Thanks for all the responses, both in the public comments and in person, on my post about the possibility of quitting the blog in favor of another project. You have reminded me of something very important.
Ministry is the Lord's work, in which we are helpers, facilitators, and collaborators. Therefore, the idea of any particular ministry we might have is not the same thing as God's idea of it. Indeed, in any successful ministry, what God is up to is greater than either what we care to or even can imagine. Anyone who has ever preached has had a plain and amusing experience of this: after the service someone comes up to you and thanks you for having said some beautiful or insightful thing that you don't remember ever saying, or even meaning to say. The devout soul heard not what you thought you were saying, but what she needed to hear from God. Indeed, to pray for such graces is a humble and helpful way to pray before preaching.
In the same way, I must remember that this blog is a ministry greater than my idea of it. Because of the particularity of my own state in life and the questions and issues that preoccupy me in the current moment of my life, I may be more conscious of parts of the audience that share some of these characteristics. But that doesn't mean that the blog is only for them or even primarily for them. The blog is what God wants it to be. It's for whoever God inspires to visit. Any fruit that comes of my little rants and reflections is God's work, accomplished in the economies of grace so expansive and wonderful that they can even work through the meager and self-indulgent efforts of a lukewarm and distracted little religious priest like me.
So, enjoy the blog. Or better, appreciate and be grateful to the God who is so marvelously humble as to shine his gentle loving kindness through our little web-based communion.
December 31, 2010
December 29, 2010
The Solitude of Sunset
There's a solitude I sometimes know if I'm out walking around sunset; I've known it for a long time, or at least I can remember it back to when I was seventeen or so.
It's as if the whole world--and me in it--is at a grand hinge, and just might (if the moment is right) take the chance to become un-hinged. Not to fall into the dreaded abyss of non-being which we all imitate and flirt with in our sins, but to slip into the final Rest that is beyond becoming. And I know, or at least glimpse, that this Rest is the endless and smooth fullness of Activity that we clumsily give the un-name of 'God.'
It isn't like the solitude of being out walking at dawn, full as it is with freshness and promise and eager but peaceful energy. No, this solitude is one of resignation, a little melancholy but not really sad, as it lets go of the day that has been. What it was, for better or for worse, was what it was, and there's no changing it now.
Thus it's a solitude that imitates the moment and limit toward which all of our days and moments tend: that final limit when our little lives are no longer subject to any revision, when we have been who we were and for whom we were, because there's no more changing any of it, because we're dead. And we let ourselves go, grief, gratitude, distraction and all the rest of the be-blessed mess, out of the becoming into the Limit and Eternity out of which we all came in the first place, and which we kind of remember, but not quite.
It's as if the whole world--and me in it--is at a grand hinge, and just might (if the moment is right) take the chance to become un-hinged. Not to fall into the dreaded abyss of non-being which we all imitate and flirt with in our sins, but to slip into the final Rest that is beyond becoming. And I know, or at least glimpse, that this Rest is the endless and smooth fullness of Activity that we clumsily give the un-name of 'God.'
It isn't like the solitude of being out walking at dawn, full as it is with freshness and promise and eager but peaceful energy. No, this solitude is one of resignation, a little melancholy but not really sad, as it lets go of the day that has been. What it was, for better or for worse, was what it was, and there's no changing it now.
Thus it's a solitude that imitates the moment and limit toward which all of our days and moments tend: that final limit when our little lives are no longer subject to any revision, when we have been who we were and for whom we were, because there's no more changing any of it, because we're dead. And we let ourselves go, grief, gratitude, distraction and all the rest of the be-blessed mess, out of the becoming into the Limit and Eternity out of which we all came in the first place, and which we kind of remember, but not quite.
Surviving Formation
Today I'm considering something hard: the possibility of quitting this blog. I doubt I will, but here's what I'm thinking:
Over Christmas an old friend reminded me that this is a ministry. As I've thought about it anew, I've noticed that some of my best and most fruitful writing here has been in the form of direct answers to questions or indirect responses to conversations from younger religious or those considering a religious or priestly vocation.
So I'm wondering if my incidental writing energies might be better spent in a more sustained and directed--and perhaps more anonymous--project toward a spiritual book on how deal with, and benefit most fruitfully from religious or seminary formation.
It seems to me that such a spiritual book is badly needed to make up for two lacks.
First, the generational differences in religious life and the priesthood can be debilitating for a new religious or seminarian. Formation programs are generally operated and controlled by older religious, so-called 'liberals' for whom the liberation of dismantling a previous, more constricting style of religious life has become a controlling norm and interpretive key. Younger religious, many of whom are converts or reverts to the faith, often emerge from a very different place: they are children of the relativistic vertigo and moral chaos of our age, seeking refuge in something solid to stand on. Form and structure are things they are liberated to, whereas their parents in religion found their freedom in liberation from them. Such is the impasse at the most basic level of spiritual attitude and vocation.
These differences have been rehearsed many times, and by those better at it than me. Each side has its virtues and dangers. My point here is that this can be very difficult world to navigate without being driven to distraction or losing one's mind, much less survive with faith, charity, and sense of humor intact (and all of these are critical to religious life.) As someone who has survived it, and continues to do so as finally professed and ordained, though not without sins and near-catastrophic falls along the way, I think I might be in a good position to share some wisdom about how one might succeed in the funny and conflicted world of religious life.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, entering religious life and trying daily to consent to the grace to be formed in religion requires many ordinary and expected spiritual trials. They aren't the interior struggles you imagine for yourself (in vanity) before you enter. But they are normal and are documented in the spiritual tradition. The trouble is, I don't think many formation programs say much about the interior life, and still less the temptations and trials required to grow in it. In religious life there is just as much--if not more--opportunity to medicate oneself against or distract oneself from these salutary struggles and trials. Unless you have a really good spiritual director--or someone else to help God dig you out from under your defenses--it's possible to miss all of this, especially if your own temperament and that of your community tends to an activist mentality that concentrates on 'doing.' The more I think about it, I think this is a serious deficit and, at the risk of being grandiose, I wonder if I am being called to do something about it.
So, should I quit the blog and try to write this book?
Over Christmas an old friend reminded me that this is a ministry. As I've thought about it anew, I've noticed that some of my best and most fruitful writing here has been in the form of direct answers to questions or indirect responses to conversations from younger religious or those considering a religious or priestly vocation.
So I'm wondering if my incidental writing energies might be better spent in a more sustained and directed--and perhaps more anonymous--project toward a spiritual book on how deal with, and benefit most fruitfully from religious or seminary formation.
It seems to me that such a spiritual book is badly needed to make up for two lacks.
First, the generational differences in religious life and the priesthood can be debilitating for a new religious or seminarian. Formation programs are generally operated and controlled by older religious, so-called 'liberals' for whom the liberation of dismantling a previous, more constricting style of religious life has become a controlling norm and interpretive key. Younger religious, many of whom are converts or reverts to the faith, often emerge from a very different place: they are children of the relativistic vertigo and moral chaos of our age, seeking refuge in something solid to stand on. Form and structure are things they are liberated to, whereas their parents in religion found their freedom in liberation from them. Such is the impasse at the most basic level of spiritual attitude and vocation.
These differences have been rehearsed many times, and by those better at it than me. Each side has its virtues and dangers. My point here is that this can be very difficult world to navigate without being driven to distraction or losing one's mind, much less survive with faith, charity, and sense of humor intact (and all of these are critical to religious life.) As someone who has survived it, and continues to do so as finally professed and ordained, though not without sins and near-catastrophic falls along the way, I think I might be in a good position to share some wisdom about how one might succeed in the funny and conflicted world of religious life.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, entering religious life and trying daily to consent to the grace to be formed in religion requires many ordinary and expected spiritual trials. They aren't the interior struggles you imagine for yourself (in vanity) before you enter. But they are normal and are documented in the spiritual tradition. The trouble is, I don't think many formation programs say much about the interior life, and still less the temptations and trials required to grow in it. In religious life there is just as much--if not more--opportunity to medicate oneself against or distract oneself from these salutary struggles and trials. Unless you have a really good spiritual director--or someone else to help God dig you out from under your defenses--it's possible to miss all of this, especially if your own temperament and that of your community tends to an activist mentality that concentrates on 'doing.' The more I think about it, I think this is a serious deficit and, at the risk of being grandiose, I wonder if I am being called to do something about it.
So, should I quit the blog and try to write this book?
December 28, 2010
Dominus ad Iudicium Veniet cum Senibus
For Christmas I went back to the parish where I was before coming here to Boston. It was a good time; I had a chance to check in with both the pastor and my successor in the parochial vicariate, and had some good time for prayer, quiet, and journaling. I concelebrated the vigil Mass and the night Mass at the parish. I greeted a lot of old friends among the parishioners, telling them that I was 'home from college.'
For the Mass of Christmas Day, I wanted to visit the adjacent residence for our senior brothers. When I asked if I could attend the Mass there, the guardian invited me to be the principal celebrant! I was anxious about how it would go, but everything was smooth, and I even got away with preaching (two sentences). I was also grateful that I didn't have to remind anyone to genuflect during the creed, since they all sit for the Mass anyway.
The gift of the moment really struck me during the Eucharistic Prayer. The voices accompanying mine in the great prayer represented almost five hundred years of religious life and four hundred of priesthood, of which my contribution was only about two and three percent, respectively. The next youngest friar in the chapel was nearly thirty years older than me, and the oldest was fifty years my senior.
In all of these things--years on earth, age in religion, and years of priesthood, I felt like an untested child with these men around me. But there I was, the principal celebrant at the beautiful Mass in aurora on Christmas morning. I felt in those voices the presence of my fathers in the spiritual order, begetting my priesthood through the communion of our sacrificial prayer.
Later on I thought, as I sometimes do, of the words of my formation director in a hallway on the morning of my ordination: "Remember the Communion of Saints. It's the only way this makes sense."
For the Mass of Christmas Day, I wanted to visit the adjacent residence for our senior brothers. When I asked if I could attend the Mass there, the guardian invited me to be the principal celebrant! I was anxious about how it would go, but everything was smooth, and I even got away with preaching (two sentences). I was also grateful that I didn't have to remind anyone to genuflect during the creed, since they all sit for the Mass anyway.
The gift of the moment really struck me during the Eucharistic Prayer. The voices accompanying mine in the great prayer represented almost five hundred years of religious life and four hundred of priesthood, of which my contribution was only about two and three percent, respectively. The next youngest friar in the chapel was nearly thirty years older than me, and the oldest was fifty years my senior.
In all of these things--years on earth, age in religion, and years of priesthood, I felt like an untested child with these men around me. But there I was, the principal celebrant at the beautiful Mass in aurora on Christmas morning. I felt in those voices the presence of my fathers in the spiritual order, begetting my priesthood through the communion of our sacrificial prayer.
Later on I thought, as I sometimes do, of the words of my formation director in a hallway on the morning of my ordination: "Remember the Communion of Saints. It's the only way this makes sense."
December 27, 2010
Thoughts at the Consecration
Once in a while a strong thought arises for me very suddenly at the time of the consecration. Sometimes it will be a certain spiritual insight, and other times a particularly outrageous temptation to distraction.
When I was first ordained, this used to annoy me very much, no matter what sort of thought it was. I was trying to concentrate, to speak the words of institution distincte et aperte and with a clearly formed intention to do what the Church intends, and I was bothered by the idea of being distracted at this most sacred moment. But as anyone who has tried to practice interior asceticism knows, we only make our situation worse when we add an emotional charge or self-conscious judgment to any sort of arising thought.
I've come to accept the phenomenon. If, as my ordaining bishop recently reminded us, my speaking of the words of consecration is the center of each of my days, why shouldn't this be the moment of special graces of spiritual insight? In the same way, why should this not be the moment when the devil sometimes attacks me with his most desperate tactics?
When I was first ordained, this used to annoy me very much, no matter what sort of thought it was. I was trying to concentrate, to speak the words of institution distincte et aperte and with a clearly formed intention to do what the Church intends, and I was bothered by the idea of being distracted at this most sacred moment. But as anyone who has tried to practice interior asceticism knows, we only make our situation worse when we add an emotional charge or self-conscious judgment to any sort of arising thought.
I've come to accept the phenomenon. If, as my ordaining bishop recently reminded us, my speaking of the words of consecration is the center of each of my days, why shouldn't this be the moment of special graces of spiritual insight? In the same way, why should this not be the moment when the devil sometimes attacks me with his most desperate tactics?
December 26, 2010
The Journey
As I was meditating on today's gospel--St. Matthew's account of the Flight into Egypt--an old and encouraging memory came up for me. For my graduation from college, my parents gave me the gift of a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I went with a group, under the direction of Fr. Callistus Bamberg, OFM, (may he rest in peace.) It was a wondrous and formative trip for me as a fairly new Christian. The crucifix I bought there to carry on the Via Dolorosa--from a storekeeper who insisted on showing me photo albums of the successes of his relatives in New York, and with whom I shared bread and herbs with a Goldstar beer while he tried to find a crucifix to my liking--has been the first thing I bring into a new apartment or cell ever since. It was in the Lord's tomb in the church of the Holy Sepulchre that I first proclaimed a reading at Mass. Whenever I think of that moment, given what has come in the years since, I am so grateful, and a little scared.
There were several of us on the pilgrimage who were there at some kind of juncture in life, or in celebration of some particular moment. One devout couple was there in celebration of a wedding anniversary. For someone else it was retirement. There were a couple of religious celebrating jubilees, and one priest having an anniversary of ordination. Me, I was the kid of the trip, and my thing was that I was about to enter religious life. At the end of our trip, the group wanted to do something to recognize these moments in the lives of us various pilgrims--I think we were at Tiberias--and so there was a little prayer service, and there were souvenir gifts. I received an olive wood statue of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. When Father handed it to me he said, "Whenever you see this, remember that it's a journey."
"The journey" is such an apt metaphor for the spiritual life, and so deep and full of resonance and meaning that it hardly seems worthwhile to try to write about it per se. Nevertheless, one aspect of the journey of which I have become increasingly aware over the years is that the journey itself is formative. The places and people, the joys and the losses, and in some ways most of all the insults and misfortunes, the meaninglessnesses and apparent absences of God by which the Cross is revealed in our individual lives, all of these conspire together to make us who we are before God and one another as Christian souls, or at least souls who desire God through the only Way of cruciformity.
When I'm at my best, the suffering and emptiness of the Cross as it has been revealed to me in my own life has made me grow in patience, compassion, and the sort of true peace that comes from perspective, from wideness of ultimate horizon. At my worst, some of my sufferings have left me damaged, skittish, dismissive, and prejudiced. One of the deep challenges of the journey, at least as I have experienced it thus far, is to accept that these two aspects of who I have become, of how I have been both formed and deformed along the way, are like the wheat and weeds of the Lord's parable. They are so intertwined in their growth together that it would be impossible to uproot the weeds without also taking the wheat along with them. Therefore, in everything I do in my prayer and in my life with the brethren and everybody else, I must remember that I have been graced for prayer and service through my journey, but that I also have dark spots that can come out in hurtful and unhelpful ways.
So I make it my prayer, that as I journey on to the moment of my own death, and groan along with every other member of the Church Universal for the final fulfillment of the creation (and along with the world, which in some ways groans harder, but ignorant of why or for what), God will harvest from me all the good he has worked in me, and let the rest fall into the pointless non-being it imitates in me each day.
There were several of us on the pilgrimage who were there at some kind of juncture in life, or in celebration of some particular moment. One devout couple was there in celebration of a wedding anniversary. For someone else it was retirement. There were a couple of religious celebrating jubilees, and one priest having an anniversary of ordination. Me, I was the kid of the trip, and my thing was that I was about to enter religious life. At the end of our trip, the group wanted to do something to recognize these moments in the lives of us various pilgrims--I think we were at Tiberias--and so there was a little prayer service, and there were souvenir gifts. I received an olive wood statue of the Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt. When Father handed it to me he said, "Whenever you see this, remember that it's a journey."
"The journey" is such an apt metaphor for the spiritual life, and so deep and full of resonance and meaning that it hardly seems worthwhile to try to write about it per se. Nevertheless, one aspect of the journey of which I have become increasingly aware over the years is that the journey itself is formative. The places and people, the joys and the losses, and in some ways most of all the insults and misfortunes, the meaninglessnesses and apparent absences of God by which the Cross is revealed in our individual lives, all of these conspire together to make us who we are before God and one another as Christian souls, or at least souls who desire God through the only Way of cruciformity.
When I'm at my best, the suffering and emptiness of the Cross as it has been revealed to me in my own life has made me grow in patience, compassion, and the sort of true peace that comes from perspective, from wideness of ultimate horizon. At my worst, some of my sufferings have left me damaged, skittish, dismissive, and prejudiced. One of the deep challenges of the journey, at least as I have experienced it thus far, is to accept that these two aspects of who I have become, of how I have been both formed and deformed along the way, are like the wheat and weeds of the Lord's parable. They are so intertwined in their growth together that it would be impossible to uproot the weeds without also taking the wheat along with them. Therefore, in everything I do in my prayer and in my life with the brethren and everybody else, I must remember that I have been graced for prayer and service through my journey, but that I also have dark spots that can come out in hurtful and unhelpful ways.
So I make it my prayer, that as I journey on to the moment of my own death, and groan along with every other member of the Church Universal for the final fulfillment of the creation (and along with the world, which in some ways groans harder, but ignorant of why or for what), God will harvest from me all the good he has worked in me, and let the rest fall into the pointless non-being it imitates in me each day.
December 24, 2010
In Nativitate Domini
Merry Christmas, friends.
May the dawn of the new creation draw us in and be the refreshment and renovation of our hearts and minds! I'm on the road for Christmas and Holy Family weekend, but I left this post to publish itself in my absence. I've posted this text before, but I remain happy with it. It's a homily for the Christmas Mass in nocte that I wrote as part of the final exam for a course on the Blessed Trinity:
Rejoice, friends, for the mystery of Christmas is the revelation of God’s loving plan for our salvation. “The grace of God has appeared,” as Paul tells us. The human birth of the Son of God reveals the mystery that God indeed has a son. Our God is a perfect love, and what is love that does not love someone? Therefore from all eternity there is lover and beloved in God, the Father and the Son.
Be assured that this Son of God whose human birth we adore tonight is God himself, “light from light,” and “true God from true God” as we shall soon pray in the creed. Paul himself calls him “our great God and savior.”
While contemplating the poor and simple birth of the Lord, let us pay attention to our attitude toward the mystery. Is it just that we have awe for the humility of the God who was willing to accept not only the poverty of our nature but to be born among simple parents in an obscure nation? Is Christmas here to teach us to be humble too? I assure you that the Son of God is much more than a role model, though he is surely that as well. Paul tells us that this appearance of the grace of God will, in fact, “deliver us from all lawlessness” and “cleanse” us, making us into God’s own people.
This is the great good news of Christmas: the Son of God is born in our human nature and thus provides our human nature a path to the divine life of God that he himself has been from all eternity. By becoming one of us, the infinite love that the Son has always received is now extended to us through the human nature of Jesus Christ.
The Incarnation connects the divine with the human, extending God’s life to us. This sacred exchange is voiced in the preface to tonight’s Eucharist prayer when it says that in Christ we see “our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.” This stretching forth, as it were, of the eternal love of Father and Son to us is what we call the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation of God establishes a path for our human nature to be brought back to God, and God’s Spirit draws us in. This is what we mean when we say that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit; the Spirit of God, God’s desire to be known, works in the Incarnation so that God’s saving plan may be known.
This is good news! The birth of Jesus Christ reveals the new availability of the infinitely beautiful and satisfying love that is the personal life of God himself. This is our adoption into the eternal Sonship of Christ himself, through which we become the true children of God. We rejoice tonight for, through the human birth of Christ, the Holy Spirit includes us in the eternal and perfect relationship of the Lover whom we call Father and the Beloved whom we call the Son. And this is the grand and mysterious reality that we call God.
May the dawn of the new creation draw us in and be the refreshment and renovation of our hearts and minds! I'm on the road for Christmas and Holy Family weekend, but I left this post to publish itself in my absence. I've posted this text before, but I remain happy with it. It's a homily for the Christmas Mass in nocte that I wrote as part of the final exam for a course on the Blessed Trinity:
Rejoice, friends, for the mystery of Christmas is the revelation of God’s loving plan for our salvation. “The grace of God has appeared,” as Paul tells us. The human birth of the Son of God reveals the mystery that God indeed has a son. Our God is a perfect love, and what is love that does not love someone? Therefore from all eternity there is lover and beloved in God, the Father and the Son.
Be assured that this Son of God whose human birth we adore tonight is God himself, “light from light,” and “true God from true God” as we shall soon pray in the creed. Paul himself calls him “our great God and savior.”
While contemplating the poor and simple birth of the Lord, let us pay attention to our attitude toward the mystery. Is it just that we have awe for the humility of the God who was willing to accept not only the poverty of our nature but to be born among simple parents in an obscure nation? Is Christmas here to teach us to be humble too? I assure you that the Son of God is much more than a role model, though he is surely that as well. Paul tells us that this appearance of the grace of God will, in fact, “deliver us from all lawlessness” and “cleanse” us, making us into God’s own people.
This is the great good news of Christmas: the Son of God is born in our human nature and thus provides our human nature a path to the divine life of God that he himself has been from all eternity. By becoming one of us, the infinite love that the Son has always received is now extended to us through the human nature of Jesus Christ.
The Incarnation connects the divine with the human, extending God’s life to us. This sacred exchange is voiced in the preface to tonight’s Eucharist prayer when it says that in Christ we see “our God made visible and so are caught up in love of the God we cannot see.” This stretching forth, as it were, of the eternal love of Father and Son to us is what we call the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation of God establishes a path for our human nature to be brought back to God, and God’s Spirit draws us in. This is what we mean when we say that Jesus Christ was conceived by the Holy Spirit; the Spirit of God, God’s desire to be known, works in the Incarnation so that God’s saving plan may be known.
This is good news! The birth of Jesus Christ reveals the new availability of the infinitely beautiful and satisfying love that is the personal life of God himself. This is our adoption into the eternal Sonship of Christ himself, through which we become the true children of God. We rejoice tonight for, through the human birth of Christ, the Holy Spirit includes us in the eternal and perfect relationship of the Lover whom we call Father and the Beloved whom we call the Son. And this is the grand and mysterious reality that we call God.
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