Retreat Report: Surrender--the Intersection of Faith and Prayer

My job is done here! I gave the last talk for our sisters' retreat this morning, and they have just under two hours left of their week of prayer and silence. So far, the reports coming in are good (their superior told me, "I haven't heard much, but if they didn't like it, I would have heard a LOT by now!"), so it sure seems as though all the prayers to the Holy Spirit have been answered. Thanks!

Today's topic is one that could be pretty intimidating: surrender (or, as the old spiritual writers used to put it, "abandonment to the will of God"). There's a page in our prayerbook with a prayer for submission to God's will; I always rephrase it. I just think "surrender" has a deeper meaning to it.

Here's why:

"Surrender" and "submit"  are not spiritual terms. We use them in many different contexts. In a law case, a lawyer might "submit the evidence", but he asks the jury to surrender to the truth (and surrender a verdict). In a war, an army might have to give up because the situation is hopeless; to continue would put their cause or their country at greater risk. They wave the white flag. They surrender. We use expressions like "I give up"; "I quit"; "face the facts"; "reality check"; "we've done all we could" (or "there's nothing else we can try"); "it is what it is."

Sometimes, when we want someone to submit to us, or to surrender to our ideas, we may say, "Just trust me on this!" And when we're driving, we might surrender to the guidance of the GPS and let it determine the road we take.  None of these are particularly spiritual. But they're all forms of submission or surrender.

"Submit" is a biblical term. The way it is in Greek seems to relate to putting things in proper order; a rightly ordered relationship. This (whatever) is "placed under" that. One thing is sent or put beneath or subject to another. We find this word used in the New Testament mostly in the Epistles, typically in an exhortation about Church order (but sometimes about submitting to God!): "Submit to your leaders." Husband and wife are to "submit to one another out of reverence for Christ." Servants must be "submissive" to their human masters; that is the appropriate social order. St. Paul used the word "submit" as the opposite of freedom when he wrote about the Galatians "submitting to the yoke of slavery"--the old Law. There's a strong association with obedience here, but it is not a matter of "listening"; it is a matter of right order; right relationship.

"Surrender" is from the Old French. It means especially to give something over; to hand over, deliver. So we might think of it as highlighting the act of giving; the freedom of the Gift (rather than the way the gift is set in relation to something "over" it). The emphasis is less on "order" and more on giving. Surrender involves a relationship. That's the difference between raising the white flag ("I give up! There's no hope! Might as well surrender...") and making a GIFT of self. (Sometimes the act of resignation, facing the facts; accepting reality, may be a step along the way to surrender in the sense of the gift of self, though.)

We could spend some time looking at the obstacles and impediments and opposites of surrender, but why bother? Let's focus on the grace of surrender itself. And you know what? We automatically respond--or at least most easily and freely and gladly respond in surrender--when we come face to face with what is good or beautiful or true and trustworthy. This is just human  nature.

What happens when you see a fresh, hot, lovely donut? You SURRENDER! You let go! You give yourself to the donut in a way that is appropriate to donuts. The donut is GOOD! You have to go against yourself not to surrender (which is the precise problem with fresh, hot donuts.) But just to say... that is the proper and easy and normal response we make before the good and true and beautiful.

So the paradox of surrender is that it is an act of freedom, not of force. It is a movement of joy and confidence, or at least confidence (there are certainly things our human nature cannot be joyful about, as Mother Thecla was so wise to acknowledge: "We cannot always be joyful, but we can always be at peace"). It is the confidence of the man in the parable who found a treasure hidden in a field, and out of joy went and sold everything he had. He gave it all over; he surrendered all his possessions for the treasure he and he alone had recognized.

The Holy Spirit's goals in any given circumstance are probably going to be vaster and deeper and farther-reaching than any outcome I might be looking for. And so it may seem that the Holy Spirit is not acting when, in fact, he is doing great things on a huge scale!

Surrender is me becoming one with God's creative act that is constantly giving me existence. When Alberione reflected on this, he wrote, "My God, I am entirely the work of your omnipotent love!" Of course he wanted to respond in a complete gift of self! Same thing with the Blessed Mother. Her response to the Annunciation was a laying-down of her life, with complete trust in God to determine and direct the outcome. As we have been praying in the "Come Holy Spirit," "come take possession of our souls and make them all your own," I see Mary and say, "this is what happens when the Holy Spirit takes possession of a soul": Jesus becomes unavoidably manifest. Christ lives in me.

Retreat Report: Penultimate day!

Only one more talk to go! And I will put it together...tonight. (From the scribbled notes I have been putting in a folder for about two years.)

Today's topic, along the theme of "We Believe and So We Speak," was on the specific mission of the Daughters of St. Paul. In Church language, it is "the Apostolate of Social Communications." We were calling it that way before "social media" came around. In fact, the language itself comes from Vatican II, but it corresponds to an insight that our Founder had pretty much all along: media are not about the technology, and not even so much about the message. Media are about people. Media are ways people connect with each other.

Here's a bit of what I shared with the sisters today:

In the early years of the Pauline Family, the common expression that was already in use among Catholics was "the Good Press," but our Founder began to replace that language. He preferred to say it was the "Apostolate" of the Editions. And he loved to talk about the apostolate. In a meditation on St Joseph from 1953, he spoke of the apostolate in terms of cooperating in the salvation of mankind the way St. Joseph did. The fact that our apostolate involves material work strengthened that association. "Labor, in the life of St Joseph as in the life of Jesus, was a work that contributed to the salvation of the world. Uplift work: it is not only a means of support, but even more a means of sanctification and a means of apostolate in our hands."

He insisted that our work be apostolic, not commercial, not a mere means of support. That the teachings we communicate be authentic, and that the labor be apostolic: "Otherwise, tear down the buildings! They serve no real purpose; indeed, they only deceive ourselves and others."

"Let us ask the grace to love the apostolate, indeed, let us thank The Lord that he chose us for this. It is not a favor we do for God--carrying out the apostolate; instead, it is a privilege The Lord has granted us. Others are called to other work, we to apostolic work. Let each one ask The Lord, through the intercession of St. Joseph, to be a good cooperator in the christianization of the world, in the evangelization of the world. Each one then should promise to carry out her apostolate faithfully, generously.

Obviously, the apostolate of social communications can be accomplished in activity, but it can also be completely carried out with purely spiritual resources, making it "an apostolate for all seasons." Our Founder's "apostolic prayers" are very enlightening in this...

One of the characteristics of the apostolic prayers in our manual is how much thanksgiving is expressed in them: "We adore you, Lord, Creator of heaven and earth; we thank you for the wonderful gifts you have given us..." Alberione saw communications  instruments as marvels; as gifts of God first and foremost.

He praised God for the human genius involved in devising these technologies, and prayed that their use would also be guided by the highest motives. He didn't focus solely on the spiritual benefits or utility of the media, but said, "Their mission is an apostolate for the material and spiritual uplifting of people and society."
In the "apostolic" prayers in our manual, Alberione consistently quotes St. Paul: "Everything is yours, and you are Christ's and Christ is God's." Everything comes from God-as-origin to return to God-as-goal "where Christ will hand over the Kingdom to his God and Father", and God will [truly and finally] be all in all. So even in the way the media are used, he saw creation reaching its pinnacle.

And then there's the aspect of reparation, which we looked at a bit the other day. Reparation is a special, entirely supernatural expression of the apostolate of social communication. There's no "sin" in the media themselves, but there are human beings who produce and consume their content, so there certainly can be more than sweetness, light and grace involved.

Think in terms of social sin: are there "structures of sin" built into certain aspects of how these technologies are run that have as a result, that people's choices, their assumptions, their ways of proceeding go in a downward direction? The Founder assumes that the downward tendency is there, but not that it characterizes media as such. No: Alberione thanks the Lord for having enlightened (keyword!) us to discover the way creation can be used to share a message across the planet in a split second. He thanks God that everything is created with the potential to "sing your glory as Creator and Savior."  So when Alberione writes about spiritual dangers with regard to media, he sees it more as a sacrilege; "misusing gifts God gave us with such wisdom and love." And even there, he doesn't blame people so much as "the enemy" who "sows weeds" and turns the media into stagnant wells.

What about us? Do we have a place in the apostolate of social communication if the deepest we ever get into the media is the occasional e-mail? You already know what Alberione said. Everything we do is apostolate; the apostolic part isn't in the work, but in our intention of doing whatever we do for the glory of God and peace to humanity. I tend to focus a lot on the technology, on the activity; but in the Gospel, the call to the apostolate was all about relationship: "He called his disciples to himself and from them he chose 12."

Retreat Report: The Apostolate of Suffering

Talk about "preaching to the choir"! Today I spoke about the "apostolate of suffering" to a group comprised, for the most part, of our senior sisters, women whose days of vigorous active ministry are long behind them; women who may very well specialize in the apostolate of arthritis; the apostolate of patience; the apostolate of suffering (nobody's favorite mission field, unless you're maybe St Therese of Lisieux). As active as our seniors try to be (they now have a little workshop going, where they put out handmade rosaries for our bookstores), they know that their real contribution to the mission of the Church is now completely on the supernatural order. Maybe that is why they paid so much attention to the reflections I offered them today.

Here's a sample:


From Carryl Houselander:

By making our humanity one with his, by making our suffering his own, [Jesus] has literally given himself to us, made his suffering ours, so that we now have as our own his power of love. His sacrifice offered for the world is irresistible to the Father. Because it is real reparation for sin it lightens the heavy burden that is bending the back of humanity, and man can lift himself up. In it the world's healing begins.
It is this power of his own love that Christ has given to us. Because of it our own personal share in the world's suffering is never useless, always potent. It is the most effective gift we have for the good of our fellow men.

The meaning of life is not to be found in or identified with the successful avoidance of pain, suffering, sorrow or discomfort. We can definitely try, but you know what starts to happen... we end up living in tighter and tighter confines. Our comfort zone shrinks to the extent that we focus on staying in it.

But the Gospel transforms our attitude toward suffering--as well as our attitude in suffering.  This is what the saints, starting with St. Paul, called "the wisdom of the Cross." On the feast of St. Rita of Cascia (just last week), the opening prayer asked this grace: 

Bestow on us, we pray, O Lord,

the wisdom and strength of the Cross,

with which you were pleased to endow Saint Rita,

so that, suffering in every tribulation with Christ,

we may participate ever more deeply in his Paschal Mystery. 

Alert readers will spot several of St Paul's key words in that prayer: wisdom of the Cross; strength; tribulation; participation. 

Jesus changed the meaning of that universal human experience of suffering. Before Jesus, and apart from Jesus, the cross--any suffering--is foolishness, waste, stupidity. From now on, every suffering can be a form of communion with him--never truly isolating--and because of that union with Jesus, it can have apostolic potential ("bringing many children to glory").

And you can bet that the person who declared "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" will have something to teach us about the apostolate of suffering, a ministrythat was as familiar to him as preaching the Gospel in synagogues and street corners. 

Even in his earliest preaching, in his very first letter (1st Thess 3:34), we find Paul saying very matter-of-factly: "You know very well that we told you that it is to be our lot...that we were to suffer affliction." We must share Christ's sufferings; his afflictions are prior to ours, and ours are "contained" in his and become only and always participating in something that is more his than ours, because God loved us first, taking on himself what had befallen us, even to death on a cross.

The apostolate of suffering is built on the foundation of Christ's resurrection: if Christ is not raised...we're in big trouble. Our faith is in vain. If Christ is not raised, suffering really is meaningless and absurd. But Christ is risen; he reveals--in himself, in his risen body with its nail marks and pierced side--that nothing we go through in life is wasted or worthless.

Here's the situation as Paul sees it: "We are afflicted in every way, but not constrained; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed..." 

Now here's comes the apostolic meaning and power and fruit in what could be a very depressing set of circumstances:

"...ALWAYS CARRYING ABOUT IN THE BODY THE DYING OF JESUS so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our body. Death is at work in us, but life in you!" (2 Cor 4:8-12)

That's what the apostolate is all about. Manifesting Jesus and communicating his life to others. It it no longer simply "I" who live, it is Christ who lives in me, making his dying present and available to others through em; making ME his presence in the world.

TOB Tuesday: Body Image

Sara Hulse is a graduate student in the John Paul II Institute for Studies of Marriage and the Family (in other words, a Vatican-established graduate school devoted entirely to the Theology of the Body). When our sisters went to Washington DC for the launch of the new translation of Love and Responsibility, they interviewed some of the students. (Look for more of these insights on future TOB Tuesdays!)

 

Retreat Report: Day 4 (or 5, depending how you count it)

My notes say " Day 4," but that's because my opening talk Friday night, was just "intro" and not really "Day 1," Any way you count it, though, we are more than halfway through the Spiritual Exercises here at the motherhouse!

The theme is "We Believe and So We Speak," drawn from St. Paul. It's a theme that happens to dovetail quite nicely with the Year of Faith, and also happens to be the theme for our 10th General Chapter (international meeting, held every 6 years), which I am scheduled to participate in come August 15. Until now, we were reflecting on the "believing" part of the equation. Yesterday's theme of "the Apostolate of Desires" was a kind of bridge, but today we are firmly in the "and so we speak" side. We believe--and so we speak, first of all to God in prayer. This is the beginning of "the Apostolate of Prayer," the most universal form of mission, so simple a little child can do it quite effectively.

Our Founder followed St. Peter Julian Eymard's school of thought in seeing prayer in four different "expressions": adoration, thanksgiving, reparation and petition. In my talk this morning, I put adoration and thanksgiving together as one expression of "grateful praise." It's our first response to God as creatures: amazement, wonder, gratitude at finding ourselves not just "created" but free before our Creator. After about twenty minutes of reflecting on this, I moved into the second expression: reparation, atonement. This is something that doesn't get a lot of publicity, but it is not only valid as a form/"end" of prayer, it is also pretty motivating. At least I have found it so.

For your reading pleasure and edification, here is the section of my talk today on the dimension of reparation in Christian (and especially Pauline) prayer:


Love and praise: this is the life we are really called to. Giving priority to praise is an implicit act of trust: it means that I so totally rely on God in his goodness and power, his all-seeing providence and mercy, that there is no valid reason for me to put praise in second place. In fact, that seems like an unhealthy self-focus and (bottom line) lack of faith, the real, effective, rubber-meets-the-road kind of faith.

So, our first focus needs to be on the "state of blessing" we live in. God can draw me in more effectively and less tiringly to the extent that I praise the glory of his grace, than by me plodding dutifully along without taking the time to acknowledge "the Almighty has done great things for me." And when I acknowledge it to God, I am also witnessing to it before others.

But I rather suspect that there is a "debt" of praise that humanity owes to God. In the words of Jane Austen, "It is a truth universally acknowledged" that "heaven and earth are full of your glory."
"Give him all the praise you know! He is more than you bestow! Never can you match his due!" These words are in the Corpus Christi sequence we'll pray on Sunday. Isn't there a need to repair for the sins of omission in regard to thanks and praise?  The Psalms call all creation to recognize the debt of praise; to make a sacrifice of praise. Isn't there a need to make reparation, to fill up in ourselves, to make up the "lost sabbaths" that the human race has failed to set apart for God's praise, and for delight in the things of God?

REPARATION is the second dimension of the apostolate of prayer.

In the Pauline Family, reparation corresponds to the "penitent heart" that we are called to have before Jesus Master. It is a taking on, in the Body of Christ, what is lacking, what falls short, in sorrow for sin, especially sins in which the media play a significant role. It is recognizing the offense to God, man and the created order--and offense that most of the world does not recognize, and doing something about it. It is noticing something that is missing, and attempting--out of love--to fill in the gap. Brother Aloysius Millela, SSP, commenting on the "penitent heart," said it especially means "have a heart!" Have a heart in the face of so many violations of human dignity; so many betrayals of God, of man, of the truth.

The story of the woman anointing Jesus' feet in Luke 7 is a wonderful picture of reparation. We are told that the woman was a sinner. She comes into a home where Jesus is a dinner guest and performs an outrageously familiar service, not only drenching Jesus' dusty feet with her tears, but drying them with her hair and then anointing them. You can just see the sputtering host. But it turns out that the woman wasn't just a repentant sinner--though she was that. And she wasn't just making reparation for her own sins--though you could say that, too. Jesus points out that she was making reparation for the host's negligence. She was supplying what a negligent (or maybe even arrogant) host had failed to provide.

Her reparation wasn't only the offsetting of a wrong, but a supplying of something missing that by all rights should have been addressed. Somebody dropped the ball. You don't go around like Sherlock Holmes to see where and why; you just go about addressing the unmet need.

So reparation is filling the gap; replenishing; supplying something good where there is a void, or providing something good in place of an evil. And it is done out of love: "The insults of those who blaspheme you fall upon me" (Psl 69:10) because I am so close to you! But also it is an act of solidarity; it is acknowledging that I am somehow connected to, related to those who are doing the blaspheming; they are "my people." Jesus certainly didn't see much difference between Simon the negligent host and the tearful woman who was a sinner. But it was the woman who "loved much."

Reparation is not a transaction; it is an act of love that intervenes where there has been an offense. And in the Pauline Family, we take on a special commitment to (in the Founder's words) "make reparation for the sins committed with the press, cinema, radio, television: these are the most numerous, the most serious, the most scandalous" (SP Nov 19, 1950).

In our prayerbook, reparation is not just about the media, although this intention predominates, especially in the Pauline Offertory and the apostolic prayers. We also make reparation for "offenses against the pastors of the Church": things like false accusations; painting all priests with the brush of abuse; the Apostoline Sisters have their own "Vocational Offertory," offering a special intention of the Mass in reparation for the neglect or hindering of special vocations, and to supply what those called have failed to contribute to the Glory of God and peace of humanity and their own sanctity--the lost sabbaths.

And it is a special grace, a privilege and a source of joy to us that we are able to offer our specific apostolate in reparation for the sins in which the media play a part (and perhaps an ever-increasing part, since various forms of media are now omnipresent not just in our lives, but in the culture, in the hands of children and of babes--just count the iPhones in babies' hands during Mass!). We are able to "reverse" the harm, repair the evil, breach the gap, by using the same instruments ourselves. Ideally (but not likely) in an "equal and opposite reaction", though really "the children of darkness are more clever than the children of light" that we try to be. But we do our little part and trust God to multiply the fruits far beyond the efforts we are able to make.

If "apostolate" were just an achievement or task ("Job 1"), reparation would be irrelevant. But apostolate is relational--an apostle is one who has been sent, and so is response-ible to the sender; aware of the sender's plan, intention and desire--aware of the goodness the sender intended and which has been compromised through "innumerable sins, faults and negligences" (as the Founder liked to quote from the Liturgy--NB: "faults" here means not shortcomings but "things left undone"). Reparation is a form of apostolate because it is relational.

And we can apply to the apostolate of reparation what St Bernard of Clairvaux wrote concerning sorrow for sin: "Sorrow for sin is indeed necessary, but it should not be an endless preoccupation. You must dwell also on the glad remembrances of God's loving-kindness. Otherwise, sadness will harden the heart and lead it more deeply into despair" (Commentary on Song of Songs). Bringing us back to the fundamental role of praise!

Retreat Report

Yes, it's Memorial Day, but for 26 sisters here at the motherhouse, it's simply Day 3 (or 4, depending how you count) of their annual Spiritual Exercises. The theme for the retreat is from St. Paul: "We believe and so we speak." The first three meditations (Friday evening through Sunday morning) were on the "believe" part; tomorrow we begin the "speak" part. Today we looked at the "bridge" between the believing in God and the speaking to or about God. We looked at what our Founder called "the apostolate of desires." (St Therese is probably the best example out there of this supernatural mission.)

Here's a bit of the morning's conference:

Holy desires come from God; are a form of communion with the heart of God. "Incline my heart according to your will, O God."  After all, God can accomplish his will without us; he doesn't need us for the achievement of his desires. But he gives us communion with him in the very desires, if not in always in the actual carrying out of the explicit goal. He may just use our "prayers, actions, joys and sufferings" in the Body of Christ to bring about the end he, and we, desire without our being actual instruments in the accomplishment. But he lets us commit ourselves (prayers, works, joy and sufferings) freely and passionately to seeking these good outcomes for his sake, for the glory of God and peace to humanity.

Could it be that, like Simeon and Anna, holy desires will train our vision to recognize the way God is accomplishing his plan? They were so in tune with God in "longing for the consolation of Israel" that when He came, they recognized him intuitively. Their "longing for the consolation of Israel" was a holy desire and a prayer at the same time. It was the apostolate of desires.

Day by Day in Boston

I was pretty pleased to learn yesterday that the retreat I am leading did not, in fact, begin today. It actually begins tomorrow afternoon, giving me even more time to pull my notes together. And I do mean "pull together."

The current state of the eight days' reflections is scraps of paper, Post-Its, torn out missallette pages and assorted other sources, divided into eight folders. I had been counting on the month of April for the work of editing this collection into a seamless garment of spirituality; instead, my siblings and I helped weave an altogether different garment--call it a wedding garment--for Mom. And as soon as I got back, we had the Theology of the Body series (which is all online now, by the way). So here I am, about to give a retreat and with only a sketchy game plan. You know the Holy Spirit is going to have to be really busy this week!

Besides working on my Intro and first meditation, I managed to take a walk around the motherhouse for my Rosary. The dogwood trees down the hill are at that perfect stage (those on the hill are yielding their flowers to leaves); the lilac are still in bloom, and as I crossed a barren stretch of asphalt an incredible perfume came wafting to me from the greenery on the side of the road. The rarest and loveliest springtime flower of all: lilies of the valley. Square yards of the tiny white bells waving in the breeze and making their presence known by that powerfully sweet scent. That was a real treat. And more signs of nature in the cackling of the robins and the stately strut of two wild turkeys, with their copper and blue-tipped feathers. Having come from downtown Chicago straight to our wooded hilltop here, I am overwhelmed with the beauty of the Massachusetts spring. And in great need of it, too.

Since I need to focus on preparing each day's talks and prayers, I will probably not have much time to spare for blogging, but I do hope to share each day a little bit of the content I'll be offering the sisters. Let that serve as a reminder for the prayers we need during this special season of grace, the annual retreat. (And thanks!)

Month's Mind

It was one month ago today that Mom left this life. As busy as this day was (last-minute errands before leaving for Boston painfully early tomorrow morning to give a retreat there), I couldn't help but see reminders of Mom everywhere: the food processor I was using to prepare some refrigerator pickles? Mom's Christmas gift. The suitcase I was packing? Mom and I got a set of three in 2005 (it was to have been for her and Dad's 50th anniversary trip to Europe; Hurricane Katrina changed their itinerary). You get the idea.

After supper, I called my sister just to connect with a sibling on such a special day. She had just left Mom's house and was walking back to her own home when my call came.

And just now, I was finishing up the packing when the strangest thing happened. My backpack suddenly began to emit loud music. It was old style American folk music. Sung by Anonymous 4, as it happened. I couldn't imagine what had suddenly turned itself on; generally I keep all my electronics on silent unless I am actually using their audio. But when I pulled out the iPad, there it was, singing away as loud as can be, just:

Oh when shall I see Jesus and reign with Him above

and from the flowing fountain drink everlasting love?

Oh, had I wings, I would fly away and be at rest

and I'd praise God in His bright abode.

And then silence. I still have no idea what on earth happened. That is, it didn't actually seem all that earthly, if you get my drift.

As I told my sister (and as I told you the other day right on this blog), Mom's death and the many other deaths that have in one way or another touched me during the Easter Season put Heaven on my mind in a way that has never happened before. And just to make sure it stays there, I've got a song going through my head that invites me not just to think about Heaven, but to long for it as the goal and crown of life.

TOB Tuesday: Is TOB just a proof-text?

An earlier post for TOB Tuesday inspired a comment:
Will you discuss the question that TOB is based on proof texting? I'm bothered about that possibility.

Here's what I answered in an off-the-cuff way:
     Re: proof texting, I assume you mean TOB is an attempt to establish a scriptural foundation for the 1968 document "Humanae Vitae."
     It is clear that Pope John Paul intended to give the Church just such a gift. But did he do so after the fact, relying simply on the appeal to proof-texts as his only basis?
     If you read "Love and Responsibility" first (published in 1960) you see that Karol Wojtyla had been doing studies in the area of marriage and sexuality for many, many years. That is why he was part of Paul VI's commission on the birth control question: he was an acknowledged authority on human sexuality before there even was such an area of study. Both the documents of Vatican II and "Humanae Vitae" itself reflect some of Wojtyla's characteristic phrases with regard to marriage.
     TOB was actually written before he became Pope; it is the "biblical" companion volume to his more philosophical Love and Responsibility. (Since he could not publish the work in book form on being elected, he adapted the content to deliver it in person, by word of mouth).
     He did not make this stuff up in the quiet of his office; couples who had been college students during his time as a campus minister were sharing their stories and experiences with him--for decades. The real authors of Theology of the Body are those Polish couples who bared their souls to their pastor and friend. TOB is the distillation of those families' lives, put in conjunction with the Scriptures through the heart of Karol Wojtyla.
     Simply reading the Theology of the Body would be enough, I think, to override the accusation of proof-texting. The content and correlations are simply too deep. Proof-texting is necessarily superficial and disconnected; there is no inner logic or harmony among proof-texts as there is in a genuine sapiential reading of Scripture (which is what Marquette scripture professor William Kurz, SJ, calls TOB).
     I hope you will join us for the program! Even if you missed the first classes Saturday, you can catch up by using the archived files.

Later, I put a link to the post and comments on Google+ and got this input:
...a comment that Alice von Hildebrand made about TOB once struck me very strongly -- that TOB is about much more than birth control, much more than sex or marriage.  The parts of TOB relating to the glorious body, for example, go far beyond these narrow issues.  Could reducing most TOB conversations to birth control/sex feed the argument that it's an after-the-fact excuse for Humanae Vitae?  Maybe.

Good point! The sections of Theology of the Body that don't deal in an explicit way with marriage are often completely ignored, giving the impression that TOB is only about the hot-button issues. I am afraid I have been guilty of continuing that impression, assuming that these are the only areas in which most people have reservations about Church teaching that TOB addresses. There's not a whole lot of controversy right now with the resurrected life. Maybe there ought to be: Sister Helena tells me that in her work with young adults, there is very little recognition that that line in the Creed ("I believe ... in the resurrection of the dead") is about our future, body and soul.

What do you have to add to the conversation?

Not-so-Ordinary Time

Today we return to "Ordinary" time, liturgically speaking. This year, after such an Easter Season, it's kind of good to be back. I didn't want all those reminders, day after day, week after 7 weeks, of dying and rising. But the Lord kept sending them, and not only in the liturgical readings. While Mom was in the hospital (on the mend, we thought), the mother of another of our sisters was admitted for emergency heart surgery. As Mom died, this other mom seemed to be recovering. (Boy, did that reality call for surrender!) But on Mother's Day, Mrs. Connor too entered the fullness of life. Seven days later, my sister called to request prayers for a missing child, the son of her co-worker. The boy's body was found yesterday.

An Easter Season full of death: what meaning can there be? For me, especially after having to say good-bye on this earth to my mother, it has been a repeated call to focus on Heaven. As Mom, as Mrs. Connor, as little Owen all experienced during the Easter Season, this life is not the "fullness" of what we are made for. As beautiful as it can be, it is only the starting block.

So I re-enter Ordinary time with a very different perspective than I had when we left it back in February.  "We are God's children now. What we shall later be has not yet been revealed."

Post from the Past: Lead us not...

This is the conclusion of a series I first published on Nunblog in 2005. Original post here.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

The usual interpretations of “temptation” can be individualistic, short-sighted and superficial, referring simply to the urge to violate a precept. But the word can be translated “trial” or “test.”  The same set of circumstances could be a temptation leading to evil or an occasion of purifying, strengthening trial. Whether we are faced with a “temptation” or a “trial” can be known only by the outcome and not in its midst. Contrary to the consumer culture with its emphasis on “having arrived,” this petition of the Lord’s prayer places us squarely “en route” in a “status viatoris.”

Even more than the plea for daily bread, this petition asserts our utter dependence on God “We are God’s children now” (cf. 1 Jn. 3:2), but even that is still a work in progress.  Do we accept this state of things? The challenge is “not to run or attempt to run from the inescapable fact of the contingency of our being” (Ulanov, Primary Speech, p. 62). Face to face with fear, even ultimate fear, we may try to short-circuit it in many ways. What if “temptation” refers to our attempts to circumvent life’s incompleteness—our refusal of the greatness of our filial condition in the vain attempt to make ourselves complete, self-enclosed, secure in intransitiveness, rather than to live in the incompleteness of an ongoing gift of self that is the creaturely form of Trinitarian life? We are tempted to take an off-ramp from the via humanitatis, which is a way of pilgrims. As Teresa of Jesus noted, concerning the security of one “who fears the Lord,” “I say ‘security,’ but that is the wrong word, for there is no security in this life” (Interior Castle, Third Mansion, Chapter 1). Earlier, she had written, “We here, so far as outward things are concerned are free; may it please the Lord to make us free as regards inward things as well and to deliver us from evil” (First Mansion).

It is here that the Lord’s Prayer completes itself, having begun with the invocation of God’s transcendent and holy name and the plea for the fullness of God’s kingdom. Before all that would substitute that kingdom and in which we could seek to ensconce ourselves, secure and unmovable, we pray: “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

Amen.

Amen is the genuine, filial expression of security: not in ourselves, not in our accomplishments, but standing confidently on the “one in whom I have believed” (2 Tim. 1:12). And the Lord, the “Amen, the faithful and true witness” (cf. Rev. 3:14) responds, “I have promised, and I will do it, says the Lord” (cf. Ez. 36:36).

Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will be Done on Earth...
Give Us this Day
Forgive Us our Trespasses...

Cultural bonanza: Mark your calendars, Chicago!

Aid for Women, for 39 years an incredibly effective provider of services to women in crisis pregnancies here in Chicagoland, just announced its Benefit Dinner, and you want to be there, even if I can't make it (I'll be in Rome, God willing).

The event will be at the Union League Club in downtown Chicago on Sept. 19. The keynote speaker is Father Robert Barron. As if that were not enough, the honoree of the evening is Barbara Nicolosi. That's right: two brilliant, articulate, spot-on culture watchers offering an intelligent and witty Catholic perspective on the issues. Please get your reservation in early.

If you can't make it to the dinner, please consider donating to Aid for Women.  They take no federal funding, as that would put restrictions on the spiritual formation they offer. Right now they especially need used cars in working condition to help the women in residence at Heather's House get to and from doctor's appointments, classes and work. You can also contribute items to their Baby Registry at www.babiesrus.com (registry # 46439641).

Post from the Past: Forgive us our Trespasses

Still running my reflections first published in 2005 for a class; the book cited was one of the texts.  Original post here.

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive...

Now Jesus brings it home. We do not get off the hook: we are involved in the answer to our prayer. “As we forgive.” Are we asking God, the infinite “Creator alme siderum,” to be reduced to our level, to restrict forgiveness to our own limited reach? That can hardly be possible. God “gives the gift of the Spirit without measure” (cf. Jn. 3:34). But how do our limits effectively prevent us from receiving the full extent of mercy God offers? How can God’s forgiveness reach someone who has closed his or her heart to a neighbor who needs forgiveness (cf. 1 Jn. 3:17)?

As with the Bread of Life discourse, “this is a hard saying: who can accept it?” (cf. Jn. 6:60). But the Lord’s Prayer invites us to an examen of consciousness. Those who “find God in all things” can even find the hand of divine mercy and goodness in human experiences of injustice, ill-will, cruelty or (perhaps hardest of all to deal with) unmitigated stupidity. The attempt to move toward forgiveness is fraught with risk. As the Ulanovs remarked, “When we pray for our enemy…we feel again all the hurt and anger and anguish gathered around that person. Yet we pray that God’s good will may operate in the situation, and in that person” (Primary Speech, p. 43). What a remarkable thing this is! In our own prayer, we are turning evil to good. Forgiveness becomes a form of the “complete gift of self” in an emptying of our false self—the self that would cling to the injustices we have suffered, rather than allow them to be transformed. But it is an ongoing journey toward “total inner transformation,” a journey on which we set out 70 X 7 times; that is, as C. S. Lewis commented, every time we remember the offense or its harm revisits us.  And every time we do this, our own hearts are opened to receive a fuller measure of God’s love in the form of forgiveness of our trespasses.

Rather than focusing on the immediate source of their suffering in the neighbor who hurt them, Christian witnesses throughout history have been awed by the mysterious presence of providence making all things work together for good. This vision offered them an angle that, while not at all diminishing the real evil of the offense, revealed it as relative and contingent. Evil cannot have its full impact if I do not absorb it and make it a part of me. In spite of itself, that evil “works for good” (cf. Rom. 8:28). And when we have seen the power of God at work for good in the sins and trespasses of others against us, we no longer have to hold on to our own sins to shield us from grace. We can allow them, too, to “work for good.” We can allow God to “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”


Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will be Done on Earth...
Give Us this Day

Me, on Memes

Last week I had an entertaining conversation with Peter Jesserer Smith about a most entertaining subject: Internet memes. Specifically, Catholic memes. I have a whole collection of these visual tongue-in-cheek evangelization tools; I share them with missionaries and priests and sisters on sabbatical in a social media workshop.

As I told Peter, the best ones, in my opinion, play with your cultural awareness. All they do is tweak it a bit to remind you in an unexpected way about some dimension of Catholicism.

Here are some of my favorites; share yours in the comments. (Don't know too many? Scroll through CatholicMemes.com!)

Jesus was here.

Posts from the Past: Give us this Day

Revisiting a series first published on this blog in 2005; original post here.

Give us this day our daily bread.

We return to the first person plural: the language of “we” and “our.” And in the verb “give,” we hear the universal voice of our primordial desires. It is the voice with which all creation groans, a voice calling out to God from the ends of the earth. Our desire is to receive; our call is “give us”; our longing is for “bread.” Not just any bread, but “daily” bread, to meet our constant need. “Supersubstantial” bread, to be literal. What else is this daily bread, then, but the very God we call “Father”? It is God, our origin, who alone nourishes and feeds us, whose life we long for.

Our desire, then, corresponds to and expresses a great truth which becomes prayer in the Our Father. “One does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God” (cf. Dt. 8:3). This is “the bread of God come down from heaven” that “gives life to the world” (cf. Jn. 6:33). And this Word, made flesh, is “real food” for us, bread given for the life of the world. Daily bread. Supersubstantial bread, “one in being” with the Father. The only bread that satisfies the hungers of the world, and for which we pray, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will be Done on Earth...

TOB Tuesday: How Youth Ministers can approach the book Love and Responsibility

From our Vocation Director, Sister Margaret Michael (here's the link if the embed fails again):


More about Love and Responsibility (including some images to share on social media) here.
Get the book (new translation!)

The missing posts, and missing the point

Just realized that all the posts I had scheduled for last week were not actually scheduled at all. So this week I am picking up again the "Posts from the Past" thread on the Our Father. (I have a sneaking suspicion that they may not even appear in the right order, but such is life.)

Speaking of life, it was deja vu all over again around me this week. My superior got a phone call from home: her sister (age 55) had died. Then on the evening of Mother's Day another Daughter of St. Paul from Louisiana gathered with her brothers and sisters as their own mom was invited to follow the Ascended Lord. And today I got a sympathy card from yet another sister whose mom died within the past year. All reminders to take Easter seriously--something I steadfastly (and rather expressly) refused to do during the first two weeks of the season, when I was more interested in hopes for this life than the next in Mom's regard, even though the Liturgy itself, day by day (especially in the Gospels at Mass) was sounding a clear and consistent message about where true life can be found. (I'm glad I'm starting to come around while it is still the Easter Season!)

Have you found yourself turning away from a message in the Scriptures that is so to the point, so timely, and so unavoidably clear that there is no mistaking it is directed to you? How did you "come around"?

Post from the Past: Thy Will be Done

Revisiting a series of posts from 2005; original post here.

Thy will be done.

This petition naturally flows from “thy Kingdom come,” and redeems our notions of “the will of God” as something to be resigned to, to be borne with or suffered through.  

Pope John Paul’s Theology of the Body offers a lovely image of the kingdom of God lived on earth as it is in heaven. For John Paul II, the mutual and complete “gift of self” of the persons of the Eternal Trinity was meant to be lived “on earth as in heaven” through the mutual gift of self in life-giving sexual love. To be a person, according to John Paul, is to be a “gift.” This is how God lives in the unceasing and complete self-gift of the Father, the unending receptivity of the Son (whose receptivity is a complete self-rendering in return), and the Person-Gift of the Spirit. “In the divine image, male and female,” human beings have the vocation to live God’s will of perfect love that gives everything without reserve, and receives everything (including the gift of new life) with complete openness. Sin has wreaked untold damage on our capacity for gift and receptivity, and so we continue to pray, “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come

Post from the Past: Thy Kingdom Come

Continuing a series originally published in 2005; original post here.

Thy kingdom come

Citizens of a democracy may be really tripped up by this petition. For many of us, God-as-King is strictly a biblical concept, unrelated to anything we have ever known or experienced. We are used to self-governing, to a vote, to majority rule. We are at the very least suspicious in the face of claims to royal prerogative. “Kingship” doesn’t go over real well. But St. Paul commented “the Kingdom ofGod is not a matter of eating and drinking” (i.e., a matter of the “rule of law,” or of kingship as external government). Instead, it is about “justice, peace and the joy that comes from the Holy Spirit” (cf. Rom. 14:7).

When we ask “thy Kingdom come,” we are asking to be “led by the Spirit of God,” with a resultant outpouring of the “fruits of the Spirit: charity, joy, peace, patience…”  (cf. Gal. 5:22). Earthly rule cannot impose requirements for life on that level. All an earthly kingship can hope to do is limit harmful behavior and coordinate whatever good there is. The indwelling Spirit of God establishes us in an entirely different realm. It is the Spirit within us who cries out “Abba” (cf. Gal. 4:6), and in this Spirit we pray “thy Kingdom come!”

Earlier posts in this series:

Our Father, Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy Name

Post from the Past: Hallowed Be Thy Name

Continuing reflection on the Lord's Prayer from 2005; original post here.

What’s in a name?

A name could be just a label: canned “TUNA” and not canned “CHICKEN”; “John SMITH” and not “John DOE.” But that’s not the real point of a name. “Name” bespeaks relationship. To withhold one’s name, to remain deliberately a-nonymous, is to refuse relationship, to cut off future possibilities, and even to thwart memory. 

On the other hand, how meaningful it is to hear our name from the lips of a person who knows us well, and who treats one’s name like a treasure. Like Mary Magdalen in the garden, we may not even recognize the other until we hear our own name pronounced. That sound brings to the fore the whole weight of the relationship: its history, its depth, its extent, its yet-to-be-realized hopes. 

Amazingly, the Our Father hints that we can, as it were, awaken all this in the very heart of God when we “call upon the name of the Lord” (cf. 1 Cor. 1:2), the name by which God has introduced himself to us.

May your name always be uttered by those who love you: “Hallowed be your name.”




Earlier posts in this series:
Our Father, Who Art in Heaven

Posts from the Past: The Our Father

While I am swamped in setting up technology (and chairs) for our Theology of the Body series, I thought I would dig into the archives and pull up a series of posts that originated as a paper for a spirituality course at CTU some years ago.  Hope you don't mind the reruns; I think it's worth a re-read, myself!

Our Father, Who art in Heaven

Joseph the Worker

Today's feast of St. Joseph the Worker is meant to highlight the dignity of work. Work isn't only a means to an end, though it is true enough that (as the ancients said) "we work so that we may have leisure." We work because we are made in God's image: ideally, work allows us to create something. This makes unemployment (and underemployment) such a demeaning experience: forced leisure seems to stymie the very will to create. And that is a spiritual problem.

I didn't know it when I entered the convent, but my community had a unique spirituality of labor. It was something the Founder grew up with as the son of tenant farmers--even before he went to primary school, he was expected to hold the lantern high while the grown-ups and older children toiled into the night at harvest time. When his little arms grew tired and some of the precious yield was lost in the shadows, the call was sure to come: "James, the light!"  Meditating on this experience in the light of Jesus' long years as a laborer, Alberione contemplated the redemptive value of work. "Jesus redeemed humanity with the sweat of his brow long before redeeming us by sweating blood in Gethsemane." In entrusting the hard, sweaty work of printing to our first sisters and brothers, he described their labor as a form of preaching, a priestly ministry. And so our community prayers to St Joseph speak of the head of the Holy Family as "work-teacher to the Son of God, who became a humble laborer for us."