Burning

When I was little, if someone gave me a nickel or a dime, I couldn't wait to spend it.  Mother used to say "You act like that money was burning a hole in your pocket."  This picture from Tuesday has been burning a hole in my computer, so eager was I to share it with you.  I saved it for Pentecost.
St. Francis of Assisi said,  "Preach the Gospel at all times.  If necessary, use words." The Holy Spirit  makes us so eager to let other's know the Good News that God loves us beyond deserving and beyond imagining that you would think the Spirit's fire was going to burn a hole in our hearts.

Cling to me wits

The very large tree that looks almost bare is a red oak.
Many years ago I read all of Jon Hassler's novels.  In one there was a character who wrote poetry.  Red Oaks was one of them.  Wise.  I have put it on this blog before.

Among the four seasons' perpetual jokes

Is the winter appearance of overdressed oaks.

Refusing to fall with the sleet and snow 

Oak leaves cling, lifelike, through fifty-below

Until they are nudged by the force of the sap

Rising to fashion the oak a spring wrap.

I hope when it's autumn and winter for me

I can look as alive as the overdressed tree

And during the lengthening nights I can cling

To my wits and my heart--the tokens of spring--

Only releasing them into the sod

The moment I'm dressed in the glory of God.

Holy Air

It feels so good to get out in the fresh air and sunshine after weeks of staying indoors.  I do walk every morning, even days in  May when the air was cold and I had to wear my winter coat.  This is the first view I see as I start my walk.  Three mornings ago I was tickled to see the leaves on the trees had begun to open up. Today,with more warm air, they are almost fully open.
In recent years as I tried to find immaterial ways to think of God, one that seemed perfect to me was simply air itself.  I've suggested it to people who find their traditional images of God no longer satisfying.  We don't have any image that fits the living God exactly, but God is like the air all around us, Air that loves us.
As I have written here "Air" is one of the four meanings of "pneuma," the Greek word used in the Bible for the Holy Spirit.  Holy Air warms our hearts with love and opens us to bring delight to all who know us.

Holy Breath

We wear masks to keep our breath from carrying the virus to others. 
When I was a young priest we breathed on a baby that we were baptizing and said "Receive the Holy Spirit. 
The evening of his resurrection Christ appears to his disciples in the upper room (2019-23.) He breathes on them and says "Receive the Holy Breath."  The word used in Greek by the author of the Gospel means also, "spirit," "air," and "wind." 
The Hebrew word "ruah" has the same four meanings.  At the beginning of the Book of Genesis the "ruah" of God blew over the chaotic waters.  In Genesis 2:7 "Yahweh God shaped man from the soil of the ground and blew the breath of life into his nostrils, and man became a living being." 
The Resurrection of Christ is the beginning of a New Creation that spans from the beginning to the end of the cosmos.  With the Breath of Christ within them the disciples continued that New Creation.  We take off our masks of indifference and let the Holy Breath spread out to our world carrying love and joy and justice.

Catching

Quarantining ourselves has been much harder on some of us than on others but most of us are cautious enough that we are willing to continue social distancing and keeping to our homes.  We are motivated not just by fear that we might catch this virus but that others might catch it from us.  

The Holy Spirit comes at Pentecost in wind and fire intending just the opposite.  The Holy Wind makes us burn so fiercely with the love of God that we can't help but spread it to others.  Ghandi said, "A lukewarm thing loses its heat when it touches something else; a burning thing sets fire to everything it touches."  The Spirit sets us on fire with love like wildfire spreading till all the world's ablaze.

Loving the World and the Church

I was ordained a priest 58 years ago today.  As the number of years gets higher and higher I am more and more astonished, first of all that I have lived this long, and most of all that I have found a way to be true to my own liberal values and to remain faithful to a Church that has often frowned on them.
I fell in love with the world when I was a child, at the same time that I was falling in love with the Church.  For most of my young life "Church" was the faith of my parents and extended family and the congregation of St. Mary's Church in Lonaconing and some pastors and sisters.  I don't recall even thinking about bishops and the institutional church.  The Church was the Catholics that I knew and loved.
In my teen years in the seminary my love for the world grew as I exposed myself to modern culture, poetry, art, music, movies, theater.  I found friends there who also cherished this wonder-full world.  All of this helped me grow in my relationship with God.  I found God in the beauty of the world.
Then into my life came Gene Walsh and Ray Brown with new ways of looking at liturgy and scripture.  I was excited by change.  I began to see that the institutional church was going to have to embrace change faster if it was going to keep up with the still wonder-full rapidly changing world.  My longing was answered 58 years ago when I was ordained into a Church of John the 23rd and the Second Vatican Council.  Though the road to change was still rocky for some years, Pope Francis holds out the promise that the Second Vatican council is irreversible.
With God's help I still try to share with others new ways of thinking about God and a Cosmic Christ and a less clerical and more open Church, one that realizes that change has to be a constant part of our Catholic life.
Love Who love us, thank You.                                                                                                                                                                                                                             .

RIP

May the choirs of angels come to greet you.  

May they speed you to Paradise.  

May the Lord enfold you in his mercy.

May you find eternal life.

We pray today for all those who have died in war and for the 345,470 people around our mother earth who have died of Covid-19 and for their families.  We pray for all those who are sick with this evil and for the health care workers who are risking their lives caring for them.  We pray also for those who are keeping to their homes, especially those who are lonely or abused.  

Sophia

I could smell these lilacs yesterday as I approached them.  When I was a kid I liked to cut them from a bush in our yard and bring them into the house to enjoy the scent.
Written about 200 years before Christ, another Old Testament book that only Catholics use is Sirach (Ecclesiasticus).  In chapter 24 Wisdom praises herself with characteristics which in the New Testament will  be applied to the person of the Word or to the Spirit.  The New Jerusalem Bible says, "The passage seems to have been one of the principal sources of inspiration for the prologue of the Fourth Gospel, in which several of Wisdom's activities and attributes are ascribed to the Logos (Word)."
Wisdom says, "The Creator of all things instructed me, 'Pitch your tent in Jacob, make Israel your inheritance.' From eternity, in the beginning, he created me, and for eternity I shall remain." 
Written around the same time, Baruch, another Old Testament book that only Catholics use says of Wisdom, "So she appeared on earth and lived with humankind."(3:37)
Using feminine terms to talk about God may help some people to grow in their relationship with God, especially those whose own father was distant or even abusive. 
Outdoor Mass may begin towards the end of June, maybe even later.

Wisdom

There are several Old Testament books that Catholics use that Jews and Protestants do not use.  One  of them is Wisdom.  In feminine terms the author in chapter 7  praises Wisdom as holy, unique, almighty, a breath of the power of God, a reflection of eternal light, an image of divine goodness.  "She is more beautiful than the sun and excels every constellation of the stars....Against Wisdom evil cannot prevail. She reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, ordering all things sweetly and well."
The author even writes about how the people have been saved by Wisdom..  She saved those in the Ark; she delivered the people from slavery in Egypt (10:4,13).  These texts are actually referring to the one God of Israel but in female rather than male language.   God is beyond gender.  In the diaspora Jews were scattered all over the Mediterranean world.  Other religions had female goddesses like Isis and Athena.  It's possible that, to fit in, rabbis began to emphasize the female figure of Wisdom.  Elizabeth Johnson writes, "Within strong monotheistic belief, she is neither a replacement for nor an addition to Yahweh but an alternative way of speaking about the one unfathomable God of Israel who creates and redeems the world."
Almost all of the above is from Johnson's Creation and the Cross.  Check my entry on May 16 "What's In A Name?"

Lady Wisdom

In the book of Proverbs, a book which Jews and Protestants and Catholics accept, there is a beautiful poem (8:22-31) in which Wisdom refers to herself as present at creation, "Yahweh created me, first-fruits of his fashioning..from everlasting I was firmly set...Before the mountains were settled, before the hills, I came to birth....I was beside him, like a master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence."  In chapter 9 she continues, "Happy are those who keep my ways...Whoever finds me finds life."
The Greek word for "wisdom" is "sophia."  I don't remember ever studying this in the seminary, but I intend to take some time meditating on Lady Wisdom here and in the books of Sirach and Wisdom. 

Gathered In

Today is the traditional feast of the Ascension.  In almost all dioceses its celebration has been moved to Sunday so that more people might be able to celebrate it.  It doesn't make much difference this year because in most places churches are still not open.
When the Father raises his Son from the dead and carries him into the other world, all humanity is gathered in with him. The Ascension of God-made-man is human nature's entry into that other world.  Whether in church or not, our prayer today is simply one of  surrender.

Fear

On Monday morning I met by zoom with the staff of the Catholic churches in our area and in the afternoon with seven priests who make up our support group.  Much of the talk was about when it was safe to open our churches.  The fear of catching Covid-19 is real and well founded.  The list of requirements for preparing churches to reopen is very long.  Old people, especially those with health problems, are especially vulnerable.  So much of this made me think that we should not be in any hurry to open.  It's made me more fearful about my own vulnerability.  Our churches decided to open no sooner than the middle of June.
I will not celebrate Mass outside at least until the churches open for Mass.  I may not start even then.

Ascending?

In the readings assigned for the feast of the Ascension this year only the first one from the very beginning of Luke's Acts of the Apostles describes the event in the familiar way.  "Now as he blessed them, he withdrew from them and was taken up into heaven." 
The first reading from the Letter to the Ephesians 1:17-24 says that  God raised Christ and seated him in heaven at God's right hand. Both Ephesians and John's Gospel help us to think about the resurrection and ascension of Jesus as the same event.  God raises Jesus from the dead into heaven.
The very end of Matthew's Gospel is assigned for this year's celebration of Ascension.  There is no mention of ascending.  Jesus promises the disciples, "I will be with you always, until the end of time. The heaven into which Jesus rises is woven into and through our world.  He loved these men and women too much to leave them forever.  He loves us too much to leave us forever. Love enables the Risen Christ to be both in the other world and in this world, transforming everyone and everything. 

What's in a name?

"What's in a name?  That which we call a rose

  By any other name would smell as sweet."

So says Juliet to Romeo, Act 2, Scene 2.
That which we call God by any other name would be as loving and merciful and powerful.  I thought of this today while I was meditating on the remainder of Isaiah 55:1-11.  God tells Israel that they will attract to Yahweh nations whom they don't know.  Isaiah seems to be saying that all nations will embrace Israel's religion, but he tells us to "seek Yahweh."  We must always be on a quest for the living God.
Israel had many names for God.  We might name God "Love" or "Beauty."  Other religions have their names for God.  But it is the same God.  If we have trouble with this idea, we hear God warn us, "As high as the heavens are above the earth, so are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts."  We are back again with Mystery.  God can never be captured completely by our concepts and our words.

Ho!

"Ho! everyone who thirsts, come to the waters....Come, buy wine and milk without money."  That's the beginning of Isaiah 55:1-11, one of the readings for the Easter Vigil, that I decided to use for today's meditation.  It looked like it had a lot of food for thought, but I didn't get beyond the first two verses.
First of all, I've never come upon "Ho!" in the Bible before.  The Catholic translations don't have it, but the New Revised Standard Version and the Jewish Study Bible have it.  Its like Isaiah is yelling at any passerby to get their attention, "Why do you spend your money for that which does not satisfy?"
I ended up asking myself what I was thirsty for, what I was hungry for, what would really satisfy me.
I kept wondering whether I was being honest with myself with some answers I came up with.  It's  something to think about for a long time.

Beloved

When I was a high school chaplain John 15:10-17 was probably the Gospel the students most requested.  They were very taken with Jesus' saying, "I have called you friends."  Friendship is very important to teens.
Ray Brown's translation has "I have called you my beloved."  He insists that the Greek word translated "friends" involves a much more intimate love.  "No one can have greater love that this: to lay down his life for those he loves."  The intimacy is strong when we think of the Risen Christ present to us now speaking these words of love to us.  "I am saying this to you so that my joy may be yours and your joy may be fulfilled....Love one another as I have loved you." 
Living in us, the Risen Christ shares his way of loving with us, so we can love him and love one another as he does.

Remain in Me

The earliest Christians must have had a deep understanding that they were all united with one another in the Risen Christ.  In his letter to the Corinthians in the early 60's St. Paul stressed this unity with the image of the Body of Christ, all of us members of the Risen Christ's Body, each with a distinct job to do.
Fifty years later John and his community of believers used the image of the vine and its branches to express the same strong union of all believers in Christ. (15:1-9.)  Again today I tried to hear these words spoken to me by the Risen Christ living in me and around me in my room: "Remain in me as I remain in you....I am the vine, you are .the branches.  Those who remain in me and I in them bear much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing."  "Remain" is an important word in this whole passage.  Don't try to live apart, never leave, never break connection to the vine.  By remaining attached to the Risen Christ we bear much fruit.  Our union with Christ isn't just for our sake.  The fruit Jesus is talking to us about is making new disciples.  Our strong unity with one another in the Risen Christ attracts others.
This miniature tangerine plant is a great tribute to the importance of pruning.

Another Paraclete

Bird is as confused as we are at having snow May 12!
I meditated today on John 14:15-21, trying to hear the Risen Christ in me and in my room speaking to me now.  He uses the word "Paraclete."  The English word has almost exactly the same letters as the Greek word John used.  The Greek word means "one who is called alongside" to help.  There is no English word that captures all the possible meanings, but we can hear Jesus telling us that the Holy Spirit is at times "advocate," "intercessor," "counselor," "protector," "comforter," "support."
Getting some grasp of the Holy Spirit involves letting ourselves fall into the Mystery of the Holy Trinity (see yesterday's quote.)  Jesus says, "I am in my Father and you in me and I in you." I find it helpful to think of the Spirit as my way into the Trinity.  Imagine the Three in a fast moving circle dance.  The Spirit reaches out and grabs our hand and swings us into the Dance.  We are swirled into Love that is all Three.
Jesus concludes, "Whoever keeps my commandments loves me; and whoever loves me will be loved  by my Father, and I shall love them."  His commandments are not simply moral precepts; they involve a whole way of life in loving union with Jesus.

Mystery

I'v spent too much of the day trying to get on zoom and failed.  I haven't meditated, so I have nothing from that.  Here's a quote I came across recently in Image magazine.  Anything that helps me  to think more about "Mystery" is welcome.
"We can never be finished with Mystery....The more we come to know It, the more we realize its difference from everything else.  Mystery, like Beauty, is not governed by concepts.  It  does not allow a conclusion.  It goes beyond the evidence.

Like a Husband

Yesterday's snow is gone today.
Like a husband, God promises never again to lose his temper, never again to walk out on his wife, never again  to leave her childless and humiliated.  "With great tenderness I will take you back....with love that never runs out I take pity on you."  With gentle words God speaks to us in a poem from Isaiah 54:5-14, one of the readings for the Easter Vigil.  As always, God's love takes the initiative in reconciling with us, as individuals, as well as the whole human race.
No matter how forgotten we feel or how lonely, we can count on God's saving love.

God In All Things

I live now not I, but Christ lives in me.  (Galatians 2:20)

May 9 snow in the time of the virus.

We Catholics are a sacramental church.  Jesus is the primordial sacrament through whom God comes to us..  We, the church, are the secondary sacrament through whom God comes to our world. We have seven sacraments, actions that bring God to us.
That doesn't exhaust our sacramental imagination.   Recognizing God in people and in water and bread and wine has prepared us to find God in every blessed beautiful thing in nature and in art.  Lack of access to church buildings or to the church's public worship does not mean lack of access to God.  There are still many ways that we can grow in our relationship with God, until we joyfully gather once more in Eucharist. 

Mechthild of Magdeburg: "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw--and knew I saw--all things in God and God in all things."
Thomas Merton: "Indeed we exist solely for this, to be the place God has chosen for his Presence."
Elizabeth Barrett Browning: "Earth's crammed with heaven, and every common bush alive with God."
St. Teresa of Avila: "You need only be in silence and you will come upon God within yourself."

Fountain of Wisdom

Social distancing
Most of the readings for the Easter Vigil are very long, so I used to choose few.  One that never made the cut was the difficult passage, Baruch 3:9-15, 32-4:4.  It is in praise of Wisdom who is personified as a woman, as in much of the Wisdom literature elsewhere in the Bible.  God alone has access to Wisdom and shares her with us through the Law.  By wanting what God wants we come to Wisdom.
"She has appeared on earth and moved among people....All who cling to her will live."
As we try to live cut off from other people, we ask God for Wisdom to help us empathize with those sick and dying of the virus, while trying ourselves to deal with depression, loneliness and simple cabin fever.

Heart of Flesh

Since we are still in Easter season, it might be helpful to meditate on some of the readings for the Easter Vigil which none of us experienced this year.  God speaks to us through the words of Ezekiel 36:16-28 to tell us that he is bringing us home from exile.  God stresses that we have done nothing to deserve his mercy.  God intends to show God's holiness through us.
This passage was meaningful after my heart surgery.  It has added meaning in this pandemic.  It also makes a very personal prayer to ask God to make us holy.  Here is part of the very beautiful translation by the International Commission on English in the Liturgy:

I will make you a new heart,
breathe new spirit into you.
I will remove your heart of stone,
give you back a heart of flesh.

I will give you my own spirit
to lead you in my ways
faithful to what I command....

You will be my people
and I will be your God.

You'll Never Walk Alone

This morning while I was washing dishes I heard on a CD a soprano sing "You'll Never Walk Alone."  The music as well as the words brought tears to my eyes as I thought about the storm through which our world is walking now.  A soprano also sings it near the end of Roger and Hammerstein's musical Carousel, probably their saddest show. Here are a few of the lyrics:
When you walk through a storm,
keep your head up high,
and don't be afraid of the dark....
Walk on, walk on,
With hope in your heart
And you'll never walk alone.
You can google all of Hammerstein's lyrics, but it loses a lot without Roger's soaring music.  A number of men have recorded it, but I think it's best done by a woman.












With hope in your heart
And yoou'll never walk alone

Present Comfort

Meditating on John 14:1-12 as words being spoken to me by the Risen Christ right now gave them new meaning.  I'm used to thinking of Jesus at the Last Supper telling  his disciples not to be troubled at the thought of his leaving them.  In this time of the virus I heard the Risen Christ present in me and in my room saying, "Do not let your heart be troubled.  You have faith in God; have faith also in me."   As I hear of more people dead and more people sick and more people depressed or just plain tired being at home, it was a great comfort to talk to the Risen Christ really present about how this is affecting me and to hear his words of encouragement.   .

Words of the Risen Christ

This past week I was reading notes I wrote during my retreat before ordination in 1962 (Yes, it has come to that!) Two different priests who gave us conferences recommended that we spend some time meditating on John chapter 14-17, Jesus's Discourse with his disciples at the Last Supper.  One of the priests was Father Ray Brown, a great scripture scholar and wonderful teacher to whom I have often referred.
He says that even though John's Gospel presents Jesus speaking these words at the Last Supper, "in a very real sense it is the risen and glorified Christ who speaks." The Risen Christ transcends time and space.  Whatever there may be in these chapters of the very words of Jesus "have been transformed in the light of the resurrection and through the coming of the Holy Spirit into a living discourse delivered, not by a dead man, but by the one who has Life to all readers of the Gospel."  He is really speaking from heaven to disciples of all time.
I meditated on this discourse during Lent and shared some insights in the blog.  These days of Easter may be a perfect time to continue meditating on this long passage, stopping whenever the Holy Spirit moves us to talk to God about what we are reading.

   

..These days of Easter are maybe even a better time

A Hidden Life

Last night I watched Terence Malick's new film, A Hidden Life, about Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian peasant farmer who was beheaded for refusing to fight in Hitler's army.  I think it is a movie for mystics.  It takes its time to reflect on the beauty of the mountains where he and his wife live, on the love that binds them together with  their three little girls, on the sheer goodness of life, and on their intimate relationship with God.  His friends and neighbors, his pastor, his bishop keep questioning him about what he hopes to accomplish by his protest.  He cannot convince them that it is not a protest, that he is simply following his conscience, refusing to take part in the evil that the Nazis are doing. 
In the second part, the film alternates between the mean, cruel treatment he receives in prison from officers and the increasing difficulty that his wife is having trying to run the farm without his help.  On the soundtrack we hear the heartfelt letters that they write to each other.  When she gets news that he has been condemned to death, she travels to see him.  She tells him that she loves him and encourages him to do what he is convinced is right.
Terence Malick strikes me as a mystic who is trying to find ways to express this on film, especially in recent movies like To  the Wonder and The Tree of Life.  I think he succeeds in A Hidden Life by showing us Jagerstatter's direct awareness of God, by allowing the viewer time for reflection and by keeping the dialogue clear and sparse.

Moving slowly into the unknown

Yesterday was the birthday of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  Born in 1881 he was plagued by suffering and difficulties.  He was a Jesuit priest and a recognized scientist.  During his lifetime he was forbidden by his Jesuit superiors and by church authorities to publish his religious writings.  Before he died in 1955 he had named a laywoman friend his literary executor.  She began publishing his work, which soon became known and influential in theological circles. 
I've been trying to understand him since I read The Human Phenomenon in the seminary.  I have not been very successful.  So far I have had to settle for a quote here and there.  One I came across recently struck me as helpful as we wait and hope for an end to the present crisis: "Above all,  trust in the slow work of God.  We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.  We should like to skip the intermediate stages.  We are impatient of being on the way  to something unknown, something new.  And yet it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--and that it may take a very long time....Only God could say what this new spirit gradually forming within us will be....Accept the anxiety of feeling yourself in suspense and incomplete"
Teilhard never did see the powerful impact that his theological writings had on our world.  We don't know what influence this time of the virus will have on our future.  We put ourselves in God's hands.

Co-creators

I used this stained glass window of St. Joseph on his feast day, March 19.  Clicking on it makes it a little easier to see, but it is obscure a lot like St. Joseph himself.  His feast always falls during Lent and is swallowed up by that season and by St. Patrick's Day just two days earlier.  I went to Catholic School in a parish dedicated to him and later as a pastor our school was staffed by the Sisters of St. Joseph,
Because he doesn't get his due in March we wanted to celebrate him after Lent.  May 1 was the date Communists celebrated workers.  To call attention to the Church's stand with workers, in 1955 Pope Pius XII established May as the feast of St. Joseph the Worker.  He referred to Pope Leo XIII's support for unions and for workers rights.
"Yahweh God took the man and settled him in the Garden of Eden to cultivate and take care of it." (Genesis 2:15)  God made us co-creators with God's very self.  God lives in us and works through the work that we do in God's evolving creation of the earth.