Most Burning Love

I organized my whole afternoon yesterday so I would be able to watch the Holy Father's Mass with the Cardinals in the Sistine Chapel. I'm glad I did; there was much of interest to notice. The homily was especially striking. After the Mass I went to chapel for Vespers. During the meditation period, part of the homily kept coming back to me:

"When we journey without the cross, when we build without the cross and when we confess a Christ without the cross, we are not disciples of the Lord: we are worldly, we are bishops, priests, cardinals, popes, but not disciples of the Lord." (Zenit)

Lost, Unworthy, Burning, and Sent

I was thinking about the calls of Isaiah and Peter as we have them in the readings for Mass today.

It's funny; we tend to think of heaven as pleasant, or at least comforting--at funerals we are consoled by our hope that the faithful departed are now on their final journey to heaven and we take courage for our own lives in looking forward to heaven ourselves--but the prophet Isaiah, faced with the heavenly court, is afraid. Finding himself in that blessed firmament, the first thing created after the light, Isaiah can only say, "Woe is me! For I am lost." (Isaiah 6:5a, RSV)

St. Cleopas

From the Roman Martyrology today:

25 September. The commemoration of St. Cleopas, a disciple of the Lord. Making a journey with another disciple on the evening of Easter, his heart burned when the Lord appeared on the way and opened the Scriptures to them. In the village of Emmaus, he knew the Savior in the breaking of the bread.

In Paradiso Con Altro Titolo

It's interesting living close to the administrative center of the Order; you learn the answers to questions you never knew you had. Today provides a good example.

If you are a Catholic, you are no doubt familiar with holy cards of the saints. You probably have some in your missal or your breviary. I have a holy card of Our Lady of the Angels that's been in my wallet for almost twenty years, long story.

Now, perhaps you have had a holy card of someone who has been beatified, a holy card of blessed so-and-so.

Have you ever wondered what happens to the holy cards of blessed so-and-so if and when blessed so-and-so gets canonized and becomes saint so-and-so? Me neither. But now I know. The person who was in charge of the causes of those former blesseds, from whom the holy cards of blessed so-and-so originate, finding himself home alone on a very hot day, puts them in the fireplace.

He even had a little chant to go with his raking around in the fireplace,

In cielo, in cielo con altro titolo ...

"In heaven, in heaven with new title."

One learns these things because inquiring minds always want to know why someone would make a fire in the fireplace in Rome in August.

Amen. May we all learn to know the Christ of the burnt men.

Ash Wednesday: Hypocrisy, Necrosis, Mimesis

Another Ash Wednesday, and with it the hope for a new beginning of the Christian life. This is my twentieth Lent already, and since I was baptized when I was twenty years old, that means that in another year or so--should God grant me to live that long--I'll be able to start saying that I've spent most of my life on earth as a Christian.

I'm thoroughly convinced of my own interpretation of Ash Wednesday, namely that it is public, communal, purposeful disregard for the gospel that serves to confess to God and to each other that this is who we have been all along, people who have heard the good news and received the divine invitation, but have not yet surrendered, not yet lived gospel lives. What else could it mean to proclaim the gospel that tells us to wash our faces when we fast and not to perform righteous deeds that they may be seen, and then eagerly line up to have someone put dirt on our faces with great solemnity and then walk around like that all day? I wear the ashes because I want everyone to know--and to remember myself--that I am a gospel-disregarding hypocrite. But within that confession is the hope for a new beginning, to do penance, to amend my life, to repent and believe the gospel once again.

Nevertheless, as attached I am to this understanding, there are other things going on with Ash Wednesday. One of them I didn't start to notice until I was a parish priest and was baptizing babies with some regularity. At the beginning of the celebration of infant baptism, the families are met at the entrance to the church. As the names of the babies are called out, the minister of baptism makes the sign of the cross on the forehead of each, inviting parents and godparents to do the same. With this, the minister announces that the Christian community welcomes her new member with joy, and that the child is 'claimed' for Christ.

It strikes me that this signing at the beginning of the celebration of baptism is the same ritual gesture that is used to give ashes. (I concede that this is not the custom everywhere.) When I receive the little cross of ashes, I think of how it relates to the sign of the cross I too received at the beginning of the ceremony of my own baptism. (Despite being twenty years old at the time, I was baptized according to the rite for children, long story.) It's as if that first sign of the cross, full of hope and joy, is now revealed again as necrotic, my first fervor having been burnt up and being nothing but weightless ash. The baptism that was to give me new life by burying me with Christ in his death has been foiled by the life of death I insist upon for myself with my sins and distraction. On Ash Wednesday I admit this, confess it to God, myself, and everyone else, and hope for a new beginning that I might prepare myself for the renewal of my baptism at the great Vigil of Easter.

Still another angle that comes to me on Ash Wednesday is its relationship to Holy Thursday. It strikes me that the ritual by which we begin the journey of Lent, Ash Wednesday,  is parallel to the ritual by which Lent gives way to the days of the Paschal Triduum, the Mass of the Lord's Supper. On Ash Wednesday we insist on not following Jesus' practical advice on how to fast, but on Holy Thursday, in the washing of the feet, we take great pains to act out a gospel commandment that can easily be taken figuratively. We begin Lent with a direct violation of the gospel on Ash Wednesday and conclude with direct imitation on Holy Thursday.  The humble service of the washing of the feet is the antidote to the hypocrisy of the dirtying of the heads.

As we begin this Lent, may we all come to know Jesus anew. In his saving humility, he washes the feet of those who don't know how to wash their faces.

The Paschal Burns

Saying my prayers this morning I noticed that the little burn on the top of my left middle finger is almost healed. I got it on Holy Saturday. Sister sacristan had set up the thurible in such a way that the top was not lifted from the base on the stand, and it wasn't one of the ones that has some piece of less conductive material for grasping. So I knew as soon as I started to make my way over that I wouldn't be able to get incense onto the charcoal without burning myself. But the alternative--failing to incense the paschal candle at the beginning of the Easter Vigil--was unacceptable.

Several times in the course of my Christianity I have gone through the Easter season with burns received at the Easter Vigil. One time when I was serving as acolyte (by privilege, not right) I got a pretty good burn on the back of my hand during the preparation of the candle. It only cleared up just at Pentecost. I was pretty proud of the timing.

I'm grateful for these little reminders that the Christian life is supposed to set us on fire and consume us. "That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men," said Thomas Merton at the end of The Seven Storey Mountain. "I don't want to die without a few scars," goes the line in Fight Club. The narrator says it in the book; I think Tyler says it in the movie.

To desire to be a Christian is to accept, as St. Bonaventure put it, that "there is no way except through the burning love of the crucified." In Holy Communion we accept the broken Body of Christ into our bodies and our lives, receiving God's invitation to break ourselves in imitation of Christ. Many know the sacrifice of Christ by the breaking of their own bodies in the service and care of others. But all of us have to let our selfish will be broken. In the end, Christianity is a life of heartbreak. But it's not the hopeless heartbreak of the world, in which hearts break and close up into bitterness. Christians, seeing the suffering of the world, surrender to having their hearts break open into the expansive and inclusive love that is humanity's closest imitation of God.

The Christ of the Burnt Men

Today in class our professor told a story about the Jesuit theologian John Courtney Murray. Some Jesuit students asked for his blessing before a big exam. He willingly gave it, in these words:

Ab illo benedicaris, in cuius honore cremaberis.

It's the prayer for the blessing of incense at the beginning of Mass.

"May you be blessed by him in whose honor you will be burned."

Burnout: An Examination of Conscience

There was an anonymous comment yesterday suggesting that I might be suffering from ministerial burnout, and that it might be the cause of my impatience with some of those whom the Holy Spirit has given me the privilege to serve in the parish ministry. In his or her charity, whoever wrote the comment promised to pray for me, and I'm grateful for that.

It kind of pierced me to the heart, and it invaded my prayer for the rest of the day, in a good way. Not every invasive thought that comes to us in prayer is a distraction; often they are something screaming to be looked at.

There is something there; some truth to the comment. On the psychological level you might call it burnout. Perhaps it's more or less the same thing that would be called acedia on the level of the passions and temptation. Whatever you call it, there is an internal challenge going on, and I'm grateful that somebody took the time to point it out to me.

This is a very personal sort of confession, but I've always meant this blog to exist partly for those who are curious about religious life and priesthood, about the struggles and joys of the life. I do it especially for those who might be discerning their own vocations.

So what's up? What is the trouble? As I've been reflecting on this since yesterday and examining my conscience, I think I want to describe it as a kind of emotional fatigue mixed with a mood of disappointment.

First, let me try to describe the emotional fatigue. In the parish ministry one deals daily with folks in intense emotional states, both good and bad. There's the zeal of converts and the distressed vertigo of those who feel they are losing their faith. There's the recently bereaved and the new parents. There's the tragic self-imprisonment of the scrupulous and the happy liberation of those who realize their salvation.

As a priest you are called to meet the intensity of these states with a certain commensurate degree of reverence. It is your joy to do this as a human witness on the part of God's Church, but it can also wear you out. I only realize now, with this job, what a quiet life I have led for much of my time on earth until now. I may have been happy or sad at any given moment of my life, but it was all pretty calm.

Second, let me try to describe the low-grade mood of disappointment that gets mixed in. One gets into this sort of vocation, whether religious life or priesthood or both, with a desire to live the Catholic Christian life in a particularly intense and directed way. You have found a call through your own prayer and are eager to answer it. You fall in love with God in a certain way that seems to demand an exclusive relationship, and you're ready to jump in with wholehearted trust and giddy zeal. But then you then find yourself in a community not only overly committed and spread thin, but also having trouble knowing its own corporate identity within the Church and the world. (I don't mean my province or Order in particular, but mainstream religious life here in North America.)

It can also be hard for you as someone once set on fire for prayer, observance, and the seeking of God, to be sent in the parish ministry where you suddenly have to deal with the average North American Catholic, who, as we know, does not practice the faith in a measurable way. Nevertheless, the average Catholic still wants their baby baptized even though they don't give evidence of being able to make the baptismal vows on the baby's behalf in good conscience, and the average Catholic still wants a priest to come say a prayer for their deceased loved one at the funeral home, even though they might not intend to give him a proper funeral or burial. Having these sorts of conflicts day after day on the phone and in the parlor wears me down. I want to infect these folks with the love of the God who is so good, but sometimes they seem to just see me as someone who is refusing to give them the customer service they want and are (often) willing to pay for. 'What sort of donation can fix this trouble, Father?'

All of this can be very wearying, and brings up the internal trouble or temptation of burning out. You're bored with the job and the people because you've lost sight of the grace in your own life and in theirs, respectively. You start to minister mechanically, working out of mere human charm and cleverness. This is particularly dangerous, because you can fool people if you're good, and you may even become more popular because you no longer have any prophetic edge or challenge to give your people. In the end though, you start to resent the people as a distraction; lacking God, you now have only you're own interests, pleasures, and diversions to interest you, and are annoyed when called away from them. Under different names and aspects, I have been aware of this temptation and struggle in myself.


In the end, though, I'm begging the question. For me, the heart of the Franciscan charism consists of two utterances: First, that of Francis confessing his own conversion: "The Lord granted me, brother Francis, to begin to do penance in this way..." By our Franciscanism we confess that our lives are no longer our own work, but the Lord's, who has given us the grace of "beginning to do penance," of turning ourselves from our miserable and boring selves to God and his poor. Second, that of Christ crucified to Francis: "Go, Francis, repair my church, which you can see is being completely destroyed." To be a Franciscan is to be a repairer of churches, a restorer of the Body of Christ.

Therefore, a Franciscan should not be surprised to find that the Holy Spirit has put him in a corner of the Church where the thing seems to be falling down and broken. To be there is his mission. That it is overwhelming and often disappointing on the human level must drive him ever more to Christ crucified whose call and Church it is in the first place. The strength for this must come from prayer. It is only from there that I can find a way to be burned through rather than burned out. It is only there that the injuries that would be the selfish wounds of disappointment and resentment are transformed into the selfless stigmata of the Cross.


"That you may become the brother of God and learn to know the Christ of the burnt men."


Thanks as always to readers, for keeping me honest and humble.