FIRE TRUCKS roar past the intersection at the corner of which sits this building.

The ground floor apartment in which I write has its only two windows facing the same intersection.

I have taken a break of a couple of hours in this writing, to allow my emotions to settle, to allow my heart to be still.

Listening to the Spirit is vital if this writing is to be truthful but not titillating, void of any suggestion that the events and choices recorded could in any way be excused as other than the wounded reactions of one both sinned against and choosing sin.

 I see this writing as a detailing of how, no matter the actual relentlessness of our capacity for sinful self-destructiveness, God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is infinitely more relentless in His gift of Divine Mercy.

I pray as I write.

I pray that should you be reading this, whatever your state or condition in life, whatever your faith or lack thereof, whatever bondage you have placed yourself, or been placed in, whatever the sin or sorrow – you – reading this, will come to understand that if one person, one soul, as given over to neurosis and sin as I was be saved by His Grace, that is by His very Divine Self, then you- in this moment,  should fearlessly open wide the doors of your being to Him, to Christ Jesus Saviour.

MAN stands at the crossroads between righteousness and sin, and chooses whichever path he wishes. But after that path which he has chosen to follow, and the guides assigned to it, whether angels and saints or demons and sinners, will lead him to the end of it, even if he has no wish to go there. The good guides lead him toward God and the kingdom of heaven, the evil guides toward the devil and ages long punishment. But nothing and no one is to blame for his destruction except his own free will. For God is the God of salvation, bestowing on us, along with being and well-being, the knowledge and strength that we cannot have without the grace of God. Not even the devil can destroy a man, compelling him to choose wrongly, or reducing him to impotence or enforced ignorance or anything else: he can only suggest evil to him. Thus he who acts rightly should ascribe the grace of God to doing so, for along with our being He has given us everything else. But the person who has opted for the path of evil, and actually commits evil, should blame only himself, for no one can force him to commit it, since God created him with free will.
[ad]

 FALL arrived finally and with it another stage in my journey.Over the years going to the parish school there had been a seemingly constant increase in the number of siblings going with me. Now the six of them would head off without me.I would join my peers and head to the Catholic High School located on the border between the inner city where we lived and the dim beginnings of uptown.Academically this last of my high school years was to be the worst. Emotionally the turmoil was great also.Spiritually, to a greater degree than heretofore in my life, grace would have a modicum, but an important modicum, of victory.Having done rather well in a high school musical by mid-term, with my new companion, I had begun to fantasize we could run away to the west coast dream factory, away from the taunts and fear of exposure and all the rest of it.Yet at the same time part of me did not want to run away with him but to escape even from him.Perhaps nowhere in our culture, or rather at no stage in the life of youth in our culture, is peer pressure, and the non-control of life, more acute than during the high school years.They are mythological in popular culture as the years of endless possibilities, yet in reality they are starkly cruel.I recall the most popular and beautiful girl, someone genuinely kind, became ill with cancer, had a leg amputated, and returned towards the end of second term, showing true courage, but leaving all of us strangely fearful of her as if she might infect us with death; other girls left because they became pregnant: yet no boy was ever dismissed for fathering a child; drugs, which made some people truly weird, rejection of authority, suicide, rejection of organized religion, running arguments about what was happening with, and the implications of, ideas coming out of the coffee-houses, the budding civil rights and other movements: change was cracking the seemingly invincible veneer of the post-war society.Pope Pius XII had died earlier the previous year and the very popular new Pope John XXIII had recently announced the convening of an Ecumenical Council. We had all received the sacrament of Confirmation, the reception of the fullness of the Holy Spirit, as we were told in those days, and had thus become, again as we were told, soldiers for Christ.Spiritual warriors.Bishop Fulton Sheen was a must see regular on the now more popular medium of television and each time I saw his radiant joy I yearned to know such joy and yearned to be a priest.Then other yearnings would stir again and any dream of mine seemed an almost obscene impossibility.I recall during that Lent my priest friend began to speak about choice, I having finally made a truthful confession. It had caused a great sadness in his voice, but he did not berate me, only tried gently to get me to agree things were very wrong in my life and needed to change.Perhaps because he was so fatherly and kind, perhaps because I was just spiritually, emotionally and physically so exhausted, I began to listen seriously and even to remotely consider there might be a slight possibility of actually conceiving of another way of living than that in which I was in such near complete bondage.

WE receive salvation by grace as a divine gift of the Spirit….The Holy Spirit, knowing that the unseen and secret passions are hard to get rid of – for they are as it were rooted in the soul – shows us…how we can purify ourselves from them. [ae]

 Sometimes however we are offered this grace as not the experience per se of some joyful and fire filled illumination of the soul, but rather as the Triune God in a manner withdrawing from the soul, allowing the soul to experience the actual, terrible darkness of sin, which is in truth the soul choosing to turn her face away from Him.That is what He did with me for much of the year and so as the year progressed that inner darkness kept growing within me and along with its growth my now constant state of anxiety intensified.My priest friend was aware of all this and did his best to help, but there was still great resistance within me.I began once again to retreat deep within myself but this time something else began to occur.Undoubtedly it was because of the grace of the sacrament of confession, operative through this compassionate priest.Little by little I was curtailing my sexual activity, even with my companion, and I even stopped shoplifting and all the other things I used to do.As regards my companion this caused some tension and at times the fear of rejection would overtake me so violently I would abandon the changes which were occurring within me.But only for a brief period, for the hunger to be chaste, to be intimate with Christ, for sanity and peace, for rest, was becoming the greatest of all my hungers.That spring we were bussed to the Jesuit University for what was in those days a typical religious career day for a Catholic high school.The huge gymnasium of the university was a kaleidoscopic vision of the pre-Vatican II splendid variety of religious habits of the entire major, and some of the less well known, orders of priests, sisters and monks.I was enthralled.

JUST as the power of evil works by persuasion, not by compulsion, so does divine grace. In this way our liberty and free will are preserved….Grace does not make a man incapable of sin by forcibly and compulsorily laying hold of his will but, though present, allows him freedom of choice….[af]

  I left there with handfuls of pamphlets on the toughest of the monastic orders of the day and began to dream of life in a monastic idyll.During final exams that year I could hardly have cared less about how I would do, indeed I spent more time studying the pamphlets and books borrowed from my priest friend about the Order than studying for exams.Proof being I was informed, as were my parents, that unless I attended summer school I would fail the year.Between the changes within me, summer school, and my companion being sent to camp for much of the early summer, I suddenly found myself less spiritually, emotionally, physically exhausted and actually began to experience something totally new: hope! One morning after serving my priest friend’s Mass I boldly announced I wanted to become a monk and would he help me tell my father.To my surprise after some perfunctory attempts to talk me out of the idea because I was still a teenager, he agreed,One evening he came to the house and spoke at length with my father.The priest left.My father said nothing other than it was high time I was in bed.I didn’t sleep that night.At some point the next day he summoned me and after expressing his basic opposition to the idea nonetheless said he would speak to my mother.Another couple of days went by.I have never been able to find out what motivated them to agree with my choice but finally my father said he had spoken with a navy chaplain who had once been a monk. The chaplain would take me to the monastery for a visit and if the monks agreed to have me then, in the fall when school was to start for the other children, he would allow me to go.Mid-summer the chaplain arrived one morning in his big black Buick and off we went.I had no idea the monastery would actually be so far from the city, nor that it would be, when we eventually after a drive of more than twelve hours got there, so isolated in its valley in a great forest.On the drive the chaplain had alternated between trying to talk me out of my plan, to trying to convince me I should ask to be a priest-monk. But to do that would require I graduate and have strong marks in Latin and the former seemed iffy and the latter was a definite no chance, so I agreed my best bet was to ask to be admitted as a lay-brother.We spent the night in the monastery Guest-house and the next morning we were given the grand tour and then had a meeting with the Abbot.He was an imposing figure, younger and more joyful than I had expected, but amazingly well informed about me, as his questions conveyed.I figured I didn’t stand a chance but at the end of the meeting the Abbot said he’d just accepted another young man of my age and would accept me too.I was both overjoyed and terrified.The trip back to the city seemed to pass in a flash and a blur.My parents were clearly none too happy but stuck to their word and since I had been accepted, they accepted I would soon be leaving home.Within a week my companion was back from camp and suddenly it hit me that going meant leaving him and so I figured if he’d give the slightest hint he wanted me to stay I’d skip the monastic thing and insist we take off for the coast and the celluloid dream factory.I told him by first suggesting we meet in our favourite hang-out, the ruins of an old factory near the waterfront.Once there I rapidly blurted it all out.He stood there silent.He wept a bit.He said he envied me and knew I would be happy.Interiorly I was enraged at him, at me, at God.I tried to convince him it was all a lark as a tidal wave of rejection-emotions pulled me ever downward and I made a move towards him….”NO!”, he shouted, “ DON’T! I can’t touch you anymore. You don’t belong to me anymore. This is wrong. You belong to Him!”With that he shoved me away. I fell backwards and by the time I’d gotten back to my feet he was gone.I stood there in the rubble and momentarily tried to make myself move, to run after him.I didn’t. Instead I stood there, railed against God, life, exhausted myself with emotional confusion and then, suddenly, a deep sense of release enveloped me and I became desirous of monastic life again and headed home.A few days later, my father having shipped out again, my mother with all the little ones to look after, an Uncle and Aunt took me down to the train station, bought my ticket and with my small suitcase put me aboard the train.As the train pulled out of the station and they waved good-bye I felt a sudden sadness, a sort of: Is there no one to ask me to stay?The train rumbled through the old freight-yards were we boys had played chicken, running between the trains and out-running the railroad police; across the edge of the city and the rows of tenements and factories; round the harbour area near the docks, and then out into the hills headed for the village near the monastery. 

THE UNPACKING of basic material to continue this writing, including the binders with my original notes, has gone well.

The heat wave, and we are just a couple of weeks away from autumn, continues unabated.

It is the 23^rd Sunday of Ordinary Time and celebrating Holy Mass this morning I was struck by the strange silence.

It was like I was a child from decades ago expecting to hear the various churches of the city ringing their bells, calling the Christian faithful to worship.

Instead all I could hear were the constant sounds of traffic, shouts of people going about doing Sunday shopping, any activity other than worship of Him.

My Mass – His Mass – was then celebrated for this city and the world.

Now it is late afternoon.

The sun broils this city.

Even this tiny apartment is stifling.

I review the notes from years’ past attempts at this writing and find I can do no better than include them as written:

TONIGHT, as I write, it is extremely cold.The wind rises with each passing hour, pulling us towards a new winter storm.It is not the electric lights, which have pushed the darkness out of the window where it belongs, by which I read and write that comfort me during these late night hours.The blue vigil light before the Icon of Mary, red before the Icon of Christ Pantocrator, these comfort me.This writing is serious for my soul.I must witness vulnerably, truthfully, to things which drew me ever deeper into greater stages of sin and darkness, if in the proper stage of this telling the immensity, the lavishness, of His Mercy is to be told with even greater eloquence and as source of confident hope for those who someday may read this.

MOST of the moral and mental and even religious complexities of our time go back to our desperate fear that we are not and can ever be really loved by anyone.
[z]

While by now tv was more and more replacing radio, radio still had some strengths, such as quiz shows where schools competed.That year my school was competing on one such show and the nuns made sure those of us not smart enough to compete would be there in the studio audience to cheer our classmates on.I should admit here that in my desperate search for the ultimate male-on-male relationship which would fill my longing for an older brother/father male in my life, and indeed affirm my own being as a male, I had by then my eye on the older of two brothers. The younger was my classmate.In my desperate and vivid imagination the older brother was the living reality of what I sought. However I figured, since he was always in the company of the most beautiful of girls in the high school, he would never notice me.A friend from the tenements next door, who was also in my class, went with me to the radio station for the show.The two brothers were there and I found myself desperate in the extreme in my desire to be noticed, but it appeared not.Once the show was over, our school having won, everyone fled the studio to the nearest greasy spoon to celebrate.My friend and I got some cokes and fries and squeezed into a booth with classmates.The din of shouting teenagers, yelling waitresses and short-order cooks, the blast of rock ‘n’ roll from the various booth players, barely distracted me from my prime preoccupation, wanting to be noticed.At some point my friend jabbed me in the rib and pointed towards the older brother who had gotten his attention and my friend told me: “ He wants to talk to you.”I began to shake so violently inside of myself I was sure it would spill outwards and people would notice.It did somewhat but no one said anything.I elbowed my way through the crowd and the older brother asked if I could ditch my friend and walk home with him.I pushed my way back through the crowd to my friend and told him and he said sure, he’d see me later.It is only with this writing that ‘later’ has truly come to pass as I lift the friend of my youth up in prayer. I was too broken at the time to have ever noticed that he embodied most of what I was looking for. He never did anything violent or sexual to me, even though he came from the most brutal home in the neighbourhood.I know I have been forgiven for two sins committed that night, perhaps the greater being I abandoned my friend.

 … a man’s intellect, clouded by the appetites becomes dark and impedes the sun of either natural reason or supernatural wisdom from shining within and completely illumining it….my iniquities surrounded me and I was unable to see…because of the darkening of the intellect, the will becomes weak and the memory dull and disordered in its proper operation. Since these faculties depend upon the intellect in their operations, they are manifestly disordered and troubled when the intellect is hindered…..

my soul is exceedingly troubled…this is like saying the faculties of my soul are disordered…appetite blinds and darkens the soul because the appetite as such is blind….

every time a man’s appetite leads him, he is blinded….

the man who feeds on his appetites is comparable to a fish dazzled by a light that so darkens it that it cannot see the fisherman’s snares.
[aa]

 

THE wind whines stronger now.

The snow has arrived and swirls against the windows.

The wall of this old wooden dormitory, for priests, creaks and snaps in the cold.

Down below in the basement, gorging itself on countless chunks of wood, the furnace bellows hot, dry air into the churning blower and most rooms, save mine with the slightly ajar window, are sleep-comfort warm.

I love the cold!

I stretch from this writing which, in deference to my sleeping brothers, in these deep hours of the night I do the old way, with pen and ink.

Only my ears hear the scratch of nib against paper, whereas a typewriter would thunder its clicks and clacks in the night!

The peace of this evening’s prayer in chapel still seeps out from these walls.

It seemed to my heart’s eye that the sanctuary lamp danced especially with joy tonight as my brother priests and I chanted Night Prayer, hovering with the wings of our sacramental priesthood in sacred care over this house, this community, the whole human family, all creation.

AS WE walked away from the greasy spoon I sensed quickly that, for whatever reasons which were his own, this older of the brothers was making a move towards me.There was within me violent anticipation and confusion.How could I have known at that age it was my soul writhing in fear of the darkness into which I was about to plunge myself?He shared his smokes with me and began talking in a hesitant manner but his purpose was clear.After a few blocks, as fog dampened the night’s darkness, we came to the area of the fish market, the old part of the city where some side streets still were cobblestone; cut past the barns where the horses of the police mounted division were kept and, strangely, I had a little corner of my heart at that moment which hoped some cop would come out and yell at us and maybe whatever spell I was coming under…handing myself over to…would be broken.It was not to be.We cut across the tracks and came to the wrought iron fence of a military cemetery, over which we climbed and there, deep in the darkness among the rows of the dead young men I crossed over from any semblance of normal boyhood into a whirlpool of confusion it would take decades for me to be extricated from.I willingly, but not comfortably as is right, admit at this juncture of my life the Lord could rightly admonish me as He did the People of the Covenant [cf. Ez.16:15], but in my hardness of heart I would not have heard, or if I did hear, would not have listened!  Within days I was so totally committed to this new bondage….yes I know advocates of this disorder would claim it was love, but that is a darkened illusion…I had begun to refuse any contact with the original and violent lad who had me in bondage.This new situation seemed to be one of affirmation of my being, though of course I was ignorant of its true cost.Eventually a weekend came when my new companion was away and the original lad caught me alone near the freight yard, tied me in that isolated area to a telephone pole, partially stripped me and beat me, but I would not forego what had now become important to me.He left me there for what seemed a very long time, but returned and cut me loose and said I was free.Another lie.However I never saw him again in my life.Decades later, with my Spiritual Father, I would make a total act of forgiveness towards him and I now as a priest pray for his salvation.

 ONCE upon a time, God, after having been very angry with the Jewish people, in His mercy and kindness stopped being angry and said, ‘ Come, let us talk things over. ‘ ( Is.1 ). A very strange part of the Old Testament, this so-called anger of God and this invitation to sit down and talk things over. If only it could happen now!
[ab]

 It would happen to me that same summer not long after the beating and God would come to sit down with me and talk to me in the person of one of the most compassionate and holy priests I have ever met in my life.He was an academic, a professor at the seminary not too far from my home, past the tenements, down an alley, across one of the inner city main streets.I never did find out how my parents came into contact with him or what made them introduce us, but he did take me on, as a priest and in a most fatherly manner.The presenting reason for almost daily contact with him was that, given the seminarians were gone on summer break; he needed an altar boy for his daily Mass.He paid me five bucks a week, plus a breakfast of bacon and eggs, toast, coffee, prepared by the Sisters who looked after such things at the seminary.It was during those breakfast chats that it seemed to me he could read my heart, yet he never condemned, only expressed concern, tried to get me to open up.Though I was never able to fully break through my inability to trust anyone but my own skill at survival, little by little I did heed his urgent advice that if I could not change my ways while in the city, perhaps I needed to ask God to help me escape the city.

BUT, of course, in order for it to happen, several things are necessary.

First, people must believe in God; otherwise how can they ‘ sit down with Him and talk things over ?’ Secondly, those who still do believe must stop being angry against God. For in our days there is less anger of God toward His beloved people than there is anger in the heart of man against God.
[ac]

 

WELL of all the notes I have re-written so far for this work those have been the toughest.

Not too many years after that summer, when I was well and truly out of the city, I got a letter one day from my mother informing me that young priest had been killed in a car accident.

Decades later I felt his loss acutely the day of my First Mass, yet his presence also.

Did he know when he was befriending that troubled teenager one day we would be priests forever together?

On my ordination vacation I returned to the city and the old neighbourhood of my youth, where so much was changed.

I went to where the seminary had been.

It was gone.

In its place: a mall.

SOUTHERN CITY heat and humidity have a peculiar languidness about them which these past few days have made it strangely difficult to motivate myself to resume this writing.

Yet this is the reason why the Bishop and my Spiritual Father granted me a sabbatical, why my Spiritual Father chose this southern city with The Community’s house nearby this little apartment as the best place for me to live and do this writing!

The sun has set now, though the sidewalks shimmer still with end of summer heat. People sit outside their apartment blocks, the inner sanctums being broilers unfit for human sleep.

Other people spill out onto the sidewalk from the many bars in this neighbourhood while sirens roar, fights and shouts break the constant hum of traffic, many cars with vacant eyed men at the wheel circling the block seeking the ‘ working girls ‘.

Children, some barely old enough to walk, and most wearing only underwear in this heat, scamper about barefooted, within careful eyesight of elderly Grandparents, while the parents are either in the bars, or a few blocks over sweating away at various parts of the line in the huge, restless, auto plant.

There’s not even a bare whiff of breeze to tease the garbage in the gutters and alleys into a dusty dance-swirl.

Ancient fans whirl with attitude from the walls of the seemingly countless greasy spoons of ethnic-dish delights, pouring into the stale gas-beer-garbage streaked air of the street, the added aroma of fast-fried food and lavishly mounded powdered sugar treats.

Jesus mingled among the crowds of the ordinary people, smelled their sweat and dreams, heard their laughter and anger, ate their food and from the abyss of their…and if we be honest truly we are all ordinary….so of our human restlessness, heard our cry of hungry heart and made Himself the one true and necessary Food for Life!

Without false compassion or blind eye I nonetheless move about, look upon, listen to, smell these all my brothers and sisters with such passionate love at times I feel my heart will break unless I cry out: JESUS IS REAL!

But,  for these months,  that is not what the Spirit wants me to do as I move about the sidewalks and alleys.

Sure as I take my daily walks I can within my heart love, pray, bless….and frankly…and here the canonists and theologians, should such ever read this may find fodder for many a debate, even outrage……sometimes in my heart I will gaze upon a whole neighbourhood or upon one person and declare: I ABSOLVE YOU!

It is strange to walk about in secular dress. It feels as if my skin is missing.

But I am to be, in the main these months of prayer and writing, hidden.

Imagine my joy when I found out the house in which I am to live, which should be ready in a month, with a layman friend and co-struggler, is on the edge of this very poor area in which the little apartment we are now in is located.

To celebrate Holy Mass behind the closed blinds each day, bringing Him among them….the blinds a veil, the apartment a tabernacle….is akin to being a priest in the worst days under Henry VIII or the Nazis or the Communists or Nero, for the hiddenness, not the danger.

The people of these streets mostly do not know they are truly loved, nor even that He is faithfully in their midst, yet each time Holy Mass is celebrated in this little apartment more and more of the words spoken through the prophet Zephaniah grow as graced seed here, for Zephaniah assures us of the joy which is God among us, how He gathers the anawim, all pointing to the One who does this, Christ our Lord. [cf. Zep. 3:17-20]

Looking back over five decades of separation from them, to the streets and manner of living of my troubled youth none, even less so I, would have ever believed that the darkness child of those years would this very day have celebrated Holy Mass as a priest of He who is Light from Light!

AS I CAME to the end of my final year of junior school and the start of high school, I was becoming increasingly reckless, desperate, in my various addictions.Paradoxically the more my sexual adventuring increased so did the variety and intensity of the penitential mortifications I was performing in imitation of what I read in my Lives of the Saints book.Sin or virtue, I practiced neither with moderation. My life was lived at extremes, like the ball in the pinball machines I loved: I bounced and ricocheted between light and darkness.Restless, always filled with anxiety, I classically dreaded the morning and was afraid of night, yet could resist the siren call of neither.Any true drug addict will tell you that their life is as much about the hunt for the fix as it is the momentary elixir of the fix itself.This is definitively constitutive of promiscuity itself.

 Even more so than the sexual acts the hunt is the turn on, because during the hunt for a new encounter the addicted imagination can conjure up the ultimate in affirmation of being, all the while, of course, suppressing any attempt by the conscience to advise the intellect and will of the raw truth that it is all an illusion.

In order to be successful both the hunter and the hunted must de facto agree upon a mutual conspiracy of lie, namely, that instant gratification will fulfill the authentic need for affirmation of being.This lie about what is so desperately sought originates, of course, with the father of lies himself whose goal always is to seduce us into seeking affirmation of being from any source other than the Supreme Being, God our Father.Most tragically and dangerously, since the necessary lie which facilitates the sexual expression of desperate need for affirmation of being inevitably fails, as does the act itself, to produce the longed for affirmation, the process must be repeated with urgent frequency. The limited illusory gratification affect of a simulacrum of affirmation endures for ever briefer moments, while the subsequent emotional crash becomes more rapid and devastating.It is akin to the rush of taste-bud desire for puff pastry which, seemingly due to its shape, colour, smell, promises fulfillment, once bitten into reveals itself to be hollow, a taste illusion, all promise, empty of substance.The satisfaction is immediate, but momentary, and can never satisfy a true hunger for substantial food.Thus I, during the period of my life I speak about here, became more and more reckless in my desperate pursuit of affirmation, of love, and hence anxiously sought new partners like a chaser of the horizon, never admitting that the faster I ran towards the very horizon over whose edges I lied to myself the goal lay, the faster the horizon itself, and its over the edge illusory promise-goal, fled before me.Now all this promiscuous activity necessarily had to occur out of sight and knowledge of the one to whom I already was in bondage.Eventually he would find out about my activity because I would transfer all my desperation onto one person, and at that time the price I would have to pay would be horrific.

THE RINGING phone brought me back from those years of my troubled youth to the present moment.

A friend, a hermit of some years, called to confirm the progress of preparations on the feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, Mary deeply participant in the Sufferings of Christ, for his perpetual vows as a consecrated virgin.

Afterwards he asked how this first week of the sabbatical is going, how with the writing.

I am humbled by how important this book already is to so many people, yet it is not even fully written.

 I have no idea if it will ever see the light of day….but I trust it is being written under Your guidance, in Your light.

UNKNOWN to me at the time, indeed something I would not face until near thirty years later, I was rapidly developing a tolerance to the effects, both physiological and emotional, of my addiction.Indeed I admit this was somehow occurring, at least on the emotional level, in the realm of my religious practice as well. In fact, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had crossed over from the authentic practice of religion into the neurotic stage of religiosity.Now it was taking more and more time before the Blessed Sacrament, because of my inner turmoil, more and more elaborate confession strategies…you know the kind where you become vague about the actual sin…more rosaries, more bargaining with God, to produce the temporary lessening of the inner turmoil.As regards my physical mortifications, for example, by now I was walking around with so many pebbles in my shoes when they spilled onto the floor one night as I got ready for bed my brothers burst into peals of laughter figuring I’d been playing in some gravel pit and was too dumb to have emptied out my shoes before coming home.

 Tolerance is the phenomenon of always wanting or needing more of the addictive behaviour or the object of attachment in order to feel satisfied. What one has or does is never quite enough. Subjectively, the feeling might be something like, “If only I could get some more, everything would be fine.”
[u]

I would alternate between two opposing types of binges: chastity, which was actually a type of forced denial of what was happening in my life, and, promiscuity, which was actually a variation of denial.On the edge between the former and the latter, so distorted was my sense of sin and of self, I would actually engage in a kind of ‘prayer’ to God that if He would only let me score one more time then I would give up my way of living and turn to Him alone.

 TWO types of withdrawal symptoms are experienced when an addictive behaviour is curtailed. The first is a stress reaction. When the body is deprived of something is has become accustomed to, it responds with danger signals, as if something is wrong.
[v]

Again I was too young, had no one I trusted, so at the time which I am writing about, of course, I did not even have the word addiction in my vocabulary, let alone could I have connected my increasingly terrifying anxiety-panic attacks with any symptoms of withdrawal. For me it was all part and parcel of the horror and confusion of my very sad and desperate daily life.Looking back now though it is clear that when I was on the ‘chastity’ binge my moodiness, angry outbursts, grief, sleeplessness, deteriorating school work, hours with tv, etc. were the classic symptoms of someone in withdrawal.In those days I took on more and more activity, volunteering to serve early morning Mass in the prison for girls in the old neighbourhood, a paper route, extra projects at school. I’d drive my bike all over the city for hours on end, make endless visits to different parish churches and pray, very fast indeed, countless rosaries and novena prayers and then suddenly I’d sort of burst inside and of an evening as darkness fell would prowl again or, if that failed, submit to the older lad who had me in bondage and soon repeat the whole cycle again..again..again.All the while the self-loathing, a type of trying almost physically to escape from my own skin, grew and grew.

IF I am addicted to gaining other people’s approval in order to feel good about myself, and if I have become accustomed to established ways of pleasing others, I will experience considerable stress in response to outright rejection. I will also experience a rebound of feeling especially bad about myself.
[w]

Obviously all this could not forever be kept from detection by my parents, teachers, or other adults in my life.However I was pretty skilled, though ultimately not completely so, at fending off attempts to get me to reveal exactly what was the problem.I am reminded  of a fable, allegedly of ancient Buddhist origin, about the young Buddhist monk who, frustrated with his failure to progress on the inner path, finally goes to visit the revered old master and asks of him: “ Master, what must I do to be free? “ The old master replies: “Who has you in bondage? “

ADDICTION and its associated mind tricks inevitably kidnap and distort our attention, profoundly hindering our capacity for love. Attention and love are intimate partners; for love to be actualized, attention must be free…..

In the great spiritual traditions of the world, attachments are seen as any concerns that usurp our desire for love, anything that becomes more important to us than God…….

No matter how religious we may think we are, our addictions are always capable of usurping our concern for God……

Another word for it is idolatry. Whether we are conscious of it or not, for however long a particular addiction controls our attention, it has become a god for us….

We are called to grow toward that point at which nothing other than God will be our god.
[x]

Given I had no idea of the fact I was addicted per se I naturally had even less notion I was caught up in idolatry, nor that ultimately the battle waging within me was taking place in my soul, for I was in spiritual warfare.In truth I was, interiorly of course, like any child caught up in war, with much of the same devastation to my personhood.By now several of my chums were either in juvenile hall, dead, some by their own hand, had run away or, most of them, fully into the unique world of high school life.God, who is never out done in generosity, clearly was pouring His mercy upon the troubled youth that I was for later in the year two people would enter my life.One, a wise and compassionate young priest, I would respond to and he would be a great help to me.      The other, well I would not say what occurred between us was because he was a gift from     God.       To be accurate he would simply be a lesser evil than the one who had me in bondage.In a not actually healthy way, but nonetheless in some way, he would be a help because, due to him, I would at least withdraw from multiple promiscuity.Ultimately, even in the midst of the neurotic chaos and sinfulness of my life, I was seeking not the ‘what’ of affirmation of my being but the “Who”: God. Granted much of my seeking was akin to a blind man tracing the origin of light in a darkened room.The real seeking was being done by the One sought:

 GOD IS first and foremost the Beloved, the Bridegroom who sues for the love of His bride: us…..in the first place, it should be known that if a person is seeking God, his beloved is seeking him much more. This Incomprehensible One takes the first initiative, He is the hunter, the Hound of Heaven who pursues us out of love. He longs to take His own inner riches and pour His whole-Self into our created capacities for Him, into bottomless caverns of our intellect and will and memory, faculties made for Him.
[y]

THE PHONE just went as I finished the above.

A call, from the other side of the world.

From a soul struggling with the very matters under discussion here, with the issue of becoming, or not, a Roman Catholic.

 Again the question of how this work is coming.

What are You telling me, without my ego suggesting anything, O Jesus about this work?

 

I hear the Lord saying the very words spoken in Jeremiah 6:16!

YOU have been told, O man, what is good, and what the Lord requires of you: Only to do the right and to love goodness, and to walk humbly with your God.
[ Mic.6:8 ]

HEADING out to the hospital after Holy Mass on this feast of the Transfiguration, early this morning, I took a moment to pick up the mail.

Later, when I returned from the hospital call, where the elderly man I was to see appeared more alive than worried family had indicated, I opened the mail.

The above quotation was on the back of a friend’s ordination card, on the front a depiction of the Icon: Jesus Pantocrator.

Such passages from Sacred Scripture ought to make it clear to every human being we cannot plead ignorance about what constitutes a right relationship with God, other and self!

That a young man newly ordained, in this day and age, should so understand the import of such a word from the Lord it becomes part of the very ebb and flow of his life, gives great comfort to my heart.

I know this man very well.

He will be a good, humble, holy priest, for he has had a long, painful struggle, from the typical secular-hedonist life of so many of his generation, to a surrender to conversion of heart, to saying yes to the call of priesthood, which is humbling to behold.

He is one of many touched by Pope John Paul II.

The media constantly harps on the Pope’s so-called unrealistic challenges to the young to be pure, kind, generous, self-sacrificing, claiming his words fall upon deaf ears.

That may be true, but his words likewise fall into hungry hearts and there, like the proverbial seed in the Gospel {cf. Lk.8:4-8}, bears fruit a hundredfold.

Today is one of my favourite feasts: His Holy Transfiguration.

St. Matthew with precise language unfolds this tremendous reality for us, revealing the beauty of the Beloved[Mt.17:1-8]!

This is a true feast of hope, and like all the mysteries of our Christian religion, requires participation for what we believe to truly penetrate our hearts.

This is a true feast of tenderness, for here Christ, though at the time the Apostles would not have known this, gives them a gift which will sustain them when He is crucified; will sustain us throughout our own lives if we open our being to this same gift.

This is a true feast of becoming, for here is revealed what, in, through and for Christ, the Holy Spirit works to accomplish in every baptized person.

 BESIDES being the festival of Light, of Brilliance, of Whiteness, and of Glory ( all names signifying divinity ), Transfiguration is also the feast of beauty, of freedom, and of human dignity. From the brilliance of the face of Christ every human face, no matter how ugly and distorted it appears, acquires beauty, dignity, and divine worth. Transfiguration reveals the true meaning of divinization and shows the glorious outcome of our own life in the Parousia.Contemplation of the beauty of Christ on Mount Tabor is the paradigm of our contemplation of the face of God in the beatific vision in heaven.[r]

The rectory is quiet this rainy mid-day of the feast.

Summer is beginning to wane, cooler air to hint of early frosts.

The Bishop’s curt announcement of my ‘leave’ was published today, so soon word will be among the parishioners.

Some will, in their humble hearts, understand the need for a priest to take time to pray, to fast, maybe even to write and paint.

Others will bemoan the waste, since there is such a shortage of priests.

A few, or perhaps many, will be glad to see this outspoken one leave!

All is in Your hands, for reputation is something we mostly delude ourselves about, and over which, in this age of purulent gossip, none can feel secure.

It is an aspect of being poor, hence vulnerable, I cannot yet claim to have truly embraced, but which I accept nonetheless as a reality.

I am deeply aware of the various dangers about writing the story of how it came to be I have such need of His Mercy. The danger of making the terrible, romantic; of readers misunderstanding the seriousness of sin, perhaps even seeking here a justification for hardness of heart; of causing people to miss the point and have an ‘ I told you so’ attitude towards priesthood, as if priestly reputation was not already battered enough.Still, it is writing I have been mandated to do by obedience to my Spiritual Father.Of course there is always within me as I write this, or anything, to do so as an act of, and with, prayer.Not only so as, in this instance, to avoid writing anything sensational, or any error, but so as to write in a way which will further the spread of the Gospel, of those who read crying out: JESUS, MERCY!A boldness perhaps for a writer, but not for a priest.Looking back I understand now a significant misstep in my sexual and emotional development, which development thus became frozen in adolescence for decades, was my relationships with the females in my peer group.I failed to relate to them as persons. I related to them only as objects of my disordered desires and immense need for affirmation, for love.Pseudo-mother, pseudo-wife, was the way I approached them.Some, of course out of their own disorders, responded in kind, while others distanced themselves from me.Often, between their mothers and mine, a combined effort saw to the temporality of such relationships until the hassle became too much exposure for me and I, other than the occasional date for a school dance, pulled away from female persons altogether and developed a mild form of misogyny — not hatred of woman per se but rather a fear which would take decades to heal because it was interwoven with my whole identity disorder of mind ( emotions and reason ), heart and soul.Having no right relationship with my own mother, or with female peers, hence a disordered relationship with the feminine in general I fared even worse when it came to the masculine.Being the oldest male in the home most of the time, with my father away with the navy, I would, when he was away, find myself a type of emotional husband-father figure which, when he would return home, was increasingly difficult to put aside to assume once again my proper place as male-child, son.Pointedly I was deprived of proper maleness formation.

 …..his problem consisted in the fact that he was split off from his masculinity and as a consequence from his real self…..the splitting off began..when he was three years old….to be split off from his masculinity meant he was separated from the power to see and accept himself AS A MAN. His inner vision of himself was sadly wanting…Within his heart there were no pictures of himself as a man and as a person in his own right…inside…there was a peculiar void, a nothingness that he attempted to fill with an unhealthy fantasy life….[s]

The above insight accurately describes how I was becoming.The process of induction by which I sought to bring about the experience of the masculine in my life became itself a major component of the very confusion I was seeking to escape.My escapades with the gang I hung with became increasingly a combination of dangerous adventures, such as playing chicken with freight trains, petty ‘ b and e’s’, and, what can best be termed primitive forms of homosexual activity.For most of the guys in the gang I hung with the latter was a passing phase, soon outgrown as they became more adept and confident with girls.Not so for me.I was so turned inside of myself, split, walking beside myself, living within my own intellect and fantasy world, so repressive of my true emotions, and increasingly so untrusting of others, especially adults and God, hence obsessively needy of another’s arms, particularly male, that I quickly became, long before the term was overused as an excuse to avoid responsibility, a sex-addict.Because I was an instant-need-gratification addict.

 God creates us out of love…Scripture proclaims that this love, from which and for which we are created, is perfect…..I am certain that it draws us toward itself by means of our own deepest desires. I am also certain that this love wants us to have free will…we are not completely determined by our conditioning..our freedom allows us to choose as we wish for or against God, life and love…free will is given to us for a purpose…to love God in return..to love one another….this is the deepest desire of our hearts….our creation is by love, in love,…for love…but our freedom is not complete. Working against it is the powerful force of addiction…addiction USES UP desire…sucking our life energy into specific obsessions..compulsions..addiction is a deep-seated form of idolatry..objects of our addictions become false gods…what we worship, what we attend to, where we give out time and energy, INSTEAD OF LOVE. Addiction..displaces and supplants God’s love as the source and object of our deepest desire. [t]

The addicted heart is a hunting heart, a lonely heart, a vulnerable heart, blinded by compulsion.Only a heart at rest, and the place of that rest must be in God, is a heart aright.The sheer weight of all the confused compulsion, increasing the need for affirmation, intensified vulnerability to a shift from hunter to prey.Word reached me through street gossip among my peers about a lad a few years my senior, a lad of alleged experience in the areas which were confusing me.Even before I had met him, in my interior musings through my fantasy life, I had constructed an intimate, affirming, relationship.My plan was to seek him out and get him to want me.It was the induced journey of moth to flame.By the time I was snared in the relationship he had already begun to be physically more rough, at times administering beatings in ways which would not leave marks greater than those you could get playing ball, at other times through emotional intimidation making me do things for, or with, older boys of his choosing. They were his peers, and some of them were scary.As was this lad’s Great-Aunt who lived in a dark purple coloured house, the windows always shaded. She dabbled in tea-leaves and other strange things and whenever she looked at me my inner being froze.I avoided her as much as possible.Only after my conversion did I understand this woman was involved in the occult and all the dangers associated with that.I have been prayed over and delivered from those influences, but they are difficult to be freed from, extremely dangerous to get involved with, yet in this too this generation is extremely, sometimes wilfully, naive. 

IT IS late evening.

 The dusk sky filled with multi-coloured clouds.

There is a stillness about the neighbourhood as night approaches.

Families settle for the evening this mid-work week.

The constant rumble of trucks in and out of the cereal factory, in and out of the hospital next to the church, the late day freight rumbling across the canal bridge, all have come and gone.

Divine Office complete, save for Night Prayer, Holy Mass celebrated this feast of the Patron of Parish Priests, St. Jean-Marie Vianney.

It seems a long, long way from the summer evenings of my growing up, when the streets were a place to prowl, to hustle.

At that time of my life the unfolding of night was often more welcomed than the opening of the day.

Every once in a while I will see some boy, or girl,[ these days more and more girls seem to wander the streets than ever before], wandering alone with that same sad-searching expression I know I had at that age.

 I will immediately pray they be spared what I both endured and forced upon myself.

By the mid-fifties as I entered adolescence the inner loneliness, the split within myself, the false self, the being bent towards myself, had pretty well taken hold, sunk deep roots within me.I really had no way of understanding what was happening.I was seeking, at times more unconsciously than not, some-thing, some-one.Obviously I was totally ignorant of the simple reality the some-one I was hungering for could never be replaced by any mere ‘one’ – for my heart, every heart, aches for the One who patiently awaits us!If I did experience any sense, or awareness, of what it – who – was missing, being sought, fear would envelop me – fear of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, and I would quickly deny the insight with the lie that I needed no-thing, no one.I began to look at peers with one of two attitudes: sometimes as sources of danger because they were smarter, tougher, could determine how others would react to me, or  as a source of attention, affirmation, and that most addictive substitute for true acceptance and love, immediate sexual gratification.What would begin with hungering eyes would end in night time aloneness darkness.The increasing darkness pervading my mind, heart, soul would lead to more frequent experiments with danger – such as train-jumping where you’d run beside a slow freight and jump onto a flatcar for a free ride;  petty break-ins, shoplifting -or with solitude, as I spent hours alone sitting on rocks at harbour’s edge, pursuits.Experiments led to addiction.Addiction led to guilt.Guilt became shame.Shame became estrangement from self, family, others, God.Affirmation became obsession.It’s sought after fulfillment turning into a source of anxiety.Danger seemed to mute the terror.This nonetheless became addictive.Satisfying less.Demanding more experimentation.Experiments led to addiction.Addiction led to guilt which led to………The cycle became my life. My life became so terribly dark and sad.Yet by some incomprehensible grace I did not, in those years, either lose nor reject faith, thus hope. I still trusted that when I went to confession, no matter how terrible the sin, I was forgiven and granted the reality of beginning in Him anew, again.Holy Mass, especially Holy Communion, was like this tremendous oasis of joy.There was no safe middle ground in my life in those days.It was all extremes, of studiousness and failing grades; of piety and tireless pursuit of sin; solitude and a desperate need to fit in; belief in the sacramental realities and the conviction there was no one to care for me but myself.Here the question could well be posed: what about my parents, my family, could no one see what was happening?      Suffice to say here that from time to time my parents tried to find out but I was extremely    adept at verbal defences and reassurances, keeping my life outside the home hidden from life within.The Navy had my father. Had him away from home so much that in fourteen years he had been there for only one of my birthdays and that when I was a toddler. My mother had my four younger sisters and two younger brothers, and her own ailing father to care for as well. Her health and her own needs were such that there was nothing extra to give. In those days there were not the types of social services or experts in the school system as there are nowadays. 

NIGHT has fallen.

I am tired.

 I am also a little surprised at how draining it is to write about all of this.

What was I thinking when I began this and it seemed to flow so easily!?

Still, I am writing under obedience.

 This is one of the books my Spiritual Father has said to write during the sabbatical.

 I know if You will that it ever be read then right in this moment You have a special grace for the one reading, so by Your grace, tomorrow, I shall continue.

 

EARLY THIS morning I awoke with this chapter on my mind and was moved to bring the whole matter to prayer.

Preparing for the day, while at prayer, I was struck by the beauty of the opening morning, the golden hues of the sky, the freshness of air coming through the open windows.

My heart was struck by the immense mystery of Divine Mercy and the gift of a new day.

Life is so incredibly precious, such a free gift, for we do not, cannot, either create ourselves or sustain our own lives by our own devices.

True, we can affect the way we live. We can terminate the material existence of another, even of the self.

By sin we can enter death refusing His Mercy and condemn ourselves to an eternity separated from the Beauty of His Face.

Just as He freely in love creates us so He freely in love never takes back the immortal life-gift once granted.

My heart then understood part of the struggle in writing this is because there is one who does not want to be exposed through this, one who does not want his vile attempts at the destruction of souls made known and therefore a mistake I have made in this work has been to forget in my prayer before writing to also pray for protection from that one, the evil one, the father of lies, the prince of darkness, the devil: satan.

Now as an adult believer I know the fact of the battle in heaven between the Angels of Light and the dark spirits [ Rev.12:7-9 ] and how time and again spiritual warfare is shown occurring now on earth [ Dn. 11:1,2 ], always with the assurance the Angels are with us [ Jude 9 ] and in Her last prayer of the day, the ancient Office of Compline/Night Prayer, the Church repeats the cautionary words of St. Peter about the one who prowls to devour [ 1Pet.5:8,9 ] –  we must remember it is part of every human life, this struggle between light and dark, as Jesus cautions more than once [ Mt. 10:28 &  Jn.8:44 ], this same Jesus who alone is Truth and so alone can expose and destroy the dark works, and overcome the dark one [ 1Jn.3:8 ].

 

The power of satan is, nonetheless, not infinite. He is only a creature, powerful from the fact that he is pure spirit, but still a creature. He cannot prevent the building up of God’s reign. Although satan may act in the world out of hatred for God and His kingdom in Christ Jesus, and although his action may cause grave injuries — of a spiritual nature and, indirectly, even of a physical nature — to each man and to society, the action is permitted by Divine Providence which with strength and gentleness guides human and cosmic history. It is a great mystery that Providence should permit diabolical activity, but ‘ we know that in everything God works for good for those who love Him.’ [q]

SAINT MICHAEL THE ARCHANGEL, DEFEND US IN OUR DAY OF BATTLE, BE OUR SAFEGUARD AGAINST THE WICKEDNESS AND SNARES OF THE DEVIL. MAY GOD REBUKE HIM WE HUMBLY PRAY AND DO THOU O PRINCE OF THE HEAVENLY HOSTS, BY THE POWER OF GOD, THRUST INTO HELL SATAN AND ALL THE OTHER EVIL SPIRITS WHO WANDER ABOUT THE WORLD SEEKING THE RUIN OF SOULS. AMEN. {Prayer of Pope Leo XIII}

 

It is late afternoon now.

The Pastor has gone on his day off, the staff have left for the day.

 The Assistant has gone with the Youth Group representatives for a youth conference where thousands of Catholic Youth are gathering from all over the continent.

I have spent time before You Present in the Blessed Sacrament and have come to understand that along with my own neurosis, which weakened my perception and acceptance of reality, along with the family problems, unknown to me at the time because, while on occasion I did sense or at least suspect so ( but being so young was in such matters without experience ), satan was at work within all that was happening to and within me.

Now when I return to those notes from years ago when I first began this work, the reflections make sense and I begin to see that ultimately You were present to me all along and never allowed me to be completely lost and for that I am grateful beyond adequate expression and I know and trust You grant that same love and mercy to those who read this, to any who will ask.

WHAT I AM trying to express is coming out of my heart very carefully.The focus must not be upon me, nor what I have done.It must be on CHRIST AND WHAT HE HAS LAVISHED, MERCY.THIS IS WHAT HE IS OFFERING YOU!I have come, finally, in my life to grow in trust of the fact that within Sacred Scripture is revealed the Beautiful Face of God, the Living Icon of the Father, JESUS!From His radiant eyes, gazing upon and into each human heart with love for us, pours forth the Fire of Love of the Father, the Holy Spirit, of Jesus Himself, and this love is ALL MERCIFUL.To gaze into the eyes of Christ, Divine Mercy, is to contemplate the Holy Trinity.Part of the grace of this struggle to write is the gift of coming to understand and be grateful for the reality of grace that, even as I entered more and more deeply into a split from myself and entered a life of darkness and grief, turning from the One True God — who does not devour us but feeds us with His Very Self — to idols which consumed me, God my Father, God my Redeemer, God my Sanctifier, God the Holy Trinity, did not abandon me.Not even when I felt that He had.The last years of childhood and the first years of adolescence were the first time in my life when I frequently, though not completely, turned my face from Him.Closed myself off to His Voice.Exchanged the freedom of a child of God for the bondage to my false self.Open ever more to darkness I came to dislike the light. Even simple  daylight.Night was my shelter, my reliable companion.I was constantly vulnerable to evil influence.Within my neurotic fears, in my soul, I had become like the Chosen People as described by the Lord Himself through the prophet Hosea, who speaking for the Lord bemoans how the more He calls us to Himself the further away we go, forgetting all His love and tenderness[Hs.11:1-4].As will become clear it would, even though it may appear at times that I was indeed turning by grace to Him, take over forty years for me to accept the truth that He IS our Healer.Only then could I rejoice with the Psalmist that this little bird had escaped the snare {Ps.  124: 7,8}

THE HEAT WAVE has finally broken.

 Today the sky is grey and pours cool rain upon an exhausted city, burnt lawns. In the countryside thirsty fields and crops drink the water so long awaited.

We three priests here juggle dates so holidays and retreats can be completed before my sabbatical starts in a month.

I enjoy a day off and resume this editing of the original notes, the re-drafting, new writing.

 I continue my meditation on the letter of Pope John Paul II to artists, draw comfort, joy, and affirmation of my Spiritual Father’s directive I take these months to ‘write, pray, paint’.

Not all are called to be artists in the specific sense of the term. Yet, as Genesis has it, all men and women are entrusted with the task of crafting their own life: in a certain sense, they are to make of it a work of art, a masterpiece.

… In shaping a masterpiece, the artist not only summons his work into being, but also in some way reveals his own personality by means of it. For him art offers both a new dimension and an exceptional mode of expression for his spiritual growth. Through his works, the artist speaks to others and communicates with them. …

… In order to communicate the message entrusted to her by Christ, the Church needs art. Art must make perceptible, and as far as possible attractive, the world of the spirit, of the invisible, of God. It must therefore translate into meaningful terms that which is in itself ineffable. …

… The Church has need especially of those who can do this on the literary and figurative level, using the endless possibilities of images and their symbolic force. Christ Himself made extensive use of images in His preaching, fully in keeping with His willingness to become, in the Incarnation, the Icon of the unseen God…..[n]

Reviewing the original notes for this chapter I found myself reflecting on the mystery of beauty and was astounded when a particular passage came to my heart from the Holy Gospel wherein Jesus powerfully cautions us for fear we would allow the light within us to be darkness! [ Lk. 11:35].

In the period of my life under consideration that is something I failed to do. Indeed the darkness was forcing more and more of the light out of my being, because I was choosing the darkness.

The tendency today, of course, is to find all forms of justification, or at least excuse, for inner darkness, aberrant behaviour, and so forth, since we no longer have any concept of sin.

The Twinkie defence, the abuse-excuse, yet while to a degree all these and others may truthfully be said to impact upon one’s ability to freely choose, rare is the case where the impact is such that, short of being totally psychotic, we have lost all possibility to exercise our free will.

I note that here for I would not want the reader, as I continue this telling, to mis-read any of this as an appeal to some form of justification or excuse for my choices.

Where the deliberate or unintended result of the sins of others against me weakened my ability to choose freely, there by His grace I have forgiven.

 There by His healing the damage has been, or is being, undone.

Mostly though I was the agent of my own wounding, a type of emotional and by sin spiritual incision into my soul, causing the haemorrhage of light until I became filled with darkness.

This, of course, did not happen all at once, but over a prolonged period of years.

However by the time I was aware that it was happening I was already so far along, and so filled with fear, that it was akin to drowning or sinking in quicksand. The more you struggle the faster, and deeper, you sink.

Even now as I go over, this afternoon here in my study, the notes about those years I experience uneasiness, a type of restlessness, a wanting not to recall, or face, that period in my life.

But how can I reveal the truth of how His mercy is greater than our capacity to sin if I fail to make a complete confession no matter the illusory assault on my ego?

In her book THE BROKEN IMAGE, Leanne Payne has many short phrased treasures and one which summarizes my mid-childhood is this:

We are more vulnerable to temptations and odd compulsions when we develop one part of the mind or personality at the expense of another.
[o]

SUCH WAS my growing experience of, delight in, creation: grass, flowers, trees, birds, clouds, sky, moon, stars, sun, rain, ice, snow, fog, sand, rocks, insects, and especially the ocean.I would as often as possible go off to places alone, in particular deserted harbour areas where I could, if not in the classic sense, pray, at least engage in a type of contemplation, or inner reflection, in an experience of solitude which was a temporary respite from inner terror, danger, the compulsive search for the narcotic of sensual pleasure, or pain, the frantic hunger for affirmation.Creation was no real threat, made no real demands for even summer or winter storms whipping your face and body with salt spray, wind, frozen pellets of a blizzard, bone piercing cold fog, these were no threat but a type of sensual confirmation you were alive!Sometimes, when I was especially mostly one huge ache of aloneness-grief, the elements spoke only of an awesomely beautiful and tender Presence, the One who so gently asked Elijah the ultimate ‘why’ question!  [ 1 Kg. 19: 11-13]The two places in my childhood where I felt secure and alive where first in church before the Blessed Sacrament or out there, somewhere, among the elements, the two being almost interchangeable, and within my own imagination aided by the world of books, adventure tales about mythical figures or real ones, the saints and martyrs of the Church.I was becoming at this stage increasingly aware, though totally un-willing to accept, and even if I had where could I have turned for help I had no idea, that in spite of my best efforts to do otherwise I had virtually no control over my life.So much was changing all the time.The world was changing and each change, even those which you might suppose where at least one step removed from a child, seemed to rattle me deep in my inner being.Steam engines gave way to diesel and so part of the comforting romance of playing around the freight yards disappeared and some of my security with it; radio which you could listen to in your active mind gave way to television which seemed to create a type of intellectual trance; the Korean War reminded you of the dangerous world of nations and the fragility of life was accented every time a newsreel, or later the tv news, showed another atom or hydrogen bomb being exploded in the southern deserts and gradually almost every week in school there were air-raid drills and even the dumbest child quickly figured out hiding under your desk would not keep the invisible radiation murderer at bay.The playful innocence of grade school gave way to the more vicious emerging peer pressure of junior high, the infantile male distaste for girls, who were all just extensions of your sisters, suddenly became transfixed as female classmates developed in shapes and ways no one’s sister ever could.Of course boys at that age are not immune to change either, though for boys it is in many ways a more solitary, if not anymore subtle, affair and one not usually talked about in any sacred manner. Hair began to sprout in places not conducive to comfortable converse, urgent needs to surface with physical change, seemingly always at the most embarrassing moments; strange spontaneous occurrences at night; the street-tale discovery of aspects of puberty’s potential and suddenly sacramental confession became a real experience of humbling oneself.Something else was happening within me too, a growing and relentless anxiety which often, indeed almost daily, was experienced as severe anxiety-panic attacks.I would be certain that at any moment I would go insane or keel over in terrible pain and die or throw-up or all of those at once!More, I was becoming desperate to find a way out of this cycle of desire and anxiety, light and darkness, serene solitude and desperate need for affirmation.My life was a continuous, exhausting treadmill where all the relentless effort led nowhere.Less and less trusting of the world, of adults, of peers, for everyone seemed either to abandon, betray, or demand, I found myself more and more at odds with God, that is the stealing, smoking, sexual activity which I increasingly turned to as anaesthetic alternative to pain, grief, fear, being mortal sins, I’d go to confession more and more desperately, less and less confident there would be a miracle and all would be well. Then there was that horrific summer of the last great polio epidemic when kids were kept         home and for me that meant just too much time to think, think, think, think, until the fall came, and we returned to school and the empty places of those who had died or been consigned to the dreaded half-life in an iron lung.The cycle became terribly simple: smoke, steal, fight, engage in sex, wallow in guilt, fear, have a massive panic attack, go to confession, pray. For a day or two be somewhat a normal kid, drown in aloneness, confusion, wonder, smoke, steal, fight, engage in sex, wallow in guilt, fear, have a massive panic attack, go to confession, pray, for a day or two be…… 

Th’expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit and possession so,
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this world well knows, yet none know
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.
[p]

 I was becoming insatiable as one who read.Thought.Questioned.Always questioned.There was within me an immense inner need to know, to understand.So I would wander the corridors of books, the pathways of ideas, the streets of the city, the strategies of prayer, desperation of relationships, anywhere that I might find a fragment of an answer, piece of the puzzle, hint of my identity, possibility of the why of I and life!My parents, teachers, parish priest, each in their own way desperately tried to help me, but none had the whole picture because either they were not with me all the time..teachers only saw me in school for example…or I never gave them the complete account of anything…if my parents found me in tears I’d have no explanation, if a priest tried to find out if a particular sin was part of a pattern I’d never go back to him for confession, so no pattern would be discovered.Put by my parents into a summer program for troubled and delinquent juveniles I’d slip away within an hour of the program beginning and be about the waterfront and hanging out with my so-called friends and then slip back into the building and out the front door with the other kids as if I had been there all day.Yet, from my reading of the penitential practices of saints, I’d walk about with pebbles in my sneakers and do other mortifications like skip meals in order to try and curb my appetites, do penance for my sins.Even when most of my buddies had abandoned all but the obligatory attendance at Holy Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation I remained an altar boy, trying to keep from being severed the thread of light that might lead me from the darkness.That was the fundamental problem — I — was trying to handle it all on my own.I was ever more bent towards myself. 

THE HEAT WAVE continues its relentless assault.

I have spent the day in prayer, answering mail, doing laundry.

Friends downloaded a list of every country on the face of the earth so I can pray for each nation by name.

What a joy to be a member of the human family!

It is not the seemingly obvious wars between nations, as destructive as they are in their own right, which in reality have the greatest number of casualties.

It is that other war, raging in each soul,  in the spirit of each nation, which takes the greater toll.

On the battlefields of mud, soaked with human blood, the physical end comes with physical death.

The casualties of spiritual warfare, unless crying out for His mercy, risk facing an eternal fate.

St. Paul encourages the Corinthians, and all of us, that while we are engaged in the true battle against visible and invisible evil we are well armed {cf. 2 Cor.10:3,4} and speaking to the Ephesians advises us on how to be protected as well {cf.Ep.6:16,17} – simply put, not to rely on our own strength!

Of course this means we strive to live in reality, to live the Beatitudes, to live with and for Christ, to be filled with life, with love – to love!

ONE DAY Father Lot went to Father Joseph and told him, ‘ As far as I can, I keep my rule. I eat little, I pray and am silent. I work with my hands and share my bread with the poor. As best I can, I strive to purify my heart. What else should I do? ‘ Then Father Joseph stood up and stretched out his arms, and from his fingers shot tongues of fire. ‘ If you want, ‘ he said, ‘ you can become a living flame. ‘

To become a living flame: that is the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus the Master……There is no secret about the nature of that fire. It is simply love. Love is the fire the Son of God came to cast on the earth…the burning passion for His Father and for us that bore Him to the Cross and through it to His Resurrection. Love is the fire the risen Lord pours into the hearts of all those who follow Him, those who hear His voice today as well as His first friends.

This love is more than a human word or metaphor. It is the living Spirit of the living God, alive in us. It is the Holy Spirit who pours God’s love into us and makes us living flames. If we want, then, we can become living flames of love because, as Jesus has promised, we shall receive abundantly.

……we are not on fire. Why not?….we are uncertain that such extravagance is either possible or desirable…we are honestly not sure how to ask for the Spirit, even if we do sometimes see clearly that we can have no real joy outside the fire of His love. [i]

Preparing for Holy Mass this evening my heart was moved to celebrate the votive Mass of the Holy Spirit, so as to become open to that very fire.It came to my heart during thanksgiving after Mass that part of the reality of Divine Fire is its purifying aspect. Who wants to be purified, to be burned?The Sacrament of Confession is the purifying fire of His Divine Mercy, so we know the burning is tender, effective, and the fire of His Love more intense, enduring, than His purifying action, because His Mercy is His Love!A purifying and humbling experience of all this for a priest, notwithstanding the personal aspect when he himself is penitent, is in the celebration for the disciples of Christ of the Sacrament of Confession. { True nowadays many say ‘ of Reconciliation’, but that sounds so ‘negotiating’, whereas there is nothing ambiguous about confession!}What is so deeply moving is to be there, fully experiencing the beating, tender, listening Heart of Christ.The Heart of Christ Priest.Listening with love, to the plea of His little ones, the poor, the humble, the trusting of His Mercy.Men, women, children of all backgrounds and with their sins from the seemingly venial to the most grotesque of human depravity and yet, when they come, their trust in Him is exquisite.There is perhaps nothing we understand less about the God who permits evil to exist than His mercy towards those who co-operate with, or initiate, evil.How often am I pleased when people remain behind the grill rather than sit in front of me, for I do not wish any to see me weep.I weep not because of the weight of their sins, but from being touched in the depths of my heart by their humility.Protestants who have lost, and Catholics who have abandoned this Sacrament will argue they can confess their sins to God directly.Mostly that is an illusion.It is true the ever present God hears all prayer, answers all prayer IF it is directed to Him.

Perhaps one of the most scary yet consoling teachings of Christ [cf. Lk. 18:11]  touches directly on this point – scary because the one man prays “to himself” – consoling because the one who most resembles the majority of people simply trusts his plea for mercy will be heard.

It is but one of the teachings from Jesus about how God our Father judges the human heart.To whom am I confessing once I have taken up my solitary position?No, at least for an ego like mine, the danger is too great I would be rationalistically confessing to myself.With Sacramental Confession even though I know the priest is in the person of Christ, and it is Christ I confess to, the veil of the human being Christ places before me adds the necessary touch of purification which offers to me and all penitents the opportunity to, in truth, embrace the humility of the Publican.The Nuns prepared us wonderfully for First Confession at school and the parish priests stressed the mercy of God, as well as the seriousness of sin.I recall they did their job so well confession was something more anticipated than feared.There was some fear within me, but it had more to do with the newness of the experience than any doubts about the immensity of His Mercy.Such fears would come later, when deliberate sinning of the truly serious kind was my constant addiction.The emphasis was on mercy because, unlike today when the clear teaching of the Church is so often ignored and the sequence of first confession and first communion too frequently is reversed, confession was presented as proper, humble prelude to communion.The importance of the proper sequence has been brought home to me as a priest on more than one occasion when children, making their first confession, will tell me how long they have waited to confess thus and so because it burdened them.Their joy once absolution is given radiates on their faces.That’s what I mean about the blessing and the humbling grace of being a confessor, you are drawn not to the sins but to the marvellous reality of a soul restored to right relationship with the Blessed Trinity.Sometimes penitents weep during confession as they experience the grace of true contrition and the flood of Divine Mercy pouring into their beings.

Those who go to God have a great struggle, first exhaustion and THEN ineffable joy. Those who wish to light a fire get smoke in their eyes and shed tears; then they obtain the desired result. We too must light the divine fire with tears and hardship. The more one aspires to the love of God, the more will one value this work……If anyone does not destroy the passions of the soul with the fire of such tears, he will never be able to acquire charity…..in real life charity is a living thing which begins with conversion, then is purified and grows towards unattainable perfection, always drawing nourishment from the same sap: the grace of God and humble human sincerity.
[j]

My first confession left me just so exhausted but unburdened in a way I had never experienced in my short life.This was how confession was for me for a few years, until I entered the period of prolonged addiction when it became a terrible thing, for I knew I was being less than truthful and shame seemed to render me almost mute.The problem was not within the sacrament, nor with any of the priests who were, with one unfortunate temperamental exception, compassionate and understanding.The problem was with my increasingly neurotic self. But I would still come out of the confessional as determined as I could be to keep the promise to avoid the ‘ near occasions of sin ‘ and ‘ to amend my life ‘ and, at least for a day or two, such would be the case.

WRITING THIS I am reminded of one of my favourite stories from the Desert Fathers, a teaching of the great Abba Anthony, for today I took some time to cull more of my possessions and was caught up in the struggle, to risk not having, to risk having to trust Him to provide what is needed:

A BROTHER renounced the world and gave his goods to the poor, but he kept back a little for his personal expenses. He went to see Abba Anthony. When he told him this, the old man said to him, ‘ If you want to be a monk, go into the village, buy some meat, cover your naked body with it and come here like that.’ The brother did so, and the dogs and the birds tore at his flesh. When he came back the old man asked him whether he had followed his advice. He showed him his wounded body, and Saint Anthony said, ‘ Those who renounce the world but want to keep something for themselves are torn in this way by the demons who make war on them.
[k]

  

{ Here I am moved to insert my favourite of all Abba Anthony’s sayings, because it has always struck me as a vision of our own era and what the world tells Christians, is this:

 

ABBA ANTHONY SAID, ‘ A TIME IS COMING WHEN MEN WILL GO MAD, AND WHEN THEY SEE SOMEONE WHO IS NOT MAD, THEY WILL ATTACK HIM SAYING, ‘ YOU ARE MAD, YOU ARE NOT LIKE US.’
[l]  }

  The great day arrived!After Baptism there is no greater experience than to receive Jesus Christ Risen, Glorified in the Most Holy Eucharist where He is Real, Present, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity!In the whole realm of human belief systems, be they religious or philosophical, even in the whole area of the sciences where there remain aspects of the material universe which are still beyond empirical certainty, yes, in many respects even beyond the most audacious capacity of human imagination — and yet as tangible, accessible, consumable as a morsel of bread and sip of wine — there is the mysterious reality of the Holy Eucharist.Theologians, philosophers, scientists, and to a certain extent artists, have struggled from time immemorial to make sense of matter.Matter, anti-matter, visible to the naked eye matter such as rocks, invisible matter such as certain forms of energy, invisible to the naked eye, detectable by our capacity to invent instruments that can ‘see’ for us; the origins of matter, the transformation of matter from a type of static, or potential energy state such as coal or oil in the ground, to fuel for cars or heat for cooking, warmth for comfort; even the vegetable matter from the garden which becomes fuel for the human body, energy for the inquisitive, reflective mind.For the authentic theologian matter becomes an aspect of contemplating the Divine, especially within the mysteries of Incarnation, Resurrection, Sacrament; for the philosopher matter is material for debate, speculation; for the scientist matter is to be discovered, studied, re-shaped, used, searched for clues about origins and destinies — hence the tension between science and philosophy — between physics and metaphysics; for the artist matter is a resource for use in creative expression:

What is the difference between ‘creator’ and ‘craftsman’? The ONE WHO CREATES bestows being itself, He brings something out of nothing — ex nihilo sui et subiecti, as the Latin puts it — and this, in the strict sensem is a mode of operation which belongs to the Almighty alone. The CRAFTSMAN, by contrast, uses something that already exists, to which he gives form and meaning. This is the mode of operation peculiar to man as made in the image of God. In fact, after saying that God created man and woman ‘ in His image ‘ (cf.Gn.1:27), the Bible adds that he entrusted to them the task of dominating the earth (cf.Gn.1:28)……….God therefore called man into existence, committing to him the craftsman’s task………With loving regard, the divine Artist passes on to the human artist a spark of His own surpassing wisdom, calling him to share in His creative power…..
[m]

Why the reference to artistry when contemplating the Holy Eucharist?Once the Father had created matter, breathed Himself into the matter of human flesh, thus transforming what to that moment was only material matter into matter with a spiritual immortal soul, the mystery of the human person, where it is the soul which gives form to the body, the spiritual is determinate of the material, became, and, for a time all was well and beautiful, upon the earth, within and around the created, living, human beings, Adam and Eve.Then, through the sin of Adam, evil, darkness, ugliness entered creation, and the pinnacle of creation, man, became in absolute need of redemption.Only God Himself could redeem what was now lost, indeed recreate what had been desecrated. To bring this about the Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took created matter upon Himself through the power of the Holy Spirit and the co-operation of the Blessed Virgin Mary and:ET VERBUM CARO FACTUM EST…..[Jn.1:14]Not only did He become a man, a living human being but He lived among us at a particular time in history and in the Most Holy Eucharist and the Ordained Priesthood STILL lives among us and with us!The Incarnation, mystery of the two natures — the created nature of matter, the human nature — and — the un-created nature, the divinity, in the One Person Jesus Christ.How can this be?Wonderfully it is a mystery!The night before He died for us, Jesus took other created matter, some bread and some wine, and in virtue of His forthcoming death and resurrection declared of the bread: THIS IS MY BODY………of the wine: THIS….. IS…….. MY BLOOD……... [Lk.22:19,20]At each Holy Mass, each Divine Liturgy, celebrated by the authentically ordained priest in apostolic succession through the laying on of hands by the Bishop, which is the calling down of the power of the Holy Spirit, in an unbroken line reaching across the millennia directly to that moment in the Upper Room with the Apostles being commissioned/ordained by Christ, the same event takes place, the same reality becomes!How can this be?Wonderfully it is a mystery!Both mysteries, the Incarnation and the Holy Mass wherein the bread and wine BECOME the Real Person Jesus, for no longer is there bread, no longer wine, but the Body, Blood, Soul, Divinity of Christ Himself, are the work of the Holy Spirit.All creation, all redemption, all sanctification is, ultimately, Trinitarian!Matter becomes not merely transformed, that is reshaped beautifully by a craftsman but in the Holy Sacrament of the Altar matter is transubstantiated— that is matter becomes in its very substance, its essence, its being, that which it was not.True the accidental, the external, the texture of the original matter remains as what is visible to the eye, tangible to the taste — but it is a type of illusion because the externals do not directly reveal the truth — though the shape of what still appears as bread and what still appears as wine, seem to indicate this is bread and wine, it is the truth that the reality is they are NOT what they appear to be!Since the actual real is always invisible only the eyes of faith can see the Real Presence.Holy Eucharist must be experienced. It cannot ever be adequately explained because love cannot be explained. Eucharist IS LOVE HIMSELF!I found an old photo of me taken right after my First Communion.In those days, with the total fast from all food and liquids from the midnight hour until communion time, it would have occurred probably at the six or seven o’clock morning Mass.I am dressed in a white shirt, white tie, white shorts, white socks, my brown shoes painted white for the occasion and a white bow is around my left arm.I am standing ridged; my hands clasped in the manner the Nuns taught us.What I had never noticed before is that I am bathed in light and it is the only photo of my childhood wherein I appear happy….no, not happy for that is a mere human emotion….I am clearly filled with that which is a gift of the Holy Spirit, joy! Imagine swallowing the sun, whole, and all that light then pours out of you, all that fire permeates your entire being.Imagine and then you will have a slight inkling of one’s First Holy Communion.    

THIS RELENTLESS heat wave continues.

The news is full of drought stories, heat related deaths, forest fires, all of that here and abroad. But lest the news channels leave us frightened as we bake they counter balance fire with flood, show other stories about our own and various countries where the deluge is upon us!

I am a winter person.

I cherish ice and snow.

Cold is my elixir.

Normally today would be my day off, a day away from the phones and doorbells of the rectory…but not away from being priest.

I am here where my little bedroom air-conditioner is. A doctor ordered concession because of the effect of heat upon me. As I came up the stairs late this afternoon, after a necessary trip to the Capital, I could hear the young assistant was in and I knocked on his door to offer him a share in my treat for myself, some chocolate pastries.

He’s a wise young man who works out at the gym and he declined the offer graciously. When I mentioned I’d given up on taking my day away due to the heat he smiled and said he was sticking close to his air-conditioner as well!

So I sit here in my study on the edge of the cool air and peruse more of those original notes for this book and came across a memory of an incident that, at the time, had a great impact upon me, whose import was made clear by my Spiritual Father. (The original reflection was triggered while I was looking out a car window the winter I was being driven back and forth from The Community to the hospital for tests to see if I had a brain tumour.)

ON THE DRIVE into the doctor’s this morning my brother priest pointed to the frozen river and noted how it seemed this winter’s extreme cold and thick ice appeared to have increased the usual number of ice-shacks for fishing.

Immediately I recalled an incident from some years ago when I was first a pastor in a rural parish.

One of the women came to me after morning Mass asking me to go with her into the nearby city, to the slum area, to comfort her friend, a single mother of several children.

The mother’s oldest, a lad of barely fourteen, had gone missing.

 I agreed and we went immediately.

As we arrived the street was filled with squad cars, fire trucks, an ambulance, people milling around, some sobbing.

Instantly my heart knew to call upon Our Lady and to pray for the God’s mercy upon the soul of the boy.

The woman ran into the house while I asked the nearest fireman to tell me what had happened.

The boy, as boys of that age are wont to do, on an errand to the store for his mother, apparently took a dangerous shortcut on his way home across the frozen river which separated the housing project from the ‘ better’ homes.

He was near the middle of the river when the ice gave way.

Someone saw him fall in and called 911.

Crawling on their bellies, roped together in case more ice would give way, the firemen were within a few feet of him when the boy, perhaps exhausted, sapped of strength by the cold, had slipped beneath the ice.

With the fast current they were unable to retrieve the body.

In the spring, when the ice was gone and high water abated, they would come back and look for the body.

I headed into the house where the woman, the mother, the children were all sobbing. I closed the door behind me to shelter them from the curious. The police and firemen took off their hats and helmets and stood in silent prayer while I held the sobbing mother and prayed for her.

One of the children, about eleven, the younger brother of the dead boy, tugged on my sleeve after awhile and asked me where his brother was and I told him simply in the heart of God.

      “ And where’s God? “

I thought for a moment, saying in my heart: Mother Mary help me.

An idea came suddenly and I asked the boy’s mother permission to take him outside.

Night had fallen, the police and firemen with their equipment were gone, neighbours had either gone home because of the cold or where already by now in the house with food and comfort. So the boy and I stood in the street, alone.

Thankfully any near streetlights were either burnt out or broken, so you could look up and see the night sky which seemed exceptionally brilliant with stars that night.

I told the boy that God lives beyond where all light comes from because He is light.

“ So, pick a star you like and behind the light, in the heart of God, is your brother.”

Though not exactly theologically precise it clearly comforted the child’s heart.

Spring eventually came, the ice broke, the waters rose, subsided, the firemen returned for the search and eventually found the boy’s body.

The same woman came to me and asked if I would perform a funeral service even though the little family was not Catholic and could the boy be buried in the parish cemetery, she would raise the money for the plot.

I agreed, but there was one problem, for though the ice on the river was gone the ground was still frozen below a foot from the surface and out in the country burials were never done between freeze-up in late fall until the ground naturally thawed in late spring.

She agreed and wondered aloud how to tell the poor mother there could be a delay of weeks?

We both fell silent. Then it was like we had the same inspiration and agreed we’d call around to the nearby farmers and beg them to open the grave.

As word spread about the situation..the boy’s death, the mother’s plight, dozens of men showed up. They worked all day, through the night, back-breaking labour with pick and shovel.

They fought the ice’s grip on the earth and they won!

 

In the morning the little family was driven from the city.

When they arrived at the grave side they were not alone, for the farmers and their wives and children came to keep them company.

They answered the prayers, sang the hymns and then, to my surprise, for they had not told me of their plans, when the grave had been filled in they ushered the mother and her children to the parish hall for the traditional funeral lunch.

In reply to my telling him about this incident my Spiritual Father said:

      It was the drowning boy within you, you were seeking to retrieve from the icy water.

DEATH has already appeared frequently in this writing.

 I find myself this evening wondering why?

Am I an unwitting Hamlet?

For forty-five minutes, though it does not appear visibly on this page, I experienced a death of sorts in that my finger slipped and I hit some key that caused the entire tool bar on this machine to disappear. The young assistant here, the moment I knocked on his door said: ‘ Now what happened with your computer? ‘

I explained.

He came to my study and after a few minutes of clicking this and that all was well.

So why this series of opening chapters where death appears so frequently?

It is not something I planned.

No more than I plan any of my actions which cause me to be so computer-inept!

My heart suddenly understands I am asking the wrong question because it is ego-centric.

I should ask the Christ-centered question:

“ What are You showing me?”

The reality is that each time we choose sin we choose death over life, curse over blessing.

This is what God who is Love, God who respects the gift of freedom He places within us at our creation, persistently offers us: life or death, blessing or curse [cf. Dt. 30:19].

The choice is ours.

When recalling then, as I must, His tender mercy and proclaiming the truth His mercy is greater than our capacity to sin, I cannot hide the fact many of my choices before true conversion were death choices.

So death appears in many forms in this telling.

Physical death.

Sin death.

Christ has conquered death of both kinds.

 

However here too we are free to choose, for love us though  as unconditionally as He does, He neither forces eternal life nor mercy upon us.

In those ancient days of awaiting the long yearned for promised Redeemer already the Psalmist in laudatory and prophetic prayer recited the pardon of sins, healing of ills, deliverance from death and lavishness of love and compassion which is offered us. [Ps.103:1-5]

Dom Columba Marmion puts it this way:

 … We are destined to proclaim eternally in the heavenly city the triumph of grace over our weakness and over sin. We can sum up the whole mission of Jesus in this world in a few words: ‘ Jesus is the herald of infinite mercy to human misery.’

If, then, there is one divine perfection which we should extol above all others, it certainly is mercy. All the ways of the Lord in regard to us are simply the condescension of love. In the economy of the Redemption in which we live, God has compassionated our distress to raise us to the power of participating in His life……

 … By acknowledging his many miseries, man admits that he has no right in justice to become the object of the divine bounty: his sole title to grace is the constant admission of his unworthiness united to his desire to glorify the eternal mercy which has given him all things in Jesus Christ…..

It is when, in full knowledge of our wretchedness, we persist in hoping in His love that we really give glory to God. [g]

 

That’s what I am still lacking.

Not just the full knowledge of my wretchedness, but rather the admission not only of my need of His mercy but that He IS merciful.

The writing of this alone will not suffice, for that would be egocentric and everything about us, all that we are, all that we do, must be Christ-centered.

To be Christ-centered means to be centered on Him in loving response to the needs of my brothers and sisters, to be servant as He Himself who repeatedly teaches He came upon us as servant [Mt.20:28 & Lk.22:27] and on the very night He instituted the perpetual Self-Gift of Love in Holy Eucharist and the Priesthood at the same time showed us how to lovingly and humbly serve as He took towel and basin, knelt and washed feet [Jn.13 esp. V.15].

This reveals a dimension to the coming sabbatical more critical than any writing I may do.

Since I have been granted time away from active, per se, priestly work in a parish, then the fulfillment of the reality of ora et labora, work and prayer, means a willingness to enter deeply into the mystery of the desert, in particular the desert of the heart.

The ancient Fathers of the Desert, the followers of Abba Anthony, those men and women through the centuries known as hermits, recluses, the inhabitants of contemplative monasteries, some like the followers of Charles de Foucauld and Catherine Doherty living the desert life in the heart of great urban centers, these have known and know that when evil spirits tire of their destructive work among the souls in the cities the same demons seek out the desolate places.

To enter the desert is to be willing to engage in combat, against the devils, yes, but also to overcome the false self which is unknown to God.

More it is also to, in a sense, draw those same spirits away from attacking our brothers and sisters, in a sense to make of ourselves the target so our brothers and sisters might, if not escape entirely the wiles and hatred of the evil ones for them, at least will have some period of respite.

This is spiritual warfare in which Christ alone is Victor, but in which we must participate.

It is the war spoken of in Revelations when the evil one, having failed to destroy the Child and His Mother, goes and mounts warfare against those who are faithful to Christ [cf. Rev.12:17].

I have come to understand such is where the Holy Spirit is leading me through the instruction from my Spiritual Father that it is time for me to go and ‘ write, pray, paint ‘….this is the writing, the painting, with the help of grace will be iconography, the prayer, will be spending time alone, fasting, in the desert of my heart, yes, and in a little room somewhere He shall show me.

Somehow this is the place I have been seeking all my life, not so much a physical, geographical place, but the ‘ thin place ‘:

 ..a ‘ thin place ‘ where the membrane between this world and the other world, between the material and the spiritual, {is} very permeable.[h]

Not merely because of the need for personal atonement, as great as that is it would be sinfully self-serving, if that is all I shall do.

No!

There is a hunger to allow the Spirit to plunge me into the immensity of the sacred kenosis, to be face to the ground beside He who Himself in the Garden was face to the ground for us.

To adore.

I don’t think we simply adore Him enough — can it ever be enough — anymore.

I don’t.

Do you?

To adore, intercede, to become by the action of the Holy Spirit, little by little, less me and more of Him.

 

One with the poor who cry alone, in the night, without hope.

To cry with them even if they know not anyone cries with them, for them.

This will not happen in any neat or comfortable way or in any way at all that I can possibly imagine or comprehend in this moment.

I must grow in trust.

Therefore I must become abandoned to Him moment by uncertain moment.

It will probably be most untidy.

Often seemingly incomprehensible to me as it already is to my brother priests in this rectory where I write in the dead of night while they sleep and this city, still broiling in the heat wave, is filled with crying poor.

Foolishness!

Yeah in some ways it is utterly nuts to walk away from career possibilities, but priesthood has never been a career for me; sheer stupidity to think whatever effort is put into this writing will someday be read by others and a real fool’s errand to go to war – but then St. Paul himself called for such foolishness [ 1 cor.4:10] so long as Christ is the reason for it.

St. Paul describes the radical followers of Christ.

Having been in my life radically opposed to Christ there is justice at work here.

Tender- love- justice, as grace from Him.

My brothers are worried I am ruining my ecclesiastical career, that after the sabbatical I’ll not be recalled to active duty, so to speak.

If I had a secure tenure to come back to where would the foolishness be?

My desert does not/will not even give me the luxury of sand and rocks, not even the security of a cave or the penny-potential of reeds with which to weave baskets!

My demons are unlikely to scream and screech so as to disturb the neighbours or trash my little place as if I were a latter-day Cure d’Ars….God knows I am neither that holy nor humble.

 

Mine shall most likely continue to be the slimy scratching kind as befits one as poor and weak as I am.

They are no less dangerous for all of that.

My desert is first within the inner struggle to overcome the shame of a sinful and neurotic life, to repent for time wasted and stolen from Him; it is a wasteland which must be traversed through the inner mystery of physical and emotional illness, of weakness in faith and trust in Him.

My Spiritual Father was right about which boy had slipped through the ice, which one needed retrieving.

IN THE city where I grew up most of the school year was marked by the frosts of fall and snows of winter.

By day my routine was centered around school, though after my First Communion this often included serving the six or seven a:m Mass before school, and after school helping my mother with my increasing number of brothers and sisters.

The evening was ‘ my time’, especially if I could get out of the house and especially if it was dark out.

I came therefore to prefer winter to summer.

The dark fell sooner in winter.

Deeper.

 Closer.

In the dark when I was very young I mainly played street hockey or maybe with some boys I hung with we’d shoplift or hustle smokes or just be obnoxious.

In the dark I felt — cloaked — not in some imaginary Green Hornet sort of fashion but rather in that the ‘real’ me was protected.

I was less terrified interiorly because the dark itself was fearful and facing that fear took most of my attention and energy.

More and more in those years there was forming around my heart a hardness, greater even than the hardness of ice. I was beginning to become used to leading a double and secretive life, even before there were any real secrets to keep — it was almost like I was practicing for what was to come.

 

The tension of that double-life was increasing my anxiety, so much so that by the time I was starting to act out sexually with my peers I had no memory left of what it felt like to be either a child or unafraid.

Cigarettes, danger, pleasure, these became the ever more addictive antidotes to that constant state of fear but guilt would swamp me ever so constantly and so I’d, once I made my First Confession, flee to the confessional and for a while things would abate.

Mysteriously, though obviously by grace, at the same time my hunger for God, for holiness, grew.

Looking back from the vantage point of sixty years it seems in some ways unbelievable any child could have chosen to live like that, but I did.

True, family circumstances, neighbourhood, influence of others, etc., ancestry, there are all kinds of contributing factors that can, legitimately, be pointed at, but even with all of that being seriously considered, the truth remains I made the choices I made.

One night in the winter I remember we’d built a snow house in a vacant lot and I was inside it when it collapsed upon me. I could hear muffled laughter from the boys I was with who’d assisted in the collapse.

For a moment I wasn’t afraid, rather I felt incredibly safe in that cold darkness and wanted to slide even deeper into its embrace.

I recall my Father digging me out.

He must have been nearby or maybe my kid brother went and got him.

Just before he freed me there was a moment when light came through the thinned snow and ice and it was in that moment I became frightened because I could tell I was trapped in the dark.

I never played in a snow house again.

SUNDAY!

A 100 degree heat and humidity Sunday!

It is mid-afternoon, the Masses have been celebrated, confessions heard, the remnants of yesterday’s parish youth group car wash put away, the collection counted, the debris from last night’s severe thunderstorms cleaned up, with no one killed or injured thanks be to God.

A brother priest calls from another city far away where, through a circuitous route, a letter has come to him from a lifer, seeking help to break the bondage of his ancestry. He’d approached the prison chaplain who proved unwilling to even consider a connection between ancestry and evil in the present generation.

Praying for that prisoner I was struck by the mystery of the Divine willingness to wait, as it were, for us who, sometimes perhaps because of the chaos of our lives unawares, wait for Him.

This mutual awaiting/seeking is articulated profoundly through Sacred Scripture, such as in Lamentations 3: 25-27!

My brother priest asked if I would be willing to help through letters to and from the lifer.

I said I would.

Part of this afternoon has been spent culling files in preparation for the sabbatical. This is actually a graced moment in my life to unload some of the burden of stuff!

Our culture, looked at dispassionately, has developed an entire cradle to grave system whereby we are formed to compulsively want stuff and become educated in a manner which will enhance our earning ability to acquire stuff.

 Stuff ,which we cling to in a way of such profound self-investment that it becomes a constant idolatrous state.

Only God and the things of God should so occupy a culture, an individual.

Priests appear not immune to this cultural quagmire, in spite of the clear teaching of the Second Vatican Council:

….PRIESTS ARE INVITED TO EMBRACE VOLUNTARY POVERTY.

 

By it they become more clearly conformed to Christ and more ready to devote themselves to their sacred ministry. For Christ being rich became poor for our sakes, that through His poverty we might be rich. The apostles by their example gave testimony that the free gift of God was to be given freely. They knew both how to abound and to suffer need. Even some kind of use of property in common, like the community of goods which is extolled in the history of the primitive Church, provides an excellent opening for pastoral charity. By this way of life priests can laudably reduce to practice the spirit of poverty commended by Christ.

Guided then by the Spirit of the Lord, who anointed the Saviour and sent Him to preach the Gospel to the poor, priests and bishops alike are to avoid everything that might in any way antagonize the poor. More than the rest of Christ’s disciples they are to put aside all appearance of vanity in their surroundings. They are to arrange their house in such a way that it never appears unapproachable to anyone and that nobody, even the humblest, is ever afraid to visit. [d]

 

This was dramatically brought home to me last night when I was called to the hospital for an emergency. After I had anointed the dying person, and comforted the family, one of the men followed me out into the dimly lit corridor.

With gentle humility, yet also with an assumptive air from wherever the little family originates, he asked: “What do I owe you Father?”

I was stunned like I’d been slapped.

Not by him.

He was, as mentioned, humble and gentle.

I’ve had such things happen before.

They always shock me.

It is a burden to have to have stuff, books, computer, etc. in order to be able…at least so I must convince myself because I am too cowardly to be truly impoverished…to fulfill my vocation of loving, truth-speaking servant.

But to ask, much less expect, payment for serving as a priest my dying brother or sister…..

I must confess my own origins in a lower working class strata of the social order where most lived a mere pay check away from destitution, or the orphanage for the kids, makes it even more difficult for me not to seek security in the material world and so it is true what most irritates us in others is what is the greatest hidden, or so we hope, flaw in ourselves.

{ The clunking sound you hear is my beam banging into the doorway! {cf. Mt. 7:3ff.}

Yes, it can be dangerous to write reflectively!

Before I dare write anymore I must go and pray for forgiveness at being so bold to even think I can detect splinters.

 

A FREIGHT train rumbles across the street halfway down the block, rattling the louder as it crosses the old bridge which spans the canal. At the other end of the neighbourhood workers swelter away in the huge cereal factory.

The evening sun is red, still broiling the city this end of July summer’s evening.

IN THE QUIET of this evening, after praying Vespers, I thumb through the original notes and have time to write once more the mystery of how a human being, a man-person of the twentieth century can, even when he knew not, or knowing struggled against, be guided bythe Holy Spirit to the ineffable reality of being priest, In Persona Christi.

There is, of course, the necessary editing which any writer must engage in. It is basically the same process as a sculpture who, having done the gross chipping away of stone or wood, must then more patiently, with more delicate tools and indeed a type of tenderness, finely shape what was rough into sheer beauty.

There are two dangers in editing.

The first is to edit out what might be a cause of shame, whereas it would be better for one’s soul to edit out what might be a cause of pride.

The second is to edit with an eye towards sales, to be blunt, which, of course, is another form of pride.

An artist in wood, stone, cloth, music- scale, word, must craft not for sale nor for admiration but for beauty and in the case of a baptized artist for the glory of God.

Sometimes the best way an artist, especially one crafting through autobiography, can give glory to God is to embrace the bold courage of both Zaccheus [Lk.19:1-10] and Bartimaeus [Mk.10:46-52] and the truth-speaking confidence of the Publican at the back of the Temple [Lk.18:9-15] so that not only for the one writing, but for those who read, what ultimately transpires is a willingness to open the doors of our being to the encounter with Jesus such as the Samaritan Woman had, for in the end it must be always Jesus, and none other, not even ourselves, who will tell us, indeed is the only One who can speak to us the truth of our lives [Jn.4:29]. Then at the end of this telling we can then go and give witness, testify about the All-Loving and Merciful One, and once we have been heard those who have listened will go to meet Him and once more the encounter and belief become intimate [Jn. 4:42]!

If that little child, later the youth and adult, so screwed up, bent, wounded, head­-living, angry, struggling against life and God, would one day be converted it is because throughout the Catholic world ordinary people, children and the elderly, the sick and the suffering in particular, are faithful to their prayers, especially the Rosary and with generosity pray as the Angel taught the children at Fatima: “O my Jesus forgive us our sins, save us from the fires of hell and lead all souls to heaven, especially those most in need of Your Mercy.”

For St. Monica, mother of the great St. Augustine, it took thirty years of prayer for her son’s conversion…being no Augustine in my case it would take over forty years of prayer and still I would not claim to be fully converted!

Eventually for myself and my peers the world which seemed to end at the edge of the curb, or at least at the end of the neighbourhood, was suddenly to expand and in what lay beyond the limited horizon of factories and childhood imaginations there was to begin a process of expansion, a relentlessness of change none of us could have suspected the first fall of school.

School meant parochial school for me, while for some of my friends it meant public school.

 That alone was an indication of change.

Except for Sundays we could mostly ignore the differences in denomination or even religion.

Now each morning as we headed off to school the whole harsh reality of difference would be reinforced day after day.

Difference would be something I would come to hate, become ever more filled with rage over, for I seemed powerless to do anything about it, yet I could see all around me, and more intently the older I got, the horrific sufferings of those considered different because they were, Black or Asian or Jewish or Protestant…of course sometimes I, we, suffered because we were Catholic.

All I remember about my first day at school besides the compassion of the good Nuns towards rather upset children was how terrified I was in a place which seemed immense. Surrounded by strangers, I was determined to escape as soon as possible!

Surrounded by all those people, my peers and the adult teachers, the Nuns, and the lay women, I was utterly filled with loneliness.

I had become more fully conscious than, had I been offered a choice, I would have wished.

Within my inner being I could almost feel myself split apart.

Paradoxically with starting school, and thus formal catechism classes, I had begun the journey towards my First Confession, prelude to the real goal, First Communion, but at the same time I was becoming split off from or, more accurately, splitting myself off from God.

Little by little losing awareness of my true self the disconnect was occurring.

I was more and more engaged in the elaborate development of a false self which necessarily entailed the establishment of ever more complex self -defences and their concomitant self-survival skills.

Because we are gifted with free-will God Himself will not arbitrarily possess us, enter into us, unless we invite Him.

He can, does as long as the soul remains in the body, call to us, as He did of old [ 1 Sam. 3: 4,6,7] and persistently knocks upon the door of our being, asking….imagine God asking of His creature!!!…..leave to enter [ Rev, 3: 20].

      However He will not force us either to answer, I am here, nor to open.

Contrary to current mythology the evil one, satan, the devil, cannot enter by force either: in some fashion he also must be given leave to enter.

How then does it come to pass that seemingly so many of us choose death over life, the death of our intimate relationship with the Father, with Jesus, with the Holy Spirit, for the chaotic existence of non-relationship with self and the illusion of a relationship with the evil one?

Mostly, I believe, we begin by being aware we are lonely, which we confuse as meaning we are alone.

We then, from an extraordinarily early age in most cases, begin to discover and devise ways and means of what we presume will be a filling up of that aloneness but which in fact merely aggravates the loneliness.

What is often dismissed as, for example, promiscuity as sexual indulgence, in point of fact is a desperate attempt to experience existence, that is, if I can compel you to pay attention to me, perhaps even to in some fashion utter my name, then I exist.

It is to seek from another mere human being what only God can give: BEING!

It is within that gap between the true self and the false self that satan enters and is given entry because we begin to choose things that come from the place of darkness rather than from the Kingdom of Light…..our failure to say in openness of our being here I am, to Christ, becomes silent ascent to evil.

One incident from my early life as a school-child illustrates the point.

Given that the parish school was some distance from the neighbourhood and that certainly for the beginning weeks I could easily become lost, not to mention the normal hazards of city streets, my Mother arranged for one of the teenage girls from the tenement next door to walk me to school.

My Mother had at that time my sickly Grandfather and my two younger sisters to care for and my Father, of course, was off with the navy in some war or other for months at a time.

I recall the girl was kind, pretty, and I trusted her.

What I most remember is she had a boyfriend from further up the street, a tough kid who didn’t seem to spend much time in school and who was always fixing various cars in front of his place near the bottling plant up the street.

This adolescent male, to my eyes tall, strong, handsome, the missing father and non-existent older brother I yearned for, captivated my being.

When he was around, when he carried me on his shoulders, let me hand him greasy tools as he tore apart another engine, paid attention to me, then I was some- one.

Was I already at that age confusing various emotions, even sexual drives, with the transference of being a son and brother, a person, onto this young man?

Did he know what a godlike being he was to me?

Certainly he never acted towards me in any way but that of an older brother.

He never lost his temper, never struck me, in fact other than picking me up to carry on his shoulders when walking with the girl and myself to or from school I have no memory of his touch, though I used to dream he was my father and played street-hockey with me and all the rest of father-son stuff.

Of course it was all an illusion within my own being.

He was neither my father nor my brother and undoubtedly had his girlfriend not been taking me to school that adolescent and I would never have met and, of course, no one outside of my own imagination knew of how much of my sense of being had come to depend on that boy being in my life.

He was my idol.

One day, it may have been a Saturday when there was no school, I was walking towards him.

I was some distance away but could see he was bent over under the hood of yet another car hard at work.

Suddenly a prowl car stopped beside where he was working.

A couple of cops got out.

There was a brief struggle.

He was billy-whipped, cuffed, shoved into the car.

I began to run towards that scene utterly terrified.

The prowl car pulled away quickly and rounded the corner.

By the time I got to the corner the car was starting to turn the next corner.

 All I saw was the sad and scared face of the young man staring at me from the back window.

Monday I walked to school by myself.

I was never to see him again.

Once again God had let me be robbed of someone I loved.

Once again the person I cared about had abandoned me.

Once again, more deeply, I withdrew into self.

What was wrong with me that no one would stick with me?

Anger, grief I would not weep out, darkness, seeped into my being and I became more and more fearful.

For in spite of all the witness of creation and of the salvific economy inherent in it, the spirit of darkness is capable of showing God AS AN ENEMY of His own creature, and in the first place as an enemy of man, AS A SOURCE OF DANGER AND A THREAT TO MAN. In this way SATAN manages to sow in man’s soul the seed of opposition to the One who “ from the beginning “ would be considered as man’s enemy — and not as Father. Man is challenged to become the adversary of God!

The analysis of sin in its original dimension indicates that, through the influence of the “ father of lies “, THROUGHOUT THE HISTORY OF HUMANITY THERE WILL BE A CONSTANT PRESSURE ON MAN TO REJECT GOD, even to the point of hating Him: “ LOVE OF SELF TO THE POINT OF CONTEMPT FOR GOD, “ as St. Augustine puts it. Man will be inclined to see in God primarily a limitation of himself, and not the source of his own freedom and the fullness of good. [f]

Of course while I suppose I knew that young man was my idol in the sense of hero only now do I understand that he was my idol in the more accurate sense of false­ god, because I was drawing my sense of being from him and NOT from the One and only God who alone is our True Father.

 

Even less so did I have any possible understanding that by permitting me to lose my idol the Father was offering me the same gift-promise spoken in His Name by the prophet Ezekiel, [Ez.36:25], though by grace I sure understand and give thanks today for such mercy.