Running After God

St. Augustine asserts that one of the deepest effects of sin is to make human beings value ‘exteriority’ at the expense of ‘interiority,’ i.e. exteriority = material goods, interiority = spiritual goods.  While both are God-given goods, they must, Augustine would argue, be rightly ordered. We are constantly seeking and looking and questing after God, but fail to see that He is in the first and last instance at the very foundation and center of our soul, sustaining us at each moment in existence, offering us His purifying love and awaiting our repentant response. “You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you,” as Augustine famously says it.

Journey to Nowhere

I knew a woman who was passionate about her faith, and for many years expressed that passion by running from prayer group to pilgrimage to apparition site to healing Mass to miracle working priest to retreat to awesome talk to relic, all the while feeling like she had just missed God when she finally arrived at each place in her journey. After years of enacting this arduous and weary quest, she had an epiphany one day in her home after a pilgrimage had been cancelled by unforeseen circumstances. She prayed the rosary in her home with her husband, and as she prayed she suddenly discovered God There: in her husband, in her living room, in her soul. The message she heard? Rest in Me, here, now. I am God-with-you.

This sudden flash of insight in no way diminished the value of her quest, her journeys, but rather it was their final terminus, their supreme goal and ultimate end: we journey toward God “without” that we might at last discover Him “within” — within our state in life, within the realities of the present moment, within the deepest core of our heart. What she did realize, however, was that in her endless quests for the new and fresh and exciting existed a secret doubt, an anxious fear that God was really not-with-her in her ordinary present life circumstances; and especially absent in her daily crosses that she knew she was running from. “From that moment on,” she said, “I saw my trip to the grocery store, to the bank, to work to the unpleasant co-worker or to watch a movie with my husband was my daily pilgrimage to God.”

And, I will add, when she daily journeyed to the holy Mass, all those diverse pilgrim roads were caught up into Christ our Way who even now allows us, in the Eucharist, a foretaste of our journey’s never-end in that Mystic Sup with the Far-Near Trinity.

Value Aright!

Let me leave you with a fabulously relevant quote from Church Father St. Gregory Nazianzen:

Let us then take care not to despise these things. How absurd it would be to grasp at money and throw away health; and to be lavish of the cleansing of the body, but economical over the cleansing of the soul; and to seek for freedom from earthly slavery, but not to care about heavenly freedom; and to make every effort to be splendidly housed and dressed, but to have never a thought how you yourself may become really very precious; and to be zealous to do good to others, without any desire to do good to yourself. And if good could be bought, you would spare no money; but if mercy is freely at your feet, you despise it for its cheapness. Every time is suitable for your ablution, since any time may be your death. With Paul I shout to you with that loud voice, ‘Behold now is the accepted time; behold Now is the day of salvation.’ (Oration XL on Holy Baptism, January 6, 381)

Light Shone in the Darkness

The Gospel of St. John, whose feast is today, reveals Jesus to us as the One who comes not to condemn the ugliness of sin, but to call forth from darkness, light; from sin, pardon; from disease, well-being; from alienation, welcome; from death, life.

In every broken human life there is beauty hidden, awaiting the saving voice of the Son of God: “Come forth!”

Unless we look at a person and see the beauty there is in this person, we can contribute nothing to him. One does not help a person by discerning what is wrong, what is ugly, what is distorted. Christ looked at everyone he met, at the prostitute, at the thief, and saw the beauty hidden there. Perhaps it was distorted, perhaps damaged, but it was beauty none the less, and what he did was to call out this beauty.

- Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh

Sounds like a way of life to me…

Stop!

This morning I was reading the work of St. John Climicus, 7th century monk-author from St. Catherine’s monastery at the foot of Mt. Sinai, and came across a passage that triggered an edifying memory.

Boldness

A number of years ago, I was speaking with a gentleman who was deeply involved in the charismatic renewal. He was a wonderfully a balanced fellow who really knew how to integrate his charismatic gifts with a spirituality grounded in humility and prudence, but he also possessed that marvelous quality that men and women in the Renewal often display: remarkable boldness in being explicit about their faith.

In fact, I remember that this man lived out an amazingly “out there” interpretation of that oft quoted St. Francis saying, “Preach the Gospel always, and if necessary use words” — he would do “silent” things that would of their nature create situations “of necessity” and “give them something to talk about,” giving him chance to speak about Christ. For example, he would always stop before his business meetings and enter into a brief moment for quiet prayer, which would often lead at some point to someone asking about what he was doing and his faith tradition (and nearly always astonished to learn he was Catholic, having never witnessed a Catholic praying in such manner). And because he did not otherwise look or act like a religious kinda guy, I understood why this would provoke fascination from others.

Oremus

But to my point. There was one time when we were talking about a difficult fellow we both knew, sharing our common concern over his bad behavior. At some point in the conversation, after I had shared a slew of details about this person’s “issues,” my charismatic friend suddenly said to me: “Tom, I think we need to stop talking about him in this way now and turn him over to God.” And he proceeded to lead us in a prayer about this man, turning all our gripes and observations into petitions.

This experience stirred in me a mixture of shame for not thinking to pray for this man, of awkwardness for the sudden shift of course in our conversation, and of admiration for this friend whose faith had so-permeated his manner of being that such a shift from talk to prayer was absolutely natural to him. Though my own approach to such prayer would have been to pray for this man at my scheduled private time of prayer, or to pray quietly within, I loved three things about my friend’s approach: (1) The fact that he “got” the faith-fact that even when you talk critically about someone out of love and genuine concern, you must not fail to invest even more vigorous energy into prayer for them; (2) that when he started to pray, his prayer evinced a profound sense that the Jesus he addressed in prayer had been listening to our whole conversation; (3) that his request to suddenly turn to prayer in no way seemed to be a judgment on me or on our conversation, but rather made our critical observations, like so many church bells, into a call to prayer.

Stop!

And so you ask, what was the Climacus quote that stirred up this memory? Well, it’s not exactly related to my recounted situation, but it addresses the question of how a Christ-attitude affects critical talk about others; and it addresses the ease with which we can slip from fraternal concern or cathartic venting to infernal detraction (see Catechism for a handy description of this slip). Climacus is acutely aware that human beings tend to mask their own faults by unmasking others’ faults, and, as with all the desert fathers, he argues that a God-inspired awareness of my own innumerable sins and faults should severely curtail the pleasure I derive from deriding others for their faults and sins. And though it may not always be wise or appropriate to be as abrupt as my friend or Climacus, the spirit of the call to prayer or to refuse to share in disparaging talk should always permeate a Christian life.

Do not regard the feelings of a person who speaks to you about his neighbor disparagingly, but rather say to him: “Stop, brother! I fall into graver sins every day, so how can I criticize him?’ In this way you will achieve two things; you will heal yourself and your neighbor with one plaster. This is one of the shortest ways to the forgiveness of sins; I mean, not to judge. `Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.”

St. John’s Greater Good

As I reflect today on this glorious feast of St. John of the Cross, I have been struck in particular by St. John’s relentless and insistent emphasis on the “gifted” nature of life’s innumerable difficulties, inconveniences, irritations, crosses. All of them serve, in God’s redemptive providence, to bring about in the lives of those who love God a greater good than any of the consolations and comforts for which we all naturally show preference.

St. John’s entire program of ascetical, penitential practice finds its perfection not in self-imposed hardships, but in the will to accept whatever life throws at us as an opportunity to be shaped according to the form of Christ. Life’s averse circumstances open up a graced space for us to exercise greater trust in God, greater virtue, greater love for God and for neighbor. Those who are able to embrace life’s trials as so many gifts have been truly set free by the Son, finding in all things a supreme freedom to love always, everywhere and without measure.

This love especially is made evident when we face our broken, imperfect, weak, sinful neighbor. He says, “Do we gloat over others’ failings and faults, or weep for them before God? Do we see in others’ errors a cause to rejoice in our own righteousness, or rather a cause to plead day and night to God for mercy on their behalf? To answer, it is better to say: What did Christ do in the face of fallen man?”

Need I quote New Testament passages?

It’s funny, as I was musing on this point in St. John’s works, I happened on a passage from an Eastern saint, St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. I’ll allow him the “last word.”

Saint Poemen the Great was asked, ‘What is faith?’ The great man replied that faith consists in remaining in humility and showing mercy; that is to say, in humbling oneself before one’s neighbors and forgiving them all discourtesies and offences, all their sins. As foolish zealots make out that faith is the prime cause of their zeal, let them know that true faith, and consequently also true zeal, must express themselves in humility regarding our neighbors and in mercy towards them. Let us leave the work of judging and convicting people to those persons on whose shoulders is laid the duty of judging and ruling their brethren. ‘He who is moved by false zeal,’ says Saint Isaac the Syrian, ‘is suffering from a severe illness. O man, you who think to use your zeal against the infirmities of others, you have renounced the health of your own soul! You had better bestow your care on the healing of yourself, and if you want to heal the sick, know that the sick need nursing, rather than reprimand. But you, instead of helping others, cast yourself into the same painful illness. This zeal is not counted among men as a form of wisdom, but is one of the diseases of the soul, and as a sign of narrow-mindedness and extreme arrogance. The beginning of divine wisdom is quietness and meekness, which is the basic state of mind proper to great and strong souls and which bears human weaknesses. Ye that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak (Rom. 15:1), says Scripture. And again: Restore a sinner in the spirit of meekness and gentleness (see Gal.6:1). The Apostle counts peace and patience (Gal. 5:22) among the fruits of the Holy Spirit.

St. John, saint of mercy’s zeal, pray for us sinners. Amen.

Mystic Broth

As I was prepping for class recently, I came across a quote from an under-appreciated giant among the Catholic mystical authors, the Flemish Blessed John of Ruysbroeck. Much of his work was to combat the ‘quietist’ tendencies of reform movements in 14th century Germany and northern Europe. Quietism espoused a highly passive understanding of Christian holiness, locating the essence of holiness in a simple abandonment to God in faith that eschewed the essential role of the active life of charity and good works. Among other things, Ruysbroeck criticized Quietist practitioners for simply canonizing their ego’s voracious appetite for self-gratification (i.e. ‘experiences’) and sloth, and calling it ‘spiritual.’

This quote catches the spirit of Ruysbroeck’s critique, and offers a powerful image of the relationship between the quest for mystical experience and the the demands of charity:

Though you be caught up in the very rapture of God and there comes to you a sick man to demand of you a bowl of broth, descend from your seventh heaven and give him what he comes to ask.

Or as St. Vincent de Paul said it,

When you leave your prayer to attend to the knock of the needy at your door, do not think you have shirked your sacred duty, for you go from God to God.

Prayer fans the inner Fire that powers our good deeds, and our good deeds provide wood for that same Fire to consume as a living sacrifice to God.

New Martyr

Excerpted from Vincent Martini

The martyrdom of Fr Fadi Jamil Haddad of Syria has been reported by multiple sources.

Fr Fadi “went out on a noble humanitarian mission to return a member of his parish who had been kidnapped a few days earlier,” and sought to negotiate a reduced ransom for their freedom.

However, the terrorists that kidnapped this man — the western-backed, Sunni Muslim “rebels” (from nations other than Syria) — also took Fr Fadi hostage, brutally tortured him for several days, and finally murdered him and left him in the town of Drousha (near Damascus), where his body was ultimately found.

Fr Fadi was a loving and compassionate man, and was beloved by both Muslim and Christian alike. He had served the Church of Antioch as a priest since his ordination in 1995 by His Beatitude Patriarch IGNATIUS IV and Bishop ELIAS (Khoury).

After news of his death was made public, the Syrian state television network said “He was one of the most prominent workers for national reconciliation and the healing of wounds.”

The Patriarchate of Antioch also made a statement about his martyrdom, and an article about his life and martyrdom is now up at OrthodoxWiki.

May his memory be eternal, and may the Church in Syria be strengthened by his prayers. Lord, have mercy.

Troparion in Tone 1:

Imitating the Good Shepherd, thou didst lay down thy life for thy sheep,
and with thy blood thou didst suffer for the faith.
Wherefore, O Hieromartyr Fadi of Damascus,
intercede with Christ our God that our souls may be saved.

Amor saca amor — Love begets love

I had to share this.

I was re-reading parts of a biography of St. John of the Cross. At the end of his life, when he was 49 years old and only a few months from death, John found himself ostracized within his own reform movement. As he had developed a severe leg infection that would soon claim his life, he requested to be sent to Úbeda to convalesce under the care of a Carmelite friar whom he knew despised him. This friar made it eminently clear to John that he was merely an unwelcome siphon on the monastery’s limited resources, but John welcomed the opportunity to love this man he knew well hated him.

During those final weeks, John penned a note to a concerned friar who felt John was being treated unjustly. The saint’s reply to this kind letter simply said this,

Think nothing else but that God ordains all, and where there is no love, put love, and there you will draw out love.

Shortly before John’s death, the superior of the Úbeda monastery tearfully repented as he witnessed John’s unwavering gentleness in the face of his brutality.

In his last days, John felt as if his one and only request of Christ had come to pass at his life’s end: “Lord, give me trials to suffer for You that I may be despised and held in no account.”

Suffering saints

On this Feast of All-Saints, I wanted to focus on the Christians who presently are suffering the terrors of persecution for being Christian. We must pray and speak and act. Here are two articles, one from The Telegraph the other from First Things:

Imagine the unspeakable fury that would erupt across the Islamic world if a Christian-led government in Khartoum had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Sudanese Muslims over the past 30 years. Or if Christian gunmen were firebombing mosques in Iraq during Friday prayers. Or if Muslim girls in Indonesia had been abducted and beheaded on their way to school, because of their faith. Read more…

Last week, gunmen from the Islamic sect Boko Haram attacked the Church of the Brethren in the village of Atagara in northern Nigeria, killing two and torching the church on their way out. Over several days, the terrorist group killed dozens in the same region and forced hundreds to flee. In the northeastern city of Potiskum, thirty-one people were murdered over a three-day period recently, and a church was burned. On October 21, most churches in Potiskum cancelled Sunday services. Boko Haram terrorists have killed more than a thousand this year, nearly three thousand since their surge began in 2009. They’ve left dozens of churches in ruins. Read more…

What’s a Saint?

When I gave a talk not long ago at a parish, I asked the participants to write out for me the definition of a saint before I gave them my own.

Whence the Saint?

I read through them all, and immediately noticed a pattern. While they all offered beautiful and accurate descriptions of virtuous behavior, not a single one mentioned that holiness has anything to do with God.

Now, I am not arguing that they would not articulate sanctity’s God-centeredness if I had posed the question differently, but it speaks to what I believe is a pervasive view of Christian life among Catholics: that being a good person is holiness, that holiness is what we do, and that heaven is what we get for what we do.

The rest of the night I affirmed their lovely and noble insights, but attempted to re-plant those insights into the Heart of Christ where all of the best of human striving is ‘caught up into divine love and is governed and enriched by Christ’s redeeming power and the saving activity of the Church’ (Gaudium et Spes, 48). I talked of sin and grace, sacraments and prayer, and argued that personally plunging into Christ’s dying and rising is God’s way to God. I used stories of saints, especially St. Augustine, who found their vices healed and their virtues kindled by loving Jesus.

But I must admit, their faces seemed puzzled at my high emphasis on the ‘need’ for Catholics to personally plunge in to this whole divine rescue thing. Or maybe it was just my William Shatner style of over-presenting that made them grimace.

Thinking and Loving

But for whatever reason, it was my recounting of the story of an RCIA Candidate in knew in Florida in the late 1990s that elicited from them an ‘aha’ moment. This RCIA seeker had struggled with a number of core Church teachings, and I would spend lots of time with her outside the RCIA evenings dishing out the best rational apologetics I knew. I was convinced I could argue her into the profession of faith.

But I was humbled to the dust the evening she pulled me aside after class to share with me a profound experience of Jesus she had had in prayer that week.  She said, ‘…and as soon as I found myself in love with Christ, it all suddenly seemed reasonable and possible.’

I thought to myself, ‘Oh. Right. Good point.’

Duh, it’s about Christ.

At once I recalled a comment the late Fr. Raymond Brown had made in a lecture I heard him give in Vermont in 1990: ‘Christianity, unlike any other religion, stands or falls on one central conviction: to become the person you are meant to become, you must love the Founder who first loved you…only when Christianity has prioritized this conviction has it flourished.’

It’s the eve of All Saints, fall in love with Christ afresh and let him catch you up in the amazing grace of divine love.

I will end here yet again with Matt Maher’s fabulous musical setting of Augustine’s prayer:

Maximal love

I was praying with St. Maximus the Confessor’s exquisite writings in the Philokalia, and came across a rich text.

After talking about struggling in prayer to detach ourselves from our disordered love of the world (i.e. our inner disposition toward greed, lust, gluttony, envy, wrath, etc), Maximus then talks about how freedom from such disordered inner ‘passions’ allows us to love our neighbors with a Godlike love. But, he argues, the demons are utterly enraged by any likeness to God in humanity, and so throw up innumerable obstacles to such a love. Here’s one obstacle he mentions:

When the demons see us disdaining the things of the world in order through them not to hate men and fall away from love, they then incite slanders against us, hoping that, unable to bear the hurt, we will come to hate those who slander us.

Amor omnia vincit, ‘love conquers all.’