Category Archives: Autobiography

Autobiography

47 MAR SHARBEL


FRESH SNOW fell during the night.

 

This morning the sun causes all the drifts to sparkle like scattered diamonds. The neighbourhood resounds with the scrape of shovels against cement as walkways and sidewalks are cleared. People chat and laugh with each other through the exertion and exhilaration.

My heart is moved to open Sacred Scripture and pray Sirach chapters 43 and 44!

BY THE TIME I was walking, at summer’s first beginning, deep into the woods with that kind priest-hermit, my stomach ailment had become a constant source of pain and stress.

My contract with the financial institution was coming to an end. The company I worked for was sending me out on various jobs (accounting, working for a polling firm, in a print shop ) prior to a major assignment for an engineering firm as an office administrator. Given my lifelong anxiety attacks these constant job changes exacerbated my general nervous state and my spiritual struggles.

Interiorly I felt as if I were in some state of spiritual vacuum, as it seemed to me the Holy Spirit had withdrawn from me, allowing me to experience more intensely than ever before in my life a state of desolation, without any sense of direction. It seemed the idolatrous addictions, the dark ignorance and sinfulness of my whole life was pressing down upon me indeed, eating away at my very being.

Yet by grace, even though I was sorely stressed out, confused, filled with inner darkness, an emptiness which seemed to impede actual prayer, rather than experiencing all of this as some type of despair my entire being was paradoxically filled with a joyful yearning, an enormous hunger, for Christ!

It had been months since I had made a good confession or even attempted to lead a truly Catholic faith life.

True I was, and again the paradox of graced inspiration, starting to spend time before the Blessed Sacrament — not so much in prayer and adoration per se as in the supplication of simply being there in agony — and when I did rarely attend Holy Mass I did not go to Holy Communion because I had not truly confessed my mortal sins — yet this afternoon my being was suddenly seized with a deep hunger for absolution, for the reception of Divine Mercy.

All this I poured from my heart into the heart of the priest-hermit who listened silently until the stream of words, emotions, confession, had exhausted itself.

By now we were sitting in his simple little hermitage and he said, just before he gave me absolution, how his heart felt I needed a special gift from Our Blessed Mother.

He gave me my penance, absolved me of my sins and repeated the conviction in his heart that through Our Lady I needed an experience of the direct intervention of God in my life — not just through the sacraments but in an intimate experience I would never forget.

That was when he told me about Mar (St.) Sharbel.

Briefly, this holy man became a monk and a priest in a monastery in Lebanon in the nineteenth century and after years of living the common life as a priest-monk he was given permission to become a hermit. He spent the next near quarter century living the hermitical life, being renowned for his piety, compassion, devotion to Jesus in the Holy Eucharist, his confident love of Our Blessed Mother, his immersion in the Holy Gospels.

Many healing and other miracles were attributed to him during his life.

He died on Christmas Eve, which is now his feast day, as he was canonized by Pope Paul VI during the Second Vatican Council.

Once when they exhumed the body it was found to be incorrupt, the coffin filled with sweet- perfumed oil.

Countless miracles occur through his intercession to this day.

The priest-hermit gave me a holy card with a relic of the saint and asked me to trust God’s power in my life through the intercession of the holy priest-monk Sharbel.

I returned to the city with a heart filled with peace flowing from sacramental absolution and the compassion of the priest.

I began the new jobs with a sense of optimism and started to lead a chaste and sacramental life.

The greatest joy was going to Holy Mass and for the first time in months receiving my Lord and God, my Redeemer, Jesus Christ, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity, in Holy Communion – it was like my First Communion!

The doctors ordered a new series of tests and I was actually able to see on a monitor what they saw as the scope-camera viewed my innards and revealed fluid.

This, apparently, was serious.

I was to return in a few days for possible surgery.

Before that, one June night, the pain was so intense I thought surely I would crack under the combination of pain and anxiety.

Suddenly I remembered that holy card with the relic of the saint.

My companion was away on a business trip and so the sense of being alone aggravated my distress as I fumbled around in a drawer among my papers for the holy card.

Yes, to my shame, I had failed to make the connection between being told about St. Sharbel and actively asking for his help.

Now fear, and desperate pain, had driven me, finally, to admit I needed a miracle.

Finding the holy card I immediately placed it against my stomach and fell back into bed, begging St. Sharbel to intercede for me.

Instantly I felt a sweet warmth flow over my being, penetrating through the skin, deep into my stomach, coursing through my body, enveloping me in a warm embrace.

I fell into a deep sleep.

I awoke at dawn with an urgent desire to go to Holy Mass and Communion.

I went to the first Mass of the day at the Jesuit church.

It was during Holy Mass I first became aware I was pain free!

Later when the doctors retested me they were amazed at the absence of fluid.

To this day I remain pain free with no recurrence of the fluid in my stomach.

There is a temptation as I finish the notes from this chapter to digress into an apologetic on the mystery of the Communion of Saints and the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox tradition of invoking their intercession.

My heart, however, is moved to simply share this prayer:

O HEAVENLY GOD, OUR FATHER, glorified through the lives of all Your Saints, it was You who inspired St. Sharbel to lead the perfecting life of a solitary hermit. We thank-You dear Father for having graced him with the courage to detach himself from the vicissitudes of this world so that within his hermitage the gifts of the Holy Spirit, poverty, chastity, obedience, might triumph in his soul through fidelity to his monastic vocation. We beg of You Heavenly Father to grant us also the grace to truly love You and serve You following the example of our beloved St. Sharbel. Heavenly Father it pleases You readily to confirm the holiness of St. Sharbel by granting prayers offered to You through his intercession, thus we beg of You to grant us this grace which we urgently need and ardently desire through St. Sharbel’s intercession so that we too might live the Holy Gospel and follow Jesus, thus Heavenly Father we beg You to grant……………………Amen.

 

 

Autobiography

46 FRAGMENTS GATHERED FROM WORKING


 

THE TELEVISION news this day has several stories involving workers: a coal miners’ strike in one country;

 after an earthquake men buried alive in a gold mine in another; thousands laid off by a multi-national so the company can cut costs and increase the dividends to stock-holders; and yet another series of tales from the former USSR of workers, teachers, doctors, and so forth, not having been paid in months.

 

Stories too: of human beings hiding in the containers on great ships, for weeks at a time, seeking to make their way into the country, in hopes of a better life.

Elsewhere, to punish and control the neighbouring nation, one country periodically closes its border so those workers who daily cross over to earn bread are kept from work, their families without bread.

How many hours have I spent in the confessional listening to the exhausted, frustrated, men and women, who feel so powerless before the corporate giants, or even just in face of the foreman, or others with power over their daily bread.

During the almost two years I worked for that company which supplied contract workers, I would work from the highest towers in the financial district to inside a print-plant six stories below ground.

I would work in stocks and bonds, accounting, as a person asking questions for a polling company, bureaucrat for an engineering firm, a folder and binder in a print shop — added to my experiences over the years as a social worker, postman, lumberjack, tailor, working in a laundry, free-lance writing, dj, some months as a mechanic, time as a farmer, even time doing stoop labour of seasonal workers around the world — each work experience a gathered fragment of insight and understanding into what it means for men and women to be workers.

My heart believes part of the greatness of Pope John Paul II as shepherd is he too has the heart, hands, bent back, of a worker.

Only a priest who has known hard labour could have written this:

( In Memory of a Fellow Worker )

He wasn’t alone. His muscles grew into the flesh of the crowd,

energy their pulse, as long as they held a hammer,

as long as his feet felt the ground.

And a stone smashed his temple

and cut through his heart’s chamber.

They took his body, and walked a silent line.

Toil still lingered about him, a sense of wrong.

They wore grey blouses, boots ankle-deep in mud.

In this they showed the end.

How violently his time halted: the pointers on the low-voltage

Dials jerked, then dropped to zero again.

White stone now within him, eating into his being,

taking over enough of him to turn him into stone.

Who will lift up that stone, unfurl his thoughts again

under the cracked temples? So plaster cracks on the wall.

They laid him down, his back on a sheet of gravel.

His wife came, worn out with worry; his son returned from school.

Should his anger now flow into the anger of others?

It was maturing in him through its own truth and love.

Should he be used by those who come after,

deprived of substance, unique and deeply his own?

The stones on the move again: a wagon bruising the flowers.

Again the electric current cuts deep into walls.

But the man has taken with him the world’s inner structure,

where the greater anger, the higher explosion of love. [cn]

 

Yes, I watch the television news from time to time, especially watching for stories of workers from across the world.

Jesus, God-Incarnate, spent most of His time on this earth as a worker.

Priests MUST have a special love and passion for, a particularly acute attentiveness and willingness to serve, those who work.

MONEY!

I recall one lunch hour going to the trading floor, that place of shouting, gesticulating, ulcer spawning, greed slacking-enhancing ante-chamber to the actual power over peoples — multi-national corporations.

The place where you could become wealthy beyond one’s ability to consume — or even quickly loose more money in an instant, more than the average human being can even conceive of.

Money!

This was a place – or rather this had become our culture — of greed and death where you can no longer assume a job for your entire working life — where human beings are declared as redundant faster than a technology becomes outmoded — stocks having replaced sweat as a the measure of a man.

Money!

No longer actually coins or paper or even a plastic card — rather increasingly a series of data on some electronic network — gone the clink of coin dropped into a man’s calloused palm at day’s end, gone the pay packet handed a woman as the store closes of a Friday evening — indeed gone the worker’s weekend — the believer’s day of rest — for money demands we never slow down, never stop, twisting in our constant search for more, even as the world turns, as if the earth were turning about looking itself for a place to rest.

I watched the relentless rush from right to left — globally from east to west — of the endless ‘ ticker-tape’ electronic spew of data — symbols and numbers assuring those on the winning end, discouraging those who’d misjudged — of fortune to be made, fortune now lost.

Not a single human face upon the ‘ big board ‘, not a single thought that this frenzy of buying and selling affected the dignity of real human beings at the end of the day as they were ‘ downsized ‘ while the cost of bread rose, interest on their mortgage rose, the corner store closed because the big box store a few blocks over now controlled things.

Money, money, money.

For thirty pieces of it you can buy and sell the Innocent One.

I returned to my office after that lunch time visit to the trading floor, returned to my work transferring billions in stocks and bonds from one buyer to another, one seller to another, and watched one town rejoice while another sank deeper into emptiness.

Something stirred in my heart that end of day as I was putting things away at my desk.

My heart saw the disposable worker, the frenetic trader, the corporate captain, the holder of stocks as not unlike myself — each of us wondering who and why, from whence to where, and fearing the answer as much as the question.

I understand now what my heart was seeing, and feeling, as a fragment of love –but I quickly dismissed it.

The Holy Spirit would have to prod deeper before I would look into the light, listen to what He was speaking to my heart.

But it was another fragment and they were — no doubt by Our Blessed Mother — being gathered into the basket of my heart.

Money, to the degree that I was making it in those days, became a problem for me for a time.

It became something of a burden, especially as I blithely walked past the seemingly constantly growing number of homeless and panhandlers.

Initially I was determined to cling to my new found money, after all I needed things, didn’t I. Besides if I gave to one person, what about the next. And the next.

Then Lent came and my heart was moved from incipient greed to a renewed awareness of charity.

I began to understand that what I was experiencing as a burden – money – was in fact a treasure and that for virtually the first time in my life I was in a position to be truly generous.

I began to make sure I always had some coins in my pocket. True, I could not give to everyone but once every day I could give to someone.

Another fragment!

For several months then my life became a rather comfortable, if somewhat insular, existence.

I had my daily job routine; stressful though it was which often included attending Mass in the worker’s chapel. There were the evenings with my companion, weekends with friends in the various bars, theatres, money with which to indulge my passion for books, the time, the security of a comfortable home in which to read.

Money for fine dining, art galleries, time to write poetry, essays, to travel in comfort whenever I went to visit my spiritual father.

There was a dichotomy however which could not long be ignored between the orthodox true teachings being placed in my heart by my spiritual father and the advice being given me by priests I consulted in the city whenever I would approach the sacrament of confession and confess sins such as greed or my disordered relationship.

The city priests assured me that if I was, as they said ‘basically’, monogamous, there was nothing wrong with the way I was living.

In the depths of my heart I knew they were not speaking truth, just as surely as I knew my spiritual father was speaking truth.

Of course I was placing myself in the heart of the dichotomy because as much as part of me desired to live in truth the rest of me clung to my fears and addictions.

Thus in the midst of a seemingly benign routine of life I was increasingly stressed.

One day I doubled over at my desk in excruciating pain and found myself rushed to the nearest emergency ward.

Once the doctors found out where I worked they spoke to me as if I were just another over-stressed achiever.

They loaded me up on some strong antacids, having determined it was stressed induced stomach trouble, and sent me home.

My stress induced trouble had nothing to do with the job I was doing.

It had everything to do with the work I was not doing.

If a man is entangled in the things of this world, caught by their many shackles, and seduced by the evil passions, it is very hard for him to recognize that there is another invisible struggle and another inner warfare. – -St. Makarios of Egypt.

Within a few weeks I was going through a bottle of the antacid medicine every day.

Summer arrived and with it the extreme heat and humidity which annually takes such a toll on my being.

My conditioned worsened and I began to miss work.

Food, which always had been a last resort source of comfort, became intolerable as it seemed to fuel the acidic burning in my stomach.

I returned to the doctors and more tests were ordered.

Nothing definitive was found.

Looking back on it, given my lifelong acute anxiety attacks, I am surprised none of the doctors recommended a tranquillizer.

Here is another fragment though, for at that stage of my life had I calmed down through drugs I most likely would not have looked into my own heart.

Filled with the physical pain, struggling with increasing anxiety, feeling like my idyllic situation was beginning to unravel, I decided on a spur of the moment to go and visit my spiritual father.

Not having checked ahead of time to be sure he was there I was very disappointed when I arrived at The Community to be told he was away and would not return for a few weeks.

Crestfallen I headed towards the shrine of Our Blessed Mother.

As I was walking towards the shrine one of the hermit-priests was coming towards me, noticed my sadness and asked what was wrong.

I told him my woes and he invited me to open my heart more and to walk with him to his hermitage.

I did.

Once in his hermitage he said he would pray for me and blessed me with a relic of a true healing saint.

I call upon You, my God, my mercy, who made me, and did not forget me, although I forgot You. I call You into my soul, which You prepare to accept You by the longing that You breathe into it. Do not desert me now when I call upon You, for before I called upon You, You went ahead and helped me, and repeatedly You urged me on by many different words, so that from afar I could hear You, and be converted, and call upon You as You called to me. [co]

 

Autobiography

45 WALKING BESIDE MYSELF AGAIN


THE SADNESS of the rich young man from the Gospel was mine.

 

It is not specified, rather presumed by most Gospel commentators, that the rich young man’s possessions where exclusively material.

I like him was hobbled in my hunger to know and be with Christ by my many possessions, though mine were less material yet no less a bondage: neurosis, bitter-roots, inner-vows, addictions, fear, self-will, and heaviest of all possessions to drag around from place to place, my egotistical-narcissistic-self.

Jesus, being as He is Divine Mercy, Divine Tenderness Incarnate, never leaves us without hope.

While the Holy Gospel does not so indicate, my heart has always believed that at some point in the future — perhaps after receiving Baptism and the Holy Spirit in the days following the Death and Resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost — the sheer loneliness of having so many possessions, of being possessed by so many, humbled that young man enough for him to indeed sell all his possessions and give them to the poor, through a life of service to the poor.

Not in the Gospel per se, just a notion in my heart.

What IS in the Gospel is the story of a conversion from a no to the Father to a yes. [Mt. 20:28ff]

Jesus is always revealing to us how mercy is greater than hardness of heart.

So once again in my life, a new decade, a new city, new circumstances.

The apartment my companion was living in was in the worst part of town and filled with cockroaches and other vermin.

My friend had experienced a difficult time in his early months in this city finding work and had only recently begun to establish himself.

There was an urgent priority on my getting a steady job so we could get out of that dump and into something cleaner, safer, better to be sure.

That first day I slept a fair bit, finally ignoring the roaches scurrying across the counter tops and even over the blanket I slept under.

When I needed a smoke I’d lean out the bathroom window, over the alleyway, this not smoking in the place, being one of the conditions of my being taken back.

The next day I went walking about the city, traveling the subway system, getting off at various stops at random, emerging into the cold January air to see a different part of this huge city of finance, movie, television, literature, art, and extreme poverty, prejudice — a city which saw itself as the center not merely of the country but frequently of the universe.

A city also seen, if not across the country certainly in the mind of the local clergy and powerful laity, as the dominate, Roman Catholic, diocese in the country.

Unfortunately, as I would learn in my seminary days, this meant more error flowed from the local institutions into the wider Church across the country than obedient humility would have allowed.

I did, however, find this great city exhilarating and felt I would do well there.

A few blocks from the apartment was a parish run by the Jesuits and there, I quickly found out, the duality of lifestyle and unabashed modernist Catholicism were readily accepted, indeed advocated.

Yes, it seemed, things would work out here.

But this was the early eighties and while they would end as the decade of greed, that greed had a tremendous price for those used to working in a smokestack economy.

Within a few weeks my money had run out and I was still without work.

This caused increased friction between my companion and I until finally he simply stated either work, welfare or out.

One of the Gospel events which is applicable to a great variety of circumstances, sacramental, inner-healing, life-event, care of necessary material goods etc. is the event where Christ multiplied the loaves and fish, as found in St. John chapter six, verses one to thirteen.

The key phrase I wish to reflect upon here, in light of subsequent events from my early days in the new city, is ‘gather the fragments’. [Jn 6. 1-13, cf. V.12]

I was at prayer in the parish church one afternoon, before the Blessed Sacrament, in desperate agony over the tension between me and my companion, the financial stress, need for a job, inner healing, indeed the whole gambit of my real poverty, admission of which as true confession open to conversion, was still hobbled by the weight of my many possessions.

What my heart became aware of, astounded by actually, was a deep sense that within the very chaos of my life at that moment the Holy Spirit was at work, a work of purification and preparation — preparation for exactly what I was not given to understand at that juncture.

My heart was made aware of the Gospel referred to above and that henceforth all my poverty and work experiences were to be a gathering of fragments.

Today, as a priest who serves the poor, working people, the sick, lonely, rejected — as all priests are called to — I can rejoice that nothing of those fragments has been lost, for I am able to serve with a degree of understanding heart that comes from shared experience.

The next day I had the strength to go to the welfare office and apply for welfare.

Many comedy routines, films, tv episodes, make fun of what happens to people in a welfare office.

There is too the common mythology of people on welfare being basically pariahs who, in a sense, steal the money generated by the average, decent, hardworking citizen.

My heart believes the real evil here is that over the centuries, certainly since the advent of raw capitalism with its boom and bust cycles, Christianity itself has handed over to the state more and more of the corporal works of mercy.

It is a type of crisis of faith wherein we trust the state to provide more than we trust God.

As always it is the poor who bear the burden of our lack of faith.

The end result too, in that paradox since Vatican II of those who previously had truly cared for the poor, living poorly themselves, under the oft repeated false doctrine of the so-called ‘spirit of Vatican II’, orphanages, schools, hospitals, and so forth, have been closed because there are no consecrated religious to staff them…while so-called spirituality centers to assuage the angst of the middle-class proliferate…and convents, monasteries, seminaries, parishes, continue to be closed.

The state cannot, indeed will not, under any circumstances, treat the poor in light of their God-given dignity as persons.

To be poor, to apply for welfare, is to pay a tremendous price of loss of one’s dignity as a human person.

A dignity not easily retrieved.

So it was for myself as I was shuffled from wicket to wicket, berated for being a healthy man without work, challenged as to the veracity of my statements, advised I could go to a soup kitchen if I was hungry since no social worker would come by to verify my situation until the following week.

Imagine my amazement when the worker did eventually come by and deemed I was living high on the hog in that dump and was about to deny my application when she opened the oven door on the stove and a whole herd of roaches scampered out.

I got welfare then.

We used my welfare check to pay the rent, while my companion put his rent money aside as down payment on a better place.

Since smoking costs, obviously not just cash, we started jogging to help me overcome the withdrawal and to ease my general anxiety attacks.

The physical aspect of the relationship was minor.

Mostly I went out from time to time for anonymous encounters and when they did occur I had that interior split, the experience of walking beside myself — it was as if I were a mere observer and also as if I were trying to draw back deep inside myself so that the real me were not involved.

Afterwards I would take long hot showers as if the scalding water could cleanse me interiorly, or sear together the split.

By spring we’d found a better place to live and I began again the hunt for a job.

My best friend from many years had long been living in that city and had a place beside ours. Both buildings had been fine houses in the previous century and were recently done over into yuppie-style apartments. The whole neighbourhood reeked of youth, money, pleasure. It was very eighties.

Each time I’d pass a church, where Jesus lives in the Blessed Sacrament, I’d want to go in, make a sincere confession.

I rarely did until I found myself working near a worker’s chapel and there always confessing immediately I had sinned alone or with another.

Thus another type of gathering fragments would occur.

After sixty job interviews, broken in my ego, the tension increasing, the inner warfare with myself extensive, a type of rage towards the deafness of God taking hold, I was on the verge of a breakdown.

I was visiting my friend next door, sitting on his living room floor, sipping coffee, when suddenly I began to tremble, to shudder, to sob and out of my mouth rushed all the rage, frustration, doubt, confusion — a type of emotional vomiting.

Trying to comfort me he suggested I apply for a job at the hotel he worked at as night clerk where many of the tv and movie stars stayed. He stressed the money and the perks of going out with the sex-crazed entertainment types, adding that it was surely the stress of trying to lead a non-hedonistic life that was tearing me apart and that once I got money and pleasure unlimited I’d feel better about myself and life in general.

At first it was as if he was speaking to me from such a great distance away I could barely understand what he was saying. Then his words began to register. My heart understood I was drowning in a lifestyle I had not truly renounced. The sheer weight of my possessions was pulling me beneath the waves and surely I was about to drown.

I knew in that instant that if I did not try and pray all would indeed, I would indeed, be lost.

That was all Christ needed.

That minuscule crack in the wall of resistance to Him became the fissure through which He would begin entry as surely as if I had truly the courage to open wide the door of my being to Him.

I left my friend’s place and immediately walked the twenty blocks to the church in the city dedicated to Our Blessed Mother of Perpetual Help.

There I went in and my prayer was simply to weep.

The very next day I was hired by a company who supplied temporary staff to major corporations and was contracted at very good pay to work in a brokerage house in the financial heart of the country.

Money, the false security of money, does strange things.

I did return to the sacraments, especially on Sunday. Then, once I found the worker’s chapel near my office, I began to attend daily Mass, often also going to confession.

But I was lulled into a compromise.

Namely, I very, very rarely was unchaste, didn’t drink, or smoke, did go to Mass, but I did not move out from the relationship and I did not pursue true inner healing or even yet pose the central question: what is the Father’s will for me.

I had allowed a crack to open within me and Christ had indeed gained, as it were a foothold but I had not opened wide, as yet, my being to Him.

I guess it was a type of standoff.

He wanted me to move closer to Him so He could accomplish more healing within me.

I wanted Him to accomplish more healing in me so I would move closer to Him.

 

Autobiography

44 DISEASE IN THE DARK IGNORANCE


IN THE FIRST encyclical of his pontificate, Redemptor Hominis, Pope John Paul II gives us a definitive teaching on the reality of the human person.

 

It is a bold, concise, clear, Gospel and Sacred Tradition rooted, teaching on Christian anthropology, the meaning and purpose of human life , the great sacred mystery, reality of God become man, the Incarnation.

Pope John Paul teaches:

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it. This…is why Christ the Redeemer ‘ fully reveals man to himself’…this is the human dimension of the mystery of Redemption……The man who wishes to understand himself thoroughly…..must with his unrest, uncertainty and even his weakness and sinfulness, with his life and death, draw near to Christ. He must, so to speak, enter into Him with all his own self, he must ‘appropriate’ and assimilate the whole of the reality of the Incarnation and Redemption in order to find himself. If this profound process take places within him, he then bears fruit not only of adoration of God but also of deep wonder at himself. How precious must man be in the eyes of the Creator, if he ‘gained so great a Redeemer’, and if God ‘gave His only Son’ in order than man ‘should not perish but have eternal life.’[ci]

Now that is what, though of course I could not have articulated it at the time, my being was yearning to discover and participate in during the period in my basement cave as an urban desert dweller.

The problem was that rather than enter into the mystery of placing my face to the ground and being humble before the Incarnate One with my weaknesses and sins, in a word being still, I approached the whole matter by and large as an intellectual exercise.

My being was hungering for an authentic experience of love, and of self.

My thinking, my attempts to rationally come to grips with my life to date, bereft of the essential simplicity, childlikeness of heart, required for true inner healing, came almost, though by His mercy not totally, to naught, as I took, as it were, a turn not of responsive docility to the prompting and illumination of the Holy Spirit, but into the disease of introspection.

 

I WAS essentially, (and only saved from total disaster since my spiritual father was always there, by letter, phone, visits in person, doing his best to break through my very sophisticated intellectual, ego defences), in this desert experience by my own ‘flight’ determinism.

Thus my uniformed, unformed, immature, fearful state of being, even endowed as I was with a ferocious autonomous will, could not long sustain the struggle.

The wise monk, a true modern desert dweller, indeed a true latter day father of the desert, Matthew the Poor, articulates it best:

Because of this hidden deceit and the fraudulent methods the devil uses, all who do not cleave to the Name of Christ and the Holy Spirit — that is, the Spirit of truth, knowledge, understanding and divine guidance — easily fall prey to the devil’s wiles and do his works quite unaware. Instead of rightly perceiving the works of the evil one, they see them simply as the way of the world or the prevailing custom or the natural product of human nature or perhaps the result of sickness, chance, unintentional error, or rash speech or action. These are the threads the devil cleverly weaves together till they invisibly encircle the mind, gradually and fiendishly shutting out the light that brings discernment between truth and falsehood. Then they close in upon the conscience, stifling it till it slowly and almost imperceptibly loses its sensitivity to truth. Finally these perceptions penetrate so deeply that they enslave not only the mind, but even the body itself, and in the end the law of sin occupies a person’s very being and controls mind, tongue, conscience, body and behaviour. [cj]

In the latter part of the seventh decade of the twentieth century the impact of materialist-hedonism, rejection of faith, in particular among Roman Catholics the development of a rejection of the sacraments, in particular confession and belief in the Real Presence, and the general spiritual exhaustion and malaise in society, was expressing itself in a desperate attempt to find meaning in the existence of self, in life in general.

Several well-known trends began to dominate the popular culture, and as well to penetrate, in various degrees, the centers of higher learning, including seminaries.

On the popular front, given the high cost of therapy with trained professionals, a whole plethora of self-help books became best-sellers, as did the expansion of so called ‘ eastern ‘ techniques. Some of the latter were rooted in actual ancient forms of religious belief and practice, such as Buddhism.

Among disenchanted Christians, including Catholics, looking for emotional solace, that feel-good aspect of life which so obsessed the decade, various forms of evangelical groups, some equating faith with material success — God as the ultimate middle-class capitalist — others became personality cults — began to pervade the air-waves.

The self-help books, and latterly in the eighties their attendant get-rich-quick offspring, will prove themselves to have been a mixed benefit — helpful to some, terribly destructive to others.

I found myself caught up in the general atmosphere of introspection, which is destructive to the baptized person — for the Holy Spirit, while He does invite us to a truly, contrite, examination of conscience, which includes a truthful awareness and assessment of one’s ‘consciousness’, nonetheless does not aid and abet introspection as a turning in upon the self.

The Holy Spirit invites us on a journey inward to encounter with Christ.

Again the ultimate point of the journey being our transfiguration by the Holy Spirit to where, in truth, we not only exult, but in reality live the sacred mystery: I LIVE NO LONGER, CHRIST LIVES IN ME.

The disease of introspection has many levels, some more lethal than others…. It is amazing how perfectly and methodically some persons can go about destroying every experience of life (i.e. the power to be), even every thought experience, through turning an introspective, analytical mind to bear on it….. a vicious and continuous mental obsession… an exercise in..continually looking inward to find some sort of a personal truth or reality… …inner dialogue..full of an irrational sophistry that [can] only tear concepts apart, but [can]never put the fragments back together in any kind of satisfying whole…..floundering in serious mental and spiritual darkness…filled with fear when he first sought help through prayer. [ck]

Of course at the time I was unaware that was happening within me, and my spiritual father, prudently, did not pressure me in anyway. He continued to work with me through the healing of memories and a constant encouragement that I strive to grow in trust of, and docility to, the Holy Spirit.

The turmoil of introspection, and the evil one’s use of that to sow confusion and a type of spiritual exhaustion, itself the step-child of emotional exhaustion, eventually led to an acting out of my old addiction and I began to lead, once again, a type of double life — struggling very hard to lead a chaste life of prayer in my basement-desert-cave, the introspective-performance oriented struggle — and straying, though only occasionally, into the fringes of the sub-culture which I was trying to leave behind. The result being I sometimes surrendered to the disordered addiction to hedonism, thus causing even greater inner turmoil, deeper introspection leading to a more determined ‘performance’ of my self-assumed ‘desert’ vocation.

I was, then, less and less Christ-centered, more and more egocentric within the false self.

To fail to be centered is to ‘walk alongside ourselves,’ a stance whereby we live out of an activism separated from being and therefore from meaning. A person split in this way can never live in the present moment. He can only live for a future that never quite arrives, one that he is perhaps feverishly trying to control in order to avoid the pain of his past. [cl]

This expressed itself within me through a growing conviction, aided and abetted by the growing trend in some circles within the Church, advocating the notion that it was indeed possible to lead an active homosexual life and be a true Christian.

This extended so far as to seeing the lifestyle as itself a vocation and I bought the ideas wholesale.

This in turn led to a determination to be re-united with my companion and thus the inner turmoil increased exponentially as the introspective turmoil fed the new notion of embracing the duality — so contradictory as to make me shudder interiorly today that I could have ever believed it to be true — of a Christ-centered existence while giving myself over to mortal sin.

The only way out of the disease of introspection is to place love in right order, namely God first, my brother and sister next, myself last.

For this to happen, of course, we must know true love.

This demands surrender, a childlike surrender and trust to the reality that love is God loving us first. Through the reception and acceptance of His love then we are able to love.

I was, as so long practiced in my life, substituting, frankly misunderstanding,  gratification for love— taking superficial emotional consolation from someone for the reality of love.

Only when I would finally recognize not only my need for professional therapy to deal with neurotic damage, a true inner healing through real faith and sacramental living, would I begin to experience, taste, accept, the gift of the Father’s love, and only then would I begin to emerge from the quagmire of the disease of introspection, the bondage of performance, the dark ignorance of autonomous self-will.

I called my companion who, with some conditions such as I find a job, agreed to take me back.

A friend said he would drive me and my few belongings to yet another new city in my life.

Christmas came and went and instead of going to Midnight Mass I went out with a priest friend, who was struggling between the option of leaving the priesthood and going overseas as a missionary.

He arrived late Christmas eve begging me to go and have a few beers, shot some pool, chat.

By the end of the night he was more settled and had made his choice.

He chose Christ and the missions. [Mk.10:21, 22]

I had chosen flight from trusting in Christ alone.

 

 

Autobiography

43 AN ATTEMPT TO TRUST HIM


 

TODAY THE CHURCH CELEBRATES the Baptism of Our Lord, in the Jordan through the intermediary of St. John the Baptist.

This is called in the East, more specifically, what both East and West celebrates, THEOPHANY: the revelation of God as Holy Trinity.

 

God: Father, Son, Holy Spirit!

…the God of life and love, a Person in relationship with another Person, the Son, and yet another Person, the Holy Spirit. The Baptism of Christ was a blessed occasion for God to manifest Himself as He really is in the inner sphere of His life. He is a one and unique Essence, a one and unique Substance, a one and unique God in three divine Persons.

…Theophany tells of the mystery of God as He is in His inner sphere of life, a Transcendent Trinity…..

The feast of Theophany therefore, celebrates the greatest of all the mysteries of our Christian religion, the mystery of our God, the God of infinite life and love, the one and unique God in three divine Persons.

…it is the feast of the revelation of the Trinity of God Father-Son-Spirit, the feast of the re-creation of the world, and of the divinization of our humanity……..in one word Feast of Light….the Lord came to be the Light of the world and He is the One ‘who enlightens and illumines every human being who is born in this world’… [Jn.1:9]. He is the Light of the whole creation because He is Image and Revealer of the Father and Sender of the Holy Spirit.

……Holy Trinity is the basic truth of our Christian religion.

….our hearts…….enter into the feast…

….we see with our eyes and hear with our ears the ineffable reality of God. While our Lord and God Jesus Christ is in the river Jordan we hear a voice from heaven saying ‘ You are My Son….’ It is, therefore, a Father talking and Christ is the Son. Moreover, we see a dove which is the Holy Spirit alighting on the head of Christ. God is, therefore, one and unique God in three divine Persons, Father-Son-Spirit. In the celebration of Theophany, the revelation of God-Trinity, we are taken up beyond the historical dimensions of a mere event of baptism and transported into the heights of mystical communion with the Triune God. [cl]

That is exactly what my entire being was hungering for, to enter into the Light!: when I decided to inculcate my romantic notion of being a desert dweller in the basement cave.

The fundamental error, I was albeit rather naively making, is that we CANNOT, per se, step into the Light.

The Light Himself must enter us[Rv.3:20].

What we can do, by grace, what we must do, by grace, is authentically open wide the doors of our being as response to His offer of Himself, our Light, then He shall enter and make it so that we are thus in the Light, in Him.

LOOKING BACK along the corridors of my memory to that first night, and the subsequent few months I lived in the cave-apartment, I now understand what happened that night, and why what my heart sought ,I was nonetheless unable to receive in its fullness.

Yet God being all-loving and all-tender as He is, nothing is impossible to Him, and time, as all things, is no impediment to His love.

In retrospect, then, actual conversion, and deepening of the call to change of heart, did occur.

While in the immediate it may not have been apparent to me, over the following years that initial hunger to be severed, by grace, from my addictions, wounds, sins, would come to pass.

He is all merciful and, indeed, where sin increased, grace overflowed all the more![Rm.5:20]

Sitting there, so suddenly experiencing a crushing aloneness, I busied myself with lighting a vigil light to dispel the increasing darkness of the falling night; took a piece of paper and wrote out a rule of life and schedule for my days, setting out times for prayer, cleaning, Mass, spiritual reading, listening to people who might come to chat — everything that my romantic notion of an urban cave-dweller’s life should entail.

Naturally enough the central question: what IS the will of the Father for me, time to be still and listen to HIM — was not even posed.

Satisfied I had things in order, more precisely self-assured I had things under control; I blew out the vigil light, since I only had a few and little cash to buy more with, and went to bed.

As I lay there on the small bed, under my single blanket, in the deep dark, a chasm, an immense black-hole of emptiness, opened up within me.

An ocean of grief seemed to be cascade into my being.

I was stunned.

I was terrified.

I sobbed.

Tearless!

But I did not pray, did not cry out to God!

My autonomous will, my survival skills, my ego, reacted.

A motor kicked in at that juncture.

A loud, clacking, invading motor and my panic increased, subsiding only slightly when my brain figured out it was the old refrigerator.

The motor ran, ran, ran and I tensed the more as that loud sound seemed to permeate the entire little apartment, seeping through my skin and bones into my inner being.

I found sleep impossible, flaying about on the bed, filled with self-pity, emptiness, loneliness, and a reluctance to pray, as if that would be tantamount to admitting this whole adventure was a terrible error of my own wounded ego.

The thought came to unplug the fridge. A thought which came only after more than a hour of the senseless struggle.

My hesitation was a combination of ego refusing to admit my terror and the realization that my entire food supply was in the refrigerator and could spoil.

Finally a modicum of common sense and a half muttered prayer for mercy overcame all other considerations and I unplugged the fridge.

The sudden ensuing silence took some time to adjust to.

Dark, airless, empty, sad, space seemed limitless as I lay down again, asking only that God protect me in my fear and let me sleep.

I awoke the next day having slept for over twelve hours.

It was almost noon and I was sure that the food would have spoiled, the frozen stuff melted.

I opened the refrigerator and was amazed, humbled actually at my lack of faith, to find everything, even the milk, as cold as if that machine had run all night.

I plugged it back in and the racket of the motor was actually consoling this time.

There was, as I cleaned up and began the day, a deep sense in my heart that no matter what, Our Lady was watching over me.

I ate a little lunch of cheese and bread, spent some time in prayer and reading, then late in the afternoon headed off to the parish church for Holy Mass, feeling secure in myself that this move, this attempt at desert life in the heart of the city was, indeed, God’s will for me.

A rationalization to be sure, but one, in mysterious ways, in His Fatherly tenderness, He frequently blessed throughout the following months.

Over time the parish priest began to send the poor, the troubled, to visit me.

One example of Divine Tenderness is that no matter how little food I had, if the hungry came for a meal, there was always enough food.

A routine developed then which lasted until the last few weeks I was there: fasting, prayer, writing, going to Mass, helping the poor and lonely, and, which truly is the central grace and importance of those months, ever increased contact with my spiritual father.

He began teaching me about the healing of memories and how healing was occurring through the process of allowing those memories, and some significant dream experiences, to be touched by Christ.

It was the beginning of the healing and true conversion process which — though had I suspected this at the time it would have discouraged me, now it is one of the joys of my life — continues to this day and must continue until my death, for it is the process of transfiguration, sobornost with the Blessed Trinity — the lessening of I and the increase of Christ.

For a time, then, all was well.

What happened to precipitate this desert-urban-cave-dwelling to an end was my transferring a significant portion of the energies used for my addictions into the disease of introspection.

 

 

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]

 

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]