Stable Body, Wandering Spirit

The world feels weighty lately. The state makes war, sins against our bodies and the earth, and ruins the souls of nations. Society ceases to build up community; it divides the peoples, diminishes the loaves and fishes, and turns the hungry against each other. Culture sickens our bodies, pollutes our souls, and starves both. The Church tyrannizes love with truth and forgets that sin, not error, is what separates us from God, and it becomes worse than a useless servant.

These problems are not above me, because I am a part of them all, but they sure do feel beyond me.

Not too long ago, I would be compelled to take action, any action, immediately. Now something is changing. No, that's not right. Not changing, because I still want to act immediately. But something else, another inclination, is arising in tandem.

While meditating in chapel today, it became clear to me that I want to pray better. I've never truly prayed for the end of war. How do you do that? I've never really prayed for survivors of sexual abuse. How do you pray for them? I've never confronted sin, evil, and its attendant violence with the weapons of the spirit. But for a few rare moments in my life, I've never worshipped God with anything like awe and wonder. I want to pray like I have never prayed before. Indeed, I haven't even begun to pray.

While walking home from Neighbors Together, it occurred to me that I had just spent three and a half hours in ministry without any deep awareness of God. I was conscious of other things. I was mindful of other things. My gut reaction to this point of seeing was, "I'd rather stay at home and contemplate poverty than show up at the soup kitchen without my soul. I could do more good that way."

Really? Yes. Today it became very clear to me that my body wants to stay put in the friary, but my spirit wants to travel.

Injustice has not ceased to irritate me. Indeed, I want it to bother me more. More than ever, I want to smash sinful structures and destroy the weapons of our self-destruction.

Ministry is fine, and the work continues to interest me, pose challenges, and present queries for discernment.

However, the desire to pray about the condition of the world; to offer petitions for the world in its sorrow and suffering; and to meditate on how I am to respond is swelling inside. This desire now matches my desire to do something merciful and just. In short, I want to spend a lot more time out of the world. I want to fuel the spirit of prayer and devotion that will fire the action I take when, God willing, I profess my vows for the world.

My body yearns to be still, but my spirit yearns to explore. This is not a contradiction. This is a new feeling. Perhaps it is a sign that I am becoming ready for novitiate?

For Grandma

Adele Zuba, my paternal grandmother, stole away from this world at this hour one year ago tonight. She was eighty-four years old.

At her funeral Mass, I delivered some words of remembrance after Communion. Here, for you and for her, are those words.

***

It is a work of mercy to bury the dead, the Church teaches us. It is a work of love to remember the dead, the Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard tells us. These are the highest things a human being can do. The rest we leave to God, whose mercy brings an end to the suffering of our dying loved ones, and whose love remembers them into new life. When one of the dying thieves who was crucified together with Jesus begged him to “remember me when you come into your kingdom,” Jesus said, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.” Jesus said this because God remembers us, and God’s memory is powerful enough to bring our bodies, lost to this world, into the undying life of heaven.

We are here to remember Grandma because we will continue to love her as we did when she was in this world. I pray that if we truly did love her, that we may remain steadfast in our love. If our love for her was ever lost, I pray that we may renew our love for her and know her once again as if for the first time. I ask God to be merciful to us and show us how to love, for God is love and is always the one who loved us first.

We are here to ask this loving God, through the risen Christ, to bring Grandma into life everlasting. God has already been merciful to her and given her release from the struggle of earthly life. The last four years of her life were a struggle, sad, lonely, and anxious. They were sad years because she lost so many things that go to make up a life—her home and her community in Flushing, her friends, her mobility, her independence. They were lonely years because she could not make new connections to replace the ones she lost. She longed for heaven; she longed for my Granddad. And they were anxious years because she knew her mind was dissolving and there was nothing she or we could do about it.

In this world she felt like a lodger who had long overstayed her welcome. We did not want her to feel this way, but none of us could satisfy the deepest longing of her heart. Only God could do that. Nevertheless, God bless my father and mother and brother for doing so much and sacrificing so much to keep her healthy and happy.

And as I have said, God has been merciful. Grandma has been spared years of a living limbo. Now we ask God through the remembering love of Jesus to carry her over the void of eternal death. In spite of the sin that causes most of our emotional and spiritual suffering; in spite of the physical evil of sickness and irreversible decay, the God of Jesus Christ holds all of creation together in himself, and nothing that was made in God’s love which remains in God’s love is ever lost.

Over the years Grandma frequently prayed for me that God would show me the way, and as the fatigue in her mind and body became permanent, she would make this prayer for herself, too. This is a very good prayer. And I know she prayed it well. This way is our true happiness. She meant for God to show us the way into the true life of God, the way into eternity. She was right to ask God to show us this way because we cannot find this way ourselves. We can’t find this way through our own skill or by luck. Only God can reveal this way, and having revealed it, give us the courage to follow it wherever it leads. We are all pilgrims on the way to eternity. We also call eternity the kingdom of God, the new Jerusalem, or just plain old heaven. But this world is the only place where we can start the journey. This time is the only time we have been given to make our way toward the timeless. And it is in this time and place that our destination begins ever so faintly to become visible. It takes faith to sharpen our senses to see it. It takes hope to believe that it will become clearer and nearer. And it takes love to leap forward into that new age. So today, in this place, let us make our pilgrimage to the city of God, taking Grandma’s prayer as our compass.

What I will remember of Grandma, what I will carry with me into eternity, or to put it better, what will carry me through this day and every moment into eternity, is her gentleness toward all; her cheerfulness toward both neighbors and strangers; her appreciation of beauty and her own eye for it; her generosity of affection toward me and Jennifer and Nicholas, as well as her delight in our gifts and talents; and above all her simplicity of spirit and purity of heart. The Grandma I knew held no hate in her heart against any other human being. I am in awe of her because of this. I saw her get angry only once in my life, and that was when Jen and I were romping around her house making a ruckus. It was the only time she ever hollered at us, and when she began to yell at us, Jen and I froze. We were mortified, because it was so out of character for Grandma to raise her voice to anybody. She was a lamb, truly a lamb, with not a trace of wolf in her.

We come to remember Grandma the real person. The real and less-than-perfect but faithful daughter, sister, wife, mother, aunt, grandmother, and great-grandmother: this is the person who will be saved. We know the ways she missed the mark of holiness or fell short of the measure of loving-kindness in her most important relationships. We know she did not live as fully as God intended her to live—so it may be said of all of us. But let us praise her virtues. It is easier to hate than to love, and as I have said already, Grandma, as far as I know, chose not to hate anyone. It takes a strong person to fulfill such a resolution. She was confident enough in God’s love that she could resist the temptation to anger and resentment and avoid violence not only in her words and actions but also in her private thoughts. And by her love, our sins against her and each other were covered, not out of willful ignorance of wrongdoing or prudishness in the face of ugly human indecency, but out of a deep desire for peace and reconciliation, and a clear-eyed hope for a better way of relating to one another. I hope that Grandma will continue to pray for us, first for peace within ourselves and in all our families and then, reconciled to each other, that we may be instruments of peace in our troubled world, bearing the invincible love of God to everyone we see.

For a final word, with the help of the Holy Spirit who joins us in love’s peaceful bond to the communion of saints, I want to speak directly to Grandma. Grandma, I pray that your presence remains with us on earth even as we trust that you will now dwell in heaven. I pray that you are aware in a mysterious way of everything that we are saying and doing, although we will never be able to know this except in the blessing of dreams and visions. I call on you to ask God to guide us by that divine love whose law is a lamp for our feet and a light for our path. Watch over us as we enter love’s narrow gate and follow that bending path, that rounding road, with the rising sun to brighten that most perfect way. And may we have the courage to follow where you have gone, to follow in passion to the cross and even beyond the crucifixion to the other side of death. I say this because you have loved me, Grandma, and I love you, too, from the beginning and now and always. We believe in this love, Grandma—it is the way, and with God’s help it will be our way.

Jesus, we trust in your loving power. We trust in the kingdom God has given to you. Now remember Grandma in your love, and we will remember her in ours.

Given at Our Lady of Grace Parish, West Babylon, N.Y., on Thursday, Feb. 10, 2011.

Eleventh-Hour Prayer

Holy God,
who numbers our days and hours,
horizon of history
and abyss of eternity,

Teach us not to count the time
and keep us free from every temptation
to purchase a fare to the hereafter.

As our age runs into the ages
show us how to play
and not to compete,
to complement
and not to contrast.

Help us rise in the morning,
rise until evening,
rise to the night,
and rise to our name on the last day,
when the game of life is done.

Until that day and hour,
make us see more brightly
what you have revealed in Jesus,
that the game is over and done with forever.
Let peace put paid to living by winning,
and we will live by dying daily to our greed.

For the only ones with whom we must contend
are ourselves and the Evil One.
The rest will be overcome.

Now guard our sleep,
watch our waking,
and help us play well,
for with you there is nothing to fear
and nothing to lose.

We ask this through the timeless name of Jesus the Christ,
who is the beginning and the end,
who is beyond all time
and in all time. Amen.

An Anecdote

I went to a bookstore in midtown Manhattan run by the Daughters of St. Paul to purchase books fit to show and read to my nephew, Jesse, who will be two years old next Sunday.

The sister working as cashier was an amiable and talkative person. I was feeling shy, as I usually do when I go into my hermit mode on weekends. But I knew I would have to make polite conversation.

She saw me standing by the cash register and said I could come forward. I gave her the books and said, "Here you go," as cheerfully as I could.

Then came the question I expected. She asked me if the books were for my children. Inside, I tensed. Children ... did she say children, not child?

I had to resist ignoring the question. I did not want to tell the sister I do not have children. I did not want to tell the sister that I have no intention of having children. I did not want to tell her that I don't have the least imagination for being a parent, much less a husband or a loving life partner. But I also didn't want to tell her that I am committing to lifelong celibacy or that I am in religious formation. Part of this was shyness, but part of it was a desire not to put the focus on me. The question wasn't about me, anyway.

While my mind was circling the wagons around my heart, I told the sister that the books were for my nephew, who is turning two years old, and I thought these books were appropriate because he is at the age where he will sit and be read to -- and quite happily, too. She agreed and then commented to the effect that he must really be getting around now, hard to keep up with, and so on. I agreed with her. I paid for the books, shoved them into my tote bag, and shoving my pride deep into my guts, I thanked the sister and went off to church for meditation and Mass.

I think I handled the situation well. I kept the focus on my nephew, not my insecurities. If I was not outwardly cheerful, then at least I was polite. But the question made me defensive, I confess. When my father was the age I am now, he was well on the way to becoming a dad for the third time.

Sometimes I also think about my elder brothers in religion, who began consecrated life ten to fifteen years earlier than I did. I am learning about the things they have done and the experiences they had by the time they were my age, and I feel like I am so far behind in my own personal becoming. I know this is not so, and it is silly, of course, to let myself be tempted into making comparisons with other souls. We are all being made into saints in God's time, not ours. Yet when time feels so ordinary, it can be difficult to remember we come from eternity and are made for living out of the eternal and into the forever.

I will not give rise to children born of my blood. And it may be that I have no spiritual children, either -- that depends on the grace of God and my cooperation. But let it please the Spirit that I seek to become a child of God. May She mother me and bring me to maturity as a disciple of Christ.

Last of all, as to one born abnormally, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been ineffective.

1 Corinthians 15:8-10

The Medium Is the Message

It is a great consolation in spiritual reading when you encounter the work of wise people whose thoughts clarify and confirm the truths you have been fumbling toward.

Today, in the Franciscan calendar of saints, the Capuchins honor one of their own, a priest known as Joseph of Leonessa (1556-1612). This ancestor in faith, a missionary to Turkey, became a famous preacher in his native land. In chapel this morning I meditated on one of his sermons, printed in my breviary. Here is a part of it:

The Gospel and the good news of our Lord's coming into the world through the Virgin Mary is not a matter for recording primarily on writing materials but in our hearts and souls. This is the difference between the written law and the law of grace. The former is called written because it was engraved on tablets of stone; the latter is called the law of grace because it is imprinted on the hearts of men through the infusion of grace by the Holy Spirit. This is what was promised by the Lord according to Jeremiah: I will make a covenant with you not like the covenant I made with your fathers. Concerning this new covenant Scripture adds: I will place my law within them, and write it upon their hearts.

Every Christian, then, must be a living book wherein one can read the teaching of the Gospel. This is what Saint Paul says to the Corinthians: Clearly you are a letter of Christ which I have delivered, a letter written not with ink, but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of flesh in the heart. Our heart is the parchment; through my ministry the Holy Spirit is the writer because my tongue is nimble as the pen of a skillful scribe.

Would indeed that the preacher's tongue were moved by the Holy Spirit, dipped in the blood of the spotless Lamb and writing skillfully on your hearts today. But how can one writing be written over another writing? Without erasing the first the second cannot be written. But avarice, pride, wantonness and the rest of the vices have been written on your hearts. How will we write humility, uprightness and the rest of the virtues unless the previous vices are erased? If men had such writing on themselves each one, as we said, would be a book and his life would teach others by example. For this reason Paul adds: You are my letter, known and read by all....

***

All I can say is, Wow. A living book of the Gospel. A letter of Christ. This is what I have been trying to say for some time now. Love it or not, I am how God is speaking. I do want to be the word God is speaking. I am but a poor stereotype of the Word of God, a word straining to be heard as a faithful echo of the Word. And by grace I am re-writing myself, constantly, so that I am better what God is speaking me to be. One continuous draft and re-draft of the music and lyrics to the song of myself God has authored: that is religious life.

Marshall McLuhan, media theorist and prophet for our age of mass communication, proclaimed that "the medium is the message." This convert to Catholicism was speaking of technology as an extension of ourselves. Through our media, our senses and our consciousness are projected onto reality, organizing and re-organizing reality. The media we use reflect the way we think and perceive and thus affect the world we construct. When we adopt a new medium, it alters the way we construct the world. Our culture, our society, therefore, is how we speak it. The medium is the message.

McLuhan was studying human media. The alphabet, movable type, radio, television, the Internet: these are human media. Four centuries before McLuhan, Joseph of Leonissa was studying media, too, except he was speaking of divine media and the divine message. And Joseph, restating what Jeremiah and Paul said many centuries before him, announced that we, human beings, are living books of the Gospel. No longer is the divine message engraved on tablets of stone alone; it is written on tablets of flesh in the human heart.

Human beings are themselves divine media! We are how God is speaking! How great a destiny! How could this be?

God, the ultimate reality, the author of our total environment, has spoken through all ages, communicating life and grace in many ways, extending the divine power and consciousness into creation, nurturing it through countless changes. God did this through many "media," from physical to chemical to biological nature. God readied the world for the definitive projection of this power and consciousness, which would forever transform reality and change the way it changes. In the mystery of salvation history, God chose a human being to be the ultimate medium of grace. For those who believe, Jesus Christ is the perfect self-communication of God. "And the Word was made flesh." The medium is the message. By the creating and saving power of this Word, all human beings could become sharers in and bearers of the message of eternal life.

Love it or not, I am how God is speaking. Jesus Christ is God speaking. Like Francis in imitation of Christ, I yearn to be more truly what God is speaking and become fully who I am. May the medium be the message. For this fond hope, Joseph of Leonessa, pray for us.

A Prayer

God of surpassing power, God the most good,
make us, your poor children,
useful to your service.

Give us the work we can do
to show forth your good in our lives.
Help us to see the meaning in our existence,
most especially during times of dullness, pain, and sorrow.

Let us remember how you have changed our lives,
and give us courage to show others what you have done.

Keep our neighbors ever in our sight. Keep us poor in spirit.

When we fail to act faithfully, forgive us our sins, we pray.
When we fail to act effectively, show us the better way,
and shield us from crippling doubt and guilt.

When we fail to speak and do the right and the good,
send us your truth to dispel our ignorance
and your love to make our words live in deeds.

And if, after we have prayed,
we remain stuck in our uselessness,
and all appears to be hopeless,
be merciful and grant us
the consolation of your Spirit.

At every dark hour,
And at our last hour,
Hold us in the Light we cannot see,
And speak the Word we cannot hear,
Until we awaken to your Presence
In the world beyond all worlds.

Hear our prayer,
Righteous Father,
Faithful Son,
Loving Spirit,
Amen.

All the Days of Our Life

Praise the LORD, my soul;

I will praise the LORD all my life,

sing praise to my God while I live.

Psalm 146

A phrase leapt off the pages of my breviary and into my heart at morning prayer. The antiphon for Psalm 146: "I will praise my God all the days of my life." From Psalm 146: "I will praise the Lord all my days." The responsory: I will bless the Lord all my life long." The antiphon for the Canticle of Zechariah: "Let us serve the Lord in holiness all the days of our life."

How many times have I recited these lines year in and year out, and why suddenly today do these particular words shine like gold? Do it enough times, and lectio divina sneaks up on you without your being aware of it. All the days of my life.

These words have really got a hold on me this day. Think about it. Feel about it. Intuit it. Praise, bless, and serve God, in holiness, all the days of your life. Can you do it? Can I do it? There it is, a promise as simple as the waters of baptism. A promise so profound that I intend to make three vows just to be sure I live up to it.

Today is the first of February. How many of you are keeping your resolutions for the new year? How many of you even remember your resolutions?

Most of the promises we make are limited in time and place. Few if any of them are for a lifetime and universal. The marriage commitment is one of them. Any others?

We live in a world governed more by contract than covenant. In the United States we seek above all not to be constrained. Not only does freedom mean freedom from involuntary obligation, but also the minimization of voluntary obligation. No contract, social, political, or economic, is inviolable. Every oath or affirmation is temporary. Every promise is conditional. No promise cannot be broken.

But with these words of prayer, everything changes.

Today in the chapel I was feeling a little grumpy, as usually I do at quarter to eight in the morning. My throat is clammy, and I can't sing or recite the prayers the way I would like. I get distracted when one brother yawns and another reads slowly and another sings off key. And then I turn the focus away from God and back to myself: I can't pray like this. Not in these conditions.

The reply from my superego: Yes, you can. Yes, you must. Yes, you will. Suck it up, you self-absorbed prig!

Then comes a more gentle response, from a place deeper than my psyche: I will praise my God all the days of my life. I will bless the Lord all my life long. Let us serve the Lord in holiness all the days of our life.

And a calm took over. Morning prayer ended, and though my brothers probably couldn't tell the difference, I felt more peace than when I entered the chapel.

You see, I realized, like I never did before, that I am not just praying to become a better disciple tomorrow. I am praying as a disciple today, right here and now. When I pray, "I will praise the Lord all my days," I am not making a pledge whose fulfillment begins tomorrow. "All my days" includes today and always begins now. My word to God is a bond not yet redeemed in full, but it has value today.

This day, and no other, is the day to praise, bless, and serve God (and all people in God's name). It doesn't matter if I feel tired and lousy. It doesn't matter if the sky is gray and the temperature is falling. It doesn't matter if it's 7:45 a.m. It doesn't matter if my brothers can't sing or sit still. It doesn't matter, because these conditions, and more adverse ones besides, will be there every day until the end of my life. In good times and bad, for better and worse, I have vowed in baptism to do these things, in spite of all conditions -- in fact, because of them. Lord, help me to love with a ready heart, always and every day.