Gaudete et exsultate: Community

I took some time to read Gaudete et exsultate. Anything I would say about it generally has already been posted here and there, so there's no need for me to repeat it. I do have some personal reflections to share, however, on this exhortation to holiness. This is the first.

In salvation history, the Lord saved one people. We are never completely ourselves unless we belong to a people. That is why no one is saved alone, as an isolated individual. Rather, God draws us to himself, taking into account the complex fabric of interpersonal relationships present in a human community. God wanted to enter into the life and history of a people. (6)

In religious life it's a commonplace to say that the reasons you entered are not the same reasons you have stayed. In the same way, what you anticipated as being the greatest challenges don't turn out to be the things you struggle with the most. Conversely, what seemed like an easy thing when you first professed can become a great struggle. I am sure that those who are married or in any other sort of particular vocation have analogous experiences.

When I made my religious profession, I had not thought much about the line, Therefore, I entrust myself with all my heart to this brotherhood. As time has gone on, however, I realize that this is one of the most challenging aspects of the whole business.

Twenty-Four Years of Brothers and Sisters

[an old post, updated]

Today is my twenty-fourth anniversary of baptism. I don't think I had any idea what I was getting into that Saturday midday when I walked up out of the basement of Freeman Hall at Connecticut College, made my way out the Williams St. gate and went down to Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Quaker Hill. Perhaps it's part of the mercy of God that I had little idea. In any case, the Holy Spirit knew what he was doing and that's what matters.

As always, this anniversary reminds me to thank God and pray for all the people he has given me along the way, those who have been bearers of the graces God has willed in his generosity towards a lukewarm disciple like myself.

Sunday Ramble

I really appreciate Sundays in my current assignment. It seems like we make an effort to put work on hold for a day and just take some quiet. After Mauds*, four empty hours of morning stretch out wonderfully before dinner. I tend to use the time to read, to clean out my inbox by answering those emails that are a little more personal or for whatever reason were more suited to a quieter moment, and to write real letters. Today I came to the end of all that with some time still remaining before dinner, so I went to the chapel to say Midday Prayer (which we don't have in common on Sundays) and to pray a little.

I was praying about how my moods and emotional states still have too much of an effect on my discernment and where I imagine myself to be with God. Whether I feel good or lousy on the emotional level, either way, interferes with the clarity of my prayer. I can even start to mistake these states for my spiritual condition. I prayed for a greater sense of faith, as something that I stand upon, or that grounds, or is behind or above--pick whichever metaphor works for you--all of that.

What came to mind was a set of events in my life: my baptism, my religious profession, my priestly ordination, and how, in God, these moments held within themselves everything that came after them for me, much of which I never would of imagined. On that tired old Saturday afternoon in the summer of 1992, when Deacon Ron poured water on my head and invoked the Blessed Trinity, everything that has come of my Christianity was contained in that brief moment of water and word: the twists and turns the journey has taken me on, the fellowship, the loneliness, the sensations of being lost and then found, or found and then lost, the joys and regrets, the friendships made and the friends lost. There were present all the prayers I would ever say, and the few of them that have been truly prayerful. Even all the sins I have committed since that moment were present in my baptism in a certain way. For, as I'll never forget, I once asked a spiritual director where God was when I was sinning. And he looked at me like I was the sad, ignorant case that I am and said, "He's on the Cross, suffering with you."

In the double-moment of my religious profession, first on a Saturday Morning in Yonkers, New York, and then, four years later, on another one in Middletown, Connecticut, my whole life as a Capuchin friar was present, my joy at receiving the mercy of this vocation and the salvation God has worked for me through it, my struggles to know how to observe the Rule I have promised, the burning desire for obedience, poverty, and chastity God has put in me set against the shallowness of my efforts to put them into practice. In that moment were all the joys and consolation I have had from brothers who have been true brother to me, as well as the injuries I bear from those who have hurt me. And there are all of my meager attempts to be brother to the brothers the Lord has given me, and all my failures to live up that simple title. And there is so much more, all of it every way that my whole experiment of finding myself in this journey of Christianity has come to be inextricably woven together with the example and words of St. Francis of Assisi.

In my ordination to the priesthood, in that moment when Seán O'Malley laid his hands on my head, anointed my hands, and prayed over me the prayer of consecration, everything my priesthood has been was present. There were the infinite graces of each Mass I have ever offered, there was whatever truth and encouragement the Holy Spirit was ever able to give to God's people through my small efforts at being a diligent preacher, there was the privilege of hearing every confession I've ever heard, as well as the awesome, saving healing of every absolution I have ever given, the forgiveness of God--stronger than sin and death--given from Jesus Christ to St. Peter and then passed down through the hands of so many and finally into the unworthy, dingy vessel of my voice.

I realize that I stand on those moments, and that whatever else should become of me as a Christian, as a religious, and as a priest, from right now, on this rainy Sunday afternoon until I should die, sooner or later, flows from them and, in a sense, is those moments. And I think this is what we mean when we talk about things as sacraments.

I arrived at such a confession through recalling a reflection on faith I used to have from time to time when I was working in the parish. A certain collection of circumstances led me to have, during the middle set of my three springs and summers as a parish priest, a lot of weddings. I think there was a spell of fourteen weeks, if I remember rightly, during which I had at least one every weekend. So that meant a weekly rhythm of rehearsals and wedding liturgies themselves, not to mention many last-minute phone calls from anxious brides and a few near-misses with paperwork arriving from other dioceses. So during this time, as a result of reflecting on what I could say for wedding homilies, shtick for rehearsals, and little catecheses for meetings, I had a lot of opportunity to reflect on what marriage might mean as an act of worship and faith. And it was just this that began to strike me, that a marriage was an expression of faith. In giving themselves to each other precisely as sacrament, what the couple were proclaiming to the Church and to the world was their faith that what they had found in each other was going to be stronger, more important, and more durable than a future that they didn't and couldn't know. It was to say that the goodness of the Creator had come to be reflected in their union, that they had found in each other the original blessing--a blessing not forfeited by original sin nor washed away by the flood, as one of the nuptial blessings puts it--that was the gaze of God upon his creation when he knew it to be good. God is love, and so to be in love always touches upon God and his eternity, which is why lovers always say, 'forever',whether they know what they are saying or not. The experience itself demands the closest imitation we have of God's eternity, our total self-giving, our unqualified 'forever.'

So in my own reflection for myself today, I find something similar. If I really believe in sacrament and it what the Church means by public vows, I too have to know that there was more faithfulness present in my baptism, religious profession, and ordination than a 'faith' that I could have been aware of in my own subjective desire or fervor or relative lack thereof at those moments. This is because our 'faith' isn't about how we feel or even how we think, in the sense of the depth of our intellectual assent to the articles of the faith, but about our willingness to let the faithfulness of Jesus Christ make a home within us, both for our own salvation and for that of others as it may please the Holy Spirit to work it through us.

May you attain full knowledge of God's will through perfect wisdom and spiritual insight. Then you will lead a life worthy of the Lord and pleasing to him in every way. You will multiply good works of every sort and grow in the knowledge of God. By the might of his glory you will be endowed with the strength needed to stand fast, even to endure joyfully whatever may come. (Colossians 1:9b-11, reading for Evening Prayer, Monday of Week I)

*"Mauds" is the name I give to the liturgy that results from combining Morning Prayer with Mass, as a portmanteau of 'Mass' and 'Lauds.' For more information see my post, "On the Various Forms of Prass."

Being a Prayer

A word from my confessor: "The life of a religious or a priest is only possible as a life of prayer. What does it mean to live a life of prayer? It means to abide in a constant, habitual awareness of God. Therefore it is also a habitual awareness of grace, the grace which is our strength in trial and temptation."

His words reminded me of one of the most challenging questions we friars are asked when we present ourselves for perpetual profession of vows:

Do you wish to serve the Lord and to love, adore, and pray to Him with a pure heart and a pure mind and to be a man of prayer or, better yet, to be made, like Saint Francis, a prayer?

It's startling to imagine that if we still imagine ourselves as people who pray, as if prayer was an activity beside other activities of daily life, we have not yet fully surrendered to the mystery and gift of our baptism. To be caught up completely in the Spirit, drawn up into the overflowing Love and creative Delight of the Blessed Trinity, this is where prayer is going; it is to become ourselves, in Christ, a prayer. "I live, no longer I, but Christ lives in me." (Galatians 2:20)

And yet, it's also a dangerous idea; it can be pretended to far too early. Once when I was on retreat I met an old priest. I was talking to him about prayer. He said, "When I was young, I used to say that my work was my prayer. And it might have been, had I been praying."

Some Time With The Novices

Our novices have been staying with us this week, having finished the novitiate program. They take their temporary vows tomorrow morning. In your charity offer a prayer of thanksgiving for their vocations, and for their courage as they go forward in our formation program.

Their presence reminds me of one of the ways I have changed my mind in the course of my religious life. In the community, we always make much of the young. Candidates and applicants are paraded around, and their 'vocation stories' get published in our newsletters. Brothers in formation are celebrated and treated quite well most of the time. I used to think this was a symptom of an unhealthy community; I worried that we were looking for our own validation through the young guys who were entering. It is they who should be excited about our life and work--presumably this is why they seek to join--rather than us finding our comfort in them. The classic tradition of religious life (across religions even) teaches that candidates should be discouraged in order to test their desire and resolve. Such was my worry.

I've changed my mind. I realize now that this behavior is the natural way families behave. As a sort of family in the spiritual order, the community makes a big deal about its babies, showing them off and trying to give them every good gift. Perhaps this is helpful and supportive for those who are going through the stresses of being formed into the community, but I now realize that it's mostly for us who are 'grown up' in the Order. To encounter and celebrate the guys who are younger in religion is just spiritually healthy. One sees their zeal and simplicity, and is reminded of these things in himself, before all of the internal compromises and friendships made with various forms of laxity and conformity to the spirit of this world. You are reminded of how you were once that way, and the desire to be so again peeks out from the stresses and details and all the anxieties of daily life and ministry.

So, as I've grown up a little bit in the Order, I realize now that we make a big deal about the new brothers at least in part because they minister to us, reminding us of how undivided our own hearts used to be in our desire for God in this life, and presenting a living invitation to accepting that zeal and simplicity once again.

My Last Wedding

On Saturday I did my last wedding here at the parish. As I was cleaning up from the ceremony, I got a little emotional for a moment; I think it was the beginning of my grieving for my assignment coming to an end.

In my three years as a parish priest, I have witnessed twenty-six marriages, and prepared about five more that were witnessed by guest clergy. It's been a big part of my life. At one point marriage preparation envelopes were the largest single thing in my office file drawer. In the middle of my time here I had seventeen couples on my checklist spreadsheet for paperwork and stages of the process. Now the spreadsheet is empty. No more calls to check in and remind brides about paperwork or evenings in the parlor reviewing the "FOCCUS" instrument.

I'm very grateful for having had the opportunity to work with all of these folks, and for the privilege of witnessing their mutual offering to one another in the sacrament of marriage. Preaching at weddings has helped me to understand certain things more clearly, truths that apply just as much to the vows of religious consecration.

When you begin to touch the very eternity of God, whether by falling in love with another human being or by the prayerful solitude in which a call to celibate consecration begins to emerge, that very eternity demands a commensurate response. The only imitation that will satisfy in this life is to say "forever." This is why love pushes us into permanent commitment; it's the least we can do, the least that will satisfy us. It's why two kids who know nothing of permanence and much less of eternity can write 'together for ever' on the wall; they have experienced the love that is God himself translated into our experience, and God's eternity pushes them to say such a thing even though they don't even know what it means.

Our freedom does not consist in preserving the false liberty of always keeping our options open, wandering through life and refusing to land, but in the freedom to dispose of ourselves fully and completely. Of course I knew this before on the cognitive, theological level, but those whose marriages I have witnessed over the past three years have taught it to me at the deeper level of the heart. Thank you.

And His Poor Mother

The poverty of the holy family goes fittingly with the humility of the Lord's incarnation, as well as providing a model for the poverty of spirit befitting the Christian soul. One of the questions we friars are asked in the examination before perpetual vows illustrates the point well:

As pilgrims and strangers in this world, do you wish to embrace the most high poverty of our Lord Jesus Christ and His poor mother and to share with joy the life of the poor and of the least in this world seeing in them the face of the Lord?

In light of all this, I was surprised to see that our Blessed Mother has the money to go around donating stained glass windows:



This is from Immaculate Conception ("St. Mary's), the mother church of Yonkers. It's my favorite church in the neighborhood. I've been wanting to get this picture for a long time, but the light hasn't cooperated until today.

Seventeen Years of Brothers and Sisters

Tomorrow is my anniversary of baptism; I will be seventeen years old. By Providence I have a liturgical day free of obligation for public Mass, so I intend to get up early and offer a Mass for those whom the Lord has given me along the way:

First, for my first priest, Fr. Larry, and for the friars and parishioners of St. Mary's in New Haven, whose reverence and piety first attracted me to prayer.

Second, for Deacon Ron, who baptized me, and for his family; for Fr. Leo Sutula, requeiscat in pace, who gave me my first Holy Communion and who also heard my first confession; for Bishop Dan Reilly, who confirmed me; for Fr. Dan, OFM, who invested me in the Franciscan habit; for Fr. Michael, OFM Cap., who received my profession of both temporary and perpetual vows; for Bishop Francis X. Irwin, who ordained me deacon; and for Cardinal Sean O'Malley, OFM Cap. who ordained me priest.

Third, for my spiritual directors, from whom I have profited so much: Fr. Charles, Sr. Joyce, Fr. Confer, Mr. Zepf, Sr. Vivienne, Sr. Pat, priests of the Discalced Carmelites and Oblates of the Virgin Mary whose names I have forgotten, and Fr. Karl.

Fourth, for my formation directors: Vincent and Fr. Aubrey, Fr. Andrew and Br. Richard, Fr. Bill and Fr. Raphael, Br. John and Ken, Fr. Marty, Fr. Tom, and Fr. Jack.

Fifth, for my classmates in religious life: Phil, Hank, Brian, Mike, Ken, John, Steve, Robert, Sam, Tom, James, Arlen, Justin, Drew, Jim, Bart, Louis, and Marvin.

Sixth, for the teachers who have been so encouraging to me: Fr. Dominic and Br. Bill of the OFM, Carlos ('the real teacher'), Antonio, ('el Loco'), Khaled, Sr. Meg, Cathy, Fr. John of the Sulpicians, and Frs. John, Randy, Peter, Dan, and Stanley of the Society of Jesus.

This is going to be one long memento for the living!

Perpetual Profession

Today I am three years perpetually professed in the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. There is another brother here in the friary who professed the same day. He must have remembered too, because we acknowledged one another in chapel this morning.

Here is the formula by which we make our religious profession:

For the praise and glory of the Most Holy Trinity.

I, Brother N., since the Lord has given me this grace
to follow more closely
the Gospel and the footprints of Our Lord Jesus Christ,
in the presence of my brothers here assembled,
and into your hands, Brother N.,
with a firm faith and will:
I vow to God the Father, holy and almighty,
to live for the entire time of my life
in obedience,
without anything of my own,
and in chastity.
At the same time,
I profess to observe faithfully
the life and Rule of the Friars Minor
confirmed by Pope Honorius,
and I promise to observe it faithfully
according to the Constitutions of the Order of Capuchin Friars Minor.

Therefore,
with all my heart I commit myself to this Fraternity,
so that, through the effective working of the Holy Spirit,
led by the example of Mary Immaculate,
the united intercession of our Father Francis with all the saints, and with you helping me in brotherhood,
I may strive for the fullness of love
in the service of God, the Church, and all people.

So I'm thinking this morning about how I've been doing. Have I become more free in my renunciation of ownership and acquisitiveness in favor of holy poverty? Have I embraced ever more fully the refusal to dominate, manipulate, or commodify other people in favor of evangelical chastity? Do I continue to renounce my own will and, as St. Bonaventure puts it so bitingly, the 'money bag of my own opinions' in favor of obedience for the Kingdom of God?

An honest person can only answer yes and no. Yes, by the grace of God, and no, because certain corners of my heart remain defended and chained up in selfishness, sin, and unfreedom. Vows are not magic and they don't make you a saint automatically. When you say this so plainly, it is obvious and reasonable, but it can actually be a hard thing to get into our dim and shallow minds.

I remember the day I was baptized, when--knowing it only obscurely then--I consented to set this whole thing in motion. I walked down to the little church on a Saturday afternoon, excited and grateful to begin this whole new journey in my life. I seriously thought, in my innocence, that things would be totally different, that I would suddenly leave all my sins and dissipations behind in favor of serving God in complete joy and freedom. It always makes me thing of that line from some Les Claypool song: "He remembered walking in/not knowing applesauce from sin."

Over the first few years of my life as a Catholic Christian, it was a hard lesson for me to learn that being in love with the idea of holiness was not the same thing as having the will to actually work toward it. Nevertheless, sanctity is the only thing really worth our efforts, and it is made out of a multitude of little ascetical acts which God--in his mercy--keeps secret and unglamorous.

Gratitude

Today's job was writing the thank-you notes for those who helped us with the perpetual profession ceremony. Naturally, I was thinking about gratitude.

Later this month I'll be fourteen years baptized. Why me? There were many kids just like me back in college when I converted. Children of privilege we were, indulging in how smart and clever we were with our little bit of learning, enjoying the life of beer and drugs, rock and roll shows and mosh pits in the consequence-free world of college. I dont' know why I was priveleged to have Christianity happen to me but it did.

I don't know what would have become of me without this mysterious hand of God that slowly but surely entered my life. I don't know what use I would have made of the gifts of my early education and the influence of my parents without religious life and ministry. But in this life I have professed, these things can now be at the disposal of God and of the Church.

Thank You

Thanks to everyone for your support for my final profession of vows yesterday. Thanks to your prayers we had a beautiful Mass and a fine celebration.

I don't have too much time to write this morning, because I am off to the new parish where I am supposed to work on weekends this coming school year.

Freedom

Today I am off to the church where I am to make my final vows tomorrow morning.

At school they tried to teach us a lot about freedom. They told us that our real freedom did not consist of our ability to revise our lives over and over, but in the freedom to dispose of ourselves definitively in and for God.

In fact, our possibilities for revising our life decrease with every moment and every year until finally, one day, we reach our death. When that day comes we have no more choices and we have to say, with our friend Pontius Pilate, like it or not, "what I have written, I have written" and what I have done, I have done.

So if my real freedom consists not in the illusion of having as many options as I can have for as long as possible, but in my liberty to dispose of myself once and for all for God and for the Body of Christ which is the Church of God, well that's what I'll try to do tomorrow.

Pray for me, my friends.

Final Profession

One night on retreat I was pacing outside, thinking about the very idea of taking my final, perpetual vows in religious life. Then I saw the big tree in the center of the retreat house's circular driveway and for some reason I addressed it:

"Well, what do you have to say for yourself, Tree, seeing as you're perpetually professed?"

So then I reflected on the perpetual profession of the tree. The tree receives the sunlight and the rain from God, but it doesn't agonize over what to do with these graces. It doesn't need to discern what to do with the rain and the sun. It doesn't need to journal about it, or wonder how someone with its particular Enneagram number or Myers-Briggs letters would handle them.

The tree has a form of life, or a rule, through which it already knows how it will use the sunlight and the rain. It will grow and flourish and provide shade for the driveway and for those who pray to Our Lady at the grotto across from the house. The tree is committed to its form of life, to its rule. It's perpetually professed.

(By the way, I am 5, INTJ.)

Obscurity

Thank you everyone for your prayers for my retreat. I'm back and moved into a new friary, with several other transitions to go. But how can I complain? I'm supposed to be an itinerant and a mendicant. Francis was fond of a brother who refused to live more than a month in one place. After a month he would get up and go, saying, "Our home is not here, but in heaven."

I worked a lot on retreat with Jacob's encounter with the Angel of the Lord in Genesis 32. I reflected on its nature as a model for prayer. "Some man," who turns out to be the angel, or the presence of God, approaches Jacob when he is alone at night. They struggle, or wrestle, until dawn. In the same way I've often experienced prayer as an obscure and mysterious encounter initiated from somewhere, I know not where.

In the end Jacob demands two things from the angel of the Lord, but only gets half of what we wants. He demands a blessing and receives his new name, Israel, and thus his new vocation. He asks to know the name of the one with whom we has been struggling, and doesn't get it. To me it speaks of the fruits of prayer. Through prayer we can receive discernment of our next step and something we call our vocation in the Lord. But when we hope to penetrate the mystery of the One with whom we struggle, the obscure presence of God only retreats further. We're left with great blessings, but also the frustration of feeling that we know less about who God is than when we started.

Of course there are other famous details in the story, but I didn't have any inspirations about their meaning for me.

Enjoy the feast of the Assumption today. If anything, it's a beautiful affirmation of the blessed possibilities of our bodily existence.