Jesus, be moved by my need

For our returning Catholics group we are just beginning to read through and discuss St. Mark's Gospel. This morning as I started my way though this Gospel, I was struck in just the kind of way lectio divinia is supposed to strike me. God gives us what we need if we but ask and then attend. After all, as Msgr. Giussani taught, education in freedom implies both an education in attention and an education in awareness.

In the first chapter of Mark, after being baptized by John in the Jordan, going into the desert, calling His first disciples, teaching in the synagogue, healing a man possessed by an unclean spirit after the unclean spirit recognized Him in the synaggogue, healing Simon Peter's mother-in-law, and "many who were sick with various diseases," plus casting "many demons," and preaching throughout Galilee, the Lord encountered a leper. Approaching Jesus, the leper pleading with Him said, "If you will, you can make me clean."

Here's what moved me: "Moved with pity," Jesus "stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, 'I will; be clean.' And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean"(Mark 1:40-42 ESV). My need is no less than that of the leper, perhaps even greater.

Lord, Jesus look on me with pity today, which is a day of penance, a day I recognize all that is unclean in me, especially in my heart, stretch out your hand, touch me, and make me clean so that I may see myself as You see me and so gaze on others the way You lovingly gaze on them.

"Everything we see we want to possess"

In light of my last two posts, Sting's song "Set Them Free" off his first post-Police solo album, Dream of the Blue Turtles, seemed like an obvious choice for our Friday traditio today.

You can't control an independent heart/Can't tear the one you love apart/Forever conditioned to believe that we can't live/We can't live here and be happy with less/So many riches, so many souls/Everything we see we want to possess

The poverty Love requires

"The law of the I - law is a description of the stable dynamism with which a reality strives towards its destiny, of the stable mechanism with which something in motion strives towards its goal - the dynamism proper to the I, which is therefore directly derived from the dynamism of God [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit], is loving, that is, giving oneself to the other, being moved. There is no dynamism of the I without this" (Is It Possible, Vol. 3, pg. 27).

To love another entails risk and truly loving someone means giving myself to them without calculation, without worrying about how I will be rewarded or what they will do for me in return. It also means loving her/his destiny. Hence, loving probably entails some suffering. After all, the result of living the Golden Rule is quite obviously not that it will always be reciprocated. Giussani's method is the method of the Gospel, not of The Secret. Instead of the law of attraction, the Gospel calls us to poverty, what Giussani terms "the law of detachment."

In his lovely book, The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer wrote, "There is within the human heart a tough fibrous root of fallen life whose nature is to possess, always to possess. It covets 'things' with a deep and fierce passion. The pronouns 'my' and 'mine' look innocent enough in print, but their constant and universal use is significant. They express the real nature of the old Adamic man better than a thousand volumes of theology could do. They are verbal symptoms of our deep disease. The roots of our hearts have grown down into things, and we dare not pull up one rootlet lest we die." Indeed, poverty extends to relationships and this is a very difficult dimension of reality even deal with let alone accept in order to live.

Tozer went on to state the paradox: "The way to deeper knowledge of God is through the lonely valleys of soul poverty and abnegation of all things. The blessed ones who possess the Kingdom are they who have repudiated every external thing and have rooted from their hearts all sense of possessing. They are 'poor in spirit.' They have reached an inward state paralleling the outward circumstances of the common beggar in the streets of Jerusalem; that is what the word `poor' as Christ used it actually means. These blessed poor are no longer slaves to the tyranny of things. They have broken the yoke of the oppressor; and this they have done not by fighting but by surrendering. Though free from all sense of possessing, they yet possess all things. 'Theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'"

Building on my last post about hope, Giussani in the second volume of Is It Possible to Live This Way, which is on hope, said, "hope above all gives birth to poverty" (pg. 87). If our hope doesn't depend on Christ, Don Gius continued, but we place it on other people or things, then we will be disappointed to the point of despair if not sooner then later "because whatever you possess is taken away... tomorrow, by time or by a bicycle: the bicycle that violently hits the individual; he falls and, falling, knocks his head on the sidewalk and dies. The next day, instead of celebrating his wedding, you go to his funeral" (pg. 89).

"Poverty is not automatic." Giussani taught. He said that poverty "is not like one in the gutter who’s got lice and a few measly rags hanging from him." Rather, "Poverty is the use of reality according to the destiny that, with certainty, is proposed to us and awaits us."

Hope, the flower of faith

The greatest trial of life is death, the fact that we will die. A year ago yesterday my Dad went to the hospital. Next Tuesday is the first anniversary of his death. Indeed, death is the biggest obstacle to hope, which is certainty about our future. Death is a horizon we cannot see beyond with our own eyes. So, we must believe in a promise. The question becomes, therefore, is the One who makes the promise reliable? We can give all kinds of eloquent answers about God's trustworthiness, but in order to really believe the promise we have to experience the reliability of One who makes it. This experience has to happen in the here-and-now. Only in this way is faith, from which hope is borne, reasonable.

What is this certainty about our future beyond death, where we fully realize our destiny? For the Christian, for the one who has faith in Jesus Christ, it is a certainty verified through experience. Christ's resurrection overcomes what would otherwise be the biggest obstacle to hope. Giussani emphatically states that "from the moment Christ rose from the dead" we have "nothing more to fear from death". Certainty about the future, about the realization of our destiny, is demonstrated by Christian martyrs. In other words, this "intensity of hope" is so "far reaching" that some "desire to die for Christ".

Let us live for Christ in the same hope come what may, even unto death.

Feast of the Baptism of the Lord

"On coming up out of the water he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit, like a dove, descending upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, 'You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased'" (Mark 1:10-11).

Well. today marks the end of another Christmas season. So, it is fitting, as it is always and everywhere, to pray:

Father in heaven,
you revealed Christ as your Son
by the voice that spoke over the waters of the Jordan.
May all who share in the sonship of Christ
follow in his path of service to others
and reflect the glory of his kingdom
even to the ends of the earth,
for he is Lord forever and ever. Amen.

Editorial comments on the liturgical year aside, I have to admit that over the past several years I have come to appreciate Christmas coming to a quiet end. It gives us a chance after all of the busy-ness and at the beginning of new year to reflect on the great and glorious mystery of the Incarnation, which is nothing other than the great and glorious mystery of our salvation. And, in light of this mystery we are called live, how we are going to live out our baptismal call to selfless service of others, that is, diakonia.

Epiphany observed

In the United States today, that is, the second Sunday after Christmas, we liturgically observe Epiphany. Tomorrow, the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, brings the liturgical season of Christmas to an end. While it is all a bit confusing, it is even more important to enjoy and celebrate these days at Church and in our homes, allowing ourselves once again to be struck by the Incarnation of the Father's Only Begotten Son, who for us and our salvation was conceived by the Holy Spirit and incarnate of the Blessed Virgin.

Epiphany, Dom Prosper Gueranger, 1870

The three kings who come to adore and worship the new born babe in the manger were Gentiles. Hence, they are indicative of Jesus' universal lordship and sign the in Him God fulfilled the promise He made to Abraham that through Abraham's descendants all the nations and peoples of the earth of would be blessed. It is in and through Christ, then, that God's covenant is extended to all. For this we are grateful, like the magi. Traditionally, the gifts of the magi have been taken as having spiritual and symbolic meaning- gold as a symbol of kingship, frankincense (used as incense) a symbol of deity, and myrrh (an embalming oil) as a symbol of death.

So, today let's bring Christ our very best gift, which a humble and contrite, but joyful, heart.

The struggle to be transformed

The first Saturday of 2012. I am happy to report that we had a nice snow storm overnight, which was a relief because for the past week or so it has been sunny and in the 50s. To have a warm spell in winter here in Utah is not all that unusual, as people who have lived for awhile know. Once in awhile we have entire winters that bring very little snow and that remain quite mild temperature-wise. The previous three winters have been, well, very wintry, that is, cold with generous portions of snow. So, our very dry December was disappointing to a lot of people. Looking out my window this morning is a thing of beauty, a landscape transformed!

Transformation, conversion, change. These things are on almost everyone's minds at the beginning of a new year. However, as we come to the end of the first week, my bet is that all of these renewed commitments are already beginning to wane for many people. We are changed through experience and no other way. Otherwise, what would it mean and why would it matter?

In Chapter 13 of The Religious Sense, Msgr. Giussani, after seeing in Ulysses as portrayed by Dante, especially his "daring to go beyond the Pillars of Hercules," which Giussani interprets as the "extreme limit erected by false wisdom" that seeks to provide us a false and so "oppressive security," points to an "even greater" text: Genesis 32:23-33. This is the story of Jacob's return from exile and his wrestling all night with the angel before crossing the river. At the end of the wrestling match, the angel says to Jacob, "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed" (verse 28).

Referring to Jacob's all-night wrestling match, Don Gius wrote, "This is is the stature of the human being in Judeo-Christian revelation. Life, the human being is a struggle, that is to say a tension, a relation 'in darkness' with the beyond; a struggle without seeing the face of the other." In my experience, Giussani's insistence that the person "who realizes this about himself goes among others as lame, singled out" is correct. Our encounter leaves us "marked." Because I know the resolution of many in this new year is to pray more, as you endeavor to keep this resolution, it is helpful to know that prayer is often, perhaps usually, a struggle.