's Word, carefully heard and acted upon, will help us to avoid these misperceptions which end up keeping us tepid in the faith. So I will conclude this bit of a digression with St. Paul's testimony about the journey of faith.

"We do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Why, we felt that we had received the sentence of death;' but that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead." [ 2 Cor 1: 8]

"We have this power in earthen vessels, to show that the transcendent power belongs to God and not to us....[most quotations stop here; we continue:] We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For while we live we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake so that the life of Jesus may be manifested in our mortal flesh." [2 Cor 4: 7-11]

"They stoned Paul and dragged him out off the city, supposing that he was dead. But when the disciples gathered about him, he rose up and entered the city....they returned to Lystra and to Iconium and to Antioch, strengthening the souls of the disciples, exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying that through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God." [Acts 14: 19b-20a; 21b-22]

Holy Saturday and the Mother of God

Holy Week forms the background of each week of the Church's liturgical calendar. For this reason, throughout the year Sunday is 'The Lord's Day', the solemn commemoration and celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Even in Lent, we do not fast on Sundays.

Similarly, on Friday, we have the custom of fasting and abstinence, even outside of Lent. This practice has been somewhat mitigated in recent decades, and I think that there is a real loss in this, even if there had been problems with scruples and abuses surrounding the 'no meat on Friday' rule that held for Catholic for many centuries.

Thursday, while the association is rather muted, pops up as a day to remember the Last Supper and with it, the institution of the Eucharistic sacrifice and the ordained priesthood. Pope John Paul II, when suggesting the new 'Mysteries of Light' for meditation during the rosary, also suggested that they be used on Thursday, and included in them the institution of the Holy Eucharist.

We might expect that Saturday would be an extension of the mourning begun on Friday. Instead, we find a very long tradition of dedicating Saturday to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Is this a mistake? A blip caused by overzealous churchmen and pious laity in their devotion to our Lord's mother?

In fact, the devotion to Mary on Saturday is indeed connected to Holy Saturday, though it requires the eyes of faith to read this association. As she so often does, Mary stands as a prototype for the Church. The Church was given birth on Good Friday from the side of our dying Savior, as Mary stood beneath him (her 'Head') with the Apostle John. Mary, as the first believer, the first to be redeemed as the Theotokos, the God-bearer, is the model of the Church that does not lose faith, even through persecution, even through death. Jesus' death is a cause for mourning, yes; but through the eyes of faith, it is a cause of wonder and, if we may say so soberly, joy. For in the eyes of faith, this death has won our salvation, has forgiven our sins, has restored us to life and communion with the God Who Is Love, has trampled down death forever and unleashed the power of the Holy Spirit for the recreation of the cosmos. The Catholic Church bears witness to this today: our Lord's body lies dead in the tomb, but we believe that He will rise, and that we have no more need to fear. All we need do is believe and wait. What can mortals do to me? Indeed, what can Satan himself do to me, with the knowledge I have that he has been defeated?

There are fleeting references to Mary's unshaken faith on Holy Saturday scattered in patristic meditations on the theme. The sense of Saturday as the day of Our Lady who did not waver and 'was not scandalized on account' of her Son's death, began to coalesce in the Benedictine centuries of the Middle Ages. It is a helpful thing to meditate on the demeanor, the prayer of Mary on this day, the day on which the disciples' faith was weighed in the scales, and most of them were found wanting. Indeed, even after the resurrection, we find them hiding away, until their baptism by the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The exception is Mary, whose baptism took place in the 'overshadowing' of the Holy Spirit at the Annunciation. We who have received the gift of the Holy Spirit in baptism do well to reflect on the Mother of God as our model of discipleship, even if the unregenerated parts of us take their cue more often from those who ran away, hid and generally despaired. While we can take our comfort and strength from our incorporation into Christ's Body and bride 'without stain or wrinkle', as individual believers, it is helpful for us to gaze upon the disciple who offers the pattern of following Jesus with total faith, hope and love.

Sr. Genevieve Glen, OSB, recently gave an exellent reflection on Judas as a mirror of our own infidelity, precisely because so little is said about his motives in the gospel. In a similar manner, Mary can be our mirror of faith, precisely because so little is said, simply the fact that she did not leave her Lord at His passion.

Pray for us, O Virgin Mother of God, that we may be made worthy of the promises of Christ!

P.S. Happy Easter, Michael! You are welcome to post whatever comments and observations you have. Hope to see the whole family sometime at Easter!

Suffering, Forgiveness, Hope, Part 4

I was unable to complete my intended reflections on suffering in the Bible last week; I hope that you will forgive me that, and I hope to return to it.

Today, I want to begin drawing connections between suffering and forgiveness, and then next week draw these connections to the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. Hope is a theological virtue gaining new attention, thanks to our Holy Father's excellent encyclical Spe Salvi, which I highly recommend, since I cannot do it justice!

We began this series of reflections with the liturgical reality that in preparation for Easter, we are presented with two dove-tailing themes: our sins and the need of repentance and Jesus' sufferings. In this light, the connection between forgiveness and suffering is clarified, at least for a beginning. Jesus Christ is the Savior who suffered for our sins and bore our offenses. God is merciful and kind and always eager to forgive, but in the sacrifice of Christ on the Cross, we see the earnestness with which this description of God is made. We also see in it the seriousness of sin.

That sin is serious is something given to us at the beginning of the Bible. The transgression of Adam and Eve introduced not only sin into the world, but significantly it also introduced suffering. At the end time, "There will be no more suffering on My holy mountain," God tells us. While we are yet in this world, however, there is still suffering because there is still sin. When God destroys sin for a final time, this will spell the end of suffering and death, and it will mark our radical forgiveness and reunion with God, each other and all the heavens and the earth.

In the meantime, there is suffering. Perhaps the most troubling aspect of suffering is that it does not seem to be distributed justly according to merit.
While I do believe that most of us harbor sentiments like Job’s friends, that someone suffering has somehow deserved it, we are then confronted with abhorrent situations like still-born children (or aborted children), civilians, including children, killed in Somalia by our government, random accidental deaths, Terri Schiavo being left to dehydrate to death, and so on. Meanwhile, perpetrators of great evil sometimes go to their deaths having suffered comparatively little.

The problem troubled the Jews during the Maccabean period, when the tyrant Antiochus Epiphanes put to death large numbers of Jews precisely for following God’s commandments. Meantime, he suppressed the sacrificial cult, the one means of reconciliation with God. This brought clarity to a new idea about the connection of suffering and forgiveness, one first adumbrated by ‘Deutero-Isaiah’ who, theologizing out of the surfeit of suffering by exiled Jews, saw in some way the atonement of the nations bein accomplished precisely by the excess suffering God required from Jacob, His ‘suffering servant’. Fast-forward three centuries, and we see most clearly in the book of Daniel the transference of the atoning powers of the temple cult to the suffering of the righteous. “At this time there is…no burnt offering, or sacrifice, or oblation, or incence, no place to make an offering before thee of to find mercy. Yet with a contrite heart and a humble spirit may we be accepted, as though it were with burnt offering of rams and bulls.” This prayer, which exists presently only in Greek and thus is not accepted by all Christians as officially inspired Scripture, nonetheless attests to this transference of atonement. The prayer is offered by the three young men from the midst of the fire, into which they were thrown because of their refusal to ‘worship the golden image’ that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.

These experiences and this theology also went together with a refinement of the idea of life after death. The death of innocent, even righteous Jews seemed to fly in the face of the earlier idea of retributive justice, in which the righteous can expect long life and peace on earth. This is to get ahead of ourselves, however, so we will save this for tomorrow.

Suffering, Forgiveness, Hope, Part 2

We ended our last post last time by observing that penances undergone during Lent will tend to cause us some discomfort. This will allow us to experience a small amount of suffering under conditions that will make it possible to monitor our responses to discomfort. This is turn, will help prepare us when serious sufferings befall us. We hopefully will be in the habit of turning to God in our needs. This habit will serve us well. As Cardinal Bernadin once said during his final illness (I paraphrase), "Pray while you are healthy because it is very difficult to do so when you are not."

We are frequently taught that we should 'offer up' our sufferings. This is true. This is not, however, always that easy to do. What stands in the way? Before we arrive at 'making up what is lacking in Christ's sufferings', let us meditate on a few obstacles to this excellent act of charity: offering our sufferings for the remission of our sins and the sins of others.

I would group these obstacles under the following headings: 1) We fail to recognize that we are suffering; 2) We fail to recognize that suffering unites us to others and does not divide us from them; and 3) We murmur.

1) I love to tell the story of the young St. Teresa of Avila, in which she and her brother plotted to run away from home to be beheaded by the Moors for the sake of Christ. Many of us look to take on all kinds of heroic trials during Lent: sleeping on boards, wearing a hair shirt, eating only bread once a day, giving up coffee. With regard to this impulse, I generally quote to our men in formation a pair of sentences from Fr. Jordan Aumann's excellent book Spiritual Theology:

"Some persons neglect the duties of their state in life and nevertheless ask permission of their confessors to practice certain penances and mortification of their own choosing. The exact fulfillment of all our duties and obligations according to our state in life is absolutely indispensable for the crucifixion of self."

What St. Teresa found was that simply living the religious life turned out to bring with it all sorts of unsought trials. Another Discalced Carmelite, St. Therese of Lisieux discovered her own pettiness throught the suffering she endured as the sister next to her loudly fingered her rosary beads each day at the Office. Repentance often involves simply rededicating ourselves to the values we professed at baptism. This is not easy. St. Augustine has this to say, "While we...by a change of life are refashioning our spirit, we find it a tough and uphill struggle [En. in Psalmis 6: 5]." St. Gregory of Nyssa, who otherwise often has very different opinions from Augustine, is in agreement on this struggle. He frequently refers to 'the difficult ascent of virtue [see for example, The Life of Moses, 2:34]'.

The truth is that we all suffer a variety of deprivations most days, but we avoid experiencing them head-on or naming them. In the first case, we might ease the wounds inflicted by the sharp edges of those with whom we live by taking up some diversion: eating, surfing the net, listening to music, and so on. This action may have its uses, but the danger is that the wounds have not been dressed, and so they fester away. On the day that a brother, a family member or a coworker reopens the wound and we don't have our emotional crutch available, we might well be seriously injured, often by lashing out at them or sinking into crushing sorrow. It would be better to be honest about our weakness from the start rather than hiding it behind spurious activity. So we might begin by learning to be more silent and still, to listen to ourselves honestly.

We live in a results-driven culture. When we experience suffering, our first impulse is to seek a solution that will reduce or eliminate the suffering. That is to say, we think that something is wrong and we must search out a way to fix it. While this might be the case, the problem with this default response is that we don't first simply experience the pain, large or small, caused by the regular round of daily life. We miss what the factual present is telling us and leap forward into plans for the future, which is uncertain. When we've asked the family to save the leftovers for dinner and someone has come by and eaten them, we are somewhat justified in an initial response of anger. What we do next is the step that interests me. Do we immediately start dreaming up the perfect thing to say to the culprit to shame him into never causing us that inconvenience again? Do we dream up rules and charts and signs that will prevent this particular thorn from lodging in our side? Or are we able to say, simply: "That bothers me. I am suffering because of this situation."

Aside from trying to 'fix' everything in order to minimize pain, we also might pull one of two routines: the victim routine or the strong routine. While annoyances do victimize us in some way, and do require of us strength, again I suggest that we often skip a step here. Instead of saying to ourselves, "That's annoying; I need to be strong and not let it get me," we take the moral high ground. "Not me! I'm above getting worked up about this! I'm strong and wise!" all the while simmering away with plans for revenge. "Poor me! No one knows the things I go through!"

So the first step is simply to enter into a slower and more silent mode of living that allows us to monitor ourselves interiorly. There, we can simply acknowledge the fact that we suffer all kinds of minor irritations each day. Once this is recognized, then we are in a position to own them and make an offering of them. Our Lenten penances can help us to this recognition by removing unnecessary distractions and props from our defenses. Before we go to that step, however, we should move on to another type of obstacle to naming our suffering: failing to recognize the suffering of others. We will take this up next time.

Suffering, Forgiveness, Hope, Part 1

Lent is a season that revolves liturgically around two themes, both of which are related, but each of which receives its own emphasis. At the opening of Lent, we are exhorted to works of penance and meditation on our sins. We are invited to go with Jesus Christ into the desert, to fast and pray and, as a result of this effort, to be tempted by the Devil. We do this so that we can properly prepare to receive God's forgiveness and welcome the Good News that will arrive at the Easter Vigil.

Before we arrive at Easter, however, the liturgy will quietly shift into a meditation on the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. His sufferings are obviously a prelude to His death and triumph over death. On the other hand, they are, as was His temptation in the desert, models for us to imitate and so conform ourselves to grace in Christ. Unlike the personal initiative required for fasting and prayer, suffering generally arrives in our lives unininvited. We can prepare ourselves for suffering, but only in the most general way. When suffering comes, it is likely to throw us for a loop, no matter how well we have prepared. In the final two weeks of Lent, we are invited to watch as Jesus Christ prepares Himself and undergoes tremendous suffering, out of sheer obedience to His Father's divine will. Like Jesus, all we can do when suffering occurs is to navigate it as best as possible; we must attempt to see in it God's will, and move forward in faith and trust.

These two poles of Lent: repentance for sins, and Christ's suffering 'for our sake', are clearly related. We say that Christ 'was crucified for our sake', and by this we go beyond the observation that He took on suffering to give us an example. The Church has always affirmed that Christ's sufferings bear with them expiatory power. We are invited to make this claim by the prophet Isaiah, whose mysterious Suffering Servant 'justifies the many' by 'bearing our grief', being 'wounded for our transgressions'. In our failings, we 'like sheep have gone astray', but in a wondrous act of reconciliation, 'the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all' so that 'with his stripes we are healed'. I called the Suffering Servant 'mysterious': of course if we are willing to accept this as a prophecy of Christ's healing sufferings, we see into this mystery, at least a small way. So we also watch and experience Christ's passion not merely as students in a Stoic school, but we do so in an attitude of thanksgiving and worship, since we participate again in the unfolding of the triumph of good over evil, love over hate, God over Satan. "Through the Cross our human nature has been set at the right hand of the throne of God, and we have been granted countless good things besides. Therefore we must not give way to mourning or sadness; we must rejoice greatly instead over all these blessings." Thus St. John Chrysostom, echoing Ezra and Nehemiah, "This day is holy to the LORD your God; do not mourn or weep...for the joy of the LORD is your strength!" [Neh 8: 9-10] when the people were grieving over their sins.

The two poles of Lent, penance and Christ's passion, are thus related in the sense that while we are making an effort to do battle against sin by our repentance, the final victory belongs to Christ. Our efforts in one sense, are merely to prepare our hearts to recognize this victory and accept it as our own by faith.

At the same time (and this is what is so wonderful about the liturgy: its symbols move many directions at once), the same efforts of fasting, prayer and almsgiving will cost us. It is not for nothing that the same St. John Chrysostom in his Lenten homilies on Genesis begins the latter sermons with exhortations to patience (a word significantly related to 'passion') and perseverance in spite of the discomfort of hunger and distractions at prayer. Voluntary penance is a bit like football practice: you don't try out your offensive plays for the first time against a real defense in a real game. First you do a 'walk-through' to train all of the players to run, block, throw and catch under 'frictionless', ideal conditions. That practice will be tested by a real team on Sunday; for now, we get a taste of that testing by controlled experience of game conditions. Likewise, by fasting, by experiencing a small bit of discomfort when we fully expect it, we do prepare ourselves in a small way for the major sufferings that are likely to come when we least expect them: illnesses, the loss of a loved one, estrangement from loved ones, disappointment at work, fires, earthquakes and hurricanes.

Next time: "Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church." [Colossians 1: 24]

News from N.S. de la Soledad

The principal purpose of my visit to La Soledad is to meet with fellow North American superiors. We share news of our communities as well as our difficulties, seeing if pooling our experiences can lead to stronger observances in our communities and a more evangelical witness. Tomorrow, we will be discussing whether there is room in our communities for men and women who are more inclined toward work than choir duties. Lay brothers were almost all absorbed into the choir after Vatican II, but there is clearly still some sense that an arrangement of different brothers in different capacities can be fruitful for all involved. We will also discuss the problems of the internet and email. Last year we discussed how to make lectio divina the spiritual center of our personal conversion to Christ.

However, it is always edifying to visit other communities with similar observances and simply watch the community. My brothers back home perhaps shudder when they think about the ideas with which I will return. It reminds me of singing under Bruce Tammen, when he would yearly take a couple of weeks to sing under the great Robert Shaw. He would always come back on fire for choral music…and the choir would tremble!

At recreation the past two evenings, we have had presentations from each superior on the story of the founding of their houses, then presentations by each of the brothers on their call to monastic life. This sort of sharing is very powerful. One quickly realizes, with the rabbi Gamaliel in this morning´s first reading, that if God desires something, then we cannot keep it from coming to be, and if something is not of God, then it will not flourish. Every one of the eight houses represented here (the oldest of which can realistically date its founding to the 1950´s, though most were founded in the 1980´s) has experienced devastating crises but even more significantly, incredible acts of salvation. God provides. What else need we say about the fact that our odd group of monasteries is flourishing? After all, the success of the Early Church was clearly against all odds, were it simply a human phenomenon. Yet here we are 2000 years later, and the gospel is being proclaimed in virtually every language in every corner of the earth. Glory to God in Jesus Christ!

We should bear these facts of our salvation history in mind. So numerous today are the ´prophets of doom´ (to quote Pope John XXIII)! The Church is always changing, of course, because it is a living Body. But change is not comfortable for us many times. We should welcome it in faith. How else can faith and hope grow if we never have to trust God, if everything simply continues according to our own estimates of what is good? Let us ask everyday for the gift of the theological virtues of faith, hope and love, so as to allow God to be more and more, to be finally All in All.