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.

Try, try again

My immediate family has never had a birthday present ritual. If someone sees something they like want to give someone, they buy it, and maybe give it to them on their birthday, or maybe give it to them whenever, or maybe they just buy the person a burrito the next time they see them. Because my birthday is always around Thanksgiving, I usually see my parents in the week before my birthday, and we take that as an excuse to eat cake. On my 25th birthday my mother brought out an Entertainment Book, dropped it on the kitchen table with a clatter and announced "Happy Birthday...your brother had to sell these for school".

Still, two nights ago my mother slipped into another room after dinner and returned with a familiar looking box from a local jewelry store. She handed it to me and laughed "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again." When I opened it I wasn't surprised to find a gold chain with a single, small pearl.

When my apartment was broken into a few years ago all that was taken was jewelry, because that was all that I had. There were only one or two things that I truly lamented losing, and one was the little Add-a-pearl necklace I'd had since I was a girl. Most of my cousins also have them, and as birthdays and holidays passed we'd get another pearl here and there and have them added to our necklaces. Mine only had thirteen or so pearls on it (or maybe seventeen? For whatever reason I'm certain it was a prime number), and since I'd reached adulthood and passed the age of getting little gold boxes on my birthday, it seemed destined to stay at that number of pearls.

It wasn't until I realized that it was gone that I started to cry. My grandmother had been dead two decades, and I knew that the loss of this sign of her love didn't mean she loved me any less. The other wonderful women in my family, my aunts and my mother, were all still in my life - in fact, no one in my mother's large family had died since my grandmother's passing twenty years prior. Still, I was raised among sacramental people, treasuring signs and objects, and the loss of that particular object was devastating.

Not only was I raised to be sacramental, I was raised on Roman time, so it's no surprise that it took 2+ years to replace the necklace. I couldn't help but think of my mother's admonition to 'try, try again' as I heard the readings for the First Sunday of Advent (and not just because they mention a house being broken into).

Most of us are probably familiar with that quote attributed to Mother Teresa to the effect of "some jerk on the beach might knock down your sand castle - build one anyway". I worry that people are tempted to take the suggestion that "we know not the day or the hour" as an excuse to do nothing, because who knows when Christ will return and transform it all?

It's true, we don't know what's coming. I try to believe in the liberation of uncertainty. If I really don't know what's coming - when the Lord will return to us, when the bottom will fall out, when my stuff will be stolen - I am free to just build. For all we know someone could yank my necklace off my neck tomorrow - that didn't stop my mother from giving me a tangible sign of her love and our memories.  My apartment could burn down tomorrow - that didn't stop me from cleaning up this afternoon. The people I love, everything I love, could be taken from me in a heartbeat - that does not stop me from loving with my whole heart every minute of the day.

We can't predict when destruction and sorrow will come for us, but we can't predict when redemption will knock on our door either. So we 'try, try again', building and rebuilding. When the unexpected comes all I can hope is that I am caught doing that which creates the world as it should be. Until we can enjoy the world as it should be, we keep trying, doing our part to increase beauty and love, clothing ourselves in the armor of light.

The Power and the Glory

There is a type of Christian spirituality that is heavily focused on the strength and majesty of the second person of the Trinity. It has spawned movies and music and mega churches, and on occasion results in an unfortunate idea that the followers of Christ are as exalted as Christ himself.


Even when this spirituality doesn’t lead to that rare but icky Christian triumphalism, I still don’t get it. It’s not that I don’t believe that Our God Reigns, Is An Awesome God, Praise Him etc, but that it just doesn’t do anything for me spiritually. So I was excited tonight that cycle C gave us the Lukan Gospel for Christ the King.

For whatever reason, I’m more comfortable with a God who deals in ambiguity, who came to glory by way of the cross. We worship a God who turns our expectations upsidedown, whose coming into the world not only saves us but confounds us. Maybe it’s because I’m one of those obnoxiously “complicated” people that I take comfort in the complicated story of Jesus and paradoxical existence of Christ. Our Awesome God wasn’t a Superman Jesus wearing the disguise of one who suffers until the time came for him to change into the King. He was always the King, ruling through service and reigning through love. We await his return when he will teach us the truth about power and glory.

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.

That is enough for me.

“There was a rich man whose land produced a bountiful harvest.
He asked himself, ‘What shall I do,
for I do not have space to store my harvest?’
And he said, ‘This is what I shall do:
I shall tear down my barns and build larger ones.
There I shall store all my grain and other goods
and I shall say to myself, “Now as for you,
you have so many good things stored up for many years,
rest, eat, drink, be merry!”’
But God said to him, ‘You fool, this night your life will be demanded of you;
and the things you have prepared, to whom will they belong?’
Thus will it be for all who store up treasure for themselves
but are not rich in what matters to God.” - from Luke 12, today's Gospel

Sometimes I worry that I am a hoarder. You’re probably thinking that there is not a lot of ambiguity in that designation, that it should be pretty easy to know whether I am or not. And anyone who has been to my itty bitty apartment, or seen me on one of my merciless clutter purges, or knows that I only spend money on books, food, and wine, knows that letting crap pile up probably isn’t among my compulsions.

I wish that made me rest easier about today’s Gospel. Even if I don’t accumulate stuff, I am often tempted to store up treasure for myself. The things I hoard are intangible: affection, esteem, opportunity. There is a fear that we all share, an uncertainty that is part of being human, and we all find ways to fight the fear off by building up reserves of what we think we need.

Yesterday was the feast of St Ignatius, whose famous Suscipe concludes “Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me.” I wish I were able to mean those words. Would God’s grace been enough for me if I had to do something that caused people to not like me? Would it be enough if I abandoned my self-centered charm? Would I be satisfied by divine love if I made a choice or commitment that closed certain doors to me? Rather than putting all of my eggs in God’s basket, I have spread them out over countless baskets, just in case…

If we are going to hold the saints up as our idols, we need to be realistic enough to acknowledge the cost. One of the most treasured quotes from Pedro Arrupe reads: More than ever I find myself in the hands of God. This is what I have wanted all my life from my youth. But now there is a difference; the initiative is entirely with God. It is indeed a profound spiritual experience to know and feel myself so totally in God's hands. He offered that reflection after a stroke that rendered him unable to speak. Perhaps to truly surrender to God involves a destruction, a shattering. After all, surrender is a war metaphor.

Is that part of the beauty of prayer, that we repeat these phrases, like “that is enough for me” even when our heart isn’t in it? Lots of people call us hypocrites because we pray “Thy will be done” or “peace be with you” and then go off and behave in the silly, destructive ways we always do. I’m not sure it’s hypocrisy – I think it’s hope. We are hopeful that someday we will conquer ourselves, or be conquered, and be able to truly mean the things we pray for. All of our prayer is a plea for transformation. We want nothing more than to arrive at the day when God’s grace is enough for us, even though now we let all our little wants get in the way of that larger goal.

Augustine wrote How shall I call upon my God, my God and my Lord, when by the very act of calling upon him I would be calling him into myself? And still he prayed. Knowing how hard it is should be no excuse for stopping. It is dangerous to offer our memory, our understanding, our will, our freedom as Ignatius did, because someday God might take us up on our offer. When the things we think define us are stripped away, may we find consolation in what we think is desolation. May we understand more fully that our hearts are made for love, restless until they rest in God. May the barns and silos we can’t help but fill with ourselves not come between us and the grace for which we are destined.

A Lesson in Humility

Due to where I live, I pass panhandlers almost every day. Usually they are at major intersections near the edges of my neighborhood, and a few characters frequent certain storefronts on Broadway.

Most people, if asked, will offer some Theory of Interaction with the Indigent: I keep a dollar in my pocket to give away ~ I buy them food instead of giving money ~ I think they should get jobs ~ I try to just smile if I have nothing to give. We come up with these theories in our dormitory common rooms and church forums on justice. They are big beautiful ideas of who we want to be. Yet I, after being faced with people begging for change nearly ever day, have adopted a practice very different from any theory of my youth: I ignore them.

Sure, some days I dig into my parking meter reserves, and most days I try to at least make eye contact, but rarely does the window come down when I’m waiting at the light. It’s not because I’m frightened or can’t afford it, but because when I am in the car on my way home I feel lazy, and I’m often too emotionally over-extended to engage another person.

This past Sunday dawned bright and cool, and not long after dawn I set out to meet friends with whom I was to go to a race later in the day. I waited at a huge intersection which was abnormally empty. As a man approached I rolled down my window. It’s the Lord’s Day, I thought, and I was feeling secure and moved by someone panhandling in the middle of an abandoned intersection.

When I gave the man some money, I suggested he get a cup of coffee, thinking “I am enjoying coffee as I drive, he should be able to enjoy some too”. Unfortunately he took umbrage, responding “Do I look like I’m high? This money is for rent.”

The light was still red, so he continued with his story. Its particulars aren’t important, but it involved leaving his job at a big box store because they capped his wages at $14/hour. The light turned green and I offered words of encouragement. His parting words were “well, it’s been a lesson in humility. Not everyone is nice like you.”

Nice like me. I drove away flushed with shame, knowing that I am not nice. I claw my way toward generosity and goodness like someone scaling a mountain. But to him, I was nice. My easy frustration and indulgent complexity meant nothing to him in our short interaction, and I was doubly shamed by my quick assumption that all of my over-thinking would matter at all to a person who was just looking for someone to be nice.

The real reason I was flushed after our conversation, and the reason this conversation has been on my mind for days, was his casual mention of a lesson in humility. We claim to seek humility, but don’t want the ugly steps it takes to get there. If my life continues on its current path, chances are I will never be humbled like my new friend. I will not beg for change, I will not approach strangers for rent money, I will not be so alone that I tell my story to strangers on Melnea Cass Blvd.

One can only become humble by being brought low. When Jesus said “blessed are the poor”, was this part of what he was talking about? The destruction of illusions about our own self-sufficiency is a pre-condition for deepening our faith, but it takes guts. We want to trust in a higher power while maintaining a secret stash of our own power, just in case.

The story of the woman caught in adultery was the gospel reading for the Fifth Sunday of Lent. It’s an incredibly rich story, which – to my great horror – is often reduced to a morality lesson about sex. To me, it is a story of powerful, proud people, hiding behind indignance. The woman is truly powerless, having sinned like we all do, but her sins more exposed than any of ours ever are. Like many women she has been made physically vulnerable, at the mercy of a merciless crowd, yet even the crowd doesn’t value her - she is only a way to catch Jesus in blasphemy, to bring a charge against him.

When Jesus intervenes, he turns everything upside-down, as he often does. Suddenly the righteous are dismissed, not by force but by moral reasoning: Let one who is without sin cast the first stone. And the one who is brought low, the last person with whom we would want to change places, is lifted up, touched by God, directed by holy wisdom, and redeemed.

What more could any of us want? Blessed are the poor, indeed.

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.

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?