Mary the Apostle

Does anyone really exist, or are people only who we make them into?

Yesterday a bunch of folks in my quirky Twitter world were tweeting away about St Mary of Magdala, the apostle to the Apostles. A lot of people in my circles are set on exonerating Mary, and with good reason. She picked up a bad reputation throughout the middle ages. I was fascinated to discover that a rise in a presentation of a penitent Magdelene occurred during the Catholic Reformation, when the whole Church was repenting and looking for a model of contrition.  In retrospect, learning that was probably the turning point toward a favorable view of Church history and a frustration with retroactive indignance: no matter how we’ve messed up, there is always a reason why.

And boy, did we mess it up with Mary of Magdala. For better or worse she is part of our collective consciousness as a loose woman, a characterization which is found nowhere in Scripture. Better writers than I have documented the conflation of various biblical women into Mary. If we look at the evidence, we see that she was a dear disciple and a leader among the Apostles, but even those of us who struggle to proclaim this are evangelizing the in the shadow of myth, aware that what we are trying to do is fundamentally an un-doing.

Yesterday I was also privy to conversations about another Mary, and her sister, Martha, both stars of one of the few Bible stories that features two women.  Unfortunately it also features sibling rivalry and the chastisement of a hard-working woman, something hard-working women everywhere have been trying to explain away ever since.

I couldn’t help thinking, in the midst of both of these discussions, “how much does any of this matter?” If we get these women figured out, does it really change anything? They lived 2000 years ago and have long since gone to a place where their reputations cannot harm them. Reimagining them doesn’t change them – but it does change us.

We rely on our sacred narratives for permission on how to behave.  If Mary and Martha is a story of passivity vs. activity, we know who wins. And for women, that’s what we’re stuck with, because so few of our sacred stories have female characters. I wonder if men pore over the characterizations of Peter, Thomas, or other Apostles, go searching for the “stories about men” the way some women scramble to find in “stories about women” evidence that God loves us, and that we matter too.  I doubt it – all history is “stories about men”. Why would they imagine themselves Matthew or Zaccheus when they could be Paul? They could be Jesus.

This is not to disparage the exegetical or imaginative skills of the wonderful men I know who look to the Bible for guidance.  They are lucky to have so many models, and in truth I often share their models – loving Zaccheus as inspiration to short people everywhere, and Peter as a model of loud-mouthed-bozo-makes-good. We should take inspiration where we get it. But I won’t pretend that women and men are on a level interpretive playing field.

The woman at the well tells me it’s ok to question and to challenge. Phew. The woman with the alabaster jar tells me I can be lavish in my giving. Good to know. The woman with the hemorrhage (are we noticing a theme of namelessness here?) tells me I can take initiative. That's a relief, since I probably would have anyway.  When I look over my academic history I realize most of my Scripture study has been focused on these women.  I have spent countless hours picking apart these stories, searching for historical context and literary types, and anything else that would help me understand these few, mostly nameless female characters.

So who is Mary of Magdala, and why does it matter? The historical Mary is long gone, lost forever to the mythologies that make figures a reflection of our age.  Can our age allow her to be what the simplest evidence points to: a faithful follower of Jesus who stayed with him until the end, and a proclaimer of the Gospel? 

Every year we read or sing the Easter Sequence, in a translation packed with facile rhymes. And every year when we get to the line “Speak, Mary, declaring what you saw, wayfaring” I literally thank God. Tucked away in that tiny couplet, in which the Church talks back to the Scripture that week by week talks to us, is permission to proclaim what we see.  Sometimes that sliver of guidance is all we get, and it’s up to us to figure out the rest of what it means, for us and for history.

St. Mary of Magdala by Eileen Cantlin Verbus. Copyright FutureChurch. For more information about St. Mary of Magdala celebrations, go to www.futurechurch.org

They'll know we are Christians by our love.

Something awful happened today.

The shooting of Congresswoman Giffords is a specific, personal tragedy, and I don't want to distract from it's specificity by making her a symbol. Yet we can't deny the country was shocked into awareness today, and many of us are thinking about the consequences of mean-spiritedness.

I think a lot about mean-spiritedness in my own religious context. Sometimes I wonder if anyone can be quite as mean as Catholics can be. So many of my fellow Catholics have bought the current politicial us-vs-them mentality hook, line and sinker. They are embattled, in the fortress, sole and indispensible defenders of the Body of Christ. If they do not keep the unworthy from the community, no one will!  I don't have the heart for that sort of combat, and I have the historical perspective to know it's not up to me to decide who is in and who is out.

That's where my head was when I got to mass this afternoon. The first thing I did with the organist was run the psalm - "The Lord will bless his people with peace". It was almost laughable in light of the heartwrenching afternoon. The Lord will bless us with peace - will we have it?

The first reading announced a favored one of God who "shall bring forth justice to the nations, not crying out, not shouting, not making his voice heard in the street." How often do we who cry out think we are being prophetic when we are really just being loud? The 'soldiers in the army of Christ' who profess a Church militant, who want to root out those who are unworthy of the faith - they may be as misguided as those who expected a zealous and violent Messiah.

God confounds us, and rather than drawing the boundaries we would like upon the Chosen People, God opens wide the doors and does what we least expect.

Fast-forward to the second reading. "In truth, I see that God shows no partiality. Rather, in every nation whoever fears him and acts uprightly is acceptable to him." Remember, this is Peter talking - not exactly one for welcoming the stranger and opening wide the doors. If a primary theme of Acts is the demarcation of boundaries, its ultimate conclusion is that the net Christ cast was much wider than initially imagined. However you want to put it: "All God's critters got a place in the choir" or "Here comes everybody", the message is clear. Those who fear God and act justly are acceptable.

And then the familiar Gospel reading, with it's beautiful climax: "he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming upon him. And a voice came from the heavens, saying, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.'" That's what I expected to blog about when I woke up this morning, how we need to listen to the voices that tell us we are pleasing, and listen for God's voice among them. After I was shocked by violence today, the Scripture did its marvelous work of meeting me where I am. The voice did not whisper to only a few. God's voice thundered to all.

I give a lot of thought to ecclesiology, enough to know that no religion exists without some sort of boundaries. How much damage do we do when we draw the lines too violently, when we presume the worst of people and don't act with charity?

As we prepared our altar to participate in Christ's sacrifice and the Church's feast, we sang "They'll know we are Christians by our love". Love is not pompous, nor rude, nor self-interested. I have to work as hard as anyone to live the love that Paul describes in 1 Cor 13. I know there are people who claim to be acting out of "tough love" when they harangue Christians who don't meet their expectations. Sorry folks, but I have to call shenanigans on that. I know what charity looks like, and vitriolic criticism it ain't.

It's not good for any of us to live in a constant state of defensiveness, ready to throw a punch at anyone who endangers our Church (or our country, or our paradigm, or...). I for one am ready to relax, to let my guard down against a Them who may not even exist, and trust that God can take care of us, of the Church, and even of God's self.

Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood

The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom
a light has shone.
You have brought them abundant joy
and great rejoicing,
as they rejoice before you as at the harvest,
as people make merry when dividing spoils.
For the yoke that burdened them,
the pole on their shoulder,
and the rod of their taskmaster
you have smashed, as on the day of Midian.
For every boot that tramped in battle,
every cloak rolled in blood,
will be burned as fuel for flames. - Isaiah 9: 1-5

Last night, as I sat at the midnight-now-10-pm mass, my second mass of four over this feast, surrounded by poinsettia and wearing jewelry that makes me think of my family, Isaiah 9: 5 jolted me out of my tired, carol-soaked mindlessness just before I headed up to the ambo to sing a peppy psalm.

Every boot that tramped in battle, every cloak rolled in blood... I wouldn't be the first person to comment on the domestication of the Scripture. I'm not an expert on the prophetic books, and like too many people who have studied Scripture I feel like that precludes me from being moved by passages I don't know inside and out. That verse was so rich that I couldn't help but be shocked - cloaks rolled in blood, boots stomping through warfare: where can the promised one meet us if we don't know such experiences?

"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free,and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord." - Luke 4: 18-19

If what we celebrate today - the coming of God into the world as a human like us - is tied up with this message of liberation, what does it have to offer us who have not been oppressed. It's trendy to say that we need to be spiritually liberated, or that we are oppressed by our own bad attitudes, but that reads a lot into the message that Isaiah is drenched in: that God is on the side of those who suffer and has come to suffer with them.

In a realistic assessment, my life has seen a share of suffering, but nothing like the suffering of those in Isaiah or Jesus' historical contexts. I wore pearls to mass last night and was well compensated for singing in a warm, neat church and being highly praised afterward. How can I hear the message of deliverance when I'm not quite convinced there is anything from which I need to be delivered? And if I don't practice the art of being reliant on God for salvation, how will I know to whom to turn when I know need?

Christ came in an unexpected form to raise up those who are lowly, to cast the mighty from their thrones, to set captives free. How do we welcome the unexpected when we live expected lives? I am blessed that the times I have known brokenness my heart has turned to faith and hope in my need. That inclination did not come through my own virtue but through grace. That I have never had a boot that tramped in battle or a cloak rolled in blood is also a sign of my blessedness, but it leaves me at times unable to hear the message - or perhaps just unable to hold it in my heart.

A Soul that Shouts

One occupational hazard for a church musician is that we rarely come across traditional hymns that are new to us: we’ve literally heard it all before. But just a few years ago I got the gift of a new Advent/Christmas hymn when I heard Gabriel’s Message for the first time. I like the tune (when it’s not done too slowly!), the refrain is catchy, and the poetry is above-average. When I got to church last weekend I was happy to find it on the song sheet.



Like many singers, I have the capacity - either enviable or regrettable - to sing on auto-pilot while thinking about any number of things (for instance, yesterday I discovered I could sing the entire Halleluiah Chorus from memory while deciding what to have for dinner). Last Sunday I found myself analyzing the text to Gabriel’s Message. “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head/to me be as it pleaseth God, she said.” At the word "meek" I groaned, thankfully silently, since I was singing into a microphone.

“Mary was that mother mild.” “A Virgin pure both meek and mild/In Bethlehem brought forth her Child” “gentle Mary laid her child”… There are plenty of problems with the idea that all women will feel an unqualified affiliation with Mary, who is often presented as the only role model Christian women are allowed to have. There are even more problems with the relentless stereotyping of Mary as docile and tame. Do we really believe a shrinking violet would have had the nerve to do what she did?

This week we are hearing the Gospel readings from Luke 1, starting with the Annunciation on Monday and concluding with the Canticle of Zechariah. Today’s Gospel is Mary’s Magnificat, an unapologetically bold declaration of praise. This is a saint I can get behind. So with all due respect to late Romantic Marian piety, I’m taking Mary back.

The idea of an ideal woman as meek and submissive may seem like an anachronism, but we’ve kept her alive in our religious iconography, and I don’t think I’m alone in saying that I’m sick of it. Give me a role model who questions an angel, bravely says yes, deals with a life lived in the rumor mill, does some bossy maneuvering at a wedding to restock the bar, and proclaims God’s praise and promises. When my soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord it doesn’t do so timidly - my soul shouts, and there’s a possibility that Mary’s did too.

We are unprofitable servants, we have done what we were obliged to do

When you have done all you have been commanded,
say, 'We are unprofitable servants;
we have done what we were obliged to do.' (Luke 17: 10)

I distinctly remember the first time I noticed these verses, which must have been two Cycle Cs ago. They left a strong impression, both because they captured so perfectly a sentiment I share, and because they seem harsh and counter-cultural. I almost felt guilty for agreeing with the idea that we don’t deserve a pat on the back for discipleship or moral behavior.

This is the type of attitude that gives Catholics a reputation, and I don’t care. Obligation is an important part of our lives. There are things we do simply because they are that which should be done. I run into a lot of people who think the purpose of religion or worship is to make us feel all warm and squishy inside. I’m not wise enough to say what the “purpose” is, but it ain’t that. To congratulate ourselves on our faithfulness is not the same as to affirm the grace of faith. We can be content with our faith and our deeds and still be unprofitable – perhaps we can never truly exceed what we are obliged to do because God’s expectations of us are so high?

Paul writes in today’s reading from 2 Timothy to “to stir into flame the gift of God that you have...For God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather of power and love and self-control” (1: 6-17). We are endowed with great spiritual gifts, every one of us, and we choose whether to stir them into flame or to cower and let them decay. Claiming our gifts is dangerous business, because it makes us agents in the world. Our power, inspired by love and tempered by self-control, makes us capable of doing every good thing that God expects of us.

The first reading today is from the small-but-mighty book of Habbakuk. The prophet cries out to the Lord, lamenting the destruction and violence surrounding him. The Lord responds:

Write down the vision clearly upon the tablets,
so that one can read it readily.
For the vision still has its time,
presses on to fulfillment, and will not disappoint;
if it delays, wait for it,
it will surely come, it will not be late. (2:2-3)

Living in hope gives us a vision of what the world could be, with all people responding to the invitation of grace and living together in love and charity. We write this vision on the tablets of our lives, doing our best to manifest the hope that lives inside of us. This is what is expected of us, and may even be what we’re made for. Our labors toward the fulfillment our mission and duty may give us plenty to be proud of, but are nothing more than what we are required to do.

Being Prodigal

When we’re just plodding through Ordinary Time, I don’t expect to hear one of the Greatest Hits readings. But it’s the Twenty-Fourth Sunday today, and one of the parishes where I sang this weekend read the long form of the Gospel, including one of the Top-Ten Parables: the Prodigal Son.


People who get fussy over this sort of thing like to point out that it should be called the “Prodigal Father”, because it is the father whose lavishness we celebrate. But the son is lavish too, just with the wrong resources. In the narrative he gets all the action (in more ways than one), he goes on an “emotional journey”, as they say. He is the main character.

He remains the main character because it is he to whom we are meant to relate. We are the sinful and broken in need of forgiveness. Blessed are those of us who have known a love that celebrates our arrival no matter the circumstances and welcomes us back into home and heart. Not everyone knows that acceptance, and I am fortunate beyond measure to have friends and especially family who love me despite my selfishness and faults.

Although my experience of being loved helps me to believe in a God who loves, the core of my belief comes from turning the parable on its head. I have also had cause to be the father. There has sprung up in me a mercy that is not self-satisfied pardon, nor an absolution that congratulates itself on its own benevolence, but is a love that simply overpowers any offence. If I, a sinner, can feel that love, then I do not question that God can do that and more.

Hope does not disappoint

If I were more serious about blogging, I would look ahead to the week’s readings and write about them before we hear them, but as it is I tend to hear them, be inspired, and take a few days to mull them over, ending up about 48 hours behind the lectionary when I decide to comment on it.

Yesterday was Trinity Sunday. This feast always sneaks up on me, possibly because it comes in the shadow of Pentecost. It celebrates one of my favorite theological ideas: that God is dynamic, mysterious, varied and engaged with us in every possible way. I cannot imagine being satisfied with a lesser God.

The second reading for the Solemnity was from Romans, containing Paul’s famous statement we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Some people look at that and see only danger, the danger that comes when people manipulate scripture to use it to keep people down. Yes, people have looked to that as an excuse to afflict and to keep the afflicted in their place. But when I heard it proclaimed this weekend my ear was drawn not to the beginning of the statement but to the end, that hope does not disappoint.

I have become well acquainted with hope in recent years. I rarely hope in a particular object or outcome – those indeed disappoint, and often. But I have settled into a hope that believes all will be well, that the worst of our lives are not the final word, and that there are myriad resurrections possible thanks to a God who died and rose.

For me, this is not pie in the sky stuff: My most intense experiences of hope have come in experiences of honestly accepting a grievous reality. Knowing that life can be tragic and still believing that life can be good has produced a new strength in me. This hope is not eagerness or anticipation - more a conviction that goodness and love are our ends. Like any virtue this hope is tested and surely will continue to be, but now it helps me face the day-to-day with a different attitude toward the bad. There are plenty of things that disappoint me, but hope has yet to be one of them.

The measure with which I measure

From Chapter 6 of Luke's Gospel:

Jesus said to his disciples:
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
“Stop judging and you will not be judged.
Stop condemning and you will not be condemned.
Forgive and you will be forgiven.
Give and gifts will be given to you;
a good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing,
will be poured into your lap.
For the measure with which you measure
will in return be measured out to you.”


My hair is naturally curly. But its not “Oh don’t you have charming hair!” curly, rather “Yikes, look at her hair” curly. I get a piece that sticks out in the front, and the back all bushes up, and I sleep with one hand on the side of my head and wake up looking like a cartoon monster. So most days I tame my hair, hoping to get myself a little more ready for the world: presentable, manageable, under control.

Years ago when I was taking Italian I remember being asked in class what parts of our bodies were most representative of our personalities. I don’t remember the context – we must have been learning the terms for body parts – but after others explained that they were flexible like their wrists or strong like their legs or perceptive like their eyes, I had to own to the face that I am wild, like my hair.

By all accounts I sprang from the womb with an enormous personality. Mouthy and opinionated, I got in trouble a lot in school. Reckless and impulsive, I got in trouble a lot out of school. I liken my adolescence to the taming of a wild animal. Discipline came at me from all directions, often in ways that were painful at the time, but I had to learn that constantly pushing my limits, even if it only resulted in catastrophe one out of every ten times, still had the potential to hurt me and other people.

Over time, I learned to discipline myself (imperfectly, mind you; to this day I am asked to lower my voice about twice a week). Although my friends tease me about what has been called my ‘relentless quest for self-improvement’ I know that if I don’t keep that discipline going, there’s no telling what will happen.

So, with my love of discipline, I have been accused of having a draconian approach to Lent. I make big sacrifices and large commitments, and make my best effort to let God set a watch over my mouth, limiting gossip, whining, cursing, rambling. And no, I don’t let myself go back to whatever I gave up on Sundays during Lent.

Yet I know these disciplines are only a means to an end: closer communion with God. As someone who has been compared to a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal, I know well that all of my sacrifices and achievements mean nothing if I have not mastered that greatest discipline, the discipline of love.

“The measure with which you measure will in return be measured out to you.” It is tempting for me to merely take comfort in that prophecy, confident that like my hair and personality, my measure will also be big. I am abundant in affection, enthusiasm, and laughter. But I can’t ignore the censure in Jesus’ words, because often the portions I mete out to the world are exemplary only in quantity, not quality. I can also be abundant in anger, in self-indulgent sadness, and in ugly moral righteousness. No simple sacrifice, no added almsgiving, can make up for the helpings of negativity that I have been known to heap onto the lap of the world.

Working more than one job, studying, conducting, singing – I interact with hundreds of people on any given day, and a candid assessment of these interactions reveals a lack of love that makes me ashamed. A student calls out my name with a smile, and I don’t notice until I am three steps past him down a crowded hallway. On the third rehearsal of a day I conduct entire pieces without looking up from my music stand. I have committed most of my adult life to ministry, and still I don’t always see the currents of grace that I swim in every day.

And so this Lent I recommit myself to loving other people. This is scarier than all my other rules and practices because it’s not about me and what I can accomplish – it is about what other people are to me and how I allow them to change me. And in the end, it is what we will be judged on – not on how many years in a row we gave up drinking or if we accidentally had bacon bits on a Friday, but on how well we loved other people.

To be merciful, just as our God is merciful: there is nothing in the world that is more difficult for me than this. I know my heart is capable of great mercy, but I can’t say I exercise it on a daily basis. I know I should always be ready to say “whatever you have done, no matter how terrible or frustrating or horrifying or dumb, I love you”. This takes an act of will. My lifetime of discipline is for naught if I don’t use that practice to direct my heart where it ought to go.

Sometimes God makes this act of conversion, of re-directing our hearts, quite easy. But we all know that most of the time it is not. Pray for me tonight as I will pray for you that we may prepare ourselves for that good measure, packed together, shaken down, and overflowing. May we open our hearts to forgiveness and mercy, may we discipline ourselves to exercise caritas, and may we be abundant, wild and untamed in virtue and love.

Create in me

I haven’t been working much lately.

I know what you are thinking: the purple circles under my eyes tell a different story. Of course I have been working plenty, but I haven’t had much performing on my plate which has affected my lifestyle (and inspired the well-documented periodic panic that I will never be hired again). The upside? I’ve been using my lessons to work on technique, and on all that rep that I’m always meaning to learn and never get to work on.

Since I’ve been messing around with oratorio and art song a bit, rather than the sing-loud-and-high, cut-through-an-orchestra operatic rep that I’ve been working for a while, we’ve been working in my lessons on tweaking technique, which always ends up an emotional experience. The dark side of improving is the realization that you were not as good as you wanted to be previously. We work so hard to figure out exactly how to sing and then expect everything to stay the same. Once we have everything in order the work should be done, we think, we should be able to freeze our technique and use it forever. The truth is that it’s a constant tension: light and dark, forward and back, chest voice and head voice – holding all of those things in the appropriate tension takes work. You can’t find balance and expect it to magically stay that way.

Because the work is hard and the product is personal, there has been no shortage of near-tear moments in my recent lessons. I get so angry at how hard it is, then I get discouraged that I haven’t been singing this well all along, then I become concerned that I will never be able to maintain whatever I have just learned. Finally the magic happens, and I am transformed, after the tears and discouragement and frustration and snapping at my teacher and pianist. Whatever I thought I couldn’t do, couldn’t maintain, becomes part of me, and I leave my lesson different and a bit better.

Is anyone surprised that this pondering this leads me back to the liturgical calendar? After hearing the readings for Ash Wednesday repeatedly, singing multiple masses, I was moved in the evening when reflecting on them privately. “Purge me with hyssop and I shall be clean; wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.”

I have known the same frustration described above when I have tried to change myself. I can’t do it, I always think: my personality is wrong. I’m too blunt, too mouthy, too angry, too whatever to be truly good. Psalm 51 reminds me that my goodness may not come of my own initiative. Sometimes getting out of the way and letting God transform and forgive is the best I can do, which is a hard lesson to learn for someone like me who wants to constantly accomplish on her own. I focus so much on what I can or cannot do, using my faults as an excuse rather than allowing God’s initiative to work through my weaknesses, to ‘create in me a clean heart, and put a new and right spirit within me’.

A friend even more cynical than I (a horrifying prospect, I know) declared that there should be no mention of the holiday today, but I can’t resist commenting on what is probably the most overblown of all Hallmark holidays. Even though on the liturgical calendar February 14th is the Feast of Sts. Cosmas and Damian (and today it happens to be the sixth Sunday in Ordinary Time), for the rest of the world it is Valentine’s Day, and love is in the air.

My guess is many of us wouldn’t find the holiday so odious if not for the sappy and absurd commercials that abound in the weeks leading up to the holiday. We are told just how to show people that we love them, with consequences for failure to comply often implied. Everyone’s focus narrows on that aspect of love that is romantic love, exclusively between two people.

It doesn’t surprise me that a media which wants to control us focuses on that piece of love’s wide expanse. Love in its totality, love that makes missions and martyrs, that drives us to creativity and to creation, is far too powerful for the powers-that-be to promote or even acknowledge. One of the most famous quotes from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin predicts “Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.”

Another quote about love (one that has begun to tire me a little, I hate to say) is the famous Arrupe quote which ends “Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.” I am so lucky that most of the people with whom I work, live and socialize, are driven by love. Love manifests as commitment to a cause, to other people, to justice, to art, to learning. As I have tried over the last few years to make my commitments more intentional I have realized that the main reason I have over-committed myself throughout my life is that I really do love people and I am always trying to expand the circle of my service so that I can work with greater and greater numbers.

Today’s Gospel ends with this: “woe to you who are rich,for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are filled now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you will grieve and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for their ancestors treated the false prophets in this way.” I’m sure many preachers today will be connecting that with the theme of Valentine’s Day, and here’s my contribution to the cause. What frustrates me the most about the mythology of love surrounding this holiday is that it suggests a perfection that is never really possible. Flowers, candy, jewelry, and even other people will never meet our deepest desires. When we imagine that our lives are perfect, like those rich and fulfilled in today’s Gospel, we close ourselves off to the transformative love of God which only meets us in our need. When we distract ourselves with a million other things that we think will satisfy us, we deny the truth and the virtue of the yearning that drives us forward to greater communion and greater service in love.

Watch, therefore, for you know not the hour.

I really didn’t want to go to New York today. ‘Tis the season, as they say, but when “they” refers to singers, we’re not talking about being jolly but about heading down to New York, to a narrow building on 54th St with dingy bathrooms, in hopes of catching the eye and ear of one of the numerous auditors who park in those studios for hours at a time hearing aria after aria.

Last night was New Hampshire for a gig. When I got back to Boston in the late evening I took some time to wind down, packed a bag, laid out some travelling clothes, and hit the sack.

I woke in the middle of the night, as I tend to, and saw that the power was out in my apartment. Immediately I saw in my mind’s eye the letter from the electric company warning me it might be out this morning. My phone, which could have told me the time, also serves as my alarm clock. Therefore it was far across the room in the only place where I can guarantee I will have to get out of bed to turn it off.

Not knowing what time it was bothered me a lot. For whatever reason when I wake in the night I like to know how long it will be until I actually have to get out of bed. On days like today, when I needed to be up at 5:30 on the dot to make my 6:30 am train, it seems even more crucial. But last night I realized I had to live with the uncertainty and be ready for the alarm when it came.

ADVENT THEMES ALERT!! I thought to myself in the drowsy night, as I fought off the insomnia that I seem to have caught from my brother over Thanksgiving. Watch, therefore, for you know not the day nor the hour. (Mt 25:13)

When the alarm sounded at 5:30 I swung out of bed, wove my way across the room, hit the button on my phone, lit a candle, and got moving. I followed the plan I had determined the night before, was in a cab at 6:00 and on the road at 6:30. At some point during the 10 hours I spent on the Megabus today, I realized I was able to get out the door not because I’m wily or because of any exceptional night vision, but because I knew what I wanted to take with me.

What do I want to take with me when the trumpet sounds? Faith, hope, charity, mercy, justice, love? If so, I better keep them near me, “laid out” like my clothes (read: tossed) on the futon while I sleep nearby. There are things there would be nice to take, and then there are essentials. Today it was a dress, heels, and the Hopkins biography I’m reading. Maybe a good exercise for Advent is to think about what I truly can’t live without, what I want to have close at hand when the alarm rouses me in a powerless night, earlier than I ever expected.

Second Sunday of Easter

Driving home tonight from my fifth mass of the day, for whatever reason my mind wandered to my policy for make-up work. If I give an assignment that is tough or complicated, there will always be some kids who can't quite follow the rubric the first time around. If they are willing to give it another shot, I am happy to dump their first grade and give them the second grade - no averaging, no deductions.

So of course, on this Divine Mercy Sunday, my thoughts turned to God's mercy (not mine - my pedagogical style is rarely described as merciful). Maybe that's what God's mercy is like: always waiting with the red pen to write encouragement in the margins, always ready to delete the first feeble attempts from the gradebook. Mercy allows us to be defined by the best we can do, and mercy always waits for us to come around, to follow guidance, and to try again. In the merciful eyes of God we are capable and good, and God is always eager for us to manifest our goodness.

All the wickedness in this world that man might work or think is no more to the mercy of God than a live coal in the sea. —William Langland

Miserere Nobis

Today I went with a small group of BC kids to a women’s medium security prison to sing mass. I followed the security protocol to the letter, wearing no denim, no jewelry, no bobby pins. Luckily I remembered before going into the facility that my shoe was being held together with a safety pin.

People ask how it was and I’m supposed to have something to say. “Amazing” is a popular word for the BC crowd. “Good” doesn’t say enough, “interesting” sounds judgmental, “transformative” sounds pompous.

I’ll say this: It’s easier to understand the preferential option for the poor in that environment. The crux of the preferential option is not that we should prefer the poor but that God does. I suspect tonight that the message of Christ speaks in a special way to those who, for whatever reason, are not free, and to those who have faced demons and are aware of God’s mercy in their life.

The air was charged as the lector read the end of today’s first reading:
All, from least to greatest, shall know me, says the LORD,
for I will forgive their evildoing and remember their sin no more.

Ecce ancilla domini - the Fourth Sunday of Advent

Yesterday's Gospel was the story of the Annunciation. I taught a lesson on it last week which had me pretty well Annunciated out, and when I heard the familiar opening yesterday I groaned a little inside. But if you have to choose one pericope to spend the better part of a week with, that's a pretty good one to choose.

No matter how many times I hear the story, no matter how many times I make the point that Mary said yes to God, no matter how many times I pray the Angelus, there's never an answer there to the big question: Why did she say yes? There was no reason for her to suspend disbelief. Why in the world would she have believed that God had chosen her for something? There's nothing in the text that tells us why should would have believed - or maybe, more appropriately, there's nothing that would convince most of us if we were in her shoes.

Faith is a habit. My guess is that most of us have been in a position before to say "screw it. I'm saying yes. I'm diving in." to whatever has been asked of us. When there is no reason to say yes and the evidence is piling up against taking the risk, we put doubt on hold and decide to try against better judgment. Maybe we have made a habit of believing God's promises of good for us. Maybe we have made a habit of trusting the people around us to catch us when we fall. Maybe we have stopped caring about the consequences and decided to value the potential good above the potential disaster. Our boldest decisions can be illogical and unreasonable, and if we're lucky they are the daring choices that change our lives or change the world.



- Henry Ossawa Tanner's The Annunciation

On today's first reading, from Isaiah 45

I am the LORD and there is no other,there is no God besides me.

It is I who arm you, though you know me not,

so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun

people may know that there is none besides me.

I am the LORD, there is no other.

I’m always pleased with the way that “ordinary time” offers us readings that are anything by ordinary. This week’s first reading in particular struck me (more the second time I heard it than the first), and shamed me in the way that reflection on the Scriptures sometimes can.

I don’t know how any one can hear the phrase “I am the Lord, there is no other” and not be at least a little ashamed. It’s human nature to become distracted, to raise other gods up because we are briefly deluded that in them we may find salvation. Just this weekend I can think of multiple gods I served: my esteem in the eyes of others, the pompous freneticism of my schedule, the frustration with other people that I want to scratch like an itch.

But to say that the Lord is God alone means little without at least a sense of who God is, despite our inability to ever fully comprehend God. For tonight I know this: God is the one whose command to me, given to the prophets and repeated through Jesus, is to love: love mom and dad, family, friends, people on the bus, co-workers, God, and myself. Just love. So why bother with any of the other nonsense?