Sunday, March 24, 2013

Obstacles to the Lord's work

"For to persons who love God wholly, all things are a help and aid for meriting more and beng more closely united by intense charity with their very Creator and Lord. Nevertheless ... the creature on its own part often places obstacles to what our Lord wishes to work in the soul. This happens not just before these graces, gifts, and delights of the Holy Spirit are received; even after the graces have come and been received - visiting and consoling the soul, ridding it of all its darkness and restless anxiety, adorning it with these spiritual goods, making it wholly happy and wholly in love with eternal things that will last forever in perpetual glory - still, it happens that we disconnect ourselves (from these graces) with thoughts of little importance, not knowing how to preserve this great heavenly good. Thus, we place obstacles to this grace and working of our Lord before it comes, and to its conservation after it comes."
--- Letter of St. Ignatius Loyola to (St.) Francis Borgia, duke of Gandía, Rome, end of 1545


Sunday, March 17, 2013

Never tire of asking God's forgiveness

On March 17, during both the liturgy at the parish of St. Anna and his Angelus address in St. Peter's Square, Pope Francis told a story of an elderly widow he encountered in Argentina during a Mass for the sick celebrated in connection with a visit of the image of Our Lady of Fatima. “I went to confession during the Mass,” he said, “and near the end – I had to go to do confirmations afterward, and an elderly lady approached me – humble [she was] so very humble, more than eighty years old. I looked at her, and said, ‘Grandmother,’ – where I come from, we call elderly people grandmother and grandfather – ‘would you like to make your confession?’ ‘Yes,’ she said – and I said, ‘but, if you have not sinned…’ and she said, ‘we all have sinned.’ [I replied], ‘if perhaps He should not forgive [you]?’ and, sure, she replied, ‘The Lord forgives everything.’ I asked, ‘How do you know this for sure, madam?’ and she replied, ‘If the Lord hadn’t forgiven all, then the world wouldn’t [still] be here.’ And, I wanted to ask her, ‘Madam, did you study at the Gregorian (the Pontifical Gregorian University, founded in 1551 by St Ignatius Loyola, the oldest Jesuit university in the world)?’ – because that is wisdom, which the Holy Spirit gives – interior wisdom regarding the mercy of God. Let us not forget this word: God never tires of forgiving us,” he repeated, “but we sometimes tire of asking Him to forgive us.” Pope Francis went on to say, “Let us never tire of asking God’s forgiveness.”

Growing up with King Arthur (Part Two)

Anyone who has ever been in love knows that the joy that makes us complete is born out of the pain that fashions love which, if it is to have any meaning at all, is always growing, is always choosing, is always deciding. I love being a priest. I am grateful that God chose me to be a priest. I love and enjoy doing priestly things – celebrating the Eucharist, hearing confessions, doing spiritual direction, listening to people, even doing administrative work. I make these choices every day I live. No matter what one’s vocation is, God graces each of us with love and joy.
When we finally recognize that we are loved, we can only be grateful. But love and joy cannot be taken for granted. There is no love or joy that does not cost something. As a popular song once said, “Without a hurt, the heart is hollow.” A priest can love others so much that he loses sight of his own need to be loved. He gives and yet feels empty. A person who loves fully and who recognizes that he is loved in return knows his or her shortcomings. Such a person has acquired a very deep state of humility.
While still a teenager and considering a priestly vocation, Fr. Bill Cleary, the assistant pastor at my home parish, gave me a copy of Fulton Sheen’s book titled “The Priest Is Not His Own.” Whatever wisdom the book contained, I was most fascinated by the title. What did it mean to be “not his own”? Really good priests do not belong to themselves. At their deepest level, priests have no life that is their own. They belong to someone else – to God and to the people they serve.
Two people in a marriage do not belong to themselves. They belong to each other. This commitment is both a source of sadness and a cause for joy. Priests are indeed like everyone else. They need to love and they need love. The priestly vocation in loving is to help others find the God who loves them. Who helps the priest grow in his love for God?
Becoming king of England was certainly a prestigious thing for Arthur. But it was also an awesome duty, a lonely responsibility for a boy becoming a man. It separated him from those whom he loved dearly. It changed his life. He could no longer be the boy he was. He had to grow up. He was one of them, a human being, but now he was also somehow different. He had to become an adult. To be a good king Arthur had to love his people. And loving them now meant serving them in ways he had yet to learn.
The poet Tennyson wrote, “I am a part of all whom I have met.” We are also a part of each other. We are a part of all of us. Yet we try to protect ourselves by becoming rugged individualists wanting to face God by ourselves rather than recognizing our common humanity, our common priesthood.     
When we commit ourselves to the priesthood, or similarly, when a couple commit themselves to each other in matrimony, none of us can project the future. We may have some slight notion about its possibilities. But we cannot see it clearly. The boy Arthur cried when he realized he was to be king of England. Though he could not see the future clearly, he knew that he was no longer his own man. He knew he belonged to England.
Arthur’s life was a life of conversion. All our lives we are continually undergoing conversion. We learn and re-learn. We confess our guilt. We accept God’s grace. Our life in God is a goal we reach not by an upward curve. We sometimes get lost and we need to find ourselves again. We can only rest in the certainty of God being with us on our journey.


Friday, March 15, 2013

Growing up with King Arthur (Part One)

A favorite novel of mine is “The Once and Future King,” T. H. White’s lengthy and imaginative retelling of the legend of King Arthur. The book’s first section – titled “The Sword in the Stone” details the education of Arthur as a boy through the influence of the wizard Merlin. The most creative and imaginative part of the novel, this section offered me an ideal on which I thought the ministry of priests ought to hinge.
White describes how the boy Arthur, under the wizard Merlin’s guidance, becomes king of England. Told with great wit, cleverness and sophistication, Merlin transforms Arthur, known as “the Wart,” into a variety of animals to complete his education as a boy, as a man, as a future knight. One day he is an insect. Another day he is a bird or a hedgehog. Arthur talks to and plays with these animals as if they were personal friends. They become his teachers.
From the birds he learns what it is to see the earth from the sky. From the snakes he learns what it is to crawl on the ground. And so forth. In this way Arthur learns not only that human beings are different from these animals. He also learns something about human nature and he discovers how human beings might get along with each other as well as how they might not.
There comes a day, however, when Arthur, now apprenticed to the knight Sir Kay, finds himself assisting that warrior at a joust. But Sir Kay forgets to bring his own sword with him. He sends Arthur to retrieve it. But because Arthur is basically still a boy, and because he is always in a hurry, and because he is inclined to be lazy, he does so reluctantly. Then he remembers having noticed a sword stuck in a stone in a nearby churchyard. So he decides to borrow it for the occasion. Arthur is in such a hurry, however, that he fails to notice the inscription on the stone. “Whoever pulls this sword from this stone shall be king of England.” With no hesitation Arthur reaches for the sword.
The description of what happens next in the novel is something like a movie suddenly going into slow motion. Arthur hears music and everything around him suddenly becomes very clear. People gathered and so too did the hundreds of animals with whom Arthur had associated himself as a young lad. It was an unusual family reunion.
The animals, his friends, encourage Arthur to pull the sword from the stone. They cheer him on and applaud as the momentous event takes place. When it later becomes clear to Sir Kay and the other knights and ladies what has occurred, they each bow down before Arthur and honor him as their king. The novelist writes that Arthur becomes very upset by this, so much so that he bursts into tears and exclaims that he wishes he had never seen the sword.
This tale touched me deeply. The magical element of talking animals was fascinating enough. The writing kept me interested. But there was something else. Arthur was talented and gifted but he wasted a good deal of these talents as well as time and energy. Like all young people, he couldn’t fully appreciate the community that was his. The “lovers and helpers of Wart” came to support him in his most important moment as an adolescent moving into adulthood. As an adult, Arthur would learn to suffer and to sacrifice and to discover what “growing up” means. And there was no other way to discover this than to do so painfully.
Over time, the tale of “the Wart” has become an instrument helping me to realize how much I idealized my vocation during the years of training in the seminary and beyond. It also helped me realize how much growing up I still needed to do.
For myself the priesthood was a fraternity of caring men who encourage one another, who support one another in somewhat the same way in which animals supported and encouraged Arthur. When ministry becomes difficult or burdensome, I thought, there are brother priests to turn to for solace and comfort. When the priesthood becomes a challenge, there are brother priests to stand with you during those challenges. At the time I believed the priesthood was a place where I would find a nurturing family. I thought of the support I needed but not always the support other priests might need.
In the Gospel of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so also I love you.” Priests share the Father’s love in a very special way. Jesus smiles upon priests. He says, “You have not chosen me; I have chosen you.” He tells them this “that my joy may be yours and your joy may be complete.” Jesus’ words to his disciples can aptly be spoken to priests and lay people both. Priests ought to reflect constantly on these words in order to deepen their own relationship with the saving Jesus.
My years as a priest have been full of sadness as well as joy. The scandals of sexual misconduct among the clergy have shocked and disappointed both priests and lay people. Both clergy and laity are deeply wounded by the betrayals. In thinking we could be better priests than the generation that preceded us, my classmates and I somehow neglected our own humanness. Grace builds on nature, our theology teaches. We forgot that we too are fallible. Priesthood does not make men better than other human beings. In wanting to be seen as ordinary as other human beings, my generation of priests forgot that all human beings sin and make mistakes. I forgot to consider my own sinfulness.
(To be continued)

Pope Francis on aging

"Dear Brothers, have courage! Half of us are old: I like to think of old age as the seat of wisdom in life. Old people have wisdom because they know they have journeyed through life – like the aged Simeon and Anna in the Temple. It was that wisdom that allowed them to recognise Jesus. We must give this wisdom to young people: like good wine that improves with age, let us give young people this life’s wisdom. I’m reminded of what a German poet said about aging: “Es ist ruhig, das Alter, und fromm” – “age is the time of peace and prayer”. We need to give young people this wisdom."
Pope Francis in his address to the cardinals on March 15