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Aug
14
The Grandeur of Death
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It is odd to think that death has any kind of majesty to it. The end of a life is the final unknown adventure and those left behind grapple with loss and pain. But for the Christian whose life is limned with hope, there is something far greater and higher than reason can grasp.
The row of windshields coruscated in the spent afternoon light, shadows lengthening at the summer day’s end. A long line of flashing taillights warned that I was imminent upon a funeral procession. Cars in the opposite direction were stopped along the side of the road, a final salutation to the soul whose body was about to be laid in its final resting place. Other cars rushed past almost in protest at the languorous pace of traffic, as if the precious moments of courtesy would cheat them out of their urgent destination.
It was a jarring sight, those cars failing to stop at this moment of solemn passing: a human being whose earthly course had run was now returning to his Creator. A soul loved by God as no others could have loved, pursued and wooed to the end by the God whose very thought created this being. How could anyone fail to stop and acknowledge this moment of grandeur? But perhaps in the failure is an element of denial, a frenzy that keeps at bay the overarching fact that each of us, too, must meet this fate.
I wondered if this person had died in the friendship of God, if he had responded to the impulses of grace freely given, if he learned to speak with God with a quality of intimacy and ease that he had with his loved ones. Or did he die in rejection of the untiring call of God? At least, judging by the number of cars in the procession, he was held in esteem by a good number of people. Enough of them understood this auspicious moment of passing.
The procession snaked its way in the country lane, passing through towering spires of cornstalks rustling in the warm, gentle breeze. How many times did this person pass through these roads? Did his eyes behold these sights of rural beauty? And did he breathe in the joys of the life of simplicity so steadfastly lived in these bucolic parts? Or were the cares of the farming life so burdensome that death, in a way, was a welcome rest from the unrelenting pace?
I will never know the answer to the questions. But that did not stop my wondering as I slowed my car to match the mourners’ pace. Behind me, more cars added to the length of the line. Lord, have mercy upon him, this sinner whom you have called back to yourself, I prayed. May angels greet him at his coming.
The procession turned off at a major branch in the road. Soon, I was released from my brief role as mourner in this drama of death, returned to my own exigencies to arrive at my own temporary destination. Yet for the brief moment, time was suspended in the contemplation of the story of this soul, his pilgrimage ended. How easy it is to overlook the import of moments like these, wrapped up as we are in our own rituals and personal dramas. It is the genius of civilization that we have funeral customs of acknowledging the significance of the life just ended. Read more
Jul
15
A Theology of Vacation
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As is often true of family vacations, they are anything but leisurely and free from anxiety. Planning and executing a family vacation is filled with a myriad of details that, if one isn’t careful, could threaten to overcome the whole purpose of vacation. Once on that desired trip, the close quarters with hardly any escape from each other stress the very relationships that we were hoping to nurture and grow. In the middle of vacation, who of us hasn’t experienced a tinge of regret and wished themselves home and away from the bickering and leisure for leisure’s sake.
A couple of years ago, the Pontifical Preacher, Fr. Rainero Cantalamessa, gave a homily wherein he preached on the spiritual significance of vacation. He took as his example Jesus in his invitation to his disciples, “Come away and rest awhile”. Jesus, said Fr. Cantalamessa, was teaching his disciples that balance between action and contemplation, to go from the “contact with people to the secret dialogue with God”. Sometimes, Jesus invited his disciples to waste time or to lose time. We are ever-conscious of time that is productive, and in studying Jesus, one gets the contrasting sense that he is in no hurry.
It is a stunning invitation to lose time with the Lord of History. Where did we get this idea that to go on vacation we must then fill that time with the busy-ness, perhaps in a different venue, but the same frenzy to fill the hours with activity as we famously display in our regular lives. We return home even more exhausted than when we left.
Fr. Cantalamessa reminded his listeners that we need times of solitude and contemplation, to be in close contact with the source of Being. We need the pause from the flurry of activity so that we can understand the meaning of life. We need the unhurried pace of conversation with our loved ones, not impinged upon by the vicissitudes of activity, but a meeting of minds that allow us to listen to one another. Our bodies especially, need the pause from the driving to and fro, from the achieving of some ideal which causes great tension in our bones and muscles which become etched in our faces and in our eyes. As summer wears on, try to lose time with the Lord.
*Gran Sasso d’Italia, Abruzzo, Italy taken on pilgrimage 2007*
Nov
5
Tyranny of the Urgent
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Do our modern conveniences help us or further enslave us to time? I struggle with the question daily because I am part of the wired generation that loves all the latest gadgetry. But what are we giving up when we surround ourselves with things? And why are we so bent on making ourselves more efficient and productive? Our culture is obsessed with the value of a “productive citizen”. Eucharistic Adoration frees us to waste time for the sake of God, to live in the Eternal Present of the God of Creation.
It was the morning rush-hour and I was negotiating a multi-lane left turn when the piercing dah, dit, dit, dit alarm jolted me. Annoyed, I glanced over at my handbag sitting on the passenger seat, realizing that it was my new Palm/Blackberry wannabe telling me to be on my way to an appointment. I was rounding the turn, so there was no way that I could turn it off. It chirped again soon after I was on the straightaway.
“I know, I know,” I told it impatiently. Still, it chirped on. “That’s where I’m going now.” I ground my teeth, bidding the image of my husband cheerfully programming in the different alarm sounds. “He meant well, really, he meant well.” I said to myself trying to overcome a rising resentment.
Dah, dit, dit, dit answered my Palm. I growled feeling the urgency of changing lanes in a quarter of a mile or miss my exit and the need to quiet that thing which was supposed to be a help but was now adding to my road rage.
“Stop it,” I yelled, and at that instant realized the utter absurdity of a grown woman trying to argue with a dumb Palm. I burst out laughing, I’m sure the people in the cars next to me must have thought me mad. Once safe in the parking lot of my destination, I pulled out the shiny Palm and turned off the alarm.
Oct
31
Beauty of Holiness
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Here is a very brief meditation on the communion of saints on this All Hallows’ Eve.
One of the most moving plainchants of the Church is the Litany of Saints, sung during Easter Vigil, Ordinations, Canonization of Saints, and during Papal Funerals. After invoking the mercy of the Trinity, the Church on earth names the glorious saints beginning with the Blessed Virgin Mary, to the Archangels and Angels, John the Baptist, Joseph, the Prophets and Patriarchs, Peter and Paul, down through the glorious martyrs, and saints of God, rank upon rank of the glorious heavenly company whom we ask to pray for us.
What a wonderful cloud of witnesses, those who have triumphed and are now beholding God face to face. These are our elder brothers and sisters in the Faith whose lives are masterpieces of the Holy Spirit’s work. Through their Yes to God, extraordinary things were accomplished so that we may have hope in our daily striving here on earth. The lives they lived are witnesses to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit. The holiness they lived is the splendor of God’s Truth worked out in ordinary living. It is this splendor that attracts us and pulls us into the interior life of the Trinity. There is nothing more powerful than a changed life lived for the glory of God.
Veneration of the saints is a confusing concept for our separated brothers and sisters in the Christian faith. There is an assumption that to venerate the saints takes away or even reduces the glory that is due to God. The vision given by St. John in the Apocalypse gives us the answer to this concern. God doesn’t reign in isolation. The glory that is his cannot but be reflected by his saints who behold him.
One of the important things to remember about the doctrine of the Communion of Saints is that as the Mystical Body of Christ, the Church is One…even though she is in three stages, Church Militant struggling here on earth, Church Expectant in the process of purification in purgatory, and Church Triumphant in the Beatific Vision of Our Triune God. But she is still One unified by the Holy Spirit who is her soul and who animates her and gives her supernatural life.
So to venerate the saints is to be led to worship the Lord. The saints point not at themselves but to Christ Crucified and Resurrected. When Catholics venerate the saints it is in its essence to be in thanksgiving for the untiring work of the Holy Spirit who perfects our faith and transforms each of us to be images of God. Saints show us that it is possible to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy.
Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis…Omnes sancti Angeli et Archangeli, orate pro nobis…Omnes sancti Patriárchæ et Prophetæ, orate pro nobis…Omnes sancti Apóstoli et Evangelistæ, orate pro nobis…Omnes sancti Mártyres, orate pro nobis…Omnes sancti Pontifices et Confessores, orate pro nobis… Ut Ecclésiam tuam sanctam regere et conservare dignéris…. Te rogamus, audi nos.
Oct
24
Fr. Philip N. Powell, O.P. recently wrote this homily which he entitled “Wired/Tired” in explaining Manic Exhaustion. He captured what most of us experience from day to day, especially those of us trying to balance the different components of our lives.
M.E. is about being tired AND wired, simultaneously. Tired: wrung out, sweaty wet, and weak kneed. Wired: panicked, pumped-up, and reeling. Both–at the same time. This combo produces for you and me a sense of doing-all-the-time-but-not-getting-done; a spirit of running-emptiness, striding inactivity. For our culture (the larger you and me plus some) this knackered mania produces historical forgetfulness; multi-media hypnosis/psychosis; the virtual individual digitized, on-line, logged-in, both watched and ignored; and the most dangerous effect–the supplemental life, that is, life as supplement: added-on, up-sized, desired but extraneous, wished for/sold away.
This wired state is something that I’m sure fits not just a few of us. We rely on our things to get us through the day. As I was writing this, my Palm beeped to remind me of the next task for today which will take the rest of the day to complete. Fr. Philip continues:
The PROFIT of M.E.’s cultural artists (ssshhhhhhh: it’s a product, after all. . .) is to juice us up, wring us out, and keep us transfixed on the fleeting moment, the temporary and impermanent, the shadow-echo-aftertaste. We are made to desire. Lack is constitutive of our creatureliness. We are full of holes: hungry, needy, wanting. And the M.E. artists fill each space, each gap with a confection, a sweet treat to placate the yearning. The goal is to addict each little void with its own recipe for fulfillment/theft; thus, distracting/occupying us from searching out the Sweetness that satisfies.
I misplaced my iPod recently and was in a panic to find it…but it remained resolutely hidden. So I finally gave up and lived life for almost a month without it. Then one of the kids found it in a sibling’s backpack. I haven’t even touched it since then.
Fr. Schall (read Why do Things Exist? On the Meaning of Being) recently received an email from a young teacher saying that for most of his students “existence of things is almost irrelevant; for them everything is how you choose to think about it.” Fr. Schall was astounded by that, but then he made the observation that most students he encountered on campus have an iPod or “some contraption in their ears,” says he. “A wall of sound exists between man and things.”
Sep
22
On Beauty
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~Sometimes in all the stresses of living our daily lives, we lose sight of the goal of eternity. Cardinal Schoenborn of Vienna calls it an “eschatological amnesia”, a forgetfulness that we are on constant pilgrimage toward the Lord. Here’s something to remind us of the utter free gift that life is from Nouvelle Theologie
Life is grace.
Be grateful with everything the Lord has given you. Each morning when you wake up and breath your next breath is grace. Be thankful for it and then live life to the fullness in union with Him.
Art, music, and theater are all expressions of our humanity. These give us glimpses towards Infinity. Grace is an essential component of our human nature. Grace not only perfects our nature but is somehow rooted within our origin b/c we exist. Life is grace.
Grace gives us a desire for something more, something outside of us but its also rooted deeply within us. It forces us to become beggars and one of if not the best expressions of this begging is represented in art, music & theater. An artist, musician, and actor reaches perfection when he touches the hand of the Infinite, or better yet when the hand of the Infinite comes down to him in act of intimate union. What grace! Nothing moves us like a great painting or a masterful piece of music. They become not only a sign but a sacrament. Beauty is what moves us but it also saves us.
Beauty is the power of God’s persuasive Truth. It is the arrow that wounds us to see beyond what our senses can perceive. It is more than what modern man likes to reduce Beauty to which is a mere aesthetic sensibility. For the Christian, Beauty flows out of Goodness and Truth to compel us to meditate on the Author of Beauty who is God Himself.
St. Thomas Aquinas spoke of the requirements of Beauty as thus: integritas, consonantia, claritas….wholeness, harmony, and radiance. When we are captivated by a masterpiece there is a longing that resonates within us, whether we can articulate it or not. This creates within us the silence that we need to contemplate the Source of all Beauty, and as Gregory of Nyssa said, “to become what we behold”…a desire to reflect what we see.
This is a challenge in our modern world of shock art or kitschy art. What are we saying about God and ourselves when our culture continually churns out such enervating and ugliness in art? It is for the Christian to speak to the Truth and to reflect the Glory that is God’s.
Sep
7
Loving God–Our True Vocation
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Tomorrow is the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In contemplating her life, she guides us in coming to a fuller awareness of our vocation in life. This is a brief reflection on our chief end.
Here is one of my favorite passages from An Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales. It reminds us of why were created and that is to adore God.
What did I think about, O my God, when I did not think of you? What did I remember when I forgot you? What did I love when I did not love you?
I think it is safe to say that all of us experience days when we hardly give thought to God. We are bogged down by various cares and the thought of loving God isn’t as urgent a priority. The Psalms are rich with the psalmist’s constant contemplation of the greatness of God and the wonder of man’s place in the order of the universe.
Part of the daily conversion into the Catholic Faith has been God awakening that sense of himself in you. You are inexorably made to love and adore God. And all your strivings, failures, and motivations reveal that desire. For me, there is nothing like failure to open my eyes to my own emptiness in the Face of God. Nothing that I have or am is mine but for the Grace of God. And in the Pierced Heart of Christ, I can gaze into the depth of God’s love for me, because he emptied himself of all glory to redeem us from our sins.
The great truth about ourselves is that all of life tends toward God. Perhaps tends is too a weak a word. Maybe gravitates is a better word because God is that irresistible force that breaks through our lives, or what we call God’s transcendence.
The Holy Virgin Mary is the perfect example for us of one whose life was a constant contemplation of God. In the Gospel of Luke we read how she treasured events in her heart. Treasuring things in one’s heart means to give great import and to ponder the meaning of things. And then the fruit of her contemplation was to unite herself to God’s will. Our truest happiness lies in our surrendering ourselves to the will of God, because he is all goodness and mercy. The fullness of goodness dwells in him, so I have nothing to fear in abandoning myself to his will, for he desires nothing but the highest good for me. To demonstrate this, he gave us Jesus Christ his only-begotten Son. Christ’s Resurrection is the great event that signals for us God’s power over all misery.
So, in loving God, we come to understand our truest selves.
Jul
28
The Creed–Our Heart’s Treasure
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A meditation on the Nicene Creed
When we survey our salvation history, we see indisputedly that the main actor in all the events is God. The underlying vision through all these events is God’s plan that we all may come to share in the Blessed Life of the Trinity.
This is a penetrating truth into which we as Catholics live through our practice of the sacramental life. Everything we do is in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. And we affirm this exquisite truth in the Nicene Creed which dates back to AD 325 in the Council of Nicea and amplified in AD 381 in the Council of Constantinople.
We say that the Creed is the ’symbol of faith’. A symbol is one that stands for something. So buried within the words of the Nicene Creed stands something far greater, higher, deeper than mere words can express.
St. Ambrose, the great bishop of Milan who became St. Augustine’s confessor, said of the Creed:
This Creed is the spiritual seal, our heart’s meditation and an ever-present guardian; it is, unquestionably, the treasure of our soul.
These are lofty words for a statement of belief that at first glance is didactic in nature. Credo–I believe–that leads into an almost checklist-like order of propositions that we profess to be true…the Father…the Son…the Holy Spirit…the Holy Catholic Church…Amen.
There is much that is packed into the Creed. If you were to take each article and think through what is being proposed, you would be diving into the deep mysteries of our Christian faith. Why? Because the Creed is a meditation on God Himself, which I assure you is a topic of inexhaustible richness. We have eternity to delve into this treasure.
So we begin the Creed by stating that we believe in one God. In so doing, we invoke the ancient Shema of the Israelites:
Shema, Yisrael, Adonai eloheinu Adonai ehad. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is One.
At the beginning, the “we believe” declares as with ancient people, that our God is one and we proclaim not just as individuals, but as a community. And we invoke God’s oath when he declared:
They shall be my people and I shall be their God.
I–We–belong to the Eternal God and he in turn belongs to us. Read more
