Monday, December 31, 2012

The energy of light



The prophet Isaiah speaks. Rise up in splendor, Jerusalem. Your light has come. The glory of the Lord shines upon you. If we think of Jerusalem as the promise God has in store for each of us, then this is a time for us to face the light, to rejoice in God’s glory, to see ourselves as the glory of God’s creation. That’s what the liturgy would hope for us. But can we really see this light? Can we really rejoice?

The writer Doris Lessing tells us that bad times come and we don’t know why. We are nearing the end of the Church’s Christmas season. Has it been a time of light or has it been a bad time? Has there been illness, unhappiness, loss of job, a lot of death? Does the earth seem to shift around you? Are people dying, breaking down, are friendships and marriages crumbling? Does there seem to be fear, pretense and silence?

Father Ron Rolheiser claims life has its seasons and we know each of them in the experience of our own lives. We know spring and autumn, winter and summer. We know both warmth and heaviness. It seems both complex and simple: Life is an eternal rhythm, a repetition. We live, then die.

Yet there is often a break in this rhythm. Life surprises us with freshness. It is mysterious, wonderful, and unbelievable! Each day we feel its many joys. If we stop to notice, we become aware of life. We exult in being alive. We are creatures with bodies and minds capable of loving. Our senses become enriched. Things like eating and sleeping are great gifts. Just being alive and knowing that we are alive is healthy. The sun shines and we feel well. We don’t ask about it and we don’t know why it is so. We are at peace. We walk on steady ground. We smile and have confidence.

But being human often seems unfair. We sense it is less fair for some than for others. In this awareness too, we can feel compassion for those who are wounded.

Is this the way it will always be? Will life always repeat itself, good times then bad, storms then sunshine? Or is there more? Can we look into the light a little more closely? The three astrologers who appear in the Scripture for the Feast of the Epiphany use what they know, their skills in reading the stars, and they see a light they’ve never seen before. It is a curious light, no more visible in the darkness than in the sunshine; it is a surprising light for it should not be there, it goes against the rhythm. What is it like when they find it is the Christ? It brings light and with it the promise of something new. It is so new, in fact, that it not only gives them hope.

But the same light frightens the king Herod. What can this mean? It suggests that Herod will no longer be in control. His power and authority are at stake. Perhaps there is a Herod who lives within each of us. What frightens us? Are we afraid of losing control? What power is threatened within us?

We receive an invitation to look into the light of Christ and to welcome the child who offers us so much hope and promise. Will bad times be taken away from us? Probably not. Will good times be ours? Perhaps. That is why it is always risky to look into the light. It may blind us such that we no longer know who we are or where we are. It may also energize us that we see in a new way and find life we never thought possible.

 

 

Monday, December 24, 2012

Between heaven and earth


Merry Christmas to everyone!

During these past three weeks of Advent, I have been reading and reflecting on sermons written by Father Alfred Delp, a German Jesuit priest executed by the Nazis by hanging on February 2, 1945 just four months before the Allies invaded Europe to begin the end of World War Two. The sermons were preached by Father Delp on the Sundays of Advent from 1941 through 1944. He was active in the resistance movement to Nazi power and assisted Jewish and other political refugees to escape Germany during these years. As a result Delp was arrested on July 28, 1944.

He had been scheduled to profess his final vows as a Jesuit on August 15. In prison he was tortured. He was pressured to renounce the Jesuits. He was offered freedom if he would change his allegiance in favor of the Nazis. A sympathetic prison guard smuggled him bread and wine so he could celebrate Mass. Women from the resistance movement were able to do laundry for him. As a prisoner he was handcuffed 24 hours a day, his cell was brightly lit all 24 hours, yet he managed to write on small pieces of paper smuggled to him.

Father Delp observed in 1942 that “the meaning of our Christmas holy days is not primarily our external holiday celebration, but that particular mysteries of God happen to us, and that we respond.” He is aware that in our liturgical rites and rituals are attempts “to indicate something that reaches much deeper and must be taken much more seriously.” He was very aware that the Nazis were doing everything in their power to erase any influence of religion not only in public life, but also in private life.

At Christmas, he says, we recall an historical event. But he also preached that “something happens between Heaven and earth that passes all understanding,” something which lasts for all time. As a result, each of our individual lives is challenged. We have received a message that must be answered. Each of us individually and personally needs to decide how to respond to that message.

What is this message? God has entered into a relationship with us. Indeed, Delp describes it as a marriage covenant. God enters into this covenant with each one of us. “God has spoken his ultimate Word to the world.” If we take God seriously – and therein lies the question – this has to mean something to us. We are “the substance of a divine commitment to man.” And we live not because of anything we do, but because of God’s grace. But do we take God seriously?

Or – in our own time – do we listen more to the braggadocio we hear from politicians, from movie stars, from athletes, from power brokers on Wall Street, from criminals, from men who abuse women, etc., etc., etc.? It is because of God’s commitment to us Delp writes, that “we know our intrinsic dignity.” We “know that we are raised up above and beyond all else, because we mean so much to God.”

So many do not believe this. So many do not realize, understand, or even know that they mean so much to God. What are we asked to do? Delp writes that we are to renounce godlessness. We are to live moral, upright, and pious lives in this world. Delp calls godlessness “a calumniation of the divine life.” We are asked to recognize that our innermost purpose in life is to find our way home to God – to seek God for God’s sake. Thus, we are always people on the way. We are always waiting for God. This makes us people of loneliness. God wants us as His people.

Delp observed that in Germany in his day there was no Christmas life. Just godlessness. There was no Christmas life in the attitude of people. They were not finding their way to God. Is this happening to us in our own day? If we no longer depend on God’s mercy, the world becomes unmerciful. If the world is unmerciful, then tragedies such as Newtown occur. The world no longer awaits the great revelation of the Lord. There is neither peace nor security.

Despite the reality of World War Two in Germany, Father Delp writes hopefully. We can still personally know the content and meaning of this feast. We still petition the Lord. We live in the knowledge that He redeems us through this mystery. “We are rich and capable enough through God’s comfort to give mankind the comfort that it needs so much.” We can be the “great comforters, the great knowers, the great blessed ones who know what it means to be consoled by God.”

 That is what this feast and this ritual can do for us – console us so that we may console others.

 

 

Thursday, December 20, 2012

From a young poet


" ... be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Young and restless - older and sedate


Some priests of my generation seem to have forgotten that they were once young, snot-nosed, arrogant seminarians. I count myself among these. Where I differ with some of them, however, is that I remember being such. Yet some priests of my generation accuse many of today’s seminarians of such arrogance and seem to have forgotten their own. To my mind these priests have just gotten old and curmudgeonly.

Recently a pastor told me about a young man of high school age in his parish who showed interest in becoming a priest. This pastor told me he was not encouraged by this young man because, among other things, the young man would flagrantly wear imitation clerical shirts with collars in certain settings. This pastor wanted as little to do with the young man as possible.

I was told of another pastor who refused another young man’s request that the priest become his spiritual director. This young man too was also considering the priesthood. But because this young man had very conservative leanings, the priest refused the request.

Having served in a college seminary these past three years, I am frequently reminded that I too once became fascinated by the thought of a vocation. I also recall my fears and those of my peers’ that we would be ordained and live under the kind of backward pastoral leadership that would inhibit us at the least or thwart us at the worst. We weren’t going to be like those pre-Vatican II clergy. We were “the new breed” as Andrew Greeley described us and we weren’t going to be fashioned from any other mold.

Well, I have news for priests of my generation. We’ve become the very thing we swore we would not be. We’ve become the backward pastoral leaders that are now angry and confused by the seminarians that present themselves to us today. One reason for a lack of vocations is a lack of interest on the part of some current pastoral leadership. Is this really anything new though? There were numerous priests when I was younger who didn’t give two hoots about encouraging vocations. And many of those priests feared us and didn’t know what to make of us.

Seminarians today are really not much different than they ever were. But seminarians today encounter the Church in a way we did not. I am not always encouraged by the attitudes of some seminarians today. But I admire their energy, their enthusiasm, their desire for holiness. Yes, they still have much to study and to learn. They will mature over time. There are priests, however, who won’t give them the opportunity to mature. They condemn them outright. They expect them to be finished products at age 18. And they expect them to think as they do.

Some of it, I believe, is because some clergy have established their own “kingdoms” (a word that we new breeders despised in the clergy ahead of us) and are quite comfortable in them. Younger clergy challenge older clergy to get out of their comfortability. We had energy and enthusiasm too. But I do not ever remember holiness being suggested to us as something to aspire to.

There are new challenges in the Church. It is unfortunate that some older clergy have to be one of the challenges seminarians encounter. That hasn’t changed in the 43 years I’ve been ordained. We have some wisdom to offer younger clergy and seminarians. Many are disinclined to offer it.