Tag Archives: death

Autobiography

54 INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI


SNOW is falling in that mysterious gentleness so unlike rain!

 

There was a news story the other day, about a man whose hobby is catching snowflakes on pieces of glass coated with a special substance which keeps them from melting. He examines them under a microscope, chooses the most unique, manages with another process to colour them and then photographs them.

The pictures are astonishing images of the not-visible-to-the-naked eye tapestry of ice-crystal beauty, an example of the intricate weaves of beauty the Beautiful One Himself has woven into the basic fabric of creation.

Before beginning to write this evening I stood in the gentle snow and let some of those tiny vessels of beauty fall upon my face, profoundly aware that the Beautiful One chose to manifest Himself in our flesh, chose for Himself a human face, chose also to remind us that we can, with our eyes, always see the beauty of His Face whenever we look upon the face of any human being.

To see the beautiful Face of Jesus, to see Jesus, is to see our Father. [Jn.14:9]

SUDDENLY events can occur which transport us from what has become familiar, ordinary, indeed in a sense a false-godlike serenity, that when they happen we can experience an inner trauma which rattles us so deeply even our very faith can be shaken.

I had no sooner written about seeing Jesus and the Father [Jn.14:9], when such an experience occurred in my life and for almost a week I was, by necessity of circumstance, living out of my briefcase with no settled place to finish this sabbatical.

Suffice to say what occurred happened to a friend, involved violence against their person and my intervening to obtain them a place of safety, in the process of which I then became the target and my spiritual father discerned satan was afoot and since finishing the sabbatical is clearly the will of God for me, best I relocate.

The Bishop agreed to the offer of a confrere and so I am now no longer in that southern city of factories but in a more northerly one. I am to live here for the remaining four months.

The advantage, which most consoles my heart, is the ground floor chapel where Jesus lives in the Blessed Sacrament and where I can spend time with Him as often as I want.

I must admit that there was a strange, — I almost wrote premonition but that is not correct, rather there was granted to my heart a mysterious awareness as I began this chapter that soon there would be an attack and I was not to worry, all would be well in the end.

Indeed, on my travels over the past week, a dear woman friend, not knowing I have been writing this very manuscript, begged me to write such a work and within the hour a dear, newly ordained, priest friend made the same supplication.

Thus, as Weigel reminds us in his seminal work on Pope John Paul II, this truth uttered by the Holy Father: …in the designs of Providence there are no mere coincidences…[da]

Since in a few days I am to finish this and then begin my work on the second manuscript, on the priesthood, how wonderful to be living in a rectory where Jesus lives under the same roof in the Blessed Sacrament. I can bring each page before Him.

BEFORE THOSE events I was beginning to write about my seminary years. It has come to my heart to write about that experience as with that of my monastic years and those with The Community.

I have found over the years, often in books, articles, most assuredly, sadly, in conversation with priests across the generations, there seems to be an overly negative collection of memories of seminary life.

It’s part of this culture of blame we live in which has infected even the lives of priests.

For me seminary life was essentially a joy.

Certainly there were stresses, sufferings, struggles, but then why not?

The grace I was given was a profound awareness that being a seminarian, at the time I was in the seminary, was my vocation in that moment.

True, being in the seminary was preparation for fulfillment of my vocation to be a priest, but all ‘vocations’ are within the universal vocation which is that we are created to be children of the Father, disciples and co-heirs with Christ, living temples of the Holy Spirit, open wide to His activity of transfiguration, sanctification, divinization.

Seminaries are not perfect institutions which meet all the physical, emotional, spiritual needs of seminarians; not all professors are orthodox or holy; not all confreres either. Seminaries are where, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, men are formed to surrender to the sacramental action of the Holy Spirit, not just on the day of our ordination and configuration to Christ Priest, but every moment of our lives.

My duty of the moment, when I was in the seminary, was NOT to become the greatest theologian, liturgist, canonist, nor become a clerical administrator, rather it was to do my best to surrender to the Prime Teacher, the Prime Former of my being, the Holy Spirit, and to sit at the feet of the Mother of all Priests and learn from her how to do as she did, love and serve the Lord Himself through loving service, of sacramentally most of all as a priest, my brothers and sisters.

I frankly found all of the courses fascinating, from Sacred Scripture to Church History to Liturgy, Sacraments, and so forth.

The pastoral experiences in parishes, working with the poor, teaching children catechism, all were fuel to the fire burning within me to become a priest-servant of the people of God.

Granted, I was no fan of examinations and tried where possible to choose courses where a major paper replaced written exams. Failing that I’d try and choose ones where it was an oral rather than a written exam. In both cases I was moving from my strengths as a writer and orator.

The fact that we lived in the same house as Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament was also a great joy. I loved the Divine Office, still do, and, of course, Holy Mass, which I now as a priest can celebrate every day and it remains the greatest joy of my life!

If there was a common denominator I found, and treasure, from among the professors and seminarians, indeed even among the cooks, cleaners, office staff, the religious sisters who worked there, it is that virtually all shared a firm belief in the treasure and importance of the sacramental priesthood.

Not everyone made it through those years of study and formation. Indeed it is a truism commonly spoken when someone would leave of their own accord, or even be rejected at evaluation time, a twice yearly ordeal we all sweated through, that: “The best guys leave.”

I say a truism because, like all platitudes, it articulates, in this instance, a fear, that is: “ If they got rid of him what chance have I got?”

In reality no vocation has to do, per se, with the mere external talents of any person. Talents are given generously by the Holy Spirit to everyone.

Vocation has to do with call and response.

He calls, we respond.

Our response is an act of trust that He will provide all the grace, which is all the mature and holy use of talent, needed to fulfill the vocation He has called us to and we have said yes to.

This call and response occurs constantly in every moment of our lives.

There is, of course, the initial call and initial response, but, as in marriage so in priesthood, in all vocations, there is the very real necessity in every moment in Him to begin again, to in every moment say YES!

To my heart, then, the essence of the seminary experience was the action deep within my being of the Holy Spirit, the true Teacher and the One who configures us to Christ, in the case of men called to the priesthood this configuration is a sacramental reality, not as some reward for having passed final exams, gained a degree — but as fulfillment, sacramentally, of Christ’s promise not to leave us orphans.

The priest, not because of his studies but in the reality of the sacramental activity of the Holy Spirit, is configured by the Spirit IN PERSONA CHRISTI.

Seminary life then should generate humble, holy men, servants of the disciples of Christ.

All else is secondary to this formation towards humility and holiness, itself the work of the Holy Spirit and thus our word for, our prayer, for all seminarians should be seek only of Christ all that we need and doing only/all that pleases Him. [Hb. 13:20,21]

While it would be untrue to claim the seminary was exactly as described in the decree Optatan Totius of the Second Vatican Council on priestly formation, nonetheless the result of my seminary experience, and in a most particular adjunct grace, my continued association with The Community, especially the wise teaching of my spiritual father, was as prayed for by the Council Fathers who decreed:

Major seminaries are necessary for priestly training. In them the whole training of the students should have as its object to make them true shepherds of souls after the example of our Lord Jesus Christ, teacher, priest and shepherd. Hence, they should be trained for the ministry of the Word, so that they may gain an ever increasing understanding of the revealed Word of God, making it their own by meditation, and giving it expression in their speech and in their lives. They should be trained for the ministry of worship and sanctification, so that by prayer and the celebration of the sacred liturgical functions they may carry on the work of salvation through the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments. They should be trained to undertake the ministry of the shepherd, that they may know how to represent Christ to men, CHRIST WHO ‘ DID NOT COME TO HAVE SERVICE DONE TO HIM, BUT TO SERVE OTHERS AND TO GIVE HIS LIFE AS A RANSOM FOR THE LIVES OF MANY’ [ Mk.10:45; Jn.13:12-17], and that they may win over many by becoming the servants of all [1Cor.9:19] {db}

The mystery of suffering, the purification and redemptive mystery of the Cross, is, because such was the reality for Christ and therefore is necessarily for all His disciples{Mk.8:34}] was not absent from my years in the seminary.

The greatest suffering of that period was to occur around the death of one of my sisters and the subsequent attempt by satan, through the actions of a seminarian, to discourage me from priesthood.

It would not be the last time satan would mount such an attack, as is evident by the events around the writing of this very chapter!

At the beginning of summer break after my first year, my sister phoned one day from the military base where she lived with her husband and children. She asked if I could meet her at the main cancer institute.

I had known for some time that she had cancer and for some time it appeared the surgery and chemotherapy had arrested the disease.

I met her the following evening after the phone call at the cancer institute’s guest house. She revealed to me she had not much longer to live, asked if I would be there when the time came, made a few other requests, and then we spoke of our childhood, life since then, God and life after death.

When the time came for us to part, until I should get word the end was near and would travel to her home, I walked out of the institute into the now dark summer night.

I sat on a bench near a bus stop, my being in the throes of a type of grief not experienced since the death of my grandmother some four decades previous.

Shock had gripped me.

Anger seethed, rebellion beckoned.

What kind of a God would call me to this vocation and then tear the very fabric of my heart through this horror which was devouring my sister?

I wanted to run from that bench and plunge myself into some kind, any kind, of instant gratification: booze, sex, rage, it really didn’t matter.

Instead I walked across the street and bought a pack of cigarettes, figuring, in the immediate at least, it was the less destructive gratification.

Then I went down into the subway, boarded the first train, rode around for a while until the shock lessened, at which time I switched to the right train and headed back to the seminary.

I’d been hired to work there over the summer cleaning rooms between the various retreat groups’ coming and going while the students were away. At the same time I was taking summer courses in subjects as diverse as medical ethics and comparative mysticism, wherein the prayer traditions of the various world religions were studied.

I was glad to be busy as I waited for that dreadful call I knew was coming.

Early in the fall, when we had returned to the seminary program for second year studies, the call came and with the rest of my family I made the long trek to the military base where, with my sister’s husband, children and friends we began the long vigil.

After what seemed like months, but which was actually only a couple of weeks, the strain of the deathbed vigil was taking such a huge toll on all concerned the night of my birthday, as I stood at the foot of my sister’s hospital bed, I begged the Father for one gift only, that she be taken home to Him.

Early the next morning she died.

I preached at her funeral.

Then next day I returned to the seminary.

Posted on my door was a note from a fellow seminarian containing within it Xeroxed copies of pages from a book in which were footnoted copies of stolen letters from me, years before my conversion, to a pro-gay ‘catholic’ group.

The seminarian’s note suggested if I did not want this information passed on to the Cardinal I should leave the seminary.

WALKING NEAR the parish church this afternoon I chanced to look up towards one of the chimneys, out of which spewing steam rose as the heat was condensed in this deep freeze weather we are having. Huddled on the rim of the chimney were two pigeons, doubtless keeping warm in the escaping heat.

My heart was thrilled to see them, to see also a fulfillment of the Lord’s words sheltering the sparrows, comforting us in our struggles, reminding us we are important to Him. [Ps.102:7-14; Lk. 12:24]

I removed the seminarian’s signature from the note. Took it, after going through my files, with copies of the original letters and went to the Rector.

I explained the situation to the Rector and that I had confirmed the originals had been stolen from the offices of the people I had sent them to, showed him the section from the book where they were quoted and informed him that someone had threatened to go to the Cardinal if I did not leave the seminary.

The Rector said he would handle things and get back to me.

Within a couple of weeks he informed me the Cardinal had said that while I need not leave the seminary immediately I should seek another diocese and transfer after that to another seminary.

The Rector said not to worry he would help me find another diocese and seminary, and indeed he helped me put together an application. At my insistence the offending material from my past was included; for it seemed to me openness was the best way to go.

I knew my past.

My present, by His grace, was not my past.

By the end of the academic year however I was still without a diocese and could not return to that seminary the following fall for the beginning of third year.

The combination of un-availed grief over my sister’s death, of the stress of dealing with the assault from that book which distracted me from grieving, and confusion over the certainty of my vocation, with the apparent end of my seminary training, took its toll as I found prayer difficult, found it extremely difficult to refrain from chucking everything and return to my pre-conversion lifestyle and attitudes.

Summer came.

I was taking courses in pastoral care and Islamic studies, trying to be faithful to my formation even though it seemed a pretty crazy thing to be doing when, come the fall and the opening of the academic year, it appeared I would be without a diocese, still unable to return to the seminary, would be also homeless and jobless.

August came.

Many friends were praying for the intervention of Our Blessed Mother, she who is the Mother of Priests in particular.

A Bishop called from out of the blue, told the Rector he had heard of my plight from another bishop in Rome. If I could come and see him that weekend he would consider my case.

At the same time arrangements were made for me to live in a house of studies of a religious order so my studies would not be interrupted if this bishop accepted me.

I packed and traveled to his diocese, was interviewed and told he would first discuss the matter with the Priest’s Senate and then give me his decision.

Summer courses were over and I traveled to The Community for a week’s rest and a visit with my spiritual father who reminded me to trust Our Blessed Mother.

Just after her feast of the Assumption word came from the Bishop: I was accepted.

…sanctification consists of enduring moment by moment all the trials and tribulation it brings, as though they were clouds behind which God lay concealed… …He directs our lives from these shadows so that, when the senses are scared, faith, taking everything in good part and for the best, is full of courage and confidence. ….However mysterious it may seem, it is in order to awaken and maintain this living faith that God drags the soul through tumultuous floods of so much suffering, trouble, perplexity, weariness and ruin. ….Nothing is more noble than a faithful heart that sees only life divine in the most grievous toil and peril….the instinct of faith is an uplifting of the heart and a reaching over and above everything that happens. [dc]

There still remained a couple of years of study, and, placement in a parish in the final year after ordination as a deacon.

During the remaining time I would learn profound lessons about social justice as a perhaps well intentioned desire to serve the poor, even more profoundly, see the sacerdos magnus, the great priest, Pope John Paul II himself revealing how to be a priest-shepherd when he visited the country.

These were the years in the universal church when the extreme forms of liberation theology were all the rage, even in the seminary. Since myself, and many of the younger men too, had been involved as laymen in the struggles against the war in Vietnam, racial justice, justice for the poor, the anti-nuclear war movement, and other liberation groups, this passion carried over into seminary life. Often the faculty would invite leaders in the various movements to lecture to us.

Sometimes, such as when a Rabbi who worked with survivors of the Holocaust and some of the men and women from the camps themselves spoke to us we were pierced to the depths of our souls. The teaching of Vatican II in NOSTRA AETATE, its righteousness and urgency, came to life as we opened our hearts to this latest mystery of the pilgrimage through history of the Chosen People, our elder brothers and sisters in faith:

Indeed, the Church reproves every form of persecution against whomsoever it may be directed. Remembering, then, her common heritage with the Jews and moved not by any political consideration, but solely by the religious motivation of Christian charity, she deplores all hatreds, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism levelled at any time or from any source against the Jews. [dd]

“The Jewish religion,” John Paul said, “ is not ‘extrinsic’ to us, but in a certain sense is ‘intrinsic’ to our own religion. With Judaism, therefore, we have a relationship which we do not have with any other religion. You are our dearly beloved brothers and, in a certain way, it could be said that you are our elder brothers.” [de]

Some of those involved in the issues of the day had a more deleterious effect on the seminarians and this, combined with other issues well known to contemporary Catholics resulted in the visitations of seminaries by Vatican officials, the Synod on the Priesthood and subsequent document seeking to reform seminaries.

None of this occurred in my day and yet, frankly, especially in the area of the extremes of liberation theology, I became, for a time, caught in the web of excessive activism.

Not that those were not dangerous years of potential nuclear holocaust, along with the gradual crumbling of the communist bloc, and other world events, and without failing to mention what was first called the ‘gay-flu’ but by those years had become indeed the horrific pan-epidemic called AIDS.

I recall one Holy Week when, and this is not atypical of activism gone awry in a Christian heart, some faculty, students, religious from various orders, with our protestant ministerial student counterparts, all got the notion there was no better way to celebrate the mysteries of our Redemption than to spend the week in a fasting prayer protest outside the gates of the main manufacturer of a particular type of weapon, rather than participate in the very liturgies we were being prepared to be the ministers of!

We would walk, we seminarians paired with members of a mendicant order, up and down along the chain-link fence praying for hours on end.

Mid-week there was an explosion at the plant.

Someone had bombed the place.

The next night we were there again, walking alongside the bombed plant praying when suddenly guards appeared with vicious dogs, police, some in plain clothes, swarmed us, guns and clubs at the ready.

As they ran towards us we formed a circle and continued to pray the Divine Office out loud and just as they were upon us, clubs at the ready, police vans pulling up, sirens bleating. They stopped as if they had hit a wall.

An officer in full riot gear approached and asked who was in charge and the senior priest said he was.

“What the hell are you nuts up to?”

“We’re praying.”

“For what?”

“An end to violence.”

The police silently withdrew.

However the next night a call came into the seminary from a friend at a radical catholic newspaper I used to write for, warning the order had gone out and anyone known to be in the peace movement who might be connected in any way with the bombing was being rounded up, along with files, documents, etc.

I got a couple of my classmates and we went to the offices of the paper, for some of the staff had recently been in communist countries, and indeed already some of the staff had been rounded up by the police, and we helped cull files and get rid of anything that might be used to discredit people.

Later that night I went into the seminary chapel, actually it was by then early morning, and sat before Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament and meditated upon His arrest and trial.

My heart knew then I was going to be ordained for everyone: the weapons builders, weapons users, those pulverized by the weapons, police, crime victims and perpetrators, for everyone.

The preferential option for the poor means a preferential option for everyone since the slum dweller is certainly poor, but how immense, ultimately, is the poverty of the slum lord.

We had been taught a narrow and self-serving use of an excerpt from Pope Paul VI’s famous encyclical Populorum Progressio as justification for priestly participation in the extremes of liberation theology. We had been regaled with tales of priests bearing arms side by side with the peasant soldiers in Asian and Latin American revolutions:

We know, however, that a revolutionary uprising — save where there is manifest,                     longstanding tyranny which would do great damage to fundamental personal rights and dangerous harm to the common good of the country…[df-1]

That part was hammered into us…but it is a distortion to leave out the Pope’s urgent warning about just what, as so many tragic histories of nations show, revolutions actually produce:

..new injustices, throws more elements out of balance and brings on new disasters. A REAL EVIL SHOULD NOT BE FOUGHT AGAINST AT THE COST OF GREATER MISERY. [df-2]

I remembered also a vital lesson taught me by a simple man, a truly good man, during the height of the Vietnam War in the late sixties.

He was a farmer, living on a small, rocky bit of land in the hill country, the poorest part of the nation.

I was there in midsummer, helping to bale hay, and as the sun began to set behind the hills, the day’s work done, we sat on the weathered wood planks of the porch.

The man brought out some cold beer.

I’d enjoyed a simple but hearty meal with him and his family.

The children were playing among the stacked bales in the field in front of the house, his wife was in the kitchen doing the dishes and singing.

The farmer rolled a couple of smokes and passed me one.

We sat there, satisfied with sweat, food, dwindling sunlight, sounds of crickets and children’s laughter.

Silence bathed that masculine moment with the at-rightness of all.

The war, where friends of mine were dying in the paddies and jungles, the war whereof I and others were lost in a confused struggle between anger at the insanity and compassion for our friends, occupied my mind even in the midst of that idyll.

Finally I broke the silent moment with a simple question to the farmer: “What say you about the war?”

He took a long draw on his cigarette, sipped some beer, looked over his shoulder towards the torn screen door of the house, then looked towards the field, now filled with evening shadow, at his children playing: “I sit here,” he said in soft tones filled with a pure man’s authority, “and I thinks, over there, in that Vietnam, there’s a man just like me. He’s sore, but it’s a good soreness ‘cause he’s worked hard his land. He sits, like me, with another man, looks about his land, watches his sons, hears the wife singin’. His belly’s full ‘cause he worked hard and she be a fine cook.”

He paused for what seemed a long time and I watched his tired watery eyes. Then he looks at me hard.

Not judging hard, penetrating hard, like a father trying to press deep into his son vital wisdom.

He spoke with authority. “Now this man, the one like me. He loves the wife and his sons and he don’t hate me and I sure don’t hate him. So I asks myself, why do they want us to kill each other? That be my thought on the matter.”

Towards the end of the last year in seminary the Pope came to our country and since two friends of mine were co-ordinating events in our area they asked if I would help out at one of the sites.

I readily agreed and was issued various passes for the different sections of the site, including the so-called papal enclosure and a security badge to be worn, I was warned, at all times.

The night before the Pope was to arrive at the shrine site I arrived just after midnight and hundreds of people were already there, along with a contingent of police, soldiers, Red Cross volunteers, site volunteers from surrounding parishes, media people and the papal advance team.

I went into the shrine and met my priest friends who were naturally a little stressed wanting everything to be just so for the Pope.

The air, in the classic yet true phrase, was electric with expectancy.

About two in the morning it began to rain and we were concerned over the plight of the now thousands of pilgrims getting soaked by the cold rain.

Suddenly across the valley lights began to come on in the village houses, even in farm houses up in the hills.

Sometime later headlights could be seen moving towards the sight and then flashlights, bobbing like fireflies approaching the shrine.

Dozens of local men, women, and children had been awakened by the rain – by angels – made coffee, sandwiches, turned big plastic garbage bags into impromptu rain-gear for the pilgrims huddled in the rain!

The next morning the sun beat down and dried the mud rather quickly it seemed to me and warmed those hardy souls who’d been there all night.

The Holy Father arrived by helicopter and went into the shrine to first see to the sick and elderly, then came out to the main site.

I was within a few feet of where he was to pass by heading to the makeshift altar, but with my particular clearance was free to move anywhere I wanted.

The pilgrims who’d endured the night’s cold and rain pressed against the rope barrier, having the best vantage spot.

The Pope drew closer and another unexpected event happened.

Those who’d been there all night looked behind and if seeing anyone who was short, like an elderly person or a child, or just plain short, they gave up their nightlong saved great viewing spot to the person unable to see above the crowd!

Everyone wanted to see the Pope, be touched by him.

I was transfixed by his radiance and frankly don’t remember a word he said.

As I walked among the people some hours later after the Pope had left I was constantly touched, physically touched, by people to the point where I wondered if they were going to tear my cassock or surplice they literally were grabbing.

But everyone was smiling, radiant with joy.

Their touch was actually a holy gesture, for though not yet ordained they assumed I was a priest and simply stated, some of them: “It is good to touch you Father, it is a blessing.”

Later in the residence of the religious priests who care for the shrine we watched video of the just happened visit.

One of the priests was a consultant to the movie industry for films having priest characters and so forth in them.

This priest suddenly shouted: “Look at him! Look what he’s doing! What a shepherd! We’ve been doing it all wrong! Look at how he touches them and let’s them touch him. We’ve been doing it all wrong.”

Then I understood why so many had wanted to touch me.

Then I remembered all the touching of Jesus in the Gospel.

I knew then that as a priest I would always allow people to touch me, touch my vestments and would always hold any person needing to be embraced by Christ.

Some weeks later final exams came and I was called by the Bishop to be ordained a deacon.

Called to the order of service, for all priests must first be consecrated by the Holy Spirit as servants of the poor.

My seminary days were over.

INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI [Ps.42/43: III: 4] All is grace!

 

 

Autobiography

51 HERE I AM LORD -ALMOST!


 

THE FIRST READING in today’s Holy Mass was from 1 Samuel 3, wherein the young man is called by the Lord and utters his famous: “ Here I am Lord! “

 

One of those modern songs, I dare not call it a hymn, used ad nauseam for years at ordinations and other liturgies, repeats that ‘ here I am Lord ‘ phrase over and over, but in a context which is more laudatory of ourselves than humble praise and gratitude of His calling to us.

This originates, I believe, in the misconception that once we have said ‘here I am Lord ‘, things are a done deal.

Yet the very life of Christ Himself, indeed the very ‘fiat’ of Our Blessed Mother, testifies that answering His call is but the bare beginning.

He calls us constantly to an ever deeper metanoia/conversion of heart and more dispossessed kenosis/self-emptying, so that by the purifying action of the Holy Spirit we may come to such a complete imitation of, configuration to Christ, that we can indeed, with the Apostle, cry out in truth: “ I no longer live, Christ lives in me! “

The perfect “Here I am Lord “is, of course, Jesus Himself — Jesus in the Garden and on the Cross, saying His ‘here I am ‘to the Father: [Lk.22:42] and [Lk.23:46].

Like probably everyone else, when hearing His call, I sincerely believed my ‘Here I am Lord ‘was complete.

Of course it was, in the narrow confines of that immediate moment, but, it was limited by my lack of understanding about the reality, the implications, as well as the gift, of His call: Whoever wishes to come after Me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow Me. [Mt.16:24]

Christ was obedient unto death….here is the ‘essence’ of our life……We are going to be tempted; we are going to be scourged. Everything is going to be against us; for the one thing the devil doesn’t want us to do is to die on the cross of our Lord…….At night, before you go to sleep, keep in your mind this thought: “ He was obedient unto death. “ [cu]

 

It is in the reality that our — no, in truth I can only say my: it is then in the reality that my ‘Here I am Lord ‘ is not yet complete that I am beginning to write the end chapters of this work, renewing my prayer that should anyone, should you, ever read this it will console your heart with the merciful, lavish, communion of love truth that, no matter how mired we are in sin, grace abounds all the more! [Rm.5:20]

I’M STILL reflecting in my heart upon the Desert Father story of the old man whom the devil distracted from trusting Christ by the scattering of the old man’s palm leaves.

What a metaphor for my life!

The old man said, indeed I say to the Lord, I weep because of the suffering, the shock, humiliation, frustration, yea even the fearfulness, that the devil should be allowed to treat the baptized of the Lord in such a horrible manner.

Jesus touches me, as He touched the old man, with tenderness, and Infinite patience, teaches me yet again a basic truth I always neglect — more than merely forget — the devil has his way with me when I seek to struggle in spiritual warfare, in even the ordinariness of life, by my own wits.

“As soon as you called upon Me satan fled for I have overcome him. “

Yes Lord, You, and You alone, are the Victor.

Once I had started university, as the Dean had requested, I informed him, telling him at the same time I was ready to move out of my living situation but given the cost of university and books did not have the income to get a place of my own. He said he would take care of it for me.

Weeks went by.

Winter arrived.

The Dean contacted me and said I was accepted for the fall term in the seminary and to proceed with the required medical check-up, necessary copy of my Baptismal certificate and gave me a list of basic books I would need, including the breviary for celebration of the Divine Office.

He suggested that even though the obligation to pray the Divine Office would not actually be mine until I was, some years in the future, a deacon, it would be good even now as a layman to begin to pray it.

As to my living situation he trusted my word I was living chastely and would soon have a place for me to live.

Today as I sit here and pen these lines in the rectory of a friend, where I am having a little holiday, I look out through the lace curtains into the expansive yard, with its statue of Mary, flower beds in full bloom, grapevines embracing their lattice. Across the alley, above the roofs of houses on the far street, the sky is boiling with black clouds, as thunder cracks the silence of this summer afternoon, and, lightening heralds the sudden downpour which slakes the earth, burdened by this latest drought.

It has been a good day. [Lk. 1:37]

We are nearing Epiphany.

Once again I fled these pages for months!

I have been scurrying around, chasing palm leaves again!

At this rate I’ll be on my deathbed and they’ll have to uncurl my fingers from around the pen with which I shall still be scribbling away.

Death!

Such a relentless companion of late.

A veritable cyclone of palm leaves.

It has occupied me much, both as a priest serving the dying, and the grieving, and very much in my own heart.

A great mystery in this season when we celebrate His birth — but then here is a deep mystery worthy of constant contemplation: God leaps down to earth Incarnate as a man, lain in the manger and ascends to heaven after having Risen from being lain in the tomb.

So far, since I last wrote any of this, I have attended the funerals of five dear brother priests and been the priest present as two of them were called home.

Each was in his own way a true holy servant of God, His People, our people.

It is also true that the actual reality of a person’s goodness becomes apparent only in death.

This is borne out by the fact, as another priest once remarked in a homily, we seem in our grief blessedly purged, in most instances, of all but the most tender and respectful memories of the deceased.

Yes, each of those dear brother priests was a mixture of saintliness and the woundedness of sins committed, sins thrust against them. But in the end each died in the arms of Jesus and Mary as we, their brother priests, prayed they be forgiven the sins of their youth.

The Pieta moment, for all Our Blessed Mother’s priest sons.

Is this not the joy of our Catholic sacramental faith that within the Church all are members of the same family, saint and sinner alike, and everyone is welcome and Our Lady is there as tender Pieta for all “ now and at the hour of our death! “

This week, the latest death of a brother priest hit me particularly hard, indeed reminded me too of the need to continue this writing.

Meanwhile I hereby pay a debt to my brother priest who died this week, a debt which is another example of the mysterious way in which Christ is always there, knocking on the door of our being and asking entrance:

Almost thirty years ago, not many months after finding myself unemployed from one of my many jobs, I was hitchhiking around the country.

It was early fall and the nights were quite cold.

This particular night the cold was aggravated by a steady drizzle and I was alone, cold, wet, hungry and, in spite of my anger at the Church, found myself desperate enough to bang on the door of a rectory in the small town where I was stranded.

It was well after midnight and no one seemed about anywhere in that town. There was no all-night gas station or coffee shop. No shelter of any kind.

After some pounding I noticed a light come on in an upper room. A few minutes later lights came on near the door. The door opened and standing before me, dressed in a black cassock, stood an elderly priest.

All I remember saying was, “Hello Father. “, and the priest instantly inviting me in.

The place was warm and before I had gotten too far in my tale of woe the priest assured me I could stay the night and immediately took me into the large kitchen, put on the kettle, disappeared for a few minutes and returned with some dry clothes, showing me a bathroom down a hall where I could clean up, dry off, put on the warm clothes.

When I came back into the kitchen he had a simple meal of soup, toast and coffee already prepared, gave me directions to a guest room, and left.

When I came down to the kitchen the next morning he had already prepared an ample bacon and egg, toast, coffee, breakfast. He’d even washed and dried my clothes.

As I was leaving after that breakfast he pushed what seemed to me like a fistful of cash into my hand, told me to keep the clothes, insisted I take a bible and a book of the lives of the saints, and as I stepped out of the door he said: “ You MUST return to the faith!”

A few days ago, just before Christmas, I took the elderly priest who lives here with me to the bedside of a dying brother priest. We anointed him, gave him Holy Viaticum, prayed the prayers of the dying as he fell asleep in the arms of Our Blessed Mother.

Both of those priests, the one who died, and the elderly one who accompanied me, had been brother priests together for decades and had even once served together in the same parish.

The one whom I anointed and gave Holy Viaticum to is the same priest who sheltered, clothed, fed, and encouraged me to return to the faith those thirty years ago.

Please God by now I have chased enough palm leaves.

 

 

Autobiography

35 OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE CARES


IN THESE EARLY DAYS OF THE GREAT JUBILEE I am profoundly conscious that it is the Jubilee wherein grace is intensely Eucharistic.

Catching up on my reading over the recent feasts of the Christmas season my heart leapt with joy as my eyes fell upon these words of Pope John Paul II:

 

The Eucharist constitutes the culminating moment in which Jesus, in His Body given for us and in His Blood poured out for our salvation, reveals the mystery of His identity and indicates the sense of the vocation of every believer. In fact, the meaning of human life is totally contained in that Body and in that Blood, since from them life and salvation have come to us. In some ways, the very existence of the human person must be identified with them, so that this existence is fulfilled in so far as it can, in its turn, make of itself a gift for others. [bt]

I resume the telling of this story of Divine Mercy and Divine Persistence in the life of one soul, one sinner — but a Mercy and Persistence lavished upon every soul, every sinner — writing during this night of the Eighth Day, His Holy Resurrection.

When I arrived here in The Community yesterday, Easter Sunday, at noon, I was told my dear Father Confessor of so many years, and whom while I lived here I had the honour to serve and watch over while he was in the main infirmary, had just entered his final sanctifying agony.

For the next twelve hours I kept vigil, praying over him the ancient prayers for the dying, giving him the Apostolic Blessing, and, as I prepared to leave in the early hours of yesterday morning, I bent down and kissed his feet in honour, his hands in gratitude, his forehead in love.

Early in the morning, just before dawn, like Jesus who at that hour would arise and go off to a lonely place to pray, this holy priest, who had faithfully served in persona Christi for sixty-one years, showed himself faithful to the end, as he arose and took the hand of the Risen One and Our Lady and was taken up into heaven.

Today I write in late afternoon.

These past couple of days the men have dug through the frozen earth in the new cemetery by the iced shut river, so that the body of this holy priest might be placed in the earth beside the much younger priest we buried just a few weeks ago.

Brother priests, local people, Community members from far and wide, we all gathered for the sacred ritual of human grief and the sacred mysteries of the heavenly liturgy of hope.

Prayers, holy water, incense, tears — all were lavished with love.

Then, so quickly it seemed I was standing at the mouth of the grave, a shovel full of earth in my hands, my stole gently dancing on the wind as I spilled the earth down and upon his simple wooden casket and the business of burial was done.

I walked off by myself then across the snow covered field, among the birch and pine to the river’s edge.

How many spring, summer, fall days had I worked this area, cutting trees, hauling rocks, smoothing soil, to prepare this final resting place for my brothers and sisters, without truly appreciating in the depths of my being that it would be indeed, brothers and sisters, beloved ones who would be laid to rest here.

How often it is in life we do things without truly understanding what it is we do until there is a moment such as when I stood by the river, when the full impact of what we have done, what we are about, sears across our mind, imagination, heart.

It is a moment of sacred illumination when we come to understand, at least a bit, that true reality is more invisible than visible.

All is grace.

It is thousands of miles between that frozen river’s edges, that moment of profound grief and gratitude, perhaps somehow though not such a great distance in the heart, and Mexico!

All is grace.

So dear confessor, dear priest, dear brother, dear friend, dear Father, who came to know the secret depths of my utter need of Divine Mercy, and through the sacraments of your priestly ordination and dispensing of mercy in confession, you too of the poetic pen, who showed me, taught me, formed me to be a compassionate confessor myself, encouraged my writing, told me constantly to trust I am a child of the Father, who always spoke so trustingly of Our Blessed Mother — adieu: to God!

AN intense winter rain pours down this afternoon as I write these notes from so many years ago.

It is the same time of year as the Mexico blessing.

Almost thirty years since that mysterious encounter with Our Blessed Mother and as I re-read the notes and write them up in a readable form my entire being is struck once again by the immense lavishness of Divine Mercy!

In the center of every human heart, the depths of the soul, the garden enclosed where the Triune God and the real I, the true self, are alone in intimacy, God Himself is there, seeking always to invite, engage, the soul in a dialogue of such profound intimacy we discover there the essence of actual relationship: creature to Creator, child to Father, sinner to Redeemer, beloved to Lover.

It is here, in this sacred solitary aloneness where no other being, no catastrophe may enter, where the soul is most purely free to ascent or refuse Divine Intimacy, that the Holy Spirit Himself, the Sanctifier, the Purifier, may, if only the sinner will cry out for mercy, enact the holy activity of repentance and conversion, quickening the soul deadened by the crushing weight of sin, back to real life — the life of sanctifying grace, the life of participating in the life of the Blessed Trinity, a restoration of being child of the Father, disciple of Christ, responder to the action of the Holy Spirit.

Evangelicals have a notion of this in their concept of ‘being born again ‘, Roman Catholics experience this every time we avail ourselves of sacramental confession, every human being, not yet baptized, enters into this splendour the moment they open their being to the invitation to accept Christ as Saviour and fulfill the necessary steps for preparation for, and then receive Baptism.

No soul is, in a sense, immune to this Triune Divine urgency which is a continual action of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit to awaken in each soul a response.

Every soul, because this same God has so generously endowed each of us with free will, is free to refuse to respond.

Horrifically such a refusal, if persisted in until death has overtaken us, results in the eternal damnation of the soul, for such persistence is a refusal of Divine Mercy and only those souls who have given their ascent to their need of mercy can receive mercy.

This is the essential experience of the God-given endowment of what is referred to as the conscience, which is NOT some self-generated moral compass but rather is the very voice of the Holy Spirit within us.

At its most basic it is the very Law of God inscribed upon our hearts at our creation.

Baptism and Confirmation enhance this actual grace of conscience into the sanctifying grace of dialogue with the Holy Spirit.

The essence of such dialogue is that we have a listening heart.

Thus, as a man created in the image and likeness of God, possessed of an immortal soul within which is the garden enclosed, the place of encounter and intimate converse, and further as a baptized and confirmed man, one who had frequently in his younger years been bathed anew in grace through sacramental confession, nourished and sustained by the Very Person of Christ Himself in Holy Communion, when I boarded the jet, making use of leftover funds from the insurance claims after the robbery, for the sojourn in Mexico with my companion, it was as one still being sought by my Father, still being sought by the Good Shepherd, still being called to by the Holy Spirit.

No salutary purpose would be served by detailing anything about that sojourn other than the key event.

God has so lavished Himself upon us at our creation, which is itself a true experience of ex nihilo, for while it is true that He has ordained a human mother and father must be the providers of the physical material, collaborators in the creation of a new human person, He Himself creates each soul, therefore each person, breathing His self into us. So we come to be. In this Divine Love-Lavishness He makes it so that no matter what surface agitations of mind, will, imagination there may be, deep within the garden enclosed is a calm clarity.

We are free to choose to open wide our being to the clarity, to open wide our being to what the Spirit speaks in the intimate dialogue in the garden enclosed, or not.

If we heed, we co-operate with grace.

If we do not heed, He will speak again and again, so long as we live on this earth.

The emphasis, in the truth that with God every moment is the moment of beginning again, must be on God!

He, as it were, begins anew in every moment of our existence, calling us into relationship with Himself.

It is the hallmark of Divine Mercy that He never ceases, as long as we live on this earth, to invite us into relationship with Him.

I cannot emphasize this too much because, as must be apparent already in this story of one sinner in need of mercy, my unheeding, my resistance, my fleeing from Him, my constant dissipating of my inheritance from my Father, seems never ending.

What, I pray, is more graphic, more obvious, most consistent, is the consistency of graced-moments of opportunity to begin again.

All from Him.

All from His love.

All from His lavishness of mercy!

Some twenty-years before this trip, one summer’s afternoon when the elderly man, later in this life to become himself a priest, who was my teacher and mentor as a writer, was showing me how to make an article tauter, he spoke to me of his own conversion experience and the importance in his life of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Indeed at the end he stated in a way which I never forgot, and which exploded anew in my heart as the jet came over those mountains and strenuously dipped towards the Mexico City airport, “ If you are ever in Mexico go to the shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe and open your heart to her love! “

Now I was arriving in Mexico.

Now I was arriving in the city of her shrine.

Now I was remembering.

Now resisting, determined to have any and all experiences but that of going to her shrine.

Grace operates within even that which seems absolutely in opposition to grace.

There is perhaps no better example of this, though not necessarily as a clear answer to the question of why or how God could operate in such a manner, than the life of Job or that of Hosea the prophet.

In the former we see how God permits evil to befall his beloved Job, not as punishment per se, but so Job may exemplify absolute trust in, and surrender to, the loving will of the Father.

In the latter we see through Hosea, called by God not to abandon his adulterous wife, the exemplification of the Tremendous Lover Himself who will constantly grant a new beginning to each one of us IF we will allow Him to take us back, again and again and again, like the woman at the well, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who washed His feet with her tears, like the prodigal son, like frightened servants at Cana, like Peter after his repeated denials. We must come to that moment of truth where we admit to Him our adultery, our arrogance, our running; our denial has so exhausted us, because we have finally tasted fully of His mercy and strive to “go and sin no more.” [cf. Jn.8:11]

Perhaps the hardest thing to admit, to accept, in this mystery of the life of grace, is that conversion does not mean He will prevent us from ever again experiencing sin or weakness or the damage done to ourselves by our sinning — hence, for example, an adulterous spouse may still find themselves divorced; an alcoholic may still die of liver ailment; someone else may suffer from aids, smokers from cancer; thieves and murders and others still be sent to jail; consecrated persons be evicted from their religious communities or the active exercise of their priestly ministry in public— and Pope John Paul II, famously recorded by television cameras forgiving the man who tried to kill him still did not walk the man out of his prison cell.

Sin has consequences and His Divine Mercy does not necessarily, nor I would suggest normally, spare us from the purifying opportunity of those consequences.

That is perhaps the hardest of lessons for Christians to learn and accept.

I have learned it intellectually in my life, that is, I know it to be true.

I have not yet accepted it emotionally and still have this attitude that God is not playing fair, a sort of ‘why I am being punished since I said I was sorry ‘childishness, which itself is the experience of the consequences of sins perpetrated against my being in childhood.

Thus once again I can only, in my MISERIA lay face to the ground and wait in trust upon the fullness of HIS MISERICORDIA!

Thus it was that upon our entering into the airport reception area we were met by two young men, clearly out to hustle tourists.

Thus it was that through them, due to the battle raging in my soul over to, or never, approach the shrine, we ended up with my asking to be driven past there in the dead of night when the place was safely shut-down.

Thus it was that my companion determined since the next day was Christmas day we should return there for Mass.

Thus it was that in spite of my fearful reluctance I ended up at her shrine.

NIGHT HAS fallen as I resume this writing.

It is, for this northerner, a seemingly strangely warm night for January, but apparently not, as I had assumed, typical for this southern city in winter. Nor in the north, as I saw on this evening’s news, where it is warm like late spring. The prognosticators suggest this is further proof of global warming.

My heart simply recalls these words of Pope John Paul:

When man disobeys God and refuses to submit to His rule, nature rebels against him and no longer recognizes him as its ‘master’, for he has tarnished the divine image in himself. The claim to ownership and use of created things remains still valid, but after sin its exercise becomes difficult and full of suffering.[bt1]

Man thinks that he can make arbitrary use of the earth, subjecting it without restraint to his will, as though the earth did not have its own requisites and a prior God-given purpose, which man can indeed develop but must not betray. Instead of carrying out his role as cooperator with God in the work of creation, man sets himself up in place of God and thus ends up provoking a rebellion on the part of nature, which is more tyrannized than governed by him. [bt2]

Everyone we human persons are in relation to: God, other, self — as well as everything created, the whole order of nature — all our relating is impacted in a determined way by our sinfulness to increased chaos, by our holiness to increased restoration of all persons and things to Christ.

If we are indeed in a period of unnatural global warming, it is because those of us with the dominate cultures of the industrialized world are greedy. Our sin of greed is the prime source of environmental chaos.

When we willingly, motivated by the highest degree of charity, simplify our standard of living, the natural environmental balance will be restored. A Christ-centric restoration alone will bring this about.

CLOSE TO noon the next day, which was Christmas Day, we traveled across the largest city, at least in population, on the face of the earth, to the shrine.

As we journeyed, by subway, bus, taxi, on foot, I observed the people and was struck by something in my heart I could not exactly define, save to say that even among the poorest, perhaps particularly among the poorest, I saw a radiance in their eyes my being could only yearn for.

Yet seemed to fear at the same time.

When we arrived in the plaza my friend said he would find out when Mass was.

I shuddered interiorly.

I urged him to climb the great stone stairs, go to Mass if he wished, I would wait for him right where I was.

He tried to get me to go with him, but knowing full well how utterly stubborn a person I am, he finally went ahead without me.

The plaza was filled with people, with families, many of whom smiled at me as I stood there at the base of the steps, some even calling out to me the traditional greeting for the feast.

I began to look all the way up the great staircase to the basilica itself, to notice the many pilgrims, some black clad old women alone, some men by themselves as well, dressed in their best, many poor people dressed in all they appeared to have, children, adults, large groups, small family groups, some people dressed in classic peasant garb, all of them ascending the stairs on their knees, praying the rosary.

Was it that I was becoming intrigued by what could be drawing them?

Was it a type of shamed unease as a result of standing there like some rock in a fast flowing stream of people, around whom they were forced to find a path?

All is grace.

Slowly, experiencing a persistent and ever more violent interior shudder, I climbed the great staircase.

The closer I got to the basilica entrance, the more I could hear a chorus of human voices, speaking, praying, and singing.

Outside the noon sun pounded heat and light upon me, each step became a twin effort against the exterior heat and the interior angst.

As I approached the portico my ears detected, from amongst all the other sounds and voices, the words of the central moment of Holy Mass, the consecration.

The urge to enter was immense.

The fear, of a more weighty immensity.

Now I was standing inside, at the very back, and as my eyes adjusted to the shift in light could make out high and way at the front the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I made to flee!

Only my extreme upper body appeared capable of movement.

I could tilt my head, raise my eyes, look towards the image.

All other movement was impossible.

Terror seized my whole being.

Yet it was not now a fearful terror so much as an experience of awe, of desire.

Suddenly from the very core of my being an awareness which urgently rose to a thought which gave way to a yes of my will:

‘MADRE — MOTHER! BRING ME BACK TO YOUR SON! ‘

Suddenly, with a gentle jerk, my body had movement again.

I was stunned.

I turned, fled down the stairs, bumping into a black dressed elderly woman who grabbed my wrist, looked deep into my being, and assured me Nuestra Madre had heard my cry. As Our Lady herself said to the holy Juan Diego: I am the Mother of all who love me, who cry to me, who have confidence in me.

This is, as St. John tells us in the Holy Gospel [ Jn. 19: 26,27]how Our Lady fulfills the mandate Jesus gave her from the Cross, indeed how we fulfill our part for the ‘home’, into which St. John and we are to welcome her, is the very depth of our being, heart, soul.

 

Autobiography

32 IN THIS MOMENT

32 IN THIS MOMENT

SO ONCE again I draw upon the original notes for this work.

The notes I have turned to today speak of the struggle which writing was then, often still is.

 

Sometimes writing is an intense experience, as if I had to squeeze my being to extract from somewhere deep inside the flow of words, while at other times the struggle is to stem verbiage!

Sometimes too writing is as a purifying fire: resisted because the dross of my wounds recoils, not wanting to die, while at other times there is a graced impulse to plunge into the fire of grace!

IT HAS BEEN so long since I have written any of this, I can hardly remember, without checking my notes, where I was in the story, or, when I last wrote.

Certainly months have passed.

Months of extreme humid heat, which seem to have incised a languid spirit in me.

Nights, called so often to the ER, I have seen more death of late than any priest should face…because this priest does not want to face his own mortality!

We are at war, in war.

Not the perversely logical impact of bombs and battlefields where a wandering chaplain would at least have the stench of blood, the wail of the wounded and dying to say: ” We are at war.”

This war is disorienting in its invisibility, though in some ways its casualties are no less visible: it is spiritual warfare.

In my youth I was among the enraged marchers against a previous war, among the determined advocates of nuclear disarmament.

I seem these days to be enraged again, not per se against the reality of spiritual warfare, but rather confronted with my own poverty, my experience of weak-faith powerlessness faced with the suffering victims.

I gaze into the eyes of a teenager who is dying because cancer devours his future as relentlessly as it devours his body. Suddenly his eighteen years have passed in a flash, the futility of it all tears at his spirit, he never paid much mind to mortality –even less to what has been not even a concept of immortality. God is but a myth vaguely heard about, now suddenly to be confronted as an urgent panic question.

Dreams not to be dreamt, and the dreamt ones not to be realized; loves hungered after never to be satiated; life tenaciously clung too with the strength of youth now as malleable as a fist full of water, dribbling away no matter the youthful rage denial.

What of this God?

Who is He?

Where is He?

Why would He allow the outrage of a tumour that eats a young heart?

Where is the answer to unanswered prayer?

Where is the miracle we are told to expect?

What, at least, of some magic?

What of this aging, bald, fat, priest who sits on the edge of the dying youth’s bed, appearing to him not so much as priest of the Risen One as angel of death?

Am I not the too wordy proof of religion’s impotence when what is needed, demanded with justified youthful outrage, is power over death?

Yes!

Sometimes I get angry with You too, though I remain always loath to admit that.

I know You love that child, that in Your dying You are power over death, and have died and risen for him.

I know deep in my heart You would not allow death to take him were it not for his good, the good of being taken up into Yourself and divinized in fullness of real life, forever.

But often times we experience Your good as our bad.

The youth asks me if this has happened to him because of something he has done wrong — what we priests call sin, he insists — or failed to do, what he himself refers to as: the waste.

In spite of 2000 years of Christian faith, how we cling to the age old myth about sin, and fail to see the Resurrection has forever changed all previous implications.

Yes.

Death is the result of sin, but not all sin results in death.

So, who has sinned Lord, that this should have happened? [Jn. 9:2,3]

I sit here, equally wounded writing these notes, presuming the lack of miracle for this young man is because of my sins and lack of faith.

Such an egotistical statement.

I am poor and powerless to heal this young man because Your desire to embrace him for eternity is greater than anyone’s urgency that the boy should be denied You!

Yet I would argue for a miracle.

I must argue for a miracle.

As surely as I must anoint him for THE miracle: forgiveness of sins and resurrection from the dead!

I work day in and day out with the broken, the poor, the sick, the handicapped, the victims of self or other inflicted violence, the despairing, the elderly. Face the broken hearted parents when the new born dies, and sobbing children when the parent, young or elderly, dies.

I am battle weary Lord.

Damn tired Lord.

Lord Jesus I do believe, help my unbelief.

The war within myself is a reluctance to go deeper into the desert of the heart, the real poustinia.

Jesus is always inviting us to come higher friend, higher, deeper into communion of love with the Blessed Trinity.

But it is a journey deeper into the self’s absolute need of His mercy — and that’s the struggle!

My spiritual father, tenderly to be sure, nonetheless emphatic for all that, reminds me I must become a desert dweller within, before I can go into the desert of a log cabin in the bush, in the heart of The Community.

There are no short-cuts!

Fleeing the battlefield does not lead to rest within the Father’s embrace.

In this life the battle IS His embrace which gives rest!

Why do I struggle against the hunger I have to be with You alone in the aloneness of the desert within?

If I were humble enough to answer that, in truth, truthfully, I’d struggle no more.

I celebrate Holy Mass every day.

It is true what my mentor-confessor, says: ” Once I have said Mass the day is complete. It is a Divine success. It is a perfect day. “

It IS a perfect day, for You are the Mass.

You ARE the success, You ARE the perfection, You ARE the day!

You are my life.

You are everything.

The truth then is that I don’t want to step into the desert of my heart because my faith is weak.

I still ask who has sinned, rather than state, with simple trust: Lord, have mercy on me, the sinner.

….a poustinik will be a martyr…and he must be prepared for it. It is the martyrdom of facing one’s emotional self. No one wants to face his emotional self. [bp]

Once aspect of the struggle is clear: The more I write this book, the deeper I am drawn, or at least wander, into, if not deliberately enter more deeply, the desert of the heart. I do so overly weighed down, like any novice in a desert, with things I must discard or I shall not be able to journey far: sinfulness, clung to wounds, many possessions which prevent true poverty.

This, then, is not so much a writing remembering of His past mercies as it is the merciful metanoia and kenosis of the present moment.

No wonder, then, such emotional upheaval.

Now we know which man-child rebels against death, which heart is being incised, not by tumour but by the Holy Spirit.

Resistance then is not to writing but to dispossession.

In this moment I am the sinner in need of Your mercy.

In this moment I am the dying man in need of Your Resurrection.

In this moment I am the emotionally wounded in need of the oil and wine of Your very Self.

In this moment I am the desert wanderer parched for You.

Mother Mary comes and picks up this broken child and lays him in the manger beside You so that therein I shall not fear the cross, Your Cross.

She takes me then in her maternal embrace and lifts me up, places me beside You on the Cross, the true desert.

In this moment I must dwell, for it too is the great desert, it too is the wilderness wherein, because You entered, there, first and engaged in spiritual warfare, I must engage battle, the one You have already won!

This wilderness is both interior-desert-lover’s-rendezvous, Nazareth, and Golgotha, the place which is no-place, where You are Healer of we the wounded, Saviour of we the sinner.

In this moment, Your grace!

Autobiography

27 A VIGIL, A DEPARTURE, A BEGINNING OF SORTS

                           27   A VIGIL, A DEPARTURE, A BEGINNING OF SORTS

 

ONE OF THE JOYS of this pre-Christmas season, this Holy Advent, each year is to bring food baskets, clothing, toys, gifts to the poor.

 

Today my co-struggler, whose kindness to this poor priest has made a place for me to live during this sabbatical, and I, spent most of the day going to those who have little, to pick-up gifts for those who have even less.

Some of what we did was to bring needed furniture to recent refugees from a country in Africa torn by civil war.

These refugees, in their homeland, are persecuted because they are Catholic. Many of the family members have been murdered, the children sold as slaves.

Here they suffer multi-tiered pain. They are reduced to extreme poverty, suffer because of the colour of their skin.

Tragically even the locals who pride themselves on prefixing their own identity with the word ‘ African ‘ reject these refugees because they are too black, too African.

This evening as I walked about the neighbourhood praying the rosary, looking at all the multi-coloured lights, my heart reflected on how we ooh and ah at the colours of fireworks, Christmas lights, autumn leaves, seek out brightly coloured clothing, postage stamps, posters, etc., yet, when it comes to the variety of natural hues of skin created by the Father to make His children beautiful, we see those colours as a litmus test which is designed to render the other a stranger as if they were not one like ourselves.

All men are endowed with a rational soul and are created in God’s image; they have the same nature and origin and, being redeemed by Christ, they enjoy the same divine calling and destiny; there is here a basic equality between all men and it must be given ever greater recognition. Undoubtedly not all men are alike as regards physical capacity and intellectual and moral powers. But forms of social or cultural discrimination in basic personal rights on the grounds of sex, race, color, social conditions, language or religion, must be curbed and eradicated as incompatible with God’s design. [bg]

As this millennium of division, this century of fratricide, comes to an end and we enter the new millennium, the Jubilee Year, my ardent prayer is that we will come to love one another.

Most ardently of all I beg for enlightenment that wherever in my own heart there is a refusal to see anyone as my brother, my sister, and to love them truly, as Christ does, that I repent of my sinful arrogance, bow low before them, begin again in Christ to love.

AS I PEN THESE NOTES, gathering up once more the threads of this story of the immensity of Divine Mercy, I am in a hospital room, keeping vigil at the bedside of the oldest of our priests.

It is another night vigil, a time of solitude.

A blessed time.

When a soul, a human being, like this old priest, is so in possession of the Holy Spirit their very body is luminous, just being within the radius of their presence is to be bathed in holiness as surely as the earth is constantly bathed in light and warmth by the radiant sun.

We’ve, myself, other priests, men and women of The Community, been keeping this nightly vigil for a couple of weeks now.

Tonight Father seems better. At least the IV’s have been removed, the heart monitor is gone.

Through these nights I am coming to understand, though not necessarily yet fully integrate in my thoughts, feelings, trust, that the coming to terms with the end of earthly existence, is a holy, if at times emotionally terrifying, reality which, as a comedian has noted, simply means facing the fact that for all of us death is instantaneous.

Mostly takes us by surprise too, hence the urging of Christ [Mk.13:33,37], echoed by the Apostle [1Th.5:2], that we be ready.

There is, of course, no better preparedness than a holy life.

Yesterday, at dawn, I left here. Left a priest who at that time seemed already to have one hand pushing at the heavenly gates!

After a couple of hours sleep I was deep in the forest with the men cutting firewood.

My job is a simple one, suited to my age and health.

I make piles of tree branches where there are too many to be left to degrade naturally on the forest floor. Once I have a good sized pile I set it ablaze.

A little flame from a match, touched to dried twigs, and soon there is a larger and hungrier flame which devours the piles, the heat causing snow on nearby high tree branches to melt, fall into the fire in clumps which sizzle!

Now, by Father in this hospital, I am beside a flame lit by Divine Fire at his baptism as a child, fuelled with sacred chrism at his ordination.

It is good to be near this fire!

The fire, of course, is Divine, and we are salted, baptized, with this fire and called, for we are anointed with same, like Christ Himself to spread this fire He came to ignite [Jer.23:29;Mk.9:49;Lk.3:16;Lk.12:49;Acts 2:3].