All posts by Arthur Joseph

Expiation

PRIESTLY MISSION RESUMED

priest

The last time I completed an essay in this section was just shy of one year ago.

In the intervening time I have worked on the connected blog: http://blog.hopeforpriests.com/

As well, as can be seen by the occasional posting of chapters, completed an autobiographical work.

 

 

 

 

However I admit each time I tried to write more about being a victim-soul, a holocaust of His Love, one with Him in the Garden, on the Cross, I’d have a recurrence of the PTSD from which I suffer, as do most accused priests, both those actually guilty of the accusation, and especially those of us who have been falsely accused.

This is NOT to elicit some form of pity by turning this into a ‘woe is me’ diatribe, simply to be forthright about my own struggle, which I know from letters received, emails, phone calls, countless priests share.

No, thanks to both intensive spiritual direction and therapy, and yes proper medication, I seem able to resume a normal priestly mission, that is, to be what I am by the gift and mystery of ordination, what all priests are be we serving in ‘public’ ministry, enduring the immense suffering of banishment, imprisonment, illness, isolation in old age, whatever the situation we may be living in, be living, we are in persona Christi.

Some priests because of the way bishops treat the accused have given into discouragement, many to the extreme of suicide.

Others have simply walked away from everything and live as if ordination is something left behind like an old coat.

A few try and fight the bishops in the canonical or civil courts, but as regards the former it is the very judges in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who make the initial judgements in secret who are themselves the court of last appeal, and as regards the latter success there often means an even harsher punishment from the church.

That is why last year in the first of what was promised {do forgive the delay} to be a series of essays I wrote:

                               Many years ago, in the first attempt at this site for hope in the lives of priests, we ran the start of a series urging all priests, in particular those enduring punishment for actual sins/crime as well as those falsely accused, but suffering the same fate nonetheless, to embrace a life of expiation, becoming living oblations, victim-souls, holocausts of love, of Love Himself.

Clearly for all my enthusiasm I had a lot to learn about being a victim-soul, an oblation with Jesus, and admittedly still have a lot to learn, so what is written here and in the essays that follow is written by a mere beginner and a continuous learner.

Perhaps this is time to place again a critical Scripture which sustains the struggle:

                                 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in His footsteps. [cf.1Pt.2:21]

It took me a long time to connect those powerful words of St. Peter to the three times in the Stations of the Cross where Jesus falls.

“The brutal experience of our falls and weakness can fling us to the edge of despair. We are strongly tempted to cry out that it is an injustice that God expects too much from us, that our cross is heavier than that of others.”  – Paul Evdokimov

We all know that the first aspect of the Cross with which we have been sealed at Baptism is the implanting deep in our being a yearning to be absolutely one with Jesus the Divine Lover, to daily take up our cross, which includes our very selves and all that happens to us, and follow Him.

Part of the cross of following Him is to embrace the tension of not knowing exactly where He is leading us, though ultimately it is across the threshold of death into the glory of resurrection with Him.

St. John of Kronstadt urges that: “Our duty is to endure, to pray, to humble ourselves, and to love.”

For priests today the greatest, yet most urgent challenge to love, is to follow Christ’s example and truly love and forgive our enemies, known and unknown.

That is key if we are to be what we are, oblation in persona Christi.

While there is an intrinsic moral obligation to struggle for truth and justice, to not simply roll over and allow the system, bishops, anyone, to crush us, for we cannot cooperate with evil, once all that must be done is done and the truth perhaps has been buried, and we with it by some CDF imposed penalty, then the moment of holy abandonment, of absolute surrender, indeed to passionately embrace the cross, to seek to endure, pray, humbly love as one with Christ accused, Christ in agony, Christ abandoned, Christ crucified, is NOW!

Finally, about the image above of a priest celebrating Mass yearning to be in Christ’s embrace:

I find this a powerful image of the agony of longing for restoration of all things to Christ within the Church, the Priesthood, the world today.

It is I believe an image of indomitable hope, endurance, love.

 

 

 

 

Autobiography

25 “BE BORN…IN SILENCE…A THOUSAND TIMES”

                                         25   “BE BORN…IN SILENCE…A THOUSAND TIMES”

 

 

 

 

I am meditating again today on Pope John Paul II’s encyclical letter DIVES IN MISERICORDIA [On The Mercy of God] and my heart leaps at the radiant truth of:

The Cross is like a touch of eternal love upon the most painful wounds of man’s earthly existence. [ay]

This mid-Advent evening I return once more to the original notes as source material to continue this writing, my heart singing with gratitude that even now are my wounds being touched with the Cross — the kiss of His lips.

 

 

THE FIRST true spring rains of the season arrived during the night, applauded by thunder, backlit with lightening flash, dancing across valley ballroom a splendid cotillion, partnered by the wind !

When the ball had ended, the performers, long departed in their cloud-glass coaches beyond horizon hills, I went out onto the porch of this house of priests, breathed deep the fresh washed air, listening to the concert of frogs chanting their Matins at pond’s edge, down by the barns.

I sit here now, penning these thoughts, watch slow clouds drift across the, at this early hour, barely blue tinted sky.

Let us become like Christ since Christ became like us. Let us become gods because of Him, since He for us became man. He took upon Himself a low degree, that He might give us a higher one. He became poor, that through His poverty we might become rich (2Cor.8:9). He took upon Himself the form of a slave that we might be delivered from slavery (Phil.2:7&Rm.8:21). He came down that we might rise up. He was tempted that we might learn to overcome. He was despised that we might be given honour. He died that He might save us from death. He ascended to heaven that we who lie prone in sin may be lifted up in Him. [az]

 

My heart is moved, as I sit bathed in beauty, to reflect upon attentiveness to the Father through living and moving according to His Holy Will — like the wind, rain, clouds, chanting frogs — in a word, what we in this apostolic family call the duty of the moment.

The first thing that comes to my heart is the need to remember it is not a question of what, as in ‘ what am I to do in this moment ‘.

It is a matter of being aware of the ‘Who’ obedience is all about.

The duty of the moment is — for if it is not then it becomes a type of neurotic enslavement to a singular notion of self, and self-worth, based upon what I do — the duty of the moment is not what I do but rather who I am — a beloved responding to his Lover!

The duty of the moment is my response to my Divine Lover, and through Jesus who reveals His love in each moment of my existence, motivated by the Spirit of Love Himself, I come into communion of love with the Father.

In this Jesus Himself became obedient that we who are terrified of being, and thus become lost in doing, might be once more. [cf. Lk. 2:51; Jn. 4:34; Jn. 13:15]

Now, obviously, we can only be faithful to Jesus and do as He has done, in the duty of the moment, be penetrated by what De Caussade calls the ‘sacrament of the present moment ‘ if we are fully present to, in, the moment.

Yet in those days, so many decades ago when I was originally with The Community, I was far too wounded, neurotic, sinful, restless, fearful to be still, much less present enough in any moment, to experience but a minute speck of the above truth.

      Partially the problem in those days too was the simple fact of youth — as youth we have a    distorted sense of time — it either is the overwhelming slow moving phenomena barely grasped but experienced as a terrifying slow death, that is commonly called boredom – or – it is the fragile, tiny container into which we try relentlessly to cram maximum, and frequently un-discerned, experience, immediately!

Thus in our youth we rarely, if ever, consider time as something precious, for it can seem as limitless as the depths of oceans, rejecting any sober second thought that even oceans are limited.

Even less so do we consider time as a grace-love-gift from the Father, a precious and unrepeatable flow of seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years which we are blessed with in the exact quantity necessary to frame the reality within which we might become saints.

Sin is a misuse of the grace of time, a waste of potential sanctification in the pursuit of no-thing-ness.

When we have some years of living, as I do now, ebbed and flowed through, we begin to appreciate the limit of this gift, the importance of being present to the totality of each moment of time.

We discover too how time itself, having been taken up into the heart of the Trinity by the Incarnation, is a constant duty of ours to participate in.

 The sanctification of which we participate in by the fidelity and love we bring: our true baptized selves into the treasury of each moment.

..fantastic, incredible, holy words….THE DUTY OF THE MOMENT IS THE DUTY OF GOD…ANYTHING done for Him is glamorous, exciting, wondrous — if only we can see it for what it truly is! But we are human. And it takes a long time, my dearly beloved ones, to see reality through God’s eyes. Unless we pray exceedingly hard, it takes a long time to ‘make straight the paths of the Lord ‘in our souls. [ba]

Once again it becomes a matter of being with Him.

Prayerfully.

Alone.

With Him.

Inner spiritual training begins with these words of Christ, ‘When you pray, go into your room, and when you have closed the door, pray to your Father who is in secret. [bb]

Writing these lines today I am conscious these truths permeate my being because years of blessing have been poured into my being.

My trouble, and why eventually I would leave the faith and The Community, back in the sixties was simply I was too broken to retain anything I learned about true Gospel living.

I was both a dried sponge, which once placed in water, gorges itself until satiated, and a sieve.

I’d no sooner take in some truth when I would lose it.

Or spill it.

He did not live from the center as an affirmed son would, that blessed stance which is a more or less unconscious position…he lived very self-consciously out of a cluster of diseased attitudes and feelings toward himself. He was split. There was a terrible chasm of non-being within him. He therefore had the disease of introspection….stood, as it were, outside himself, analyzing, hating, rejecting, pitying, despairing over himself……. To live from that center is to live from that which is not real but illusory, an illusory person living in an illusory world…..As a Christian, he had a home within, a divine center from which to live, but he knew nothing of it…[bc]

 

There is within all our lives a continuous thread of Divine intervention: GRACE!

Now grace, obviously, works within the created order, for it is within that order we live.

Sin is a determination on our part to re-arrange the Divinely constituted order into something we fraudulently attempt to claim is more suited to our immediate gratification.

God permits our futile attempts at re-arrangement, for He respects the very order He has created, is faithful to what He has set in motion, especially our very being, even when we war against that Divine right order.

The ever flowing river of grace is His active love of us, but here too He respects our freedom, a freedom which He places within us when He creates us.

Grace then is NOT a Divine imposition.

It IS the True Lover’s invitation we accept the ultimate gift: Himself!

It is first and foremost, in the sacramental order, Baptism, which reorients us into a right ordered relationship with the Trinity.

There is a paradox in Baptism, for while this sacrament reorients us at the same time it removes us, that is, with Baptism we enter into that communion of love where, while we remain in the world, we are no longer to be of the world.

Through Baptism, in a real sense, our place becomes no-place!

This because in truth we are created and more vitally baptized to dwell, even here on earth, in the Trinity and, within especially our communion of love with the Father, to live and move and have our being.

This indwelling is itself a type of holy mystery, for we can only truly dwell within the Trinity who first dwells within us.

The holy import of this is tremendous and should move us to a constant state of awe and adoration!

We are gifted with free will and hence can, frankly, mess not per se with the effectiveness of grace, for grace is never defective, but with the hesitancy or fullness of our response to, and co-operation, with grace.

Significantly, as Leanne Payne rightly teaches, this whole movement of response to grace, of openness to the communion of love, is constitutive to my knowing, or at the very least seeking to know, become, the person He has created.

Thus the first great effective activity of sacramental grace in Baptism, by our being washed in the Blood of the Lamb, is our re-creation, our truly being born. This IS our true birth and through this being created anew we can discover the real I — I as child of the Father, disciple of the Son, temple of the Holy Spirit!

Once I know I am ‘I’, and the knowing means rejoicing, being thrilled at my very existence, an existence which is relational, communion of love — then I can authentically say YES!

My yes is to a person.

Not to some idea or rule of life or philosophical notion — though as I live elements of those necessarily become aspects of living.

My yes is to a real, living person, the Person par excellence for He is the Incarnate One.

My yes is to Jesus.

Yes to Jesus means opening wide the doors of my being to His communion of love, to His every word, and I make concrete this yes by heeding, following, living His word, the Gospel, hence my yes to Jesus is yes to communion of love, to life with, to having my being within, the Holy Trinity. [Jn. 14: 23-26]

DAY AND EVENING have come and gone!

As I begin to write again it is a tremendously fresh and beautiful Sunday afternoon.

A brilliant day as if the sunlight were dusting gold flecks upon every leaf and blade of grass.

The Eighth Day!

KRISTOS ANESTE EK NEKRON THANA CONPATESOS KAI TOIS EN TOIS MNEMASI ZOEN KHARI SAMENOS!

Sung during Holy Mass this day with all the passion, surely, of those Ointment Bearing Women as they returned from the tomb, knowing their tenderness was not needed: CHRIST IS RISEN FROM THE DEAD TRAMPLING ON DEATH BY DEATH AND ON THOSE IN THE TOMBS LAVISHING LIFE!

Truly, such as through the sacraments of Baptism and repeatedly thereafter in the sacrament of Confession, He lavishes life upon us even while we are yet in the tomb of original sin or actual sin.

The once brown fields this day are greening with new life, trees tremble with unfolding buds, birds sing more varied songs than ear can embrace for sheer wonderment at His once again making all things new!

In the soft sand of the winter- ice- retreating- gouges among the higher slants of the hills swallows build nests, as chipmunks, on my walk, scurried about the forest floor all a-chatter with indignation that a mere man dare walk into their world!

A young man, visiting here, came up to me all eager and fair shouted: “Father!

What must I do to be baptized? “

“Say, YES, Jesus! “

Of course there is more to it than that, like careful instruction-preparation.

But in that moment naught more needed to be said.

No matter how much the men and women in office seem to wreck their part of the Church’s fabric by their humanness — hence sinfulness and unpleasant personality traits — it does not happen. Christ in their office does not allow the Church to be wrecked because of the weakness of the persons who represent Him……we are dealing with the MYSTERIUM ROMANUM…dealing with the passion of Christ and the behaviour of the apostles, who were not such hot potatoes. One denied Him, one betrayed Him, all but one ran away when He died. There are only two possible conclusions: either the Catholic Church IS divinely founded, and Christ is IN all the people who rule His Church, or there IS no Catholic Church and the whole thing isn’t worth belonging to. Take your choice. [bd]

Christ is risen from the dead, trampling on death by death, and on those in the tombs, lavishing life!

In what tomb, or tombs, do I languish?

Or hunker down in like a frightened lost child who seeks shelter against or within any place that appears to have about it a definitive solidity?

Certainly in those original years when I lived with The Community, because of my split-ness, I was making of the community life itself a type of tomb.

 

 

Autobiography

24 DEATH, THY STING, IF FAITH LOST

THERE is, as I reflect on yesterday’s question from my confessor, a type of urgency to complete this book.

I’m not sure if the urgency is in response to the goad of grace or the restlessness of my ego — but I turn once more to the original notes and am amazed at how His Mercy is always greater than our capacity for sin.

I AM DISTRACTED, anxious, grieving this morning.

 

 

 

 

The spring sun has shaken all the ice-glass from the trees, woven there by days of freezing rain.

The fields, washed of snow by warmer rain, reveal their yellow-brown last year’s fashion, clamouring for the new season’s outfit.

On this day a year ago I had arrived in the west at a new assignment with The Community.

Barely unpacked, I was summoned by a phone call.

Years before, and for years, there had been three buddies.

Now the middle one was telling me, the oldest one, of the youngest’ death.

Though by now priest, and supposedly man of faith, the act of death stung my being.

Death had stolen friend from among the earthly living and flung that friend beyond the tangible sense those of us, left behind, could easily touch.

What had started out as the sophomoric promiscuity of the young had, not without heated debate, struggle, matured into a pure and authentic male on male friendship.

The agent of death has been aids.

When the youngest had first been diagnosed he had called me, not as friend but now as priest-father, with one simple question:

“Do you think God has allowed this to happen to me so I might come home?”

Home being sacramental life with Christ.

I said: “Yes.”

This day of the phone call announcing the completion of his journey home seemed to have arrived so suddenly.

Not unexpectedly, perhaps. Suddenly, nonetheless.

Confusion that, during that Day of the Resurrection of Christ, death should still sting so mightily.

Last year, like now, Easter.

This year, like then, death stings still.

I cry out for the grace of help for in my belief I need help with my unbelief.

From the Stichera of Easter from the Divine Liturgy, this, from St. John Chrysostom:

O DEATH WHERE IS YOUR STING? O Hades where is your victory? CHRIST IS RISEN AND YOU ARE ABOLISHED, CHRIST IS RISEN and demons are cast down, CHRIST IS RISEN and the angels rejoice, CHRIST IS RISEN and life is freed, CHRIST IS RISEN and the tomb is emptied of the dead: for CHRIST being RISEN from the dead, has become the Leader and Reviver of those who had fallen asleep. To Him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen.

 

Meditations

Living Flame

icon

Do not grudge burning a wax tape before the image of the Lord during prayer; remember that you burn it before Light inaccessible, before Him who enlightens you with His Light. Your candle is as though a burn offering to the Lord. Let it be a gift to God from your whole heart. Let it remind you that you yourself should also be a burning and shining light. ~~~St. John of Kronstadt

Autobiography

23 STANDING AT THE ENTRANCE OF THE GREAT DESERT

“HOW IS THE BOOK COMING?”, was the unexpected question from my confessor yesterday after I had spoken my sins, trusting in Divine Mercy.

At that point in the Sacrament the normal expectation is some direct word of advice on avoiding sin, trusting God, not a question about one’s literary effort.

The question was actually on point.

I have spent more time of late writing

letters, articles, doing research for other books than working on this one.

 

In a word my confessor had been enlightened by the Holy Spirit to ask the central question about fidelity to the duty of the moment.

So here I am this afternoon of the great feast of the Immaculate Conception of Our Blessed Mother, faithful to the duty of the moment, reviewing notes and beginning again!

TO HANG LOOSE, to be silent, to let God use me, to fear nothing, to love always, that is what I am in poustinia for…yet here I am writing notes for my book!

Poustinia – the desert – the hermitage – is NOT for writing books. It is for absolute stillness in being alone with the Divine Lover.

All else here is distraction, rest-less-ness, which is in direct opposition to being at rest in Him.

I think too much!

That’s how Adam lost the original experience of intimacy with God, as well as intimacy with self and other like himself, Eve.

Adam was so busy thinking about the relationship with God, rather than resting in trust of Divine Love, that he was susceptible to the diabolical suggestion God was not to be trusted.

That is, God is not a faithful lover.

Distrust the lover and you come to distrust love itself.

The point of being on the edge of the great interior desert, at the entrance of the great desert of aloneness with the Divine Lover is that I might come to trust Him, trust His Love.

We have, of course, been created by Love Himself, to be His beloved and to love one another, as He loves us, which means self-gifting to other.

From the very beginning the Triune God seeks us out on the holy ground of creation. He first speaks and awaits our response.

There are places of encounter, there is longing within us, His voice moves us and we cry out to Him.

We await Him, He awaits us, becomes more intimate to us than we are to our very selves, for in His Incarnate Being He enters all we must endure, He prays for us, sanctifies solitude for us and continuously knocks at the door of our being, begging leave to enter{Gn.2:18; 3:8-Ex.3:5-1Sm.3:10-1Kgs.20:9,12-Ps.42:2;46:11-Sg.ofSgs.2:10-Sir.35:17-Lam.3:25-Dn.10:8-Mt.4:1;14:23-Mk.1:35;6:31-Lk.9:18;22:41-Rv.3:20}.

Yes during my years with the community, as today in this poustina-desert as I pen these notes, meditate upon those passages, I had many times in solitude and did hear the knocking at the door of my being, but was too weak of faith to do other than lean against the door and yearn for the courage to open.

Yet the very gift of the time confronting — though not in a manner most would deem successfully — my inability to open did help me stay a member of The Community far longer than would have been possible without at least the struggle at the edge of the entrance to the great desert.

Those notes, re-read and typed this afternoon, suddenly revealed to my heart another type of desert – the solitude of the writer!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

22 OPPORTUNITY MISSED OR GIFT?

THERE IS perhaps no more haunting version of the Beatitudes put to music than Albinoni’s!

Whenever I listen to it, as I am now in a powerful rendition by the Choir of New College Oxford, my soul is transported into the depths of the mystery of the Church and the constant yearning of the whole human family to rest in the eternal embrace of the Father.

 

 

This night as I walked about the neighbourhood praying the rosary I was struck by that yearning in the hearts of all the workers, felt deep in my being this paradox of being a worker wherein throughout the day the worker finds his being steeped in a type of anger.

 He must work to eat and eat to work.

Work should be his daily experience of participating in the creative work of the Father, however work is, in our modern economies, too often a dehumanizing of the workers very person and dignity as man, as woman.

The explosion over the past few days of great strings of Christmas lights on the little houses, nestled between the two main rail lines which sever this area from the ‘better’ homes, could be seen as the great cry of Les Miserables, which echoes in my heart as a great hymn, worthy of Albinoni’s , of confident trust the Father has not forgotten them.

Once more I draw from the original notes, these from the time when doctor’s suspected I had a brain tumour:

ONLY SMALL sections of the river in the base of the valley, which I can see from my window, remain iced over.

The rolling hills, on the far side of the river, are various shades of brown, black. Here and there a slight hint of pale green, where poplars, always the first, begin to bud.

The only snow still visible are the remaining bits of five foot drifts left by what may have been the last storm of the fading winter.

The drifts cling to great rocks in the sheep field just below this house. [Lk. 24:5]

It is Resurrection day!

CHRIST IS RISEN!

       I was looking at a black and white photo the other day in a coffee table book about Russia.

In it, a photo of a stone idol from that odd definition of a period which we write about as ‘pre-historic’, as if there were ever a moment in creation devoid of history!

What shocked me about the stone idol was how familiar it looked.

Then I remembered a period in my life, when I lived in an urban commune.

I was given a stone idol.

 It was a stone head, over fifty pounds in weight.

The features: exactly as shown in the Russian photograph.

I kept that idol with me for several years.

Even when I moved, which I often did in those days, I’d take it with me, though it was usually the last thing I would ‘pack’.

This because somewhere deep inside of me was a reluctance to have it with me.

Now I can state without hesitation that thing deeply disturbed me, but it was as if it had a hold on me.

Then, too, those were the days when I was seeking the dead among the dead.

Just a few days ago my spiritual father and I were talking about my first years as a member of The Community and he revealed to me that at the time the Foundress did not believe it was my vocation.

Certainly, in retrospect, that is something for that period I would agree with, though at the time no one told me and I was too terrified of the alternative to face reality myself.

Nonetheless as mysterious as the workings of what Augustine calls the grace to have grace, I needed the community in those years and in their patient kindness they welcomed me as one of themselves.

It is the mystery: of that in some ways missed opportunities, yet total gift, I now wish to meditatively write about.

When I first joined The Community, in terms of the longevity of communities like the Benedictines or Coptic monasteries in Egypt, it was a newborn.

Even though I am once again part of this apostolic family in the heart of the Church it is not my place to reveal too much because, as with any family, it is to the parents, in our case the elders, to reveal.

Suffice to say in the early days there was the joy of a being part of something very new and exciting in the life of the Church, a degree of growing pains which was a time of trial and error, such as the almost casual ease with which one could become a member, contrasted today with a much more mature process of communal discernment and detailed formation which makes for members of a deep maturity in their charity and powerhouses of intercessory prayer for the Church and the world.

I mention only the above since there is a connection between that period in the life of the community and my own inability to reach out for the help I truly needed.

It is mentioned not as blame but as a simple fact of the mystery of my own life pilgrimage, a pilgrimage which was blessed then, as it is now, by each and every member of, and moment with, The Community.

It is perhaps pertinent here to recall once more the point of this book is not to focus per se on the story of one soul led by the Holy Spirit, through belonging to Christ, on a journey of unending mercy towards the Father in the awesome vocation of being PRIEST.

The point of this book is where sin abounds: grace abounds all the more, for each soul.

For your soul in the very moment you read this.

ALL is from the merciful hands of our Risen Lord.

ANYTHING not from His merciful hands is NOT for our good.

 Only that which, and all that which, comes from Him is for our good, is good.

EDITING your own work is perhaps as wise as being your own lawyer!

However it is good to have these old notes to stimulate the reflections which are still within the depths of my heart about those early years, understood now as a great oasis of grace in the midst of the desert of sin which constantly gave birth to sandstorms of despair across the regions of my heart.

The headaches have returned, as the doctors said they would. The test results show no tumour or cancer. Rather the doctors have concluded the cause of my troubles is arthritic damage, including some nerve damage and additional havoc caused by the heatstroke and a common virus which has attacked the fluid in the ear which controls balance.

In a word, chronic stuff but no chance of getting to heaven anytime soon!

Yesterday I walked back from the chapel with one of the women members. She told me a great story about working with the grand-daughter of one of the local men. A man I should note who was a great presence in my life when I was first here and from whom I learnt lessons still lived to this day.

The woman told me how one evening she had invited this teenage grand-daughter to come to Mass and after Mass the girl had asked: “Do you know what men look like when they are in love?”

The woman told me she figured this teenager had a crush on the men of the community so she admitted hesitating but did say: “Well, yes!”

The girl’s reply was unexpected: “Oh, did you see all those men in church? They have THAT look….and….they’re all in love with God!”

The communion of love!

There are various things which can block or at least delay true and total spiritual conversion, emotional maturation….though one can be a saint and not necessarily have it all together…just look at the classic Urodivoi, the fools for Christ!

Much of the frustration and discouragement we experience when we seek God, begins when our first misstep is to seek virtually any who or why, to justify or affirm our own existence….the seeking of Him where He is not even while He has already found us!

The frustration and discouragement come from our impatient expression of our need to be named, that is to hear someone call us by name in a voice which affirms our very being.

It is to surrender to an idol, to the evil one, through the sin of asking, seeking, that voice from the mouths, the lives, of other seekers. In this is found the common cause of so much sexual disorder.

Ultimately it is a disorder of the heart where, rather than communion of love, we have devouring desperation.

One of the early graces of my time with the community, a grace later rejected and yet which remained buried in my heart until one day after my ordination it exploded in my being as I elevated the chalice, was coming understand Who knows our real name [Is.49:1]!

     Keeping that ever since before my heart prevents me from easily seeking from any­one, anything else affirmation of my being.

 

 

 

 

 

Autobiography

21 VIGILANT DURING THE NIGHT

WE HAVE entered the last Advent of the century and the millennium!

If the fearful pundits, secular and religious both, are right and the world will soon end then truly this writing is the ultimate futility!

 

 

Returning to the original notes I took a moment to reflect on the powerful words [Mt.26.40; Mk.14:34; Jn.18:1; Lk.22:46; Jn.14:31] of Jesus the night of the penultimate vigil of prayer.

As I write these lines out by hand in the middle of the night, this Holy Thursday morning, when such tremendous reality unfolds, I stand in awe before the holy elasticity of time, history, space, as lived reality experienced by those who live, move, have their being permeated by the Sacrament of Baptism, animated by the Sacrament of Holy Eucharist!

My heart has come to understand the angel given to Jesus in the Garden of Olives, [Lk.22:43] IS the Angel of Encouragement…encouragement that in my life I be like the olive and allowed myself to be torn from the tree of my self-existence, pressed into the chalice of oneness with Him, crushed with His Cross that the oil of my being be poured out as love’s salve in service to my brothers and sisters.

To keep vigil during the night is an ancient tradition in the life of the Church and one I am moved to keep – from time to time.

This vigil I struggle with the mystery of time…waste too much time writing about time.

NOW, on sabbatical, these many months later, much time having elapsed, I cut severely those original notes, shamed at the amount of intellectual pertinence I spent time putting into words on paper.

It is now Holy Saturday and I have kept vigil two nights in a row.

Yesterday was NOT a day for words.

Nor questions as kneeling before the Cross THE Answer to all possible questions, is contemplated.

Yesterday was a day to stand outside the brokenness of ordinary time in utter silence, bowed low to the ground before the crucified One, being bathed in His Blood and drawn by that rushing river of mercy into His own time.

It is to be immersed in the timeliness and timelessness of Unconditional Love.

Now we prepare for the essential vigil of all vigils: the Easter Vigil…to keep watch before the tomb knowing in the unknowing what shall happen has happened!

Time is indeed fulfilled by the very fact God, in the Incarnation, came down into human history….man rises from the earth and returns to it [Gn.3:19]: this is an immediately evident fact. Yet in man there is an irrepressible longing to live forever…Christian Revelation excludes reincarnation, and speaks of a fulfillment which man is called to achieve in the course of a single earthly existence…..through a sincere gift of self, a gift which is made possible only through his encounter with God. It is in God that man finds his full self-realization: this is the truth revealed by Christ. Man fulfills himself in God, who comes to meet him through His Eternal Son. Thanks to God’s coming on earth, human time, which began at Creation, has reached its fullness. “The fullness of time” is in fact eternity, indeed, it is the One who is eternal, God Himself. Thus, to enter into “the fullness of time” means to reach the end of time and to transcend its limits, in order to find time’s fulfillment in the eternity of God.

 In Christianity time has a fundamental importance……In Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, time becomes a dimension of God…..From this relationship of God with time there arises the duty to sanctify time……..In the liturgy of the Easter Vigil the celebrant as he blesses the candle which symbolizes the risen Christ, proclaims: “ Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha and Omega, all time belongs to Him, and all the ages, to Him be glory and power through every age for ever.”….The meaning of this rite is clear: It emphasizes the fact that Christ is the Lord of time…The solar year is thus permeated by the liturgical year, which in a certain way reproduces the whole mystery of the Incarnation and Redemption, beginning from the first Sunday of Advent and ending on the solemnity of Christ the King, Lord of the Universe and Lord of History. Every Sunday commemorates the day of the Lord’s Resurrection.[ax]

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book Reviews

GOD CALLS ME MIRIAM

Publishers are well aware of the importance of book covers – for often time when browsing for ‘just something to read’ an eye-catching cover frequently triggers a purchase.

 

 

I mention this at the outset of this review because when the first word in a title is: GOD and the title declares something He is doing, and beneath that is the picture of a radiant woman in procession with lighted candle and under that teasers about the content of the book such as: journey, Jewish, Christian, struggle, disease and gulag – well you can be pretty sure this will be a page turner!

However once begun this is no page turner in the usual sense, rather this is a book which moves mind, memory, heart to reflection, and much more!

Many books for priests are written by priests – some books neither written by priests, nor specifically for priests, are treasuries of insight which we need both for our ongoing journey of faith and to be more truly servants of those who come to us seeking hope, mercy, faith.

The book reviewed here is precisely that treasure of a book!

Written by a woman I know well, and have come to know and treasure even more through accompanying her in reading this book to places, even in my own heart I often avoid visiting, I confess writing here the struggle is against revealing too much and depriving thereby others having the same experience.

Approached with mere curiosity, or worst with a voyeur attitude and the reader will miss the power, beauty, indeed the grace of being offered, rather invited, to journey with a woman on “this adventure, this quest for ‘life in abundance’ promised by Christ….” as Miriam writes in the Preface.

As mentioned I have known Miriam, the way we most know one another, for decades and she is a most beloved sister, friend, co-struggler on this great adventure of life – however in this book it is as if I am graced to know the real woman, the real disciple, the real servant of the poor – because in her book Miriam speaks words, experiences, fears, poverty, persistent faith – like pools of cool water in the immense desert we all must cross to reach the threshold of eternal paradise – pools of cool water were we may slake our thirst and journey some more.

Here is one example from her diary notes of January 20, 1997:

“Lord, why is it so painful?” He pointed to the crucifix. “Yes, but you suffered for us!” “All suffering is united with my suffering.” “Are you sure these aren’t just my neuroses?”

“I died for those too.”

GOD CALLS ME MIRIAM by Miriam Elizabeth Stulberg is available from:

www.madonnahouse.org/publications

 

Autobiography

20 TWO PRIESTS

I CELEBRATED Holy Mass before starting to write again. A votive Mass of Our Blessed Mother under her title, Pillar of Faith.

As I lifted the chalice, filled with Himself, my eyes fell upon the icon of the Twelve Apostles holding up the Church. My heart became instantly steeped in this awesome mystery of being priest.

A sudden urgency took hold to finish this book .

 

 

Then, just as suddenly, as I descended the chalice, my heart had a profound understanding of the mystery of His time.

One day in those turbulent sixties while I was working on a painting commissioned by one of the many cognoscente of surrealism, I suddenly found myself weeping.

A week or so later, while traveling by bus between cities, again tears streamed from some un-aware region of my being.

Over succeeding weeks these fits of sobbing became intense, and frightening.

I finally faced the fact something was terribly wrong and, through a doctor in a street clinic I volunteered at, found myself a psychiatrist.

By the second session the psychiatrist declared he could indeed cure me of my angst, but in so doing I would be drained of my artistic powers and that I should choose, art or inner peace, but that he could not give me both.

It is indicative of just how interiorly wounded I was that I believed him and opted for art.

The sixties!

So I returned to my self-destructive, walking beside myself, split from self, illusory existence, for it was no ‘life’.

However the All-compassionate, All-loving Father, who is constantly calling us to Himself….the sound of His voice is the beating Heart of Christ, IS Christ Himself, His word….takes even our most screwed up, our most unintended, inclination to prayer as eloquent plea from a pure child.

The Father does this through the inexhaustible movement of the Holy Spirit within the baptized soul.

Since we are so confused by emotion, wants, even needs, etc., etc., we really do not know objectively the grace needed, hence the Holy Spirit within the baptized speaks passionately and eloquently for us{Rm.8:26,27}.

The shrink may not have understood my tears but with each one taken, and folded into the Spirit’s inexpressible groaning, they became the Surgeon’s lance, cutting deep into my soul allowing the pus of sin to drain. {Deut.4:29, 30}

It was late one night, I was hanging out near the bus depot with a small band of fellow hippies, when a tall man, poorly dressed, long haired and bearded, yet older than most of us, approached.

He’d been tossed out of the depot by the cops and sent towards us, being told by them we knew where to sleep.

He followed us down into the cavernous reaches of an underground parking garage where a steam vent afforded warmth for sleeping in the exhaust laden air.

In the morning when the depot had reopened the man took us to its greasy spoon and bought us pancakes and coffee.

He told us of a place far to the north that none of the group but myself recognized from his description.

It was then that I knew this man of beard and pancakes was a priest!

Soon he was gone towards the bus bays and we wandered off towards the financial district to panhandle food and drug money.

As we walked I wondered about a priest who looked like that, slept on a steam grate, appeared so deeply sad, yet with some protective aura around him which, although he seemed not to want it, kept him from ultimate harm.

[ I would not see him again for many years until, coming from many adventures, even time in the desert caves of the Holy Land, he too would join The Community and we would become the closest of brother priests…….but such lay years into the future from the period of which I now write.]

It was a short time later that a letter arrived from, of all the women in my life, exception of the primacy of Our Blessed Mother, THE woman in my life, the Foundress of The Community.

Our correspondence, since the late fifties, had been unusual and erratic.

 Her letters always short and totally on point.

      Mine, as I look back, rather self-serving pathetic!

This time she wrote, commandingly of : “…a priest I know will be good for you. He is a former..monk like you and he has come to join us. You should really meet him.”

Even as I write these recall lines my being burns with an inner fire, for in that brief letter was contained an ineffable grace for the rest of my life.

Although I originally had no intention of going to see this priest I was nonetheless curious at least to see The Community, meet the woman with whom I had over the years exchanged letters.

However, left to myself, I would probably never have made the trip but within days of receipt of the letter my father announced he and my uncle where going to that area to fish, their wives to shop in country stores, why didn’t I come along and go visit the community I often spoke of.

My next memory is of standing alone in the cold rain of a fall day, heavy mist rising from the great river, a small grouping of buildings looking rather poor, and a man not much older than myself rushing towards me as if we were long lost brothers.

It was the priest she had written about.

He was dressed in secular clothing with an unfamiliar styled cross hanging from a slight chain around his neck.

He ushered me across the muddy lot into a tiny log cabin, its shelves lined with rocks and crafting equipment.

A small card table stood in one corner laden with unknown tools and a couple of ash trays.

He lit a cigarette and began to talk at a rapid, enthused pace, peppering me with his answers to questions I hadn’t asked.

Questioning me with his answers.

I smoked one cigarette after the other, my mind dazed by nicotine overload and swirling emotions triggered by this accelerated flow of energy from the priest.

I have no memory of conversational detail.

Just a series of memories of rapidly moving events, for suddenly the priest told me not to move and he rushed out of the cabin.

My eyes, being as I was having a massive panic attack, searched the rocks on all the shelves as if I were looking for a clue.

The door of the cabin swung open, the priest came in followed by a man with slicked black hair, wearing a cross like the priest’s, but not a priest, and I do remember this man’s words: “ Father has told me all about you and you are just the kind of man we need to help with our summer program. I want you to go home, settle your affairs, come back and join us! See ya!”

He left.

It all seemed a done deal.

The priest said he thought it would be a good idea that I take time over Christmas for a retreat in my former monastery before coming to join The Community.

He blessed me and left the cabin.

I recall sitting there, smoking, listening to the rain beat against the tar paper shingles of the roof, wondering what had just happened, suddenly aware that, at least in the moment, I was no longer panic filled.

The woman I had sought to meet, I never did see on that trip.

Once home, within weeks I had quit my job, packed my few belongings, boarded a train for the monastery.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Expiation

Priestly Mission: Jesus Lover, Priest, Oblation

Here He is!

 

Our Divine Lover, Priest!

 

Vested as Priest, placed on the paten of the Cross as Victim-Oblation

 

Alone.

 

Exhausted.

 

 

 

Condemned by false testimony, abandoned by those religious leaders who should have protected Him, handed over to the state to execute Him .

 

His chosen friends, first Pope, first Bishop-priests, betrayed Him, denied Him, fled from Him.

 

Only She whose own heart had been pierced by the sword of misunderstanding, gossip, rejection, remained – His Mother, and with her, besides her own women friends, one newly ordained bishop-priest. The one portrayed in popular religious imagination to this day as the youngest, weakest of the bunch!

 

Not  then to the first Pope, nor to those other allegedly strong men, was the Mother confided, but to the one whose strength was not in muscle or age, not in hardness of ego boasting promises to be faithful, but one who truly loved!

 

Love is stronger!

 

Of course just as when we celebrate the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass nothing else but the bread – wheat ground and baked by fire – appears to be upon the paten; nothing more than wine – from grapes crushed and squeezed until the last drop, and a wee drop of water co-mingled – water of life, of baptism, of slaked thirst, of tears – appears to be within the chalice, so too here: no-thing, no-one is upon the paten of the Cross, within the chalice of suffering but He Himself – yet in truth: ..CHRIST IS ALL AND IN ALL! [cf. Col. 3: 11]

 

Look at Him!

 

Contemplate Him!

 

We become the one we contemplate!

 

Look past the spittle of hatred and lies, past the scourging of sin of un-forgiveness of our enemies, beyond the apparent powerlessness to the true Beauty of His Face.

 

Look into those eyes which ever since He first opened them as He lay in the manger have gazed across the millennia upon you at this very moment – eyes which lavish upon one and all, upon you, absolute love, and compassion, pouring forth from His Heart and saying: For you! For you because I love you I am beaten down, rejected, abandoned, lied about, convicted, stripped, sentenced, killed – for You because I love you!

 

Love IS stronger!

 

It is a terrible thing to suffer rejection, abandonment, punishment – all without due process, all because liars go unchallenged and many bishops lack the courage { as did their original predecessors } to defend Christ crucified in His priests.

 

Yes, it is a terrible thing to be persecuted by the Church – but we must as suffering priests never forget we, like all the baptized, are invited to be one with Christ, even in the depths of His suffering, yes, but through Baptism we are also immersed into the wonder of His resurrection!

 

Love is stronger and like Christ Himself – if we ourselves are to have trusting hope in the strength of love and truth – we must ‘love our enemies and do good to those who persecute us.’

 

Look at Him!

Contemplate Him!

Love Him!

Trust Him!

Follow Him!

 

Yes, follow Him even unto the very aloneness of the altar of abandonment, the cross of rejection, the paten of unending waiting, waiting, waiting for Him to grab us by the hand, as He did sinking Peter, and to save us!

 

Jesus Himself is our hope!