Tag Archives: Christ

Priesthood Today

10 ANOINTING-HEALING-DELIVERING

                                                                       

                                                                       The complete Christ is the Christ united to the concourse of the faithful who will live for ever; the complete love of Christ is the love of the Heart of Jesus, united to the love of millions of Christians who will love with Him and in Him to the end of time. This is the great masterpiece Divine Love has accomplished. This alone has succeeded in quenching the infinite love-thirst which Christ had for His Father.

                                                                       Of me then, Jesus asks alike my body and heart, my mind and my will. He asks everything of me. Himself He has given wholly to me. He has given me His flesh, His blood, His life. Now in return He asks mine of me. “Allow Me to live in the place of the self in you; allow Me to substitute Myself for you,” He says to me; “For through you and in you I would yet love the Father to the limit of love.” [87]

A few years ago, in the middle of the night, a call came into the rectory where I was living.

The call was from a Catholic ER nurse in the city hospital.

She was desperately trying to find a priest who would come and anoint a young husband and father, seriously injured in a car crash.

I went immediately to the hospital, anointed the young man, comforted his wife, was present when he died and prayed both the prayers for the dying and then for the deceased.

Afterwards the nurse took me aside and confided she had called the nearest parish first but the priest who answered the phone had said: “We don’t respond outside of office hours.”

Some months later I was asked to help hear confessions in another parish where they were having a “healing” mission.

What happened there I found deeply troubling – lay people where mimicking the actions of priests when we celebrate the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, using oil and making the Sign of the Cross on the people who came to them, on hands and forehead.

This after the very clear instruction from the Vatican:

                                                                    In using sacramentals, the non-ordained faithful should ensure that they are in no way regarded as sacraments whose administration is proper and exclusive to the bishop and to the priest. Since they are not priests, in no instance may the non-ordained perform anointings either with the oil of the sick or any other oil. [88]

As with all sacraments there is a direct connection between our faith in the sacraments as encounters with our loving Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit, in which we participate as recipients and also as celebrants, and the care with which we protect the integrity of the sacred – or not.

We need also to be careful of the way we use language, for words are powerful.

Hence to speak of a ‘healing’ Mass as some extra particular celebration of Holy Mass is erroneous, for every Holy Mass heals.

It is understandable the hunger of people for physical, psychological, spiritual healing – but to confuse the power of the specific Sacrament as being somehow of lessor important than certain para-liturgies such as mentioned above speaks of a lack of faith and trust both in the Sacrament of Anointing and in the very sacred power which is ours in persona Christi.

We need to rediscover, heed and be generous with the Church’s own appreciation of the Sacrament of Anointing of the Sick, as articulated, for example, by the Second Vatican Council:

                                                                         “Anointing of the Sick,” is not a sacrament for those only who are at the point of death. Hence, as soon as anyone of the faithful begins to be in danger of death from sickness or old age, the fitting time for him to receive this sacrament has certainly arrived. [89]

The Catechism extends this to include: “….just prior to a serious operation….” [90]

I may be too generous here but having worked with people suffering eating disorders and other serious mental health issues, addicts, people suffering with HIV, etc., etc., I prefer a charitable lavishness with the sacrament, trusting that whoever asks be anointed.

I apply the same when it comes to the matter of time of death.

This I learned from my own bishop who ordained me, now long gone to his eternal reward.

He was truly pastoral and once asked me to attend a rooming house where the police were waiting.

A man had died a few days before and the elderly couple who owned the home did not want the body moved until the man had received ‘the last rites.’

The Bishop said: “Go and under your breath say softly first: ‘If there is life within you then I….’, and the old couple will be at peace.”

Sometimes the needs of the living ask of us what God in His love fully understands and undoubtedly appreciates! [cf. Canon 1005]

Not only when I am travelling on the busy highways where, as we all know serious crashes are unfortunately all too common, but also when just walking around the city, I keep the Holy Oil with me, for at any time we may come upon someone, for example, collapsed on the sidewalk who may be in need of the sacrament.

Simply put as priests we should always be ready to respond to all souls at all times whatever their need.

I believe we priests should accept and understand we are serving Jesus, the Church, the human family, in a time of war, the war which has raged across all of human history, but is perhaps more intense in our own day: spiritual warfare.

Sometimes the casualties in this war are because of actions of we human beings who often act recklessly, sometimes because of the direct, albeit limited as we know from the Book of Job, actions of the devil and his minions – always we priests must be ready!

One winter’s night I was traveling along a narrow highway in a severe snowstorm.

Usually I would not drive under such conditions but it was critical to get a lay missionary to the airport some hundred miles to the south as she was going to a country where the window of opportunity to enter was limited.

Missing the flight meant it would be months, perhaps years, before the proper visa would be granted again.

So there I was cautiously driving through the storm when coming around a tight bend in the road numerous lights were flashing.

We had come upon a terrible crash involving so many vehicles and deceased and seriously injured people, as the first officer who approached the car asking for help told me, all available ambulances, from the nearest city itself an hour away, had been called to the scene.

I got a small stole kept for such emergencies out of the glove box, and as I stepped out of the car, telling my passenger who had already gone pale never having witnessed such a scene to stay put as there was nothing she could do, got the oil from my pocket.

Bodies were strewn about, some dismembered, all deceased, so I simply anointed and absolved with the ‘if there is life within you’ formula.

So many crashed vehicles, so many dead, near a dozen already rushed to hospital among the living, of which only two were uninjured, a man and his little girl, the wife and mother having perished.

The police already knew the lead car had been speeding and crashed into a van from the opposite direction triggering the pile up.

The father and child were in the back of a cruiser and I spent some time comforting them, then turned my attention to the officers and once that was done, my feet soaked as much with blood as wet snow, returned to my car where my passenger was in tears and we spent the rest of the trip praying for the dead and injured. [Mk.6:6-13]

I tell the above simply to underline part of our call must be our readiness at any moment to be present to, with our people whatever their need is.

If we have fallen into some type of 9-5 functional mentality, see priesthood as some sort of job, well then we won’t keep, for example, the Oil on our person.

Who among us priests would ever want to be the one who ‘passed by’?  [Lk. 10:29-27]

His people, our people, are mainly good, sincere people doing their best to love one another, care for their families, be good citizens yet at the same time, as Jesus Himself points out [Mk.6:30-34; Mt.9:35-37] they often act as if sheep without a shepherd, experiencing confusion and fear, especially in these days of such extensive global anxiety fed by a media which reports more on the state of terrorism, economy, climate, disaster, than on giving priority to stories about human kindness, goodness, efforts for peacemaking.

I see a direct connection between the anxieties of the human family and an attitude among priests which fails to see our vocation in persona Christi as one of total availability and as true shepherd, guarding by effective use of all the Sacraments and our priestly intercessory power of prayer and fasting to confront evil, that is to be good fighters in spiritual warfare.

St. Jude speaks directly to this responsibility of ours to be engaged in the struggle for the salvation of souls in union with Jesus, powerfully, among other things, urging us to save our brothers and sisters by ‘snatching them out of the fire.’ [Jude 17-25]

Nothing that concerns the salvation of souls should be outside of our willingness to serve.

                                                                          Precisely because it is a humble reflection on the zeal of Christ Himself, the devotedness of the priest for others can know no limits; its field lies wherever men are to be saved. Like God Himself, the priest wishes all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For this reason the office of priest was summed up by St. Ambrose when he wrote that “it belongs to the priestly office to do harm to no one and to be desirous of helping everyone; to accomplish this can only come from God.”

                                                                      The apostolate of the priest is to the great and the lowly, to the powerful and the weak. It is his duty to adapt himself to the particular needs of each soul. “Let them mount the heights,” wrote St. Augustine, addressing himself to priests, “that they may lift up the great; let them come down into the depths in order to feed the little ones.”

                                                                      St. John Chrysostom declares: “No matter how insignificant or lowly may be the one who appeals to us, no matter how hard and painful may be what he asks, still if he needs our help, then all the difficulties should seem light and easy to bear. God showed us that the soul is worthy of every care and attention when He did not even spare His own Son. [91]

I am well aware of the attitude many priests have, indeed I admit sometimes I reacted the same way, towards those who seem always to be demanding ‘healing Masses’ or to be prayed over, delivered, anointed, have ever new devotions to Mary or some Saint, who even if given all that are never ‘healed/delivered/satisfied’, yet these are the very anawim who flocked to Jesus.

Sure in the vast crowds clamouring for more bread or a new king or more miracles, there were also those who quietly – not necessarily because they had greater faith, trust, maturity or were less wounded, sinful – followed Jesus, accepting whatever He offered without ‘needing’ more.

We, for we priests too are of the sheepfold, we His flock come in all shapes, sizes, colour, maturity, and lack thereof, simplicity and complexity, sinfulness and holiness.

Why do we expect the composition of our parishes, of the human race today, indeed of the priesthood itself, to be any different?

I believe we priests need to spend less time concerned about the composition of our parishes, the make-up of the population of the Church and the world, even of our own ranks, and leaving all that in Our Lady’s hands to sort out, become more adept at combatting real evil, the evil one and his destructive hordes, in a word being true priest-fighters and true vessels of compassion.

We suffer, our people suffer, all people suffer and within the expansive variety of suffering we must never forget, nor deny, evil is afoot for the diabolical hyena preys on those weakened by physical and emotional suffering.

                                                                         It can be said that man suffers whenever he experiences any kind of evil.

                                                                           In the midst of what constitutes the psychological form of suffering there is always an experience of evil, which causes the individual to suffer.

                                                                          While it is true that suffering has a meaning as punishment when it is connected with a fault, it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of a punishment.

                                                                       Suffering must serve for conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance. The purpose of penance is to overcome evil. [92]

I remember when this powerful teaching from Pope John Paul came out and the resistance, some of it rather harsh, to any suggestions of the connection between sin, suffering, punishment, repentance, conversion, intercession as being a rather pre-Vatican II, outmoded, almost medieval approach, understandable if regrettable because of the Holy Father’s Polish background!

O Lord sometimes we priests can be rather arrogant, Lord have mercy!

Granted no human being wants to suffer and it can be difficult at times to dispassionately look at the cause, trigger of the why of some suffering we endure.

However what the Holy Father is challenging us to do is not to spend time trying to figure out how we came to be suffering, but rather what will we do with our suffering?

This applies to those who suffer who come to us for healing, for hope.

If, except when absolutely necessary in order to serve them all the more, when we are approached by so and so, yet again, and their hypochondria or other emotional wounds are self-evident, it is wrong for us to dismiss them out of hand, or deny their request for anointing or to be prayed over.

 It is a golden opportunity to engage them in conversation, urge them to embrace their suffering in union with Jesus for the salvation of souls, an end to abortion, for peace – the needs of the human family are vast!

Our vocation of joy is to serve and our joy will be the greater the less we judge and simply wash feet!

Our hearts then should be filled with the same generosity of heart as St. Paul who constantly prayed for those he served, always eager for their growth in holiness. [1Thess.3:9-13]

The entire baptized community in particular, but truly every human being, dwells in the reality of spiritual warfare.

As priests we should, we must, be in the forefront of the battle.

We live in extremely dangerous and often confusing times.

To be blasé about, ignore or worse deny the reality of satan, evil, sin and the devastating consequences for souls, while perhaps understandable among those of no or weak faith, should cause immense concern when priests have such an attitude.

Perhaps it is not comfortable to ask, but we need to ask ourselves: do I take seriously the threat satan poses to the souls of every human being? To my own?

Satan, as we know, does not only entice to sin individuals and entire peoples, but also, when he fails to seduce with evil will seek to entrap by some other means, such as discouragement, those who struggle to be faithful and virtuous.

                                                                 The devil hates God, but as he cannot reach Him in Himself, he turns against His creatures, and especially against His privileged creature, the priest, the living image of Christ.

                                                                    By our vocation, by the mission and duties which it prescribes for us, we, priests, are especially exposed to the attacks and the cunning of these enemies. [93]

When we cut back on accessibility to confession, anointing, daily Mass, fail to arrange easy access to the Blessed Sacrament for adoration, cut back on home, school, hospital visits, prefer tv or internet to contemplation and lectio divina, when we allow the media and other enemies of Jesus and His Church to form our attitudes then we are clearly being wounded in the war.

In the ‘outer’ world we know how terrorism works with its sneak attacks, i.e.ds., disinformation and other ruses all designed to dispirit whole populations, to create a climate of constant fear.

We know too that in that world governments and their security forces can only protect the population through constant vigilance.

Much like the Cure d’Ars, a good priest, a real fighter in this warfare, worn out and discouraged, came one day, in Russia, to a holy Abbot seeking help:

                                                                         “My parish, Father Abbot, is large,” the Pastor said, “and we have no sects here, but people are indifferent. They rarely come to church. I do not see any reason to celebrate frequently in an empty church.” “Father,” the distressed Abbot answered, “if your parishioners neglect their important duties, you, their pastor, must never neglect yours. The temple of God is never empty. Since it was consecrated it has its own guardian angel. If your people neglect their duties, their guardian angels do not. They fill the temple. When you celebrate, the angels concelebrate with you. You must celebrate regularly, and pray God to convert your people to prayer and penance. The Lord will order their guardian angels to persuade them to come. You are responsible for your own soul and those of your flock. You must realize that.” [94]

Discouragement and anxiety are among satan’s most powerful weapons because they wear us down by degrees.

We rarely wake up one morning suddenly discouraged, rather progressively over time, especially if we have been feeding on negative thoughts, neglect of interior silence, contemplation, fidelity to the Divine Office, daily Mass, etc., interior grumbling becomes anger becomes discouragement and the spiral can continue into deep inner darkness.

We then are vulnerable to not simply neglect of the good but to choose sin.

We have been wounded, perhaps not mortally, wounded nonetheless.

                                                                      Those who are trying to lead a spiritual life have to carry on a most skilful and difficult mental warfare, a spiritual warfare, every moment throughout life; it is necessary that the soul should have every moment a clear eye, able to watch and notice the entrance into the heart of thoughts sent by the evil one, and to repel them. The hearts of such men must always burn with faith, humility and love; for otherwise the subtlety of the devil finds an easy access to them, which is followed by a decline, or even by an entire loss, of belief, and afterwards by every possible evil, difficult to wash away, even by tears. [95]

Among the texts in the New Testament which place before us this reality of spiritual warfare and of demonic activity in the lives of all human beings, particularly the baptized and priests are: Jesus in the desert, in the garden, the cautionary words found in the teachings of St. Peter and Revelations: Mt.4: 1ff; Mk. 1:12ff; Lk.4:1ff; 22:39ff; 1Pt.5:6-11; Rev.12].

Both in the desert and in the garden in particular, Jesus is engaged in the most intense aspects of spiritual warfare.

 The Gospels are replete with encounters between Jesus and evil spirits, for St. Luke points out in his conclusion to the battle in the desert that satan only left Jesus alone for ‘a time’, Lk.4:13.

It can happen that at times we feel as broadsided by the evil one as any soldier stepping on a landmine, sometimes with spiritual consequences akin to those inflicted upon the hapless soldier – or innocent villagers simply on their way to work the fields or go to market – for we must never forget our willingness to be engaged in struggles against the evil one is for all souls and their protection and salvation.

What Jesus took upon Himself and experienced in the Garden, and His prayer, should be ours, and if we can we should willingly spend entire nights in such vigil and intercessory prayer. [Lk.22:39-46]

Our call is to be one with Jesus in all aspects of His life and ministry, which means also in the desert, in the garden, engaged in the battle with satan – without fear: Christ Himself is the Victor and He is with us in the struggle and He engages the enemy in front of us, for us.

Christ was alone in the desert, His disciples failed to keep vigil and fell asleep in the garden.

We are never alone in the desert; let us beg the grace to be vigilant, side by side with Jesus in the garden.

The more we strive to be faithful as priests in persona Christi, the more the evil one will hound us [Rev.12.] but it has always been thus [1Pt. 5:1-] so we should call upon the assistance and protection of all our brother priests in heaven and then continue the struggle with deep peace and intimate confidence in Jesus.

In these days of scepticism, relativism, scientism and the myriad of other isms, when it comes to the reality of spiritual warfare and the activities of the evil one, we can do well to heed this wisdom from a brother priest:

                                                                                    Science insists that the New Testament’s “possessed” were simply insane; the age did not recognize their symptoms and therefore held demons responsible for them. In this respect it concludes, Jesus was a man of His time. True, the external manifestations then were probably similar to the symptoms recorded by specialists in our clinics today; but what is behind those symptoms no psychiatrist can tell. When the Lord commanded an evil spirit in one who is mentally ill, He worked from an approach that no modern doctor can share. Evil does not function so that one can say this or that is unnatural, therefore demonic. Neither the supernatural nor the unnatural in Christian life makes its appearance by stepping into some gap in the natural order. Everything is also ‘natural’; the chain of nature events never breaks. Everything is the result of something else – but it is precisely here, in natural cause and effect that satan works as well as God. Therefore, when Jesus addressed the demon in a sick man, He did so because He knew that ‘something else’ lay at the bottom of the psychosis. [96]

Nowadays every variation of human physical, psychological, spiritual life is simultaneously justified, explained, excused as one having been ‘born that way; my choice; its genetic; I’m addicted; I have…..[name the flavour of the month]’: in other words we increasingly eliminate any responsibility for the ‘something else’ and therefore enable the evil one, more and more, to, in a sense supply, or at least motivate, the ‘something else’.

The culture of darkness and death, of relativism and of ‘my rights’ trumping responsibility is part of the ‘something else’ which animates the horrific crimes and sins which cast their poisonous fog into the depths of countless lives, countless souls, from abortion to euthanasia, from child abuse to violence against women, into the dank places where terrorism is planned, where human trafficking unfolds.

Wherever evil lurks, there is the battlefield.

In a sense the evil one ‘hides’ in plain sight in the culture of death.

                                                                             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 work quite unawares. Instead of rightly perceiving the works of the evil one, they see them simply as the way of the world or the prevailing customs or the natural product of human nature or perhaps the result of sickness, chance, unintentional errors, 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 lights that bring discernment between truth and falsehood. 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 the mind, tongue, conscience, body and behaviour. [97]

Yesterday I was visiting a dear brother priest and as is our custom, from time to time, we prayed over each other, absolved each other and anointed each other.

He has a serious and chronic lung condition which at times brings him to the brink of death.

I too have a chronic, but much less serious, medical condition and we both are wearied by the warfare, so the reality of shared sacramental and priestly blessing is essential.

Since we began doing this for each other we have both noticed a reduction in stress, improvement in physical, emotional, spiritual health, renewed commitment and joy.

Sometimes it does please Jesus to heal, to deliver, instantly [Mt.8:1-4]; sometimes to do so, as it were, progressively [Mk.8:22-26]; to grant forgiveness of sin and then to heal [Mt.9:1-8]; always there is communion of love: by glance, by word [Jn.4:4-42; Lk.9:37-43] but always all ultimately is to reveal the glory of the Father, which is His love for us [Jn.9], and to do as Jesus did/does is not only to be fully engaged in spiritual warfare, it is to love, it is to spread the fire of hope and compassion [Lk.10:25-37].

Here, the final word to a great priest of compassion, a true fighter:

                                                                         In the Book of Revelation, the ‘great portent’ of the ‘woman’ [12:1] is accompanied by ‘another portent which appeared in heaven’: ‘a great red dragon’ [Rv.12:3], which represents satan, the personal power of evil, as well as all the powers of evil at work in history and opposing the Church’s mission.

                                                                 Here too Mary sheds light on the community of believers. The hostility of the powers of evil is, in fact, an insidious opposition which, before affecting the disciples of Jesus, is directed against His Mother. To save the life of her Son from those who fear Him as a dangerous threat, Mary has to flee with Joseph and the Child into Egypt [cf. Mt.2:13-15].

                                                                   Mary thus helps the Church to realize that life is always at the center of a great struggle between good and evil, between light and darkness. The dragon wishes to devour ‘the child brought forth’ [cf. Rv.12:4], a figure of Christ, whom Mary brought forth ‘in the fullness of time’ [Gal.4:4] and whom the Church must unceasingly offer to people in every age. But in a way that child is also a figure of every person, every child, especially every helpless baby whose life is threatened, because – as the Council reminds us – ‘by His Incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every person.’ It is precisely ‘in the flesh’ of every person that Christ continues to reveal Himself and to enter into fellowship with us, so that rejection of human life, in whatever form that rejection takes, is really a rejection of Christ. This is the fascinating but revealing truth which Christ reveals to us and which His Church continues to untiringly proclaim: ‘Whoever receives one such child in My Name receives Me.’ [Mt.18:5]; “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of My brethren, you did it to Me’[Mt.25:40]. [98]

Priesthood Today

5 CLOTHED WITH CHRIST

                                                                        

In the evening as I left the rectory for a walk, praying the Rosary, I came near the main alley of this neighbourhood.

The alley runs between the abandoned warehouses and the school.

A man came walking by.

He walked as one bent over with fatigue. His clothing indicated he was probably working in one of the factories over the hill at the bottom of our street.

My heart was immediately moved to pray for him, and all men, women and children throughout the world who labour long hours, in often dehumanizing conditions, for barely enough to put food on the table.

Just as I was passing the alley down which the man had headed, I heard him call out a name, and noticed a small child running towards him.

When the child was close enough he leapt into the man’s arms, his father.

As the man lifted the small, living, joyful weight onto his shoulders I noticed he was no longer moving with heavy step of exhaustion, but walked tall, straight, as if filled with new energy. [Gal.4:6,7]

Before ordination sacramentally configures us as father, in persona Christi, we are, sacramentally in Baptism, born anew as children, sons of the Father.

Already in baptism we become participants in the priestly, kingly, prophetic mission of Christ.

Ordination impels us, with great love, to become fully missionaries to all our brothers and sisters, especially those who ‘labour and are heavy burdened.’

We priests participate in the mystery of being both children, along with all the children of God, thus brother with all our brothers and sisters, and father, shepherd, teacher, evangelist, for those same brothers and sisters.

                                                 Catholic doctrinal tradition describes the priest as teacher of the Word, minister of the sacraments and leader of the Christian community entrusted to him. This is the starting point of all reflection on the identity and mission of the priest in the Church.

                                   ….Many of the baptized live in a world indifferent to religion. While maintaining a certain faith, these practically live a form of religious and moral indifferentism, alienated from Word and sacraments which are essential for Christian life.

                                  …For the contemporary Church, Mother and Teacher, the mission ad gentes and new evangelization are inseparable aspects of her mandate to teach, sanctify and guide all men to the father.

                                     ….In a particular way, priests have this duty since they have been specially chosen, consecrated and sent to make evident the presence of Christ whose authentic representatives and messengers they become. [48]

Thus we need to be truly aware of, grateful for, that baptismal faith which makes us His children. [Gal.3:26]

We can never contemplate to exhaustion the incredible gift and reality of our baptismal faith.

Indeed if our baptismal faith is weak, uncertain, confused, tainted in anyway by the surrounding culture of death, or specious notions in theology or spirituality, then our ability to be authentic evangelizers as priests will be seriously compromised.

Long before we were ordained, indeed a necessary gateway, we were brought by the Holy Spirit into new life in Christ at our baptism. [Gal.3:27]

It is this first clothing which makes possible our later configuration to Christ in the fullness of divine election at our ordination.

Satan wages war against the followers of Christ, the children of Mary. This we know not only from Revelations chapter 12, but from life experience.

What is true for all the baptized is an even more constant experience for we priests. [Col.2:6-8]

Pope John Paul II constantly, in his writings on the priesthood, urged us to be aware of the authentic reality of the sacramental priesthood, just as he constantly urged all the baptized to be aware of the reality of baptism.

For us priests it is a call for us to be fully aware of both sacramental realities of our ‘grace in return for grace’ existence.

Thus we must strive always to be aware, with great humility, that before we are celebrants of Christ’s sacraments, we are recipients of His sacraments.

We encounter in sacrament the One whose sacraments we bring to our brothers and sisters.

It is one of the realities which make our Catholic religion the religion of glory.

                                                    The whole liturgical life of the Church revolves around the Eucharistic sacrifice and the sacraments. [49]

It is often a reality for priests that we encounter much stress around the celebration of the sacrament of Baptism because of the very loss of a sense of faith and faith practice among the people. Thus it can be difficult for us, when striving to properly catechize parents and godparents alike, to appreciate the reality of what is being asked for on behalf of the child.

It is to be prayerfully wished that instructing parents, godparents, adults seeking to be baptized will offer us the opportunity to re-discover anew the tremendous gift of grace which is our faith, our baptismal, sacramental life.

Baptism is, to be sure, being reborn in and through Christ as we are plunged into the mystery of His death and resurrection.

Baptism is also a renewal, sacramentally, of that communion of love offered us by the Holy Trinity at the moment of our creation by the loving act of God.

Indeed the Catechism of the Catholic Church, where we are taught in paragraph 366 that every spiritual soul is created immediately by God “also reminds us of our creation for the purpose of this communion of love as noted in paragraph 367: “…man is ordered to a supernatural end and…his soul can gratuitously be raised beyond all it deserves to communion with God”.

We are called to by the Trinity, in particular through Baptism, as St. Peter reminds us, to this communion of love through grace given us by, the All-Holy One.

We are all called to holiness! [1Pt.1:15,16]

The more we accept the love of the Holy Trinity, the more we become love for others, and through love’s humble service, the holier we become.

                                    There is one characteristic common to all the Saints and holy people of the Church – a characteristic that predominates in the lives of the Apostles. It is their personal love of the Lord.

                                   ….Our Lord’s plan for each priest is a personal partnership: ‘We: Jesus and I.’ This is how He would have each priest live and act – in the first person plural. Our Lord wants to share every moment of our life, especially every moment of our ministry. He wants us to live and work in complete dependence upon Himself and His love, never forgetting, never doubting it. He wants us to think of Him always in the second person singular – not the third as many priests do. He wants us to be His friend; but He wants even more than that. He wants us to find in Him and to give to Him, all the love that human hearts can give each other. [50]

This intimate love affair begins with baptism, is re-established in confession every time we remove ourselves from this love through sin, is nourished and fortified, deepened, indeed made more passionate, every time we receive Him, glorified, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity in Holy Communion.

The greater the depth of our meditation upon the reality of our baptism and its gift of faith, the more profound becomes our understanding of this same holy sacrament, in particular when we are blessed with the opportunity to baptize.

Indeed the preparation for and the celebration of this sacrament will no longer be an occasion when satan may attempt to seduce us into the sin of arrogance through a too narrow interpretation of the requirements expected of parents asking to have their child baptized.

We will be moved in the depths of our hearts with a fatherly patience, a shepherd’s understanding, a teacher’s truth-speaking ability to form where formation is needed, to overlook where charity should prevail.

When we know we are beloved of the True Lover, we rejoice in the mysterious reality that sacraments are not only sacred events, holy realities, but wonderful places of encounter with the Divine Beloved.

Thus we will approach teaching of the sacraments fully aware the Divine Lover seeks to encounter their very persons, no matter their apparent poverty of faith practice, and we will trust the power of the sacraments themselves.

Our people, irrespective of the sacrament they approach us for, particularly irregular or non-practicing parents seeking baptism for their child, will see in our eyes the tender expression of Christ Himself, His love for them.

This will motivate and encourage them to be willing students of faith and eager to resume faith practice.

Not as some imposed requirement, rather as their response to Love’s call.

Holy Mother the Church, in her own tender wisdom, places the renewal of our baptismal faith in the heart of the Easter Liturgy.

It is a moment we should enter with extreme gratitude and celebrate for our people with due reverence.

With our hearts full of joy at His Holy Resurrection we actually celebrate the first moment of what Scripture elsewhere refers to as the love we had ‘at first’.

For us priests it is also reliving the moment when our divine election to our vocation of joy, in persona Christi, began.

A reminder too that above all we are apostles of Love.

                                                          People need to hear at least once a week that God truly loves them, that He wants a relationship of love with them, that He cares infinitely for each one, so much that He is present to each one’s joy and each one’s sorrow, to each effort and each failure, that He loves and loves and loves and loves, that He forgives and forgives and forgives. [51]

It is when we priests doubt that truth, fail to trust His love for us, we run the risk of appearing unloving to our people and frustrating them in their desire to return to baptismal faith practice or to grow ever more in their lives of charity towards all.

Ours must be the very words of Jesus Himself, poured forth from our hearts as ardent prayer that it be so! [Jn.15:8-11]

The more we strive to become what we are through baptism the more we shall become what we are by virtue of our sacramental ordination as priests.

I do believe in the depths of my heart there is a direct connection between that priestly angst which seems at the root of so much sorrow in the priesthood today, such confusion, being vulnerable to pressure from those who would reduce priesthood to a mere function able to be ‘performed’ in most respects even by the un-ordained, and a type of forgetfulness regarding the reality of our baptism.

                                                       Following Christ is not an outward imitation, since it touches man at the very depths of his being. Being a follower of Christ means becoming conformed to Him who became a servant even giving Himself on the Cross (cf.Phil.2:5-8). Christ dwells by faith in the heart of every believer (cf.Eph.3:17), and thus the disciple is conformed to the Lord. This is the effect of grace, of the active presence of the Holy Spirit in us. Having become one with Christ, the Christian becomes a member of His Body, which is the Church (cf.1Cor.12:13,27). By the work of the Spirit, Baptism radically configures the faithful to Christ in the Paschal Mystery of death and resurrection; it ‘clothes him’ in Christ (cf.Gal.3:270: ‘Let us rejoice and give thanks,’ exclaims Saint Augustine speaking to the baptized, ‘for we have become Christ!’ Having died to sin, those who are baptized receive new life (cf.Rom.6:3-11): alive for God in Christ Jesus, they are called to walk by the Spirit and manifest the Spirit’s fruits in their lives (cf.Gal.5:16-25). Sharing in the Eucharist, the Sacrament of the New Covenant (cf.1Cor.11:23-29), is the culmination of our assimilation to Christ, the source of ‘eternal life’ (cf.Jn.6:51-58), the source and power of that complete gift of self, which Jesus – according to the testimony handed on by Paul – commands us to commemorate in liturgy and life: ‘As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes’ (1Cor.11:26). [52]

As these truths permeate our being our hearts will become ever more filled with that Divine Fire which so burned in the Heart of Christ!

Indeed we shall feel ourselves, and yearn evermore, to be compelled to spread that fire through evangelization, baptizing the newly born or converted, seeking out the lost, and giving ourselves over fully to the missio ad gentes.

In a word: to spread His fire as He yearns. [Lk.12:49]

This is our call to holiness, to be fire spreaders, to set the world ablaze with love in return for Love.

True there will be those moments, perhaps even hours, days, weeks or more, of struggle when it may seem our hearts have grown so cold we have barely a spark to spread, but even the tiniest spark can begin an immense blaze.

So, by grace, we live faithful to the duty of the moment, our hearts open to this heartfelt plea:

                                                    ……try to walk in the way of sanctity which God has chosen for you….The pursuit of sanctity is like an interior flame, a sacred fire which we bear within us. At times this fire seems to be only a spark, but, believe me, it can be revived and become bright again. If we wish the Father, when He looks at us, to be able to say, as He said of Jesus: ‘This is My beloved Son,’ let all our efforts and all our aspirations tend towards the establishment of the reign of charity in our hearts. [53]

The real and great tragedy, the true scandal, pulverizing the priesthood today is not, per se, those abuse or heresy scandals which receive so much media attention.

They are, to be sure, serious indeed as sin certainly always is.

The great tragedy, which is fundamentally the root cause of those sins which become the perhaps more obvious, at least to the media, is our failure as priests to willingly become saints.

                                                      The saints know a truth that sin keeps secret: the human spirit is robbed of its natural dignity when it is content to be only natural. Evil claims to be natural, and this is the heart of its deceit. [54]

Baptism is both the gateway to the fullness of the rest of sacramental life and the call to holiness.

By sacramental ordination we become in persona Christi; in the person of the All Holy One.

                                            So how is it that we are not gathering our forces together to counteract the strange forces that continue to infiltrate into the Church, which arise even within the Church to manipulate the Church. There is one way in which it can be done, and only one way: the way of holiness. For this we were born: to be holy. We are given every advantage by the Church to follow the path of the Holy One who calls Himself ‘the Way.’

                                              The priest is a shepherd. He has a flock given him by God. For this he was ordained. God asks from His priests one thing: that he himself cleanse his soul, that he walk the path of the Holy One, now falling down, now bruising himself, but since the path is made by God, God is around and He will help the priest to stand up and continue walking. [55]

Flowing from our first experience of the communion of love and our baptismal commission to be witnesses to Christ, His Holy Resurrection, His Gospel of Love and Truth, of Life, comes that constant call to holiness which the Spirit Himself speaks to the depths of our being every moment of our priestly lives.

It is the call to become a living flame of love.

Jesus, the night of His Passion, having arrived at the hour when He would indeed spread divine fire and set the world ablaze, told us the time had come to ask for everything in His Name.

In the very asking and receiving will come the enhancement of our joy. [Jn.16.24]

The ancient prayer to the Holy Spirit begs Him to come and kindle again within us the fire of our first love, our true joy.

To become a living flame: that is the Gospel proclaimed by Jesus the Master. That is what He Himself is, the blazing sun who lights the whole world…..

                                                          ….. there is no secret about the nature of that fire. It is simply love. Love is the fire the Son of God came to cast on the earth….the burning passion for His Father and for us that bore Him to the cross and through it to His resurrection. Love is the fire the risen Lord pours into the hearts of all those who follow Him, those who hear His voice as well as His first friends.

                                                         This love is more than a human word or metaphor. It is the living Spirit of the living God, alive in us. It is the Holy Spirit who pours God’s love into us and makes us living flames. If we want, then, we can become living flames of love because, as Jesus has promised, His Father does not refuse the Spirit to anyone who asks. If we ask, we shall receive abundantly.

                                                        …..we are not on fire. Why not? I think that there are two reasons. The first is that we are uncertain that such extravagance is either possible or desirable. The second reason is that we are honestly not sure how to ask for the Spirit, even if we do sometimes see clearly that we can have no real joy outside the fire of His love.

                                                       In the story of the Pharisee and the publican, the Master is responding to this bewilderment of ours. He is telling us how to ask for the Holy Spirit. He is revealing to us the only fuel for the fire that He wants to set in our hearts. That fuel is humility….The Lord wants to teach us how to be humble, by telling us the truth about our own wretchedness as He reveals to us the greatest truth – the truth enfolding and encompassing every other truth – that is the mercy of His Father. [56]

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

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]

 

Book Reviews

I LIVE NOW, NOT I

                                                               I LIVE NOW, NOT I

 

 

Subtitled: Life as it is now becomes the mystery of Love in Christ – this brief work by Father Pat McNulty witnesses the power of grace, the true hope of baptismal life.

 

 

 

 

 

Published by Madonna House Publications it is readily available through: www.madonnahouse.org/publications

There are some autobiographical hints in this work but the real focus is how grace works within the reality, sometimes painful, experiences of our lives.

In essence this book is about the love affair between each of us and our Crucified Lover.

One brief quote:  …..in the darkness, the solitude, the desert when there are no more answers because there were no more questions, “someone” teaches us in That Place that our suffering and pain is no longer just about us. It is also about Christ and thus about everyone else because we are one in Christ.”

This is a book we highly recommend.

 

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.

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Priestly Mission

Priestly Mission: An Apostolate of the Heart

GLORY TO YOUR HOLY RESURRECTION O CHRIST OUR GOD, GLORY BE TO YOU!

                                  Priestly Mission:  An Apostolate of the Heart

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.

 

In the intervening years the site underwent a couple of revisions, this being the latest.

To be honest, abandoned because I, Fr. Joseph, endured a prolonged period of discouragement within five years of struggle for vindication of innocence, which, like most falsely accused priests ended in being exiled nonetheless – for in this current climate an accusation is tantamount to automatic conviction, at least in the eyes of the institutional church!- the aforementioned series was abandoned.

Some months ago a truly faithful Catholic Layman, the webmaster of this site actually, challenged Fr. Joseph to face reality, in a word to embrace the full implication of being, irrespective of ‘official status’, or living conditions, In Persona Christi.

So, as you have already seen, the entire site has been upgraded.

 Admitting I gave into discouragement, here I am, ready to walk with my suffering brothers into the mystery of unsought after suffering, to struggle to embrace the cross, to be truly one with Christ.

The Servant of God Catherine Doherty, Foundress of the Madonna House Apostolate, taught repeatedly: In God every moment is the moment of beginning again!

Going over the struggles of the past few years and the final decision of the CDF barring me from ever again exercising ‘public’ ministry, such as in a parish, but allowing me to live as a priest, celebrating the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass [ alone in terms of the presence of another human person, of course wherever and whenever Holy Mass is celebrated the entire Heavenly Court is present] and, with spiritual direction, a good therapist and support prayers, encouragement of family, of friends as well finally coming out of discouragement [ just a first baby step on this journey],  the beginning again moment is here!

Before writing this I spent time reflecting on the central lines in her offering as an oblation, of the Doctor of the Church, St. Therese of Lisieux:

In order to live one single act of perfect love, I OFFER MYSELF AS A VICTIM OF HOLOCAUST TO YOUR MERCIFUL LOVE, asking You to consume me incessantly, allowing the waves of infinite tenderness  shut up within You to overflow into my soul, and that thus I may become a martyr of Your Love, O my God!

In the great Easter Sequence we begin our joyous praise and love of the Risen Jesus Christ by crying out:

Victimae Paschali laudes immolent Christiani!- Christians, offer to the Paschal Victim sacrifice and praise!

Cross and Resurrection, suffering and joy, love and pain – these are inseparable realities of a fully alive Baptized human being and even more so are they constitutive of  life of a priest.

However it has come to pass, because of our own actions/choices or the caprice of those with power over accused priests, all caught up in the maelstrom know the stark reality, in the depths of our beings, indeed as a daily challenge, of having before us the choice between blessing and curse, life and death [cf. Deut. 30:1 & 30:19].

On the very threshold of the beginning of Resurrection history, the very threshold of the beginning of the pilgrimage through history of the nascent Church, the threshold of the beginning of priestly life and service across the millennia, in the full light and joy of His Holy Resurrection the first offering, even before praise, we are called to offer is sacrifice.


 This opening stanza of the Sequence echoes the cry, the supplication, we all offered at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday in company with Our Blessed Mother, herself a holocaust of love, for Love, to Love:

…..Listen to my fond request: let me share your grief….in my body bear the death of your dying SON…wounded with His every wound……

When life was unfolding as apparently it was meant to, within the rhythm of parish life, I daresay all the above prayers, words, about joy and suffering, choice, sacrifice, etc., while no doubt embraced with a sincere heart, were nonetheless sort of benign – certainly not as excruciating close and raw as any priest suffering imprisonment, abandonment, rejection, exile, banishment from ministry, reputation of good name lost, enduring poverty, illness, old age, depression, discouragement, etc., etc., now experiences as daily reality.

It may well seem we have not chosen curse, it has been thrust upon us; we have not chosen death – depression is a living death; life seems to have ended, at least the life we assumed would be ours when we were ordained; blessing? Where is that?

But, in point of fact, the choice IS ours to make, no matter what our circumstances are, in prison or not, reduced to the ‘lay’ state or not, indeed whatever our situation the choice is ours: anger, resentment, etc., etc., which is to chose curse and death – or – without counting the cost, without self-pity, denial, bargaining etc., etc., to choose to become, truly in persona Christi oblation, victim, holocaust.

“I am the vine, you are the branches. Whoever remains in Me and I in him will bear much fruit….By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit….As the Father loves Me, so I also love you. Remain in My love…” [cf. Jn. 15: 5-10] 

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]