Grace – Page 6 – Frassati Reflections

Like Children

“Amen, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children,
you will not enter the Kingdom of heaven….
…If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them goes astray,
will he not leave the ninety-nine in the hills
and go in search of the stray?…
…In just the same way, it is not the will of your heavenly Father
that one of these little ones be lost.” Matt 18:1-5,10,12-14

Our peaceful Pentecost prayers were interrupted by the wail of an emergency siren. It was emanating from my 18-month-old niece Zippy, who was making a compelling case that evolutionary descent was not from apes but from banshees. “Owwwww” she wailed, convincing the entire congregation to look our way, expecting blood. But it was just an abbreviation for “out” by which she meant “out of the pew”, “outside” and also “now.”

So I extracted her writhing figure and brought her outside to the statue of Joseph holding Jesus, where she was once again happy. “Ball!” she said, noting the sphere in the hands of baby Jesus. “Ball!” she said louder. “That’s the world, Zippy, not a ball,” I explained, but she still thought that Jesus ought to hand it over to her. I realized she had a good share of my DNA blended in with the banshee.

Several years ago I read a book about Saint John Paul the Great which deeply inspired me to want to be a saint. “I am ready to get serious about my faith” I told God. The images that came to me in prayer, however, were not of great sacrifices or even good deeds, but rather of a nursing infant.

“What does this mean?” I asked, and then followed another image, of myself as toddler, sitting on Jesus’ lap at the Last Supper. I looked around with great delight. “I am ready to sit with the big kids!” toddler-me told Jesus. “I want to be one of the apostles.” Then I thought for a moment, and toddler-me replied, “Actually Jesus, I want to be you. I want to be in charge!” Jesus only smiled, and I saw once again the nursing infant.

There was a time when serious-adult-me would have rebuked this little toddler, but now I only laugh, because I know that Jesus delights in her, in her big dreams and small stature. Certainly a humility check is in order (and still in progress) but there is something in her honesty, in her way of relating to Jesus, her confidence in His love for her no-matter-what, that adult-me can learn from.

After Mass, we take Zippy to Red Robin for dinner, and order her mini meatballs from the kid’s menu. Because I am an amateur, not a parent, I hand her the tomato sauce for dipping. Moments later, I am sitting next to a pint-sized serial killer, covered head to toe in red. Because I am an aunt, not a parent, I snap pictures in lieu of cleaning her up.

I hand her a cup of juice, which she sips daintily, careful not to spill any. When she is finished, she indicates so by pouring the remaining juice directly into her lap. She looks up, smiles, and reaches out her arms to be picked up. She is confident that my love is greater than my aversion to sauce and stickiness.

I bring her outside to fend off impending sirens, and she hears some music from a nearby restaurant, and begins to dance. She has not yet learned to judge herself on the reactions of others, the number of Facebook likes, or even her skill at dancing, which is only a slight improvement over her table manners.

I am reminded of teaching my four-year old class the story of The Found Sheep. For this one, Jesus leaves the ninety-nine to search diligently, until He finds it and carries it home jubilantly on His shoulders. At first I worried in the back of my mind that children in their sensitivity might worry about the ninety-nine—those poor sheep left behind while Jesus goes looking for the one. But the child sees what adults do not: to Jesus, there is no ninety-nine. There is only the one.

Children know the secret to holiness is simple. Love. Dependence. Trust. Confidence in the goodness of God, in His care for us, in His willingness to love us even when we are messy or awkward or do things badly or even completely wrong.

The key to holiness is not the greatness of our deeds but the greatness of God’s love. Prayer is not one of the good works performed by the holy, but rather the food which makes any other work possible.

A few months later I am standing at the seashore with little Zippy, the waves which wash pleasantly over my ankles are strong enough to push her off balance. But unafraid, she reaches up her arms to be picked up. Safe and comfortable in my arms, she points to the deep, trusting that she can go anywhere as long as she is held.

May we like little children be confident always in the Father’s love for us, trusting in His goodness and protection to feed us, to lead us, to carry us home.

Tiffiny

I felt sorry for her, the girl with crippled hands who had come to our Frassati dinner, so I invited her to come to my birthday party. I now wince at the subtle condescension in my offer, as though I were bestowing a kindness. I think of the woman at the well believing she is being asked to do Jesus a favor…. Meanwhile! “If you only knew the gift of God…” He tells her.

Tiffiny came to my birthday party at Max Brenner later that week, and so began my friendship with a saint.

We bonded at first over fine chocolate and our mutual love of good food. Tiffiny was one who fully entered into and enjoyed life. Her tastes tended toward the gourmet; she loved music, loved to dance, loved a good time with friends of all kinds.

She was very accomplished—we only learned how much so, in small doses over time, as she rarely spoke about herself. It would be a casual remark “that time when I was recruited by the FBI and studied body language” or a brief anecdote about playing on the national golf circuit, or writing music and choreography at Carnegie Hall, or about the friends made while working in the fashion industry. We would often laugh at how very many different areas she was gifted in, and how often we were taken by surprise by newly revealed talents.

Tiffiny was a facilities manager at Fidessa in downtown Manhattan when the planes flew into the World Trade Center on September 11^th, 2001. She was a witness to the carnage that day. Then, in part because of her service to others (including helping to pack up the personal effects of those who had fled), she became a victim herself.

It was then that she contracted toxic mercury poisoning, which triggered scleroderma. Scleroderma is a fatal autoimmune disease which causes a hardening of the skin and organs, and was responsible for the disfigurement of her hands and face which I noticed that first day. It also caused worse damage internally, and profound physical pain and suffering. Before Tiffiny, the longest anyone had survived this diagnosis was only ten years. Tiffiny lived for fifteen more years, until 2016, her body and abilities slowly giving out on her, but her soul was only strengthened by her sacrifice.

Many friends have remembered how Tiffiny listened patiently to our complaints, and we only realized later how much her suffering in those moments eclipsed our own often silly complaints. Even while sick, Tiffiny’s schedule and accomplishments were amazing. I thought I was busy and hardworking as a healthy person, but what she did put me in the shade. Her joy was contagious, witnessed not only by those who shared her faith but by people of all walks of life. “That girl is a saint” said the security officer in the building where she worked. So many people were drawn to her, testifying to a life that was not hidden under a bushel but visible and always attractive.

I didn’t always see eye-to-eye with her. Actually, when she first took over as leader of Frassati, I thought she was crazy. We had started preparing monthly dinners after Mass at St. Vincent Ferrer, and things were not going smoothly. I was ready to quit, having prepared the last one alone in the kitchen without help until five minutes before serving time. Tiffiny’s first idea was to put out vases of flowers on the tables, and add table cloths (light blue, for Our Lady). “You want to add more work?!?” I asked incredulously.

She was right, of course, as is evidenced by the fact that years later, our dinners host more than 140 people. She knew that it was the little things that mattered, that beauty mattered, that hospitality was more than just meeting physical needs.

It was Tiffiny who began our weekly bible study, taught by then Brother Sebastian, ensuring that our friendships were formed around the faith. When we had picnics or other events, they would always be preceded or followed by Holy Hour and/or Mass.

It was Tiffiny who taught me about prayer, taught me that it mattered, that it made a difference. When she prayed for me, things happened. More than once, I physically felt her prayers from afar. She would occasionally be given prophetic words for me “X will happen as you are hoping, but Y will not.”

I would learn that this was because when she said “I will pray for you” it wasn’t a throw-away line—she meant it. She would spend hours each night in prayer, in the presence of Jesus and Our Lady and the saints and angels, who she spoke of with intimacy and affection, as though she knew them personally. I would later learn that she did—her life was touched with mysticism.

She was as a friend encouraging and supportive, but not afraid to challenge me. “What makes you think that will make you happy?” she would interrupt my complaints, startling me into looking twice. Or “But that is changing, isn’t it?” regarding something she had been praying for, and knew God was answering, before I did. Sometimes she would stop me in mid-conversation: “Hold on, I am trying to hear what God wants me to say to you” and then deliver a wisdom that could only be supernatural.

It was her insistence that God was good, and her personal affection for Him and for Our Lady, in spite of all of her suffering, that was most formative for me. Prior to her I saw God’s love only in providence and blessing, not in things that went wrong. At best I would remark with Saint Teresa of Avila, “if this is how you treat your friends, no wonder you have so few!”

Tiffiny however saw her illness not as abandonment by God, but as fulfillment of her greatest desire—that He be at the center of her life.

In Tiffiny’s own words (from an interview in 2011)¹:

In 1998, I had begged Him to show Himself more in my life, and from that day He has been preparing me for this, my cross. I was on my way to a fashion show when I got the diagnosis [of scleroderma]. I remember that I went to the show anyway, on the arm of a friend. I think I must have immediately given everything into God’s hands in order to continue with my daily life as I did. I went on with great hope and promise, which came from Another….

…It was almost a relief to know I would have to depend on him now. God had to take each one of my gifts and talents away one by one for me to see what the real Gift is. My life is no longer who I know, all my contacts, what I can do — because I can no longer do what I was able to do physically. Now my life is just him, on whom I fully depend. I still work in finance, designing office spaces. I can’t play music anymore, but I still have my voice and I am composing music with the help of friends. I have to give everything to everyone because I am so dependent. But if I had not already been in a relationship of dependence on Christ, accepting so much help would be unbearable. Instead, my friends are signs of him for me.

Two years ago this week, on August 5^th, 2016, Tiffiny went home to Him. Tiffiny, our saintly friend, pray for us!

* * *

¹The interview quoted initially appeared in Traces magazine. The link is no longer available but was here.

God Is On Our Side

“Eleven dollars and twenty-six cents!” my niece Lollipop announced after we had counted all of her savings from the shoebox under her bed. It was nearly doubled thanks to the $5 I had used to bribe her to go on the Ragin’ Cagin’ roller coaster at Six Flags, and so I expected her to be delighted.

Instead she threw herself down on the bed and wailed. “I will never earn enough money!” she cried. “How will I ever get $30,000?”

She was hoping to adopt a baby sister and the cost was prohibitive, particularly given the earning power of an eight-year-old.

The adult in me wanted to smile, but I felt something (Someone) nudging my heart, and realized that our similarities were more than physical, and not just because we are both drama queens.

It’s tempting in spite of (or perhaps because of) years of Catholic formation to think we can earn God’s grace, or love or virtue. Even knowing that this is theological nonsense, I often find myself in practice trying to do just that, only to find that in a lifetime I can never earn enough, make myself good enough or be worthy enough.

It’s not as if after a few millennia of working out, St. Peter could walk on water by himself. Or that after a few million motivational talks he’d have the willpower to not deny Jesus three times, or to be crucified upside down, or to preach Pentecost morning while a number of listeners thought he was drunk.

It’s all grace. I know this. I can’t earn it. I can’t make it happen. I can’t even store it up for future use. But what I sometimes forget, is that God is on my side. He desires more good for me than I can ever think to aspire to or ask for.

In today’s Gospel, we see Jesus free a poor soul from the grip of demonic power, only for the Pharisees to spin the story and give credit to Beelzebub. Why are the Pharisees so set against Jesus? They have reduced religion to works, thinking that enough pious practice can earn them a place with God in heaven. Jesus has come to show them that He is the way; there is no other. He longs for them to come to Him, but their hearts are hardened to receiving and relationship.

Jesus then goes Himself out into all of the villages and towns. His heart is moved by the needs of the people, and He goes to them and heals them. There is no question of a trade-off; no payment is required for grace. The Unmoved Mover is moved by the people themselves.

It is from this place of compassion that Jesus asks His disciples to pray for more workers to attend to the harvest. He is not looking for more practitioners of piety, but for those who will share with Him the heart of the Father.

It is only in allowing ourselves to receive the free love of God that we can be freed to truly love and serve others, to be Christ to them. Let us ask for the graces we need to live and love like Jesus.

P.S. Lollipop’s baby sister was born a little over a year later. Her money is still safely under the bed. It seems no action on her part was required. 😊

Do Not Be Unbelieving

“Do not be unbelieving but believe”—John 20:27

I remember standing on the deck, enraptured by beauty, as we sailed through the sparkling blue of the Mediterranean to the Amalfi coast. The temperature was perfect, the views spectacular, and my heart soared with delight. I don’t know what the mystical experience of ecstasy is like, but this was as close I had ever come on a merely human level, and it may be that that moment was also infused with something of the divine. “I don’t know how anyone could ever doubt the existence of God!” I remember whispering in awe.

This memory burned within me, when, months later, I was plunged into a terrifying spiritual darkness. I had always paid lip service to the idea that faith is a gift, but I had not really known what that meant until it disappeared.

I had always believed in God, even when other parts of my spiritual life were in disarray. Faith itself had always come easily to me, and while studying had bolstered my faith, it was not the foundation for it. Now, suddenly, the entirety of the faith presented itself as an epic joke. I was tempted to doubt not merely an individual doctrine or practice, but even the idea that there could be a God, the idea that there could be meaning behind all that I saw. All of the cruelty of the universe—in human experience, in the violence of nature, and in particular in the weaknesses and scandals among Christians—screamed in mockery at me as I tried to hold on. The more I tried to reason my way back to belief, back to peace, the more preposterous it all seemed. My will was the only very fragile thread that kept me believing anything at all.

The darkness was terrifying and profoundly lonely. More than once I cried in Confession—an act as mortifying to the poor priest as it was to me. He tried to assure me that God still loved me, while I tried to explain that if there was no God, not only was I unloved but my whole life had been built on an illusion.

The memory of this is still so awful that I mentioned recently to my spiritual director how afraid I am that I could go back there. “Yeah, good thing you got yourself out of that!” he replied, with no little sarcasm.

Because of course I did not, could not, get myself out of that.

I tried, in particular reaching out for answers to the questions that I could not answer—reading, researching and attending Bible Study with the ever-patient Brother John Mary. There was one class in particular that I hoped would put an end to a particularly challenging question, and I looked forward to it with all the hope I could muster. But instead an unavoidable calendar conflict caused me to miss it and so I never got my answers.

Then one day I went to Confession at Catholic Underground. I had zero expectations but confessed my doubts with an almost hopeless resignation. “What do you want from me?” the priest asked. “Just absolution? Or something else?” I was surprised by the question, and said simply, “I don’t know. Yes, absolution. And if you have anything to say from God, I’d love that of course, but I am not expecting anything.”

He then told me then a story about St. Angela Foligno, a mystic whose periodic experiences of “abandonment” by God would leave her screaming like a crazy person, to the great embarrassment of her brother who was a priest. Then she would regain her faith, and conclude that while God’s love was faithful, her own was “nothing but games.” I don’t remember all of the details of the story—it doesn’t actually matter, because it wasn’t the story that was convincing. Somehow, during the telling, it was as though a match was struck, and I was aware once again of the Light. I could not see anything new—my faith would return more completely over time, but I was assured only of the reality of this Light. I was not alone in the dark after all.

I don’t know all of the reasons God allowed this particular season in my life, although I can see some fruits. Certainly I have more compassion for those who struggle with doubt. I understand better now that faith is a gift I did not, cannot, earn, and that I should never take for granted.

But I also learned that faith is about more than answers. It is about the One Who Answers. In a mysterious way, I am in the hands of God, who is infinitely beyond understanding.

This is the One who appeared to Thomas, aware of his doubts and of the obstacles in him to belief. He invited Thomas not only to touch the wounds in His hands, but to put himself into them. “Do not be unbelieving, but believe.” Saint Thomas, pray for us that we might receive ever more the gift of faith.

* * *

“It is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.” —Kallistos Ware (Orthodox church author)

The Narrow Way

I remember years ago, as a child, reading with awe the stories of great missionaries and martyrs. And so when in China I met “real live people” who were daily risking their lives to bring the Gospel, I was somewhat starstruck. I attended secret Masses with priests and nuns who had served in the Underground Church for decades, who had friends who had been arrested, beaten, or even killed for their faith. I met women who taught small children the faith, despite the law that made it a crime to speak of God to anyone under eighteen. I met men and women who had started orphanages and infant hospices to care for the abandoned and discarded little ones, and others who assisted women seeking to hide their “illegal” pregnancies from forced abortion. Each of these daily put their livelihood and even their lives on the line, over a span of decades, and many had suffered terrible persecution but still persisted.

When I was invited to join some of them in a secret mission trip to another part of China, to join in speaking “illegally” about the faith, I was thrilled. To be fair, the risk to me was insignificant—if caught I would only be deported, not killed. But there was something in me that loved the idea of being a part of something that felt so missionary, to join these heroes even in a partial way.

But then, a few days before we were to leave, something felt wrong. At first I thought the heat was finally getting to me. We had taken a taxi to the Great Wall, and our driver like many elderly Chinese had a deep superstition regarding moving air. He insisted on keeping the windows closed and the AC off, until we arrived and gratefully tumbled out into the much cooler 99 degree air. But the weak, dizzy feeling continued well into the evening, even after we returned from the wall.

The next morning, my stomach began to lurch and make sounds that might have had me burned at the stake in earlier centuries. It then violently designated “return to sender” pretty much everything I had ever eaten or ever considered eating. Charity and basic decency ask me to censor the graphic details, but suffice it to say, I had never been so sick in my life.

In the United States, when one gets a stomach bug or food poisoning it usually end after 24 hours or so. This did not. After three full days my body was still violently and involuntarily turning itself inside out, and I alternated between thinking I was going to die and praying that I would.

I did not suffer nobly. I did not smile serenely offering up my pain for the poor souls. I was not peaceful, accepting whatever God would send me for His greater glory. I don’t even think I prayed, other than to beg God to let me die, quickly. I had not known, until that moment, that it was possible to experience such pain and not die or fall unconscious. I only wanted it to end.

It was ten days before I was back on my feet again, thanks to a combination of watermelon, Cipro and many prayers. I missed the mission trip, and realized ruefully that that far from being a hero, I had more in common with the nameless companions who died of dysentery before ever reaching the missions.

I was tempted to be disappointed, at first, at not being permitted to do something “great” like the others. And I was frustrated at how poorly I had suffered even my minor little cross, when I knew others who carried much bigger ones more gracefully. But God’s plan for each of us is profoundly personal, and always perfect.

“Comparison is the thief of joy.” We’ve all heard some variation on this, and know, (at least on some level) the harm in Park Avenue pretense, or Wall Street ambition, or any other human measuring sticks. Yet sometimes this slips into our spirituality and our ideas of holiness.

It is a central strategy of the Opposition Voice to turn our eyes away from Christ, to look instead to the gifts, or faults, of others. When we see those of seemingly greater gifts or callings we are tempted to doubt our own, to be ungrateful, or to let them go unused. When we see the faults of others, we are tempted to excuse our own, saying “at least I am not as bad as him/her.” My father used to warn me not to make others the measure of my soul: “You will always be able to find someone holier than you, and someone more sinful. The fact that you are better than Hitler does not make you a good person. You need to do the best you can with what you have been given.” Christ invites us to look to Him, to what He is calling us to individually.

The way is narrow because it is personal, a specific way for each person. As Pope Benedict said, there are “as many ways as there are people.” Not that each person invents his or her own way—nothing could be more disastrous! Rather each person is uniquely called to follow Christ in a particular way, with particular gifts. The one reason to do anything, great or small, is because He asks us to.

Salt and Light

Jesus said to his disciples:

“You are the salt of the earth.
But if salt loses its taste, with what can it be seasoned?
It is no longer good for anything
but to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. –Matt 5:1

* * *

My late father was an introvert. At his funeral the joke was that he would have preferred a smaller event, so that he wouldn’t have to talk to so many people. He was intelligent and well-educated, having studied eight languages while working on a PhD in English—but he chose all dead ones, thus avoiding the risk of having to converse in them. These ranged from familiar ones like Latin and Hebrew and Ancient Greek, to Hittite and Sanskrit and Tocharian (which in my uneducated mind was spelled Tolkarian, and which I assumed was something that hobbits spoke—until I had to google it). He tended to stay on the periphery of conversations, only occasionally injecting bits of wisdom, humor or an odd pun.

So it was something of a shock when the phone rang, one day years ago, and it was for him. It was a collect call from a Massachusetts prison, from a young man named Scott, looking for my father. Even more of a shock was that my father stayed on the phone with him for close to an hour, using more than a few month’s quota of words on someone we didn’t even know he knew. This was repeated many times, as Scott had found in my quiet father something of a mentor.

Indeed, my father attracted quite a fan club among surprising populations. This is probably not the best place to mention “Boomer”, another prison inmate, who saw in my father’s Sicilian features an underlying presence, and took him for a Godfather figure. He refused to believe that my father was who claimed to be (ironically at the time, a sales rep for a large stuffed animal company) and thought he must in fact be a Boss. “Let me work for you!” Boomer insisted. “I could be your hit man!” (true story)

At his funeral many commented how my father spoke rarely, but when he did, people listened. I know in my own life, I have held on to these bits of wisdom, which while infrequent had more impact than many longer conversations or even entire courses in theology. And I have come to recognize that this unassuming wisdom was the fruit of a life of prayer.

“One of the greatest evils in the Church today,” my father told me when I was seventeen and on the way to college in Steubenville, “is the number of people in positions of authority who have long since ceased to be holy themselves.” I heard these words long before the Church was rocked by public scandal and had the veneer of public piety removed from some of the most horrifying of private sins. But my father’s warning was not directed at others, but as a caution to me. “It is very easy when you are learning about God, doing things for God, talking about God, to forget to talk to God.” For my father this was the worst possible fate.

“You cannot give what you don’t have.” I don’t think that expression was original to Dad, but it points to the necessity of prayer, and is the heart of today’s Gospel. “If salt loses its flavor, what good is it?” Jesus asks, after telling his disciples to be salt and light for the world. Similarly, one cannot give light by studying it, talking about it—only by being filled with it. And the place we are filled is prayer.

There was one cause which propelled my Dad from the comfort and confines of a hidden life, and that was the prolife movement. In his retirement he went weekly to an abortion clinic, more than sixty miles from our home, to stand alone peacefully offering literature about the help and alternatives available to women as they entered the clinic. But then later in the morning he would stand across the street with a sign, across from the parking lot where they would see him as they left, with a sign that said: “Jesus forgives and heals.”

Many people thought it was “too soon.” That the women were not ready for repentance and thus not ready for Christ’s mercy. But my father believed that being prolife was more than just saving babies, that it was about saving souls. And he knew from the experience of many who shared their personal stories of abortion with him, that memories of the day would come back years later. He hoped that with them would come the memory of that message of mercy.*

I think of this too when I think of salt and light, and how the one thing that they cannot be is hidden. Like my Dad, I prefer quiet and solitude, and more than he, invisibility when it comes to controversy. I don’t like to be the one to speak out, to stand out. I prefer to be one of the crowd. But we all know what the “crowd” does to Jesus.

It is in prayer that I draw both the strength and motivation to step out of myself. Just as improbable as my father’s prison ministry is my own public speaking. I have learned how true it is that “the one who does not speak to God has nothing to say to the world.” That it is only by practicing faithfulness to daily prayer that I have anything at all to say, and more importantly, the courage to step out of myself and my fears to say it.

Let us ask God today that we may be truly salt and light for the world, witnessing by what we are and have received.

Like my father I have only love for those who have had abortions. I know the sometimes unbearable pressures of circumstances, boyfriends, family and friends that weigh into such decisions. I also know that for many, often years later, there is great anguish and pain following that decision. If you know of someone who is seeking healing from an abortion, there are many organizations who can help including the Sisters of Life linked here.

Stinkbugs and Fleas

In every age, O Lord, you have been our refuge. (Psalm 90:2)

Living in a city shoebox apartment may have its down side, but living in a big house in the country has its outside. And when winter departs and the tundra thaws, the outside springs to life—and then the outside starts to make its way inside.

The worst of these unwanted interlopers is the stink bug, which I defy even Saint Francis to love. The other morning, I was awoken by my 88-year-old aunt shouting with great alarm, “There is something…prehistoric…crawling on the wall!” One of the world’s ugliest but otherwise harmless (apart from smell) insects was indeed making its way up toward the ceiling. Being the generous, virtuous soul that I am, I said “No! I am not killing anything until I have had my coffee!” and stomped downstairs. And I guzzled a few days-worth before grimly making my way back upstairs to begin the day’s extermination, which did not end with just one.

And so it is that when Corrie ten Boom wrote in The Hiding Place about fleas, I was entirely on her side. Corrie and her sister hid Jews during the Holocaust, and the first part of her book is filled with remarkable stories of God’s providence, and how they were given the grace not only to witness to Christ heroically but to save countless lives. But then they were betrayed to the Gestapo, and sent to Ravensbrück concentration camp. The suffering and abuse they would experience was horrific, but what nearly put Corrie over the edge was the infestation of fleas they encountered when they first moved to new barracks. “How can we live in such a place?” she wailed.

Her sister Betsie believed that the answer to “how” was to be found in Saint Paul’s exhortation to “give thanks to God in all circumstances,” and she led Corrie reluctantly through a litany of thanksgiving for everything—including all of the awful aspects—culminating with the fleas. Corrie writes:

The fleas! This was too much. “Betsie, there’s no way even God can make me grateful for a flea.”

“Give thanks in all circumstances,” [Betsie] quoted. It doesn’t say, ‘in pleasant circumstances.’ Fleas are a part of this place where God has put us.”

And so we stood between tiers of bunks and gave thanks for fleas. But this time I was sure Betsie was wrong.

But Betsie would have the last laugh. For it turns out that the flea-infested room was their one place with sufficient freedom for prayer and bible study, which was for the prisoners the sole source of peace and calm in the years of torment. It was the one place the wardens never entered, never caught them worshipping. One day they discovered that their freedom was directly due to the infestation—the guards refused to enter the room precisely because of the fleas!

Corrie writes: “My mind rushed back to our first hour in this place. I remembered Betsie’s bowed head, remembered her thanks to God for creatures I could see no use for.”

When we think of God as our “refuge and help” throughout the centuries, we are often tempted to think of the highlight reel of good times and blessings. But we are invited to look deeper, to discover a God who is Emmanuel, with us in all things—including times of evil and suffering.

“The mystery of suffering is the biggest challenge we face in living out our faith…Faith doesn’t take away the mystery or the suffering, but it offers us another mystery: that God does not run from those who suffer, but instead draws close to them,” writes Sr. Marie Paul Curley, FSP in See Yourself Through God’s Eyes.

“The Lord is close the brokenhearted,” the Psalms tell us. The Incarnation shows God taking on our suffering Himself in the person of Christ, but He also continues to love each of us in our own particular suffering. And just as His own Cross brought about both Redemption and Resurrection, God can bring good out of everything in our lives too. Some we see in this life; some will be seen only in the next.

The gratitude Betsie preached was important not only as spiritual etiquette, as giving God His due, but also in placing the situation, and all of its ugliness, in the palm of Providence. When we thank God for His gifts, we build our own trust in Him as Giver, and our confidence that He will continue to keep us in His care. When we recognize the good even in the midst of suffering, we strengthen our hope that future evils will also be accompanied by, and used for, good.

In a recent homily Pope Francis spoke about joy “not as living from laugh to laugh” but as a gift of the Holy Spirit that can be lived even in suffering. The key to this joy, he said, is gratitude and memory. It is the memory of God’s faithfulness that both sparks joy and gives hope for the future.

Let us pray for the grace of grateful hearts, to receive all as good from the Giver of All Good Things.

* * *

*Betsie would eventually give her life in the concentration camp, and when they found her body it was radiant and joyful. Corrie survived the holocaust and went on to be a great Christian speaker and writer, whose works include The Hiding Place in which this story is found.

You can find See Yourself Through God’s Eyes by Sister Marie Paul Curley FSP in the Pauline bookstore or in the embedded link, or on Amazon here. The above quote is from page 119.

“The Lord is close the brokenhearted” is from Psalm 34:18.

Not From Me But For Me

Peter began to say to Jesus,
“We have given up everything and followed you.”
Jesus said, “Amen, I say to you,
there is no one who has given up house or brothers or sisters
or mother or father or children or lands
for my sake and for the sake of the Gospel
who will not receive a hundred times more now in this present age:
houses and brothers and sisters
and mothers and children and lands,
with persecutions, and eternal life in the age to come.
But many that are first will be last, and the last will be first.”—Mark 10:28-31

* * *

It is the sound that every mother of a toddler learns to fear: an eerie silence, followed by piercing squeals of unfettered delight.

My friend Heidi and I ran down the stairs from where we had been packing for a day at the pool, to find her not-quite-two-year-old Nicholas splashing about with great enthusiasm in the toilet.

Even the future Saint Grace was quite appalled, and we immediately moved to extract him. He quickly became as stiff as a board and twice his usual weight as he began to wail piteously and thrash about. He remained inconsolable, as we cruelly re-dressed him, buckled him in his car seat and drove him further away from his sole source of joy. That we were driving to a pool, a much bigger and more glorious version of his tiny heart’s desire, was an irony not lost on me.

This fear of trusting, this doubt that good things can follow a No to what we think we want or are currently enjoying, is not only a quality of toddlers.

A friend of mine who was preparing to enter the seminary tried to explain the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience to his secular friends. “Dude, you’ve got to be kidding me! Those are the three things I am most trying to avoid!” one responded in shock.

It’s easy for me to laugh at that guy, but my own conversion was significantly delayed because I feared that if I took my faith seriously God would “make me a nun.” (That this was for me the worst possible fate is itself quite telling).

In today’s Gospel, Jesus promises that those who give up “house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands” for His sake will receive “a hundred times more…in this present age”—as well as persecution, and eternal life. We get the persecution and the eternal life part; but do we believe the hundredfold in this life?

This renunciation, this death to self, this emptiness, is a characteristic of all Christian life, not just those with what we call a “religious vocation.” And all, whether lay or ordained, married, single or professed, are called to live not as corpses but as “witnesses to the resurrection.”

In my first ever attempt at Lectio Divina, we were invited to imagine ourselves as a person or object in the story of the Wedding in Cana. I found myself imagining myself as one of the six stone jars in the story, and imagined myself being emptied and filled, day after day after day (before of course the Big Day in the story). As I felt the weariness of being emptied yet again, I felt a question rise to the surface of my mind, “Grace, why are you focusing on being emptied rather than being filled?”

Later, when my life unraveled and I felt as though everything was being taken away from me yet again, I was on my knees asking God, “What is it that you want from me?” And unmistakably the voice came back, “It is not what I want from you, it is what I want for you.”

One of the marks required for considering sainthood is a life characterized by joy. Although the saints invariably lived lives of renunciation and at times profound suffering, they were filled with something, and this emanated in a life of joy.

God is never outdone in generosity, and indeed I have experienced on many occasions this “hundredfold” and gifts of joy I never imagined possible. Whenever I have surrendered something to Him, He has replaced it with something better.

Yet, this is an ongoing story—I can look back on this as a promise fulfilled, but I must also look to it with the eyes of faith as a promise still to come. Some days I am gloriously happy in my current life even without a lot of things I thought I wanted/needed. But some days “dying to self” is like blowing out trick candles on a birthday cake, and Christianity can feel like a cruel joke.

Anyone who has attempted the Christian life for any significant stretch of time is familiar with these ups and downs, these seasons of plenty and famine. St. Ignatius called these spiritual seasons “consolation” for the good, and “desolation” for the down times. It is helpful to remember that just like the seasons of earth, they will come and go. In times of good, it is helpful to build memories and gratitude to recall and strengthen us for the times that are harder. And in the tough times, we can hold on to our memories of good and the promises of Christ.

Let us pray today for the grace to trust in the goodness and generosity of God at all times.

The King of Glory and the Pink Bunny

Jesus raised his eyes to heaven and said,
“Father, the hour has come.
Give glory to your Son, so that your son may glorify you,
just as you gave him authority over all people,
so that your son may give eternal life to all you gave him —John 17:1-2

* * *

I have two distinct memories of our second grade Christmas pageant. The first is of the lyrics to The King of Glory which we sang with such joyful exuberance that we were marched through the hallway to the upper grade classrooms in hopes that they would catch some of our enthusiasm and volume. “Who is this King of Glory, How shall we call Him?….Open the gates before Him, lift up your voices!”

The second was that I was forced, against my will, to wear in public a pink bunny costume for our tableau of Noah’s ark. I had volunteered to be a bunny, imagining appearing soft, white, furry and adorable. When my mother pulled out the entirely pink costume, I was aghast. Bunnies are not supposed to be pink! I would not, could not appear in something so obviously what a bunny should not look like. It didn’t matter that I otherwise loved pink; it mattered that it was not a suitable color for a bunny.

I decided instead to wear a white turtleneck and tan pants, appropriate bunny colors, and to affix a cotton ball to my posterior to look like a real bunny. My mother broke the rules and came to our classroom, where she conspired with my teacher to cover up my authentic costume with the horrific, fake, pink abomination. I don’t think I even sang The King of Glory that night, my eyes filled with tears at the terrible humiliation and shame of wearing something that so obviously wasn’t right.

If I am amused as an adult at my youthful squeamishness and perfectionism, I have also come to realize that so much of Christmas is in fact neither fitting nor right. That the King of Glory should be a helpless baby, confined by swaddling bands in a trough from which animals ate, is of course more incongruous than an oddly hued rabbit.

In his (highly, highly recommended) new book The Word Made Flesh: Foretold, Fulfilled, Forever, Father Richard Veras tells of the awe of the angels that see God in this tiny human baby. “Who is this King of Glory?” they wonder, marveling that God would appear in a place and form so horribly beneath Him, so at odds with His power and glory. But this awe is not just for Christmas he notes.

We focus so much on the descent of God, the humble lowering of Himself as He comes to earth with a full human nature. We sometimes forget how much the angels must likewise marvel when human flesh ascends into heaven!

How surprised would seven-year-old-me have been to read Father Veras and learn that Psalm 24:7-10 (see full text below), on which our Christmas song The King of Glory was based, was believed by Church Fathers to be in fact about the Ascension. Writes Father Veras:

The image proposed by these Fathers is that the angels ascending with Jesus are telling the angels in heaven to open the gates to the King of Glory. But the angels guarding heaven’s gates question them. For the ascending angels are accompanying a man of flesh and blood who bears wounds in his body. That a man, that a human nature could be approaching the very throne of God causes the angels at the gates to ask again, “Who is this?” And the ascending angels, with great rejoicing, repeat their proclamation and verify that this man is indeed the King of Glory.¹[emphasis added]

Jesus is glorified not when He “finishes” His human life and returns to one that is purely divine. Rather, He is glorified when in His human nature He is raised from the dead and then ascends into heaven. Forever, the human and the divine are linked; humanity is now infused with unimaginable glory into eternity. Fr. Veras quotes Jean Danielou, noting that:

…the mystery of the Ascension is not that [the angels] are to adore the eternal Word—that is already the object of the liturgy—but rather that they are to adore the Word Incarnate; and that overturns all of heaven, just as the Incarnation revolutionized all of earth.”² [emphasis added]

C.S. Lewis believed that heaven and hell were not merely conditions of the afterlife, but conditions that begin in this life. One can see a glimpse of this in the joy of the saints, or the horror and misery of great sinners. Similarly, our own glorification, our union with the divine, begins with a transformation in this life, when with the power of the Holy Spirit we are changed to be more like Christ. While we can wonder when merely human beings are given the power to heal, or speak in or interpret foreign tongues, or to prophesy, it is an even greater wonder when merely human beings can love like God, forgive like God, humble themselves like God.

At the beginning of the time the Opposition Voice told Eve that if they ate the forbidden fruit they would “be like God.” Since then our image of God has been backwards, as have our attempts to imitate Him. When we say of someone “he thinks he’s god” we are generally implying one who is arrogant, bossy, even tyrannical. How unlike this image is the baby in Bethlehem, the gentle healer riding on an ass, the man who lets Himself be nailed by His hands and feet to the Cross.

As we continue in this space between the Feasts of the Ascensions and Pentecost, let us pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that God may be glorified through what we become, beginning now to be completed in eternity.

* * *

I highly recommend that you read the entire book by Father Veras. You can buy the kindle version on Amazon here or a paperback version through Magnifcat here.

Citations:

¹ Veras, Richard. The Word Made Flesh. (New York: Magnicat Inc.,2017) pp. 174-5

² In the second quotation from page 175, Father Veras quotes Jean Danielou:

Jean Danielou, The Angels and Their Mission According to the Fathers of the Church, tr. David Heimman. (Allen, Tex.:Thomas More Publishing, 1987), 34.

Psalm 24:7-10

Lift up your heads, O gates:

rise up, you ancient portals,

that the king of glory may enter.

Who is this king of glory?

The Lord, a mighty warrior

the Lord, mighty in battle.

Lift up your heads, O gates:

rise up, you ancient portals.

that the king of glory may enter.

Who is this king of glory?

The Lord the hosts is the king of glory.

Better Off

But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go.
For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you. (John 16:7)

We all have those particular passages of Scripture that test our faith and strain our credulity: When Balaam’s ass thinks his master is being one, and so strikes up a conversation about it. When Jonah is swallowed by the whale and then spit out again so that he can go to Nineveh after all. When the Apostle Paul is preaching so long that Eutyches falls asleep, falls out the window and dies. Yes, Paul raises him from the dead, but then he goes back upstairs and goes on preaching.

And then there’s today’s Gospel. Why in the world does Jesus say: “It is better for you that I go”?

How can this be? Jesus is claiming that we are better off with the Holy Spirit, than if Jesus Himself were sitting right here bodily among us.

Do I really believe this? What do I do about it?

In the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, as Jesus is about to ascend into heaven, He tells His apostles: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you.”

The word “power”—dynamis in Greek—is closely related to “dynamite.” The gift that Jesus is promising is no wimpy substitute for Himself.

I thought about this in March when three successive snowstorms dumped almost thirty inches of snow on us in less than ten days. The heavy wet snow in combination with storm winds caused trees to topple, severing multiple power lines and leaving many without power for days.

At first, it seems almost romantic, eating and reading by candle light as in times gone by. But then one notices that the internet does not work without power. Foods that don’t require cooking are used up, and there is nothing to prepare for dinner without the power of the stove. Water from wells likewise cannot be pumped through faucets without power. The furnace cannot heat the house without power and so things quickly become cold. And then very, very cold. The dark is no longer fun; we wait impatiently for the power and light to return.

So it is with the power of the Holy Spirit. It was by His power that The Light entered the world when He overshadowed Mary and Jesus was conceived; it is by His power that we receive the light of faith and understanding. It is by the power of the Holy Spirit that the bread becomes the Body of Christ at Mass, our ultimate Food. It is the power of the Holy Spirit that awakens for us the thirst for God, for goodness, for truth—and He that ensures that we are drawn to the Living Water. It is by the Holy Spirit that we are given the Word Made Flesh, and the words to communicate this love to one another. It is by His Power that we are made clean in the Sacrament of Reconciliation. It is in this power that we can live the abundant life and joy that Jesus desires for us.

Just as on a large scale the power of the Holy Spirit makes the Christian life possible and real, we need the power of the Holy Spirit on a practical and personal level even to pray. Scripture tells us that not only does the Holy Spirit inspire us to pray, He prays with us and in our place:

Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. (Rom 8:26)

Not only has the Holy Spirit inspired me with all of my deepest desires, He expresses them to God when I cannot. And if He does this for me in prayer, how much more will He do if I open my entire life to His Power? For God “gives the Spirit without measure.” (John 3:34)

As Pentecost approaches, let us ask for the grace to be ever more open to the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives and in our world.