spirituality – Page 2

Keep the conversation with the Lord going

I’ve been conscious of how busy everyone is, or pretends to be. Excuses run rampant as to why one can’t do thus-and-such, or … or …. One person asked the perennial question: How do I maintain my relationship with God? Father Giussani asked a similar of question of members of Communion & Liberation. He answered by telling his questioner that to keep the Lord’s name on our lips and to recognize the way the Lord has looked at us He looked at Zacchaeus in the sycamore tree. Giussani also reminded us to be attentive to reality as God has given it to us and not as we want it to be. Maintaining one’s relationship with God alive is easy if you move in small but deliberate steps by following a long held custom of praying short prayers that re-focus our attention: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, pray for us; Come Holy Spirit, come through Mary; Lord, Jesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner; O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee; Saint Catherine of Siena, pray for us; and so on. Short prayers such as these examples are remarkable keeping my mind and heart on target and away from sin. I have the practice of praying my own version of the Litany of Saints as I walk up and down the aisle when attending Mass or when I am making the Morning Offering.

Saint Josemaría Escrivá offers some guidance in this regard: “You should maintain throughout the day a constant
conversation with Our Lord, a conversation fed even by the things that happen in
your professional work. Go in spirit to the Tabernacle… and offer to God the
work that is in your hands.”

Make a spiritual communion.

Humor is a Catholic thing, really….

Humor and Catholicism are not easily cohered by many people. For some reason, many people believe that to be a Catholic, a saint, a person “in-tune” with God means, by definition, to look unhappy, if not really be, unhappy. Yea, but no. Really, the contrary is true if you know God, His Son and sacred Scripture. To have a healthy, vibrant spiritual life is have joy. We hunger for intimate connections with God, others and self. We are made for love and joy. Yet, love and joy are mysteries in the Providence, and love and joy separates us from the animals, as does freedom. And to love is be full of joy, full of humor and delight.

Tonight, I had the pleasure of seeing an old and dear friend, Jesuit Father James Martin, speak at Yale University’s St Thomas More Catholic Chapel. Nearly hundred people were in attendance including members of the local and Yale communities. Father Martin is the Cultural editor of America Magazine, the only Catholic weekly journal of opinion. He’s the author of a plentitude of articles and several books (My Life with the Saints & The Jesuit Guide to (Almost) Everything, and he’s due to publish yet another book, Sarah’s Laugh: Joy Humor and Laughter in the Spiritual Life, in a few months.

Martin was invited by More House to deliver the More House Lecture, which since its establishment in 1962 has had a few distinguished Jesuits. The inaugural More House Lecturer was given by Father John Courtney Murray, SJ in 1962 on the topic of the Problem of God. Martin is now on a spry list of notable –and a few ignoble– scholars and cultural types. A terrific honor, indeed.

Father Martin’s point is that joy and laughter are under-rated in the spiritual life and are essential for a healthy physical and spiritual life. To be joyful is to be in-touch with God. Joy equals holiness (for those who pray).

While humor is culturally bound in time, place and location, there is evidence that laughter had some importance among the Old Testement characters, think of Abraham and Sarah, Isaiah and in the New Testament with Jesus, think of his interchange with Nathaniel. Saints had a particular bias for humor and joy and laughter, think of Saints Teresa of Avila, Philip Neri, Benedict, Blessed John XXIII and Teresa of Calcutta, and countless others.

Father Martin had ten points in praise of humor and its intimate connection with the spiritual life:

humor evangelizes; humor shows others our faith in God, in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead; humor shows the victory of love over hatred;
humor is a tool for humility; it aids in the quest of humility; humor is a great way to keep one grounded and away from the Deadly Sin of pride; as my mother says frequently, don’t take yourself that seriously;
humor shocks the hearer to hear something new; humor gets the point of across
humor speaks truth to power, especially when other forms of truth-telling seem to fail; do we need more pompous, puffed-up and powerful people with a distinct lack of humor leading us, in Church and in society?
humor shows Christian courage: think of Saints Lawrence and Thomas More;
humor deepens a relationship with God (if you have one); by analogy –Catholics love theological analogies: being in relationship with God is like being on the phone–someone talks and someone listens; a healthy relationship with God would mean that joy is very much a part of one’s relationship with God; as Father Martin pointed out from the Ignatian spirituality point of view, can I imagine that God might want to be playful with me? Can I delight in God’s desire for giving me the unexpected? Can I, like the Prophet Isaiah, allow God to delight in me and I delight in God?
humor shows genuine hospitality, it shows the other that being welcome in a place is a virtue;
humor is healing –it releases endorphins; one never laughs at sin or personal hurt but in its proper place humor gives us a break;
humor opens our minds –it helps us to relax; humor helps get the message across, eases the burdens and allows us to imagine being personally with Jesus; joy is the surest sign of the Holy Spirit;
humor is fun and fun is a foretaste of heaven.

Thanks be to God for the grace of laughing. John Paul II and Benedict XVI have also showed us the value and place of humor in life. As I have said before here: can I really take my humanity seriously? Can I be joy-filled? Can I allow God to show me the way to Him through humor?

Faith in Christ’s Divine Merits

Some friends and I at the parish have been reading a series of Pope Benedict’s homilies on the Eucharist taken from his book, God is Near Us. I recommend paying attention to every page of this small collection of Benedict’s. Reading through some meditations of Blessed Columba Marmion, the famed Benedictine monk and spiritual master struck me. He wrote,

To believe that Jesus is God, is to acknowledge that He has every right over us, it is to surrender ourselves to Him without reserve, to allow Him to act in us as absolute Master.

When we live by this faith, we say to Our Lord: “I love Thee, I adore Thee, I give myself to Thee by my submission to Thine every will, by leaving all that Thou does desire of me; I wish to live in complete dependence on Thee.” Then Christ takes us by the hand and draws us close union with Himself.

Moreover, faith in the Divinity of Jesus produces great confidence in our souls. His merits are those of a God, therefore they are infinite, and they are ours, we may dispose of them. His redeeming blood can blot out all our sins and all our infidelities; we may hope for all the graces of which we have need, for He intercedes for us.

United to His intercession and clad with His merits, let us not fear to draw nigh to the Father and to speak to Him, in the Name of His Son, with unshaken and boundless trust.

Blessed Columba Marmion, OSB

Revue Liturgique et Monastique

Sacrament of Mercy Conference

A friend, the Rev’d Canon Matthew R. Mauriello, has organized the forthcoming Conference on the Sacrament of Mercy to be held in Milwaukee, 8-9 October. There are several excellent speakers to note.

If you are in the area, perhaps you can participate. But being united in prayer is very welcomed. Perhaps the intention could be to ask the Lord to show us His mercy so that we can be merciful. In so many places and circumstances in the Church love shown to its extreme limits –mercy– is lacking. There is something wrong with this experience. Pray to Saint Matilda of Hackeborn, as Pope Benedict suggested earlier this week.

See the program here: Sacrament of Mercy Conference.pdf

Holiness is a disposition of the heart

Christian hope is not based on personal merit, nor
upon good works, nor good intentions, for all these are too transitory, and too
utterly disproportionate to the attainment of God; rather, our hope is based
upon God himself, upon Christ the one Mediator and Savior.

For hope not to
become rashness, it must obviously be accompanied by personal effort and
diligence; still we must be convinced that all our good will and good works are
always insufficient; only God can sanctify us, only God can raise us up to himself
and give us himself as our possession. Only God, the object of our hope, is
also the support of hope, its buttress, its fulcrum.

With this in mind St.
Therese of the Child Jesus wrote: Sanctity does not consist in this or that
practice; it consists in a disposition of the heart which make us humble and
little in the arms of God, conscious of our weakness, and confident to the
point of audacity in the goodness of our Father (Novissima Verba, pg. 29).

Father Gabriel of St. Mary Magdalen, OCD

Divine
Intimacy

Facing our reality, a monk tells

Facing our own reality, as it is present to us right now, can be an extraordinarily painful experience. Living in either the past or the future is not of the Holy Spirit. But we sometimes find ourselves nursing old wounds, angers, being scared by weaknesses. However, experience tells us if we look carefully, that living reality is superbly beautiful and freeing and loving, too. Fr Giussani points us to keep life real, to be faithful to life and to accept the grace of recognizing that Christ is in the center of life. Easier said than done most days. One’s sin can be overwhelming and it has the ability to define our being if we are not careful. I found the following paragraph of Abbot Alban’s to be helpful and real; he names the virtues we need to live as God wants us to live. Perhaps you’ll take some solace from Abbot Alban’s brief note, too,

Time and again, during our life, we shall meet with
hardships which are the inevitable accompaniment of any attempt to lead a
supernatural life on this earth. These will arise not only from the temptations
which … are the consequence of our own weakness and fault but also from all
those trials and problems that arise from circumstances and people beyond our
own control, things which will demand from us much humility, fortitude,
generosity, forgiveness, patience with the “personality problems” [of others],
patience with ourselves…. Only the spirit of compunction of heart will enable
us to accept them … [and] to transform them from bitter frustrations into a
patient and even joyful sharing of the sufferings of Christ.

Alban Boultwood,
Alive to God: Meditations for Everyone (Baltimore: Helicon, 1964), 64.

Saint Joseph Cafasso: patron for prisoners and spiritual directors

The Pope’s weekly general audience address today was
dedicated to Saint Joseph Cafasso (1811-1860), a member of the “St Francis of
Assisi Institute,” a priest (ordained in 1833) who died 150 years ago. He is
most known as Saint John Bosco’s spiritual father (director) from 1835 to 1860.
Cafasso died in 1860; Pius XII canonized in him 1947. In 1948, Pope Pius XII named him the patron of Italian
prisons and, in 1950, proposed him “as a model for priests involved in
Confession and spiritual direction.” His uncle is Blessed Joseph Allamano. Saint Joseph Cafasso’s feast day is June 23.

I never heard of Saint Joseph Cafasso
until today, partly because I am not well attuned to the life of Saint John
Bosco of which he seems to be most connected. According to the Benedict, Joseph
Cafasso’s ministry helped to form “the true pastor with a rich interior life
and a profound zeal for pastoral care: faithful in prayer, committed to
preaching and catechesis, dedicated to the Sacraments of the Eucharist and
Confession, in keeping with the model incarnated by St. Charles Borromeo and
St. Francis of Sales, and promoted by the Council of Trent. St. Joseph Cafasso
sought to establish this model in the formation of young priests so that, in
their turn, they too could become formators to other priests, religious and lay
people, thus creating a unique and effective chain.” AND how could anyone NOT take Saint Joseph Cafasso as a paradigm for Christian life?

A theme that I am picking
up these days from some of the Pope’s addresses is the constant need to stay in
the “state of grace.” You might say, “no Kidding, Paul! Really?” Mock if you want, but there is an increasing distancing from God, especially staying close to God by means of staying in
a state of grace through the sacrament of confession. We know that the pure of heart are the ones who inherit the kingdom of God. One of the things we know
of Saint John Vianney is that he devoted himself to confessional. Cafasso, the
Pope said, “loved the Lord totally, he was animated by a well-rooted faith and
supported by profound and prolonged prayer, he showed sincere charity to
everyone. He knew moral theology but was equally well aware of the condition of
people’s hearts for which, like the good shepherd, he took responsibility.”

Benedict
XVI explained that that Saint John Bosco never copied his master. Not an
insignificant point: we need to take under consideration those who guide us but
we also need to assert our independence from a “master teacher” in order for
grace to flourish. Otherwise we
merely parrot the other in an unthinking manner. The Pope said, “He
imitated him in the human and priestly virtues – defining him as a ‘model of
priestly life’ – but maintained his own attitudes and his own specific
vocation. … This is a precious lesson for those involved in the formation and
education of the young generations.”

What may be interesting for us to
know is that Saint Joseph Cafasso was renown for his “concern for the lowest, especially for prisoners
… who lived in inhuman and dehumanizing conditions.” Characteristic of Cafasso’s
work with prisoners is remembered today as he “often delivered great sermons
that came to involve almost the entire prison population, with the passage of
time he came to favor individual catechesis, made up of conversations and
personal meetings. While respecting the individual situation of each
individual, he tackled the great themes of Christian life, speaking of trust in
God, adherence to His will, the utility of prayer and the Sacraments, the
culmination of which is Confession, the meeting with God Who, for us, becomes
infinite mercy.”

Pilgrimage to Chartres

Going from point A to point B whether it is a physical move or a spiritual one is a pilgrimage. Something happens to the person making the move between points. Traditionally speaking a pilgrimage is not a tourist event nor is a undertaken for frivolous reasons. Tourism is fine and necessary but I want to think about a different type physical and spiritual journey not often talked about in Catholic circles today. It is a journey; it’s a path walked; it is a time to review your life. A pilgrimage is time spent either alone or with others on a path to a change of heart, a conversion. Often we take on the burdens and the delights of a pilgrimage to gain a deeper insight into our lives as Christians asking questions about how the experience of Christ has changed me, or where I need to change based on what I discern the Lord to be asking.

Saints have made pilgrimages, sinners have made and continue to make pilgrimages. My own home parish priest just led a very beautiful pilgrimage to the Lourdes Shrine and other religious places in France this past April. Members of the lay movement Communion and Liberation makes an annual pilgrimage to the famous Marian shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa (also here) or to the Shrine of Our Lady of Loretto and the Conventual Franciscans (and the Capuchins, CFRs and Dominicans [to sights related to Saint Dominic] do the similarly) often lead pilgrims to Assisi in order to be faithful to the path set out by Saint Francis of Assisi. The Benedictines of Saint John’s Abbey sponsor a regular pilgrimage to religious shrines and monastic foundations in Europe related to Saint Benedict and the Benedictine patrimony. OK, the point is not to catalog the pilgrimage possibilities but to give examples of current types of pilgrimages and to say that making a pilgrimage is not a dead, outmoded pious gesture. Real, good stuff happens to people on pilgrimage!

One such pilgrimage taking place on annual basis is the Pilgrimage to Chartres by an international group of young people numbering in the neighborhood of 10-15k. Their form of prayer is Catholic: rosary, litany, mortification, acts of asceticism, confession of sins and the Mass according to the missal of Blessed John XXIII.

Watch a most fascinating video on the experience… and the 2009 photo album …and the report with pictures of the 2010 pilgrimage in 4 installments from The Society of St. Hugh of Cluny.

“Why I am a Catholic?” is a good question to ask

McGill University professor of History John Zucchi, Canada’s national leader for Communion and Liberation, asks the provocative question in a brief essay, “Why I am a Catholic.” John is a great guy, he’s serious about his faith and he’s sensitive to the movement of the Holy Spirit, but no one would claim he’s a mediocre follower of Christ. The claims of faith in Christ, Zucchi tells us, have to have two criteria borrowing from Luigi Giussani: faith in Christ has to be reasonable and it has to broaden my humanity, a gift given by God Himself. Reason and humanity lead to and exude Mercy. Paraphrasing Cardinal Ratzinger in God and the World, to be a Christian means that you are sympathetic toward one’s humanity that of another; a Christian is accepting of one’s injuries and within these wounds a deeper healing is found.

I highly recommend you read, and re-read God and the World (2002),Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger’s conversation with Peter Seewald. It’s more than right on target….

Don’t let your words contradict your actions, St Augustine tells us

I am not sure you read the Office of Readings in the Divine Office, and if you don’t may I suggest that you begin; the readings from the Church Fathers is rich for meditation. The Liturgy, Mass AND the Divine Office is the daily magisterium for our faith. Today, the Church proposes a a sermon by Saint Augustine of Hippo, a portion of larger piece actually, titled “Sing to the Lord a new song.” Augustine says SO much worth chewing on, and so I find it difficult pointing out from the text only one item.

Perhaps one of the following points is worthy of our meditation today: “anyone who has learned to love the new life [new life in Christ] has learned to sing a new song,” or “what is the object of your love?” or that “God loved us first and therefore we are capable of loving,” or “do we know how to sing with our voices, our hearts, our lips and our lives?” or “is Augustine pointing ought the obvious that we can’t comprehend making sure our words don’t contradict our lives?”

Read Saint Augustine’s Semon 34….

Sing to the Lord
a new song; his praise is in the assembly of the saints. We are urged to sing a
new song to the Lord, as new men who have learned a new song. A song is a thing
of joy; more profoundly, it is a thing of love. Anyone, therefore, who has
learned to love the new life has learned to sing a new song, and the new song
reminds us of our new life. The new man, the new song, the new covenant, all
belong to the one kingdom of God, and so the new man will sing a new song and will
belong to the new covenant.

There is not one who does not love something, but
the question is, what to love. The psalms do not tell us not to love, but to
choose the object of our love. But how can we choose unless we are first
chosen? We cannot love unless someone has loved us first. Listen to the apostle
John: We love him, because he first loved us. The source of man’s love for God
can only be found in the fact that God loved him first. He has given us himself
as the object of our love, and he has also given us its source. What this source
is you may learn more clearly from the apostle Paul who tells us: The love of
God has been poured into our hearts. This love is not something we generate
ourselves; it comes to us through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Since
we have such an assurance, then, let us love God with the love he has given us.
As John tells us more fully: God is love, and whoever dwells in love dwells in
God, and God in him. It is not enough to say: Love is from God. Which of us
would dare to pronounce the words of Scripture: God is love? He alone could say
it who knew what it was to have God dwelling within him. God offers us a short
route to the possession of himself. He cries out: Love me and you will have me
for you would be unable to love me if you did not possess me already.

My dear
brothers and sons, fruit of the true faith and holy seed of heaven, all you who
have been born again in Christ and whose life is from above, listen to me; or
rather, listen to the Holy Spirit saying through me: Sing to the Lord a new
song. Look, you tell me, I am singing. Yes indeed, you are singing; you are
singing clearly, I can hear you. But make sure that your life does not
contradict your words. Sing with your voices, your hearts, your lips and your
lives: Sing to the Lord a new song.

Now it is your unquestioned desire to sing
of him whom you love, but you ask me how to sing his praises. You have heard
the words: Sing to the Lord a new song, and you wish to know what praises to
sing. The answer is: His praise is in the assembly of the saints; it is in the
singers themselves. If you desire to praise him, then live what you express.
Live good lives, and you yourselves will be his praise.

Sermo 34, 1-3. 5-6:
CCL 42, 424-426)