True Serenity

In the last three weeks, my life has been turned a bit upside down. Life is change, as a former film prof of mine recently reminded me. I've never been particularly good with change. In the past, I've either resisted it and suffered immensely, or I've run away to start over -- only I'd bring all the old bag and baggage with me that was never dealt with. 

In the midst of this current round of uncertainty and movement, I've been reminded that the appropriate response to any kind of big change is to offer up thanks and gratitude. But I know from my own experience that empty words of gratitude don't amend my heart, and they only end up tasting bitter rather than being sincere and true thanksgiving to God. I'd wager most people have experienced this at some point. I know of a few tender souls who struggle with it daily, in fact.

The other morning as I sat on my porch with my morning coffee, watching the finches duke it out at the feeder, I felt the very near Presence, and a word resounded in my mind:  acceptance.

Whoa! Okay, wait, what? You want me to accept all this crappy stuff that's happened and is happening? You want me to acknowledge that it exists and that I can't change it and to accept it? What are you, nuts?

Now, the Serenity Prayer comes to mind. "Lord, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." And of course there are other, more modern, less pious versions, such as "Lord grant me the serenity to accept the stupid." But that's not so helpful. And even in its pure form, I don't think this prayer fully expresses what I'm getting at here.

Acceptance. It doesn't mean roll over and die. It doesn't mean not to feel your feelings. It does mean to feel them and give them to God, to let them go, rather than wrap yourself up in them like a shroud of victimhood from which to accuse the world's injustice. It doesn't mean you don't speak truth about justice, righteousness, or mercy. It does mean you live your best life and allow others their God-given free will. It means we understand that God's will is always present, always moving, even when humans choose otherwise. God's will cannot be overwritten. It involves trust. And as that acceptance takes hold, true gratitude can begin to germinate.

Once the gratitude takes hold, all things become blessings. You will see the people, situations, and things around you that you have taken for granted, and you'll give thanks. You will see the problem or change or situation you are facing as a blessing, and you'll desire God's will to be done (and trust He has plans for you). And only then will you have serenity. But it all starts with acceptance.

You cannot give Me thanks until you have fully accepted that things are the way they are, through no action of yours, and that your job is to stay with Me and let Me lead the dance. Trust that I am in control, here. There's no other way. You've tried it the other way, and you know that doesn't work. That leads to anxiety, anger, and depression. Those things make it harder for you to see Me and know My infinite love for you. Remember, I died on the Cross so that you could live. Accepting your cross is part of union with Me.

Lord, grant me the grace to accept all things as my share in the cross and to stay with You, my eyes on You, alone, and my heart open to receive the gifts that are present, which are also from You, in loving trust.                   

      Amen.

Triduum 2016 - Holy Thursday

In the Gospel of John, Yeshua tenderly washes the apostles' feet, then sits down and asks them, "Do you know what I have done for you?" (Jn 13:12) At the time, Simon (Cephas/Peter) and the apostles didn't really catch on to what was going on. But eventually, they did. And so can we.

Jesus (Yeshua) has shown us that we are to be servant leaders; we are to serve our brothers and sisters in humility and love - just as He did. In Holy Thursday Mass, we have the "washing of the feet" to commemorate this act. But what does it really mean, and why did Jesus wash the disciples' feet, not just serve a meal or do some other act of service?

We must do two things to unpack this gesture - one is the examine the physicality of it, and the other is to remember Jesus' time and place. Jesus took off his outer garment and wrapped a towel around his waist. Taking off an outer garment can symbolize getting ready to work (akin to "rolling up one's sleeves"), and it is also a gesture of intimacy, of removing a layer that separates one person from another. In this wood cut image, you can see Jesus' posture: He is on his knees, He is bent over. The posture itself is one of humility and even deference (imagine, the God who created the universe is hunched over in service to His most cherished creation!).

The other thing to know is that people in ancient Palestine didn't get pedis on a regular basis (duh!). They walked barefooted or with sandals in roads filled with dust, mud, and dung.  It was a form of welcome and hospitality to have one's feet washed when one entered a home - but it was the gentile servants who did this act, not the host. So washing their feet - a dirty job reserved for non-Jewish servants - was not the most pleasant task. However, He did it with Love, and He did it with a heart to show us how we must serve one another - in humility, in perfection, in true charity (caritas). Our High Priest serving His people, as we are called to be a priestly people serving each other.

Some translations say "...what I have done to you?" We have been washed by God, caressed and made clean, in a precursor to the water that will flow from Messiah's side (the waters of Baptism) along with His Precious Blood (His Love for us outpoured for our redemption). Although the disciples are already "clean" (except for the one who will betray Jesus), they are still in need of KNOWING this. And knowing that their job will be to bring the Good News and Baptism to others in service to others. This kind of knowing is tied to physicality--feeling the Master's own hands cleansing their rough, worn skin. He tends to our souls with His own hands, His own outpouring of Love, so that we may be with Him in Eternity.

As I've said elsewhere on this blog, Jesus touched people; He physically touched people in healing and in teaching. He used parables of real life, experiential lessons in the Kingdom of God embedded in the very Creation we share. And in this same way, His touch brought home the lesson and the example of how we are to care for each other. 

As I write this, Bl. Mother Teresa comes to mind, how she touched the unwanted and the dying, caring for them, saying that in each of them, she was touching and caring for Jesus, himself.

We have been made ready to follow Him as humble servants of each other, thereby loving God in our service. When we feed the hungry, comfort the grieving, clothe the naked, shelter the homeless, we are rendering this to God, who is alive in every one of us. For we are One Body in Christ.

Jesus transformed the Passover sedar into communion with Him, and with the Trinity, when he instituted the Eucharist. This is My Body...this is My Blood. These aren't symbols of his body and blood, these are His very SELF given to us in love beyond human comprehension. He says with this Gift, Be one with Me, as I am one with the Father, and you shall be one with each other in Me. Abide in me, He asks us, begs us to accept Him so that we may have Life.

Last night, Holy Thursday Mass and reposing of the Blessed Sacrament was simple and beautiful at St. Peter's parish, where I worship. Despite feeling unwell most of the week, I was able to stay in the "Garden" with Jesus for a little while after Mass. I will forever associate this with my first experience on Maundy Thursday in the Garden at St. Jude's Anglican Church in Burbank. It was that first Holy Thursday after my reversion/Resurrection experience that I felt the presence of Christ, nearer than my own breath, as I ventured to stay with Him in the Garden of my soul, wearied and broken as I was (and am).

How Jesus suffered in His Agony... "He told them, 'My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.'" Matt 26:38

CNS Rome bureau: Catechism, yoga, Zen cannot open people's hearts to God, pope says:  http://t.co/utL2Y7geou #CNSstory
— Catholic News Svc (@CatholicNewsSvc) January 9, 2015

I cannot agree more with this little article, as a person who tried all kinds of ways in my younger adulthood to be healed and connect with...SOMETHING...I tried Buddhist meditation, EFT, Reiki, even pagan moon rituals. Nothing led me to the Love of God. The moment of my "resurrection" or conversion experience had absolutely nothing to do with my own effort. It was the Holy Spirit, a shaft of light piercing the darkness that had become my inner world, and the Spirit showed me the Heart of Jesus on fire for me. For me! 

I'm not talking down to Buddhists, pagans, Yoga and Reiki practitioners, or anyone else... I know that those practices come from the same desire to be loved and to love. My own experience is that those are limited forms that do not do the "trick," and only God can move us in our deepest selves. I'm sure there are those who might be offended by this, and for that I would be deeply sorry, for I don't wish to offend. But I have to agree with the Pope because it's the truth as I've experienced it and know it deeply. As I read St. Augustine's Confessions, I have to smile because I am constantly saying to myself "Yeah, me, too!" In other words, this movement of the Spirit isn't a one-off type of revelation; it's how God operates.

I also think Pope Francis' words about Jesus' disciples having hardened hearts are very pertinent - because even those who walked with Him and ate and lived with Him every day were hardened by what Pope Francis calls "religious narcissism." By this I understand he means those who think to themselves "yup, I'm all set, I'm good, I'm doing everything I'm supposed to" and therefore that's it, that's all that's required. In reality, God wants us to ask the Holy Spirit to open our hearts to Him. It's a constant waiting for us to turn to Him, and He is ever ready to help us open ourselves to Him. It's not about dotting the i's and crossing the t's - in other words, we don't work out our own salvation. We instead invite Him to heal us, change us - into what? Into Himself, to become divinized in Him, the living God.

Studying Catechism is a fine thing, but intimate prayer such as St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross (and many others) taught is the way to open ourselves to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. And Jesus, Himself, taught us to go into our rooms, shut the door, and pray to the Father in secret. That's a very intimate form of prayer, isn't it? This intimate sharing between us and God, and frequent reception of the Eucharist are what's necessary. But even for non-Christians who don't receive the Eucharist, opening yourself and asking the Holy Spirit to pray in you, and asking God to meet you in your deepest self will prepare the garden of your soul for God to cultivate. It's not about what you "do" for yourself, it's about asking God to embrace you, as He so longs to do!

"I have called you by name: you are mine."

On the first day of week, after Jesus had been crucified and laid in a tomb, Mary Magdalene arrives early, before dawn, to the tomb where he lay. She finds the stone of the tomb entrance rolled away, the blessed body of her Rabbi gone. She is distraught. She runs and tells Peter and John. They come back to the tomb with her and verify that it is, indeed, empty. Then they go away. But Mary, she stays. She stays and weeps.

I completely understand this. When my mother died, I didn't want to be apart from her, even at the funeral home, where I stood next to the casket the entire time, even at the grave, when I didn't want to leave after the service was over. I wanted to stay and be still, to mourn and cry, and to be near her. There is something visceral about this experience, when the connection to the deceased is so strong that separation feels like an impossibility, and there is a sense of massive disorientation, like this person isn't truly gone, somehow.

Mary turns around from the mouth of the tomb, and there he is, standing there, her Master. But she doesn't recognize him. Until he says her name. Then she hears, she sees, she realizes, she believes. She believes: he is alive! Risen! Her joy is so intense, her relief so deep! Can you imagine?

The thing that catches my breath every time I read this passage is that it is only when Jesus says her name that she is carried over from her grief, despair and darkness (as the text tells us, she arrives while it is still dark) to the knowledge of the new Life that stands before her, that will Live within her from that day forward. 

illustration by James Jacque Joseph Tissot
http://www.globible.com/gallery/easter/34.php

The year before I moved to L.A., Yeshua was calling my name. I ignored him at the time, of course, but now I look back and laugh, because he wasn't very subtle, and he definitely wasn't giving up on me. The first time was just before Easter of 2011. I was in a parking lot of a TJ Maxx with my friend. It had been raining (of course it had been raining; when is it not raining in Ithaca in April?), and I parked in front of a lamp post. On the base of the lamp post was a little black Bible. Clearly, it had fallen out of someone's purse or pocket, and clearly, someone else had picked it up off the ground and set it on the lamp post. And there it was, waiting for me. My friend saw it and said to me, "Hey, look, it's a Bible." Then she, a non-Christian, looked me in the eye and said, "I think you need to take this." So I did. I put it in my purse and carried on with my day. 

Fast forward to December of 2011. A couple weeks before Christmas, less than a month before I was set to move to L.A. I decided to go see the movie Soul Surfer by myself. Loved the book, was psyched to see some girl surfers on the big screen. It also happens to be a story of spiritual renewal. So on my way into the theatre, hunched down into my coat (my normal posture for winter in Ithaca), I spied on the ground...a crucifix. One of those that someone carries in their purse or pocket that says "In case of emergency, call a priest." Obviously, it had been lying there some time and had been run over; it was flattened out completely. Well, I couldn't just leave it there on the ground! I picked it up, put it in my purse, and carried on with my day. 

But as I did, I could tell, I could feel a sort of...I dunno...mystical tapping on the shoulder. "I'm right here," he whispered to me. Of course, it wasn't until after I moved to L.A. that things started to get REALLY interesting.

Is God calling your name? Is Jesus beckoning you to see, hear, and believe in him, against all odds, like he did Mary Magdalene, like he did me? 

JN 20: 11- 18

Mary Magdalene stayed outside the tomb weeping.
And as she wept, she bent over into the tomb
and saw two angels in white sitting there,
one at the head and one at the feet
where the Body of Jesus had been.
And they said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?”
She said to them, “They have taken my Lord,
and I don’t know where they laid him.”
When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus there,
but did not know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?
Whom are you looking for?”
She thought it was the gardener and said to him,
“Sir, if you carried him away,
tell me where you laid him,
and I will take him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary!”
She turned and said to him in Hebrew, “Rabbouni,” 
which means Teacher.
Jesus said to her, “Stop holding on to me,
for I have not yet ascended to the Father.
But go to my brothers and tell them,
‘I am going to my Father and your Father,
to my God and your God.’”
Mary went and announced to the disciples,
“I have seen the Lord,”
and then reported what he had told her.

Isaiah 43:1

But now, thus says the Lord,

who created you, Jacob, and formed you, Israel:

Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;

I have called you by name: you are mine.

Pope Francis's Easter Vigil Homily (or, 'what he said')

Pope Francis expressed far more eloquently than I did in my last post the Good News of the Living God. That's fitting, I suppose, seeing as he's the Pope and all.

Full text of Pope Francis’s homily at the Easter Vigil | CatholicHerald.co.uk

Pope Francis processes into St Peter's Basilica for Easter Vigil 2013 (AP)

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

1. In the Gospel of this radiant night of the Easter Vigil, we first meet the women who go the tomb of Jesus with spices to anoint his body (cf. Lk 24:1-3). They go to perform an act of compassion, a traditional act of affection and love for a dear departed person, just as we would. They had followed Jesus, they had listened to his words, they had felt understood by him in their dignity and they had accompanied him to the very end, to Calvary and to the moment when he was taken down from the cross. We can imagine their feelings as they make their way to the tomb: a certain sadness, sorrow that Jesus had left them, he had died, his life had come to an end. Life would now go on as before. Yet the women continued to feel love, the love for Jesus which now led them to his tomb. But at this point, something completely new and unexpected happens, something which upsets their hearts and their plans, something which will upset their whole life: they see the stone removed from before the tomb, they draw near and they do not find the Lord’s body. It is an event which leaves them perplexed, hesitant, full of questions: “What happened?”, “What is the meaning of all this?” (cf. Lk 24:4). Doesn’t the same thing also happen to us when something completely new occurs in our everyday life? We stop short, we don’t understand, we don’t know what to do. Newness often makes us fearful, including the newness which God brings us, the newness which God asks of us. We are like the Apostles in the Gospel: often we would prefer to hold on to our own security, to stand in front of a tomb, to think about someone who has died, someone who ultimately lives on only as a memory, like the great historical figures from the past. We are afraid of God’s surprises; we are afraid of God’s surprises! He always surprises us!

Dear brothers and sisters, let us not be closed to the newness that God wants to bring into our lives! Are we often weary, disheartened and sad? Do we feel weighed down by our sins? Do we think that we won’t be able to cope? Let us not close our hearts, let us not lose confidence, let us never give up: there are no situations which God cannot change, there is no sin which he cannot forgive if only we open ourselves to him.

2. But let us return to the Gospel, to the women, and take one step further. They find the tomb empty, the body of Jesus is not there, something new has happened, but all this still doesn’t tell them anything certain: it raises questions; it leaves them confused, without offering an answer. And suddenly there are two men in dazzling clothes who say: “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; but has risen” (Lk 24:5-6). What was a simple act, done surely out of love – going to the tomb – has now turned into an event, a truly life-changing event. Nothing remains as it was before, not only in the lives of those women, but also in our own lives and in the history of mankind. Jesus is not dead, he has risen, he is alive! He does not simply return to life; rather, he is life itself, because he is the Son of God, the living God (cf. Num 14:21-28; Deut 5:26; Josh 3:10). Jesus no longer belongs to the past, but lives in the present and is projected towards the future; he is the everlasting “today” of God. This is how the newness of God appears to the women, the disciples and all of us: as victory over sin, evil and death, over everything that crushes life and makes it seem less human. And this is a message meant for me and for you, dear sister, dear brother. How often does Love have to tell us: Why do you look for the living among the dead? Our daily problems and worries can wrap us up in ourselves, in sadness and bitterness… and that is where death is. That is not the place to look for the One who is alive!

Let the risen Jesus enter your life, welcome him as a friend, with trust: he is life! If up till now you have kept him at a distance, step forward. He will receive you with open arms. If you have been indifferent, take a risk: you won’t be disappointed. If following him seems difficult, don’t be afraid, trust him, be confident that he is close to you, he is with you and he will give you the peace you are looking for and the strength to live as he would have you do.

3. There is one last little element that I would like to emphasize in the Gospel for this Easter Vigil. The women encounter the newness of God. Jesus has risen, he is alive! But faced with empty tomb and the two men in brilliant clothes, their first reaction is one of fear: “they were terrified and bowed their faced to the ground”, Saint Luke tells us – they didn’t even have courage to look. But when they hear the message of the Resurrection, they accept it in faith. And the two men in dazzling clothes tell them something of crucial importance: “Remember what he told you when he was still in Galilee… And they remembered his words” (Lk 24:6,8). They are asked to remember their encounter with Jesus, to remember his words, his actions, his life; and it is precisely this loving remembrance of their experience with the Master that enables the women to master their fear and to bring the message of the Resurrection to the Apostles and all the others (cf. Lk 24:9). To remember what God has done and continues to do for me, for us, to remember the road we have travelled; this is what opens our hearts to hope for the future. May we learn to remember everything that God has done in our lives.

On this radiant night, let us invoke the intercession of the Virgin Mary, who treasured all these events in her heart (cf. Lk 2:19,51) and ask the Lord to give us a share in his Resurrection. May he open us to the newness that transforms. May he make us men and women capable of remembering all that he has done in our own lives and in the history of our world. May he help us to feel his presence as the one who is alive and at work in our midst. And may he teach us each day not to look among the dead for the Living One. Amen.