All posts by Arthur Joseph

Autobiography

42 SUDDENLY OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE

42    SUDDENLY OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE

 

IT IS evening, before the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. I continue my meditations on the various teachings of Pope John Paul II given this Christmas as he inaugurated the Jubilee Year.

 

This is from the traditional Urbi et Orbi ( to the city of Rome and to the world ) message before the Pope gives his blessing. This special message and blessing is given only twice each liturgical year: Christmas and Easter.

We turn our gaze to You, O Christ, Door of our salvation, as we thank You for all the good of the years, centuries and millennia which have passed.

We must however confess that humanity has sometimes sought the Truth elsewhere, invented false certainties, and chased after deceptive ideologies.

At times people have refused to respect and love, their brothers and sisters of a different race or faith; they have denied fundamental rights to individuals and nations.

But You continue to offer to all the splendour of the Truth which saves.

We look to You, O Christ, Door of Life, and we thank You for the wonders with which You have enriched every generation.

At times this world neither respects nor loves life.

But You never cease to love life; indeed, in the mystery of Christmas, You come to enlighten people’s minds, so that legislators and political leaders, men and women of good will, may be committed to welcoming human life as a precious gift.

You have come to give us the Gospel of Life.

We lift our eyes to You, O Christ, Door of peace, as, pilgrims in time, we visit all the resting places of the victims of brutal conflicts and cruel slaughter.

You, Prince of Peace, invite us to ban the senseless use of arms, and the recourse to violence and hatred which have doomed individuals, peoples and continents.

“To us a son is given.”

You, Father, have given us Your Son.

And You give Him to us again today, at the dawn of the new millennium.

For He is the Door.

Through Him we enter a new dimension and we reach the fullness of the destiny of salvation which You have prepared for all.

Precisely for this reason, Father, You gave us Your Son, so humanity would know what it is that You wish to give us in eternity, so that human beings would have the strength to fulfill Your mysterious plan of love.

Christ, Son of the ever Virgin Mother, light and hope of those who seek You even when they do not know You, and of those who, knowing You, seek You all the more.

Christ, You are the Door!

Through You, in the power of the Holy Spirit, we wish to enter the third millennium.

You, O Christ, are the same yesterday, today and forever (cf.Heb.13:8). [cf]

OUT OF the blue one day my companion announced he had accepted a job in another city and would be moving out.

The emotional impact upon my narcissistic being was pretty severe.

Yet at the same time, deep in the garden enclosed, I was aware this was indeed Jesus offering me in my sin induced wilful dark ignorance blindness a chance to take His hand and be led outside the village.

Yet again!

Perhaps this time I would walk even further with Him from the village and not hesitate at the nearest outskirts.

However, as shall soon become clear, I was to make a pretty common mistake and in so doing compound the error by failing to truly listen to my spiritual father.

The graced event, though not recognized at the time as an occasion of grace, which had motivated me to get off drugs had been that traumatic experience when I almost overdosed; a similar experience had started me on the road of overcoming my heavy drinking, again not understood at the time as an occasion of grace, namely, I was so drunk one night in a disco that I had danced for hours within inches of large speakers with the resulting damage to my eardrums, which took weeks to heal. During that time the pain, and constant ringing in my ears, was a salutary reminder of the stupidity of the inebriated.

This departure of my companion, and the necessity therefore of my finding my own place to live, and a more secure paying job than free-lance work, was itself a graced moment.

However, as mentioned, I did not take time to be still in prayer and listen to the Holy Spirit before formulating a plan. Once formulated I did not trust or accept the concerns expressed by my spiritual father, but forged ahead, literally, on my own.

Freud speaks of a ‘flight into health ‘, which is not a healthy journey at all.

In the spiritual life, the life of faith, there is a type of ‘ flight into holiness ‘, which rather than being a true pilgrimage towards union with Christ is in actual fact a flight from the necessary conversion ( metanoia ) and abandonment to the Father (kenosis-emptying of the self ) which the Holy Spirit seeks to achieve within us.

Instead of using the time available to me for job hunting I used it to plow through the stories of the Fathers of the Desert. Filled with romantic images of desert life I decided I would instantaneously transform myself from a man who was barely returned to the practice of the faith, and still living in the dark ignorance of his addictions, into a desert dweller in radical emulation of those heroic saints — true saints radically wiser than I, then, OR now!

Unwittingly, and this is something I have only discovered in my heart as I write these lines, I was duplicating my very ‘flight’ pattern from when I had first arrived in the city a decade before after being ousted from The Community.

Then too I had sought to, frankly, assuage my fears, placate my God, through plunging myself into a way of life which, it seemed to me, would by its very construct, militate against the disordered tendencies within me — namely atheism and hedonism.

Sanford speaks of ‘performance orientation’ and May speaks of ‘autonomous willpower ‘.

…soon after the glow of conversion dies down, performance resurrects with a vengeance……Many come into the fullness of the Holy Spirit only subsequently to crack up because that un-dead area of flesh throws them into an inner striving no one can live up to! [cg]

For the power of addiction to be overcome, human will must act in concert with divine will. The human spirit must flow with the Holy Spirit.

Personal power must be aligned with the power of grace….It is surely impossible by autonomous willpower alone; the addicted systems of the brain are too numerous and overwhelming. It is also impossible if there is only an intellectual attempt to align the will with grace…The alignment of our will with God’s must happen at a heart level, through authentic choices of faith that are empowered by God. [ch]

It would be a painful process of accepting failure before I would begin — by grace obviously — to accept the truth of those statements.

In the meantime, as a performance oriented personality in full energetic flight towards I had deluded myself, conversion and holiness through the effort of my very sharp intellect and strong autonomous willpower, I ignored the recommendation against the move from my spiritual father and forged ahead on my own.

So, in spite of the clear, profound concerns, yet not an outright telling me not too, (here I used a type of rationalization common when we ignore the will of God expressed through a spiritual father) I managed with the help of friends, to find a very tiny basement apartment in an old building on the edge of the inner city.

The little apartment was across a narrow hall from the furnace room of the building. The apartment had a small bathroom, a ‘main’ room which was slightly more than four feet wide and about ten feet long. In this room as a small refrigerator and an old fashion electric stove. Then there was the bedroom, which was even smaller. There was no window in it. There was a window in the main room. Just up near the ceiling, which itself was just over a foot above my head.

The window was two feet long and a foot high and covered in coloured paper.

The place was as close as I could get to a desert cave without actually being in a desert.

I moved in there with my books, typewriter, some holy pictures, icons and statues given by friends, some of whom thought I was doing something holy and some who thought I was just nuts.

However both groups in their kindness helped me move.

I had just enough money to cover first and last month’s rent, buy a little bit of food.

Once everyone had left that first night I sat in the semi-darkness.

The little window gave onto the alley, at ground level, so even though it was not yet sunset, only weak light entered.

Suddenly I knew myself to be terribly alone.

Later that night, and only now, in light of the words from Sandford and May, plus the maturing, healing, effect of grace over these decades, do I understand that, alone with a tender miracle from Our Lady, it was also an acute experience, psychologically, physically, with a spiritual component to it, of withdrawal.

As May notes:

In Scripture, nothing portrays our vulnerability to grace more profoundly than the imagery of the desert….Humanity’s struggle with addiction is a journey through the wilderness of idolatry where temptations, trials, and deprivations abound, but where God’s grace is always available to guide, protect and transform us. [ch]

 

Book Reviews

TWO FOR THE HEART

TWO FOR THE HEART

Sometimes there are offered to us gifts of words which truly touch the heart.

 

I have been blessed in my priestly life to meet many men and women who both live our their primary baptismal vocation within the vocation of holy marriage and parenthood and within that truly use the talents given them, especially as witnesses to Christ through marriage and family life and through art.

Not only do I know, and yes admire and learn from these many years, James and Ellen and their sons, but with the two books recommended here was graced to read them in manuscript form and be further blessed.

Rather than do a detailed review here I will simply post the link to Full Quiver Publishing and say that the first novel, “Emily’s Hope” will heart-touch and inspire and the second, “In Name Only” will open a wonderful door to encouragement and trust.

http://www.fullquiverpublishing.com/

 

 

Autobiography

41 A FIRST STEP OUTSIDE THE VILLAGE

41   A FIRST STEP OUTSIDE OF THE VILLAGE

 

RECENTLY IN L’OSSERVATORE ROMANO, there has been, at least in the English edition which I receive each week, a continuing series on the pastoral challenge presented by the world-wide phenomena of an apparent increase in the incidence, and acceptance of, overt homosexuality.

 

The striking fact of this series is the solid pastoral compassion ( love ) and the equally solid orthodoxy (truth) setting before the eyes and hearts of all people Church teaching of revealed truth about the dignity of the human person and the holy mystery of human persons being endowed with pro-creative capability.

While in the early stages of the healing process, begun under the guidance of my spiritual father, I could not have articulated the following, I was becoming aware of the same facts: 

The homosexual condition is difficult, sometimes tragic, and not only because of the obstacles it can encounter in society and the injustices of which it can be victim, but also because of its narcissistic quality. This quality is expressed in the continual attempts at ‘self-recovery ‘ and in searching for the ‘better self ‘ or the ‘ missing self ‘ in another person. [cd-1]

This latter point about the attempts at self-recovery, seeking the missing self, would for years be a type of false-start distraction for me.

To be sure, during the same period, I would indeed embrace the call to chastity, return to the faith and sacramental life, and discern my true vocation and so forth.

But in a strange way, rather than seek Christ in and for Himself, there would be a degree of seeking to find in a relationship with Christ, in the life of grace, even in discernment of vocation, a type of self-recovery, of finding the missing-self, which would significantly interfere with what true conversion is ultimately about: I NO LONGER LIVE, CHRIST LIVES IN ME!

The homosexual approach is really one of identification and possession. According to Miller it is easier for two homosexuals to regard each other as narcissistic extensions of themselves than to be involved in mutual exchange. [cd-2]

This, especially in the early stages of conversion and healing, is extremely difficult to face, because the intricately crafted illusion of mutuality, of giving to the other in same-gender relationships, belies the self-centered and other devouring truth.

It means accepting that beneath the intricacies lies the chasm of sheer loneliness which is the stillborn child of the constitutive non-complementarities inevitable in homosexual so-called, in reality pseudo, unions.

Only Christ can fill the void — and it is, as in the actual beginning — the Spirit Himself who hovers over the void and re-creates, restores, Christ and His Life within us.

If not only those who struggle with homosexuality, but with any form of other involved sexual adventurism, of self-gratification, be humble, that is truthful, all such activity will then be confessed as the idol-worship narcissism search for the self from whom I have become split, beside whom I walk, in dark ignorance.

The common notion of the Greek myth about the god Narcissus is that he fell in love with himself — which is true to a point. The point being he fell in love with what appeared as his self-reflection when he gazed into the water. In fact what he saw was a distorted ( by the very nature of the refracting reality of water and light), and inverted ( the mirror principle ) image of himself, a false-self.

That is the tragedy of narcissism.

It is not even love directed towards the real self — rather it is a disordered love directed towards the false-self. Ultimate egoism!

Socarides says without hesitation that in a homosexual relationship each partner plays his role, ignoring the complementarity of a sexual union, as if the act were consummated in ‘splendid isolation ‘ from the other individual, simply as a stratagem for portraying a one-sided emotional conflict. Every homosexual encounter is primarily concerned with disarming the partner by means of seduction, prayer, power, prestige, effeminacy or masculinity, in order to derive satisfaction then from the loser. [cd-3]

This should be so obvious as to not need comment.

However it is bound to be vehemently denied because, if accepted, then the whole infrastructure of the so-called gay culture begins to unravel — the whole point of the ‘ bar-scene ‘, for example, is to go ‘ cruising’, that is to seek out a sexual conquest.

Hans Giese rightly stresses that the ‘foreground ‘of the homosexual syndrome comes from ‘clinging to the self ‘. The move towards the other is not completed, while the move towards one’s own sex is shorter, less costly, simpler; but, since one fears the risk of failure, to take this step involves a new risk, that of egotism. Bergler also maintains that the dominate note is always emotional detachment from the other and the focusing of interest on mere gratification. [cd-4]

 

Here we have a vital key to the extremely dangerous practice of suggesting an attempt at heterosexual marriage as some type of ‘ cure’, and, equally the danger of admitting persons to consecrated life who have not at least shown a free and peaceful acceptance of the gift of chastity — for that egotism will express itself in non-genital forms such as materialism, authoritarianism, gluttony, tv-addiction, alcoholism etc.

Since the root cause of homosexuality is a non-completeness of being, the ‘ cure ‘ is the restoration of, that is the completing of, the real person.

Hence true conversion, which may include therapy, a profound sacramental and prayer life, the vigilance of fasting, these are crucial.

No less crucial, especially for the soul struggling to hold on tight to the hand of Christ the Healer leading us out of the village of sexual disorder, of incompleteness as person, and very crucial for all pastors of souls, who are the bringers of the gender-blind, wounded, to Christ, is to embrace with humility the possibly very long, try and try again, aspects of the healing pilgrimage to the far outskirts of the village.

Kardiner notes that the majority of these experiences are due to casual encounters and are ‘ one-night stands ‘, i.e., the essential element is the value the experience has for the imagination and not the lasting human relationship. This easily leads to the desire of arousal for its own sake, to repetition and finally anonymity, the discovery of the other not being worth the effort….In short, for the homosexual there is the proximate danger of falling into such anonymous, repetitive and even more demanding sexual behaviour that it becomes a kind of addiction……[cd-5]

 

An incident from my own life illustrates this point.

Being a true addict I also became addicted to more incautious forms of anonymous encounters and found myself one evening in the clutches of a sadist with a knife at my throat.

I survived the ordeal, but it did not lessen my addiction.

With every grace of conversion and healing the soul is invited to trustingly join Christ in the desert where He Himself battled and defeated the tempter.

It is Christ who wages the greater battle in the spiritual warfare encountered by every soul. Seeking to actively participate with Christ, which is to co-operate with Christ’s healing action, each soul must willingly embrace the battle, and endure, by the gift of grace, grace of perseverance and trust.

Satan, who has long claimed the soul for his own, will, of course, seek to discourage, frighten, entice, cajole, and seduce the soul back from intimacy with He who is our Life, our Light, the Way and the Truth. Satan wants to drive the soul back into the dark ignorance.

Some words of encouragement and wisdom then from those early great spiritual warriors, the Fathers of the Desert:

A brother asked Abba Agathon about fornication. He answered, ‘Go, cast your weakness before God and you shall find rest.’ [ce-1]

Abba Theonas said, ‘When we turn our spirit from the contemplation of God, we become the slaves of carnal passions. ‘ [ce-2]

 

The following shows how priest-confessors must not only be compassionate but willingly take on, help carry the burden, of humble and contrite hearts — it is the mysterious and blessed vocation of being a co-struggler:

It was related of a brother who had committed a fault that when he went to Abba Lot, he was troubled and hesitated, going in and coming out, unable to sit down. Abba Lot said to him, ‘What is the matter, brother? ‘He said, ‘I have committed a great fault and I cannot acknowledge it to the fathers.’ The old man said to him, ‘Confess it to me, and I will carry it. ‘Then he said to him, ‘I have fallen into fornication and in order to do it, I have sacrificed to idols. ‘The old man said to him, ‘Have confidence; repentance is possible. Go, sit in your cave, eat only once in two days and I will carry half of your fault with you. ‘After three weeks, the old man had the certainty that God had accepted the brother’s repentance. Then the latter remained in submission to the old man until his death. [ce-3]

 

Another aspect of the above example is that once we have confessed our sin, received absolution, we must not only fulfill the penance given to us, as act of our co-operation with grace, but we must enter the struggle for purification, inner healing, release from inner-vows — a struggle which may be brief or of long duration — praise to His Holy Will in all such matters — and also we need to remain humble, docile, in true, trusting, acceptance of the directives from, obedience to the guidance of, a holy spiritual father.

The final example shows what to the overly sensitive modern, rationalistic mind may appear as pretty rough justice! In truth, it is our failure to comprehend the raw reality of spiritual warfare — the struggle to overcome our tendency to sin — that may cause some to miss the point of the example that follows. Here, truly, the heart needs to listen.

The point is basic — confession of sin, struggle to repent and open our beings to purification and healing by the Holy Spirit — the restorative power of the Holy Eucharist — communion of love — for the point of conversion is that we be restored to Christ so that: I NO LONGER LIVE, CHRIST LIVES IN ME.

The length of any struggle should never discourage us.

The victory is Christ’s.

Christ IS our co-struggler, for He struggled and overcame temptation, sin and death before, and for us.

Christ IS our salvation; our healing; our communion; our Way, Truth, Life.

Christ IS everything.

Our joy: to struggle.

He has come that His joy may be in us so that our joy may be complete.

Christ’s joy is that He has accomplished our salvation.

Abba Phocas also said, ‘When he came to Scetis, Abba James was strongly attacked by the demon of fornication. As the warfare pressed harder, he came to see me and told me about it, saying to me, “Tomorrow, I am going to such and such a cave but I entreat you for the Lord’s sake do not speak of it to anyone, not even my father. But count forty days and when they are fulfilled do me the kindness of coming and bringing me Holy Communion. If you find me dead, bury me, but if you find me still alive, give me Holy Communion.” Having heard this, when the forty days were fulfilled, I took Holy Communion and a whole loaf with a little wine and went to find him. As I was drawing near to the cave I smelt a very bad smell which came from its mouth. I said to myself, “The blessed one is at rest. “ When I got close to him, I found him half dead. When he saw me he moved his right hand a little, as much as he could, asking me for the Holy Communion with his hand. I said to him, “I have It. “ He wanted to open his mouth but it was fast shut. Not knowing what to do, I went out into the desert and found a piece of wood and with much difficulty, I opened his mouth a little. I poured in a little of the Body and the Precious Blood, as much as he could take of Them. Through this participation in the Holy Communion he drew strength. A little while after, soaking some crumbs of ordinary bread, I offered them to him and after a time, some more, as much as he could take. So, by the grace of God, he came back with me a day later and walked as far as his own cell, delivered, by the help of God, from the harmful passion of fornication.’ [ce-4]

 

Perhaps, you the reader are not in bondage to any sexual sin, to any kind of fornication.

Whatever the sin struggled with, whatever the addiction, whatever the doubt, whatever the depths of bitter-roots or the tenacity of inner-vows, Christ IS the only Way, the only Healing, the only Truth, and our only true Life.

In the Roman Liturgy, the central act of faith, the sacred celebration of the summit of sacramental, of faith life, is the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass.

Before the reception of Jesus Christ, in His Real Presence, in the reality of His Body and Blood in Holy Communion, priest and people proclaim out loud together a vital prayer — do we contemplate these words enough — do we utter them from the depths of our being as the opening wide of the doors of our being to Him?: LORD, I AM NOT WORTHY TO RECEIVE YOU, BUT ONLY SAY THE WORD AND I SHALL BE HEALED.

 

 

Autobiography

40 THE CONVERSION BEGINNING UNFOLDS

40   THE CONVERSION BEGINNING UNFOLDS

 

THIS MORNING I spent several hours in prayer and the celebration of Holy Mass.

A great joy permeated my being. Joy and gratitude for this extraordinary grace of these months in semi-solitude, to write, pray and paint.

 

What a lavishness of grace for my own being in this Jubilee Year.

What a Gospel ‘talent’ not to be wasted but rather, by fidelity to the duty of the moment as a priest-writer, to labour with words until the work is done.

Then: to let go of it, for the Lord to use, as He wills.

Even if that use means, once written, this work, through the discernment of my spiritual father, is never published.

So as I write in my heart echo lines from Psalmist seeking discernment, understanding, giving praise and crying longing. [Ps. 119: 169-176]

IT IS a great mystery that God, Father, Son, Holy Spirit, does not force Himself upon us, does not, when we yearn for true conversion of heart, remove from us our freedom to resist His invitation to repent and return to Him. 

The extraordinary grace, the seed-sowing within the depths of my being of His word:’ come home My child’, poured into my being during that charismatic rally at the time of the death of Pope Paul VI on the feast of the Transfiguration.

To be accomplished, this transformation — for He so wills it — my free-will consent and co-operation with grace were/are required.

Only when I would truly open wide the doors of my being to Christ would any conversion take firm root, repentance begin to flower. Only when I would humble myself, by grace of course, and have recourse to sacramental confession, wherein my sins would be forgiven, might the healing process — Christ Himself, the Healer — become increasingly efficacious, as the Gospel reveals. [Mt. 9:1-8]

The trees are all in bud as I write once again.

Warm spring rains fall upon the small patch of grass outside my basement window. I can hear, but not see, little rivers of water washing across the parking lot, some ten feet higher up the slope from my window.

This is my basement cave!

In the old days a priest serving an institution, such as this home for the infirm, would have been granted a decent set of rooms — nowadays no one has much respect for themselves, let alone for others.

The priest is seen as a sort of unavoidable nuisance. Handy to have around when someone is dying, but otherwise best he remains hidden in his ‘cave’.

In my first few weeks here it was difficult to be down in here. Now it is a place for my heart, in the great hermitical tradition of all those who voluntarily have entered actual caves over the centuries to be alone with You.

I must not waste a moment of this precious space or time.

The news today announces Pope John Paul is off to visit Lebanon, a place soaked with fraternal blood through inter-religious civil war and hatred.

Why do we hate so much?

In mid-fall of the year of three Popes my new spiritual director contacted me by letter and phone.

Eventually I began to visit him, to open my heart, to attempt to listen and even to go to confession truthfully.

This was very difficult the first few times, for it meant admitting not only my sinfulness but my absolute need of God.

Fall unfolded into winter. I still found myself occasionally engaged in my habitual patterns.

However there was waging within me a true struggle against the satanic darkness and neurotic fears which had such a hold on my being, and, a real hunger to enter into the light.

Looking back I understand now part of the struggle was an inner expectation of spiritual magic. Namely, that it sufficed I wanted to be converted, healed, set-free from what had me in bondage — but converted, healed, set-free WITHOUT the divinely ordained ordinary process of progressive conversion, healing, release.

Only decades later would I appreciate what tremendous patience my impatience, and easily provoked discouragement, exacted from my spiritual director, whom I came to see more accurately as not only the friend of my soul but as my spiritual father, which is how I see him now.

My heart has come to see in the progressive process of conversion, healing, release — (keeping in mind, of course, that God sometimes does grant the miracle of an instantaneous conversion) — what appears to be the ordinary pilgrimage, wherein the Holy Spirit divinizes the soul, of which the Gospel account of healing found in Mark 8: 22-26 illuminates the mystery of progressive healing.

Here is what this Gospel passage says to my heart:

THERE is a place to which we must all come, — Christ Himself being the actual ‘place’ — being brought there by our brothers and sisters through their prayer for the conversion of sinners. That place is also the Church — participation in the sacramental life of the Church specifically.

THIS is the place per se of encounter with Christ, Saving Healer, who draws us to Himself because He loves the Father and loves us.

He is, in a sense, drawn to us through His own love for the Father and for us.

Our being drawn to Him is assisted through the plea on our behalf of our brothers and sisters at prayer, of Holy Mother the Church herself at prayer for the conversion of the world.

Critical is the prayerful intercession also of our Blessed Mother Mary, and of all the Saints and Blessed in heaven.

CONFESSION of our blindness is essential.

Perhaps, as would appear to be the case with the blind man in this Gospel passage, if not by spoken articulation, at least by the eloquent poverty of simply being in the place of encounter with Christ.

WE MUST be touched by Christ, therefore when He offers His hand to us to lead us into the depths of repentance, conversion, release, healing, we must accept — always we are endowed with free-will — His touch.

WE MUST willingly be led by Christ away from the place/places wherein we dwell in the dark ignorance of hell — for our blindness is not only interior but is exacerbated and facilitated by our dwelling in the places and companionship of accomplices.

SPITTLE is used here by Christ because He had not yet shed His blood — His Heart had not yet been torn open by the lance so the ‘ blood and water ‘ [ Jn.19:34] — the river of sanctifying grace, of sacramental life — was not yet pouring forth upon us.

It is sanctifying grace through the sacraments — especially of Baptism, Confession, Holy Eucharist — which the Holy Spirit uses as the forgiving, converting, releasing, healing touch of Christ.

ONCE touched the question posed is a query by Christ of the soul ascertaining the soul’s co-operative willing participation in the forgiveness-­converting-healing-releasing-sanctifying process which unfolds through the holy action touch of Christ Himself.

THE SOUL’S response is not merely affirmative but an accepting admission of struggle — the blindness is deeply bitter-rooted, the blind attitude deeply inner-vowed as a commitment to rebellion against the very Eternal Father who so loves us He has given us Jesus, who with the Father, so loves us the Holy Spirit is given to us to Purify and Sanctify every soul who believes in Him and willingly receives Baptism, gateway to all sacramental life.

THE SECOND touch — maybe for some of us more resistant, more deeply wounded, more profoundly addicted to our blindness, a third, fourth, innumerable touches  are required— in either case there will come what is the final touch of complete healing, total conversion, absolute release — the grace of communion of love, union with the Holy Trinity.

EVERYTHING  now is seen distinctly, that is, our true relationship with the Trinity, our brothers and sisters, self, — we see clearly everything about life, about the danger of temptation, the destructive folly of sin, the absolute need we have of Divine Mercy.

DO NOT EVEN GO INTO THE VILLAGE is the divinely uttered, tender yet imperative caution.

We MUST heed this urgent Divine admonition NOT to return to the place and accomplices of our dark ignorance.

Such a return would be a refusal, a rejection of the very grace just given, a turning away from the Divine Self-Giver, Giver of Light, Truth, Healing, and Salvation.

 

Autobiography

39 TOO IMPORTANT TO MISS


 

MY COPY of L’ Osservatore Romano has just arrived. I’ve been earnestly waiting for it for days — to meditate upon Pope John Paul’s homily during Midnight Mass and the Opening of the Holy Doors for the Great Jubilee Year, which we have entered.

 

The banner headline reads: CHRIST IS THE DOOR THAT LEADS INTO SALVATION.

So incredible are the words of the Holy Father my being cannot continue any writing unless I transcribe the core of his words — for since this work is essentially about Divine Mercy, Divine Love being greater than our capacity to sin, these words of the Pope, my heart is convinced, are, as it were, a verbal portal through which the remainder of this book must pass.

The Pope speaks:

“Hodie natus est nobis Salvator mundi “….For 20 Centuries this joyful proclamation has burst forth from the heart of the Church…the Angel repeats..to us…” Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good news of great joy..to you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour…welcome these comforting words…in them the “ today “ of our redemption becomes a reality.

….We are spiritually linked to that unique moment of history when God became man, taking to Himself our flesh.

Yes, the Son of God, of one being with the Father, God from God and Light from Light, eternally begotten of the Father, became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and assumed our human nature. He was born in time. God entered history. The incomparable eternal “ today “ of God has become present in everyday human life.

“Hodie natus est nobis Salvator mundi “….We fall down in adoration before the Son of God. We unite ourselves in spirit to the wonder of Mary and Joseph……..

……..At the feet of the Word Incarnate let us place our joys and fears, our tears and hopes. Only in Christ, the new man, is true light shed upon the mystery of human existence.

………You O Christ, are the Only-begotten Son of the living God, come among us in the stable of Bethlehem!…….

……..Ever since the night of Bethlehem, humanity knows that God became man: He became Man in order to give man a share in His divine nature.

You are the Christ, the Son of the living God!….the Church greets You, the Son of God, who have come into the world to triumph over death. You have come to illuminate human life through the Gospel…..You are our hope. You alone have words of eternal life.

You who came into the world on Bethlehem night, remain with us!

You who are the Way, and the Truth, and the Life, guide us!

You who came from the Father, lead us to Him in the Holy Spirit, along the path which You alone know and which You have revealed to us, that we might have life and have it in abundance.

You O Christ, the Son of the living God, be for us the Door!

Be for us the true Door…….

Be for us the Door which leads us into the mystery of the Father. Grant that no one may remain outside His embrace of mercy and peace!

…….Mary, dawn of new times, be at our side as we trustingly take our first steps……..[cc]

 

Autobiography

38 THREE POPES


 

WEEKS PAST, and while things seemed to return to the way they were — my companion returned from the coast, I kept up my free-lance work — things were much changed, though it would take time for me to comprehend just how they had changed.

 

Early one afternoon I sat with friends watching the television coverage from Rome as a man, small of stature, emerged onto the ancient balcony to give the Church and the world his first pontifical blessing.

What struck all of us, and certainly I had been interiorly comparing this new Pope on sight to the image of Pope Paul VI, was his smile!

It seemed the world instantly rejoiced and embraced this humble little man of the kindly father’s smile.

Yes, change was afoot.

One day a letter arrived from my former spiritual director, last seen in the black cloud diesel smoke of a departing bus.

It was a strange letter.

The gist of it being a vague description of his plans to be a priest and scholar in some new charismatic community and an almost off-hand note that he has passed on my ‘file’ to another priest to be my spiritual director.

I was infuriated by both the fact of the ‘file’, in other words my letters to him over the years and his comments, and that he assumed a] that I wanted a spiritual director and b] that I would want the priest he picked as my spiritual director even if by some stretch of the imagination I should figure out either that I wanted, or even more distressing, that I needed one!

So I, in that instant, made one of my more stupid inner-vows that I simply would not respond, should I ever hear from this new priest.

But then I read the end of the letter and came upon the name of the ‘new’ priest.

It was the name of a priest who was a dear friend of mine from The Community!

The very priest who had received my first vows in The Community more than a decade before.

He was someone I admired as a man, a friend, an intellectual and especially as a priest.

Perhaps, just perhaps, this wouldn’t be such a bad turn of events after all.

Still, I did manage to find this change rather threatening.

It was as if my soul knew this priest would indeed be the hound of the Hound of Heaven Himself!

THE HOLY SPIRIT has His own way of driving a point home!

I was about to take a break in writing today, this already the second chapter written today, when my heart was moved, — as I was giving thanks in the very writing for the priest mentioned in the letter, he remains these twenty plus years later still my spiritual father, — to recall this word about Abba Evargrius:

..we also saw a most learned man, wonderful in every way, Evargrius by name. To him among other powers of the soul was granted such grace in the discernment of spirits and the purging of thoughts ( as the Apostle says ) that it was thought that no other brother had ever achieved such subtle and spiritual knowledge. He had gathered his great understanding by his studies and his experience but above all by the grace of God. [bz]

Within the common sense wisdom of that old saw, ‘ the man who is his own lawyer has a fool for a client ‘, is the germ of a more vital truth: the soul who is its own spiritual director embarks upon a fool’s journey.

It is the Holy Spirit Himself who teaches the soul its need for direction and then Himself directs the soul.

The surest protection for the soul from error, in this dialogue and guidance of the Holy Spirit, is the instrumentality of a wise and holy spiritual director — preferably an ordained priest.

…through the Fathers of the Church God has made it clear to us that we need spiritual direction. All Christians, all Catholics, should make use of it. St. John of the Cross has said that ‘only a fool directs himself ‘….people should seek direction. Through this grace they realize better their poverty and their weakness. We need a spiritual guide on the narrow road that leads to heaven. The devil delights in placing confusing signposts on our way, especially at our major crossroads….That holy man, that priest, must know the state of your whole self mentally, emotionally, and spiritually……The great Spiritual Director Christ, who stands behind your spiritual director, already begins to bless you. Often without your realizing it, He gives the beginning of answers and places a great peace in your soul……because you have recognized your dependence upon the priest He has given to direct you. [ca]

Even before I had been contacted by this new priest, new in the sense of his being suggested as a spiritual director for me, the Church and the world, strangely even my own heart, were plunged into sorrow once more through the shocked suddenness of the death of the smiling little father of us all, Pope John Paul the First.

This time it would be a strange period of mourning I would undergo.

I even went to Holy Mass — though not Holy Communion being as I was still unwilling to confess my sins in the sacrament of confession.

Oddly I was feeling as a child who has lost their father.

What WAS happening to me?

How came it to pass that I was losing my taste for the life I had lived with such frenzied determination these many years?

Was this some auspicious change occurring within me, or a mere atavistic anomaly in the rhythm of my life?

Then once again, through television, the world fixed its eyes upon, the Church cast her gaze towards, the ancestral balcony, and there emerged a strong man, also a smiling man, ‘from a far country. ‘

THIS NEW BISHOP OF ROME intended to be a servant. And so, before the eyes of the world, John Paul II prayed, ‘ Christ, make me become and remain the servant of Your unique power, the servant of Your sweet power, the servant of Your power that knows no eventide. Make me a servant. Indeed, the servant of Your servants.’

And the message of this ‘ servant of the servants of God ‘ was the call of Christ to His disciples: BE NOT AFRAID! Be not afraid to welcome Christ and accept His power. Help the Pope and all those who wish to serve Christ and with Christ’s power to serve the human person and the whole of mankind.

Be not afraid. Open wide the doors for Christ. To His saving power open the boundaries of states, economic and political systems, the vast fields of culture, civilization and development. Be not afraid. Christ knows ‘what is in man.’ He alone knows it. [cb]

 

Autobiography

37 TRANSFIGURATION BEGINNING


 

MY HEART JUST, this instant, became suddenly aware of the extent to which this feast of the Transfiguration, and the events surrounding its celebration was a lavishness of His love, His mercy.

 

Graced gift, wherein I was suddenly some twenty years ago, granted yet another moment in which to choose!

To choose between the blessing or curse placed before me, that embrace of love or His refusal, of life or the continued death I was living [Dt. 30: 11-20]!

It was a day in the year dubbed in the press as the “year of three popes! “

IT IS ONE of those sunny, yet cool, spring afternoons as I begin to write again.

In this house of the infirm, where I have been living and serving for some time, along with my duties as chaplain for the hospital, we are holding, today, a fund raiser through the sale of flowers.

Thus the whole place is ablaze with beauty!

My heart looks at the faces of the elderly and the infirm.

Before the beauty of any human face all other beauty fades into the background.

It is the reflected radiance of Your Holy Face, O Incarnate One, O Transfigured One, O Suffering One, O Most Glorious Risen One!

I ponder many mysteries in my heart today: human suffering, sin, death, grace, conversion, ordination, priesthood, hiddenness, this moment!

It is striking, the insistence of St. Paul, that the transformation of the person is connected to the renewal of our mind — in a word — a radical conversion of the way we think. [Col. 2: 6-8]

It is a matter of opening wide not only our hearts but the entire resource of our intellect, imagination, memory, to Divine Wisdom, that we become purified of the shackles of any philosophy, mode of thinking, attitude, rationale, which is contradictory to our God given sacred dignity and person.

During that mysterious long, hot summer, so many decades ago, I was indeed, not merely captivated by, but an advocate of, empty philosophy, and the sheer weight of that emptiness was crushing my being.

I remember that August was ferocious with its heat and humidity, as if the doors of hell hadbeen opened and the heat from that infernal fire was loosed upon the earth.

At the beginning of the month the man who was at that time my companion, left, as they say: ‘for the coast ‘.

For a few days I gave into my old habitual patterns, but there was within me a distinct lack, both of energy and enthusiasm.

Some weeks previous I had gotten word my spiritual director — whom, frankly, I long had considered to be my ‘former’, spiritual director — would be in the city to address a national Catholic Charismatic rally and that he wanted to see me.

The event was to take place in the local sports stadium on August 6th.

For the world: the horrific anniversary of the first use of the atomic bomb against human beings, against our brothers and sisters.

It was a day I’d normally be in some protest against such weapons.

For the Church: the celebration of the Holy Transfiguration of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

As the sun rose, that particular morning, it was already extremely, brutally hot.

The light and heat sweeping across the balcony, through the open glass doors, slammed into my face with such hot force I awoke feeling my face was blistering.

Opening my eyes the intense light burned as if I had my face right against a strobe light flashing before my eyes.

My being shuddered with a dual sensation of fear and anticipation.

There were hours to go before the rally where my former spiritual director would be speaking.

Time enough to go to that other rally where I would join my voice with others, and groups across the globe, crying out for an end to the seemingly relentless lemming-like drift of the militarists towards a nuclear holocaust.

By mid-afternoon I left the rally and headed towards the stadium.

The city, it seemed to me, was already broiled to a crisp.

The ravaging by the extraordinary beating down of sun’s heat and light seemed to have inflamed my entire being.

When I arrived at the stadium I was astounded not only to see the place packed, the large numbers of Bishops and priests processing towards a raised platform in the middle of the football field, a platform on which was an altar, but even more so by the impassioned energy and enthusiasm of the assembled people.

This was too much religious fervour for me.

I climbed into the higher rows of seats, figuring if I stayed away from the density of the crowd, and especially far out of line of sight with that altar, I’d be protected from whatever, all day long, my being seemed to sense was about to happen.

I was sensing within me an odd mixture of fear, and anticipation.

Suddenly a mitred Bishop approached the makeshift pulpit and motioned for everyone to be quiet.

He announced he had just been informed Pope Paul VI was seriously ill.

The Bishop then called for prayer as a strange murmur washed across the crowd, a murmur not unlike that of a family who has just been told their father is dying.

Suddenly I was thrust back in my imaginative emotions to the sixties and the horrendous anger which I carried when this Pope came out with Humane Vitae.

I had never read the actual encyclical, of course.

I uncritically believed everything both the secular and the rebellious ‘catholic’ press of the time had to say.

After all I was a champion of social justice and what the Pope had done, refuse the pill, was unquestionably an injustice.

How darkly ignorant was I in those days about the extent to which I had been captivated by a secular, empty philosophy, by lie.

After what seemed about a half hour the Bishop interrupted the Mass and approached the microphone once more.

I remember sitting there in that instant as if I were reviewing my entire life and an immense hunger to be real was welling up inside of me.

Yet at the same time there was a strange taste in my mouth as if an immense, sour, blackness was being regurgitated.

I had no idea who I was.

It was as if I were standing beside that seat, looking down at a pathetic lost child.

In a broken voice the Bishop announced that Pope Paul was dead.

Suddenly all around me people were sobbing.

I sat there, stunned, rigid, as if I had no idea what was happening.

Bishops, priests, nuns, old men, women, younger people, children, the police doing crowd control, everyone, it seemed, was sobbing.

How could this be?

How could these people weep over the death of that man?

Only these decades later do I see clearly now, understand, they were weeping over the death of their father, their shepherd.

Perhaps the first awareness was that the wetness on my face felt different from the sweat that had bathed me all day long; perhaps the first awareness was the hug given me by a woman who herself was weeping.

Perhaps it was that I too had been looked at. [Lk. 22: 61]

I don’t recall much after that, not until the whole event was over and I went to search out the priest who still saw himself as my spiritual father.

When I found him near the exit, where he had sent word weeks before we were to meet, he instantly apologized for being in a rush. Then before I could say a word he said he was leaving The Community but would be in touch and he ran to catch the bus!

Jesus had come to Jericho.

I had, so I thought at any rate, started to climb the tree.

Before I did so, Jesus had just taken off on a bus!

In that instant the immense heat seemed to engulf me once more. Within my being it seemed too that whatever I had unknowingly anticipated had been snatched away, or rather taken off on that bus.

How utterly wrong, as time would tell, I was.

How utterly ignorant too of the way the Divine Lover works, in the garden enclosed.

Sin is a terrible burden, the weight of the whole world’s evil pulling our hearts into a darkness worse than annihilation. It begins so simply with little acts of rejection or mere non-acceptance that hook into our infantile need for total love and create in us fear and rage, guilt and sadness. By the time we reach adulthood, even if we have been baptized as babies and raised as Christians, almost all of us have chosen again and again and again to be accomplices in our own rejection. We choose to be woven into the web of selfish fear that is the world’s darkness. We choose to believe in the absence of God, and that absence weighs on our hearts with such constant force that we think it is as normal as gravity.

Then one day, who knows when, we hear that Jesus is passing by. Perhaps we have heard it every Sunday of our lives, but this day that weight of God’s absence in us at last wearies us beyond pride, beyond fear, breaks through to that core of us where we are all emptiness, all longing, and we want only to know one thing; what kind of man is this Jesus? Suddenly, without knowing how we got there, we are up in that tree with Zaccheus, our whole being in our eyes, looking for the face of Jesus. And Jesus looks at us and says, ‘ Hurry up and come down! I MUST stay at your house today. ‘ [Lk.19:5]

All that waiting, all those dreadful years, and it turns out that God has been waiting for us.

…….REPENT means to turn around, to stop believing in the absence of God, to stop building a life without Him, to stop trying to find rest by our own efforts –and, like Zaccheus, to start climbing the tree of salvation so that we can see the life-creating face of Jesus. [by]

 

Autobiography

36 EIGHT YEARS OF THE DARKNESS OF IGNORANCE


THERE IS WITHIN me today a gentle, yet persistent, sense of urgency once again to complete this work, to progress towards the other manuscripts to be written during this sabbatical.

 

As I walked about this workers’ neighbourhood this afternoon, praying the rosary, my heart was filled with awareness of, love for, the working man, the working woman.

This is a city of factories which run twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, twelve months of the year.

In those factories the average worker makes as much per hour as half of what my weekly pay packet was when I first worked as a postman — yet they are burdened with debt and a sense of irretrievable, daily, slipping away of their dignity, the purpose of their lives.

How urgent my heart feels the need to, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, find the words, the means, the example, which will encourage them to turn to Christ and live; to turn to Christ and have their dignity restored; to turn to Christ and know the holy, purifying, purpose of human labour:

….man’s life is built up every day from work, from work it derives its specific dignity, but at the same time work contains the unceasing measure of human toil and suffering, and also of the harm and injustice which penetrate deeply into social life….man eats the bread produced by the work of his hands….he eats this bread by “the sweat of his face“….[bv]

 

So I came back here and began writing from my notes once more:

HELL IS THE darkness of ignorance, which envelops sentient creatures, when they have lost the contemplation of God. — Abba Evargrius.

 

Back in this country after several weeks past the encounter with Our Lady of Guadalupe, I resumed my frantic existence and entered in that darkness of which the holy Abba speaks.

An ignorant darkness, in which I would remain entangled, shackled, deeply in bondage, for eight terrible years.

An idealized and eroticized image of the same sex plays a large part in homosexual relationships. When in love, the homosexual is really enamoured with his heart’s idealized image of his own sex…..The homosexual’s relationship with his same-sex partner is based more on a projection of an illusory image from his heart than on real love for another person. [bw]

The pursuit of that phantom ideal man would occupy the near totality of my psychic, affective, physical being during those terrible years.

Given its reality, and thus its inherent disorder, it is a sterile pursuit and hence it is a will-o’-the-wisp mode of existence, leading inevitably to promiscuity, for virtually always the familiarity of a relationship leads to a denouement, which leads to a renewed search for the ideal.

Thus, not long after our return, my companion and I ‘freed’ each other, (being disillusioned towards one another, having both failed to sustain the illusion of the ideal), to seek out the ideal.

We would remain friends, continue to share the apartment, but we would no longer be lovers.

Neither of us, of course, surrounded as we were by an increasingly philosophically, apologetically, politically, astute sub-culture, were in a position for sober second thought about any of our ideas, actions or choices.

Thus muted into almost total silence, the conscience itself became smothered by the weight of the darkness of ignorance.

The frenetic state of being which was mine as I pursued the ideal was paralleled by the frantic way in which I spent my working nights as an investigator for the child protection services.

At night I would enter more and more dangerous situations on my own without armed officer back-up. I took on more and more extra, and double, shifts, while on my nights and days off I sought out the ideal with the same frenzy of a heroin addict seeking their next fix.

Within a few months I encountered someone who became the concretized ideal and moved out of the situation I was in, remaining friends nonetheless with my former companion, and into this new one.

Shortly thereafter one evening I was at home and felt a strange sensation, a tingling in my arms, a tightening in my chest, sweats, yet cold.

I phoned a friend who was an analyst but not a medical doctor, figuring I was cracking up.

He said it sounded like a heart attack.

Within minutes I was in the hospital, in ICU, hooked up to monitors, oxygen, IV’s.

In my young life death, in all its natural and inflicted ways, was familiar.

In my young life already I had been in four situations where someone had tried, by violent means, to end my life.

Somehow on none of those occasions, in the core of my being, had death seemed imminent.

This time was different.

It was not so much that I believed I was about to die as that there, alone in that unit with those monitors and the oxygen and the IV’s — well I needed little time to tell myself this could well be it.

Thus began within me a survivalist debate — ask for a Catholic priest, repent, confess, be anointed, accept Holy Viaticum and die peaceful ( or not die and confront reality ) — tough it out, die during some personal plea-bargain session with God, assuming there is such a Person ( or not die and not have to confront reality ) — or die without the repentance and sacramental forgiveness, die without having had a chance to formulate a definitive plea-bargain and burn forever in hell ( but since I do not believe in God or heaven or hell or an afterlife I won’t even know that I’m dead so what’s the debate about ) — or……..

Exhaustion and morphine took hold and I drifted off, the debate unresolved.

Within ten days I was released from the hospital having promised the cardiologist, with no intention of actually doing so, that I would quit smoking, loose some of the stress, eat better, get regular sleep.

He had said the ‘event’ had been a warning.

Looking back across the decades I see now it was not just a warning but another attempt by the Holy Spirit to get my attention.

So thick and dark was the ignorance I was in I both failed to hear and failed to heed.

I belonged to the generation which was in the process of achieving and defining absolute freedom. To admit there was any cost to our pursuit would be tantamount to admitting our freedom was illusory.

Certain currents of modern thought have gone so far as to exalt freedom to such an extent that it becomes an absolute, which would then be the source of values. This is the direction taken by doctrines which have lost the sense of the transcendent or which are explicitly atheistic. The individual conscience is accorded the status of a supreme tribunal or moral judgement which hands down categorical and infallible decisions about good and evil. To the affirmation that one has a duty to follow one’s conscience is unduly added the affirmation that one’s moral judgement is true merely by the fact that it has its origin in conscience. But in this way the inescapable claims of truth disappear, yielding their place to a criterion of sincerity, authenticity and ‘ being at peace with oneself, ‘ so much so that some have come to adopt a radically subjectivistic conception of moral judgement.

As is immediately evident, the crisis of truth is not unconnected with this development. Once the idea of a universal truth about the good, knowable by human reason, is lost, inevitably the notion of conscience also changes. Conscience is no longer considered in its primordial reality as an act of a person’s intelligence, the function of which is to apply the universal knowledge of the good in a specific situation and thus to express a judgement about the right conduct to be chosen here and now. Instead, there is a tendency to grant to the individual conscience the prerogative of independently determining the criteria of good and evil and then acting accordingly. Such an outlook is quite congenial to an individualistic ethic, wherein each individual is faced with his own truth, different from the truth of others. Taken to its extreme consequences, this individualism leads to a denial of the very idea of human nature.

These different notions are at the origin of currents of thought which posit a radical opposition between moral law and conscience, and between nature and freedom. [bx]

What the Holy Father is teaching here is classic from the treasury of Sacred Tradition and Sacred Scripture, and, if reflected upon objectively, is basic common sense wisdom.

What we were asserting, by’ we’ I mean those involved in the articulation of argument to justify our lifestyle, and indeed what is articulated still by those opposed to truth, that is, frankly, opposed to Christ, were the following notions which flow as the extreme consequences of chaotic individualism: a] sexual orientation is a genetically pre-determined pre-disposition and therefore is irreversible, yet it is also a matter of free-choice; b] to deny us anything is to discriminate against us and therefore everyone must be forced by law to deny us nothing; c] truth is what I determine it to be for me, therefore I cannot determine it for you, presuming of course you never challenge nor impede my notion of the truth; d] if you are guilty of opposing my ideas in b and c then you are an irrational, bigoted, conservative Christian of cruel temperament who couldn’t possibly understand me anyway, unless you willingly subscribe to, nay participate in, my notions and experience of my reality; e] nothing is against nature nor is anything immoral if it fulfills my wants unless, of course, it is something I don’t want and therefore am free to declare it as being against nature and thus immoral; for all social institutions exist to fulfill me.

It is a basic notion in the economics and physics of energy that if it takes more of the matter to produce the energy, thus the cost to produce will always exceed the profit derived from the use made of the energy, you either abandon that process or go broke.

It is the basic necessity of the product of lie, the denial of truth and the consequences of that denial, the cost if you will, that you must willingly expend un­calculated, yet paradoxically in a very calculated fashion, energy, inventiveness, scheming, protesting, asserting the rightness of your cause, lest there be a breach in the constructed dikes in the intellect and soul against the breaking in of the light of truth which might become a stream of living water washing away the morass of the darkness of ignorance.

So for almost the entire seventies I lived in un-availed ignorance.

Increasingly I slept less, ate worse, and drank more.

Increasingly I worked more, cared less.

Increasingly disillusion tore at the relationship I was in, disenchantment infected my relentless promiscuity.

Increasingly I became dark in my personality, aggressive in my profession, callous in my relationships, bitter in my writing, hopeless in my poetry.

I was burning-out, long before such became a flavour of the month neurosis.

Eventually I had to quit my job, the stress was too much.

I sought out a therapist as the exhaustion had brought on severe agoraphobia.

To make money I worked as a free-lance essayist, did pre-publication book reviews so there would be something to put on the dust jacket of first editions, and, once the agoraphobia was somewhat under control, did club and theatre reviews for an arts magazine.

I agonized a lot too.

 

Autobiography

35 OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE CARES


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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

Today I write in late afternoon.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All is grace.

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

All is grace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we heed, we co-operate with grace.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All from Him.

All from His love.

All from His lavishness of mercy!

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

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

Now I was arriving in Mexico.

Now I was arriving in the city of her shrine.

Now I was remembering.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NIGHT HAS fallen as I resume this writing.

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

My heart simply recalls these words of Pope John Paul:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet seemed to fear at the same time.

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

I shuddered interiorly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

All is grace.

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

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

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

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

The urge to enter was immense.

The fear, of a more weighty immensity.

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

I made to flee!

Only my extreme upper body appeared capable of movement.

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

All other movement was impossible.

Terror seized my whole being.

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

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

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

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

I was stunned.

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

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

 

Saints

Words From St. Teresa

Let nothing disturb you, let nothing dismay you, all things are passing, God never changes.

 

Patience attains all that it strives for.

He who has God finds he lacks nothing: God alone suffices.

It is love alone that gives worth to all things.

Accustom yourself constantly to make many acts of love for they enkindle and melt the soul.

Pain is never permanent.

Be gentle to all and stern with yourself. ~ St. Teresa of Avilia