Letting go of the past, to live a new life

We are now in post-Easter time according to the Liturgical calendar. Many will still find themselves, because of the reality of their lives, being in the pre-Easter events of Jesus. Our relationship with God is best understood not in ordinary times-Cronos, God’s time is Kairos, God is always best understood outside of time and space. In this post-Easter time, we are given for our reflection, the events as they happened in the relationship between THE RISEN CHRIST and his frightened and doubting disciples.

The days after the resurrection were challenging times for the followers of Jesus, who was the historical Jesus. These were challenging times for the followers of Jesus of Nazareth. This historical Jesus was the one they followed in hope but whose life ended in death. He died not just any death. He was crucified. He died the horrible death reserved for run-away slaves. His followers were keenly aware of what the Hebrew scripture said about how cursed is he who hangs upon the wooden cross. As we reflect, we see something new has happened, which is beyond the comprehension and understanding of these followers who are disillusioned and fearful.

Now something has happened which is beyond their comprehension, their understanding. Startling events have happened which are way beyond their expectations. The one whom they knew suffered a horrific and public death. Now they are told He has risen from the dead. He has not just risen, He is appearing to people. He is not just appearing. He is sharing food with His former disciples. He is not only sharing food, but is appearing in their midst when they are locked away in door-locked rooms. This will take getting used to. This is exactly what the risen Christ does. He spends 40 days with His disciples so they can get used to a new way of relating to someone they knew and is now living a new life. The Risen Christ wants to lead His followers away from the past, which is past and gone, into a new way of living and relating to the Risen life. Over the next few weeks I hope to share some reflections on the Scriptures relating to what happened between the Risen Christ and His disciples.

I think it is fascinating to reflect on what was going on in the minds and hearts of His disciples locked away in fear. Even though the door was locked, Jesus appears to them. I have many times wondered about the thoughts and the feelings of those gathered in that room. What was going on in their minds, what were their private thoughts, what was the content of their conversation? It more than likely was about what has happened and the startling news of His resurrection. In the midst of all of this the Risen Christ appears.

Uhh ohh, He is here. What will He have to say to us? We really blew it. When it came to crunch time there were not too many of us that hung around to be with Him and His family as He hung in crucifixion. We are happy John stuck it out on Calvary and gave Mary support.

Peter's thoughts,
"Boy, am I in for it now. In my usual blustery way I promise way more than I could deliver. I cannot believe I went back on my word to stand by Him. Not only did I not stand by Him, I even denied I ever knew Him. He picked me out to be a leader and all I did was deny Him. I did not deny Him once, but as He told me ahead of time, “Peter, you will deny me three times, and so I did”. When He told me that, I was so offended, I was angry. I am so grateful for tears, when I had shed enough tears, I was somehow able to remember what He said in the past, "Anyone who comes to me, I will not reject." He also said, "Come to me all who are weary and find life burdensome and I will give you rest". What His visit in my memory was the woman brought to Him caught in the act of adultery, everybody was ready to stone her. In a quiet way, He turned everything upside down. When He was finished there was nobody there to condemn her. And He said these wonderful words, “Neither will I condemn you”. I also remember Him saying, “In God, there is no condemnation”.

I will never forget that day when we were in the boat and a storm came up, He had forced us to get into the boat to cross the lake while He Himself went off and prayed. He did that a lot. We were in that boat and it was scary. We were being tossed about by the winds and the waves, then out of the storm He appeared. Would you believe it? He was walking on the water! Being very impulsive I wanted to get out of the boat. I was going to walk on the water, to join Him. He called to me and I got out of the boat. In the beginning I was just fine-I was focused on Him. Then, the splash of a big wave hit me and I realized where I was. I got into immediate fear, lost my focus on Jesus and began to sink. I cried out for help, He reached out and took my hand, saved me and together we walked back to the boat along the water. I was safely seated before I became aware I still had a death-grip on His hand. That sinking feeling is with me now. I also know what happened to me before. That same rescuer is standing in front of my again. It was though I would like to run and hide, there is no place to hide for "the big Fisherman".

Would I have been better off to do what Judas did and commit suicide? Those tears that I shed, somehow soothed my soul. I decided to rely on the mercy I heard Him speak about day after day after day. I wonder what is He going to say to us, and me in particular? I know myself I would have a field-day sending people on a guilt trip. He is beginning to speak and what is this I am hearing? He has nothing to say but “Peace be with you”. For myself I was expecting “Hi Peter, remember how brave you were when you promised to die with me? But, when it came to crunch time, what happened to you? You chickened out?”. With this person there were no recriminations, there were no paybacks. All He is offering us is peace, Shalom.“

What is this wonderful, something new, that is taking me over? What is this new sense of oneness and togetherness that is filling this room and all who are in it? Is this what He means? Is this what it means when He says “Receive the Holy Spirit”? There is s calm, a serenity, a peace of mind I have never felt before. I, who am a restless, always on the go person, all I want to do now is to be here, to be with the rest of the group. We together have been through so much. We have been in so much guilt, fear and shame. Now, there is peace, joy and a great feeling of love. I said this before, on the mountain, when He was transfigured before my eyes, “It is good to be here”. It is good to be here right now.

Now what is He saying? You have got to be kidding, He wants us to forgive sins? His timing is impeccable, as it always has been. No way am I ever going to allow somebody to speak to me about their sins and remain in the guilt and shame of their sins, and remain in the guilt and shame of it. My sin has been the worst. I denied I knew Him. At the time, He needed someone to stand by and stand up for Him, I was not there. Now I have been given this peace from my troubled and rebellious soul. I have experienced not His judgment, not His condemnation, but the gift of His peace. I want everybody to experience what has just happened to me. That guy is smooth! He knows us as we are right now. I remember one Him saying that He never had to be told what was present in the hearts of human beings. He knows where we are and how we feel. At this moment we are most aware of our humanity, of our weaknesses, our powerlessness. He gives us the power to forgive the sins of others when we need forgiveness most ourselves. He is saying to all of us, and me in particular, “As I have treated you right now, this is the way I want you to treat others when they come to you beaten, broken, bruised, with feelings of abandonment”. Wow…does it ever get better than this?

Right away! I do not see Thomas here, I wonder where he is? Oh there is a knock at the door! Thomas, I’m so glad you have joined us. You are not going to believe what has just happened.

A reminder just because the calendar says resurrection has happened, this does not mean it has happened for some individuals. Some are still in their Good Friday agony. Theirs are the feelings of being bruised, beaten, battered, betrayed and abandoned. There are still millions in liminal, in between, time of Holy Saturday. The death has taken place, a loss has happened, but the new life has not yet immerged. For them it is the belief, the hope, the certainty that is theirs in the face of all the odds against them. This year, they are being asked to celebrate what can be rather than what is. There are some lucky ones not experiencing the joy, the freedom, exaltation, of the new life which has burst upon the horizon of their lives. The dazzling light of the resurrection has definitely penetrated the previous darkness. It is Allelujah, Allelujah, Allelujah.

Everyday Living is the Pascal Mystery

I came across the following story in Thomas Keating's book, The Mystery of Christ,

"A Sufi master had lost the key to his house and was looking for it on the lawn outside, running his fingers through each blade of grass. His disciples came along and asked the master what had happened. "I have lost the key to my house", he said. "Can we help you find it", they asked. "I'd be delighted", he replied. With that the disciples got down on their hands and knees beside him and started running their fingers through the grass, too. After some hours, one of them asked, "Master, have you any idea where you might have lost the key?". He answered, "yes, of course. I lost it in the house." The disciples looked at one another in astonishment. "Then why are we looking for it out here", they exclaimed. The master replied, "Because there is more light here".

This parable speaks to the human condition. We have all lost the key to happiness and are looking for it outside ourselves where it cannot possibly be found. We search outside because it is easier or more pleasant; there is more light there. There is also more company. If we look for happiness in emotional programs that promise happiness through symbols of security/survival, affection/esteem, our power/control, we can find plenty of help, because everyone else is trying to do the same thing. When we look for the key where it can be found, we may find ourselves, abandoned by friends and relatives who feel threatened by our search. Lack of support for the spiritual journey, not to mention possible opposition, is one of it's heaviest trials."

I do not have anything original to say. All I have to say is repeating what has already has been said by so many others in a much more eloquent way. I see this space as a place of reminding, a place where you and I can remember who we have been from the beginning of time, who we are now in the love of our Prodigal Father. To keep before us we are journeying as pilgrims back to our original home and the eternal presence we have sprung from.

Easter Sunday was last Sunday. I hope you and your loved ones had a wonder-full celebration, which continued on to a day of ease and peace. Our spiritual reality was celebrated last Sunday and is being encountered again and again in each and every moment of this day and every "today". The whole mystery of the death-burial-resurrection-ascension-and the gift of "a new spirit for a new life" is so vast, so deep, so encompassing, it takes us 40 days [Lent] to prepare ourselves for the celebration. It takes us three full days to celebrate the mystery. It will now take us another 50 days to reflect on how this mystery is our life. The life we live every day as we deal with the reality of being "spiritual beings having a human experience". Our everyday connection with the Pascal Mystery does not come automatically. We cannot think our way into what the mystery offers us. We must act our our way into being open to the fact that in all of my everyday reality we are encountering the love of God and His transforming love in every moment of life. In doing we are offering the limitations of our human efforts to the transfiguring, resurrecting power of our God. The result is a new way of seeing, believing, and acting. Transformation is a process we must allow to happen. It is to this we will come to believe in the saying "I will not think my way into a new way of acting, I will act my way into a new way of thinking". This the only way we can, with God's grace, be freed from the old patterns of thinking and acting. I want to make it very clear this is not easy. It is very difficult to act our way into a new way of thinking. It takes practice, practice, practice.

During the closing weeks of Lent, I had the privilege of celebrating Reconcilation with a good number of people across the whole spectrum of age. This year, like every other year, I heard the confessions of "I was angry with my husband/wife/sister/brother/employer/employee---when the penetant finished, I would ask this questions, "and who else are you angry at?". Ususally the answer is "nobody else". My next question is, "Are you sure". There is usually no answer, just silence. Then I ask the million dollar question, "what are you angry at yourself about?". There is a look of surprise and I hear, "Oh, I never thought of that". Then we get into a conversation about where the anger is directed to themselves and in what area does the person themselves need forgiveness and compassion in their own life. There is a great deal of anger and resentment, but is there a willingness to forgive? I have asked the person, "have you ever said, I forgive you, to yourself?". The ususal answer is, "no, I have never done that". I now ask the person to say, "John/Mary, I forgive you". In some cases, the person is able to say it, in many many cases, there is silence. There is the welling up of tears, sometimes, many many tears are shed. "Father, I cannot say it" or "I cannot say it because I don't mean it". I then ask them to say, "You do not have to mean it in the beginning, all you have to do is say it. Because of the spiritual principle, I will not think my way into a new way of acting. I will act my way into a new way of thinking". In many instances there a continued inability to say "I forgive you". I then ask them to say, "I release shame, I release shame, a number of times". And following the "I release shame", I ask them to say "John/Mary, I forgive you". Now, as those wonderful words are expressed, tears dry up and smiles appear. Resurrection has just happened. We know that only God can forgive sin, but if we do not forgive ourselves, we can never enjoy the forgiveness of God. St. Thomas Aquines has said, "Grace builds on nature". God takes what we give Him and through His transforming grace, His transforming love, that which is impossible for us, becomes possible through His grace. With God all things are possible. All we have to do is surrender.

What I have just described is repeated and repeated with so many individuals when I ask them to say simply, "John/Mary, I love you". I hear the objections, "Father, I cannot say that", or "I can say, I love others, but I cannot say it to myself". We have to remember the command of Jesus, when He tells us, "we are to love our neighbor as we love ourselves". There are many times in my life if I was to love people the way I was loving myself, they were in serious serious dodo! Now I am in the uncomfortable position of when I start criticizing and judging others I am reminded that what I see that I don't like in them is exactly what is present within myself. "If I see it in others, I got it myself." It takes practice, practice, practice to accept the freedom that is ours because we share in the risen life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is the mystery we have been baptized into, and you and I live it out every day.

We have to actively claim our new life in each and every moment of each and every day. In each day is the pain and suffering of Calvary [Good Friday], in each and every day we have to deal with some kind of loss, terminal death, Pascal death. In each and every day we must wait in the tomb of emptiness and nothingness. From the womb springs new life and new beginnings. Each day we must claim these new lives and new beginnings. Each day is resurrection day. Each day we must ask for the grace, the help, the new lenses to see the ever newness of God's revelation in every new moment given to us. Each moment is given to us to live, to experience, to celebrate so then every day life is our daily living out that mystery we take 40 days to prepare for, three days to celebrate and 50 days in which we work to grasp the reality of new life and a new way of living. This is not just something we read about in the Bible, hear preached about in the Church, rather, it is your reality and my reality in the here and now. Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ comes again and again and again to you and I in the wonder-full mysterious awe-full reality of this present moment.

"I believe Lord, help my un-belief - or - I believe Lord, help my disbelief."

New life is always being offered to us. The risen life of Christ is being offered to you and I right now, exactly where we are at. Where we are at, God promises to meet us and He promises to always be with us [Emmanuel]. God is always faithful to His promises, He is faithful to His covenent with us, He is faithful to us, not because we are faithful to Him. God is faithful to us because He is good, not because we are good. God is faithful to us and He will not abandon us like He was abandoned because we are His Beloved. Again it is always good to remind ourselves, we do not earn, deserve or qualify for this love. It is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. We cannot make any sense of God's love. All we can do is relax and enjoy it. This of course, is easier said than done. In our world, where there is so much emphasis on productivity and results, it is so very difficult to fathom that what we are striving for is really already present within us. What is behind all of our efforts and striving is already given to us freely. It is deep inside each one of us. For us to come to this realization and the enjoyment of the free gift, we must learn to give ourselves permission to be human beings, not human doers. Over the years, I have asked stressed out moms and dads to take some time for themselves. I ask those who have the feeling of being over-whelmed to set aside 20 mintues for themselves to do nothing. I am then asked the question, "What will I get from doing nothing?". The answer is "Nothing that you will see right away. The change will come slowly from the inside and will become apparent to others before it will become apparent to us". One young mom said to me, "My husband thinks he has a new wife and my kids think they have a new mother. All that is happening is I'm taking time for me." There is another example of Pascal Death and Resurrection. We have the words from Psalms 46:10, "be still and know that I am God". In the stillness, our God is always present in us, and through us. I would offer the following for your reflection, which is part of my favorite Celtic prayer:

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in every heart of every man/woman who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouths of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

I hope and pray this will help you, encourage you on your journey to resurrection and new life. I hope and pray that these words can be a source of strength for you to continuously look inside rather than outside for your strength for the journey. This is an effort to emphasize we are never alone, even in the darkest times. We may feel deserted, abandoned, but our God is always reaching us in the place we least expect it.

"I am the blind alleys of all your paths."
"For you no longer know how to go any further, then you have reached me......thou you are not aware of it."
"I love you."
"You are precious to me."
"You are the apple of my eye."

Pascal death-The Highway to Radical New Living

This week we are celebrating the greatest mystery in the greatest week of the Christian calendar. It is the week we call Holy. In our understanding of the events and Liturgical celebrations of this week, we are empowered to journey into the Pascal Mystery. This is a mystery we experience every day of our lives. Our participation enables us and empowers us to journey into a mystery which is part and parcal of our everyday lives. This mystery is hidden and revealed in every moment of every day enabling us to participate in the life, suffering, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. Most importantly, the final event we celebrate is the descent of the Holy Spirit. For some of us it will be an orderly celebration. For others because of today's life experience it will be about the possibility rather than the reality of resurrection. The Liturgical calendar says we can journey from suffering death to burial and resurrection in three days of celebration. In the reality of life, this does not happen in nice 24 hour increments, which is Kronos time. When we see ourselves participating in the reality of the Pascal Mystery, we are in the realm of God's time, which is called Kairos. There are no measuring instruments when it comes to God's time. There is nothing about God that can be boxed, controlled or measured in time and space. In the spiritual life there is no time, there is no space.

The Pascal Mystery is first and foremost a mystery. This mystery teaches that with every beginning there is an ending and with every ending there is a new beginning. It is a mystery dealing with the deepest working of God's grace. A mystery dealing with death, burial and new life. A spiritual mystery such as this cannot be explained, it can only be entered into and treated with reverence. I would like to suggest this year, more than ever, we need to open ourselves up to what this week offers in the way of hope, consolation and the promise of radical new life. This will come to us through the power of honesty, honesty about our everyday experience. There can be no spiritual growth unless we are developing a progressive honesty which is about embracing what is real. Where there is no honesty, there is no reality. So, there is no God. When we want to get a grip on reality and the Pascal Mystery within us, here are a number of words you and I cannot have in our vocabulary, the following are many words which have no connection with reality:
could, would, should, what if, if, if only, when, ought, try, interesting, or any similar words used to deny our real feelings and our real emotions.

On the otherhand, here are six words that help us to face our reality and they are:
yes, no, I did, I didn't, I will, I will not. In these words, the REAL which is God will be revealed to us. Resurrection is not just "an intellectual promise or an historical event, but a daily experience by the person who knows that his/her faith might not be in remembering but in living here and now". Eugene Kennedy. We must get out of our fantasy world, our fantasy world of denial, the world of illusions, so we can encounter the living God. So we can encounter the Pascal Mystery as it occurs in our everyday reality. This makes every moment of everyday Holy, a place of encounter and hopefully an everdeepening encounter with both the suffering Christ and the Risen Christ.

A number of years ago, I read a book by Fr. Ronald Holheiser which enabled me to enter into a new and better life-giving understanding of what the Pascal Mystery is all about. In his book, The Holy Longing, he explains the difference between terminal death and Pascal death. "Terminal death is a death that ends life and then possibility. Pascal death, like terminal death, is real, however, Pascal death is a death that, while ending one kind of life, opens a person undergoing it to receive a deeper and richer form of life. The image of the grain of wheat falling into the ground and dying so as to produce new life is an image of Pascal death. Then resurrected life...is the reception of a radically new life... The Pascal Mystery is about Pascal death and resurrected life."

Continuing on, in the same chapter entitled "The Spirituality of the Pascal Mystery", we read the following:

The Pascal Mystery might be diagramed as follows:
1) Good Friday...The loss of life-real death
2) Easter Sunday..."the reception of new life"
3) The Forty Days..."a time for readjustment to the new, and grieving the old"
4) Ascension..."letting go of the old and letting it bless you, the refusal to claim"
5) Pentecost..."the reception of new spirit, for the new life that one is already living"

Put into a more colloquial language and stated as personal Pascal challenge for each one of us, one might recap this diagram this way:
1) "Name of your death"
2) "Claim your birth"
3) "Grieve what you have lost and adjust to the new reality"
4) "Do not cling to the old, let it ascend and give you its blessing"
5) "Accept the spirit of the life that you are in fact living"

This cycle is not something we must undergo just once...It is rather something we must undergo daily, in every aspect of our lives. Christ spoke of many deaths, of daily deaths and of many risings and various Pentecosts. The Pascal Mystery is the secret to life. Ultimately, our happiness depends upon properly undergoing it... Unless we die in infancy, we will have many deaths in our lives and within each one of these we must receive new life and new spirit. Daily we must undergo the Pascal Mystery.

We all know what BFFs are...and the drama that occurs when BFFs become enemies rather than the best friends. I would like to suggest that what we think are our greatest enemies are in reality God's BFFs. That is the secret. That is a paradox we have to encounter and deal with on our spiritual journey.

God's three BFFs and our worst nightmares, which are failure, rejection and nakedness. Fr. Richard Roar uses those three to describe what the cross is for each one of us. Each one of us on our journey into the resurrected life will have to deal with what it means to fail, what it means to be rejected and deal with who we are without any the many masks we wear to hide who we really are. Honesty is not only necessary but is is essential for us to journey through the reality of the Pascal Mystery so we can not only claim but enjoy the new life that is ours because of the journey we are on right now. For those who are in Twelve Step programs, they know that recovery is dependant on honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. Where there is no honesty there is no recovery. To sum up, honesty makes it possible for us to journey from death to new life.

The celebrations of Holy Thursday are rich with outward signs of celebration. Good Friday, the atmosphere is an atmosphere of the startk reality [no bells and whistles]. Then we come to the time between Good Friday and Holy Saturday. This is a time of an emptiness, devoid of any movement. This time can be called "tomb-time" or "womb-time" and is also called 'in-between time". There is something happening in the womb of the tomb which is going to result in an explosion of new life. The only thing that we have to do is what most of us are very poor at doing, is to wait. We have to wait for the new birth that is going to come from the death that has taken place. A seed does not germinate quickly in the darkness of the earth (human), it is a slow process which must be endured. We, too, must enter into the darkness which comes to us from being human and patiently await the slow transformation and transfiguration which will occur through the power of God's grace. The resurrection is all about transformation, transfiguration and the birthing of new life. We believe the same God who raised Jesus from the dead is the same God who is present in all of our dying, in all of our deaths, and is slowly and uniquely bringing us to a new level of living, to a new level of being, a freedom as his beloved sons and daughters. We believe as it happened to His Beloved Son, our brother Jesus Christ, so too, will it happen to us who are loved with the same love. Whatever has happened to The Beloved will also happen to each one of us. The tomb-time, the womb-time is called by Fr. Richard Rohr "liminal time", it is the in-between time. The time that between that death we have experienced and what has not yet appeared to take the place of what we have lost.

For myself, I find it a very difficult and anxious place to be in. We have said goodbye to something or someone that was a part and partial of our everyday life. We must enter a new way of living not knowing what is going to occupy that place and space. How many millions of people have lost their jobs and are now searching for new ones. For others it is even more difficult because their search is not being rewarded so they have to live in a deeper darkness. How many people have seen their IRAs, bank accounts, college funds, not only take a deep hit, but in some cases disappear? What is the future holding for them? The families and love ones who have had to deal with sudden disasters are in their womb-time, tomb-time, Holy Saturday time. We see this as a time of true darkness. There seems to be no felt-sense of God. Our sense of God somehow dried up and disappeared. We are now being forced to see a God that is beyond our feelings, our thoughts, our imagination. To again quote Fr. Rolheiser, "when you feel agnostic, even atheistic, because we can no longer imagine the existence of God. God seems non-existence, absent, dead, an fantasy of wishful thinking'.....when we get to this reality, we are in deepest faith. Faith begins exactly where atheism assumes it ends."

For those of us who have endured the desert of Lent, the journey is almost over. We are ending the journey into the depths ourselves where the demons were encountered, where the limitations of our humanity were experienced. This resulted in a cry for help out of the depths of our emptiness and nothingness. Easter Sunday is a time of celebration, it is a time when we rejoice and celebrate in the felt-presence of God, who is revealed to us as loving, caring and faithful. Because of His faithful care and compassion, we are led to the acceptance of His gifts of Light, Life and Love. Light enables us to journey out of the prison of the guilt and shame into the freedom of being Beloved daughter/Beloved son. God's Life enables us to journey from being at war with ourselves and others to a place of peace and serenity. God's love enables us to journey from our Pascal death to resurrection and to a radical new life lived in real freedom. That is the ideal. Reality is altogether different. I expect many will come on Easter Sunday only to be brought to the understanding that in reality they are still in the fear and anxiety of Gesemane or the abandonment of Calvary or in the darkness of the in-between time in the tomb. What we pray for is that by this participation in the celebration in Easter Sunday, they are awakened to what is their destiny.

Again in her book, Little Pieces of Light, Sister Joyce has this to say, "Being able to let go and let God take over one's life demands a tremendous amount of trust in this Devine Companion. Thomas Merton writes that, 'True love and prayer are really learned in the hour when prayer becomes impossible and your heart turns to stone'. It is in within the hour of our greatest darkness that we discovered that we are never really alone. It is a time when we learn to trust as Gods love is much more than we ever imagined." This gives us the great freedom to be able to sing our Halleluahs with real gusto. Death has turned into life. Christ is risen and is alive within you and me.

"O happy fault of Adam that has revealed to us such a God."

Light always overcomes darkness, but we have to make the decision

From our everyday experience we know that both the windows of our homes, and the lenses through which we see through, must be kept clean and clear. We know these must be kept clean and clear so we can see the reality of what is both in us and in front of us. We must have the windows of our homes clean so that we can see out and light can filter in. When we enter into the storm of guilt, fear and shame, our windows and our lenses are splattered by dirt and grime which make seeing difficult and darkness appears. I came across the following, which I used last Sunday, from a wonderful book by Joyce Rupp, O.S.M.. She tells us, "darkness is a natural part of life, but I have fought this reality for years. It has taken me a long time to recognize that darkness is an essential element for personal growth. No matter how 'right things' I do, darkenss still comes unannounced and uninvited because it is an essential part of life. Without darkness I cannot become the person I am meant to be." Sister Joyce continues;

Darkness comes in many forms and is not an easy visitor. Our life experiences when 'dimness and disorder hold sway' are as many and as varied as we are. The Webster's Dictionary definition for darkness includes: "closed, hidden, not easily understood, obscure, gloomy, hopeless, entirely or partly without light." This description hardly touches the human experience of darkness. The darkness in the human heart also includes: lonely, shattered, dead, anxious, forlorn, bereft, despairing, discouraged, numbed, grief-laden, damaged, empty, bleak, fearful, traumatized, stumbling, aimless.

The land of darkness might be any or all of the following:
-a time in which the energy and focus of life is almost completely funneled into physical, emotional, or psychic pain
- a discouraging and empty inner sojourn when nothing seems valuable or worthwhile
- a stage of spiritual desolation in which there is no sense of God's presence and little or no desire for things of the spirit
- a battle of indecision and struggle, when the unknowns and fears of the future press painfully upon decisions to be made
- a fog-like state when life is confusing, unclear, and seemingly impenetrable
- a situation with evil and atrocity which threatens to overpower or annihilate
- an excruciating time of helplessness in which one feels paralyzed or powerless to alleviate the pain of another
- an on-going siege of negativity which brings with it constant frustration, irritation and dissatisfaction

This list of general descriptions of darkness could go on and on."

I want to encourage you to take these different states of darkness and see which of these states of darkness is overshadowing your life right now. I see, for myself, there is more than one right now. This is our sharing in the Pascal Mystery right now. This is why we have Lent and the journey with Jesus into the desert. This year's experience of Lent is so different for so many people. Not only do we have to journey into the powerlessness, desolation and darkness of the inside, but we also encounter powerlessness, darkness, frustration on the outside. This year, more than ever before, our everyday life is a real reflection of our inside journey.

"The Battlefield of My Soul" was posted earlier today. What is going on in "The Battlefield of My Soul" and so of all of our souls? We see there are two opposing forces, the force that is offering us the Aisling of God, God's dream for us, which is the life of being at ease. There is also the force that wants to not only to sabotage and but distroy that dream. When we are in darkness of guilt, fear and shame, we will be more inclined to deny God's dream and so live in disease. We must always then be on guard, be the alert, be aware of the constant need to continuously open ourselves up to the light of God which is faith, the life of God which whole, and the love of God, which reveals to us the loving presence of the Holy Spirit. So those who struggle with addictions and compulsions this is called serenity recovery. So we are now no longer death-dealers but life-givers to ourselves and consequently to the others that will enter into our life. We will now be wounded-wounders rather than wounded-healers.

I remember many years ago, I began to read the book by John Powell, Happiness is an Inside Job, I came across the following quotation, "Growth begins when the blaming ends". There and then, I threw away that book for five years! When we are using the escape hatch of blame, we will never hold ourselves responsible or anybody else responsible as well. Being responsible is part of growing up. Growing up is painful and in the process we have to face the disease, the darkness that can prevent us from having a life that is full and free. God's dream for you and me. We have been given the awesome gift of free-will we make a personal choice and so we no longer have the freedom to blame anyone or anything, not even God. God has become a wonderful scapegoat on whom we can lay blame for lack of responsibility on our part and the part of others. One of the classic God-blaming states is "God did this for a reason" when it was first and foremost the abuse of our freedom or us being the victim of other acts committed from their disease. When something painful happens in our lives, God does not cause the pain, but is hidden within the pain so he can journey with us from that pain into a new life, a new freedom. That is what Calvary, "Good Friday", Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday is all about. It takes time for the gift to appear from the transformation of the pain, but it will happen. All of our suffering, all of our darkness brought to prayer, always and I mean always, are thresholds leading to resurrection and new life.

So then it is not only necessary, it is essential to keep the windows and the lenses of our life clear so we can enjoy the Sunlight. The Sunlight that is always shining on each one of us each on at every moment of every day. No matter how dark the clouds are, the sun is shining above those clouds. When the clouds roll by, and for certain they will, we will be reminded of this fact. A reminder of this fact, light will overcome darkness. In these moments of change, transfiguration and transformation we will come to believe that light is permanent, darkness is transitory. Because we are believers in the Pascal Mystery, we can now see that in every failure is already sown the seeds of the resurrection. In every success, there is sown the seeds of failure.

We cannot build a tower to the sky, all of our towers crumble at some stage in our lives. All we have to do is look at our society and see the towers that were built on ego and disease have now crumbled. What happens next is God takes the rubble of our fallen towers and builds his Kingdom within us. These moment are our Gethsemane moments. The falling of our towers and the pain and the darkness of loss are our Gethsemane moments. It is our Calvary moment when wee cry out "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Why have you foresaken me? Why do I feel so alone?" Our faith leads us to surrender in faith, "Father into your hands I commend my spirit". The resurrection, transformation, transfiguration has now begun. I love the prayer, "May our faith, hope and charity turn hatred to love, violence to peace, death to eternal life."

"The human eye in selective what it wants to see and also evades what it does not want to see. It is a startling truth how you see, what you see determines how and who you will see....When you really look deeply at something, it becomes part of you...To look at something that can gaze back at you or that has a reserve and depth, can heal your eyes and deepen your sense of vision." Anam Cara

Healthy Spirituality is the answer to toxic shame

We need a constant reminder of Nouwens great words of consolation, "God's mercy is greater than our sins. There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but to self preoccupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and our failings and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt."

I believe what Nouwen is speaking about here is the third aspect of the "toxic trinity", which is shame. Healthy shame says, "I am human, I am limited, I make mistakes and it is okay. I do not have to be perfect." Toxic shame on the otherhand takes away the following five rights, which must be reclaimed.

I MUST reclaim the Right to:

Right to love - which means I do not have to earn, deserve or qualify for love, otherwise, it is not a gift.
Right to be loved [the beloved]-I am the beloved when I am loved as I am right now. I am loved with a love that is unconditioned, unlimited and unrestricted. It is now and forever. Being the beloved cancels out need for and the demands of perfection.
Right to belong- I have always belonged to God's love. The fact that I am living means God's love is supporting me and I will return to the same eternal love. I always belong to the family of Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Right to worth-whileness- My right to live fully human life. "The glory of God is the human person fully alive." My worth-whileness is not dependent on what I do, but who I am. "My being proclaimed the greatness of the Lord." Mary in the Magnificat
Right to have fun [play]- Unless I play my prayer does not work.

We are not born with toxic shame, we are "gifted" this beginning at about 18 months old. We must spend our whole life giving back that toxic gift so we can live God's dream for us on a daily basis. Toxic shame comes to us in words and in phrases. Words like; dumb, stupid or phrases like; I am ashamed of you, how could you be so dumb/stupid, what cannot you be like....I am sorry you have ever been born and the list goes on and on. It also comes to us as the result of physical, spiritual, sexual or psychological abuse.

Behind every addiction and compulsion is toxic shame. Behind all of our medicators -abuse of alcohol, drugs, sex, food, shopping, work, gambling, TV, internet, pornography, cutting - is toxic shame. We are now blessed to have such wonderful support groups such as Alcholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Sex Anonymous , Overeaters Anonymous, etc. etc., which offer to the addict a way out of the addiction into a new way of living an authentic human life. What is offered in these groups is the essence of spirituality. It is a great example of how the place of the wound becomes the place of the gift and those who are previously wounded now become empowered to be healers from their experience. When we are in a shame attack, with feelings of not being good enough, or not being deserving, we lose sight of who we are as the beloved son as beloved daughter. A classic example of a shame attack is "poor me". The natural consequences of this will be unhealthy behaviors which we just mentioned above.

Toxic Shame wants to kill you and me. Many people surrender to the end consequence of toxic shame and commit suicide. Suicide can be either fast or slow. Toxic shame is terminal, it is death dealing. Because toxic shame and healthy spirituality are mutally exclusive, not so with religiosity. We are told that religiosity if for those who are afraid of going to hell. Spirituality is for those who have been to hell. Spirituality is the key which unlocks the door allowing me to cross the threshold shame into a life of peace, joy and love. Every encounter with toxic shame will either strengthen and reinforce my belief in my essential goodness or weaken the boundary of my belonging.

Religiosity and toxic shame seem to be able to coexist. We will do everything we can to look good on the outside, all the time while actually in a living hell on the inside. The thinking is as long as the outside practice is okay and I am looking good doing it then I must be okay, not so. How often have you heard, "The cleaner the house, the sicker the family. A clean desk is the sign of a sick mind."

How often do we as individuals, as couples, as families, as parishes, as church, as country project one thing while we know deep down that is not the truth - we are living a lie. We have a secret. There will always be a secret we are not allowed to speak of or share in any way. A secret, because of our misgotten love, we will take to the grave rather than face the reality and bring it to light. Our unhappiness will somehow be connected to our share in the family secret. When toxic shame paralyzes us into inactivity, we are unable to move, we are frozen in place. Something will then happen which will force us to deal with the toxic shame of the secret. This is a moment of conflict. Will I continue to live the life of the lie or grasp on to the outstretched hand of unconditioned, unrestricted, unlimited love which will lead me to freedom. This freedom can be summed up in a new way of living, which comes to us from a new way of acting.

The antidote to toxic shame is a healthy spirituality. Healthy shame, healthy spirituality is always reminding us we are the beloved, we are loved without conditions or restrictions. We do not have to earn love, deserve love or qualify for love, it is always being gifted to us without price. We cannot earn what we already have. Unhealthy thinking and unhealthy messages from the family secret will lead us to perfectionism which according to John Bradshaw is a disease not a quality to be desired. Those of us who desire to be perfect are usually angry, resentful, short-tempered. Why? Because, simply when we want to be perfect, we are chasing an illusion. We cannot be what we expect to be or want to be or other people tell us we ought to be. We are never good enough. This in turn will lead me to another visit to the pity-pot, to the "poor me". When enough of us get together who are on our pity-pot, we have a pity-party, which will only reinforce our sense of powerlessness and alienation. The opposite of this is asking the question, "What am I going to do for me, right now?". You switch the focus from the poor me to that of empowerment. We make the choice of being a victim or a survivor. Healthy spirituality is saying to us on the other hand, by the grace of God, I am who I am right now [St. Paul]. That means that right now I am loved by God. I am being graced. Because I am loved by God right now, I have to make a choice whether I will respond to God's love or choose self-hatred, leading to self-punishment.

Spirituality enables us to become comfortable with being a human being rather than a human doer. When we are authentically human we realize that we are in the process of becoming through the actions of God's grace. We are in the process of being born. We are always in the process of giving birth to who we are. You can reflect a little bit more on the quotation from Anan Cara shared in the March 17th blog.

I find great consolation in the parable of the wheat and weeds. In the parable the servants want to go and to pull up the weeds, but the wise king says, "Let them grow together until harvest time. Because in pulling up the weeds, you may pull up the wheat as well." As they spring from the earth, the wheat, and in this particular case [Darnel] are very similar. So the king is wise because what the servents would have thought were weeds would have actually been wheat and what was wheat would have been weeds. This is our spiritual journey. This is the process we go through. What I thought were the strengths of my twenties are now the weaknesses of my sixties. What I thought were the weaknesses of my twenties are now the source of strength for the sixties. Merton encouranges us with the words, "Be who you already are". We have been loved by our God from all eternity. We are loved right now with that same eternal love we have had from the beginning of time. We will return to that infinite eternal love when our time here is ended. Where that love resides is called the heart, that is the place in each one of us that has never said no to God. I do not care where you have been, what you have done, there is that place in you that has never said no to God. In that place, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are having a great celebration. There is always an open invitation for us to celebrate. We have been given the freedom to say yes and to say no. When we are living in the true life of the beloved, we are open to join in the celebration.

When we are in toxic shame, we do not believe that we are good enough or that we do not have the right to celebrate because we have not earned it, deserve it or somehow in our misguided [diseased] thinking qualify for the celebration. Each moment there is a decision to be made, we are we going to chose to live live life, and live it to the fullest [spirituality] or surrender to death [toxic shame].

There is the great prayer which called the Serenity Prayer;

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things that I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference."

Everybody is familiar with those lines, but not many people know the next two lines;

"Living one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time."

And that moment is now.

There is No...Other...Way...of meeting God except right NOW.

Scripture tells us, "Now is the acceptable time, now is the time of salvation". In this now moment, we make a decision whether to listen to the truth that we are the beloved. Or listen to the lie, which is we are not good enough. In this moment, God is saying to each one of us, "I love you with an everlasting love. It is my gift to you."

From Fear to the Freedom of Faith

In our journey in faith, there are no mistakes. God takes all of our so called mistakes compensates for what is missing with His transforming and transfiguring grace. This new creation of grace is gifted back to us, resulting in a new understanding and a new compassion. "Behold, I make all things new", says our God. He does not make new things. This past summer I was on a hike in Colorado for what seemed to be a long long time. I met nobody along the trail. Then I saw three people approaching me. When they saw me, they began to smile and one of them said, "Oh we were beginning to think this was an abandoned trail". None of us wants to hike an abandoned trail. It means there is some danger involved, otherwise it would not be called abandoned. You and I are on a trail which is not an abandoned trail rather we are on the trail to abandonment. Being on this trail is the scariest experience, of the many difficult experiences we suffer on our human journey. Many of us are afraid of being alone, being left behind by our friends, being deserted by by those who once said they loved us, cared for us and said they would never leave us. On the other hand, how many times will we want to hang onto to disfunctional relationships because we are afraid of letting go? We are afraid of a future that is devoid of a presence we have gotten used to and are afraid to do without. These are issues we have to deal with because of our experience with abandonment.

To identify with us and our issues of abandonment, God has sent His son to journey to the place of abandonment, so when we find ourselves in that desolute place, our God is there to meet us, embrace us, encourage us and strengthen us. Jesus on the cross uttered those searing agaonizing words, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?". In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus dies having uttered those words and we have no answer in Mark's Gospel to the question. Even in His Gethsemane moments, Jesus was able to pray to the Father that the cup He about to drink from would pass from Him, so that He would not have to drink from it. On the cross of abandonment, there is no such Presence, there is no such relationship to call on, so He cries out His prayer of abandonment.

Over the years, I have come across so many individuals who have been abandoned by their fathers and their mothers. The subtlety lay in the fact that there were two people in the house, a man and a woman, but they were not parents, there were no parents in the home. Thank God there is a great amount of literature available and counseling available on the issues of abandonment. In particular, literature for daughters without mothers. Because someone has given birth to a person that does not necessarily mean they are a mother to that person. You can have a man in the house who can be so caught up in work addiction that there is no nurturing time for the life entrusted to him to be cared for and nourished. Abandonment issues result in people fearing letting go. And as a result I have come across people who will stay in disfuctional relationships long after the realization that they are in an unhealthy environment.

The opposite of fear is faith. When we have issues of fear and anxiety, the scripture offers us many words to be prayed at the time;

Out of the depths I cry unto you oh Lord, Lord hear my prayer.
Oh God, come to my aid. Oh Lord make haste to help me.
Father in your hands I commend my spirit.
We have the great consulation, the Lord is close to the broken-hearted and from all their distress He rescues them.

True intimacy with God will only be real when we walk through raw, naked fear. You know from your own experience real intimacy comes when you leave fear behind and you reveal yourself to another person as you really are, knowing that they love you and accept you just as you are right now. I strongly recommend that wonderful little story The Velveteen Rabbit. Skin Horse has gifted us these wonderful words, "You are not really real until somebody really loves you".

"When love awakens in your life, in the night of your heart, it is like the dawn awakening within you. Where before there anoynmity, now there is intimacy; where before there was fear, there is courage; where before in your life there was ackwardness, now there is a rythm of grace and gracefulness; where before you used to be jagged, now you are elegant and in rythm with yourself. When love awakens in your life, it is like a rebirth, a new beginning. The human body is born complete in one moment, the birth of the human heart is an ongoing process. It is being birthed in every experience of your life. Everything that happens to you has the potential to deepen you........[Patrick Kavanagh "Praise, praise, praise/The way it happened and the way it is.]" Anan Cara

This trusting faith is what builds within each one of us from many many journeys into the realm of fear. There is an old old song "Put your hand in the hand of the man from Galilee". Here are two little instances which happened to me on trips. In my younger days I used to love to take the kids to Disneyland. One year I was on that paddle steamer looking out across the water, I felt a hand reach into my hand, then I looked down and saw two eyes looking up at me. I didn't recognize the two recognize eyes, they didn't recognize my two eyes. So the hand was withdrawn and the kid ran away - hopefully to his parents. Another year I was at Mass there was a little girl next to me. When it came time for the Our Father, she put our her hand and clasped mine. Then after a little while, she withdrew her hand, picked up her little doll, extended one of the doll's arms to me and kept the other arm linked to her and we completed the Our Father that way. The little girl, the doll and I prayed together. As we prayed the Our Father, I had never had the same feeling before or since then. There are two choices we can make. Will we either hold onto the hand of God or ithdraw and run away in fear. Prayer is always bringing ourselves as we are and entrusting all of ourselves, the good and the bad, the successes adn the failures, the joys and the sorrows, and entrusting them into the caring hand of Our Father who is our God.

To have a real trusting faith, a deepening of honesty is required. To journey from our fears of abandonment to trusting faith, we must be reassured and reassure ourselves that our God meets us, greets us and loves us just as we are. Both faith and love demand trust.

The season of Lent is a season into progressive honesty. It is forty and forty nights. One evening I was speaking to the kids in prison and I mentioned how Lent is for forty days, one young person piped up with "It is forty nights as well". When I said to her, "It is the nights that are the toughest", all she was able to do was nod her head in agreement. It is within darkness, especially the darkness of the night, where our greatness fears surface and haunt us. It is then we encounter the wild beasts and our own personal demons. It is in the darkness the wild beasts of guilt, fear and shame seem to roam at will resulting in a night of tossing and turning, a night of restlessness and turmoil. Lucky for us, God has given to us Psalm 23 where He reminds us He is our shepherd and the dark valley will hold no fear for us. It is also helpful to repeat, "I believe Lord, help my unbelief, I believe Lord, help my disbelief". Do not be afraid appears in the scriptures 365 times. I wonder why our God in His infinite wisdom and mercy would want to remind of about this fact over and over and over again? On our journey through life we have to deal with the uncertainties of life. All we have is right now, this moment, with the rest, there is no guarantee. We do however have the guarantee there is no moment our God will not journey in us and through us and with us. No matter what we feel, no matter what we think, no matter what we are told, our God does not and can not abandon us. "He has to be faithful to us because He has to be faithful to Himself." He loves us not because we are good, He loves us because He is good. A belief in His love is an act of faith which will enable us to live life and live it to the fullest.

Yes, His eyes are watching through the lense of His love for us.
Yes, His ears are listening ever attentive to the outcry for His love.
Yes, His lips are speaking, "I love you", "You are mine."
Yes, He is our friend ever by our side,
Yes, we are His beloved,
Yes, He is our lover.

Fear knocked at the door. When faith answered, there was nobody there.

God Bless,
Fr. Joe

More thoughts on reconciliation and guilt

When I was preparing for my first reconciliation, I vividly remember being in the old fashion type black box, practicing for the real thing. I must have said something which I cannot remember when a hand came out of that little screen and slapped me across the face, not once, but twice...I ducked the third time! That memory has been with me all of these years. I also remember being invited to a parish to celebrate First Reconciliation with the little ones. I had pulled back the old screen. There was dead silence until I heard a littel tinkle and I knew there was no fountain in that reconciliation box. I just cannot imagine the fear that was in that little person so many years ago.

Over the years we have come to a ever deepened understanding of the sacrament of reconciliation. It is not a place we go to to receive a slap in the face or to approach with fear, it is an encounter with the loving presence of a God who loves us and accepts us beyond our wildest dreams. His mercy is greater than our sin. It is a mercy we need to experience again and again. Why? Because it is the sacrament of reconciliation not obliteration. Jesus Christ is the only spiritual leader who encourages us to love our enemy. And the enemy is within each one of us. There are some sinful practices that are removed by God's grace, while others remain. It is so encouraging to read what happened Paul when he had thorn in the flesh which because of his fallen understanding he wanted it removed and removed immediately. It did not happen. When he complained to God about the thorn remaining in his life, he heard the words, "My grace is sufficient for you, it is in weakness my power is made perfect". Then we have Paul's great response to this, "It is only when I am weak, it is then that I am strong". When we go to encounter the gentleness and compassion of God in this sacament of peace, we are going to confess our need to encounter a God of mercy and confession and the part of we hate the most. {Rohr} This is wonderful a freeing understanding of the sacrament that is today so unused, not visited.

The season of Lent has always been associated with penance and the Sacrament of Reconciliation. The journey into our own deserts reveal to us the aspects of our lives we need reconciliation with the ministering of angels it offers to each one of us in this encounter with a revelation of God's love for us-our savior Jesus Christ. This is what conversion means-to return, to turn around and return to the always open embrace of our God.

A repentence means returning so we can become truly ourselves.
Turning around to be embraced so we can embrace who we really are.
Turning around so as we can turn our back on guilt, fear and shame.
Turning around so we can be embraced as the beloved.
Let us turn around so we can be who we already are.
Turning around so we can be free from the prison of the lie so we can be free to live in the freedom of the Truth.
God's truth speaks to us always in the present and this present of God is what we call now.

Enjoy,
Fr. Joe

More food for the Journey

It is very obvious as we look around us we are going through some very difficult and demanding times. They are demanding times for us in our fiscal, physical and spiritual lives. When we are forced to let go of some of the external trappings of our lives we are forced to see ourselves as we have never seen ourselves before. What is extraneous to us is or has been taken away or been removed from our lives, forcing us to face ourselves as we have never seen or faced ourselves before. This is a wonderful spiritual gift. {Go ahead and say all the nasty words you are thinking and when you are finished, take a deep breath and read on.}

What is external/extraneous - our power, property and prestige. That there can be no spirituality without reality. It is in so far as we are really real will we come to an deeper and a deepening understanding of Reality itself - God. It isn't until we come to know ourselves apart from the outside trappings that are conferred on us or we ourselves obtain. Will we ever get honest in our relationships with a God who sees beyond all the externals into who we really are, His creation. We are not what we have, we are not what we do, we are not what who people say or think we are. We have got to let lose all of the who we are not to find out who we really are in God's love. A Love we don't earn, deserve or qualify for. A love the world cannot give us, it is only when we enter the world of poverty, nakedness and abandonment will the great treasure, the pearl of great price, will be bestowed upon us. Carl Stuhmiller says; "It is only through our weeknesses and our brokeness can we have an audience with a God of faithfulness and compassion". Another great theologian, Carol Rahner has written the following:

"And now God says to us what he has already said to the world as a whole through his grace-filled birth: "I am there. I am with you. I am your life. I am the gloom of your daily routine. Why will you not hear it? I weep your tears - pour out yours to me, my child. I am your joy: Do not be afraid to be happy: for ever since I wept, joy is the standard of living that is really more suitable than the anxiety and grief of those who think they have no hope."

I am the blind alleys of all your paths, for when you no longer know how to go any farther, then you have reached me, foolish child, though you are not aware of it. I am in your anxiety; for I have shared it by suffering it. And in doing so, I wasn't even heroic according to the wisdom of the world. I am in the prison of your finiteness, for my love has made me your prisoner. When the totals of your plans and of your life's experiences do not balance out evenly; I am the unsolved remainder. And I know that this remainder, which makes you so frantic, is in reality my love, that you do not understand.

I am present in your needs. I have suffered them and they are now transformed but not obliterated from my heart. . . . This reality--incomprehensible wonder of my almighty love - I have sheltered safely in the cold stable of your world. I am there. I no longer go away from this world, even if you do not see me now; . . . I am there.

I started off by reading this and over a number of years ago. It has become part of my daily reflection. Somedays, I have to remind myself of this many many times during the day. It has become for me a great source of consolation and strength for the journey. This is my wish for you all.

Toxic Trinity

Our God will never allow us to face a challenge alone, unless of course we exercise our God given free will and reject, turn our back on his grace, help, love. It is essential we keep before us the great gifts offered to us to strengthen us to face the challenge of the here and now living. Celtic spirituality offers us some wonderful prayers that can be strength for our journey. The first is from Lorica - known as "The Deer's Cry",

I arise to-day.
Through a mighty strength,
The invocation of the trinity
Through belief in the threeness
through confession of the oneness
of the Creator of Creation
I arise to-day
through God's strength to pilot me;
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear to me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,

Another prayer I like;

Your eyes are watchful,
your ears are listening,
your lips are speaking,
friend at my side.

With all of that, upper-most in our minds, we can now journey into the territory of the toxic-trinity; guilt, fear and shame. This week, we will take a look at guilt, which Erma Bombeck said, "Is a gift that keeps on giving".
Healthy guilt enables us to say, "I made a mistake and I need to make amends, I need to change this behavior". There is also the guilt that we hang onto - never forgetting, never forgiving. It becomes a toxic presence in our spiritual life. We are told that our Jewish brothers and sisters discovered guilt, but Catholics perfected it. I am sorry to say there was a huge assist given in this effort by the Irish monks. John O'Donohoe in his book, Eternal Echoes has written the following; please read it slowly and reflectively;

"Sometimes, we feel guilty about things in the past that should hold no guilt for us. Because we feel bad about something, we exaggerate our part in it and retrospectively ascribe more power and freedom to ourselves than we actually had in the actual situation."

Guilt belongs to the past and the past is over and gone. We have the consoling words from Psalm 103, "As far as the East is from the West, so far, have I put your sins behind you". Do we believe God or not? "When personal guilt in relation to a past event becomes a continuous cloud over your life, your locked in a mental prison. You have become your own jailer." Although you should never erase your responsibility for the past, when you make your past your jailer, you distroy your future. It is such a great moment of liberation when you begin to forgive yourself, let the burden go and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility. Self-compassion is a wonderful gift to give yourself. You should never reduce the mystery and expanse of your presence to a haunted fixation with something that you did or you did not do."

To learn the art of integrating your faults is to begin a journey of healing on which you will regain your pose and find new creativity. You soul is more immense than any one moment or event in your past. When you allow guilt to fester and reduce you like this, it has little to do with guilt. The guilt is only an uncomfortable but convenient excuse for your fear of growth. Guilt then has to do with self-forgiveness. In the Sacrament of Reconciliation, I have come across so many people who have never forgiven themselves. They have placed themselves in the prison of guilt and shame. Guilt is "I made mistake and I need to change and in some cases make amends" shame is "I am a mistake and I need to be punished". When we do not want to forgive ourselves, that is pride. Pride in the fact that somehow our sin is too big for God's love, his compassion and his forgiveness. We are told today the way we forgive ourselves is the way we allow to forgive us. If I never hear myself say, "I forgive you Joe", how am I going to believe God when He says, I forgive you and I have placed your sins behind you. Isn't there a reason then, that Russeau can, "Man was born free, yet everywhere where I look, I see him in chains."

Many people do not forgive themselves for some action in the present or actions in the past. Whether it is the stealing, the lying, the cheating, the lack of respect for parents and authority figures, premarital sex, adultery, or abortion. You can also carry a burden of guilt not because of an action, but because of your non-action at a crucial juncture. If you had had the vision or courage to say or do something, then someone else might have been spared great pain. (Anam Cara) Once you began to see what your failure to act actually allowed, you feel guilt and shame. Somewhere we need to be able to say, “I forgive you.” We need to bring our guilt and shame to the Sacrament of Reconciliation and then accept the words that we are forgiven. This forgiveness, God’s forgiveness, will depend so much on how we forgive ourselves. Lack of forgiveness will deprive us of enjoying God's gift of forgiveness. Forgiveness is God's gift to us. We must impart the gift of reconciliation to ourselves. Reconciliation is a process not an event. It is a lifelong journey because of the experience of being human.

To help us the journey into reconciliation, it is very helpful to write, not type, a letter of understanding and forgiveness to yourself for the actions of the past which we are finding hard to accept and forgive now. With understanding comes forgiveness. To help us with understanding we need to go back and place ourselves in thoes events and circumstances which are causing us difficulty right now. We are told in philosophy the object of the senses is good. We will never do anything that at the moment of doing does not appear to be good. Five second, five minutes, fives days, fives years later, we see that was not the best decision, but it was the best decision at the time we performed the actions.
We did our best, not, the best in those situations. Again, with understanding comes forgiveness. Hindsight is always 20/20. We can judge ourselves harshly in our 30’s and our 40’s, about actions we did in our teens and 20’s. We need compassion, not condemnation. In Anam Cara on page 117, we read, “Every person has certain qualities or presence in their heart that are awkward, disturbing, and negative. One of your sacred duties is to exercise kindness toward them. In a sense, you are called to be a loving parent to your delinquent qualities.” After you write your letter of forgiveness, burn it, not tear it up, burn it.

So let us use the season of Lent to deal with the guilt of the past and impart in ourselves the gift of forgiveness, reconciliation and freedom. Let us bestow on ourselves the gift of compassion. So we can enjoy God’s gift of compassion and understanding. Paul tells us in Corinthians, “Love is patient, Love is kind, Love takes no offense and is not resentful.” Let us use this season of Lent, to put those four aspects of Love into our daily life, into our daily living. We will then walk beyond guilt, and fear, into freedom and a transformed sense of who we are in God's love. Our goal is always to be able to love ourselves as God loves us. When we do not forgive ourselves, in other words, allow God's forgiveness to penetrate into what can be harden heart. It is wonderful to keep in front of us the following words of Henri J. M. Nouwe;

“God’s mercy is greater than our sins. There is an awareness of sin that does not lead to God but to self-pre-occupation. Our temptation is to be so impressed by our sins and failings and so overwhelmed by our lack of generosity that we get stuck in a paralyzing guilt. It is the guilt that says: “I am too sinful to deserve God’s mercy.” It is the guilt that leads to introspection instead of directing our eyes to God. It is the guilt that has become an idol and therefore a form of pride. Lent is the time to break down this idol and to direct our attention to our loving Lord. The question is: “Are we like Judas, who was so overcome by his sin that he could not believe in God’s mercy any longer and hanged himself, or are we like Peter who returned to his Lord with repentance and cried bitterly for his sins?” The season of Lent, during which winter and spring struggle with each other for dominance, helps us in a special way to cry out for God’s mercy.”

When we have a God of mercy we have a loving God. In fact we have a God that is prodigal in His love for us. He is reckless, extravagant with the merciful love He offers to you and I in each and every moment in our journey to Him and with Him. Conversely, if we do not have a God of mercy, or worse still when we see ourselves as not needing a God of mercy, there is a kind of hell have we placed ourselves in and then blamed others and God for it.

Let us remove the stumping block of guilt so we can see deeper into the cave of our soul where the presence of God is always there to forgive, to reconcile and impart in us the gift of freedom, the gift of new life which will enable us to live more deeply what is ours because of our Baptsim. Please love yourself enough to give yourself this gift of forgiveness. Only you can allow yourself to enjoy the gift of forgiveness already offered to you by your God. Psalm 103, "As far as the East is from the West, so far have I put your sins behind you." In the Old Testament we are told in Isaih, "You have thrown my sins over your shoulder". The following is a quotatation written by Merton to Henri Nouwen, which many people have embraced resulting in a new freedom and a new happiness. "At the center of our being a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure faith, a point or mark which belongs entirely to God...this little point...is a pure glory of God in us...it is life pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of Heaven. It is in everybody."

Our God and Father is a God who is prodigal in His love for us. Let us give ourselves the freedom to leave behind the prison of guilt, so we can walk more freely knowing His eyes are watching, His ears are listening and we truly have a Friend by our side. A Friend who will never leave us or abandon us.

God Bless,Fr. Joe

For those of us on the Journey of Questioning, Doubting and Rejecting

Many years ago, I was told that to question was to care. People will question in classrooms, will question relationships, will question that which has a meaning and significance. It stands to reason that we will have deep deep questions concerning the Unknowable and the Indefinable - God.

In this time of uncertainty there is one radical step I encourage you to take on a very regular basis, as a matter of fact, this step should be taken many many times each day. You must claim the words of the Father to his Son at the Jordan, "You are my beloved and in you I am well pleased". Mary and Maria you are to claim it as you are my beloved daughter, in you I am well pleased. Pat and Max you must open your heart to hear you are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased. This statement never changes. Each one is loved by God ever before we were born. Psalms 109:3 "From the womb, before the day star, have I begotten you." From eternity, you have been loved with an unconditioned, unlimited, unrestricted, everlasting love, which by it's very nature will be without end. It is a now and forever eternal love. Over the years, I have given the following quotation from Thomas Merton to many many teens and those in their early twenties as well as those in their thirties and forties;

"God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing do. But, I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know, that is I do this, you will lead me by the right road, though i May know nothing about it. Therefore, I will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost in the shadow of death. I will not fear for you are ever with me, and you will never me to face my perils alone."

Confusion is a necessary part of the journey into being an authentic human being rather than being a robot. God we know has created us in his image and his likeness endowing us with an intellect and a will. If God has given us such a great gift, he definitely wants us to use that gift. So, go ahead ask your questions, let it be part of your life and you will be surprised at how gently you will be lead into the answer. We live in Kairos time not Kronos time. From my own experience, I struggled with a question for seven years before the answer was revealed to me in and through my everyday life experience. As I struggled, it dawned on me what my mothers experience was, she told me how she prayed for seven years for something before the situation resolved itself. There is something about seven I have come to notice. In America people change homes every seven years. Every seven years people seem to change jobs and we are told every seven years we ask a new set of questions and the old answers don't do anymore [ROHR].

I have come to see over the years how God uses time, places, people and events of our everyday life to reveal to us the loving and caring God. Not an indifferent, detached God locked away on His Heavenly thrown, but a God who is always present in us and with us [Emanuel], and He uses our reality to become a reality in our world. We are in partnership with God in the ongoing creation of this world which in entrusted to our care. What a great dignity our God has bestowed on each on of us to make us co-creators and co-perfecters of His universe. We are entrusted with continuing the work, first began by the Word, the Word became enfleshed in the person of Jesus Christ, who is the source of our blessedness.

Sometimes we can buy into this wonderful mystery of God cooperating with us and the necessity of us cooperating with God to make creation what our God intended it to be. When we have doubts about our abilities and commitments it is in these moments we are most effective because we know ultimately whatever is accomplished for good in this world, it is the creative love of God, the Holy Spirit, who is at work and we are the instruments of co-creation.

Lent 2009

This is your first Lent and it is my first Lent. We as we are right now have never been through a Lenten Season. We as we are right now will journey with Jesus through the desert experience and because of this journey part of us chosen by God will be radically changed, transformed and transfigured. We may be reticent, reluctant or putting it bluntly, being down right afraid to enter into the desert. It is a scary place to journey into. Jesus Christ is the head and we are His body. Wherever he has gone, we are bound to follow, wherever we end up, Jesus is waiting there to greet us. We can almost hear Him say, "What has taken you so long, I have been waiting here for you". Will we ever be surprised at the places we end up and there we are greeted by the laughing, caring and gentle person and presence of Jesus Christ.

Next week, I will reflect more on Jesus' journey into the desert where He was with the wild beasts, but the Angels came and ministered to Him. We will face the wild beasts of guilt, fear and shame, which I now like to call the "toxic-trinity" and see in this encounter the place of conversion. Conversion meaning turning around and going in the opposite direction. Conversion is also described as turning around and looking for happiness in a different place. Scripture scholars describe the desert for Moses and the chosen people as a place of purification and courtship. We must always keep before us whenever we encounter the toxic-trinity we have the Holy Trinity, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit present in us, through us and with us. The Holy Trinity imparts to us their light, life and love. As the antidote to guilt, fear and shame. It is going to be an exciting Lent.