Prayer – Page 5 – Frassati Reflections

Unceasingly

“As Jesus approached Jericho
a blind man was sitting by the roadside begging,
and hearing a crowd going by, he inquired what was happening.
They told him,
“Jesus of Nazareth is passing by.”
He shouted, “Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me!”
The people walking in front rebuked him,
telling him to be silent,
but he kept calling out all the more,
“Son of David, have pity on me!”
Then Jesus stopped and ordered that he be brought to him;
and when he came near, Jesus asked him,
“What do you want me to do for you?”
He replied, “Lord, please let me see.”
Jesus told him, “Have sight; your faith has saved you.”
He immediately received his sight
and followed him, giving glory to God.
When they saw this, all the people gave praise to God.” (Luke 18:35-43)

Dear friends, I cannot tell you the number of times my prayers for certain intentions have dwindled over time because they’ve gone seemingly unanswered. I get disheartened, listen to that tiny voice of despair telling me to doubt God’s faithfulness, and don’t pray about it as much—and not out of surrender, but out of fear, out of feeling unworthy.

Mea culpa. Jesus, Son of David, have pity on me.

The blind man in today’s Gospel was persistent in his cry for Jesus. He, a beggar, an outcast and someone seen as less-than, didn’t doubt that Jesus would hear and answer him because of who he was. Even when the crowd told him to be silent, they couldn’t stifle the outcry of his prayer.

When people tell us to give up, when the world screams that God isn’t good, we cannot cease our prayer. When we pray steadfastly, we allow the steadfast love of God to enter our hearts. We renew our trust in Him each time we cry out to Him. We proclaim how much we need a Savior.

In acknowledging Jesus as the “Son of David,” the blind man is declaring that Jesus Christ is Lord, that as the Son of David, He is the Messiah. This shows his great faith in who Jesus is.

Even though the man couldn’t see Jesus and the miracles He was working before his sight was restored, he had faith. He believed that Jesus is the Savior. When we can’t see what God is up to or when our prayers seem ignored, we can have faith that Jesus hasn’t left the picture. He never abandons us, and He always hears and answers our prayers.

One of my favorite worship songs, “The King of My Heart,” has a line that says, “You’re never going to let me down.” Has God ever let us down? Even in the darkest moments, no. Will God ever let us down? No, we can trust in His unending love. We can pray unceasingly, knowing that God is with us, fulfilling our every need.

What’s For Dinner?

I used to think that my name, Grace, was a bit of irony from God. But I have come to realize that it is in fact the best name for me. Not because I am graceful (ha!), nor because I am full of it, but because it is what we say before food. Even not-yet-two Zippy knows this. When they tell her: “Say Hi to Aunt Grace!” she tries to make the sign of the cross, thinking that food must be coming. And that’s about right.

As a lover of food, I can’t help but find today’s Gospel rather puzzling. Who, when invited to a royal banquet, would prefer lesser things? Who would say No to the promise of such a feast? Who indeed.

The invitation to faith is the invitation to trust in the goodness of God. It is the invitation to reverse the sin of Eden, to reverse the decision to doubt, to reverse the decision to choose lesser but attractive foods.

True faith is trust in the goodness of God, in His Providence for us in all things. It is also trust in the desires that He Himself gives us.

In C.S. Lewis’s novel Perelandra, a man named Ransom finds himself in a new paradise. He is in a world of floating islands, filled with trees bearing the most wonderful fruits he has ever tasted. Every need is provided for in this new Eden, but there is one catch. Because the islands are floating, constantly changing, it is impossible to “save,” to “keep,” to “hold on to for future use” anything at all. The Tempter comes, proposing an alternative: A Fixed Land. The choice is proposed: trust in continued Providence, or choose the safety of control.

It is easy to know the right choice, turning pages from the comfort of an easy chair, with my cup of coffee and a chocolate chip muffin still warm in my belly.

But when the hunger sets in—and I have nothing saved for myself—do I still trust?

What if the hunger is itself food, itself a gift?

In the song Blessings Laura Story wonders if our sufferings—the “rain, the storms, the hardest nights” are in fact blessings in disguise. But then she goes a step further:

…All the while, You hear each spoken need
Yet love us way too much to give us lesser things…
…What if my greatest disappointments
Or the aching of this life
Is the revealing of a greater thirst this world can’t satisfy?

We all know that sometimes things that seem to be evil can turn out to be good. But what if the longing for good, the thirst for God, is itself a good to be sought? What if hunger is a gift?

C.S. Lewis argues that desire for heaven is one of the proofs for the existence of God. He notes that all desires have a corresponding means of fulfillment on this earth, all but one—our desire for eternity. “If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world” he concludes.

St. Augustine is known for saying “our hearts are restless oh Lord, until they rest in thee.” He wrote extensively on the longing for God—and held that the longing itself increased the soul’s capacity for God.

“The deeper our faith, the stronger our hope, the greater our desire, the larger will be our capacity to receive the gift, which is very great indeed…The more fervent the desire, the more worthy will be its fruits. When the Apostle tells us: Pray without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:16), he means this: Desire unceasingly that life of happiness which is nothing if not eternal, and ask it of Him alone who is able to give it.”

Saint Thérèse of Lisieux lived total confidence in God, was confident that He would make her a saint, in spite of her littleness. She believed that her desire for God was itself a pledge, that He would not give her very great desires if He did not mean to fill them: “I am certain, then, that You will grant my desires; I know O my God! That the more You want to give, the more You make us desire.”

Indeed, many saints have written that as they have ascended the heights of holiness, plumbed the depths of prayer, that their desire for God, rather than being satiated, was only increased.

May we be fed today with renewed hunger for God. See you at the feast!

Banquet_in_the_House_of_Levi_by_Paolo_Veronese_-_Accademia_-_Venice_2016_(2)

Photo attribution: Banquet in the House of Levi © José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro

The Cave

Jesus said to the crowds,
“When you see a cloud rising in the west
you say immediately that it is going to rain–and so it does;
and when you notice that the wind is blowing from the south
you say that it is going to be hot—and so it is.
You hypocrites!
You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky;
why do you not know how to interpret the present time?
—Luke 12:54–56

In the daily rush of work deadlines and subway delays, I often lose touch with an awareness of God’s presence. I’m so focused on my own plans and worries that I’m not really looking for Him. To use the analogy Jesus tells the crowds in today’s Gospel, if the “signs of the time” are being revealed through rising clouds and blowing winds, I’m not even looking up at the sky. I’ve closed myself off into a cave of my own complacency, safe from the winds but unable to hear the voice of God speaking to me through Creation. My desire for normalcy is greater than my desire for intimacy with God, and so I fall into a routine of keeping the status quo.

So how do I begin to take those first steps out of the cave and into the light? I think the most important step is to move beyond perfunctory prayer and to be truly honest and open with God. I know that I can fall into the habit of treating prayer as a chore to be completed rather than a conversation to engage in. As in any human relationship, if we come to each encounter with an agenda, then we aren’t able to fully see the other person and simply appreciate them for who they are. I’m trying to find more times in my week when I can simply be with God, without any agenda. My requests and petitions can come later; first I need to soak in His presence, and then everything else will flow from that.

And when we are attentive to the signs of God’s presence, we are called to point them out to others, to wake them up out of their own complacencies and reveal to them the beauty that surrounds us all and the greatness to which we are called.

Living in the Spirit, Following the Spirit

Brothers and sisters:

If you are guided by the Spirit, you are not under the law.

Now the works of the flesh are obvious:

immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry,

sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealousy,

outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness,

dissensions, factions, occasions of envy,

drinking bouts, orgies, and the like.

I warn you, as I warned you before,

that those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

In contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,

patience, kindness, generosity,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

Against such there is no law.

Now those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified their flesh

with its passions and desires.

If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.
—Galatians 5:18-25

Do you ever catch yourself reading a Scripture verse and thinking, “Okay that seems obvious”? Or maybe a better way to phrase the phenomenon is glazing over a verse here or there because it just seems too…straightforward? Easy to digest? Unremarkable?\

Sure, you do. We all do, we all know the feeling. It’s happens all the time when our minds wander, and sometimes even when you’re pretty well focused. That happened to me with today’s first reading.

Luckily, I caught myself this time. Do I really think St. Paul was redundant? Should I really write him off as an over-communicator? Of course not.

So I went back to the last verse of the reading: If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit. Straightforward, no? Yet what happens if we break this verse down grammatically? If I believe and profess that the Bible is the written Word of God, then every sentence, and possibly every word, should get this treatment. There are so many “levels” on which you can read Scripture, and God can speak to you through all of them! Read a chapter for the story, or meditate on a single sentence or passage a la lectio divina; the Spirit speaks either way.

So. Back to today’s verse: If we live in the Spirit, let us also follow the Spirit.

Why wouldn’t somebody be doing both? Why does it need to be stated?

As Catholics, what does it look like to live in the Spirit? The most obvious response is being a regular participant/recipient of the Sacraments. Jesus instituted the Sacraments as vehicles of grace, aka the gifts of the Spirit. Regular Mass-goers, you can check this one off: you, in a technical sense, could be considered to be living in the Spirit (if you go to Confession, and if you are not in a state of sin; big ifs)

If we’re living in the Spirit, it does not mean that we are necessarily following the Spirit. Participating and receiving do not mean that we are listening. If we are to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, do we need to receive the Holy Spirit? Absolutely. Is that enough by itself? Not at all.

“Following the Spirit” can have two related meanings: discerning God’s will in your life (i.e. following as a guide) and acting in accordance with His law (i.e. following as a rule). How often do we participate, but do not seek time in prayer for the Spirit to speak on a personal life decision? How often do we pray before a difficult conversation? A meeting at work?

These two elements, living in the Spirit and following the Spirit, are symbiotic and necessary. The grace of the Sacraments will flow into and inform our prayer and actions, and our prayer and actions inspire a greater desire for the Sacraments.

In addition to seeking out ways you can more deeply live in and follow the Spirit in your life, I ask that you say a special prayer for those who attend Mass regularly, but God does not have a central place in their lives otherwise. Pray that the Spirit would enkindle in them a new fire of love for Christ.

Are You For Real?

“Suffering is Jesus kissing you from the cross!” Mother Teresa is reported to have told a woman in great anguish. “Well then, tell Him to please stop!” the woman supposedly retorted.

Lately, I have been inclined to agree.

I wrote recently that it is when you hit rock bottom that you discover just Who that Rock really is. But I feel as though instead, I am lying splattered and splayed upon its hardness. Previous pious platitudes have not brought comfort.

“I can’t handle this, Lord. I have nothing left to give.” I was praying weeks ago in front of the Pieta, on Saturday afternoon of the Frassati retreat, begging for a reprieve from fatigue and stress. Neither the statue nor any other voice spoke into the silence, but I felt a pain like a cross beam spread across my shoulders, then slowly into my neck. That pain did not subside after my prayer was over. It only grew, and I blamed my relentless stress.

A few days later, I was not able to turn my head without a cocktail of ibuprofen and prescription drugs. The doctors took some bloodwork, which revealed elevated lymphocytes and some other anomalies, and I was diagnosed with Lyme disease.

“Are you for real?” I asked God. “Didn’t I ask for rest, for reprieve? Did you hear me correctly?” Silence. “All right, I will say Yes, if this is Your will for me…”

After ten days of doxycycline, the pain had only worsened, spreading from my elbows throughout my arms and legs. I was unable to lift even small items without intense pain, so I called my sister Teresa to help me take care of my mother, and my 88-year-old aunt who has also been staying with us.

On the way back from the train station, I was telling my sister about my symptoms when suddenly the pain increased exponentially. Simultaneously there was a terrific bang and lurching. I struggled to breathe as the now excruciating pain tore through my ribs and neck. It took a few seconds to figure out what was happening—an SUV had smashed into our car, which in turn propelled our small Honda into the SUV in front of us. I didn’t even get a look at the scene as the ambulance carried us away.

“Are you for real God? Surely this is not happening…” I was mostly laughing, as I later texted neck-brace selfies from the ER to friends and family, but maybe it was the morphine. I was admitted to the hospital, to ultimately be diagnosed with a fracture of my neck vertebrae. Teresa returned to the city with her own very painful injuries (diagnosis still in progress).

A few days later I was finally feeling strong enough to sit up at the table for dinner. But a bit later, my mother started complaining of abdominal pain. The complaints grew in urgency and volume, and I looked to see that she was as white as a sheet and sweating. A call to a nurse friend directed me to call 911, in case she was having a heart attack.

My few minutes of sitting up became seven hours in the ER, only to have Mom admitted, not for her heart but her pancreas. “Really, not again…” I sighed.

The next morning, before I call for a ride to the hospital, I stumble into the kitchen to make myself some coffee. Something doesn’t smell right. Maybe it’s because there’s been nobody to do the dishes, but there aren’t that many, and the smell is worse than that. I painstakingly bend down to peer into the corner, to discover that an unwanted gift from Saint Martin has been decomposing in the corner of the pantry.

This is the last straw. “I HATE ALL LIVING THINGS!” I scream into the Silence. But I hate even more things that used to be living. Surely this cannot be real. Surely there is someone else to deal with this. I have said many times that I don’t mind being single and without a husband, except perhaps on garbage night. I add this to the list. “This is not okay, God!!!”

Mom is released from the hospital two days later, and I think I can finally breathe. But then we get the news that the car is likely totaled, and I look at our finances, and feel my feet sinking into an ocean of panic. “I trusted you, God!” Without a job, our finances have been precarious for awhile, and this is one hit too many. What are we supposed to do now?

On Saturday evening I am nauseous from the stress, worry and pain. We go to Mass, at which the Gospel is the Rich Young Man, who leaves Jesus, sad because of his preference for possessions. I feel an odd sense of conviction, that despite technically living below the poverty line, I am no different from this rich man. That there is still more to surrender.

“ARE YOU FOR REAL?” I ask God incredulously. Surely He cannot want more of me…surely there is nothing left to give!

God is silent, but other voices start piping in.

“Are YOU for real, Grace?” asks the Girl I Ought to Be. “Where is your trust in God?” snaps her snarky sister. “You talk about it all the time, about faith on the tightrope, about thanking God in all things. Time to see what you’re made of!”

Real Me responds with words that could constitute material for Confession.

“What do you want from me God? I am trying to trust you. I am trying to say yes. I am even trying to thank you, but it seems like a joke. Are you even there? Are you, in fact, for real?”

Doubt comes around like a Dementor, threatening to consume me with its darkness and despair, so I quickly shut the door, in my will if not my emotions. “Jesus, I trust in you.” The words comfort me, even if only 1% of me can get on board at the moment.

On Sunday I sit down to pray. “Lord, I am trying to say thank you. Trying to say yes. Trying to trust. But that is above my paygrade right now. I need you to do all these things for me, in me. I don’t even know what that means. I even need you to give me faith to believe that you are real.”

And I remember suddenly, that it is the date of my baptism, that (quite a few decades ago) on this very day I was brought as an infant to a small church in Kentucky. Brought to be marked with the sign of the cross, to receive the gift of faith.

The Silence remains, but I find rising up within me the grace to look up and say “You.” To remember and know that my prayers are not being spoken to or received by an abstraction, but by a Person. By Someone who is loving me in this. That I am saying yes not to the cross itself but to the Person who asks me to carry it (or more accurately, carries me during it).

Today is the feast of St. Margaret Mary Alacoque, to whom God entrusted the vision and message of His Sacred Heart. A Heart that was incarnate that we might know God’s love is not an abstraction, but in fact deeply human. A Heart that was pierced and bled for our sins, yet still burns with a personal love for each one of us.

Invitation to Festivus

Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.
Job spoke out and said:
“Perish the day on which I was born,
the night when they said, ‘The child is a boy!’
Why did I not perish at birth,
come forth from the womb and expire?”—Job 3:1-3

* * *

One of the prime tactics of the Opposition Voice is what I call an “Invitation to Festivus.” Festivus was initially a holiday invented by a character on the comedy sitcom Seinfeld to celebrate the “airing of grievances.” The idea became so popular that it was taken on in real life and now has formal recognition and its own date, December 23^rd, where it is billed as an “anti-Christmas.” While it is celebrated for the most part as a joke, and to be enjoyed as such, actual Opposition Voice invitations are another matter. It is particularly fitting that these invitations be recognized as in opposition to the gifts and joy that Christ brings.

These invitations have a way of arriving when I am about to begin a worthwhile activity, or even more frequently, when I sit down to pray. As I try to quiet myself, provocations for anger rise to the surface. Wrongs in the world, wrongs in my life, people that have failed me or failed at what I think they should be. “Someone is wrong on the internet” and so my mind starts composing a long letter-to-the-editor rebuttal. “Someone did me wrong” and my mind conjures up vivid, detailed video footage of the event and every word that was said, or that should have been.

Recently it was a woman who rather outrageously and falsely accused me of doing something wrong. I was in this particular case quite innocent, and while the matter itself was paltry and insignificant, her words continued to smolder in my mind. I do not always receive just criticism with grace, but false accusations, even minor ones, invite my ego to a duel onto death. My face grows hot as the resentment burns to a dangerous level. Instead of defending myself at the time however, I simply said, rather too quietly “That’s not true” and we awkwardly ended the conversation.

But the furnace has been stoked and the fire continues to rage, as my mind thinks of all the things I could and should have said. Some eloquent if lengthy depositions in my defense; some could be summed up in four letters.

We’ve all been there. And that’s the problem—I was there—more than twenty-eight years ago. This is not a new or recent grievance; it is one conjured up from a stash of hoarded unpleasant memories that were never properly put in the trash.

The self-pity party, with help from my imagination, has been upgraded to a gala. And then a new guest of honor comes crashing in: Shame. What is wrong with you? Why are you so insecure that you are bothered by decades-old criticism? Why couldn’t you have spoken up for yourself—why are you always such a coward? Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

How to respond?

The first line of defense is to recognize that most of these invitations are junk mail and require no response at all. Simply tear them up and put them in the paper trash. Many of these grievances disappear as soon as they are acknowledged as temptations or distractions.

Second—if that doesn’t work, and it seems to come with a message that requires something more, speak God’s love into it. In the scenario above, this would take the form of forgiveness: forgiving the woman who judged me unfairly, and then forgiving myself for a) my weakness at the time and b) my weaknesses now, in the recalling. Maybe even going a step further and saying “I love you!” by name to BOTH parties. I realize this sounds remarkably cheesy, but the fact that in practice it is so difficult to do suggests it may be more helpful than we realize.

Third—sometimes God lets us know that this has come to signal something a little more serious, and we are invited to look at what the invitation is really about. Why does it bother me? Is there an underlying wound that God wants to heal?

If this wound is not apparent, we should not worry about digging it up. Sometimes, however, God is allowing it to rise to the surface because it is time to bring it to light and to heal it. If that is the case, let this be a subject for your prayer time!

It is never helpful to attend a party hosted by the Opposition. But God Himself loves to hear whatever is on our mind, and He is happy to let us air our grievances to Him in all of their rancor and bitterness. Let Him be the host. When He does, there is always a gift exchange, with God being the more generous giver!

A People of the Beatitudes

In listening to a reflection on the Beatitudes today, the speaker asked their audience to reflect upon what it means to live the Beatitudes. Not just to believe in them, but to live them.

To live the Beatitudes is to value the things that this world does not. To see with God’s eyes and hear with God’s ears.

We live in a world full of “takes”, of people and outlets vying for our attention by giving their spin or opinion on the world unfolding around us. I cannot begin to tell you how many different articles I saw posted on social media that were trying to vindicate or vilify Archbishop Viganó’s letter of accusation. The “liberal” Catholic figures were attempting to poke holes in the statement, the “conservative” Catholics were calling for the resignation of the Vicar of Christ, and most of the laity fell somewhere in the middle to be buffeted back and forth by one “take” after another. I began to despair, to be frustrating, to find myself alternately excited that the horror might not be as deep as it seemed and terribly, terribly angry that it very well could be.

Instead of attaching myself to either side of the “aisle” of this politicized version of Catholicism, I decided to cleave to the LORD. I prayed. I prayed my heart out, and I haven’t been that good with prayer lately, so you know I’m not saying it to brag. I say it because prayer is what brought me comfort. When the world around us takes every event and spins it into 2 alternate “realities” (call ’em facts and alternative facts, if that suits you), I took deep, deep comfort in the fact that their is ONE LORD and we shall have NO OTHER GODS above him.

Our LORD’s mind is not divided. His heart is pure, singly devoted to His children. Our LORD, given our participation, will sift the sheep from the goats, weave a braided cord and CLEANSE HIS HOUSE.

I’ve never been one for “fire and brimstone” preaching. Us cradle Catholics can be somewhat allergic to that. But in this last month where I have not known what is wheat and what is chaff, I have found myself praying for purifying fire. Elijah, calling down fire upon the prophets of Ba’al. I’m furious at many things, and most of all that the voice of Jesus Christ is being lost in this awful human noise. Drop your agendas, be respectfully skeptical of your favorite news source, and PRAY in a way that you have not yet. For those of you that have, bring the light of Christ to others; it shines in a way that blots out all the torches and pitchforks.

The voice of Jesus Christ is the voice that spoke the Beatitudes in today’s Gospel. Pray that we might all live these words, and see with God’s eyes what is valuable and true in the midst of the noise.

Blessed are you who are poor,
for the Kingdom of God is yours.
Blessed are you who are now hungry,
for you will be satisfied.
Blessed are you who are now weeping,
for you will laugh.
Blessed are you when people hate you,
and when they exclude and insult you,
and denounce your name as evil
on account of the Son of Man.

Rejoice and leap for joy on that day!
Behold, your reward will be great in heaven.
For their ancestors treated the prophets
in the same way.

But woe to you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
But woe to you who are filled now,
for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
for you will grieve and weep.
Woe to you when all speak well of you,
for their ancestors treated the false
prophets in this way.

Appointment With God

Jesus departed to the mountain to pray,
and He spent the night in prayer to God.
–Luke 6:12

There is nobody on this planet that would accuse me of being a neat freak. And yet, when I sit down for prayer time, my desire for tidiness goes suddenly and inexplicably into overdrive.

I notice the picture that is hanging ever so slightly unevenly, begging to be straightened before I start. I notice the pile of papers on my desk, and have an immediate urge to address or file them. I see the basket of laundry and remember that I must apply stain remover to that one shirt, and if I don’t do it right now surely it will be ruined forever. The books on my shelf are crooked, acquiring dust, need to be read, need to be given away—that would be a good one for Susie—maybe before I begin to pray I should call her? Maybe I should make my bed. Maybe I should get in my bed, because did I really get enough sleep last night?

And when all else fails, as I begin to pray while looking out at the morning sky, I will see a small shadow moving across the window, as yet another stink bug compels extermination…

Anyone that has ever tried to put a toddler to bed will recognize these for what they are: diversion tactics. Whether natural or preternatural, resistance to these and any other delays is the first step to prayer.

The truth is, the Opposition will use any strategy that works to get us not to pray, or to delay prayer until a “later” that he knows may never come. It is imperative to resist these temptations, but to do so we must recognize them as such.

*You don’t have time to pray! You are too busy. It’s not like you’re a cloistered nun—you have a life. Don’t worry, God understands. Your work is your prayer…

*Daily prayer is not realistic. God asks too much of you. You ask too much of yourself…

*Yeah, you should pray of course, but better to get to Confession first. You’re not in a good place to meet God at the moment, are you?

*You aren’t very good at prayer. When’s the last time you heard God talking to you? You’re not like those other people who talk to God like they know Him or something…

*You don’t know how to pray. Why waste your time on something that you won’t get anything much out of?

*You can pray later, when you’re not so busy or distracted; when you don’t have so much on your plate…

*How do you know God is listening to you? Is He even there? If He is real, why doesn’t He do X? Why does He allow Y? How can you talk with somebody you don’t know for sure is even there?

In today’s Gospel Jesus calls the twelve apostles and heals the crowds, but only after spending the night in prayer. What did that night look like? How did the Son of God converse with the Father? We can only wonder—and marvel that such questions can even be asked of God made Man.

We only know that even Jesus needed prayer, that all of His actions flowed from this union with His Father lived out in prayer.

Reading this gospel, I was reminded of Father Michael Scanlan T.O.R., the former president of my alma mater. After his passing in January 2017, alumni were invited to offer tributes and share memories related to his legacy in their lives. At first I thought I had little to say. While I am no doubt indebted to him for my college experience which set a trajectory for my life, my personal encounters with him were few and not the sort that great stories are made of.

Yet much is made in Christian life of the notion of planting seeds—how often that is what we as educators are called to, even when we do not see for years any visible signs of growth or fruit. I think of myself often as a seed planter (at least on days when I am feeling optimistic) but I forget at times of how much I am the recipient of the seeds of other sowers. One such sower was Fr. Mike, and the particular seed was his book Appointment with God.

The funny thing is, I am not sure if I ever actually read the book. My memory is rather foggy on that point. But the idea of a daily appointment with God, a designated prayer time, was spoken of frequently at FUS and modeled for me by many of my fellow students. His idea was simple—a guarded time set aside each day, put onto the calendar and thereby not to be moved, to meet with God in conversation, ideally before the rest of the day and its concerns came rushing in to fill the time.

I loved the idea of it from the beginning. But faithful practice of it was decades away, as I made what I realize in retrospect were flimsy excuses.

Years later, as I started to become more faithful to times of prayer, I began to experience God’s love in new ways. Sometimes I had experiences of His presence during prayer; more often I began to recognize His presence outside of prayer. Flashes of understanding. Conversations that confirmed something I thought God was saying. Snatches of song in the grocery store with their secular lyrics—that were not only poignant echoes of God’s love, but even prophetic at times. The more I made time for God to speak to me during prayer, the more I heard His voice in unexpected places.

Wise foolishness and the abundance of God

Dear fellow pilgrims,

Our readings today have a clear message: be humble, follow the Lord’s will and not your own. We can feel this message of “let him become a fool, so as to become wise” when we talk about our lives to some unbelievers whilst trying to explain decisions made by the guidance of the Holy Spirit, peace in prayer, and other ways of discernment. How do we explain if we left a job with no other job lined up because we “just knew” it was time through prayer? How do we explain not being truly worried about the amount of children we will eventually have? It’s impossible without a childlike trust and humility in our Lord’s provision for us and faithfulness to us. In a world where very intelligent people can chide religious people by telling us we trust in, essentially, a “flying spaghetti monster,” it is no wonder sometimes that we feel “foolish” in the eyes of the world. But this trust we have in our Lord is not truly foolish. We have tasted and seen that the Lord is, indeed, good. I pray all of us have some moment in our hearts we can go back to to ground us in times of unbelief or difficulty in faith where the only conclusions are that God is real and God loves us.

In our Gospel today, we see a moment like that happening frame-by-frame for St. Peter. He follows the direction of Jesus, who is clearly not an expert fisherman, after following his own experienced direction for quite some time and finding no luck in a catch. But this seemingly foolish move results in something so miraculous that he is struck with the fear of God: he is faced with a catch of fish so large that even his own equipment cannot hold it. His nets tear! What a beautiful image. This detail is speaking to me today:

Sometimes we think that it is because of our own equipment and knowledge that our lives are not going the way we planned. We have worked hard, using all of the knowledge that we have, and we are not seeing results or certain events happen in our life. But in this Gospel, we are reminded of Who holds every aspect of our lives in order. You can be as prepared for a giant catch, or desired result or happy moment, in your life as possible, have all the right equipment, but still, in that moment of fulfillment, you may also an inadequacy in receiving it. Your nets may rip, your mind and heart may fall short of receiving what Jesus is giving you. It may all seem too much and actually a threat to your life instead of a blessing. But these moments, especially, so potently remind us that the Lord does not give purely according to when we fulfill some formula or when we meet a holiness or readiness quote. God is not like humans, He gives freely and purposefully, even though the purpose is most likely lost on the receiver. God does not give only according to our little abilities to receive Him, He gives fully, which should make us want to grow to receive more.

So maybe that wasn’t even the biggest net St. Peter had, but Jesus gave him an overabundance of harvest anyways. May we also heed our Lord’s calls to seemingly foolish things in the hope that in this “foolishness” is true wisdom as His children.

Pax Christi,
Alyssa

Demons Are Not Humble

I am not in general prey to superstition, with one glaring exception: the Litany of Humility. I learned to fear this prayer in college, when I first took it up as part of the popular piety of the time. I quickly found that my prayers were answered rapidly and concretely—I was offered occasions of humiliation, often public, with nearly every recitation. On one occasion, I was sitting with an upperclassman to whom I was rather attracted and wanted very much to impress. Somehow I managed to rock and tip my chair backwards, landing flat on my backside with my legs in the air like something out of a slapstick comedy. I joined the whole room in laughter, but then decided to table the prayers for humility indefinitely. Like St. Augustine, I hoped that someday God might grant me the grace. But I added a very firm “not yet.”

It was years later that I was telling some of these stories to a fellow teacher, joking that if students needed quick assurance that God is real and responds to prayer, the Litany of Humility was perhaps a quicker bet than the Skeptic’s Prayer. It was only a few hours later that I was pulled over and given my first (and only) speeding ticket. While I sat in the driver’s seat with the police lights flashing behind me, blushing down to my goody-two-shoes, another car pulled over to join us. It was my mother and with her all of my siblings. Anxious to find out what the matter was, she drew over to ask what I was doing there. I don’t remember which was more mortifying—to have my family witness the speeding ticket, or to have the cops see my mother coming over to help. I changed the “not yet” to “not ever” and stopped even joking about the Litany of Humility.

* * *

Demons are not humble. They brag. The demon in today’s Gospel recognizes Jesus and wants to show off his knowledge: “I know who you are—the Holy One of God!” he cries out in a loud voice before being cast out.

Saint Francis of Assisi uses the example of such demons to warn us: having knowledge and powers is not an occasion for glory. In Admonition #5, he offers a candid (to put it mildly) warning that should be daily reading for anyone in Church ministry:

Consider, O man, how great the excellence in which the Lord has placed you because He has created and formed you to the image of His beloved Son according to the body and to His own likeness according to the spirit. And all the creatures that are under heaven serve and know and obey their Creator in their own way better than you. And even the demons did not crucify Him, but you together with them crucified Him and still crucify Him by taking delight in vices and sins. Wherefore then can you glory? For if you were so clever and wise that you possessed all science, and if you knew how to interpret every form of language and to investigate heavenly things minutely, you could not glory in all this, because one demon has known more of heavenly things and still knows more of earthly things than all men, although there may be some man who has received from the Lord a special knowledge of sovereign wisdom. In like manner, if you were handsomer and richer than all others, and even if you could work wonders and put the demons to flight, all these things are hurtful to you and in nowise belong to you, and in them you cannot glory; that, however, in which we may glory is in our infirmities, and in bearing daily the holy cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. (Emphasis added).

Translation: even the demons know that Jesus is God. In fact, they know more than we do. So any knowledge, any teaching or other gifts from God, do not make us great and therefore should not be a source of pride. We can only glory in our weakness, and in bearing the Cross of Christ.

We easily recognize pride in its more “worldly” forms: when men and women seek glory in the accumulation of wealth or prestige or power. In the Church it takes more insidious forms. I wrote last week how morality can become an idol; so too can our good works, our mission, or things that we do ostensibly for God.

Our mission is a gift from God. It points to God, not to ourselves. Currently, we are watching with shock and horror the unmasking of those who have abandoned the mission to serve God—and those who have put their mission ahead of God and ahead of those they are called to love. Abominable things have been covered up to protect the image of the Body of the Christ, while underneath, Christ suffers over and over in the wounds of the victims.

It was not a coincidence that when Christ was crucified He was stripped of His garments. He who had no shame took ours upon Him, so that ours might be revealed and healed. We more than ever need humble leaders, who will follow Christ, unafraid to be shamed for the Gospel. We need those who are guilty to be honest about their sin, to accept having their crimes laid bare, to stop covering their shame but instead bring it forth to the only One who can heal. We need those who are innocent to be willing to suffer shame with the guilty, as Christ did—for the sake of sinner and victim alike. We need a Church that is not afraid of the truth, confident in the knowledge that the Truth will set us free.

We need a stripping away of false versions of holiness, the false versions of ourselves that we worship in God’s place. We need to tear away the coverings that allow evil to hide behind pious facades. And we need a repentance that is recognizes what sin is, but also knows that sin doesn’t get the last word. Today more than ever we need to recognize the truth about what we are and what we are not. We are not God.