The Good News

Greetings in the Interim

2007-05-24T09:26:00.001-04:00

Dear Friends,

The last month has been a time of transition – from one job to another via a summer in yet another job, from one residence to another. So, I’ve not been blogging for a while. But I miss it and so will be back at it as soon as I can.

The Lord’s faithfulness and kindness to me over these months has been constant, plentiful and unfailing. Pray always! Without him I – and we – can do nothing.

Fr Ben

The Moral Life and the Trenches

2007-04-18T15:54:00.000-04:00

A friend, an American military officer, wrote me recently:

“I've been giving classes to the men these week (all the officers and staff NCOs) in preparation for Iraq, and I keep wanting to say 'Look, this is all stuff that will save your life. But at the end of the day, it's luck that will keep you alive. Make yourself as hard a target as you can but if that IED or sniper is going to get you, it/he is going to get you.' But I can't say that. I can't have that semi-fatalistic attitude. It's not fatalistic as in ‘I want it to happen,’ but fatalistic or perhaps resigned to the inherent risks this occupation takes...

“I'm looking at Iraq, specifically what it did to (a good friend), what it could do to (another good friend), what it did to (yet another friend) and his now orphaned kids, and thinking hard. I mean, I couldn't imagine doing anything other than what I am doing now. But at the same time, it's frightening what it has done to a snippet of my generation. I look at this war somewhat as Kurt Vonnegut looked at Dresden: 'a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty....'

“My job is to motivate, control, and command (my men) in combat. That's another bizarre thing. As Robert E. Lee's character says in The Killer Angels,‘To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. This is…a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so few good officers, although there are many good men.’ Alas and alack, I suppose, as the saying goes: you signed up for this."

I share this with you all, with his permission, because my friend’s cry is clearsighted, close up, courageous, and principled - without cynicism, despair, or romance. He fixes his gaze on elevated things beyond personal convenience or gain, even as his sight engages all that is physical, concrete and real. This is what the struggle for the moral life looks like, and only good can come of it.

Best of all, my friend’s gut experience of what he doesn’t want to call “fatalism” in his first paragraph opens the door to the mystical self-revelation of God to the one needing relief and respite. “There are no atheists in the trenches.” God in the person of Jesus Christ came looking for me in my exile. And so God will for all of us.

The Church a Man Can Love

2007-04-16T13:48:00.000-04:00

The cover of the April 3, 2007 The Christian Century announces an article entitled “Why Men Say No to Church,” a review of Why Men Hate Going to Church by David Murrow. Murrow, according to Lillian Daniel, the reviewer and senior minister at the First Congregational Church (UCC) in Glen Ellyn, IL, thinks that church culture in general and worship in particular have been feminized. In Daniel’s characterization, “A chick-flick atmosphere prevails on Sunday mornings, complete with flowers, ferns and soft music, all geared toward women’s desires for safety, security, and harmonious relationships.”

Murrow opposes this new reality: “Women must humble themselves, pray and allow the men of the church to lead the body toward an adventure…Will you allow men to take risks, dream big, and push the envelope with your local church? God made men for adventure, achievement, and challenge, and if they can’t find those things in church, they’re going to find them somewhere else.” “Somewhere else,” according to Daniel, seems to be the movies, the local bar, sports events, TV, and perhaps worse.

So, what, precisely, characterizes Murrow’s remasculinzed church? Much depends, I think, on what Murrow calls the “adventure” God made men for. Do I seek adventure because in finding it I feel powerful, in-control, authoritative, self-satisfied? Or, is the goal outside myself – justice done, people liberated, human flourishing sparked?

Church at its best – religion at its best – embodies as its central premise that God calls his followers to move outside themselves in service, a move ironically that brings the follower back to herself in affirmation and fullness of life. My fear is that the men whom Murrow defends seek “adventure” that makes them feel powerful, in-control, authoritative, and so on.

Who would Murrow’s manly men hold up us their heroes and role models? John Wayne in The Quiet Man? The English kings that conquered the Welsh in the 13th century, the Irish in the 15th Century, and the Scots in the 18th Century? The English kings who tried to conquer and control French for three hundred years for no reason other than conquest?

I keep asking myself, What was accomplished by all that warfare? Was their a value outside and beyond the men involved, in particular, the leaders involved?

And, I ask myself, why should women and the feminine be disparaged because they – I – see this fighting as having no value because the fighting destroys much and produces little. Or, more precisely, the fighting produces nothing beyond the self-satisfaction of the leaders and destroys life and livelihood of those who are the raw material of the fighting.

Have Murrow and his men seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ? Is what happens to Jesus of Nazareth no less masculine a fate than, say, William Wallace’s, portrayed in Braveheart by Mel Gibson? Jesus lived a life of great risk. Was this not enough risk for today’s manly men? Was Jesus a girlie-man who defended no more than values of housekeeping and family?

Jesus’ life cost him the persecution Gibson portrays in his movie, and Jesus’ goal was not his own sense of being a manly man, a love of excitement and thrill. Its goal was human liberation, fullness of life, and complete joy.

The reviewer notes that “Murrow is right to point out that when our top prayer request is ‘God, keep us safe. Keep our kids safe. Watch over us and protect us,’ we are not being faithful to the fullness of the gospel and the cost of discipleship…In Murrow’s world it’s not only the men who are slighted when the church becomes too safe.” She concludes the review: “Surely there are ways of being a godly man that do not involve kicking ass. The cross stands out as one.”

Please Vote Today!

2007-04-13T15:31:00.000-04:00

A note from Adoro Te Devote on her blog today told us all to get out the vote. Bloggers' Choice Awards offers voting possibilities in many categories. In the religion category, one of the top vote getters is an atheist's blog! So vote today, and, as we say in Chicago, vote often! Click either on the above title or the following:

http://www.bloggerschoiceawards.com/categories/14

And visit http://adorotedevote.blogspot.com for a wonderful read. If we all had faith like that!

In Him Our Wounds are Made Glorious

2007-04-08T15:37:00.000-04:00

Once he has lit and blessed the fire to begin the Easter vigil, the presider marks the Pascal Candle with the sign of the cross, then places five grains of incense in the candle, saying,

“By his holy and glorious wounds may Christ our Lord guard us and keep us.”

He then lights the candle from the fire and says,

“May the light of Christ, rising in glory, dispel the darkness of our hearts and minds.”

As Christ rises in glory, the Father makes his wounds holy and glorious. As Christ helps us rise into new life from the places in our lives where we are entombed, he makes our wounds holy and glorious. The readings of the Easter Vigil help us remember that God has loved us and all humanity from the Creation, from Abraham, through the great Jewish prophets, to Jesus of Nazareth, now the Risen Christ in glory. The reality of the divine love becomes explicit when that love makes our wounds holy and glorious.

A friend of mine, a person who loves the Lord and who knows the Lord’s love for him, has suffered deep inner turbulence from childhood misfortunes. Just recently, though, he began feeling the Lord calling him into healing. And, right on schedule, in fact a little ahead of schedule, on Holy Saturday, he began to feel inexpressible joy. “I’m so happy!” he kept saying to me, waving his arms, smiling ecstatically, and jumping into the air.

Medieval tradition believed that during the three days in the tomb, Jesus descended into hell, took Adam and Eve by the hand, and led them and the other dead into heaven. This tradition, called the Harrowing of Hell, built on Matthew’s Gospel: at Jesus’ death, rocks split apart, graves opened and the dead rose.

My friend rose from a grave on Holy Saturday. His childhood wounds still marked his psyche and soul, but now the Master Healer had drained away their toxic hurt and healed them. His wounds were made holy and glorious, and he enjoys new life.

“Light and life to all he brings,
Ris’n with healing in his wings…
Born to raise us from the earth,
Born to give us second birth…”

I too have experienced this rising to new life, this profound inner healing. And so I say to you, “Alleluia! He is truly risen!”

May the blessings of the Risen Christ be on you and those you love!

Mourning a Friend

2007-04-06T18:16:00.000-04:00

There is nothing so sad as Good Friday night. The Memorial of Our Lord’s Passion is over, and we are alone. The Western church, though its tradition is already rich, needs a burial service for Jesus.

I attended such a service some years ago with the Community of the Beatitudes, who live in a former Cistercian monastery in Mortain, a small town in the Normandy region of France. The community’s ample stone church and cloister, the Abbeye Blanche, reflect the austere late-12th Century French style. Those who live here, perhaps 60 men and women, some married, some single, some priests, some nuns, dedicate their lives to perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament and service to the poor.

On the Good Friday night of my visit, we shared an ascetic meal of tasteless broth during which our only conversation was to tell our faith stories. Then the community invited us guests to join them in the “salle capitulaire” below the main altar. Originally the monks met in this formal room, sitting in stone benches, still present, built into the walls. Slender pillars and arches supporting the structure above broke the sightlines of the spacious “salle,” though the room housed us easily. A stone sarcophagus stood with dignity in the center of the room, its carvings now indistinct from age.

The March night was cold, the room was dark, and we shivered despite our coats as we sat in rows of chairs around the sarcophagus. After a time in silence, candles were lit, and the music began, a chant in medieval style, in French, the leader singing, the rest responding. A pair of community members approached the sarcophagus, covering it with a heavy linen cloth which they smoothed carefully and lovingly. From time to time other community members approached the sarcophagus as the singing continued. Some sprinkled fresh rose petals, both red and white, on the cloth. Some sprinkled rose water. Then more singing, readings in French, and more singing until the cloth had disappeared under the petals.

The music was mournful, thought sweet with our grieving. The brightness of the rose petals and the fragrance of rose water gave weak relief to the cold and the darkness of what might well have been a tomb. After a while the singing ceased, and we remained in silence until we each felt the desire to return to our rooms. The cold became unbearable at one point, so I left numbly, but feeling a great sense of joy that we had mourned the death of our friend and Lord.

For more on Abbeye Blanche and the community, visit The Beatitudes. Then click on "Europe," then "France."

The Tabernacle is Empty

2007-04-06T15:56:00.000-04:00

How stark is the empty tabernacle after the Holy Thursday mass! What a brilliant symbol of what we honor: the one who was our hope has been betrayed, and we who want to be hopeful could well be lost.

At Gesu Parish in Detroit, a Jesuit parish, the ornate brass cube of the tabernacle – weighty in appearance and symbolism - sits in an opening in the wrought iron screen behind the main altar. On the other side of screen and tabernacle is the daily mass chapel, and in this chapel too the same tabernacle sits behind the altar. A pair of the tabernacle’s brass doors faces the main altar, and an opposite pair face the daily mass altar. Following the Holy Thursday mass both pairs of doors are opened, the sanctuary lamps extinguished, and the altars stripped.

Seeing the empty chamber of a tabernacle tears at my gut. But when I first looked through the tabernacle at Gesu Parish – and saw nothing but the same world I inhabit on this side – the sight doubled, tripled, quadrupled the symbol’s wrenching power.

This is the genius of Catholicism: to create symbols that embody meaning beyond words. This is why I love being Catholic. At a glance the voided tabernacle says, The man we loved as friend and Lord is taken from us by those who hate and revile him. And we are left here alone, with only our fears to aggravate us to discouragement and despair. At the level of symbol, we don’t know and can’t know the end of the story.

So, what can we do? We wait in silence, in prayer, and at midnight must leave the church. Then go to bed, hoping yet fearing tomorrow. We know God has been good to us, and this man said he was one with the God who loved us. Will this God act on our behalf?

A New Kind of Love

2007-04-03T15:30:00.000-04:00

My mother (left) died of bone cancer in February, 1979. I worked in Washington, DC at the time and used to visit her and my father (below with my step-mother) in New Jersey once a month. On one visit I found my father in the kitchen making breakfast for my mother – soft boiled eggs, with a little butter and salt – a major comfort food in my family. She was in bed upstairs, and he asked if I would feed her.

I said I would and took the dish of eggs upstairs. As I sat down on her bed, we began to talk as we always did. We had a wonderful relationship, and I was always happy to see her.

But on this day something unexpected happened. It happened when I held out the first spoonful of eggs for her to eat.

A realization hit us – no words, but an experience as we looked into one another’s eyes:
I, the adult, was feeding my own mother, the adult who had given birth to me and had fed me for years. I was feeding her because she was too weak to feed herself.

This unsettling experience called something new out of me and her, a new kind of love, a new way of loving. The call disturbed me at first, perhaps her too, but it deepened and enriched the love we had built up over the 31 or so years of my life.

This was the disciples’ experience at the Last Supper when Jesus washed their feet. Him washing their feet! The symbol and the reality shocked the disciples, because it represented a breadth and depth of care, of compassion, of service they had never seen before. And the shock registered deeply: Peter cried out, “You will never wash my feet!” and we can just see him jumping back in horror.

An expression of deep love can shock all of us, because we feel that “…, I am unworthy to receive you,…” But this is the love that liberates – when Jesus offers it to us, and when we offer it to one another. And so, it is good and even necessary that we take him up on his offer: “…only say the word, and I shall be healed.”

On this Holy Thursday, the Lord wants to show us a new kind of love. We all have the choice to accept it, this most precious gift, and then share it with one another. Receiving it and giving it heals us and saves us. This is the Good News.

(The photos: my mother on the left, nine years before she died; my father and step-mother, several years after my mother died.)

Walk with Jesus during Holy Week

2007-03-28T15:30:00.000-04:00

Today I have posted a series of reflections on Jesus' Passion and Death based on the Gospel of John, from the raising of Lazarus through Jesus' death on the cross: please visit Living Christ's Eucharist in Our Daily Lives. I hope these reflections will help you enter more deeply into Holy Week and thereby into the mystery of the Eucharist.

Please visit as well Did God Find You Today?, a series of quite brief posts, one-screen full at most, with my own experiences of God finding us in our lives.

This is Late, But It's Important

2007-03-28T11:39:00.001-04:00

I attended a seminar this past week on Catholics in the Blogosphere. It was conceived and hosted by Fr Dan Joyce, SJ, a Jesuit friend from 12 years ago when we were both new Jesuits studying philosophy at Loyola/Chicago, now working at
St Joseph's University/Philadelphia. The seminar hosted significant people in the world of Catholic blogging: Amy Wellborn of Open Book, Rocco Palmo of Whispers in the Loggia, Grant Gallicho of dotCommonweal, and, as moderator, Bill McGarvey of BustedHalo.com. The latter has posted a video of the conference: Ecclesia Virtualis: Catholics in the Blogosphere.

So this seminar let me meet other Catholic bloggers – and what bloggers! Very knowledgeable, experienced, creative, enthusiastic – and very encouraging of me and of all of us who feel the desire to tell our Catholic and Christian stories.

Spending not more than an evening in their company, I’ve come away feeling a new commitment and a new creativity. Best of all, I feel as though a part of my life has opened up to see more broadly, in a more inspired way, in a way that brings me a new joy, a new hope, and a new opportunity.

What really happened is that the Lord met me in Philadelphia and shared his divine life with me in a way that gives me new life. And so now I share that with you.

Why Be Religious? - Part 1 of a Lenten Reflection

2007-03-12T16:50:00.000-04:00

We all have a choice to make:

-- either I will choose to believe that I am the master of my destiny and can create a successful and happy life through my own efforts;
-- or, I will recognize that I cannot be the master of my own destiny because human life is unpredictable and beyond my complete control.

We must choose. Not to choose is to choose.

Our culture believes that “religion” or “God” is no more than a lifestyle choice, like deciding to be a vegetarian or a carnivore. And there are no consequences to the choice, since “God” doesn’t exist in any real sense. Since affluence, education, and science permit a certain control over one’s life, the affluent can create for themselves the illusion that they control the events of their lives. To turn away from God and rely on self is serious Sin.

But affluence and science could not prevent Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Education, social and economic status, and physical goodlooks cannot prevent the onset of cancer, the suddenness of car accidents, the drying up of professional opportunities in mid-career, the unpredictability of what one’s children do and become. We cannot give ourselves hope and well being in the face of suffering.

Catholicism asserts that the Triune God exists “out there” in Creation and “in here” in my experience and in the experience of the believing community. The mystical experience of Catholic saints, confirmed by many ordinary believers (I am one), demonstrates that God works in our lives on our behalf: “…God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth…” (Spiritual Exercises, 236).

We come to believe because we see God act in our lives. I had chosen to live without God in my early adult life, and that choice ended in frustration and confusion as I approached 40. What had seemed like control proved to be an illusion. As I turned 40, then 41, God revealed himself to me in my experience in the person of Jesus Christ. My acceptance of God’s self-revelation has given me a life of meaning and value that I could not have created for myself.

Religion offers no lucky charm that averts all disaster. But God gives comfort in the face of grief, strength in the face of opposition and injustice, and meaning in the midst of suffering. I can come to recognize that God, who created me in love, has invited me into relationship through which I have hope of what Jesus calls “fuller and more abundant life” (John 10:10).

The Lenten season invites us to enter into this reality in a new and deeper way, to avoid the Sin of false self-reliance, self-satisfaction and self-congratulation and to enter into relationship with the Lord who is our only hope and strength.

Why Be Religious? - Part 2 of a Lenten Reflection

2007-03-12T16:39:00.000-04:00

Human beings like to think that we're in charge. Yet, life experiences teaches us that this is not so. Our pets may love us, and we love them. But their care for us ceases at death, as far as we know. Only God can care for us in both this life and the next, and so far only God has offered.

The Lenten season invites us to realize this reality in a new and deeper way. Jesus' Passion, Death, and Resurrection provide us care and compassion in this life and companionship into the next.

(Monument, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

God is dead.

(signed) Nietzsche

Nietzsche is dead.

(signed) God

Why Be Religious? - Part 3 of a Lenten Reflection

2007-03-12T16:34:00.000-04:00

Jesus was tempted in the desert – to reject God and rely on himself. But he recognized the reality that he, like all human beings, is dependent on God, and so he resisted these temptations and avoided serious Sin (Matthew 4:1ff):

-- turn the stones into bread, said Satan: in other words, depend on yourself, reject any idea of dependence on God.

-- rule the whole earth, said Satan: in other words, believe that exercising control over one’s life, over other people and things in this world creates a successful and happy life. Depending on God is foolish and unnecessary.

-- throw yourself off the parapet of the Temple, said Satan: in other words, make God take care of you so that you can maintain the lifestyle you have chosen.

Relying on our own efforts alone, seeking control over our lives, and insisting God ensure our choice of lifestyle appeal to the human hope for self-assertion and affirmation. But they are temptations to deny what is real, namely, that only God can be the source and sustainer of our lives. And to turn away from God in favor of a false self-reliance is serious Sin.

It is no accident that in Matthew, Mark and Luke Jesus begins his public ministry with his baptism, which is his confirmation by the Father, and the temptations. The Feast of the Baptism always closes the Christmas Season, and the temptations are always the Gospel reading for the first Sunday of Lent.

Our only way to live fully and successfully is to hear the Father’s confirmation of us and to resist temptations to rely on ourselves rather than on God. "Turn away from sin," the priest says on Ash Wednesday, marking our foreheads with ashes. False self-reliance and self-sufficiency are serious Sin. Only God is God. "Remember you are dust and to dust you will return."

Being “religious,” being a believer, holding the Triune God at the center of our lives is the only way to a fullness of life we cannot create for ourselves.

The Good Sister and the Jesuit

2007-03-02T21:14:00.001-05:00

Dear Sister Mary Martha,

Thank you so much for your wonderful post Reverse Lent. But I want to disagree.

You cite a portion of the list from the diocesan paper:

“Fast from emphasis on differences;
Fast from pessimism;
Fast from complaining
Fast from negatives
Fast from bitterness”

Then you comment,

“Aren't these all just ways to describe the same thing? Suck it up. Walk it off.”

Yes, these are all the same thing. They are the temptations of the wounded soul still tainted with self-centered ego.

We need to fast from these temptations. More importantly, we need to be healed of these wounds and to reorient ourselves away from a focus on our wounded selves to a focus on the Lord, who was wounded for us so that we could be healed. This focus on the Lord and his wounding is precisely the work of Lent, as you note. But if we just “suck it up,” we won’t be forgiven and healed, and we won’t be able to shift our focus from ourselves to the Lord.

Our fasting, healing and reorientation need to take two forms:

First, when I suffer innocently from other people’s sinfulness, I am already suffering as Jesus suffered. I suffer innocently when people oppose my attempts to speak the truth, to stand against injustice, to proclaim the Word – all the things Jesus did. My own innocent suffering allows me to identify with Jesus in his suffering.

So, my Lenten task is not to “suck it up” and trudge on, trying to be brave in the face of my wounds. My Lenten task is to ask him in my daily prayer and in the Eucharist to grant me the grace to endure this suffering for his sake, for the sake of the building of His Kingdom. And my Lenten task is to avoid the temptations of pessimism, complaining, and so on, and to transform this suffering into love for him, thus healing me.

Second, my own sinfulness and the ego-taints in my soul are products of thwarted ego: my plans don’t work out, so I complain; my idealism is wounded, so I become pessimistic. My sinfulness, the ego-taints of my soul, and my thwarted ego need forgiveness and healing. Neither will happen by my sucking “it” up, as you propose, where “it” is the personal sinfulness that has thwarted and wounded my ego.

My Lenten task is to give over daily to the Lord my own sinfulness and the ego-taints of my soul and ask for his forgiveness, healing, and love. St Ignatius of Loyola provides us the words in the most powerful prayer I have experienced, except perhaps for the Rosary:

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, my entire will, all I have and possess. You have given all to me. Now I return it. Dispose of it wholly according to your will. Give me only your love and your grace. They’re enough for me.

So, thank you, Sister, for your energetic and humorous post. May the Lord’s richest blessings be yours, now and forever.

"Coincidence" or Divine Synchronicity?

2007-02-28T16:44:00.000-05:00

I flew to Rapid City, South Dakota recently to move a resident Jesuit priest to Chicago. I had never been to South Dakota before, never dragged a trailer before, knew I had to drive an old car that hadn’t been driven for months, and knew my Jesuit companion had health problems. So I worried: would a heavy snow storm hit? would dragging a trailer on snowy cause us to skid off the road? If we got stuck in snow, would my friend’s health be compromised?

The first day of our trip was uneventful: cloudy skies, but dry roads, little traffic, no precipitation – and the trailer followed perfectly. The next two days we drove through Minnesota and Wisconsin to Chicago: blue skies, no clouds, little wind - couldn't have been better. The same weather continued the fourth day when I drove my companion’s belongings from Chicago to their final destination near Detroit. The fifth day I returned to Chicago, cloudy, but with little wind and open roads.

I arrived in Chicago around 2:30pm – after 1,600 miles of clear sailing. Around 3:30 the wind started, and by dinner time, we were in the midst of a full-scale sleet storm, with biting, driving winds and a multi-inch accumulation of ice. On the news I heard that a massive storm had hit the Great Plains. In just the area we had driven through - Winona, Minnesota to La Crosse, Wisconsin – 15 to 18 inches of snow fell. Over 50 cars had skidded off the highway into the ditch.

So, the question is, Was our good fortune just a coincidence, or was God at work in our lives to help us complete our journey safely?

The Greek word “Gospel” means “Good News,” God participating in our lives and fulfilling faith claims that "Though i walk through the shadow of the valley of death, I will not fear, for you are with me" (Psalm 23) and "…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear…" (Matthew 6, the Sermon on the Mount).

St Ignatius of Loyola says in the Spiritual Exercises that "God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth, that is, He conducts Himself as one who labors,..giving being,..conferring life and sensation..." (section 236).

So, when these remarkable events occur in our lives, we can choose to deny God and call them coincidences, or to recognize the Divine Synchronicity of the God who loves us, fulfilling His Good News in our lives.

I know how I choose. And you?

WHEELIE CATHOLIC:

2007-02-06T18:03:00.000-05:00

Please visit this wonderful blog - so full of life, so full of the Lord's love, so full of the Lord's challenge to all of us - to be grateful, to fight for what is right, and not least to love. Just click on Wheelie Catholic above.

God Forgives Me. Can I Forgive Myself?

2007-02-02T02:00:00.000-05:00

Comment from Adoro Te Devote:

"Something I, and many others I know struggle with is, when we leave the confessional, really BELIEVING that it's all gone, and how to simply accept that if we have made the best confession we can (imperfect contrition), knowing our vices are not broken, and yet not questioning that God has had mercy and that we can TRUST in that."

An excellent comment. Let’s begin with Scripture:

The eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, you whole body will be full of life; but if your eye is unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness! Matthew 6:22-23

When you leave the confessional, what are you seeing with your physical eyes and the eyes of faith? If you “see” with the eyes of faith that you have been forgiven, can you encourage your physical eyes to see the beautiful architecture of the church, the bright sunlight and blue sky, the children at play? If so, the goodness you see with your physical eyes will sustain and support the goodness your eyes of faith have “seen.”

“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Hold that glory – the glory of forgiveness - before your eyes of faith.

The eye is the gatekeeper of the body. If your eyes are healthy, you will be full of life. If your eye of faith “sees” that God, who loves you, has forgiven you, then your eye of faith can even “see” that God has forgiven what you “meant” to confess, “partially” confessed, “confusedly” confessed.

What happens after you leave the confessional arises from your choice or intention. If you “see” only darkness, you will fill yourself with darkness. “If your eye offends you, pluck it out,” Jesus says sensationally. “Look only through your healthy eye.”

I too have these dark currents that threaten my happiness. See my posts A Mary Moment on a Martha Afternoon, October 17, 2006 and Mozart and Maelstrom: Mary and Martha II, October 22, 2006 on concrete steps I took in the face of fear and anxiety. Quick answer: let the Lord’s goodness and light in through the glory of creation.

An important note: Don’t worship your emotions! Feelings don’t always reflect reality. “I feel unloved,” but God loves you nonetheless. “I feel afraid,” but there may be nothing to fear. If there is an object or cause of fear, channel your anxiety into specific steps to respond to the object or cause. If not, tell the feeling to go away and leave you alone. “See” goodness. Take positive action. Drive the negative out.

Beware of creating a place for the Evil One to attack you. (See my post “The Devil Made Me Do It” November 1, 2006.) Evil takes advantage of negative emotions, including over whether we have confessed “enough,” to create unhappiness in us. St Ignatius suffered from serious scruples, but discovered that scruples came from Evil. “And since he (Ignatius) now had some experience of the differences in kinds of spirits through the lessons God had given him, he began to mull over the means through which the spirit had come. As a result he decided, with great clarity, not to confess anything from the past any more. Thus from that day onward he remained free of those scruples, holding for certain that Our Lord in his mercy had willed to liberate him.” The Autobiography of St Ignatius, para 25.

My Favorite Sacrament

2007-01-30T21:10:00.000-05:00

If you had to choose a favorite sacrament, which one would you choose?

In presiding at any sacrament the priest invokes God’s presence on behalf of a person or group of people. God responds because the ministerial priesthood is an authority, a gift of the Spirit, given by God to a human being for just this purpose. (All the faithful, including ministerial priests, share in the Royal Priesthood of Christ (I Peter 2:9), but explaining that must await another post.)

God invoked in this way brings healing, restoration, and rejuvenation because God’s Trinitarian presence is the presence of love: Christ present in the power of the Holy Spirit revealing the Father as love. Those who are wounded, suffering, discouraged, or abandoned feel this love as affirmation, freedom, and new hope. Christ’s Real Presence in the sacraments renews and refreshes us in ways we cannot image, much less achieve for ourselves.

What I love about the sacraments is this power to recreate, and my favorite sacraments are those in which I can see this recreation occur before my very eyes.

I heard the confession of a young man once who had matters worth confessing. But he hadn’t been to confession in a long time, and he had to struggle to reveal his story. We talked for 45 minutes, I asking questions to help him explore what he wanted to express.

By the time we finished, he had started to look bewildered and amazed. As he left my community’s residence and went down the walk, his gait made him look almost tipsy. He kept looking all around him as if in wonderment, as if his life had changed so suddenly – and for the better – that he couldn’t grasp this new reality.

Why? I expect that he was experiencing his life without the burden he had brought to the sacrament. In place of the burden, he was now feeling a new-found lightness of being that contrasted so sharply with his troubled life only 45 minutes earlier. Where there was darkness and misunderstanding, there was now light and clarity of understanding.

So, is Reconciliation my favorite sacrament? Well, yes – and no. It is surely a wonderful reality in our lives, Christ present, lifting our burdens and giving us freedom and joy. What could be better? Nothing – except perhaps that the other wonderful sacraments also bring freedom and lightness, as we give ourselves over to the Lord’s love.

"But Mass is so boring!" Part 1

2007-01-23T21:27:00.000-05:00

This post is the first in a series of five, which follow immediately. These posts recognize that some people find the Mass boring, irrelevant, or pointless. So, if you feel this way, please keep reading.

The Mass – The Most Holy Eucharist of the Roman Catholic Church - isn’t a spectator sport. You’ve got to make it your own.

Or, more precisely, if Christ is really present in the Mass – which He is, since that is what the Real Presence is - then you have to be really present too!

How can you to do that?

Just listen to the Penitential Rite, which begins each Mass just after the priest’s greeting:

“Lord Jesus, you healed the sick. Lord, have mercy!
Lord Jesus, you forgave sinners. Christ, have mercy!
Lord Jesus, you give us yourself to heal us and bring us strength.
Lord, have mercy!”

Is any part of you sick – your body, your thoughts, your habits?
Are you plagued by worry, by angry thoughts?
Do you use the internet to view pornography? Do you drink too much?

Do you need strength and courage to face the challenges that confront you?
Do you have problems with your supervisor at work, with your children, with money?

If so (and we all do), hold these realities vividly in mind, and then say, “Lord, have mercy!” as a cry for help: “Lord, have mercy on me! These problems are too great for me to bear alone!”

“Lord, have mercy!” is your cry for help – and your statement of faith.

“Lord Jesus, you raise the dead to life in the Spirit. Lord, have mercy!
Lord Jesus, you bring pardon and peace to the sinner. Christ, have mercy!
Lord Jesus, you bring light to those in darkness. Lord, have mercy!”

Is any part of you dead because you haven’t been loved or cared for?
Are you wandering in darkness, not knowing how to cope with problems in your life?

Feel these feelings deeply, and say, “Christ, have mercy! Have mercy on me and help me find a way to feel alive again so I can love and be loved. Help me find my way! I feel so lost and alone!”

The Mass is in part about asking for Jesus’s help with the things in our lives we can’t control. We ask Him because He holds ultimate power over all creation. We ask Him in faith because He has promised us His help in love.

"But Mass is so boring!" Part 2

2007-01-23T21:23:00.000-05:00

So, in the Penitential Rite we ask Him for help with parts of our lives beyond our control.

Then, we sing the Gloria – “…We worship you. We give you thanks. We praise you for your glory…”

Meaning, “Thank you, Lord, for what you have done for me, especially those things I can’t do or couldn’t do for myself!”

Do you ever count your blessings? Blessings are those realities that we enjoy but haven’t provided for ourselves because we can’t.

Little blessings, especially when life seems grim: a sunny day, bright flowers, a good laugh, a delightful memory suddenly recalled, an inspiring song popping into our heads.

Medium-sized blessings, especially when life seems grim: a wind storm that does no damage to the house, a “coincidental” meeting that leads to a new job, your child wins the trophy, an unexpected bonus or raise in pay, you and your spouse find time for a weekend away together.

Large, family-sized blessings, especially when life seems grim: a clean bill of health despite recent aches and pains and family history of illness, your son or daughter gets into the college of their choice, your house sells in the first week on the market, so now you can retire on schedule.

When you sing, “We worship you!! We give you thanks!! We praise you for your glory!!” be sure you put in the exclamation marks! Hold in your mind’s eye those special blessings. Let your gratitude and excitement for those blessings inflame your praise.

“The Lord inhabits the praise of His people,” the psalm says. The Lord will engage you in a whole new way as you thank Him for what He has done for you as the Mass begins.

"But Mass is so boring!" Part 3

2007-01-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

So, we’ve told the Lord that we’re lost, in trouble and need His help – “Lord, have mercy!”

We’ve thanked Him for our blessings – “We worship you! We give you thanks! We praise you for your glory!”

Now that we have done these things, we can find Christ present to us as the word – the Word – is proclaimed.

The readings from the Old Testament, especially the prophets, and the New Testament Letters, encourage us, exhort us, remind us of the Lord’s promises to His people.

On Sunday, January 21, 2007, the Third Sunday of Year C, Nehemiah the Prophet speaks to the people of Israel: “…Today is holy to the Lord your God. Do not be sad, and do not weep…Go, eat rich foods and drink sweet drinks, and allot portions to those who had nothing prepared. For today is holy to our Lord…for rejoicing in the Lord must be your strength.”

Rejoicing! We just rejoiced as we sang the Gloria. “The Lord inhabits the praises of his people,” and rejoicing in the Lord must be – will be – our source of strength. Try praising, thanking the Lord in a more enthusiastic way – help someone “who had nothing prepared” - and watch for Him to act in a new way in your life.

The second reading, from Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians: “All of us have been given to drink of the one Spirit…You then are the body of Christ. Every one of you is a member of it.” Do you feel alone, unappreciated, pushed out, abandoned? This word tells you that you belong to God, to the Lord, to His Blessed Mother, to all of us gathered here. Rejoice that this is true, and feel the truth start to work in new ways in your life.

The Gospel, from St Luke: Jesus quotes Isaiah: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me…he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to proclaim liberty to captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and release to prisoners.” And so he does – when we ask His help, which we did in the Penitential Rite – and when we thank Him for what He has done, which we did in the Gloria.

Remember: there is a word in these words for you. The Word inhabits these words and speaks them to you, to your heart – just what you need to hear, when you need to hear it. But, of course, you must be listening. Catch the word as it flies by. Let your ears, your mind, and your heart be fertile to receive and nourish the word that the Word speaks to you in this Mass.

"But Mass is so boring!" Part 4

2007-01-23T21:14:00.000-05:00

When the priest speaks the words of consecration, Christ becomes Really Present in the bread and wine as the bread and wine are transformed – transubstantiated – into His Body and Blood.

Then the priest asks us to remind ourselves why we are doing this: “Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith.” And we respond,

“Dying your destroyed our death, rising you restored our life,…”

Jesus’s Death and Resurrection have destroyed our death, and so we have the hope and assurance of rising into new life as we breathe our last on this earth.

Jesus’ Death and Resurrection have also destroyed our deaths – plural. And so we have the hope and assurance of rising into a new part of our lives on this earth as we confront and work through the psychological, emotional, social and economic deaths of this life.

As parents realize that their child has Downs Syndrome and wonder how they will cope, they have the assurance that Christ will lead them through this challenge.

As people realize that they are alcoholic or otherwise addicted, they have the assurance that Christ will be with them as they struggle to face this challenge.

As people speak out against wrongdoing or injustice and are treated unjustly themselves, they have the assurance that Christ walks with them in this unjust treatment.

In all such cases the challenge, the injustice never have ultimate power over us, because Christ has destroyed the power of the challenge, of the injustice to hurt us ultimately.

“By your cross and resurrection, you have set us free! You are the Savior of the world!”

He frees us from worry about ultimate ends. He makes a way out of no-way.

So, in the Mass when the priest says, “Let us proclaim the mystery of our faith,” say – proclaim! – the mystery of your faith, recognizing that this mystery – Christ destroying death and restoring life – is at work in your life. Invite the Lord into partnership in your own life, and put the mystery of His Death and Resurrection to work in the concrete reality of your life.

"But Mass is so boring!" Part 5

2007-01-23T21:08:00.000-05:00

“Lord, I am unworthy to receive you…”

This isn’t S&M. This is the frank admission of what is really true in our lives: that the difficulties, challenges, and trials we face – the ones for which we cried out “Lord, have mercy!” – are greater than we can resolve on our own. We are also admitting that our choices and habits that exclude the Lord can bring us no hope.

Remember: we cried out, “Lord, have mercy!” because we can’t face and overcome certain realities in our lives without outside help – and specifically without God’s help. This is a statement of reality and of faith!

More than that, we are admitting that often enough we act as though we can solve these problems ourselves, or we try to solve them without turning to God. This can only lead to failure. So, recognizing these futile attempts and the magnitude of the problems we face, we admit that “Lord, I am unworthy to receive you…”

“…but only say the word, and I shall be healed!” We affirm that his Real Presence will heal us and give us hope. We need to be healed of worry, of doubt in His existence and love for us, of fear of failure and defeat, of the hurts of the past that grow like weeds in our hearts and clog our present. As we ask in faith – as individual human beings living in a concrete reality in this time and place – the Lord engages yet more deeply with us.

You may ask: will I feel this healing? Will I see these changes in my life? Yes, but, remember, this isn’t magic. It isn’t the Lord waving a wand. It is the power of love being reborn in the depths of our being. It is the rebirth of hope, courage, and the will to live. It will grow over time as we nurture this new growth by returning repeatedly to the Eucharist – to the Lord in the Eucharist.

Christ is Born Today!

2007-01-03T22:16:00.000-05:00

On Christmas Day Jesus is born - again. But where, exactly, is he born?
Inside us - in the midst of our grief, our regrets, our hurts, our anger – in all those places where we long for relief, respite, and new life.

Grief, hurt, and anger can harden into cynicism and bitterness. A wounded heart without hope becomes a heart of stone. Jesus invites us to hope again. Jesus loved those who hated him. That Jesus - born in us where we are in pain – can help soften hardness, heal hurt, dissolve cynicism. We celebrate his calendar birth on December 25. We allow his birth in us on Christmas Day – and on any day – when we allow our hope to be rekindled. This hope leads us to love again and to be loved again, despite failed loves. Emerging hope and renewed desire mark Jesus’ presence, a presence like no other, one that not only encourages but heals. His presence invites and makes possible.

A few days ago I visited Lake George in northern New York State, the most beautiful place in all creation, only 15 miles north of the cemetery where Hawleys back to 1825, including my parents, are buried. The lake has enriched generations of Hawleys, and no visit to the lake is complete without a visit to the cemetery. On the day I visited, the sun shone brilliantly, the lake sparkled, the evergreens shone, the chilly temperature making everything the more vibrant. Such beauty everywhere I looked! Such Beauty, God’s Beauty touching me and filling me!

While still at the lake, I gathered pine branches and later placed them on the graves of the Hawleys who had loved the lake. I felt a special peacefulness – God’s peace – as I stood among the family gravestones and the pine branches from the lake.

These experiences of Beauty and Peace are modes of Jesus being born again in me. No small thing, since the generation ahead of me wasn’t the easiest to live with. Visiting the cemetery, even visiting the lake, brings back memories I would rather forget. So, the invitation, the urging, the empowering to love again, despite the past, represents a new beginning, a new joy in my life.

God’s greatest inspiration that afternoon was to carry one pine branch back to Boston, and the next day I placed it on my mother’s parents’ grave in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

So, within 36 hours I had spent time with both sides of my family and, I hope, had helped them feel joined to one another by the evergreen branches from the lake. God’s inspiration arose from Jesus reborn in me in the Christmas season, rekindling the possibility of my loving my family in a new way despite the past.

The Feast of the Holy Family, December 31, 2006

2006-12-24T10:42:00.000-05:00

Excerpts from a homily given by a wise Jesuit priest during this Advent season:

Luke’s Gospel says that Zechariah was “righteous in the eyes of God,” as was his wife Elizabeth. Yet for all his faithful observance of God’s commandments, the prayers closest to his heart went unanswered. This may be something we share in common with this priest. Zechariah would pray, “Lord, send a child to Elizabeth!” “Lord, send us a son!”

Year in and year out, the same prayer, the same longing, the same desire. After a while, if we experience only God’s silence, what else can we do but keep praying, or else fall into a deep sleep of desolation. “Curse God and die” was what Job’s wife had told him as he sat in the ashes and contended with the Lord. But it was not like that with Elizabeth and Zechariah. Zechariah stayed with his prayer.

Then one day as he offers the same petition for the zillionth time, suddenly all heaven breaks loose, and there is Gabriel saying, “You prayer has been heard! Do not be afraid!”

Zechariah is unnerved. He says what anyone who has drunk deeply at the well of disappointment might say: “How can I be sure of this?”

And then silence. There are no more words from him. It is as though the angel’s message from God says to him, “It’s time for you to stop speaking, Zechariah. The time for prayers is over. The time for the fulfillment of God’s promise is begun. Just be quiet and pay attention. You don’t have to say anything more.”

There are lots of annunciations in Scripture. Whenever the wombs of mothers are closed or the land turns barren or the rivers dry up or the words of hope from priests and prophets seem finally to have withered away, it is then that God speaks. It is at the end of prayers - or even after prayers have been abandoned - that God has something to say. That is when babies are born, deserts bloom, rivers overflow their banks with living water, and hope is renewed.

If there is a lesson we can carry in this Advent season from the annunciation to Zechariah, it is this: prayer is not for the worldly-wise and sophisticated. Prayer is for those who recognize that in the face of their deepest longings, they are really quite helpless. Prayer is for those who are willing to persist in doing something that is both credulous and crucial.

They Eat Roadkill

2006-11-02T00:24:00.000-05:00

In captivity they eat roadkill and dried rat bones. In the wild they eat carcasses of deer, antelope and small mammals killed in avalanches – but only after foxes, wolves, eagles and other vultures have eaten the flesh. The bearded vulture is immense: adults range from 12 to 16 pounds, the size of a Thanksgiving turkey with a 10 foot wingspan. A native of the highest reaches of Alpine Europe, many bearded vultures never mate, preferring lives of solitude. Those who mate do so at five years of age or older, late by bird standards. Their diet is 90% bones, the African hyena being the only other animal with this restricted diet. To digest bones their stomach bile registers nearly 1 on the pH scale, and the vulture is able to swallow whole vertebral bones of cattle.

God had the option to create any sort of bird he wanted. So, why create the bearded vulture? “How odd of God/To chose…’ the bearded vulture.

We can never know the mind of God. Yet, it is very clear that these vultures hold pole position in a line of raptors that include foxes, wolves, and eagles, all of whom clean the environment of carrion. The bearded vulture, consuming mostly bones, completes the cleaning process. In God’s creation nothing is wasted. “Energy may neither be created nor destroyed. Therefore the sum of all the energies in the system is a constant,” says the law of the conservation of energy.

In the rural town in West Africa where I lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer, there was little litter. Everything was used: old tin cans, plastic bottles, paper bags, everything. Very poor people have very little, and what little they have they use, and nothing is wasted.

Mother Teresa’s fundamental insight, the foundation of her world-wide ministry was that the homeless remain fully human, children of God, and worthy of respect and care, despite their poverty, misery, age, and disease. No human being is wasted. All human beings are equally precious in God’s eyes.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth. It shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.(Isaiah 55:10-11)

So God asks us to recognize this fundamental dynamic in Creation and to live with greater comfort in the reality that God is in charge. God is bringing Creation into new life in him.

(Information on the bearded vulture came from an article “Mighty Vulture Back from Near Extinction,” The Boston Globe, October 31, 2005.)

And God Shall Wipe Away All Tears

2006-11-02T00:15:00.000-05:00

Remember me as you pass by.

As you are now, so once was I.

I am now, so you must be.

Prepare for death and follow me.

From an ancient tombstone in a north Jersey cemetery, I no longer remember where.

The ghostly lines speak without reproach or dire warning, but with a voice of welcome and the matter of fact reality of death. The lines speak of our need to prepare, not in fear but in joyful expectation of a new world of relief, healing, rest and renewal, unknown in this life.

Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away…And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “See, the home of God is among mortals…He will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more. Mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away.” (Revelation 21:1, 3, 4, the latter two verses quoting Ezekiel 37:27)

My parents are buried in the Bay Street Cemetery in Glens Falls, New York, companions of Hawleys back to Amos and Achsah, who died in 1825 and 1832 respectively. My mother’s parents are buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts as are my father’s uncle and aunt.

I visit both sites whenever I can. I go as if drawn in a welcoming way and afterwards am always glad to have made the visit. The visits tell me that the dead are now at rest. Having known their struggles, I sense their relief. I know that their “mourning and crying and pain” have passed away.

Consecrated in 1831, the 175-acre Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first in America to be landscaped to make it a place of natural beauty: hills, glens, ponds, trees of many varieties (each tagged with date of planting, some 150 years ago) give the cemetery the feel of a park, an arboretum, a bird sanctuary, a place to which the living can retreat from their busy lives and be refreshed. Intended for the living as well as the dead, Mount Auburn early on became a popular site for outings, its focal point being the granite Washington Tower, built in 1852 on the highest spot in the cemetery, offering a panoramic view of Boston. Today one commonly encounters people in Mount Auburn walking alone or with friends, taking photos, watching birds, and – best of all – being renewed in the midst of the living and the dead.

This seems so right to me, that we the living should find peace and recreation – re-creation – among the dead. We might miss them, but how greatly they merit the relief and peace they now enjoy. And, I expect, how greatly they hope that we can experience some of their peace in our own lives. God shall wipe away all tears, and the process begins in this life as soon as we make the choice to invite God into our lives. As we seek God’s active participation in our lives, we grow into the “fuller and more abundant life” that only God can give, in this life and in the next.

(Monuments, Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts)

"The Devil Made Me Do It!"

2006-11-01T20:44:00.000-05:00

“Oh, really! Did he have a tail and horns, a black body suit and a pitchfork?!”

No, evil doesn’t look like that, and evil doesn’t make us do things. But evil exists, and we must learn to identify it accurately. Identifying evil, which St Paul calls testing the spirits and which St Ignatius calls discernment of spirits, requires practice, experience and sometimes the formal gift of discernment from God (see I Corinthians 12).

St. Ignatius of Loyola often refers to evil as the “enemy of our human nature.” Our human nature is oriented to God and to a desire for the fuller and more abundant life that only God can give. But, our human nature has weaknesses by which we can be deceived, and we must be on our guard.

To identify evil, remember that evil’s mode of deceit is to suggest to us that the false is true and the true false. So, for example: I tend to worry about the future. “This bad thing has happened before. It’s going to happen again!” I think to myself, and the evil voice encourages me to continue thinking this way and to worrying more.

Worrying isn’t planning. Planning entails weighing costs and benefits, risks and probabilities. This is a necessary rational process. But it is not worrying, which is always unproductive. “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?” Jesus asks in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:27).

Or, I make a major decision about my life, to enter the Society of Jesus, for example, and in a short time my human nature starts to second guess my decision. The evil voice, always alert, encourages this second guessing, and soon I am worried and fearful. Or, I begin a new job or a new initiative in my current job. Then my human nature starts to worry that I have made a mistake, and the evil voice, always alert, encourages my anxieties. St Ignatius warns us against evil’s “fallacious reasoning” of just this type. For a humorous account but very accurate account of this process, read CSLewis’ The Screwtape Letters.

Or, much worse, some people who are worried or fearful turn away from God to seek relief in pornography, gambling, alcohol or drug use, and the evil voice encourages their choice.

What saves us always is God’s presence in our lives to help us unmask this evil and protect ourselves from it. Be attentive to the events of your day. Pray the Our Father with new fervor each day, “…deliver us from evil.” Pray to St Michael the Archangel to “defend us in battle…”

What saves us ultimately is that the Father has broken the power of evil through the Death and Resurrection of his son Jesus of Nazareth, now the Risen Christ who sits at his right hand. But we must cooperate with this saving power: learn to recognize evil and invite the Lord to repudiate its appearance in our lives.

Jesus Invites You into New Relationship

2006-11-01T20:19:00.000-05:00

Several postings ago I offered the text of a prayer for those who complain that their personal prayer feels dry or that their daily routine that doesn’t seem to help them live out their faith. The text gives you words for prayer, speaking to Jesus. It is equally important, though, that we hear Jesus speak to us. The following revises the earlier text, inviting you to ask Jesus to help you hear him say these things to you.

The text of this and the earlier posting come from St. Ignatius of Loyola as the statement initiating the Spiritual Exercises. This statement – the First Principle and Foundation - summarizes the dynamic of our lives in Christ. Ignatius based this statement on his experience of discovering Christ in his own life. David Fleming, SJ has translated Ignatius’ 16th Century prose into modern English. I’ve rewritten Flemings’ text as a prayer to Jesus. I hope you find it helpful.

First Principle and Foundation as Jesus speaks it to you

The goal of your life, (fill in your name), is to live with me, Jesus, forever.
I, Jesus, who love you, gave you life.
Your own response of love to me
allows my life to flow into you without limit.

All the things in this world are my gifts to you,
presented to you so that you can know me more easily
and make a return of love to me more readily.

As a result please appreciate and use all my gifts to you
insofar as they help you develop as a loving person.
But if any of these gifts become the center of your life,
they displace me and so hinder your growth toward your goal,
namely, to live with me forever.

In everyday life, then, please hold yourself in balance
before all these created gifts,
insofar as you have a choice and are not bound by some obligation.

Do not fix your desires on health or sickness,
wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.
For everything has the potential of calling forth in you
a deeper response to your life in me.

Your only desire and your one choice should be this:
to want and choose what better leads to my deepening my life in you.

Original text by St Ignatius of Loyola
Original paraphrase of Ignatius’s text by David L. Fleming, SJ
Additional paraphrase by Ben Hawley, SJ

Detour to The Dakota: A Tourist Does New York

2006-10-26T02:20:00.000-04:00

I committed an act of tourism today. Of course, I had already hit tourist spots: Times Square, Broadway, and so on. But so far I had avoided “tourism,” meaning “rushing from thing to thing, so I can ‘see’ them and check them off the list.”

The day was glorious – brilliant sun, sparkling sky, the colors rich and exciting. I was walking through Central Park, having in mind the Arnold Arboretum in Boston, which I love. Both are children of Frederick Law Olmsted, both seeming to be Nature at her most natural, though both products of much creativity and labor.

Then I overheard a passerby say to her companions, “That’s The Dakota,” and she pointed to an elegant rooftop over the canopy of trees. The Dakota! I have never been a Beatles fan nor followed John’s post-Beatle career. But even I know The Dakota.

The Siren words had been spoken, and - suddenly, unexpectedly - I headed for The Dakota. And once I arrived, I started photographing the deep archway in which John was shot and killed – like a tourist! Why was I doing this? Was I committing “tourism”?

Aristotle said that in knowing something, the observer becomes united with it. And as I come to know, I grow, because the knowing-in-union entails absorbing, distilling, weighing, and – one hopes – appreciating, valuing, and perhaps understanding the thing known. By coming to this place and so to know the place where John was killed, I became united not only with the place but also with the tragedy, this union enriching my life with its purpureal image of crazed attachment leading to crazed killing.

This unifying dynamic of knowing allows us some experience of the mysteries of human existence beyond the realm of “answers” in any scientific or data-based sense. Standing in front of The Dakota, I still could not answer questions about why someone would kill John. Standing there failed to answer questions about talent snuffed out, creative moments lost forever, and their product now never available for human enjoyment.

But standing there invited me to continue to live - and perhaps live with greater depth – in the questions and so come in time to Wisdom. Standing in front of The Dakota, I experienced the questions yet again, in all their unanswerableness. Experiencing the void of unanswerableness evokes from within us an insistent call to God to fill the void and assuage our grief. There is an answer, and it is God’s answer, and it could fill the void. But God’s answer is remote, unavailable, unknowable.

So I stand there to realize yet again that as we come to know and love God and so be in union with him (per Aristotle), we can experience that God gives love in lieu of an answer. Or, better, that God gives divine love to fill the void of loss and unanswerable questions and asks us to offer that love to help fill one another’s voids and grief.

In Catholic tradition pilgrims visit a shrine precisely to “know” the saint in the Aristotelian sense and to be filled with new measures of God’s love through the saint. My sense of being guided mystically to The Dakota was a call to pilgrimage to receive God’s love yet again, not in the presence of a Catholic saint, but in the presence of one killed mindlessly, needlessly and so whose murder reminds us all of our need for God’s love in our lives and in our world.

Visiting a shrine isn’t tourism, and it certainly isn’t “tourism.” The problem with “tourism” is that rushing from place to place prevents Aristotelian union of the knower and the known. Richness in life comes from union, not completed To Do lists. Richness in life comes in particular from union with God who fills our voids. Fortunately, - and this is the Good News – we can experience God’s answering love not only at places of tragedy, but also in surroundings of external beauty that feed us, in our daily prayer, in our friendships, and in the sacramental life of the church. Today John helped me touch the depth of tragedy even as Central Park in the beautiful sun helped me touch the heights. God filled everything I saw and experienced today, and so my life gained a richness I could not have given myself. Good News indeed!

New York City: October 21, 2006

Is There Anything Out There to Believe In?

2006-10-26T02:19:00.000-04:00

If “religion” is the mode by which humans engage God and so begin to know something of the divine life, of moral human life, of human happiness, and so on, then the big question is, Is there someone out there with whom to engage?

A philosophical camp, called anti-realism, thinks that God’s existence is located in a community’s belief that God exists. Belief creates existence. Believers believe God exists, therefore God exists, because in the hearts and minds of believers God exists.

Conversely, Roman Catholicism believes that God actually exists as the Divine Creator, the Triune God, the Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans. God is really “out there” and, perhaps more importantly, God is “in here,” in believers’ hearts, in the concrete reality of our lives, and in the midst of the community gathered in prayer. The Catholic teachings on the Incarnation, the Real Presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, the healing and transformative power of the sacraments, the authority of the ministerial priesthood, and the royal priesthood of all believers are grounded in the reality of God’s existence. And these teachings become a reality in time and space through God’s actual authority, power, and activity in Creation.

Moreover, the great saints go before us as exemplars to show that we can experience God in our lives. St Ignatius of Loyola records in his Autobiography that he came to know the reality of God through experiences of consolation during his convalescence at Loyola and in the subsequent months just outside Manresa. This consolation Ignatius felt – the experience of being “inflamed with love of (his) Creator and Lord…,” of feeling “all interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly…by filling (the soul) with peace and quiet in its Creator and Lord” – was God’s dynamic self-revelation (Spiritual Exercises, 316). In fact, Ignatius modeled the pattern and flow of the Exercises on these experiences. In the same way my own conversion came in an experience of consolation in prayer. (See the posting “Why I Am Catholic,” October 18, 2006).

This revelation is Trinitarian: Christ present in the power of the Holy Spirit revealing the Father as love. This revelation gives rise to consolation in daily life and leads us to the fuller and more abundant life that only God – a God who really exists “out there” and “in here” – can give, a God of the living and the dead.

Mozart and Maelstrom: Mary and Martha II

2006-10-26T02:11:00.000-04:00

I was having another Martha afternoon. (See my posting A Mary Moment on a Martha Afternoon - October 10, 2006.) I was in New York City walking along Columbus Avenue on my way to Lincoln Center for a concert, and my external life was wonderful. But my mind persisted in worrying. The worry made my stomach churn and risked overwhelming my excitement at being in New York City for the first time in 11 years – and on my way to a concert that would be wonderful.

Alice Tully Hall’s oval shape, warmly-lit wood-paneled walls and raked seats bring Mozart-sized orchestras and audiences together in satisfying intimacy. When the orchestra started playing, I nearly gasped at the richness yet clarity of the sound, the precision of the ensemble, and the music itself: two Mozart piano concertos (No. 9 and No. 27) and Symphony No. 40.

But the worries roiling my psyche would not rest, and I faced irretrievable loss: Mozart sucked into maelstrom. From experience I knew I had to focus on the beauty around me: the hall, the sound, and the music. So I listened more intently, more deeply and with ever greater focus and determination.

What won the day – finally – was Beauty. Not just the beauty of the hall, the sound, and the music, though they were exquisitely beautiful. This beauty – small “b” – is the derivative beauty of Creation made in God’s image that can be so satisfying. But what also and in particular saved me was Beauty – capital “B” – the fundamental part of God’s being by which the beautiful Creation sprang into being. The Holy Spirit carries God’s Beauty into Creation as the motive force sustaining the beautiful things of Creation.

This Holy Spirit of God – which is God and which is love - flowed into me as I opened myself – in desperation – to the Spirit’s help. Beauty, flowing to me through the beauty of the hall, the sound and the music, rescued me from worry.

This was what Mary was doing at Jesus’ feet. She chose “the better part,” that is, she chose God’s Holy Spirit of Beauty, of Truth, of Liberation, of Salvation rather than allowing herself to be dragged into the maelstrom. In inviting God’s Holy Spirit into herself she girded herself against whatever worried or constrained or hurt her.

God’s Holy Spirit saves us from what constrains us or hurts us, because by means of the Son’s Crucifixion, Death and Resurrection the Father broke the power of sin and death, raising Jesus of Nazareth into new life as the Risen Christ. Good News, indeed, for us all!

New York City: October 22, 2006

The Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ

2006-10-18T22:11:00.000-04:00

1. God exists. God created all things and saw that they were good.

2. God created us in God’s own image and works actively with us in all creation to build the Kingdom. The Incarnation was the full, complete and particular manifestation of God to creation in creation, a manifestation of the love of the Creator for the Created.

3. God confers on us life itself and a fundamental, inalienable dignity, which is the foundation of all moral behavior, that is, how we must treat ourselves, one another and God our Creator.

4. God confers meaning, significance, and value on our lives. We are unable to confer, create, or obtain these qualities for ourselves, God being their sole source. When we know that God has given us these qualities, we can come to live in peace and joy. Without these qualities, we cannot find such peace and joy (cf “Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” St Augustine).

5. God reveals Godself to us in our individual prayer, in community prayer, in the sacraments (notably the Eucharist), and in the concrete events of our lives. God always takes the initiative in inviting us into relationship, since God’s love is prevenient – it always comes first. God communicates with each one of us in terms that are clearest and most meaningful to us individually, and his central message is invitation to relationship.

6. God’s self-revelation to us invites us into a loving relationship: “I call you friends…love me as I have loved you” (John 15). This love constitutes the foundation and opportunity for fuller and more abundant life as well as serving as a cushion against whatever challenges and difficulties our lives hold for us.

7. God invites us into a state of life – married, committed life, celibate in religious or clerical life, or single. God also invites us into a life’s work (or works), which may be our career in the marketplace, in the home, or both. Or, it may be in vowed life in the church. This work is our vocation. God offers this vocation as an invitation, not a requirement, because God always respects our free will.

8. As part of our vocation God gives us gifts (for teaching, preaching, healing, care giving, leading, parenting, and so on) by which to serve God, the church, our families, communities, and the world (I Corinthians 12 – 14.). God asks all people to express a special concern for the poor. We contribute to the Building of the Kingdom of God as we live out our vocation.

9. As we undertake the responsibilities of our vocation in our state of life, the forces of evil – envy, anger, resentment, prejudice, lust, small-mindedness, self-centeredness, deceit, and so on – begin to rise in opposition to our efforts. These forces often lead us to worry, to be fearful, to be hurt and discouraged. This opposition may make us suffer, and we may find our work at an impasse. Like Jesus of Nazareth and in partnership with him, we have our times in the Garden, we stand accused and humiliated before the authorities, and we are crucified before all the people.

10. When we face hostility in living out our vocation, God gives us peace, hope and courage in the face of our suffering and so gives our suffering meaning. The peace, hope and courage God gives us is the rock upon which we can stand, the foundation that allows us to face hostility and to continue the work of our vocation. As we continue to commit ourselves to the Father, he strengthens us. Our model and assurance is the Father who gave Jesus hope and courage in the Garden of Gethsemane, empowering Jesus to face his Passion and Death, as Jesus continued to commit himself to the Father’s work (Luke 22).

11. When we face opposition in living out our vocation, God “makes a way out of no way” through the obstacles and the hurt, so that the opposition – possibly exacerbated by our own sinfulness and weakness - fails to halt the Building of the Kingdom.

12. We are able to feel hopeful and courageous as we face hostility and opposition because through his Passion, Death, and Resurrection, Jesus of Nazareth in partnership with the Father broke the power of sin and death to hurt us ultimately and to prevent the Building of the Kingdom. “Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life…” In the Eucharist Jesus’ body is broken and his blood poured out yet again, the power of sin and death broken yet again for us, and the Father’s love and new life sent out among his people through descent yet again of the Holy Spirit.

13. God offers us forgiveness for our own sins and healing of the pain we experience through the world’s sin visited upon us. “Lord, I am unworthy to receive you, but only say the word, and I shall be healed.” God’s love poured into our relationship with him dissolves our sin and our pain. God heals our memories, heals the current pain of our past hurts. God also curbs the power of addictive behaviors. We can therefore come to live increasingly in a new freedom and peacefulness with ourselves and others. “By your cross and resurrection you have set us free. You are the Savior of the world.”

14. As we live out our vocation, God blesses us with richness of life, with opportunities we cannot give ourselves, opportunities that include challenges (Mark 10:29ff).

15. God leads us through physical death into newer and fuller union with God in the next life. Death cannot harm us. In fact, it is the entry point into the deepest possible love and the fullness of life (Revelation 21).

This is the Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Good News fulfills God’s promise to us, proclaimed by Jesus during his public ministry and described by Jesus in the Gospel of John as fuller and more abundant life (John 10) and complete joy (John 15).

Why I Am Catholic

2006-10-18T20:19:00.000-04:00

I am Catholic because I found God in the Roman Catholic Church in the person of Jesus Christ, and I continue to find God there daily. To my surprise once I found God, I discovered that God had been looking for me. It just took me a while to learn God’s vocabulary and so to see how God had been inviting me into relationship for a long time. Since then God has given me a life of hope, joy, healing and peace – a new way of living and working - that I could never have created for myself.

It was not always so. From the time I was 22 in 1969 to August, 1986 when I was 39, I attended no church, looked to no god, sought nothing “religious,” though I lived what I think was a moral life of honesty, generosity and service. But by August, 1986 my life had become burdened and empty. On one day that August I experienced a moment of panic, a conviction that I was hopelessly lost, that I could see no way forward nor any hope for future happiness. I know in retrospect that this was an unconscious cry to God.

A series of twists and turns over the next 20 months took me through meditation, bits of the New Age, and an unexpected foray into Catholicism. One day in April, 1988 I found myself in St Matthew's Cathedral in Washington, DC praying to Jesus: “If you’re there, do something!” Intuitions and unexplainable stirrings in me, especially during the Mass, had been suggesting that something very real but unknown was going on – and I wanted to know. At that moment I was filled with what St Ignatius calls consolation, “an interior movement…aroused in the soul by which it is inflamed with love of its Creator and Lord…an interior joy that invites and attracts to what is heavenly…by filling it with peace and quiet in its Creator and Lord” (The Spiritual Exercises, 316).

A short time later on the basis of this experience Fr John Gigrich, a priest of St Matthew’s Cathedral, confirmed me in a side chapel on the Cathedral’s upper floor, just inside the archway at the center of the accompanying photo to the left of the organ pipes.

And so I am Catholic because I found God in the Roman Catholic Church, in its sacraments, and in its people. And I continue to find not only God there, but I also find my vocation, my life’s work. I find healing and peace, and I find protection, comfort, and courage when doing my life’s work brings challenges, obstacles, and hurt. I am experiencing the Good News of Our Lord Jesus Christ.

I invite you to seek God, if you do not already know God, and to be surprised as I was that God has actually been looking for you all this time.

But, you might ask, Why should I look for God at all? Why should I be religious? Excellent questions, but questions for another blog.

October 18, 2006 St Mary’s Hall, Boston College

Click here to see more pictures of St. Matthew's Cathedral.

Dry Prayer? Ask! Ask for Him Alone!

2006-10-17T13:09:00.000-04:00

People frequently ask me what they can do to give their prayer lives more richness or to feel a deeper sense of faith or to experience God more fully in their lives. They complain of prayer that is dry or of a daily routine that doesn’t seem to help them live out their faith. My own experience has taught me that to jumpstart my prayer or enliven my sense of God in the events of my life I need to make a new and yet more explicit commitment to the Lord and to ask him with new ardor and love to be in my life.

St. Ignatius of Loyola begins the Spiritual Exercises with a statement that summarizes our lives in Christ. Ignatius based this statement – the First Principle and Foundation - on his experience of discovering Christ in his own life. David Fleming, SJ has translated Ignatius’ 16^th Century prose into modern English. I’ve rewritten Flemings’ text as a prayer to Jesus. You might find praying it helpful in inviting the Lord more deeply into your own life.

The First Principle and Foundation as I speak it to Jesus

The goal of my life is to live with you, Jesus, forever.

You, Jesus, who love me, gave me life.

My own response of love to you

allows your life to flow into me without limit.

All the things in this world are your gifts to me,

presented to me so that I can know you more easily

and make a return of love to you more readily.

As a result you ask me to appreciate and use all your gifts to me

insofar as they help me develop as a loving person.

But if any of these gifts become the center of my life,

they displace you and so hinder my growth toward my goal,

namely, to live with you forever.

In everyday life, then, I choose to hold myself in balance

before all these created gifts,

insofar as I have a choice and am not bound by some obligation.

I choose not to fix my desires on health or sickness,

wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one.

For everything has the potential of calling forth in me

a deeper response to your life in me.

My only desire and my one choice should be this:

to want and choose what better leads

to your deepening your life in me.

Original text by St Ignatius of Loyola

Original paraphrase of Ignatius’s text by David L. Fleming, SJ

Additional paraphrase by Ben Hawley, SJ

A Mary Moment in a Martha Afternoon

2006-10-17T12:57:00.000-04:00

I was having a terrible afternoon. My bank was assessing me a $32 penalty for a 61 cent overdraft – my fault to be sure, but the “fault” of a long-standing customer. Companies charging my credit card for services I no longer wanted made me fight my way through phone menu after phone menu before finding a human being to speak with me. My budget refused to be reconciled. Worst of all, this trying, exhausting work began to generate in me a sense that my life had no meaning apart from this work, that I was doomed to do this depressing work forever, and that my frustration marked me as a failure at the business of life.

It was a Martha afternoon (Luke 10:38ff). She had begun to see herself as no more than the tasks of her daily life, their frustrating routine draining her of joy and peace. Jesus described her accurately as being “anxious… about many things.” But his invitation to her was not to leave undone this necessary work of life, work that in fact was a benefit to herself, to him, and to Mary. Instead, he invited her to undertake her work as part of relationship, in this case with her sister Mary and in particular with him. When she can feel herself part of his peace and joy, he says, then the difficult work of life – and even the hurts and challenges of life – cannot overwhelm her nor discourage her. He will give her peace and will give meaning to her work, despite her frustrations and suffering.

I found - on my Martha afternoon – that, as I was able to pause at my desk in the midst of the clamor, I could feel that deeper peace cushioning my frustration. The peace reminded me that the challenges I faced could not negate the value of my life, because my life comes from him. Even better was to leave my desk at the end of the afternoon to preside at our community’s daily Mass where – surprise! – the Gospel of the day was the story of Mary and Martha. We gathered to participate once again in Jesus’ victory over sin and death. This victory places sin and death, which include frustration and discouragement, under his feet and gives us hope and freedom. “By your cross and resurrection you have set us free! You are the savior of the world!” He filled me with his peace as I invited him into my afternoon’s frustration, so that I could enjoy the fullness of life that only he can give.

St Mary’s Hall, Boston College, Tuesday, October 10, 2006

The Amish Show Us the Way

2006-10-14T21:30:00.000-04:00

“But as for me, I know that my Vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand upon the earth…” Job 19:21ff

“On entering any house, first say,‘Peace to this house.’ If there is a peaceable man there, your peace will rest on him; if not, it will come back to you.” Luke 10:1ff

On a bright sunny afternoon we stopped our car – a Jesuit friend and I - at the edge of an ample field where a dozen Amish men and boys were cutting the glowing hay. As we stood there watching them work under the broad blue sky, we were filled with a sense of peace. This peace wasn’t the relaxed aftermath of a good meal nor the laziness of a day off. It was a deep assurance of a fundamental goodness resident in that place. The Amish hay cutters were peaceable men (and boys), and in this Pennsylvania Dutch farm country their peace came to rest on us.

We have all seen this peace on display recently as the Amish reacted to an anguished and desperate non-Amish man’s attack on their community. A New York Times reporter wrote that “Throughout this ordeal, the Amish,…have been the object of fascination not just because of their old-fashioned dress…, but because of their stoicism, faith and capacity for forgiveness.” The reporter quotes a non-Amish neighbor and friend: “Any outsider would have said, ‘What’s wrong with these calm people?’ I mean, we were crying, we were praying, but we weren’t hysterical.” (The New York Times, Thursday, October 5, 2006)

“Hysteria” is the natural reaction of those who have no interior life to counter or cushion a tragedy. Hysteria is a clanging of a rock thrown harshly into an empty garbage can. The Amish reaction, the reaction of faith to tragedy, is the same rock falling on a bed of pine needles. The falling rock creates damage, hurt and disruption. But the pine needles remain part of a rich, fertile soil that continues to give life.

Faith is God’s gift to us, and as we grow in faith, we grow in interior peace. Faith after all is the belief, the conviction that God’s power is greater than the power of sin and death. As we grow in faith, we learn to live more confidently in the assurance - based on experience - that this divine power will envelop the difficult and challenging events of our lives. These events may retain their hurtfulness, but God’s peace counterbalances and cushions the pain. We come to feel comforted in our grief.

“Dying you destroyed our death, rising you restored our life, Lord Jesus, come in glory!” we Catholics say at Mass when the priest asks us to “proclaim the mystery of our faith.” In His Passion, Death and Resurrection Jesus of Nazareth in partnership with the Father broke the power of sin and death to hurt us ultimately. He is the Vindicator who will stand upon the earth and give us mercy and peace.

Texts taken from Thursday of the 26^th Week in Ordinary Time, Thursday, October 5, 2006

His Vest Said, Blind Runner

2006-10-12T14:51:00.000-04:00

A blind man ran past me today. He wore a cotton vest over his plain-colored T shirt – Blind Runner, the vest said in florescent yellow. He carried a white cane, not tapping it on the ground but holding it point-downward ahead of him.

The blind man ran past me today - from behind on the winding drive, then disappearing around a bend ahead. A quarter of an hour later he reappeared, passing by me again, still running his own confident path. He ran past men and women, walking and talking their way along, he as confident as they. He passed children too on bicycles, as easily as I might, if I ran as easily as he.

How, I wondered, did he become a blind man who runs? Once he must have been a blind man who did not run. Then, he discovered that people ran, that these people, called runners, wore special shoes and special clothing that they bought somewhere. And that must have appealed to him too. But did his friends and family say to him, “Blind people can’t run. How can you run?”

Deep inside him he must have carried on the debate: “Blind people don’t run; but I could run. I want to run. But can I run?” Maybe he went to an athletic goods store and said, “I want to run. I want running shoes and running clothes.” Did the salespeople say to him, “You are blind. Blind people can’t run.” Or did they just think it, while staring at the blind man who wanted to run? Did they sell him the running shoes and clothes?

When he finally said to himself, “I will run!” what did he do next?

What was he thinking when he put on his running shoes and running clothes for the first time? Was the debate still going on inside him: “Blind people don’t run; but I could run, and I have the shoes and the clothes. So now I will run.”

“I will consider how God works and labors for me in all creatures upon the face of the earth, that is, he conducts himself as one who labors…I will consider all blessing and gifts as descended from above. Thus, my limited power comes from the supreme and infinite power above…” (The Spiritual Exercises of St Ignatius of Loyola, paragraphs 236, 237.)

God was surely acting in the blind man who ran past me today. Perhaps the man knew God’s action explicitly, or perhaps the man felt only what he thought was his own desire and determination. Nonetheless, God acted, God conducted himself as one who labors, and the blind man ran.

October 9, 2006: The Arnold Arboretum, Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts

Why this blogspot?

2006-10-12T14:21:00.000-04:00

I write as a convert to Roman Catholicism (1988) and late entrant into the Society of Jesus (1991) and relatively newly ordained priest (2000). In the mid-1980s I faced a life crisis as I was about to turn 40. I had committed myself to life and career as our world understands these things, and everything had failed me. The Lord revealed himself to me and invited me into relationship with Him and into priesthood in His Church. Consequently, I write as a Roman Catholic and live as a Roman Catholic, receiving the Lord not only in personal prayer, but in the sacraments and fellowship of the Church.

I hope this blogspot will help you in your journey as a Catholic disciple of the Lord, and as well if you follow Him in a different Christian denomination. It may be that this blogspot might help you if you are a faithful follower of a non-Christian tradition. In particular, I hope these reflections will help you if you have chosen to be on leave-of-absence from the Church or if you have chosen to pursue no religious path in this part of your life.

“We are pilgrims on a journey,/We are friends along the road./We are here to help each other/Walk the mile and share the load.” Others have helped me. I hope I can help you. Please let me hear from you.