The Raging Waters Within

Friends,

I have been realizing in the flurry of life that is being abroad that there is so much of so many going on. So much in so many categories. And high on that list for me is the ongoing spiritual development I feel called to so strongly by what I deem my vocation (ministerial leadership) and my ideal of always being a role model.

I look back fondly on Catholics on Call from this summer as a key moment in my formation--the talks from adults, the group sharing, the general interaction between like-minded people form so many backgrounds and academic disciplines, and most especially, the interpersonal conversation with beloved people that made me realize how joyous and positive vulnerable sharing can be. I learned a lot from the entirety of the experience and especially those experiences. Most importantly, more than what I learned, was the how: I learned how fruitful and full-of-life intimate, honest, genuine, heartfelt conversation can be with other real, true people.

I have gained the constant desire to experience these exchanges, at first driving myself a bit crazy trying to force them and then settling back into the calm life-flow that lets me thrive. Taking these conversations in as they happen and learning how to engage people best in those situations is so valuable and illuminating to my life.

The result of all that and the new layers to my introspection, self-review, and personal reform is the somewhat exhausting and ongoing process of being seemingly perpetually analytical (in a stop-think-pray sense; not just academically or superficially). This is a crucial time of self-discovery and formation, so it is important to undertake these processes within yourself. However, it can be so intense sometimes and I can get so involved in seeking to consider ways to improve myself that it distracts from putting it to use.

In other words, if I am always figuring out how I act, how to improve it, and how it fits the Christian life, how do I ever live it? Where is the balance between ongoing self-reform and living the changes? I know I have recognized important things and try to live them. However, I feel that sometimes I find important things so frequently that none of them stay significantly involved in intentional minute-by-minute practice.

I think now, with the flurry of self-discovery that hits you living abroad, it will be hard to calm that part of me and tilt the balance heavily toward living what I've learned. But I have tried to step one bit backward from it by returning to my "stop-think-pray" mantra, writing it back on my hand like I used to and pushing it back to the forefront. With Vision looming after the year and potentially a year of being an RA ahead, I don't know when I'll ever be able to really step off my higher level of self-inspection. Hopefully the processes that continue within will form me in very important ways that I cannot know for a while or perhaps ever.

Bible Verses No. 3

Written at O'Hare about an hour before boarding the plane to London...

John 3:16 -- For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall never die but have eternal life.

In Trads II (Christian Traditions II, part 2 of a required 2-part course for THEO majors at ND), at the start of the course, Professor Randall Zachman asked us to summarize the Gospel of Jesus with a single phrase or sentence. After a handful of volunteers all failed to provide the answer he was looking for, Zachman gave us, "Repent for the Kingdom of God is at hand". I thought it over for a moment and accepted it as a pretty good response, especially given his excellent defense of it, but I was not totally satisfied.

I have since settled on an answer that may be less precise and accurate but feels more applicable and central to me: John 3:16. The Incarnation has become increasingly more meaningful and central to my faith, starting with my reading of CS Lewis' Miracles in Prof. Cavadini's Miracles class. Lewis pegs the Incarnation as "The Grand Miracle", the miraculous action of God that most and best captures the essence of miracles.

Through the Grand Miracle, God/the Word/the Logos became flesh, and the nature of God (John 1) wondrously incarnated in man entered into this world in the most unique way. Why did God undertake this miraculous act of generosity? Simply put, it was for the sake of love, for God is love. More deeply, Christ came as perfectly innocent and born of the Virgin Mary to die an innocent death and use His sinless state to defer the reward--that He could have taken Himself--instead to all humanity. This allowed his death to serve as satisfaction for the sins of all man. And since God is boundless and timeless, the generous and loving satisfaction made by Christ could reach back into what we call the past as well as extend into the future to make His sacrifice reach all people in every place and every time. This element of Christ's action is not so explicit in this single verse of Scripture, but through its simple yet deep declaration, it proclaims the love of Christ the Son and God the Father and calls us to come to Him in loving faith so that we might have the joy of eternal salvation in the Lord.

So though the limits of this single verse do not delve deeply into the deep theology of Christ's satisfaction-making death, it gently teaches us that whoever believes in the Son that God has sent to us will not really die but have life forever. A harsher, more sin-and-evil-focused perspective, which is valid and ok but exactly where I'm at, might suggest something more like what Zachman suggested. However, I more readily look to the verses of hope that immediately call to mind the love and generosity of God that desires to call all humanity home to Himself. For here in John's more priestly and preachy Gospel, we find a teaching of love and care that lays out simply the path of acceptance and a movement toward love that comes with the joy of salvation in Him.

Trust and Humility

In the fall semester, I promised myself as a condition of coming to terms with going abroad that I would make the most of my time. It seemed that in the little things throughout the day and looking back on my days in sleeptime prayer, God was pushing me to embrace patience more and more. I became good and content with living in the now, aware of things coming on the horizon but not overlooking the things in today. Unfortunately, the side-effect of that is that I have become super-itinerant and struggle to slow my mind down and relax in the moment. I live in the moment, but I'm racing mentally to exploit the moment for all its worth.

My simultaneous failure and success on silent retreat showed me I am incapable of profound quiet/silence. I struggle to sit completely still and totally quiet the waters of my head to move into my heart. I found an effective way in prayer to move to God in His arms and allow my worries to happen in Him instead of at Him, and I hope that can help calm me down. But Darrell Paulsen once told me prayer can't just be "worrying before God".

My new charism is trust and humility, humility and trust. I think these are two very related virtues that are also ideals--things that are impossible to achieve in perfection but worthwhile things to pursue for self-reform. A major fault of myself is presumptuousness; I am quick to criticize, even if sarcastically (which is a horrible default feature we cultivate in ourselves and each other that bleeds over from joking into seriousness), because I assume I have it right in my head. Little examples, especially in deciding a route to take in exploration walking here in London, have kicked me in the face to show me how stupid I really can be when I assume my infallibility. The solution is learning to give people more merit before they even speak--giving them the chance to be right and smarter than me, because God knows they often are.

The complement to humility is trust, a greater trust in God. If one trusts in God, there really is nothing to fear, for God finds good even in the evilest of acts. I've adapted some of the prayers of the monks from Gethsemani, including a part of Compline that I use while praying at night and moving into sleep: I will lie down and sleep comes at once, for you alone Lord make me dwell in safety. Even something as simple as sleeping can become easier and more peaceful through trust, especially for me. I lay on my back and don't let myself turn to a fetal position (which is where I fall asleep most of the time) until I've prayed, and sometimes this takes a while if I let myself drift or just worry incessantly in an nonconstructive way--this can be healthy and helpful, but in my case it can just get ridiculous.

The path to cultivating these virtues is rough and tough, and I know it's a process. It's just another of the charisms I want to adopt and add to my arsenal of tools that helps knock me off my pedestal and stay focused on becoming a fuller, better person.

• Love generously, unconditionally, and instantaneously
• Stop. Think. Pray.
• Cultivate humility and trust.
  

Meet You in the Eucharist PLUS

Another journal from the Gethsemani... you think this one had anything to do with the influence of a semester abroad looming near?

Having just participated in the Eucharist with this community and taken the Body and Blood in the context of the monks' mass, I am inspired with new awe and thanksgiving for the miracle of Eucharist's mystical unity made possible by the Body of Christ--Jesus' body both in the power of the Eucharist and the Church and people He has gathered for Himself. The power of unity in Christ transcends space. The universal Church--our Catholic Church--includes common worship by all peoples in all parts of the world, so we are united not only with Christ and the rest of the congregation gathered right then and there but also with fellow believers stretched far and wide throughout God's world.

The extension of this that came to me in the sacrament today was that God cannot be limited by space OR TIME--He is timeless. So, in taking the Eucharist, I not only join in union with Christ, the congregation, and the believers of our Church worldwide/universally, I also enter into solidarity with a huge host of believers who came before me as well as those yet to come. God is timeless, so His Presence for us in the person of His Son in the Eucharist I believe is also timeless. By coming to us in His divinely-instituted sacrament, Jesus binds us together with the people who believed in Him as we look back into the past as well as those who will come into this world and follow Him in the future.

God is aware of and has ordained our world in a certain way--as Creator, the confines of time and space can be traced back to God's first movements to make our world from only Himself. But to God, time and space are nothing; they exist in the world He created for us to live in and praise Him in, but God's omnipotence, foreknowledge, and ordination transcend and exist above time and space. God's benevolence, care, and providence united and guide us eternally--at all times, in all time times, and beyond time.

So our Church, as the social organ of Christ's Body so established by Him in which we receive His Eucharist, gives us the means to access God well and enter into this limitless and timeless unity of solidarity with all our brothers and sisters of all time with Christ as our Head.

Good Things

A word-for-word sampling from my Gethsemani journal...

On Saturday morning of our Friday-to-Monday Folk Choir retreat at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the former abbot and current guestmaster of the Abbey, Father Damien, addressed us, speaking about spirituality and our being special people of God. The quote that struck me most and spawned the journal entry that I wrote then and offer to you here and now was,

“So many good things happen here.” —Fr. Damien, o.c.s.o.

What a beautiful, simple way to articulate the agency of the Spirit here in a Trappist monastery, the very cradle of Catholic spiritual contemplation. Such an assessment can only be made by a man of firm, grounded faith that is central to his minute-by-minute life and outlook and is constantly influencing the way he lives and sees and encounters his world. This encompasses a disciplined faith that recognizes that God wills no evil and, in His divine foreknowledge, knows how He will pull good things from bad/evil actions and events. Despite the rigors of daily life and the demands of the monastic routine and lifestyle, Fr. Damien speaks first and only about the good—the God—in his monastery.

His statement also reflects inherent optimism that is actually an indication of the deeper trust in God that I will mention later. This is especially discernible in his intentional speech, which uses words sparsely and deliberately (“How many words do we waste?” —Fr. Dan Parrish, c.s.c.). He doesn’t stumble over finding politically correct words or softening potentially hard speech or shrouding deep-seated tensions or hatred, etc. He can speak on his immediate, spontaneous thoughts since he has cultivated a righteous heart and Christian disposition.

His positive disposition is an excellent outward illustration of his calm, attuned heart. By clearing away distractions—making his mind unclouded by unnecessary things—he can be constantly living in Christ in the best of season of his life at all times.** Most importantly, his speech and this quote demonstrates a profound trust in God.

His faith, optimism, and disposition are all intertwined with his trust in God. He could not believe with conviction unless He trusted in the Truth of his faith and God’s Revelation. He could not carry an optimistic outlook without first trusting that God will provide in all things and make good of all we freely undertake. And Fr. Damien could not live so well-disposed to life and his monastery unless he trusted that his attitudes and behavior would be looked kindly upon by His Father.

**If your mind isn’t clouded by unnecessary things, this is the best season of your life.” This is a cool, killer final line of a poem shared with us at Catholics on Call/August 2009 by Bishop Morneau.