Being a Saint is Not…

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

Saints alive! It seems that our notions of sanctity or holiness are often distortions. We form images of other-worldly beings who have little or nothing to do with everyone we know – even very good people! Whatever saints are, it isn’t like me – their lives are not like my life. I mess-up all the time. Why do we put them so far out of reach? Maybe because we believe that we can’t possibly do what we imagine they did to achieve the rarified air of almost godliness. 

Yet St. Paul in his letters regularly addresses the members of the communities he is writing to as saints or as God’s holy ones – sometimes just before he calls them out or corrects them for their obvious shortcomings and failures to live as God would prefer. Being a saint is not being perfect. Saints are human beings and we human beings are not capable of perfection. We can try to do good, to do better next time. 

In Scripture, holiness is linked to being a member of God’s people, chosen by God, called by God to live good, loving lives. Sounds like all of us! God looks at all of humanity and sees that we are very good. This despite the forces and movements within and around us that seduce us to selfishness. Even saints make mistakes. 

Sanctity is not passive. It invites our response. We need to cooperate somehow, trying to live, as best we can, as God desires us to live. Our cooperation cannot be perfect, because we aren’t. We are limited to what we have come to understand is, in our time, with our formative experiences, living as God wants. We can’t do more than this.

Think of people in history (even in our lifetime) who have been designated as saints: Paul of Tarsus, Francis of Assisi, Mother Teresa of Calcutta… Picture the apostles before and after Jesus’ resurrection. At some point they all came to passionately dedicate their life energy to God. They were not saintly in every moment of their lives, but they wholeheartedly embraced and followed the Spirit’s lead. Over time, God became the primary focus for their lives. Responding to God’s grace made them who they were. Being a saint is not our achievement. 

Léon Bloy, a nineteenth century French writer, wrote: “The only real sadness, the only real failure, the only great tragedy in life, is not to become a saint.” Being a saint is God’s work. What fear so infiltrates our heart that we choose to settle for mediocrity, compromise, socially acceptable niceness, instead of letting God transform us into powerful, yet flawed, instruments of the Good: saints!

Grief Upon Grief

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

Today would have been his 85th birthday. He’d survived deprivation, war, and personal losses. He, Parkinson’s and all, was resolutely committed to waiting out COVID-19 with his dear love and soul mate, Mikki. In the middle of the night, it seems, there was some kind of accident, trauma from which he could not, would not recover. I am just now back from his funeral.

For David, injustice, ignorance, arrogance, and complacency were intolerable. He vibrated with passion, and his heart was saturated in compassion. He possessed a razor sharp mind and humor to match. David was solidly a good man – rare, remarkable, memorable. There is a void, that will not be filled in this life.

It so happens that today is the celebration of the Sacred Heart of Jesus – a Feast that focuses on the fullness of God’s Love for all humanity – no one excluded, nothing held back in reserve. Seems fitting to review and to remember David this day. Late in a restless life he, found or re-found, faith, family, belonging. He realized that our time here is too short to waste wading around in any dead end.

There is deep pain, more than usual, in David’s death. Not for him, not now. After more than a year of pandemic-induced isolation, the awareness of how many moments together we missed out on magnifies the sense of loss. Yet, isn’t this true for all of humankind. We have all been deprived of innumerable, grace-filled times together with loved ones, friends, communities… that hold us closely. Hopefully we have learned to deeply appreciate what is temporarily being denied us – taking nothing for granted – and are resolved to live what days we are given, more mindfully, more fully, more gratefully.

Expanding Your Tent

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

In the desert, hospitality or refusing hospitality is cause for either life or death. To offer water and shade to members of your family and tribe, as well as to any passing stranger, is a matter of survival. In a nomadic culture, tomorrow it could be you in need of this life-sustaining refreshment and rest.

Thomas Merton once wrote that today everywhere is desert. And, in a sense, we are all wandering nomads. The inner life that defines us as human is in danger of drying up and blowing away with the next windstorm. We require oases and depend on one another for gracious welcome. Hospitality is a simple, if sometimes risky, gesture necessary for us to continue on our pilgrim way.

Are there people – not like us, of course – with whom we would not share what we have if they came to our camp, to our oasis? Our future, and our growth toward fullness, as the human race, rests on our willingness to share what we have with whomever is needy. When we look out from the cool shelter of our airy tents, can we see those who are struggling just to get by as our brother, our sister, part of our self? What will it cost us – a drink of water, a few minutes, a smile, a gentle word? It cannot be said often enough. We are all in this together – like it or not. We need to learn to make room in our lives, in our tents, for those whom God will send into our lives.

Which Way Do We Lean?

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

Deuteronomy, the final book of the Law/Teachings attributed to Moses, looks back on the seminal history of God’s people, with the eyes of a different age. It takes the tradition and updates it to speak clearly to the children of Israel in their new circumstances, settled and gaining some prosperity in the land of Promise.   

Toward the end of the book (Deuteronomy 30:15-19) we hear the voice of Moses, sounding like an alarm bell from the past, to alert us to the vital possibilities or mortal pitfalls of our response to God’s Will. Our choices, as limited and conditioned as they are, are the key to fullness of life and true happiness, or to death, decay and dis-ease. Our way of life determines our destiny.

We can either choose to give preeminence to God in our life or to accept God as one of several reference points to guide our course. The idols of success, comfort, illusion, convenience, accomplishment and countless others, whisper to us in our sleep and woo us in our waking hours – powerful, seductive, seemingly irresistible. They are the atmosphere in which we wander through this world, manufactured to distract and claim us away from the One who desires what is truly good for us. Media, advertising, social expectations all meld their forces to capture our lives, our very souls.

The voice of Moses cries out like a trumpet calling us to put all our trust in God – to choose living in communion with others and with God over the slow, winding, but certain, path to death. We are to choose truth over all the beautiful, but ultimately empty, lies. We are to choose compassion over self-centeredness. 

Choose life, then, so that you and all those people you are interconnected with may live well.

Not the Best Timing

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

In the Gospel according to Mark (Mark 10:32-44) Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, on his way to his anticipated suffering and death, as he just reminded his disciples for the third time. Blatantly and cluelessly, the brothers, James and John, approach him with a request. They believe that Jesus is about to triumph, through the power of God, and want him to name them as his second and third in command in his certainly soon to be established kingdom. Nice that they don’t seem to care which of them is on his right and which is on his left – just so it’s the two of them.

Since Jesus’ disciples have been arguing, on a regular basis, about who among them is the greatest, this sets the other ten off. Who do those two usurping upstarts think they are! Jesus didn’t call them first! They have no more right to positions of authority and prestige than any of the rest of us! Once again, Jesus tries to penetrate their ego-centric skulls with a very difficult lesson.

Previously, Jesus used a small child to model the attitude and behavior needed by those who would take on leadership in God’s coming Kingdom. As if that wasn’t shocking and unpleasant enough, now Jesus, referring to his own way of leading, uses the image of a servant/slave. Servants do have influence, but of a kind that stands in radical opposition to how the unbelieving wield what passes for authority among them.

These faithless bosses lord it over those they subject to their commands and their whims. They (in a phrase that captures this well) make their power over others felt. Everyone around them can feel how the world’s masters use and misuse any and every advantage, deception, alliance, imposition, coercion – every imaginable stratagem – to build and to radiate a pervasive sense of their indispensable importance and value. One can physically feel the weight of their presence and self-serving actions. It manifests itself as unyielding and oppressive. This type of power comes down crushingly on people from above.

Jesus clearly and unequivocally states that this is not to be so among his followers. They are to learn and to practice the leadership of the servant/slave. By faithfully accomplishing what is asked with all their knowledge and skill, by being carefully attentive to the needs of those they serve, by desiring what is truly good for those in their charge, by earning trust, by persuading through their genuine concern and astute observations – in all these ways they are building an unshakeable foundation through effective influence – from below. It is not important who gets the credit, the praise, the notice. It is enough that they are content to serve the building up of God’s Kingdom, and that the people they serve are well.

Human Do-ings

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

How did we get to this place where we have forgotten who we are, and who we were created to be? Action, movement, busy-ness, adrenaline, filling up large swaths of time with vigorous effort, expending frenzied energy – all these and more have become substitutes for living as human be-ings. I guess it beats the creeping sense of drifting emptiness that can haunt those moments when we dare to be quiet and still.

Life turns into a race with death to accomplish something that will stand out – good or evil – and most importantly, be noticed by as many people as possible. We like to have concrete output that we can point to: “Look what I did!” But what does it mean? Was anything advanced for the betterment of others? Were people lifted up out of their isolation or other types of misery? Then why are our engines running wide open, if we aren’t going anywhere?

When we feel fearful, stressed out, lost or powerless, we can easily slide into doing mode. This offers us the illusion that we have some measure of power or control or security. We don’t – but that seems too painful to admit and own. We are not gods, nor are we God.

Faith is the antidote. Trust that all is embraced by divine Love, no matter how things look or feel, allows us to be the amazing creatures we are meant to be. Just to be: present, attentive, discerning, caring in every minute. Resisting the pull of doubt and dread demands hard work and courage. This is how we can live as human beings. There is nothing more important.

Dark Night of the Body

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

Imagine you are in fine health and unexpectedly you are diagnosed with a life-threatening, unpredictable, aggressive disease. Equally aggressive and powerful medical intervention is needed to preserve some semblance of your life as you have known it. Of course you agree since you haven’t yet seriously considered how the fact of death fits into your agenda.

The treatment takes you to physical states you had never imagined to visit. One by one systems in your body falter or fail, overwhelmed by the prescribed remedy, to be restored or at least patched in place by heavy doses of other medications. Exhaustion becomes your new normal and a dense fog clogs your brain, making it hard to think or reason.

You’ve had a habit of prayer for years. Suddenly you cannot pray, try as you might. Your re-made body and your thick, drifting mind have become major distractions. You struggle to focus on anything other than all that is not working as it did for your whole life – until now. You feel yourself being dragged down. God, enveloped by the mental mists, feels distant or non-existent. 

How to pray when you can’t pray? Ignatius of Loyola has some very practical recommendations for when we enter into desolation – whatever its origins. Look back over your life, not in comparison with its present circumstances, remember and name as many of the countless blessings you have enjoyed (and are still present – though hidden) as you can. Try to feel what it felt like when God was there, particularly those unforgettable touches of grace. God is still here, now. God is faithful.

Act as though nothing between God and you has changed. From God’s side it hasn’t! You just aren’t able to see clearly in this moment. Do your part. Put time and effort into prayer and love for those around you, as before. Especially if you don’t feel like it. You have all the time in the world. Since you can’t do much else, wait for the day when the sunshine of grace will burn through the temporary fog. Even on the grayest, gloomiest days, the sun is still there, above the blankets of cloud. 

A huge assist comes from entrusting your current state of neediness to your community. Ask them to carry you, in your weakness, through this dark and difficult time. Their faith and prayer will sustain you, if you let them. You will be able to keep going because of their love crying out ceaselessly on your behalf.

Throughout life, and particularly as we age, there are, and will be plenty of occasions where our physical condition fails and weighs us down with it, rendering us dysfunctional. Good thing – life and prayer do not depend on how we are feeling. God’s love is the sole constant force in the physics of spirit, even in the dark.

Born in the House of Bread

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

It seems that most cultures and civilizations have some easily grown and processed starch as the staple in their diet. Think manioc, taro root, rice, corn or other grains, squash, potatoes, beans… These highly starchy foods supply caloric fuel that enables laborers (and some athletes) to endure arduous exercise for many hours on end. For many, including our biblical ancestors, the local basic element of their diet was (and is) bread.

Bread has been referred to as the staff of life. It supports and sustains us, so we can go about our days with sufficient energy to accomplish what we need and/or want to do. Bread is so life-centric that English slang uses it, along with dough, to mean money.

Jesus, further along in the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John (John 6:32-35), refers to himself as bread, the bread of life, and the living bread come down from heaven. He is the essential nutrient for the fullness of life that Abba God desires for all. His body, his very being, given over in free, total love, all the way to death, is the food we need to become fully alive. Jesus is our currency for the long and winding journey of life leading to Life.

And where does Jesus begin among us? Tradition says that he was born in Bethlehem, which can be translated, “house of bread.” Maybe it’s not too much of a stretch to say that Bethlehem is the birth home of the life-giving Bread from God.

 

Reclining in the Mountain Grass

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

It’s interesting. For years I have been reading and reflecting on certain texts of the Bible and then suddenly, one day, something that I had never noticed or paid attention to before seems to jump off the page. What a gift and surprise!

Take the beginning of the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John – a familiar recounting of a superabundance of bread and fish through the presence and action of Jesus (John 6:1-13). A large crowd, who had seen Jesus healing and freeing people from the grip of evil, follow him up the side of a mountain not far from the Sea of Galilee. Philip approaches Jesus with a logistical problem. What to do with a mass of hungry humanity when the community treasury is low?

Andrew to the rescue? He brings a lad to Jesus with five loaves of barley bread and two fish – locally sourced. What is this to a huge crowd with whetted appetites?  

Jesus asks his disciples to have the people recline on the lush carpet of grass. Recline! That’s a word to indicate the posture at a feast or a banquet – not fast food or a family picnic. Jesus takes on the role of gracious host. He provides the impetus through which all the people are able to eat, be satisfied and there is a basket of leftovers collected for each of the 12 tribes of Israel. 

It seems that with Jesus there will be a festive gathering, even when the fare is as simple as barley loaves (the bread the poor could afford) and fish (abundant enough to be the basis for a major regional industry). Jesus invites us to turn our ordinary, simple meals into banquets by sharing what we have with those around us and by being aware that Jesus is present with us. Lean back and savor these moments!

A Voice from 2800 Years Ago

Posted on by a43dcb5_wp

During the Eighth Century BC Israel was filled with prophetic warnings and instruction. People were taking advantage of one another, especially of those with little power, wealth or status. They were ignoring their obligations to God, while enriching themselves. They believed that their strength was sufficient to save them from any danger. (Sound familiar?) The people’s infidelity to the God, who had bonded with them in a covenant, was opening them to invasion, destruction and being carried off into exile by Assyria – the big, bad, pagan empire of the time. The last of this series of prophets to passionately cry out and call for conversion was Micah.

Micah loved God and was deeply concerned with his people. He summed up what God required of them in three interrelated phrases: Act with justice; love fidelity; walk humbly with your God (Micah 6:8). In other words, “Get your act together. Turn your life around before it’s too late!”

We tend to view justice in terms of a balancing act – weighing out deeds and consequences in some kind of mathematical formula (e. g. an eye for any eye and a tooth for a tooth). We think that it is very fair if someone who does something wrong or harmful gets a properly measured punishment. We are into payback; not justice. Justice in Scripture is infinitely different (literally).

We are to treat others as we would like to be treated. But there’s more! We are called to treat others as God treats us. Whoa! God, an equal opportunity lover, makes the sun to shine and the life-giving rain to fall on good and bad alike; on wicked, sinful unbelievers the same as on those of us who think of ourselves as the righteous ones. That’s unfair! That’s the God that Jesus reveals to us – the only true God there is. Deal with it. God forgives everybody for everything. God works for the good of all. We are to act this way.

Love, in the understanding of the people of God, meant to choose to be wholeheartedly for someone or something. The word for fidelity in Hebrew, hesed, is at the heart of the covenant. It captured how God was for the people: faithful, kind, loving, good, compassionate, tender. To love fidelity is to put our whole self, holding nothing back, into infusing all our relationships (God, others, self) with faithfulness, kindness, love, compassion and tenderness.

Adam and Eve, as pictured in the first chapters of the book of Genesis, were accustomed to walk with God in their garden paradise in the cool of the evening. Their intimacy with God was shattered when they decided that they preferred to be like God rather than to simply savor being with God. They cut themselves off through their arrogance. To walk humbly with God has two main facets: to walk in step with God, not trying to get ahead of God nor falling behind; and to walk humbly, certain that we are loved as we are. We are wonderful, amazing, precious, but we are not gods. Humility is about holding in dynamic tension our littleness and our awesomeness. 

Micah invites us to reorder our lives in justice, fidelity, love and humility. God will supply the grace-energy needed to live in this way. That’s a promise.