Von Balthasar on the Cross

“It is to the Cross that the Christian is challenged to follow his Master: no path of redemption can make a detour around it.” 

― Hans Urs von Balthasar, Unless You Become Like This Child

The Victory of the Cross

Most High, glorious God, enlighten the darkness of my heart; Give me right faith, sure hope, and perfect charity. Fill me with understanding and knowledge, that I may fulfill your command.

-St. Francis of Assisi

Bear Wrongs Patiently

The following comes from Msgr. Charles Pope:

Here is  perhaps the most revolutionary of the Spiritual works of mercy. It is the one tied most directly to the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. To decide to bear wrongs patiently is nothing less than to declare a revolution and to wage a very paradoxical counteroffensive against this world and its economy of anger.

There is a cycle of violence and retribution in which the devil seeks to engage us. The cycle begins with one person harming or slighting another, perhaps tempted to do so by the devil or by the world or flesh, manipulated by him. And then, the harm having been worked, the victim retaliates and escalates. The salvos go back and forth with increasing fervor, often including others as well. Meanwhile, Satan observes from the wings with delight as he reaps a bountiful harvest of anger, fear, bitterness, violence, and poisonous personal and social venom. Through such cycles, he is able to bring down friendships, families, cultures, and nations. Indeed, world wars can set much of the planet ablaze.

This is Satan’s economy. Its currency is hatred and its coinage is revenge. He would have us develop diverse portfolios of grievances and fears, and fill our coffers with memories of past wrongs stretching back hundreds or even thousands of years. So clever are Satan’s marketers that those who are consumers and suppliers think their vengeance is righteous—even holy. And so the economy of Satan grows and grows, fueled by vengeance, bankrolled by grievances.

Into this economy, this cycle of violence and retribution, the Christian who bears wrongs patiently engages in the revolutionary act of saying, even if on a small scale, “the cycle of violence, anger, and retribution ends with me.” It is like throwing a wrench into the gears of Satan’s economy. Even if it is just the bearing of very small wrongs, it slows the machine of hatred and retribution, and causes the economy of Satan to grind more slowly. The person who does this engages in a revolutionary act, a paradoxical act of sabotage.

It is the same paradox we see on the Cross, where Christ won by bearing patiently and bravely the venom, hatred, and violence of this world to the end. He bore it, not opening His mouth, not retaliating, not hating, but loving and enduring unto the end.  The Cross is a huge wrench cast into the gears of Satan’s economy. Every Christian who bears wrongs patiently increases the size of that Cross by the fact that Christ unites our sufferings to His.

Note the logic of this revolution: darkness cannot drive our darkness, only light can do that; hatred cannot drive out hatred, only love can do that; pride cannot drive out pride, only humility can do that. And thus Jesus, and every Christian who bears wrongs patiently, drives out darkness by light, hatred by love, and pride by humility. It is nothing short of a revolution, a cry of civil disobedience in a regime that demands escalation and further retribution.

Is such a stance to be absolute? Must we bear every wrong patiently? No. There are times when we must defend ourselves and others, when the only way to repel the grave harm caused by a serious injustice is to disable it and remove it. There are times when we must refuse to cooperate in evil, even if it means suffering arrest or even the loss of life. There are also times when we must actively resist evil and stand in its way. But in all this, retaliation must not be our goal. Rather our goal must be justice, established in love and respect, with a desire to end the cycle, not merely to continue it as the victor. Evil is to be resisted and robbed of further prey.  If I seek to conquer and destroy evil, too easily I can become the very evil I seek to destroy. Even as I declare my victory, the evil still lives to strike again, but now it lives in my own heart.

The cycle must end. The Christian who bears wrongs patiently says, in effect, “It ends with me.” I will take the blow (like my savior on the Cross) but I will not return it. This does not make me spineless, but rather courageous and crafty. Jesus once said, To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also (Mat 5:39).

Many interpret this passage as weakness. It is not. It is revolutionary and strong. In effect, the one who turns the other cheek looks the perpetrator in the eye. He does not flee in fear. Rather, he refuses to enter into the world of the perpetrator, into the economy of hatred, by escalating the hatred. No, he stands his ground, neither fleeing in fear nor losing by becoming like his enemy and retaliating. He remains himself, drawing his dignity not from the praise of men, but from the Lord. Is he weak? Was Jesus weak on the Cross or strong?

Yes, bearing wrongs patiently can seem irksome to us. Perhaps we think we are compromising with evil. This is only true if we compromise by doing evil. That must be resisted and to those who would seek to force us to comply we can only respectfully respond, “I cannot comply.” But in the end, to bear wrongs patiently is to declare a revolution against Satan’s regime, to break the cycle of his economy and say, “The cycle of violence and revenge ends with me.” It robs Satan of prey, of dividends.

Throw a little revolution. Never cooperate with evil, but where possible, bear wrongs patiently. It is like putting sand in the gears; Satan loses a little something every time.

Here is the death scene from The Passion of the Christ. Note that at the end, Satan seems to know he has lost, that he has been denied his true desire. He seems to realize that the Cross, like a wrench, has been thrown into the gears of his hateful economy.

The Passion - The Crucifixion from Anchorsaway Ministries on Vimeo.

We Want Christianity Without the Cross

The following comes from the NCR:

If there were a Nazarene yearbook 2,000 years ago, Jesus would not have been voted most popular. Maybe "most likely to be tortured and crucified" but definitely not most popular.

He didn't seem to care all that much about being popular because he knew that if being popular is your goal you may very well achieve it but at what cost? As Jesus said, we cannot serve two masters.

When Jesus said, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give is my flesh for the life of the world," it freaked a number of his disciples out. In fact, it freaked them out enough that they bolted.

Now, as they abandoned him, Jesus could've said, "Hold the phone" and then they might've asked what a phone was. But maybe they would've understood through context. But Jesus could've said, "Just messing with y'all. Not ACTUALLY my body and blood. Symbolically. It was all a metaphor, you see."

Nope. Jesus didn't say that. Jesus wasn't trying to be cool. He wasn't concerned with popularity at all. In fact, so committed to not being popular was Jesus that he allowed himself to be crucified. That, my friends, is a strong commitment to unpopularity.

So I'm always a little bit perplexed when I see Catholics arguing that the Church needs to change its teachings in order to be popular. They use terms like "get with the times" or "modernize" but it means the same thing.

We're told that if you want to be cool you'll be awesome with abortion, good with the gay sex, open to ordaining women, relaxed about religious freedom, and cool with contraception. And we're told that unless the Church does these things, churches will become increasingly empty and irrelevant. But what role does that leave the Church, to simply affirm what people already think and do? Is it the Church's role to make people feel good about their choices regardless of the reality. It seems that modern Christianity wants to avoid the cross but here's the thing - there is no Christianity without the cross.

As the Church continues preaching the truth, it may very well face empty pews, hatred, and even persecution in the near future. We will be the modern lepers who instead of announcing themselves as "unclean" must pronounce themselves "uncool." And it will likely get worse than that. When Jesus said He was the living bread, some ran. Jesus was tortured and killed. That's going on right now in many parts of the world. And it may soon go on here in the Western world.

As Francis Cardinal George said, "I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square." While this may seem like the beginning of the end, it will not be. This is how the Church is reborn.

It may very well be persecution which will eventually bring people back to the Church. But in the foreseeable future there may very well be dark times ahead. Prepare yourselves. Prepare your children. The cross awaits.

St. John of the Cross and the Night of the Senses

The following comes from Fr. Iain Matthew O.C.D.

“The trouble is our culture has a mesmeric fascination in keeping moving–there is no where so urgent as an airport. Our fascination is moving, and growing fear of having to stop. It takes courage to stay with it: not to move on when I do not like it anymore but, instead, to stay with it and let what is no longer novel disclose its unsuspected depth.

“St. John of the Cross tells us, ‘Say no to your desires and you will discover what your heart really desires. What makes you think your longings are God’s longings?’

“To live on likes and dislikes–gusto, apetito, gratification, affective drive–keeps one a tourist, doing more and more, experiencing less and less.  This is to live on the level of ‘sense’. It refers not so much to the sensory–the body, the emotions–as to the person who is hostage to his or her own needs. And the sensory side of the person can symbolize that: body and emotions are a rich blessing when they are in place, but they tend to turn imperialist and extend dominion over the whole person, making us ‘sensual’. Sensual man is the person enslaved to each next moment.

“If, however, a person chooses not to fill the hole with one more sensation, not to flit to another relationship or different project, but to see this one through, life can transfer on to a new level. St. John calls it ‘spirit’.

“At first it can feel like starving. John tells of a language, taste, texture, freedom, peace, life which is yet to be discovered and which we cannot know until it is discovered. He assures us that, ‘To come to know what you know not, you have to go by a way that you know not.’ Not filling the gap inside of us with another novelty can feel like we’re starving, but it allows the genuinely new to be disclosed. It allows one to live, not as a consumer among objects, but as a person among persons: Fit for communion, for the love, which can hold the other, and be held, on open palms. Not grasped.

“That is the level of spirit: availability as a person for communion; the space for the gift of the Other. This is more than just a rearrangement of the pieces.”

Christmas, Suffering, and the Cross

The following comes from Michael Coren at the Catholic World Report:

I graduated from high school in England back in 1977, and it’s grimly sobering that some of the people reading this column weren’t even born then! Be warned younger people—middle age creeps up on as surreptitiously as the most careful and crafty beasts of prey. There was a somewhat perfunctory party where students and teachers said goodbye to one another, but most of us were only too eager to see the back of school and go on to university, work, fun, whatever. I remained close to my oldest friend, who later was the best man at my wedding, but otherwise I have not maintained contact with most of my contemporaries. Frankly, I can’t even remember their names.

There was one couple, however, who I do remember: Jonathan and Angela. I say “couple” because while only 17-years-old back then, they always seemed to have been together. Not in some prurient way but as surprisingly mature, committed young people. They were also both extremely good-looking, athletic, and intelligent. With so many gifts they could at least have been unpleasant and rude just to balance things out, but they were also kind and generous—the model couple.

I recall Angela speaking to me at the party about her plans but I think I was too busy trying to look at her legs to listen to what she was saying (I wasn’t a Catholic at the time, so it was okay!). After that I pretty much forgot about Angela and Jonathan. I married, came to Canada, started a family, and moved on.

Fast-forward twenty years to a phone-call from that oldest friend. “Are you still visiting London at Christmas,” he asked, “and do you remember Jonathan and Angela?” I said “Yes” to both questions. “They’ve apparently been living in Africa and have just returned to Britain. They’re having a party to say hello to everybody. They want us all to know, however, that Jonathan was in an accident. Angela has been a teacher at a small school, and there had been a fire. One little boy, Joshua, had been left inside. Jonathan ran back in and rescued the boy. The child is fine, but Jonathan is badly burnt; they don’t want anybody to be shocked when they see him.”

I did indeed fly to London that Christmas, and made my way to the apartment whereJonathan and Angela were staying. It was Christmas Eve, and I’d planned to go to Midnight Mass after seeing them. As for burns and the accident, I had worked as a war reporter, had seen death up close, and I was—so foolishly prided myself—a man of the world. I arrived a little early, and knocked on the door. There was Angela, as lovely as ever. “Come in, come in”, she said. “You’re the first here, and Jonathan will be overjoyed so see you.”

There he was. This once strikingly handsome young man, sitting in a large armchair, his face so disguised by scar tissue that I could barely see his eyes. One ear seemed to be almost missing, and he had hardly any hair. I tried to register nonchalance, but it never works. Then he spoke, and the voice was the same as it had been two decades ago. And the words, the words. “All right Coren, I know I look a bloody mess. But at least one of us has kept their figure.”

I tried to laugh, but instead I began to cry. Angela ran to me, embraced me, said, “Don’t worry, don’t worry, we’ve both done a lot of that. Don’t worry.” Then a little African boy ran into the room, jumped on Jonathan’s lap and said, “Daddy, daddy!” Angela held my hand and said, “Have you met our new adopted son? His name is Joshua.”

I learned that night that Jonathan and Angela were Christians, had been all of their lives, and that after university they had worked as missionaries in Africa. Jonathan helped bring a clean water supply to the region; she set up and ran a school. Christ had formed their lives, their behavior, their relationship, their love, their sacrifice, and their courage. I should have known this years earlier but I was—yes—too busy trying to look at Angela’s legs. That was an evening, a Christmas, and a Midnight Mass I will never forget.

Let me be candid. There are times when I wonder if it’s all worth it. The internal politics of the Church; the ambitious Catholics—clergy and laity—who gossip and betray; those who are never happy unless they are condemning and criticizing the words and actions of others. It was Flannery O’Connor who spoke of suffering for the Church and suffering from the Church. The first is easy and rewarding, and can lead to deeper faith. The second is enervating and painful, and can lead to despair. But whenever I feel the sting, see the unfairness, shudder at the injustice, I try to think of Jonathan, Angela, and little Joshua. But most of all I think of what this season is all about, and it is about He whose birth we celebrate at Christmas.

I know the birth of Jesus Christ may well not have been in December and that it may not have been a stable, but I really could not care less. I have been to Bethlehem, but more importantly Bethlehem has been to me. I have not had to run into burning schools or put my life at risk, and my complaints about ill treatment are generally little more than privileged whines. Nor do I want to be a martyr, if it can be at all avoided. The point, though, is not whether we die for Christ but whether we are willing to die for Christ. If it’s love, it’s total. There’s no middle way when it comes to the romance of faith.

He became a baby so that we could know Him and understand Him properly. This is the quintessence of Christmas, the story of God becoming man—becoming child. Naked vulnerability guaranteeing eternal life. Angela reminded me of this when I spoke to her the day before I returned to Canada those twenty years ago. “Women used to turn and look at my husband in the street because he was so good-looking”, she said. “Now everybody turns and looks at him, but for other reasons.” A pause. “I’ve never stopped looking at him, and never will.”

Never stop looking at Jesus, as a baby, a child, an adult, a man dying on the Cross, a God restored to life, a savior with us until the end of time.\

Have a blessed and wonderful Christmas.

The Curse is Real (And So is the Cross)

The following comes from the Catholic Exchange:

Not many people are offended by the message that God loves them. They might find it old-fashioned or naïve, but usually not offensive. Almost everyone, however, is offended by the message of Christ crucified. It implies we are all sinners. Regardless of how good we are, what kind of salary we make, what kind of education we have, the cross says we are all sinners who need a Savior.

A startling claim of Catholicism is that we are born under a curse. The idea doesn’t exactly imbue the warm cozies, does it? But we will never feel the truth of the Gospel unless we feel the truth of the curse. If we hope to catch even a glimpse of glory in the light of the crucified and resurrected Christ, we need to feel the truth of the curse. It’s not enough to admit that all creation is good or that Adam and Eve were made to bring God praise. We need to own up to the fact that sin has entered the scene.

We are in pieces

What is humanity but a lavish outburst of the beautiful, unfathomable, all holy greatness of God. What a God he must be! But how miserable and wretched is humanity because of pride and disobedience. How pitiable we must be! Because of sin, God’s original design for male-and-female creation is warped and confused. Humanity is a broken institution. We are in pieces. Broken people get married and become broken parents who make broken kids. Broken people run countries, work for employers, manage companies, and cook dinner. Because of sin, being human is a broken thing.

Read the rest here.

Contemplating the Faith: The Exaltation of the Holy Cross

Christ was truly crucified for our sins. For if you would deny it, this place refuses you visibly, and blessed Golgotha, in which we are now assembled for the sake of Him who was here crucified: and the whole world has since been filled with pieces of the wood of the Cross. But He was crucified not for sins of His own, but that we might delivered from our sins. As thou as Man he was at that times despised of men, and was buffeted, yet He was acknowledged by the Creation as God: for when the sun saw his Lord dishonored, he grew dim and trembled, not enduring the sight.

Let us, therefore, not be ashamed of the Cross of Christ. You openly seal it upon your forehead that the devils may behold th royal sign and flee trembling far away. Make then this sign at eating and drinking, at sitting, at lying down, at rising up, at speaking, at walking: in a word, at every act.

For He who was here crucified is in heaven above. If after being crucified and buried He had remained in the tomb, we should have had cause to be ashamed. But, in fact, He who was crucified on Golgotha here, has ascended into heaven from the Mount of Olives on the East.

For after having gone down hence into Hades, and come up again to us, He ascended again from us into heaven, His father addressing Him, and saying, "Sit at My right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool."

From the Fourth Catethetical Lecture by St Cyril of Jerusalem. Died 386 AD.

Life Comes Through The Cross; ‘Life’ Lessons

The following comes from the site of Bishop Paul Etienne:

Early on in our faith formation, we learn about the cross. We hear about the cross of Jesus, and all the suffering he endured for our sake. We learn that Easter only comes after Good Friday. We learn that the Resurrection and the Life of the Risen Lord only follow the via dolorosa and Jesus’ suffering and death.

In more secular terms, we hear, ‘no guts, no glory.’ One can imagine this phrase being used in the face of great danger, such as the need to cross a raging river to avoid drowning, or to charge an enemy in the heat of battle. Another favorite is ‘no pain, no gain.’ This phrase is a motivational phrase for one working out to prepare for an athletic event, or perhaps only to lose weight.

These above mentioned phrases of course have their roots in Sacred Scripture, and ultimately in the life and Gosepl of Jesus. For example, in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus teaches his disciples (and us):

Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the Gospel will save it.

For some reason, in many people’s day-to-day life, we are willing to make great sacrifices for temporal gain. We may forsake relationships for the sake of carreers. We may forgoe a healthy diet in order to have the kind of body the culture around us tells us is ‘beautiful’. Athletes invest huge amounts of their youth and time and endure tremendous rigors for fame and fortune. In other words, they are so focused on the ‘end goal’ they are willing to do almost anything.

Faith is no different, and yet people have such a difficult time making the same ‘connection’, or even making the same ‘sacrifices’ for something that is not fleeting, and has a far greater ‘satisfaction factor’. If we could only see the cross as the positive agent that it is in the faith journey. Sacrifice, the cross, is never easy, but until we allow ourself to ‘risk’ living fully the life of discipleship Jesus speaks of, we will never ’taste’ and experience the truth of the Gospel, that it is only in losing one’s self that we find true life.

This life experienced as a result of such discipleship is truly rewarding! Once we experience this ‘Life’, then we will see more distinctly what Jesus is talking about. It is like the pianist, who only after hours and years of practice is capable of playing a beautiful concert.

May we willingly embrace the daily sacrifices which are a part of our life as disciples of Jesus, so that our life may be just one small part of the great symphony God envisions for this present moment, only to lead us into the great Choir of Life Everlasting!

Heather King on the Cross of the Church

 The following comes from Heather King at Word on Fire:

"We must all be saved together! Reach God together! Appear before Him together! We must return to our Father’s house together…what would He think if we arrived without the others, without the others returning, too?" - Charles Péguy

Recently  a reader sent a link to a piece by a disgruntled lapsed Catholic who was marching about fuming that no mere Pope Francis would induce him to re-join the Church. " 'God is love, God is love,'" he groused. That's the namby-pamby message I hear. I want something challenging. I want to hear about sacrifice. He approvingly quoted Flannery O'Connor: "They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."

This guy so does not get what Flannery, with her huge sense of humor, and profound love of Christ, got from Day One: the Church IS the Cross. If you want to be challenged (and ridiculed, and marginalized, and scorned), do major penance and sacrifice, and die to every idea you've ever had about who you are, who God is, and what religion is, become a member of the Catholic church.

"When you finally discover that you are just one of the little people, don’t conclude that this makes you special," observed French eccentric/lay comic-mystic/lover of the poor Madeleine Delbrêl.

The idea isn't to demand that the Church make herself worthy of us. The idea is to realize that in spite of our unworthiness, we - miracle upon grace upon wonder upon mystery - have been deemed worthy of the Church. "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," we pray, just before receiving the Eucharist. The Eucharist! The Body and Blood of the Savior of the World. I mean this joker thinks Christ is not worthy of him?!

Here's the Cross of the Church: It's not just for us. It's for everybody. Thus, we don't get to have homilies tailor-made for us, although in another way a homily always is tailor-made, usually in the last way we would have chosen. The priest has to meet the tentative searcher; the elderly man who has tottered in, aching in every bone in his body, to give thanks; the pregnant teenager; the wife of the CEO whose son is a crackhead dying out on the streets; the crackhead; the guy who's cheating on his wife; the wife; the vet suffering from PTSD; the general who's ordered the killing; the nurse trying to figure out whether to quit her job because her hospital is performing abortions.

He has to meet the one who thinks the Church is too hard and the one who thinks the Church is too soft, the one who is rejoicing and the one who is mourning, the one who is pissed at God and the one who is falling madly in love with God. He has to meet the eight-year-old and the eighty-year-old. He also has to meet the blowhard, the Pharisee, the one who thinks only she is up to being challenged, only she suffers, only she gets it and for God's sake can't we get some decent music. All in six minutes.

The priest has to do that while performing baptisms, weddings, funerals; while overseeing the fundraising fall festival; while settling parish conflicts; while blessing homes, cars, and candles. He has to do this, day after day, often many times a day, while exhausted, understaffed, impatient, critical and doubtful (i.e. human) himself. He doesn't get to have it his way, all the time, any more than any of us do.

It is one of the glories and gifts of the Church that we don't encourage priests who are "personalities." We don't encourage flamboyancy. We encourage humility, plodding perseverance, and service. So perhaps the priest can be forgiven for resorting to saying that God is love, not least of all because God IS love--just not the love, ever, that we think. Actually, in seventeen years in the Church, I have never once heard a priest say "God is love." I've heard priests say our job is to serve the poor, examine our faults, love God. I've heard a steady stream of Gospel-based homilies that, if not individually wildly compelling, have consistently, slowly, quietly, inexorably led me closer to Christ.

In seventeen years, I can also count on one hand the number of times a priest, while celebrating Mass, has appeared surly, bored, condescending, or irreverent. This quiet, faithful carrying out of the duties of the office, no matter how disordered the priest may be personally, has set me free to ponder the great mystery and sacrifice of the Mass, to penetrate beneath the surface, to realize that, as Flannery O'Connor observed, the Mass could be celebrated out of a suitcase in a furnace room and it would still be the Mass: the most shocking, scandalous, cataclysmic, glorious, horrifying, sublime act the world ever has or ever could know. After awhile I realized, Let me bring my burning heart. Let me make up for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. Instead of sitting around complaining and carping, maybe I could think about what I could contribute to the Church.

Heather King: "The follower of Christ doesn't strive. The follower of Christ surrenders."

The following comes from Heather King:

"We must all be saved together! Reach God together! Appear before Him together! We must return to our Father’s house together…what would He think if we arrived without the others, without the others returning, too?"

--Charles Péguy

Recently  a reader sent a link to a piece by a disgruntled lapsed Catholic who was marching about fuming that no mere Pope Francis would induce him to re-join the Church. " 'God is love, God is love,'" he groused. That's the namby-pamby message I hear. I want something challenging. I want to hear about sacrifice. He approvingly quoted Flannery O'Connor: "They think faith is a big electric blanket, when of course it is the cross."

This guy so does not get what Flannery, with her huge sense of humor, and profound love of Christ, got from Day One: the Church IS the Cross. If you want to be challenged (and ridiculed, and marginalized, and scorned), do major penance and sacrifice, and die to every idea you've ever had about who you are, who God is, and what religion is, become a member of the Catholic church.

"When you finally discover that you are just one of the little people, don’t conclude that this makes you special," observed French eccentric/lay comic-mystic/lover of the poor Madeleine Delbrêl.

The idea isn't to demand that the Church make herself worthy of us. The idea is to realize that in spite of our unworthiness, we--miracle upon grace upon wonder upon mystery--have been deemed worthy of the Church. "Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed," we pray, just before receiving the Eucharist. The Eucharist! The Body and Blood of the Savior of the World. I mean this joker thinks Christ is not worthy of him?!

Here's the Cross of the Church: It's not just for us. It's for everybody. Thus, we don't get to have homilies tailor-made for us, although in another way a homily always is tailor-made, usually in the last way we would have chosen. The priest has to meet the tentative searcher; the elderly man who has tottered in, aching in every bone in his body, to give thanks; the pregnant teenager; the wife of the CEO whose son is a crackhead dying out on the streets; the crackhead; the guy who's cheating on his wife; the wife; the vet suffering from PTSD; the general who's ordered the killing; the nurse trying to figure out whether to quit her job because her hospital is performing abortions.

He has to meet the one who thinks the Church is too hard and the one who thinks the Church is too soft, the one who is rejoicing and the one who is mourning, the one who is pissed at God and the one who is falling madly in love with God. He has to meet the eight-year-old and the eighty-year-old. He also has to meet the blowhard, the Pharisee, the one who thinks only she is up to being challenged, only she suffers, only she gets it and for God's sake can't we get some decent music.All in six minutes.

The priest has to do that while performing baptisms, weddings, funerals; while overseeing the fundraising fall festival; while settling parish conflicts; while blessing homes, cars, and candles.  He has to do this, day after day, often many times a day, while exhausted, understaffed, impatient, critical and doubtful (i.e. human) himself. He doesn't get to have it his way, all the time, any more than any of us do.

It is one of the glories and gifts of the Church that we don't encourage priests who are "personalities." We don't encourage flamboyancy. We encourage humility, plodding perseverance, and service. So perhaps the priest can be forgiven for resorting to saying that God is love, not least of all because God IS love--just not the love, ever, that we think. Actually, in seventeen years in the Church, I have never once heard a priest say "God is love." I've heard priests say our job is to serve the poor, examine our faults, love God. I've heard a steady stream of Gospel-based homilies that, if not individually wildly compelling, have consistently, slowly, quietly, inexorably led me closer to Christ.

In seventeen years, I can also count on one hand the number of times a priest, while celebrating Mass, has appeared surly, bored, condescending, or irreverent. This quiet, faithful carrying out of the duties of the office, no matter how disordered the priest may be personally, has set me free to ponder the great mystery and sacrifice of the Mass, to penetrate beneath the surface, to realize that, as Flannery O'Connor observed, the Mass could be celebrated out of a suitcase in a furnace room and it would still be the Mass: the most shocking, scandalous, cataclysmic, glorious, horrifying, sublime act the world ever has or ever could know. After awhile I realized, Let me bring my burning heart. Let me make up for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ. Instead of sitting around complaining and carping, maybe I could think about what I could contribute to the Church.

People erroneously think the Church is confining, but the Church gives us the framework of prayer, the Gospels, the Catechism, the community, and the Sacraments and then you are more or less on your own, man. You will be surprised to find that the Church trusts that--given your intelligence, good will, and humble, contrite heart--you will be able to connect the dots. And the dots are these: You don't get to have someone hold your hand and guide you along the perilous, excruciatingly lonely path to Christ. You don't get to have someone applaud or even notice your hidden life of sacrifice and penance. You don't get to be understood, validated, and comforted every other minute. While you're being nailed to your own Cross, you get to do those things for someone else.

You will see that the Church is both the lightest yoke and the heaviest cross imaginable. You will begin to understand the meaning of the Sermon on the Mount. You will see that the biggest electric blanket of all is the desire for spiritual excellence, an Ivy League college, a high-end gym with a personal trainer; for others to view our journey to God as interesting, as special, as just a bit of a cut above the ordinary.

The follower of Christ doesn't strive. The follower of Christ surrenders...

Please, read the rest here.

Fr. Robert Barron: ISIS and the Meaning of the Cross

The following comes from Word on Fire:

Last week, the attention of the world was riveted to a deserted beach in northern Libya, where a group of twenty one Coptic Christians were brutally beheaded by masked operatives of the ISIS movement. In the wake of the executions, ISIS released a gruesome video entitled “A Message in Blood to the Nation of the Cross.” I suppose that for the ISIS murderers the reference to “the Nation of the Cross” had little sense beyond a generic designation for Christianity. Sadly for most Christians, too, the cross has become little more than an anodyne, a harmless symbol, a pious decoration. I would like to take the awful event on that Libyan beach, as well as the ISIS message concerning it, as an occasion to reflect on the still startling distinctiveness of the cross.

In the time of Jesus, the cross was a brutal and very effective sign of Roman power. Imperial authorities effectively said, “If you cross us (pun intended), we will affix you to a dreadful instrument of torture and leave you to writhe in agonizing, literally excruciating (ex cruce, from the cross) pain until you die. Then we will make sure that your body hangs on that gibbet until it is eaten away by scavenging animals.” The cross was, basically, state-sponsored terrorism, and it did indeed terrify people. The great Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero once described a crucifixion but only through a convoluted circumlocution, for he couldn’t bring himself to characterize it directly. After putting down the great slave uprising of Spartacus, the Roman government lined the Appian Way with hundreds of crosses so as to dissuade any other would-be revolutionaries. Pontius Pilate had much the same intention when he nailed dozens of Jewish rebels to the walls of Jerusalem. That same Pilate arranged for Jesus to be crucified on Calvary Hill, a promontory situated close to one of the gates of ancient Jerusalem, guaranteeing that his horrific death would not be missed by the large Passover crowds moving in and out of the city.  

From the crucified Jesus, all of the disciples, save John, fled, precisely because they wanted with all their hearts to avoid his dreadful fate. After Good Friday, the friends of Jesus huddled in terror in the Upper Room, petrified that they might be nailed up on Calvary as well. The disciples on the road to Emmaus were, understandably, heading out of Jerusalem, away from danger, and they were utterly convinced that Jesus’ movement had come to naught. In a word, the cross meant the victory of the world, and the annihilation of Jesus and what he stood for.  

And this is why it is surpassing strange that one of the earliest Apostles and missionaries of the Christian religion could write, “I preach one thing, Christ and him crucified!” How could Paul—the passage is taken from his first letter to the Corinthians—possibly present the dreadful cross as the centerpiece of his proclamation? He could do so only because he knew that God had raised the crucified Jesus from the dead, proving thereby that God’s love and forgiveness are greater than anything in the world. This is why his exaltation of the cross is a sort of taunt to Rome and all of its brutal descendants down through the ages: “You think that scares us? God has conquered that!” And this is why, to this day, Christians boldly hold up an image of the humiliated, tortured Jesus to the world. What they are saying is, “We are not afraid.”

How wonderful this is, by the way, in light of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy and the controversy over the Dutch cartoonist’s mocking depictions of the prophet Muhammad. Christians don’t fuss particularly about insults to Jesus, for we reverence a depiction of the insulted Christ as our most sacred icon. We can say, with Paul, “I am certain that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither height nor depth, nor any other creature will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39), for we know that the world killed Jesus but God raised him from the dead.

Read the rest here.

The Cross Is the Key to Understanding Life

A reflection by Fr. Richard Tomasek, SJ at Celebrating the Year of Faith:

“Were not our hearts on fire within us while He spoke to us on the way and opened the Scriptures to us?”  ( Luke 24:13-35).  The story of the two disciples returning to Emmaus, disillusioned and discouraged by the terrible execution of Jesus whom they thought was the Messiah sent to free Israel, is the story of each one of us.  We too often find ourselves defeated by life’s difficulties and questioning whether God cares or even exists.

In 1946 a Viennese psychiatrist by the name of Viktor Frankl wrote a little book called Man’s Search for Meaning.  By the time of his death in 1997, the book had sold over 10 million copies in 24 languages and was considered one of the ten most influential books ever published in the USA.  Frankl found himself in a Nazi concentration camp and observed that some prisoners withered away and died quickly whereas others carried on with relative strength.  By interviews and reflection, it became clear to him that the people who had the best chance of survival were whose who had a meaning, a purpose and a hope in their life.  Perhaps it was a burning desire to rejoin their family, or to finish a science project started, or to persevere in the strength of their religious faith.  From that, Frankl developed a school of psychotherapy called Logotherapy, based on the Greek word logos, which signifies word or meaning.  It is the same word used by the New Testament to name the Word of God, the second Person of the Divine Trinity, who became man for us in the womb of Mary. “And the Word became flesh…” (Jo 1:14).

In the Emmaus account in Luke’s Gospel, Jesus, the true Word of God, enlightens his disheartened followers by opening the Scriptures to them and showing them how his sacrificial death-victory were prophesied for hundreds of years in the writings of Moses and the prophets.  The key phrase is, “Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?”  The Cross is the key to understanding life.  Jesus himself pondered and prayed over the scriptural Word of God and found His vocation described in such passages as Deut 18:18 (he will be another Moses), Psalm 22 and Is 53 (by his sufferings and death we will be healed) or Psalm 2 (You are My son; you shall rule the nations).  Just as Jesus learns his identity and mission from praying over the Word of Scripture, so each of us must make a practice of reading and praying over the Scriptures in order to find God’s meaning for what is happening in our lives.   As with the disciples whom Jesus instructs “along the way,” our hearts too will be set on fire with understanding , hope and enthusiasm when we see God’s secret and unexpected ways for blessing and leading us.  And we too will run to tell others of our discovery just as the two disciples ran back to Jerusalem to share their new faith with the rest of the Church.

Another way to do this easily is to pray the Scriptures with Mary. Just to pray theMysteries of the Rosary is to see how God led her from one challenge to another, one surrender to another, all the way to sharing her Son’s bitter death and His glorious resurrection and outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost.  As we pray these Mysteries, Jesus the Word also teaches us and sets our hearts on fire, rejoicing to share His cross and resurrection in the concrete challenges and details of our own life.

Pope Francis: There is No Christian Without a Cross

The following comes from Zenit:

“Without the cross, there is no Christian,” Pope Francis said during his homily at Casa Santa Marta this morning. The Holy Father dedicated his homily to Luke’s Gospel which recalls Jesus’ requirements for following Him.

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me,” Jesus says in the Gospel. The Pope explained that Christian life does not exist outside of this path.

“There is always this path that He has done first: the path of humility, also the path of humiliation, to destroy Himself, and then rise again,” the Pope said. “But, this is the path, the Christian style. Without the Cross, there is no Christian. The Christian style takes the cross of Jesus and goes forward. Not without the cross, not without Jesus.”

The Pope went on to say that this Christian style of denying oneself is meant to give life to others. It is the “style of humility, gentleness and meekness.”

“The book, The Imitation of Christ, gives us beautiful advice: ‘Love to be unknown and considered as nothing.’ It is Christian humility, that which Jesus did first,” the 77 year old Pontiff said.

Concluding his homily, Pope Francis invited the faithful to embrace the joy that comes from giving one’s life. All other joys, he noted, allow one to gain the world but result in ultimately ruining one’s life.

“At the beginning of this Lent, let us ask the Lord to teach us this Christian style of service, of joy, of destruction of ourselves and of fruitfulness with Him, as He wants,” he said.

Pope Francis on the 'real St. Francis'

Oh, Love That Will Not Let Me Go: On My Conversion to Catholicism

It seems ironic that a free spirit like me -- who doesn't like hierarchy, routine, and structure -- ended up in the Catholic tradition.

The following comes from Karen Beattie at the Catholic Channel:

There is no way to "return to the faith of your childhood," not really, not unless you've just woken from a decades-long and absolutely literal coma . . . If you believe at fifty what you believed at fifteen, then you have not lived—or have denied the reality of your life. ~ Christian Wiman, My Bright Abyss

The first few months after our then two-and-a-half-year-old foster daughter was placed in our home, she resisted affection. When I rocked her to sleep at night, she would wiggle away from me, never snuggling face-to-face or chest-to-chest. I would hold her tighter until she gave up and leaned against me.

One night, when my husband David was out of town, D's grief at her previous losses (of her birth parents, of her former foster family) seemed too much for her to bear. She had a meltdown when I told her that she had to stop brushing her teeth (she had been brushing for ten minutes, rather than go to bed). She threw her Barbie toothbrush across the slate bathroom floor and started wailing so loudly that I feared the neighbors would think I was torturing her. I tried to pick her up, all thirty-five pounds of her toddler chubbiness, but she was too strong and she pounded my chest until I let her go.

I followed her around the condo for thirty minutes, trying to calm her down. Finally, I corralled her into her bedroom and closed the door. I sat on her pink flowered rug and once again tried to hold her. She was so exhausted that she let me squeeze my arms around her chubby brown limbs. Still, she squirmed, but I held her tight, I felt the pounding of her heart, and the sweat on her cheek.

"Are you sad?" I asked. She nodded her head as she continued to sob.

"You're safe here," I said. "You have so many people who love you. So many people. I will hold you tight until you believe it."

During the year following her placement with us, we tried to keep a regular schedule. We put her into a good structured daycare. At home we created routines and rituals. We ate lunch at noon, had naptime at 2:00, and bedtime was strictly at 8:00 pm. The bedtime rituals were always the same.

Within the combination of our embrace and solid structure, she didn't have to worry about what was coming next. She had the boundaries she needed in order to thrive. A container to work out her grief. A safe place to feel what she needed to feel.

It's not just hurting children who thrive in structure. What might seem like stifling limitations at first can be a path to freedom. Poets work within structure. Writers have a word count they need stay within. Artists learn the rules of painting realistically before they can launch into abstraction.

I think of this when I try to explain to people why I became Catholic.

There are many reasons why I converted. But it seems ironic that a free spirit like me, who doesn't like hierarchy, routine, and structure ended up in the Catholic tradition.

But I changed. And circumstances changed.

The non-denominational churches that I had attended for years, and where I had learned so much and found deep community, were now like a baggy, shapeless coat. While I once thrived in unstructured, ever-changing worship services, now they left me feeling empty and bored and anxious. While at one time I craved long exegetical sermons that fed my intellectual hunger, now I felt I would never get all of my questions answered—and that God was a total mystery to me. Where I once longed for the newest and latest, I now longed for the depth and stability of tradition.

Read the rest here.

Pope Francis: Approach mystery of the Cross with prayer and tears

(Vatican Radio) At the Mass for the Feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, Pope Francis said the mystery of the Cross is a great mystery for mankind, a mystery that can only be approached in prayer and in tears.
In his homily, the Pope said that it is in the mystery of the Cross that we find the story of mankind and the story of God, synthesised by the Fathers of the Church in the comparison between the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, in Paradise, and the tree of the Cross:
“The one tree has wrought so much evil, the other tree has brought us to salvation, to health. This is the course of the humanity’s story: a journey to find Jesus Christ the Redeemer, who gives His life for love. God, in fact, has not sent the Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. This tree of the Cross save us, all of us, from the consequences of that other tree, where self-sufficiency, arrogance, the pride of us wanting to know all things according to our own mentality, according to our own criteria, and also according to that presumption of being and becoming the only judges of the world. This is the story of mankind: from one tree to the other.”
In the Cross there is the “story of God,” the Pope continued, because we can say that God has a story.” In fact, “He has chosen to take up our story and to journey with us,” becoming man, assuming the condition of a slave and making Himself obedient even to death on a Cross:
“God takes this course for love! There’s no other explanation: love alone does this. Today we look upon the Cross, the story of mankind and the story of God. We look upon this Cross, where you can try that honey of aloe, that bitter honey, that bitter sweetness of the sacrifice of Jesus. But this mystery is so great, and we cannot by ourselves look well upon this mystery, not so much to understand – yes, to understand – but to feel deeply the salvation of this mystery. First of all the mystery of the Cross. It can only be understood, a little bit, by kneeling, in prayer, but also through tears: they are the tears that bring us close to this mystery.”
“Without weeping, heartfelt weeping,” Pope Francis emphasized, we can never understand this mystery. It is “the cry of the penitent, the cry of the brother and the sister who are looking upon so much human misery” and looking on Jesus, but “kneeling and weeping” and “never alone, never alone!”
“In order to enter into this mystery, which is not a labyrinth but resembles one a little bit, we need the Mother, the mother’s hand. That she, Mary, will make us understand how great and humble this mystery is; how sweet as honey and how bitter as aloe. That she will be the one who accompanies us on this journey, which no one can take if not ourselves. Each one of us must take it! With the mother, weeping and on our knees.”