Two Worlds Fused

Before we get too far from St. Patrick's Day I want to look at the Irish sense that this world and the "other" world are intermingled.  In a talk on Celtic spirituality last week the speaker stressed the closeness of these two worlds.  He showed us a cairn, a short pile of one small stone on another, that he said the Irish used to mark the "thin places" where you could see or feel more strongly presences from the other world. (These cairns are like those used to mark a turn in a hiking trail.)
John O'Donohue in his book Anam Cara says, "The eternal is not elsewhere; it is not distant....The eternal world and the mortal world are not parallel, rather they are fused."  He uses a Gaelic phrase that means "woven into and through each other."  There is no closed or sealed frontier  between them.  They flow in and out of each other. 
Sometimes when we see a particularly beautiful sight, we have a sense that the Divine is showing through.  A foggy morning like the one in the picture makes me think that I am getting a glimpse of this other world.
"For the Celts," he says, "the eternal world was so  close to the natural world that death was not seen as a terribly destructive or threatening event."  When a person is close to death, the veil between this transient world and the eternal world is very thin.  They may see their friends and relatives who now live in the eternal world coming to meet them, to bring them home.  Death opens us to embrace the Divine that has always lived secretly within us.
Our dead, then, are not in some faraway place.  They are right here with us, even though most of the time we do not see or hear them.  Sometimes we do feel their presence as more than just a memory.

Father Francis

Rising sun slides through a foggy world.
Any Jesuit who names himself after St. Francis wins my heart.  The first thing that I think about when I think of St. Francis is his poverty.  In the square of Assisi he took off his wealthy clothes and walked away from his fine family and the comfortable life he had been living.
In Buenos Aires Cardinal Bergoglio lived in an apartment, did his own cooking, and used public transit -- not the usual life of a cardinal.  His modest use of material things challenges us to share generously what we have with others and to use stuff without becoming stuck to it.
Our Father Francis is showing us how to be a true disciple of Jesus by being poor.
After his election he ignored proper protocol and spent more time in prayer than he was supposed to.  By now we've seen him frequently at prayer. To be a disciple of Jesus means to learn from him.  We can do that only by spending time with Jesus in prayer. 
By his humility, poverty, and prayerfulness our holy Father Francis is showing us how to be disciples of Jesus.

Ray of Light

Did you see the Holy Spirit sitting on the chimney of the Sistine Chapel?  That was certainly my first thought when a sea gull landed on the chimney and stayed for about 40 minutes.  Not a dove, but close enough.  I couldn't help but thinking that the Holy Spirit was trying to hurry the Cardinals below into choosing the right man.
Instead of guessing what Pope Francis might do in the days and months ahead, I am impressed by how already he is showing us how to be disciples of Jesus.
When he was finally on the balcony, I was moved to tears when he asked us to pray for him and then bowed profoundly as the huge crowd fell silent in prayer for this humble man.  His humility is the first thing that strikes me as I hear about any number of things that he has done, like paying his own hotel bill.
In his brief opening remarks he did not refer to himself as the pope.  Instead, he used bishop of Rome.  "You all know that the duty of the Conclave was to give a bishop to Rome....I thank you for the welcome that has come from the diocesan community of Rome....And now let us begin this journey, the bishop and his people, this journey of the Church of Rome....Before the bishop blesses the people, I ask that you would pray to the Lord to bless me -- the prayer of the people for their bishop."  This is an accurate, more modest view of his office, as well as a sign of his personal humility.
Francis is showing us how to be a true disciple of Jesus by being humble.

Self-righteous

This past weekend in the homily I focused on the father's unconditional acceptance of the prodigal son as a parable of God's unconditional, unearned love for all of us.  After Mass I was saying goodby to people outside church.  A young man rushing past me, said something like, "You mean I could live a wild life for 40 years and then ask God to forgive me and He would?"  It wasn't clear whether he was annoyed at me or the parable.  He didn't stop for a discussion.  As he hurried away from me, I said "That's what Jesus says."
I wondered if he realized how much he sounded like the self-righteous older brother in Jesus' story.  Then I started to wonder how many of us are like the self-righteous brother without realizing it.  Self-righteousness is a hard fault to be even aware of in ourselves.  It's easier to see in others.
In next Sunday's Gospel (John 8:1-11) Jesus finds a way to help the scribes and Pharisees become aware of their self-righteousness.  It's not surprising that it is they to whom Jesus addresses the parable of the prodigal son.  In John's passage they bring a woman caught in adultery.  They tell Jesus the Law says she is to be stoned to death and ask him what he thinks.  He says to them and to us, "Let whoever is without sin throw the first stone."
Self-righteous means thinking we make ourselves righteous.  The scribes and Pharisees thought that by obeying the Law, they made themselves good.  They failed to see that any goodness in us is due to God's work not our efforts.  Jesus makes them and us stop and think whether we are so good that we have a right to condemn the adulteress and the prodigal son.  Then, as we slink away aware of our self-righteousness,  Jesus shows the woman the same unearned forgiveness that the father showed his son.

Let Yourself Be Loved

Yesterday's snow, still clinging today to the branches, highlights our torn and bent and broken trees.  They help me think about the prodigal son.
The father's gracious love is so prominent for me in the story that I have to push myself to think about the son.  His leaving home is headstrong and hurtful.  Having made such a radical break with his father, he returns home only reluctantly.  He can't believe in his father's gracious love.
A teenager told me once that she wasn't afraid of God but she didn't trust him. While many of us have never completely turned away from God, almost all of us have at times held back from full surrender.  We cannot believe that God could love us no matter what we have done. 
Even though I  experienced constant love from my parents, I was in my mid-thirties before I believed that God would love me without my having to earn it.  People who have had distant or mean parents find it even harder to trust God's gracious love.  Too many of us, like the prodigal son, feel that we are not loveable. 
Today's calendar tells me, "Let yourself be loved."  Praying over this parable again and again may help us to trust God's all forgiving love and let God take us in his arms.

Home

In a fine movie of Dickens' Nicholas Nickelby the title character rescues a crippled boy named Smike who is being beaten in an orphanage.  They leave together. One night they take refuge in a hay loft.  Sitting before an open window with the star-filled sky behind them, Nicholas tells Smike that he will help him find his home, about which Smike has only a vague memory.  He says quietly to Nicholas, "You are my home."  Nicholas does take care of him until Smike dies.
The scene has stayed with me and surprisingly has enriched my understanding of my relationship with God.  God is our home. God has rescued us and holds us close.  God lives in us and we in God, truly our Home.
I think of this when I read the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32) who has left home, wasted everything, and returns home.  Jesus says, "While he was still a long way off his father caught sight of him and was filled with compassion."  His father is his home.  That's where the son finds unearned love.  The father welcomes him home without setting any conditions.  God is gracious Love.
We sing a hymn with a refrain in which God assures us, "I will bring you home.  I love you and you are mine."

Never Enough

"I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE" is God's only answer to Moses who has asked for a name.  This response enriches our prayer life.  Sometimes we catch ourselves thinking that God is just like us, only bigger and more powerful.  Far from it!  The story of the Burning Bush does give us a glimpse of what God is like, but at the same time we're told that God is Mystery, Ultimate Reality that can never be completely captured by a name.
Our prayer is enriched because we can never get enough of God.  This is one instance where we can have our cake and eat it too.  No matter how well we get to know God, there is always more to know, more to love.  Just as I like a poem whose meaning I have to work out for myself, I am drawn to a God who does not make himself completely clear, who is always drawing us deeper and deeper into a more and more intimate relationship. 
The Divine Fire intrigues and attracts us; we remove our shoes and approach in awe.  We long to lose ourselves in these Flames of Love that consume without destroying.