ASK TO BE HEALED – OR – EMBRACE THE JOURNEY?

Daily I pray an ancient litany, given to me by a dedicated consecrated woman, a lay missionary, some thirty years ago. She and I have known each other more than fifty years and I treasure her holy presence in my life.

We are both in that last stage of life referred to as old age or being elderly, which brings with it a persistent process of letting go, a process which at times is excruciating, sometimes frightening, always a challenge to embrace with faith and trust that our Abba, our Heavenly Father knows what He is doing in allowing us to age.

Anyone who lives with, deals with, has as a co-worker or confrere or family member one of “us” who is aging find themselves in a mystery: often; a challenge: frequently!

Indeed the young, as in non-adults cope rather well with we old people: there are similarities between us such as needing adult care and attention, approval, assurance we are loved, for example  – it is the younger as in adults over twenty but well below my age, who can find things a tad overwhelming which then causes much hurt, misunderstanding, anger directed at us so for we seniors the result is deep pain, experience of rejection and a type of dark fear which has us asking if perhaps it would just be best all-round if we were at least less visible, if not ‘out of the picture’ entirely.

Today is mentioned as an example of how both for the elderly person and their younger family, friends, co-workers, this journey of life where generations are co-mingled, pilgriming together, has real challenges, with real people consequences:  being of the fountain pen generation computer systems sometimes are daunting and I often feel I must seem illiterate to this wired generation and so when a serious glitch hit I sent a text to a family member, whose professional field of expertise is all things computer related, for help.

 Their response, simplified here, was they were already having a stressful day and I had just made it worst and ruined things for them.

The paradox is they get upset if I contact someone in their field other than themselves to fix things – but what choice did I have but to do so today – and it was rather expensive.

So I have spent a day, emotionally, feeling like so many in my age group: a burden, rejected, a problem, unwanted, unloved – the whole emotional gambit – feeling I betrayed the family member by hiring an outside technician and then the struggle NOT to give into emotions of self-pity, resentment, anger piled up on top of everything else!

God is very patient and understood my early morning prayer time was less than peaceful, more through gritted teeth and so the day of battle unfolded – hoping my battle with stress would be taken as an offering to ease the stress of the family member.

Then late in the day, there before my eyes, in a pile of notes for a different essay, was a copy of the very litany which in my discombulated state I had failed to pray in the morning.

It is called: LITANY TO THE VICTORY OF THE BLOOD OF JESUS, a copy of which I’ll put at the end of this.

So drawing on sections of the litany in light of the reality of aging as noted above, here is what came from meditation:

I praise You Precious Blood of the Lamb of God who heals all the infirmities of my body, of my soul, of my spirit.

Really? – yep that was my kneejerk reaction until I looked and listened carefully and understood: YES You are healing the infirmities of my body, not the ‘I am cured!’ way I often ask for, but in the ways which enable me to continue this journey towards the end of earthly life, to approach, hobble if need be, be carried bedridden if it pleases You towards, at times with some uneasiness on my part the door of death – which You promise us opens into life!

There are various stages of the journey before being bedridden and carried the last steps of the way – eyes dim, mobility slows, the car goes and public transit becomes the norm, true a great opportunity to pray everyone we travel with meet Jesus, but for family, friends it can mean the added burden of having to bring the elderly person back and forth for visits, hence more and more the visits become less and less and so aging is a time of increased isolation, aloneness, augmented by the stark reality death takes away our contemporaries and so there is added pressure on the young to fulfill our need for human contact!

The challenge for we elders is to embrace all of this with equanimity and love and gratitude, to accept what is offered with joy and not become demanding of others, to embrace solitude as time alone with Him.

The challenge for the young is not to forget us or make us feel we are a burden but to remember we are Christ disguised as us!

When it comes to healing the infirmities of my soul – yeah I experience this in every Confession and in every Holy Communion but here too NOT the easy way I expect: I have to go to confession with a truth speaking, contrite heart – which is rather humbling if I have been needy-demanding of family or impatient or……yeah I’d rather a system where I could mail it in and get absolution by return mail! Nope! Jesus loves closeness, presence, likes us to be right there with Him in the person of the priest so we can hear Jesus Himself speak the words of healing and restoration.

A dear delightfully Irish priest friend told me once, which it comes to healing of the spirit, that locus where the emotions often hang out, that our emotions are both the last thing to be healed, the last part of us to die – and this temperamental Italian sure gets that one!

So just how O Jesus with Your Precious Blood are You healing the infirmities of my spirit?

Well, I know He is because, for one thing, while I might interiorly be extremely hurt, in great pain, feel resentment, finally in my old age I don’t over-react, externally, don’t thereby cause hurt to the one who has hurt me, in a word Jesus is teaching me to follow His Heart and absorb the pain of other, the stress, the anger, carry the burden for them – it is what love does.

So a wee word to all who must bear the burden and wish to learn how to be patient and understanding with those of us who are elderly, and keep getting older: speak with us, ask us about the journey and listen, and we will ask you and listen too so together we will grow and understand this stage of graced life, loving each other with patience, kindness, humour.

Here is the full litany:

 

Litany to the Victory of the Blood of Jesus

I praise you Precious Blood of the Lamb of God who heals all the infirmities of my body.

I praise you Precious Blood of the Lamb of God who heals all the infirmities of my soul.

I praise you Precious Blood of the Lamb of God who heals all the infirmities of my spirit.

I adore you Blood of the Lamb in your powerful forgiveness.

I adore you Blood of the Lamb in your powerful healing.

I adore you Blood of the Lamb in your powerful purification.

I adore you Blood of the Lamb in your powerful renewal.

I adore you Blood of the Lamb in your powerful protection.

I praise you Precious Blood of Jesus Christ which purifies me and rids me of my sins.

I praise you Precious Blood of Jesus Christ which frees me from slavery.

I praise you Precious Blood of Jesus Christ which is stronger than my corruptible blood.

I praise you Precious Blood of Jesus Christ which transforms me to His own image.

I praise you Precious Blood of Jesus Christ was makes of me a new creature.

Glory be to the Blood of Jesus Christ which delivers me from the powers of evil.

Glory be to the Blood of Jesus Christ which triumphs over my enemies.

Glory be to the Blood of Jesus Christ which protects me from the snares of satan.

Glory be to the Blood of Jesus Christ which robes me in the white garment of the wedding of the Lamb.

Glory be to the Blood of Jesus Christ which makes all things new. Amen.

 

 

 

HIS LOVER

Lately I have been re-reading and meditating upon the Spiritual Canticle of St. John of the Cross and originally planned this little essay to be focused on the love affair between God and us, we and Him.
While it is true we are called to be His lover, first and foremost He is our lover for by creating us He makes us His beloved.
Then, a morning routine, as I was preparing to write I checked the news and the day’s emails.
The news: filled with the threats from North Korea, Iraq, Somalia, Syria, places of immense human suffering.
The emails: filled with the anguish of a young university student struggling with depression and the weight of secularism wounding his faith, a woman friend in real danger from a violent, angry, hate filled companion, a brother priest exhausted with his treatment at the hands of his bishop as this priest becomes more impoverished and hopeless, wondering where is the vaunted compassion so powerfully called for by Pope Francis.
Snail mail from a widow who serves the poor but bears the weight of widowhood, a note from a family bearing the stress of a vulnerable newborn who is in hospital.
As one of my correspondents asked: “How come it is that God, who is all pure love, can allow this planet to spin into worse insanity and violence…..”
At that juncture I was about to continue my pre-writing notes when word came in about the bombings today in Boston and for a moment I thought perhaps NOT the time to write about love – yet it is the very absence of love and its replacement by unbridled hatred which is at the root of the deep, cold, dark evil which is modern North Korea, a country where those with power freeze and starve the ordinary people for what? More weapons? For Why? Well clearly the why is to blackmail the rest of the world.
Where is the international courage to deal with such bullies?
It is hatred when violence rips Iraq and Syria apart, hatred which enables all forms of violence be it between nations or tribes or religions or ordinary people or families; hatred and a disdain for the beloved sacredness of other.
So unless we the baptized in particular start taking our baptismal vocation seriously and chose in every aspect of its Gospel rootedness to be lovers as Christ loves, then the global insanity and violence, the global cold darkness of the absence of love, will leave us with nothing more than a decaying civilization of death.
People get a tad tense [putting it mildly] when they bemoan to me God doesn’t seem to be around or answering their prayer and my challenge is: do You love Him?
All of us have a huge struggle with the reality of love for try as we might to be lovers, that is the ones without compromise or holding anything back being the ones doing the self-gift of loving, the truth is mostly we would prefer to be the beloved.
Being a lover is fraught with danger of our love not being returned, danger of our love being outright rejected, and danger of the one we love taking advantage.
But then as we quickly learn in life being the beloved is no cakewalk either!
Reality is, within love between two human beings, love is a learning process, love and pain are inseparable, love cannot ever be 50/50 all the time, love is uncontrollable, much as we like to pretend we have some control over it – true love means I have handed over control from my brain and emotions to the selfless wisdom and direction of my heart.
St. John of the Cross notes the verse: “Where have You hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?”
Who has not wondered where He is hiding when our newborn is in hospital with a tumor, when the women and children of Syria are being blown to bits, when our brothers and sisters in North Korea are starving, when thousands of our brothers and sisters from around the world gather for a marathon in Boston – a city familiar to me and always experienced as friendly, friendliness a type of love – yes where was He hiding when the bombs went off and people died and were wounded?
Normal questions we all ask but the foundational question I must ask, we must ask, first and foremost must be the mirror question Jesus asked of Peter and asks of us: “Do you love Me?”, hence I/we must ask: DO I LOVE JESUS, GOD, EVERYONE?
Am I light in the darkness death culture of hate, or by the coldness and self-centeredness of my heart have I become part of the darkness?
St. John of the Cross comments on the verse: “Where have You hidden, Beloved, and left me moaning?”, by teaching in part that the soul “ calls Him ‘Beloved’ to move Him more to answer…prayer. When God is loved He very readily answers the requests of His lover….If you abide in Me, ask whatever you desire and it shall be done unto you [jn.15:7]. A person can truthfully call God Beloved when he is wholly with Him, does not allow His heart attachment to anything outside of Him, and thereby ordinarily centers his mind on Him.”
I abide with Him and in Him and live and move and have my being in Him not by some isolated pseudo-mystical experience but through authentic presence and fidelity to the duty of the moment of my chosen vocation, hence if I am married the abiding in, being wholly with and attached to Him becomes reality if I am truly self-gifting present to, loving of, my spouse and seeing my spouse as a living icon of Christ, for to love and abide in Jesus is to love and abide in the Father and the Holy Spirit.
Whatever my state in life, whatever my vocation the absolute abiding with, being in love with Him, being His lover is possible, is reality because FIRST He loves, first I am His beloved, first He abides in me, His living abode by baptism.
Yes as my friend wrote in her letter asking for prayer the world is insane and violent, peopled by millions I would add of lonely and anxious human beings drowning in the darkness of the culture of death because the living light in the world, the baptized, has dimmed because we have become more concerned, in the climate of greed which poisons the human family, with being loved rather than being lover.
The extreme radicalism of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the call to love one another as He loves us: selflessly, serving, laying down our lives for other.
What happened today in Boston is what happens when love is absent.
What happened on Good Friday is what happens when love is present.

PRISM OF TEARS

Outside the hermitage window a spring snowstorm covers the world anew in white.
The snow muffles sound so there is a particular silence, yet the sun, though hidden behind the clouds, is already high enough, strong enough as we move towards late spring, that the snow is literally dazzling white, a reminder of the brilliant light of the Risen Jesus.
In the weeks since I last posted like much of the world I have followed the actions and words of Pope Francis, especially during Holy Week and this Easter season.
Meditating on a recent word of Pope Francis, reflecting on the person of St. Mary Magdalene and her encounters with Jesus before His passion and after His resurrection, I was struck by the Holy Father’s comments on the reality of tears, of human weeping.
On the threshold of seventy it should surprise no one I am of the generation where tears of any kind for a boy or a man were simply not on.
Crying was female stuff, a sign of weakness for a male and dare any boy-child cry there was indeed hell to pay, which even as a child struck me as rather odd: to stop a boy from crying spank him, itself tear inducing!
Thankfully we have matured as people in our culture to the point where when the Pope speaks of tears and weeping it is clearly wisdom!
The key phrase from Pope Francis is: Sometimes in our life tears are the glasses to see Jesus.
The Holy Father stresses we should ask the Lord for the ‘beautiful grace of tears’, thus echoing the teachings of the early Fathers on tears as a gift of the Holy Spirit referring to such tears as a second baptism.
The Fathers of the Desert stressed continuously the importance of the Holy Spirit’s gift of penthos [tears], for with this gift we weep not only with contrition for our own sins but those of the whole world.
However, as Pope Francis reminds us, tears are not only a gift of contrition they are also a gift of goodness for such tears prepare our eyes to look at, to see the Lord.
In his book: The Heart of the Desert, Deacon Chryssavgis points out that: The silence of tears reflects out surrender to God…..It is the depth of our love that determines the intensity of our weeping. Through tears, we give up our infantile images of God and give into the living image of God.
As I was meditating on all the above about tears I was struck once more by the impact of sunlight not just on the deep snow as a mass, also what happens when the light hits a single crystal of frozen snow.
Anyone who has walked in the bush on a moonlit winter night has experienced the dazzling display of countless diamonds of light as moonlight bounces off the frozen crystals.
In sunlight, a more intense experience of light, crystals become like prisms and what appears, as with a drop of water, window glass, even the glass of my trifocals, as things through which the light pours undimmed, suddenly at the right angle each of those becomes a prism and suddenly all the colours ‘hidden’ in light become visible.
One of my elderly Aunts when I was a boy had a rosary made of crystal beads and whenever she would pray the rosary with us with light hitting the beads the display was awesome.
If we allow the Light of the Risen Jesus to touch our tears then truly we shall behold immense beauty, for Jesus is light from light, true light, come to fill the world, to fill us with His Light, His very self.
To embrace tears is to embrace the grief of not knowing, it is to embrace overpowering joy, to accept, as Pope Francis teaches the beautiful grace of tears as profound encounter with Jesus, an encounter which, as for St. Mary Magdalene, the disciples on the road to Emmaus, will change our entire lives from being bent towards self and the false gods of the world to having our hearts on fire within us, for it is within the depths of our heart that we encounter more fully Jesus who dwells within us.

POPE FRANCIS

Not unexpectedly after the brief gushing upon his election about the humility, compassion, love of the poor radiating from Pope Francis, the media is now on their typical tear, attacking, attacking, attacking, without of course irrefutable evidence.

Truly while we should pray for, heed, love Pope Francis, we should also pray for the souls of those men and women, in the media and elsewhere, who spend their lives in absolute opposition to Christ, His Church, His Pope, His people.

We have developed such a culture of the angry, negative, tear down and destroy that it seems to me the media in particular have lost their way.

Media should inform with verifiable fact.

To be sure within the reality of human life not all reporting will be of good news stories, however these days things are so tilted towards the aggressive, the negative, the accounts of human hatreds, wars, violence, yes sins, rooted in the awful adage: if it bleeds, it leads.

We are left with a perception of human life, of various cultures, indeed of purported reality in our own cities, towns, countryside, which hardly reflects actual reality.

Perhaps part of the media fury is a reaction to the simple yet powerful, clear and challenging teaching Pope Francis gave in his first homily as Pope.

In this teaching he notes: “Walking: our life is a journey and when we stop, there is something wrong.”

Those who relish finding reasons, real or imagined, to attack others, irrespective be it the Pope or any person, are people who have stopped walking, thus they sink ever deeper in the mire of the dark and the negative.

Pope Francis also taught: “Build up the Church…..With every movement in our lives, let us build!”

We can extend this call to build, with every movement in our lives, beyond Church to society at large.

Always finding fault with family or co-workers or the government or culture or other races, religions, yes with the media [mea culpa] is to tear down, to destroy, rather than build.

To build is movement as elegant as ballet, as dance in general.

To tear down is a nasty, dusty, noisy aggressive, harsh action.

Drawing on words of Leon Bloy, Pope Francis continued: “’Whoever does not pray to God, prays to the devil.’ When one does not profess Jesus Christ, one professes the worldliness of the devil.”

The Holy Father concluded with a call to true holiness in union with Jesus Christ, reminding us we too, like Jesus, must carry the cross: “When we walk without the Cross, when we build without the Cross, and when we profess Christ without the Cross, we are not disciples of the Lord. We are worldly…..I would  like that all of us….might have the courage – to walk in the presence of the Lord, with the Cross of the Lord….My hope for all of us is that the Holy Spirit, that the prayer of Our Lady, our Mother, might grant us this grace: to walk, to build, to profess Jesus Christ Crucified. So be it.”

SEDE VACANTE

Last evening with a simple gesture of closing the doors of Castel Gandolfo the Church witnessed to the world the peaceful ending of the pontificate of now Pope Emeritus Benedict and, by the same gesture, opened the door into the awaiting time for the emergence on the balcony of St. Peter’s of the next Vicar of Christ for the Church and the entire human family.
In his final words to the assembled Cardinals Pope Emeritus Benedict quoted the theologian Fr. Romano Guardini: “The Church is not an institution devised and built at a table, but a living reality. She lives along the course of time by transforming Herself, like any living being, yet her nature remains the same. At Her heart is Christ.”
While the media frenzy has, mercifully, died down somewhat, the ignorance remains! To wit a commentator today on a major network suggested the Cardinals are already forming ‘alliances!’
For people of faith, Catholics in particular, these are not the times for speculation or gossip, for advocating for Cardinal X or Cardinal Y.
Rather we should be spending our time, with open hearts, praying, humbly and ardently, that the Holy Spirit will guide the Cardinals to the one He has chosen, that the Cardinals will allow themselves to be guided.
“There is no need to worry; but if there is anything you need, pray for it, asking God for it with prayer and thanksgiving, and that peace of God, which is so much greater than we can understand, will guard your hearts and your thoughts, in Christ Jesus.” [Phil.4:6,7]

WHY JESUS?

Jesus You know I have been drowning in confusion, frustration, wondering when this so painful period in the life of the Church will end.
It is a sense of drowning in a sea of powerlessness and pain as the world’s media attacks, attacks, attacks the Holy Father, the Church in these long days between Pope Benedict announcing his obedience to Your will and resigning.
I am old enough not to be surprised by my or anyone’s: pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, religious, man, woman, believer, non-believer, capacity for sin.
Such is the reality of life; such is the un-holiness all around.
I am old enough to have known, two of them already among the ranks of the blessed and soon to be canonized, real saints, real martyrs from those same ranks of human beings in various vocations.
There was a time, Jesus as You know, the news media, save for the editorials on the page set aside for such things, reported the news: verified, factual news.
Now we live in an era when repeatedly ‘breaking news’ is flashed around with biased editorializing. Often subsequently the initial report is proven deficient if not completely in error – yet the original almost instantaneously becomes imbedded in the minds of the majority of people as irrefutable fact.
Why Jesus have You allowed so much, to borrow from Pope Paul VI, of the smoke of satan to invade the Church, why do You allow via the media in particular, this war which is doing so much damage to the faith of ordinary people, this war of mockery and innuendo, this media war reducing the conclave to a political horserace?
Then too Jesus I don’t understand why You allow the relentless war in Syria with so much hatred, violence and death, why You allow abortion, abuse of the innocents, hunger, war and every other evil.
Have You no answer?
“My child I have given You an answer in the Parable of the Wheat and Weeds. Go and let it penetrate Your heart. Then go, live out My commandment of compassionate trust. I have already overcome all sin and death, all darkness and evil and I am with you, with the Church, with everyone.”
[cf. Mt. 13: 24-30; Lk.6:27-36]

POPE BENEDICT: Some reflections

Over the past several days, after briefly showing some respect for the Holy Father when he announced his resignation, much of the world’s media, have revealed their persistent anti-Catholic bias, dragging before the cameras the usual assortment of disaffected priests, nuns and others to once again bad mouth the Holy Father.
When not slamming the Church, and the Holy Father, the media then blather on about the forthcoming conclave as if it were a mere human political endeavor, ignoring the simple reality that a conclave is fundamentally the work of the Holy Spirit.
As Catholics we should follow the example of the Holy Father in his humility and simply be praying that the Cardinals do listen attentively to, and follow the guidance of, the Holy Spirit with the help of Our Lady, Mother of the Church.
From the earliest moments of his election as Supreme Pontiff, Pope Benedict revealed his humility and faith, saying: “…the Cardinals have elected me, a simple, humble labourer in the vineyard of the Lord. The fact that the Lord knows how to work and to act even with insufficient instruments comforts me, and above all I entrust myself to your prayers.”
In the intervening years Pope Benedict has been tireless in his guidance of the Church, his teaching strengthening the faithful, his outreach with compassion to the whole human family.
I admit being shocked, like most of the world, when the Holy Father announced his resignation, indeed as shocked as when Pope John Paul, called “the great” by Pope Benedict, died.
We are accustomed to quickly taking each pontiff into our hearts as true father and shepherd, knowing, or at least until now, only death would take him away.
Humbly Pope Benedict has opened the door to allow his successor[s] to choose another path, a post pontifical life of prayer.
In his homily at his installation Mass in 2005, Pope Benedict pointed to the truth of how pope’s are chosen, to the reality of being faithful disciples of Jesus, friends of God: “…. How alone we all felt after the passing of John Paul II – the Pope who for over twenty-six years had been our shepherd and guide on our journey through life! He crossed the threshold of the next life, entering into the mystery of God. But he did not take this step alone. Those who believe are never alone – neither in life nor in death. At that moment, we could call upon the Saints from every age – his friends, his brothers and sisters in the faith – knowing that they would form a living procession to accompany him into the next world, into the glory of God. We knew that his arrival was awaited. Now we know that he is among his own and is truly at home. We were also consoled as we made our solemn entrance into Conclave, to elect the one whom the Lord had chosen. How would we be able to discern his name? How could… Bishops, from every culture and every country, discover the one on whom the Lord wished to confer the mission of binding and loosing? Once again, we knew that we were not alone, we knew that we were surrounded, led and guided by the friends of God. And now, at this moment, weak servant of God that I am, I must assume this enormous task, which truly exceeds all human capacity. How can I do this? How will I be able to do it? All of you, my dear friends, have just invoked the entire host of Saints…... In this way, I too can say with renewed conviction: I am not alone. I do not have to carry alone what in truth I could never carry alone.”
So we wait, with intimate confidence in the Holy Spirit, for the conclave, the election, the emergence on the balcony at St. Peter’s of the next pope.
Indeed each Lent we prayerfully prepare for and await the greatest solemnity of the year, Easter!, so it is a good time to prayerfully await and pray for the new pope, and to pray for Pope Benedict as he enters a new part of his apostolic life.