In a very real way it is good for a priest to know the misery and struggles of sin. It helps us to understand and be compassionate with those we serve. But as a priest, we cannot stop there, as if a simple sharing in the same plight and spiritual condition of everyone else were enough.
A priest also has to know the path to freedom from sin, the path that Christ has won for us. He has to know that the humanity of Christ has christ-ened his own humanity. This is what people long for, to find and experience the path to freedom which is the humanity of Christ. When I say 'know' I mean really to know it as a personal experience in one's life. Granted, we must know this in an intellectual way so that we can find the words to express it in preaching, but the sine qua non is the personal experience of the freedom, liberation, and joy we communicate to others in our ministry of the Sacraments.
June 5, 2009
From My Confessor
Some good words on the struggle and the ministry:
Distractions in Prayer
Anyone who decides to get serious about prayer and the spiritual life soon knows the discouragement of struggling with distractions during the time of prayer. They may be useless or even sinful, or just an intruding awareness of the next thing we have to do during the day.
To be distracted when we try to pray and recollect ourselves in the Presence of God is one of the ordinary and most useful trials in the spiritual life. Dealing with the annoyance and disappointment of distraction can help us accept the tutelage of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to draw us deeper into the Blessed Trinity.
That being said, what should we do if we find ourselves unacceptably distracted in prayer?
Outside of the time of prayer
First of all, if we are distracted at the time of prayer, it may be because we are distracted in our life in general. Mindfulness is critical in the spiritual life. Age quod agis, as the saying goes: "Do what you are doing," and not something else.
There can be no hope for prayer if we spend the rest of our day in a state of distraction, with the attention of heart and mind thrown about by every little thing that presents itself to them. A life of prayer demands that we begin to practice "watchfulness of thoughts" and "guard of the heart." We must work with our thoughts, inclinations, and affections throughout the day, practicing the letting go and breathing out of those that are useless, vain, or sinful. If we do not at least begin to discipline our interior attention and affect throughout our whole day, we cannot hope to just turn off the chaos during the time we have set apart for prayer.
Second, we need to practical about planning out our daily prayer. At what time of day is our mind most clear and at peace? For many the early morning is the best time for prayer, when the dawn or pre-dawn--the summo mane as the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours put it--recall the Resurrection and the whole world is quiet. For others the best time is the evening, after the day has been dealt with and stress has been worked out. For parish priests who often have a kind of crepuscular, bi-phasic workday, the best time may be in the quiet of the afternoon. We should seek the time for prayer that suits our particular temperament and circumstances best, so that we set ourselves up for success, praying when our mind and heart are most at peace.
Within the time of prayer
Even when we have organized the rest of our lives in service to our prayer, we we will still have to work with distractions while we are praying. It is good that we have to do this, because it trains us in our prayerful intentionality and will leave us more free from the tyranny of our thoughts during the rest of our day.
The most basic response to distractions in prayer is to simply let them go. Thoughts wander into our consciousness without our consent, and we are under no obligation to pay them any attention. If we don't, they will continue on their way. Images are sometimes helpful here. One that I like compares our mind to a river and our thoughts to little boats. I think I got it from Thomas Keating. Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away.
The purpose of an imaginative exercise like this is to help us learn that one of the real purposes of prayer is dis-identification with our thoughts. Our conscious thoughts do not exhaust our real identity, any more than our body does.
In order to make the letting go of thoughts and distractions work, we need to give up control. As long as we try to force thoughts out of our consciousness, we will only introduce more distraction. The point is not to push them out by force, but to let go of control and to dis-identify with the thought-stream altogether. We are not the thoughts, but the spiritual being that has the thoughts. Just as control is opposed to love in relationships between people, so control is opposed to prayer in the interior person. Let go. If distractions want to be there in our mind, let them be there. It is none of our business. When we don't worry about them or pay attention to them, they will go somewhere else. Control is the opposite of prayer.
Practicing in this way has tremendous spiritual fruit in our life outside of prayer. As we become less identified with our thoughts and feelings, we find ourselves less controlled and determined by our thoughts, feelings, and "tapes" as we go through our day. We become free from what we thought, half wrongly, was our "self."
Now sometimes it happens that we will be overwhelmed. Distracting thoughts come that have such an emotional charge or urgent intensity that they drown out everything else. At this point we sometimes have to simply surrender to the distraction and pray with it instead. As pain in the body is meant to make us deal with an urgent issue, so it sometimes happens with the soul. If distractions are so intense that we cannot let go of them or work with them, we have to start praying through the issue the distraction presents. But we shouldn't resort to this too readily. To let go of thoughts and distractions is a much more fruitful practice.
To be distracted when we try to pray and recollect ourselves in the Presence of God is one of the ordinary and most useful trials in the spiritual life. Dealing with the annoyance and disappointment of distraction can help us accept the tutelage of the Holy Spirit and allow Him to draw us deeper into the Blessed Trinity.
That being said, what should we do if we find ourselves unacceptably distracted in prayer?
Outside of the time of prayer
First of all, if we are distracted at the time of prayer, it may be because we are distracted in our life in general. Mindfulness is critical in the spiritual life. Age quod agis, as the saying goes: "Do what you are doing," and not something else.
There can be no hope for prayer if we spend the rest of our day in a state of distraction, with the attention of heart and mind thrown about by every little thing that presents itself to them. A life of prayer demands that we begin to practice "watchfulness of thoughts" and "guard of the heart." We must work with our thoughts, inclinations, and affections throughout the day, practicing the letting go and breathing out of those that are useless, vain, or sinful. If we do not at least begin to discipline our interior attention and affect throughout our whole day, we cannot hope to just turn off the chaos during the time we have set apart for prayer.
Second, we need to practical about planning out our daily prayer. At what time of day is our mind most clear and at peace? For many the early morning is the best time for prayer, when the dawn or pre-dawn--the summo mane as the rubrics for the Liturgy of the Hours put it--recall the Resurrection and the whole world is quiet. For others the best time is the evening, after the day has been dealt with and stress has been worked out. For parish priests who often have a kind of crepuscular, bi-phasic workday, the best time may be in the quiet of the afternoon. We should seek the time for prayer that suits our particular temperament and circumstances best, so that we set ourselves up for success, praying when our mind and heart are most at peace.
Within the time of prayer
Even when we have organized the rest of our lives in service to our prayer, we we will still have to work with distractions while we are praying. It is good that we have to do this, because it trains us in our prayerful intentionality and will leave us more free from the tyranny of our thoughts during the rest of our day.
The most basic response to distractions in prayer is to simply let them go. Thoughts wander into our consciousness without our consent, and we are under no obligation to pay them any attention. If we don't, they will continue on their way. Images are sometimes helpful here. One that I like compares our mind to a river and our thoughts to little boats. I think I got it from Thomas Keating. Imagine the consciousness during prayer to be like a section of a river. Thoughts and distractions are like little boats that come floating downstream. If we don't pay them any attention, they float by and are gone. If we put our attention into them, or worse, weigh them down with an emotional reaction, the little boat gets heavier and moves that much slower. The more attention and emotion we put into the little boat, the heavier it gets and the more sluggish it becomes in floating away.
The purpose of an imaginative exercise like this is to help us learn that one of the real purposes of prayer is dis-identification with our thoughts. Our conscious thoughts do not exhaust our real identity, any more than our body does.
In order to make the letting go of thoughts and distractions work, we need to give up control. As long as we try to force thoughts out of our consciousness, we will only introduce more distraction. The point is not to push them out by force, but to let go of control and to dis-identify with the thought-stream altogether. We are not the thoughts, but the spiritual being that has the thoughts. Just as control is opposed to love in relationships between people, so control is opposed to prayer in the interior person. Let go. If distractions want to be there in our mind, let them be there. It is none of our business. When we don't worry about them or pay attention to them, they will go somewhere else. Control is the opposite of prayer.
Practicing in this way has tremendous spiritual fruit in our life outside of prayer. As we become less identified with our thoughts and feelings, we find ourselves less controlled and determined by our thoughts, feelings, and "tapes" as we go through our day. We become free from what we thought, half wrongly, was our "self."
Now sometimes it happens that we will be overwhelmed. Distracting thoughts come that have such an emotional charge or urgent intensity that they drown out everything else. At this point we sometimes have to simply surrender to the distraction and pray with it instead. As pain in the body is meant to make us deal with an urgent issue, so it sometimes happens with the soul. If distractions are so intense that we cannot let go of them or work with them, we have to start praying through the issue the distraction presents. But we shouldn't resort to this too readily. To let go of thoughts and distractions is a much more fruitful practice.
Church Nerd Humor
Acrimonious debater: What would St. Thomas say if he were here?
Unhelpful friar: He would say, 'Did I miss the Second Council of Lyon?'
Unhelpful friar: He would say, 'Did I miss the Second Council of Lyon?'
June 4, 2009
Overheard in the Parish Office
Priest: Have you picked the readings from Sacred Scripture for your wedding?
Bride: Not yet. I just don't want that one that everybody has, you know, 'love is jealous..."
Priest: I think it says, 'love is not jealous.'
Groom: [laughs]
Bride: Not yet. I just don't want that one that everybody has, you know, 'love is jealous..."
Priest: I think it says, 'love is not jealous.'
Groom: [laughs]
Christian Prayer
New friend Adore te Devote has a wonderfully honest and humble post today called Hypocrisy in Prayer. Check our her blog if you aren't already reading it. She outlines an experience that most serious Christian pray-ers have probably had, and certainly those who pray the Liturgy of the Hours.
Her annotation of part of psalm 18 says it all:
It's true. In praying these lines it is hard to own them. They seem to accuse the pray-er who knows that they aren't true. Rather than the bold proclamation of the psalmist, they seem to enforce upon the pray-er her sense of inadequacy and distance from God and his righteousness.
This experience demands a theological account of Christian prayer. What do Christians mean by prayer? Christian prayer is first and most completely the prayer of Christ. As Sancrosanctum concilium 83 puts it, "Christ Jesus, the high priest of the new and eternal Covenant, took our human nature and introduced into the world of our exile that hymn of praise which is sung in the heavenly places [in supernis sedibus] throughout all ages.
So, by Christian prayer we mean first and foremost the prayer of Christ. We who are Christians, then, have as our praying project to simply join ourselves to this prayer. Note the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours 6: "Prayer directed to God must be linked [conectatur oportet] with Christ, the Lord of all, the one mediator through whom alone we have access to God." This is why Christians always pray, 'through Christ our Lord;' our prayer is meant to be taken up into his.
In the end it is not us who pray at all, but the Spirit who prays within us. Thus prayer is the real fruit of our being baptized into the life of the Blessed Trinity. Just as the Spirit conceived the Word of God that He might borrow our humanity from Our Lady, so the Spirit delights to conceive the prayer of Christ in the lives of those who consent to be Christians.
So when we come to praying the psalms, for instance, the primary praying voice is not ours, but Christ's. He is the righteous one who can pray "my hands are clean' and 'I have kept the way of the Lord.' Christ can pray this prayer even thought we can't. But since Christian prayer is the prayer of Christ, the righteousness that we hold up to God in sacrifice through our prayer is not our own but Christ's. It is by his righteousness and obedience that we are saved, after all, not by our own. When we pray these lines it is His voice praying, and his perfect and eternal sacrifice in which the Father delights.
On the level of day to day spirituality, then, Christian prayer is not matter of effort but of consent. The prayer is always there, as the Holy Spirit has stretched the perfect praise of the Blessed Trinity to include our humanity in the Incarnation. We just have to permit the Spirit to pray within us, through Christ our Lord, that his prayer might take shape in our humanity as well.
Her annotation of part of psalm 18 says it all:
He rewarded me because I was just, (When have I been just?)
repaid me, for my hands were clean, (My hands are filthy!)
for I have kept the way of the Lord (No, I haven't)
and have not fallen away from my God. (Yes, I have)
It's true. In praying these lines it is hard to own them. They seem to accuse the pray-er who knows that they aren't true. Rather than the bold proclamation of the psalmist, they seem to enforce upon the pray-er her sense of inadequacy and distance from God and his righteousness.
This experience demands a theological account of Christian prayer. What do Christians mean by prayer? Christian prayer is first and most completely the prayer of Christ. As Sancrosanctum concilium 83 puts it, "Christ Jesus, the high priest of the new and eternal Covenant, took our human nature and introduced into the world of our exile that hymn of praise which is sung in the heavenly places [in supernis sedibus] throughout all ages.
So, by Christian prayer we mean first and foremost the prayer of Christ. We who are Christians, then, have as our praying project to simply join ourselves to this prayer. Note the General Instruction of the Liturgy of the Hours 6: "Prayer directed to God must be linked [conectatur oportet] with Christ, the Lord of all, the one mediator through whom alone we have access to God." This is why Christians always pray, 'through Christ our Lord;' our prayer is meant to be taken up into his.
In the end it is not us who pray at all, but the Spirit who prays within us. Thus prayer is the real fruit of our being baptized into the life of the Blessed Trinity. Just as the Spirit conceived the Word of God that He might borrow our humanity from Our Lady, so the Spirit delights to conceive the prayer of Christ in the lives of those who consent to be Christians.
So when we come to praying the psalms, for instance, the primary praying voice is not ours, but Christ's. He is the righteous one who can pray "my hands are clean' and 'I have kept the way of the Lord.' Christ can pray this prayer even thought we can't. But since Christian prayer is the prayer of Christ, the righteousness that we hold up to God in sacrifice through our prayer is not our own but Christ's. It is by his righteousness and obedience that we are saved, after all, not by our own. When we pray these lines it is His voice praying, and his perfect and eternal sacrifice in which the Father delights.
On the level of day to day spirituality, then, Christian prayer is not matter of effort but of consent. The prayer is always there, as the Holy Spirit has stretched the perfect praise of the Blessed Trinity to include our humanity in the Incarnation. We just have to permit the Spirit to pray within us, through Christ our Lord, that his prayer might take shape in our humanity as well.
June 3, 2009
Covered in Blood
Once in a while I have extra spiritual experiences while offering Mass; interior visions or insights, that sort of thing. A good example is my "dirty chalice" experience. I'm grateful for these for the fear of the Lord and understanding they offer, but I have to be very deliberate with the rest of Mass because I feel distracted and likely to skip something, etc.
Today was another one. I was very happy to offer the Mass of St. Charles Lwanga, because his feast is my "name day." In a rather uncharacteristic display of practicality, I chose to be baptized with the name of a saint identical to the name I had before. I didn't know much about St. Charles, but since I also already had the middle initial 'L' it seemed like a perfect fit. Over the years I have sought Charles's prayers as a special patron, and also having learned more about his life and martyrdom I have come to believe that my choice was entirely inspired and providential.
Today at Mass I tried to preach on St. Charles as an undiscovered patron saint for our times. As he was martyred at least in part for his unwillingness to accept a situation of sexual abuse and exploitation at the king's court, so we should seek his prayers in our effort to find a path to healing and a place beyond the scourge of sexualized power and exploitation in our Church.
As I was leaving the ambo after the homily and returning to the chair, I noticed my red chasuble and all of a sudden I had this interior vision of myself covered with blood. With this seemingly grotesque insight I peered for a moment into the truth of the Mass and our martyrdom. St. Charles is counted among the martyrs precisely because his own blood was taken up completely into identity with the Precious Blood of Christ. The Eucharist he received was so powerful in his life that in his sufferings his own blood became the extension--in his particular time, place, and culture--of Christ's Blood poured out on the Cross.
This is the joy and the challenge of the Eucharist for us. Christ's Blood was poured out on the Cross. He is broken. In the Eucharist we receive his broken Body and Blood poured out so that our blood might become His. We too are to break ourselves so that the Blood of Christ may flow from us for the life of the world. The goal of the Eucharist is Holy Communion--a communion in which the Blood of Christ, the blood of the martyrs, and our blood and lives are ultimately--and only ultimately--the same thing.
Today was another one. I was very happy to offer the Mass of St. Charles Lwanga, because his feast is my "name day." In a rather uncharacteristic display of practicality, I chose to be baptized with the name of a saint identical to the name I had before. I didn't know much about St. Charles, but since I also already had the middle initial 'L' it seemed like a perfect fit. Over the years I have sought Charles's prayers as a special patron, and also having learned more about his life and martyrdom I have come to believe that my choice was entirely inspired and providential.
Today at Mass I tried to preach on St. Charles as an undiscovered patron saint for our times. As he was martyred at least in part for his unwillingness to accept a situation of sexual abuse and exploitation at the king's court, so we should seek his prayers in our effort to find a path to healing and a place beyond the scourge of sexualized power and exploitation in our Church.
As I was leaving the ambo after the homily and returning to the chair, I noticed my red chasuble and all of a sudden I had this interior vision of myself covered with blood. With this seemingly grotesque insight I peered for a moment into the truth of the Mass and our martyrdom. St. Charles is counted among the martyrs precisely because his own blood was taken up completely into identity with the Precious Blood of Christ. The Eucharist he received was so powerful in his life that in his sufferings his own blood became the extension--in his particular time, place, and culture--of Christ's Blood poured out on the Cross.
This is the joy and the challenge of the Eucharist for us. Christ's Blood was poured out on the Cross. He is broken. In the Eucharist we receive his broken Body and Blood poured out so that our blood might become His. We too are to break ourselves so that the Blood of Christ may flow from us for the life of the world. The goal of the Eucharist is Holy Communion--a communion in which the Blood of Christ, the blood of the martyrs, and our blood and lives are ultimately--and only ultimately--the same thing.
June 2, 2009
Paying Attention
The spiritual part of the human being, i.e. soul, mind, spirit, etc., reveals its spiritual nature most simply insofar as it is not bound by time and space. Unlike the body, which (apart from the most extraordinary phenomena) can only be where it happens to be in space and time, the mind, soul, and spirit do not have to be in the same place as the body. Through memory, the mind can place itself in the past, or it can be present to the future through imagination. The inner attention can be somewhere else apart from where our body is; somewhere we have visited perhaps, or would like to go.
That our spiritual nature is not bound by space or time is the means of prayer at the most basic level. We can 'raise heart and mind' to God and be present to the Ultimate and Infinite rather than the contingent and finite things of this world. We can take a peaceful walk and work through our memory, allowing our heart and soul to travel through time in search of a greater understanding and acceptance of the present. These uses of our spiritual power are very good and salutary things, and help us to be more human.
But this powerful faculty of our spirit is also dangerous and the occasion of many pitfalls. The ability of our soul and inner attention to be somewhere else can be misused. We can go through our days with no attention to the moments that God puts before us. The grace of God unfolds before us but we miss it because our soul is somewhere else. To be sure, we might be about something very pious in our mind and soul, like preparing a homily or a pious blog post, but we are nonetheless failing because we are not mindful of the present where God is always revealed in a privileged way. If we are naturally bright and a good multi-tasker, we can even seem like we are listening to someone or working quietly, but all the time we are going over something else and talking to ourselves or running 'tapes' in our head and not really paying attention. And then we find ourselves unhappy and we don't know why. We are unhappy because we have spent all our time living in an unreality.
That our spiritual nature is not bound by space or time is the means of prayer at the most basic level. We can 'raise heart and mind' to God and be present to the Ultimate and Infinite rather than the contingent and finite things of this world. We can take a peaceful walk and work through our memory, allowing our heart and soul to travel through time in search of a greater understanding and acceptance of the present. These uses of our spiritual power are very good and salutary things, and help us to be more human.
But this powerful faculty of our spirit is also dangerous and the occasion of many pitfalls. The ability of our soul and inner attention to be somewhere else can be misused. We can go through our days with no attention to the moments that God puts before us. The grace of God unfolds before us but we miss it because our soul is somewhere else. To be sure, we might be about something very pious in our mind and soul, like preparing a homily or a pious blog post, but we are nonetheless failing because we are not mindful of the present where God is always revealed in a privileged way. If we are naturally bright and a good multi-tasker, we can even seem like we are listening to someone or working quietly, but all the time we are going over something else and talking to ourselves or running 'tapes' in our head and not really paying attention. And then we find ourselves unhappy and we don't know why. We are unhappy because we have spent all our time living in an unreality.
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