Saturday, December 10, 2011

Entering the Biblical Story during Advent

During class Father Albert Haase, OFM referenced a remark he made in his book, Living the Lord's Prayer - The Way of the Disciple and I was awe-struck by it. The remark was: "Remember your suffering. It need not be in vain. It can become the womb of compassion."  The womb is a place where something is in the process of being birthed - a place where something is formed.  Fr Albert goes on to say, "Compassion makes us aware of who we truly are as it bonds us to others in relationships." 

Interestingly, the word religion is a derivation from  re-ligare: meaning, "to bind back." As we are beings in and of and for relationships - and as we are always falling in and out of relationships we, by nature are religious beings patching ourselves back together. And so I was struck by how suffering works in all this and how compassion is connected.

Richard Rohr, when lecturing on suffering and pain says; "If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it." So at our point of suffering we are weaving these two strands of thoughts together and our choice says a lot about our faith. For how we deal with our suffering is the incubator of choice - we either are being transformed through our suffering or it is a source of transmitting the suffering on to others. 

During the Advent season we are ever reminded of Our Lord and how He came to awaken in us a self-donating transformation of suffering.

Link HERE for a powerful Advent reflection by my friend Gerry Straub, sfo.  Gerry will be coming to Bloomington-Normal the first part of April 2012.  We are lining up a couple presentations during his stay with us so we will let everyone know when we nail down the specfics.

Gerry begins his reflections with this Oscar Wilde quote:
“Jesus understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness of the blind, the fierce misery of those who live for pleasure, the strange poverty of the rich, the thirst that can lead people to drink from muddy waters. He penetrated the outward shell of things and understood that whatever happens to another happens to oneself, and whatever happens to oneself happens to another.”
These words make a connection - they link us to one another and they do it through suffering. It seems to be that we would do well to embrace our suffering and the embrace another in their suffering.  Another friend, Gil Bailie talked about suffering this way:
Jesus says take this cup, which is the cup of suffering. We don’t have to be melodramatic about it; there is suffering in our lives. The suffering that I should understand as redemptive is my suffering. The sufferings that I see other people undergoing I should not think that I am going to take it away, I won’t be able to, but I can be present with them in that suffering so they can feel that they are not alone in that suffering and perhaps feel the truth of the situation which is always, always, always that Christ is in it with them. They may not be able to experience that unless they know that I am in it with them. That act of being present with them may be their only entrée to the discovery that Christ is in it with them. Being in that suffering with others, and of course, that sometimes means helping to relieve the suffering, is our responsibility...
See link HERE to get the transcript of Gil's talk on entering the biblical story.

There seems no better time at which to enter the biblical story then now, during Advent.  One last link HERE to read an Advent selection from Father Alfred Delp.

Thursday, December 1, 2011

The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words

Today’s Magnificat meditation is from Fr. Alfred Delp, SJ who was a German Jesuit priest condemned to death by the Nazis in Berlin, Germany.  What powerful words he speaks here - we should let them sink in and penetrate us to our very being for these words have the power to transform.

“The Grace to Listen to the Lord’s Words”

That God would become a Mother’s son and that a woman could walk upon this earth, her body consecrated as a holy temple and tabernacle for God, is truly the earth’s culmination and the fulfillment of its expectation…

Oh, that this was granted to the earth, to bring forth such fruit! That the world was permitted to enter into the presence of God through the sheltering warmth, as well as the helpful and reliable patronage of her motherly heart!

The gray horizons must light up. Only the foreground is screaming so loudly and penetratingly. Farther back, where it has to do with things that really count, the situation is already changing. The woman has conceived the Child, sheltered him under her heart, and has given birth to her Son. The world has come under a different law. All these are not merely one-time historical events upon which our salvation rests. They are simultaneously the model figures and events that announced to us the new order of things, of life, of our existence…

At a deeper level of being, even our times and our destiny bear the blessing and the mystery of God. The most important thing is to wait, to be able to wait, until their hour comes…

Let us pray for the openness and willingness to hear the warning prophets of the Lord and to overcome the devastation of life through conversion of heart.Let us not shun and suppress the earnest words of the calling voices, or those who are our executioners today may be our accusers once again tomorrow, because we silenced the truth.

Once again, let us kneel down and pray for keen eyes capable of seeing God’s messengers of annunciation, for vigilant hearts wise enough to perceive the words of the promise. The world is more than its burden, and life is more than the sum of its gray days. The golden threads of the genuine reality are already shining through everywhere. Let us know this, and let us, ourselves, be comforting messengers. Hope grows through the one who is himself a person of the hope and the promise.

Advent is the time of the promise, not yet the fulfillment. We are still standing in the middle of the whole thing, in the logical relentlessness and inevitability of destiny…

The sounds of devastation and destruction, the cries of self-importance and arrogance, the weeping of despair and powerlessness still fill the world. Yet, standing silently, all along the horizon are the eternal realities with their ago-old longing. The first gentle light of the glorious abundance to come is already shining above thing…This is today. And tomorrow the angels will relate loudly and jubilantly what has happened, and we will know it and will be blessed if we have believed and trusted in Advent.

Sunday, November 27, 2011

"Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen 4:9)

From The Magnificat to the Front Page.

The Magnificat Sunday, November 27, 2011

Since the days of your ancestors you have turned aside from my statutes and have not kept them.  Return to me, that I may return to you, says the LORD of hosts.  But you say, “Why should we return?” (MALACHI 3:7) 

Although we know that Christ has not in fact left us since the resurrection, we often experience his absence from a world that has not yet fully owned him and from lives not yet fully free from the hold of sin.  During Advent, we pray for his promised return in the fullness of salvation, as the sun, never absent from the universe, returns at dawn after the long hours on night.

To the front page that begs the question, How powerful are our actions ushering in Advent?

How much crazier can Black Friday get?
Pepper-sprayed customers, smash-and-grab looters and bloody scenes in the shopping aisles. How did Black Friday devolve into this?

As reports of shopping-related violence rolled in this week from Los Angeles to New York, experts say a volatile mix of desperate retailers and cutthroat marketing has hyped the traditional post-Thanksgiving sales to increasingly frenzied levels.

The wave of violence revived memories of the 2008 Black Friday stampede that killed an employee and put a pregnant woman in the hospital at a Walmart on New York's Long Island.

The violence has prompted some analysts to wonder if the sales are worth it, and what solutions might work.

One shopper said, "If I'm going to get shot, at least let me get a good deal."
It seems that we humans wake up only The Day After Trinity unable to recognize the trajectory of our misplaced desires that inevitably leads to violence. What does it take to break the cycle?

Back to the reflection from The Magnificat:
"At a certain point in life, the profound desires and cravings of our heart reach a point of eruption. Yet, at the same time comes the awareness that we cannot bring about what we want - we do not have inside us what is needed to fulfill and satisfy our longings. And so, with our infinite yearnings we turn to the Infinite and cry, "Oh, that you would rend the heavens and come down." Our experience of helplessness before the fact of our boundless human need moves us to ask for fellowship with God's Son, Jesus Christ the Lord. The nature of our desire assures us as we enter into Advent that we are not lacking in any spiritual gift as we wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ. "The Lord of the house is coming." "Be watchful! Be alert!"
Must read the following (and please do yourself a favor and link below on the title and read the entire message):

Waking Up to Ourselves by Father Alfed Delp

The deepest meaning of Advent cannot be understood by anyone who has not first experienced being terrified unto death about himself and his human prospects and likewise what is revealed within himself about the situation and constitution of mankind in general.

This entire message about God’s coming, about the Day of Salvation, about redemption drawing near, will be merely divine game-playing or sentimental lyricism unless it is grounded upon two clear findings of fact.

The first finding: insight into, and alarm over the powerlessness and futility of human life in relation to its ultimate meaning and fulfillment…The second finding: the promise of God to be on our side, to come to meet us.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

Being Scene- the Self and the Sound of Two Hands Clapping

Link HERE to view the 2 videos from Dominican School of Philosophy & Theology April 2011.

You Must Make Your Choice

C.S. Lewis from Mere Christianity

"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God."

Friday, November 25, 2011

Tell Us No More Enchantments, Clio

Someone from Northern Ireland looking a bit more closely at Clio. 

In the ancient Greek world, Clio was a goddess whose name meant 'to praise' and whose celebrated symbol was the laurel wreath symbolising glory. Her role was to ensure that remembering the past awakened zeal to emulate illustrious deeds. These 'heroic' deeds were violent but, where once they were life-giving, bringing order out of chaos, today they may stimulate cycles of destructive violence. We in Northern Ireland know something of Clio's power to foster violence and even when affronted by bloodshed we may re-enact it, not only as memorial but also in practice.

...

Gil Bailie quotes American poet Howard Nemerov: "Tell us no more enchantments, Clio. History has given and taken away; murders become memories, And memories become the beautiful obligations: As with a dream interpreted by one still sleeping, The interpretation is only the next room of the dream."

Another Green Chri$tma$ or Could It Be that Christmas has Another Meaning?


This morning pre-dawn, on the day we call Black Friday, observing the full parking lots at all the major retailers it looks like we are in store for another green Chri$tma$. You know..., folks seem to get all warm and fuzzy about Christmas; they even criticize the trend of political correctness discouraging references of Christmas in work, schools and public areas, and yet, they go merrily along getting sucked into the marketing of deviated desire. Take a few moments to link to the story of Stan Freberg's "Green Chri$tma$" allowing let it soak in, remembering that the song came out 53 years ago. Have we bowed down to our wonderful market economy, by allowing it to clothe us as "consumers" into the false transcendence, swallowing up this song, laughing all the way to the bank?

"I did some stuff for Dupont and they said, 'Well, we know about the prunes and pizza rolls, but have you ever taken on a really serious client?' and I said, 'Other than God?'" -- Stan Freberg

Link here to read The Story of Green Chri$tma$.
"Do I have to tie my product into Christmas?" Crachit asks. "Christmas has a significance, a meaning!" "A sales curve!" Mr. Scrooge responds. "Christmas has two s's in it and they're both dollar signs!"

"I listen to that now, and it's like I did it last week. I'm amazed that it holds up all these years." Freberg says. "The interesting thing is that after that record, both Coca-Cola and Marlboro came to me to do ad campaigns. And this is after the president of Capitol, Lloyd Dunn, said, 'Well, I'll tell you one thing, Freberg. You'll never work in the advertising business again.' I was just getting started in the field."

Ironically, Green Chri$tma$ may have marked the turning point in Freberg's career as he shifted his professional focus from radio in the late 1950s to advertising in the 1960s. Freberg went on to a storied career in advertising winning numerous awards and accolades for humor in advertising.

Green Chri$tma$ resonated with listeners but rankled advertisers on Freberg's show. "This record, of course was an attack on the over commercialization of Christmas.," Freberg says. "And when it first came out some sponsors refused to pay for any of their commercials that were programmed within five minutes of my record being played. They felt that my record negated their commercials." So critical was the business of radio and advertising that Green Chri$tma$ received no commercial airplay prior to 1983.

While Freberg is hailed as visionary for his biting brand of satire skewering everything from pop culture to the history of the United States of America it is Green Chri$tma$ that brings out a funny and sad reminder of how twisted we have allowed Christmas to become.
[End of excerpt]
Link here to view a great video rendition of Stan Freberg's Green Chri$tma$.

Thank goodness Thanksgiving Day is over & we can get back to our worship

Driving to mass early this morning I was met with throngs of cars jamming the byways all leading to the big-box stores. It gives you wonder... No, it is not wonder anymore, for the reality of what really matters to us is plain as the noses on our faces, as the fight to be first in line to get that "MUST HAVE item cheapest" reigns. Viewing our 'mob' actions through the lens of mimetic theory one begins to realize the power of mimetic contagion.

The Muppits have a way of being a mirror to us, as Animal sings of being abandon by Mama and Dada who have been swept up by the crowds at the big box store and Miss Piggy summing everything up so well, "nothing really matters, but moi... Anyway the wind blows..."

Friday, November 18, 2011

Cleansing of the Temple - Father John Tauler, O.P.

And when Jesus had done this He spoke to those who sold doves and said: "Take these things away." It was His will to cleanse His temple. It was as if He had said: I am the owner of this temple, and I alone shall dwell in it and be master of it. And what is this temple in which God alone shall rule with all power and according to His own will? It is man's soul, which He has created in close resemblance to Himself, according to His word: "Let us make man after Our image and likeness." (Gen. 1, 26) And this likeness of man's soul to God is so close, that nothing else is to be compared with it for close resemblance to Him in Heaven or on earth. This is why God will have our soul free and clear of everything but Himself alone, and when that is done He is well pleased to make His abode there alone.

Who were those that bought and sold in the temple, and who are they that do so now? And take notice that I am to speak only of those buyers and sellers in the temple who are good people, and who are nevertheless scourged out of His temple by the Lord; not gross sinners or such as are consciously in a state of mortal sin; and yet they are buyers and sellers. They are souls who, indeed, guard against grievous sins, and would do good works for God's glory; they fast and pray and keep vigils and do other good things. But what is their motive? It is that God would in return do good things to them, bestow on them the favors they wish. They are, therefore, self-seekers; they are merchandisers with God, as anyone can see. They give that they may get. They must traffic with our Lord. And meanwhile in all their trading with God they are self-deceived. For what is there of all they possess and trade with but God has given it to them? God owes them nothing, no matter what they may give Him or do for Him. Whatever they are, they are from God; whatever they have, they have from God, and are nothing and have nothing of themselves.

Hence I say again, God owes them nothing for all they may do for Him or give Him. He has given them all they have willingly out of His free grace, not on account of their works or gifts. They have nothing of their own to give Him; no power of their own bestowal wherewith to work for Him, as Christ says: "Without Me you can do nothing." (John 15, 5) How dull and foolish are such men to think that they really trade with the Lord! They perceive the truth of Divine things scarcely at all, and hence the Lord scourges them out of His temple. Light and darkness can have no fellowship. God in His very essence is truth and light, and when He enters His temple He drives ignorance and darkness out of it, revealing Himself in all His brightness. When truth enters in and is recognized, then trafficking must go out; truth can tolerate no trafficking with God. God is not selfish, but in all His works He is free, being directed wholly by perfect love. And thus acts every man who is united to God. In all that he does he is free and unselfish, acting purely from love, never asking why and wherefore; that is to say, never seeking his own, but only God and His glory; and in all this God is working in him.

And let me insist: As long as a man in all his good works seeks or desires as his controlling motive what God may give him as a recompense, so long is he like the traffickers in the temple. If thou wilt be quit and done with all such trafficking, then do all the good that thou dost for God's praise alone, and stand as entirely free as if there were to be no return made thee. Then thy good deeds become entirely spiritual and Godlike. Then are all traffickers driven out of the temple of thy soul. God alone dwells in the soul of a man that in his good works takes Him and Him alone into account. This is then the purifying of the soul from all self-seeking, God and His honor becoming the end and purpose of all.

But this Gospel points out to us a yet higher grade of disinterestedness. For there are some who have a pure intention in their well-doing, and yet are hindered from attaining a high state of perfection; namely, those who keep up a less blameworthy traffic with creatures, like those dealers in doves whose chairs the Lord overthrew in the temple. The traffic in doves was well meant at first, and yet it was unseemly; and it became the occasion of avarice rather than a help to worship of God in the temple. So it is with some men, who have an upright intention and serve God without self-seeking. Yet they still yield to a feeling of ownership in their good deeds. They insist on doing them in a certain sense mechanically, and strictly according to time and place and number and routine, and according to specified plans, and this hinders their coming to the hest spiritual state. They should hold their souls free from all such things, just as our Saviour Himself did, and be ever ready to begin anew, without waiting for certain times or going to certain places. They should give themselves over to the guidance of the heavenly Father just as Christ did; yea, obedient to the least intimation of His holy will, determined on one thing only to be perfectly under the loving influence of His fatherly heart. Thus one is led to a life of the truest perfection, unhindered by methods and arrangements of his own, only anxious to yield instantly, and, as it were, to the beck and nod of God's will; and in the same spirit to return God's gifts back again into the heart of our Lord Jesus Christ with all praise and thanksgiving. Then it comes to pass that all hindrances to spiritual progress are taken away; from such a soul even the doves and their venders are expelled — all sense of proprietorship whatsoever, even that which is least blameworthy, is done away, and a man seeks himself in nothing at all. Our Lord is determined that no one shall make any disturbance in His temple; He will permit no running about here and there, as St. Matthew tells us. Which means that a spiritual man must purify his motives, until they are clear of every obstacle that may divert him from advancing even a single step in perfection.

And when this purification of the temple of the soul has been accomplished, and all ignorance and proprietorship are cleansed away, then God's work in it shines so beautiful and so bright that it excels the glory of any other of His creations. No beauty can outshine that of such a soul, save only the uncreated beauty of God Himself, whom it resembles more than any other creature can. No angel can be like it; not even the highest of them; for, though it has much resemblance to it, it is yet not quite like it. For to the progress of an angel there is now, in a certain sense, a limit fixed as to the beatific vision, whereas this soul can continue to grow more and more perfect as long as it lives in time.

Suppose a man who is still in this life gifted with the virtue of a certain angel; his freedom and his opportunities are such as to enable him to advance every instant beyond the angel in perfection. God alone is free with uncreated liberty, and so is the soul free, but not in uncreated liberty; and herein is there a peculiar resemblance between God and the soul. And when the soul departs this life, it is absorbed in light uncreated — in God — then it must attain to union with Him by full knowledge of Him. And this, as we have already shown, is begun by our Lord Jesus Christ, when He enters the soul and drives out of it the buyers and sellers, and begins intimately to speak to it.

Dear children, rest assured that if any one undertakes to speak in the temple — that is, in our soul — except Jesus alone, then does Jesus immediately become silent. He no longer feels at home there; indeed, it is now not His home, for it entertains strange guests and holds converse with them. Not only so; but if Jesus is to speak, the soul itself must be silent, and do nothing but listen to Him. The moment it sits still and listens, He begins to speak. What does He say He says, “I am: I am the Father's Word.” And then in the same Word thus spoken the Father Himself speaks, the entire Divine nature is heard — all that is God, all that God's Word is to God's self, perfect in self-knowledge and infinite in power. God is infinitely perfect in His utterance to the soul, for the Word He utters is Himself; it is the Second Divine person of the God head, of the same nature with the Father.

And in speaking this Divine Word, God utters all reasonable beings in created existence, thus forming them like unto His uncreated Word, as It ever dwells within Him. All the brightness of created intelligences is made after the image of the glory of this uncreated Word of God. And this resemblance consists essentially in the capability the created soul has of receiving, by Divine grace, God's uncreated Word: ye I, even the very Word that is God, receiving It as It is in Itself. This was all uttered by God, when He divinely spoke His infinite Word in the God-head. Now, one might enquire: Since the Father has thus spoken His Word, what does Jesus speak in the soul? Dear children, I answer you by recalling what I have already said of the manner of His communication: He speaks and reveals His own self, and that includes all that the Father has spoken in the Divine act of uttering the Word, all being now addressed to the soul according to its capacity to receive it.

First, He reveals the Father's supreme majesty in the soul, in His sovereign and immeasurable power. And when the soul feels and perceives this almighty power in God's Son — feels itself made a partaker of that power in all virtue and in perfect purification, so that neither joy nor sorrow nor any other created force can unsettle its peace; then in that Divine power it rests, strong against all adversaries, great or little.

In addition to this, the Lord reveals Himself in the soul in infinite wisdom — in the very Divine wisdom that He is Himself, that in which the Father knows Himself with His almighty paternity; and, again, the Word that is wisdom itself and is one essence with the Father. When this wisdom is united to the soul, all doubting and all straying away is stopped, and all spiritual darkness vanishes, and the soul is placed in the clear light that is God's self. It is now as the prophet said: "In Thy light we shall see light." (Ps. 35.10) That is to say: Lord, all light is seen in the soul in the light that Thou art. Thus God is known in the soul by the light that God Himself is. And thus is Wisdom known by the light of Wisdom Itself; and with it the soul knows itself and all things else that it knows. Thus, again, by this wisdom is known God's fatherhood in majesty, His essential unchangeableness, and His Divine and indivisible unity.

Thirdly, Jesus reveals Himself within the soul with infinite love, with sweetness and abundance of love welling forth from the Holy Ghost, and overflowing into the heart, all docile and receptive of its rich streams. Yes, it is by means of the Love that Jesus is that He reveals Himself to the soul and unites it to Himself. It is this sweetness that causes the soul to flow into itself, and then to overflow beyond all creatures—melted by Divine grace, given power to return again into God its first fountain and origin. Then the outward man bows down obedient to the inward man — obedient unto death; then are both the inward and outward faculties at peace with each other in God's service.

May God grant us this happy state; may He expel and destroy all hindrances in us in both soul and body, so that we may be made one with Him in time and in eternity. Amen.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Put on the meekness of Christ

Lenten sermon delivered March 2007 by Capuchin Father Raniero Cantalamessa in the presence of Benedict XVI and officials of the Roman Curia. The Pontifical Household preacher delivered the reflection in the Mater Redemptoris Chapel of the Apostolic Palace.


Put on the meekness of Christ

By their nature the beatitudes are oriented toward practice; they call for imitation, they accentuate the work of man. There is the danger that we will become discouraged in experiencing an incapacity to put them to practice in our own lives, and by the great distance between the ideal and the practice.


We must recall to mind what was said at the beginning: The beatitudes are Jesus' self-portrait. He lived them all and did so in the highest degree; but — and this is the good news — he did not live them only for himself, but also for all of us. With the beatitudes we are called not only to imitation, but also to appropriation. In faith we can draw from the meekness of Christ, just as we can draw from his purity of heart and every other virtue. We can pray to have meekness as Augustine prayed to have chastity: "O God, you have commanded me to be meek; give to me that which you command and command me to do what you will."

"As the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on the sentiments of mercy, goodness, humility, mildness ("prautes"), and patience" (Colossians 3:12), writes the Apostle to the Colossians. Mildness and meekness are like a robe that Christ merited for us and which, in faith, we can put on, not to be dispensed from pursuing them but to help us in their practice. Meekness ("prautes") is placed by Paul among the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:23), that is, among the qualities that the believer manifests in his life when he receives the Spirit of Christ and makes an effort to correspond to the Spirit.

We can end reciting together with confidence the beautiful invocation of the litany of the Sacred Heart: "Jesus meek and humble of heart, make our hearts like yours" ("Jesu, mitis et humilis corde: fac cor nostrum secundum cor tutum").


This and a number of reflections by Father Cantalamessa refer to René Girard.  Like most all his works he demonstrates the need for a Christ-centered anthropology as what Pope John Paul II strived to put forward.

Friday, October 21, 2011

Coming Home - John Adams


Robert Hammerton-Kelly wrote, "Revolutionary democracy imports the fiction of rationality to obscure its sacrificial structure," and yet the Gospels continue to break in on us, shedding more and more light on "the stone that the builders rejected," that is the founding violence our world is built upon.

The Matrix - Father Barron

The Scapegoat explained by Father Barron

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Feast of St Francis & Revisiting St Bonaventure

These words of Dr. Robert Moynihan from Inside the Vatican magazing caused me to revisit my posts on St Bonaventure. Hope you enjoy.

October 4, 2011

Feast of St. Francis of Assisi
This was the prayer of St. Francis:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love.  Where there is injury, pardon.  Where there is doubt, faith.  Where there is despair, hope.  Where there is darkness, light.  Where there is sadness, joy. 

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive.  It is in pardoning that we are  pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life.

Amen.
============================
Who was St. Francis?

Who was St. Francis of Assisi, really? Was he just a sort of superficial "hippy" who preached to birds? No. Quite the contrary...
More than 700 years ago, on February 24, 1209, St. Francis, then 27 years old, heard a sermon that changed his life. The sermon was on Matthew 10:9. Christ there tells his followers they should go forth and proclaim that the Kingdom of Heaven is near, taking no money with them, not even a walking stick or shoes for the road.

Inspired, Francis decided to devote himself to a life of poverty. Clad in a rough garment, barefoot, and, after the Gospel precept, without staff or scrip, he began to preach repentance. This why he became known as "il poverello," the "little poor man," and why it is said that he married no ordinary woman, but "Lady Poverty."

But this was not the only remarkable thing about Francis. Toward the end of his life, in a mystical vision, he became the first person in the Christian tradition to receive the "stigmata," the wounds of Christ himself, making him, in a sense, a living copy of his crucified Lord.  Tthis is the reason Francis was called by his follower, St. Bonaventure, "the angel of the 6th seal."
===================================
The "Root of All Good"

Francis would have agreed with the phrase of St. Paul: “The love of money is the root of all evil.” ("Radix omnium malorum cupiditas est," Letter to Timothy, 6:10) If the love of money is the root of all evil, what then is the root of all good? Francis proposed a seemingly outrageous answer: the love of poverty is the root of all good.

Why so? Because he saw that, for one who loves poverty, all the desires of this world fall away.  No longer is there a desire to gather gold and silver and nickel and copper coins, or dollars, euros, rubles and yen, all the paper currencies, or bonds and stocks, or interest rate swaps and options, or jewels, or the works of master artists.

No longer is there a desire to amass these "goods" at any cost, including trickery, deception and cheating -- including the knowledge that some other men and women may be left destitute and miserable in the process. Rather, there is a desire to preach repentance to all, and the common good for all the sons and daughters of God, for all men: the good of peace, and justice, and wisdom, and humility.

And Francis is an example that following this path does not mean a man or a woman must quiver and crawl, without the power and the trappings of power so well known in our world. Being humble, loving poverty, does not have to mean being weak. In fact, the way of Francis -- the way of Christ -- is the strongest way a man or a woman can live, and the most long-lasting, for it builds peace in this present time, and it leaves a testimony for all ages to come, as Francis's life has, and it reaches even unto eternity.  It is a prophetic way to live...

The Sixth Seal

And this applies to St. Francis, because many in his time, and since, have believed that he was actually a type of prophet, a man who in himself spoke and fulfilled prophecy.  What prophecy?

In the Book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible -- and arguably the most enigmatic -- an aging John of Patmos describes a mystical vision granted to him concerning the future of human history, and of that history's final end (to be brief, that end is a wedding; human history, in this vision, in the Bible as whole, ends in a marriage between the Lord and his spouse, who is mystically the Church, gathered from all nations, from the farthest ends of the earth). John's vision begins when he sees a scroll "sealed with seven seals" of wax so that unauthorized people cannot open the scroll and read it.

Then, each one of the "seven seals" is opened, revealing an apocalyptic event. The opening of the first four seals release "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," each with their own specific mission (some identify these as the Antichrist, War, Famine and Death).

(The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, an 1887 painting by Victor Vasnetsov. The Lamb, very small with a golden halo, is visible at the top.)

The opening of the fifth seal releases the cries of those martyred for the "word of God."  The sixth and next to last seal initiates a time of cataclysmic events. The seventh seal reveals seven angels with trumpets who sound the trumpets to end all time.

What does all this have to do with Francis? Everything.

Because we know that St. Bonaventure, the great Franciscan theologian who lived in the generation after Francis, believed that St. Francis was, in fact, "the angel of the sixth seal." Bonaventure wrote this in his life of St. Francis, the Legenda Major, and told this to his brothers in conversation.

"Don't Hurt the Earth!"

Here is what John in Revelation says about the 6th seal (I have bold-faced the passage which Bonaventure believed refers to St. Francis): Revelation 6:12-17; 7:2-4

12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood; 13 And the stars of the heavens fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places. 15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains; 16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: 17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

2 Then I saw another Angel rising from where the sun rose, carrying the seal of the Living God. He thundered to the Four Angels assigned the task of hurting earth and sea, 3 "Don't hurt the earth! Don't hurt the sea! Don't so much as hurt a tree until I've sealed the servants of our God on their foreheads!" 4 I heard the count of those who were sealed: 144,000! They were sealed out of every Tribe of Israel...

The Seal -- the Stigmata

On or about September 14, 1224, the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, while he was praying on Mt. Alverna, and keeping a forty-day fast in preparation for Michaelmas (September 29), Francis had a vision as a result of which he received the stigmata.

Brother Leo, who was with Francis at the time, wrote: "Suddenly he saw a vision of a seraph, a six-winged angel on a cross. This angel gave him the gift of the five wounds of Christ."

From this moment on, St. Francis was in pain. He lived two more years. Suffering from these stigmata and from an eye disease, he was brought back to a hut next to the Porziuncola where his religious journey had begun. He died on the evening of October 3, 1226, singing Psalm 141. Hence his Feast Day today, Octiber 4.

Bonaventure and the Sixth Seal

About 30 years later, St. Bonaventure climbed Mt. Alverna. Bonaventure sought to discover a mystical way to reach God: "as much as possible be restored, naked of knowledge, to union with the very One who is above all created essence and knowledge."

In 1259, St. Bonaventure had a cell made at the sanctuary near the spot where St Francis experienced the stigmata. It is now the Chapel of St Bonaventure. Not long after, Bonaventure wrote his Life of Francis, seeking to transpose Francis into a universal prophet sent to the entire Church.

Francis was, in fact, in a mystical way, Christ, Who had returned to restore the Gospel life. Bonaventure saw Francis as the angel of the sixth seal, the third in the line of the great triad of prophets, after King David and the Apostle Peter; the Old Law (David), the New Law (Peter), and the New Law recovered (Francis) -- the one who ushered in a final age of world history.

Pope Benedict, Francis, Bonaventure, and the Angel of the Sixth Seal

Pope Benedict XVI is very familiar with all this. He studied Bonaventure in depth for his dissertation in the 1950s. And he is still making references to to these matters today. During his General Audience on March 10, 2010, dedicated to Bonaventure, Benedict made the following comments about the stigmata of St. Francis and St. Bonaventure:

"Of his writings, I would like to mention only one, his masterwork, the Itinerarium mentis in Deum, a 'manual' of mystical contemplation," Benedict said. "This book was conceived in a place of profound spirituality: the hill of La Verna, where St. Francis had received the stigmata. In the introduction, Bonaventure illustrates the circumstances that gave origin to his writing:

"'While I meditated on the possibility of the soul ascending to God, presented to me, among others, was that wondrous event that occurred in that place to Blessed Francis, namely, the vision of the winged seraphim in the form of a crucifix. And meditating on this, immediately I realized that such a vision offered me the contemplative ecstasy of Father Francis himself and at the same time the way that leads to it' (Journey of the Mind in God, Prologue, 2, in Opere di San Bonaventura. Opuscoli Teologici / 1, Rome, 1993, p. 499).

Benedict continued:

"The six wings of the seraphim thus became the symbol of six stages that lead man progressively to the knowledge of God through observation of the world and of creatures and through the exploration of the soul itself with its faculties, up to the satisfying union with the Trinity through Christ, in imitation of St. Francis of Assisi.

"The last words of St. Bonaventure's Itinerarium, which respond to the question of how one can reach this mystical communion with God, would make one descend to the depth of the heart:

"'If you now yearn to know how that happens (mystical communion with God), ask grace, not doctrine; desire, not the intellect; the groaning of prayer, not the study of the letter; the spouse, not the teacher; God, not man; darkness not clarity; not light but the fire that inflames everything and transport to God with strong unctions and ardent affections. ... We enter therefore into darkness, we silence worries, the passions and illusions; we pass with Christ Crucified from this world to the Father, so that, after having seen him, we say with Philip: that is enough for me' (Ibid., VII, 6).

"Dear friends," Benedict concluded, "let us take up the invitation addressed to us by St. Bonaventure, the Seraphic Doctor, and let us enter the school of the divine Teacher: We listen to his Word of life and truth, which resounds in the depth of our soul. Let us purify our thoughts and actions, so that he can dwell in us, and we can hear his divine voice, which draws us toward true happiness."

If we would seek God, then, and if we are to imitate Christ, and Francis, and pass through the apocalyptic events unfolding around us -- always unfolding, until the end of the world -- we must "ask grace, not doctrine, desire, not the intellect; the groaning of prayer, not the study of the letter."

This is the path of poverty which is indicated to us on this great feast day.
===========================

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I Received the Living Waters & Held Them in a Stagnant Pool

YOU WHO QUESTION SOULS

You who question souls,
and you to whom souls must answer,
do not cut off the soul of my son on my account.
Let the strength of his childhood lead him to you,
and the joy of his body stand him upright in your eyes.

May he discern my prayer for him,
and to whom it is uttered, and in what shame.
I received the living waters
and I held them in a stagnant pool.

I was taught but I did not teach.
I was loved but I did not love.
I weakened the name that spoke me,
and I chased the light with my own understanding.

Whisper in his ear.
Direct him to a place of learning.
Illuminate his child’s belief in mightiness.
Rescue him from those who want him with no soul,
who have their channels in the bedrooms of the rich and poor,
to draw the children into death.

Let him see me coming back.
Allow us to bring forth our souls together
to make a place for your name.

If I am too late,
redeem my yearning in his heart,
bless him with a soul that remembers you,
that he may uncover it with careful husbandry.

They who wish to devour him have grown powerful on my idleness.
They have a number for him, and a chain.
Let him see them withered in the light of your name.
Let him see their dead kingdom from the mountain of your word.
Stand him up upon his soul, bless him with the truth of manhood.

- Leonard Cohen

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation Part IV

"While meditating upon this vision (Francis receiving the stigmata), I immediately saw that it offered me the ecstatic contemplation of Fr Francis himself as well as the way that leads to it." - St Bonaventure from the Prologue of"The Journey of the Mind to God." 

Click here to view my 1st post.  My 2nd post here and to link to my 3rd click here.

This is my 4th and final post in this series on Saint Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God."

While reading Bonaventure’s book, the Holy Spirit had me revisit a book I had read about a year ago, "St. Francis and the Cross: Reflections on Suffering, Weakness, and Joy."  This book was born of a 3 day retreat for Franciscan priests held at Mt Alverno. The book ends with a meditation by Marco Bove that I wish to share along with some reflections of mine that will be in (parenthesis)
Francis basically remained a poor man, a man who lived by faith and who gave his life totally to God. Such a man does not make calculated plans and does not seek security in what he has, who he is, or what he knows. The Father is the source for everything, and the poor man places his trust completely in God. (He abides in the Other – reflecting his true subject being made in the image and likeness [Gen 1:26] – Love.)

One does not maintain such an inner attitude without a struggle and without intense suffering. When Francis arrived at Mt Alverno, he was full of many doubts: about himself, the trail he was blazing, the order he had founded, the choices he had made, the future, and his responsibility in regards to all this. (He is seeking the approval of others – he is experiencing humanity’s fallen nature – reflecting the restless subject.)

Like Jesus, Francis also sought the Father's will. Gradually God led him to the total gift of himself, to the experience of the cross: "My Father,... not as I will, but as thou wilt" (Mt 26:39). Herein lies the meaning of the stigmata. It is the external manifestation of something that occurred in the heart, so as to enable Francis to say with St Paul, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me" (Gal 2:20). (Here we insert Bonaventure's contention that true reason must abide in prayer so as to accept the cross [out of love] and thus over-coming restless reason which always gets stuck in an endless loop leading humanity back to the cross - love over restlessness.)
The inner struggle leading up to total surrender often assumes a form of resistance in the life of the believer. In opposition to the weakness and the foolishness of the cross are the wisdom and power of the world, which are rooted in a quest for clarity and efficiency based on expediency. But Jesus' cross is not based on any human criteria, and even less on any criteria related to expediency, efficiency, or effectiveness, because God's strength and wisdom are revealed through Jesus' cross. (His throwing off the myth of power allows God to strip him of the restless subject, that which seeks the approval of others, thus becoming a new life – an authentic image and likeness of his true Subject – participating in a reciprocity of love in praise and gratitude.)
St Bonaventure, a Doctor of The Church, was a great scholar and leader. He was dedicated to the art of reason and made great efforts to reconcile reason with revelation. In "The Journey of the Mind to God" St Bonaventure expressed what he came to know through his meditation on "crucified" Francis, which was that reason, centered in the heart, grounded in faith, can make intelligible Christian conversion, though in and of itself, reason does not necessarily lead to conversion.

In chapter 7 he beckons us to enter into the mystery of the stigmata - giving no heed to ourselves, as if we humans were substantial or sufficient beings in and of ourselves, rather he challenges us to embrace our poverty giving all...
"to the Gift of God, that is to the Holy Spirit. Little or nothing should be attributed to the creature, but everything to the Creative Essence - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And thus, with Dionysius, we address the Triune God: 'O Trinity, Essence above all essence, and Deity above all deity, supremely best Guardian of the divine wisdom of Christians, direct us to the supremely unknown, super-luminous, and most sublime height of mystical knowledge. There new mysteries - absolute and changeless mysteries of theology - are shrouded in the super-luminous darkness of a silence, teaching secretly in the utmost obscurity that is manifest above all manifestation; of a darkness that is resplendent above all splendor, and in which everything shines forth, of a darkness which fills invisible intellects full above all plenitude with the splendors of invisible good things that are above all good.'

"So much let us say to God. To the friend, however, for whom these words were written, we can say with Dionysius: 'And you, my friend, in this matter of mystical visions, redouble your efforts, abandon the senses, intellectual activities, visible and invisible things - everything that is not and that is - and, oblivious of yourself, let yourself be brought back, in so far as it is possible, to unity with Him Who is above all essence and all knowledge. And transcending yourself and all things, ascend to the super-essential gleam of the divine darkness by an incommensurable and absolute transport of a pure mind.'"
A good teacher on Bonaventure is Pope Benedict XVI. He writes in, Great Teachers that Bonaventure once explained his decision to become Franciscan:

"I must confess before God that the reason which made me love the life of blessed Francis most is that it resembled the birth and early development of the Church. The Church began with simple fishermen, and was subsequently enriched by very distinguished and wise teachers; the religion of Blessed Francis was not established by the prudence of men but by Christ."
Benedict went on to quote Bonaventure painting an image of Francis in these words:

"a man who sought Christ passionately. In the love that impelled Francis to imitate Christ, he was entirely conformed to Christ."
and as he goes on in the book to quote and describe how Bonaventure engaged the argument between reason and theology:
"...real theology, the rational work of the true and good theology has another origin, not the pride of reason. One who loves wants to know his beloved better and better; true theology does not involve reason and its research prompted by pride, [but is] motivated by love of the One who gave his consent" and wants to be better acquainted with the beloved: this is the fundamental intention of theology. Thus in the end, for Saint Bonaventure, the primacy of love is crucial... for St Bonaventure the ultimate destiny of the human being is to love God, to encounter him and to be united in his and our love. For him this is the most satisfactory definition of our happiness.

Today we can look back and see the trajectory of Bonaventure’s reflections - from the Crucified and Risen Christ to Francis and into the future where Henri de Lubac (1896-1991) a French theologian, wrote in "The Discovery of God":

"(There is) no real knowledge without mystery. And no man without God."

From the ending of "St. Francis and the Cross: Reflections on Suffering, Weakness, and Joy" Marco Bove suggests how Francis came to reflect this new life in Christ. Leaving Mt Alverno, after receiving the stigmata, Francis went straight to Umbria and the Marches on a long preaching tour. His biographers say that he was deeply inspired and very enthusiastic. The composing of the “Canticle of Creatures” followed and in it Francis highlights the key to a journey of faith: praise and gratitude. Bove commented that in the "Canticle” Francis expresses a new way of being in Christ which is:
“to stand before the Father and to face life itself. Praise bursts forth from the heart of a man who lives by grace and by grace alone, from the heart of a man who can only express gratitude through his life and through his words.”
So from the Crucified and Risen Christ to Francis receiving the stigmata – a place where reason is conquered by revelation – we touch on what it means to be human. It boils down to a question of desire* or will to be a subject – and our freedom to choose how to fulfill that desire.

Christian conversion, represented by Francis, is a true transformation of that desire – it is discovering the model whose relationship to the true God is such that in following That Model one enters into a life in which prayer and transcendence is central - where the Real Other in one’s life is God and this is radically different from a life where that is not the case.

One gets a sense that through his intense contemplation on Francis receiving the stigmata, Bonaventure saw that reason, left to itself, leads to the Cross, which illuminates our darkness, our violence. And thus we find Bonaventure, throughout the book, using reason as he talks about faith, but in the end he insists that reason must have a prior source of grounding – reason must be conquered by revelation - as he was keenly aware of the limitation of philosophy; that reason only exists as long as there are differences. Once left outside the love of God, we humans rubbing up against each other long enough, will unravel, much like the fractions within the Franciscan order that Bonaventure was dealing with; just like what Francis was struggling with prior to his visit to Mt Alverno. In time, this unraveling of reason will result in both, a crisis of culture as well as a crisis of the individual, thus destroying all differences – throwing everyone into sameness – a frenzied mob expelling reason - where the only source of truth now comes from The Voice on the cross: “Father forgive them for they know not what they do.” (Luke 23:34)
 .
We find throughout Bonaventure’s book insights, like a flicker, a glimmer of something more, a precursor if you will, for which no expression had yet been found and which we are only now beginning to grapple with, and that is how the self – what it means to be a person – is bound up in a Trinitarian and anthropological troth.
Indeed, the Lord Jesus, when He prayed to the Father, "that all may be one. . . as we are one" (John 17:21-22) opened up vistas closed to human reason, for He implied a certain likeness between the union of the divine Persons, and the unity of God's sons in truth and charity. This likeness reveals that man, who is the only creature on earth which God willed for itself, cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.Gaudium et spes, 24
And so Bonaventure closes out his book countering the "false-self" of reason, which was perfectly exemplified by Pilate's empty philosophical question, "What is truth?" with a clear and realistic expression of Franciscan spirituality – living for the Something Greater. I invite you to the cave of Francis and ask you to engage in a Franciscan form of centering prayer - one that is not so much an "inner" journey, as if to locate the essence of yourself within, but rather one in love modelled on Francis imitating Christ, as he was entirely conformed to Christ.

If you should ask how these things come about,
question grace, not instruction;
desire, not intellect;
the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study;
the Bridegroom, not the teacher;
God, not man;
darkness, not clarity;
not light, but the wholly fire
which inflames and carries you aloft to God
with fullest unction and burning affection.

This fire is God,
and the furnace of this fire leads to Jerusalem;
and Christ the man kindles it
in the fervor of His burning Passion,
which he alone truly perceives who says,
"My soul chooses hanging and my bones death" [Job, 7, 15].
He who chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true:
"Man shall not see me and live" [Exod., 33, 20].

Let us then die and pass over into darkness;
let us impose silence
upon our cares, our desires, and our phantasms (imaginings).

Let us pass over with the crucified Christ
from this world to the Father [John, 13, 1],
so that when the Father is shown to us
we may say with Philip:
"It is enough for us" [John, 14, 8];
let us hear with Paul:
"My grace is sufficient for thee" [II Cor., 12, 9];
let us exult with David, saying:
"My flesh and my heart have grown faint; Thou art the God of my heart, and portion forever" [Ps. 73, 26].

"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say:
So be it, so be it! Amen! Hallelujah!" [Ps., 106, 48].

(*Desire not from a psychological or what we usual think of as 'individual craving', but rather an anthropological understanding based on "all desire is a desire to be," it is an aspiration, the dream of a fullness attributed to the mediator.)

We dare NOT let go of this intense self-interest

From The Magnificat

Graces of the Parable of the Talents

Sooner or later, each of us has to be confronted with the terrifying truth (or blissful truth, according to our faith) that we have nothing, nothing whatever, to go on or to rely on except Jesus. In all other areas of life our own efforts and activity are crucial and we have to be thoroughly adult; but where the very heart of reality is concerned, where we stand vis-à-vis God, there we are only children. No other state is appropriate or possible. Our fears, complexities, scruples, complacency and conceit come from not fixing our eyes on him who is our way, our truth, and our life. By nature, we tend to be fascinated by our own selves, even in our miseries. We dare not let go of this intense self-interest, feeling that if we do we will just dwindle into othingness. We dread the void, dread the feeling of being spiritually inadequate. So we look around, in the name of prayer, for ways of diverting ourselves from simple, trusting exposure to Love. “O foolish and slow of heart to believe” (Lk 24: 25) that God is who God is! “Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you did not winnow” (Mt 25: 25). Jesus knew the human heart and its pitiful caricature of God. No wonder we cannot trust that one! No wonder we shirk encounter!

Sister Ruth Burrows, O.C.D.
Sister Ruth Burrows is a Carmelite nun at Quidenham in Norfolk, England. She is the author of a number of best-selling books.

The Access to Heaven is through Desire

From The Magnificat

Staying Awake through Our Desire

Yes, Christ did ascend upward and from on high sent the Holy Spirit, but he rose upward because this was more appropriate than to descend or to move to left or right. Beyond the superior symbolic value of rising upward, however, the direction of his movement is actually quite incidental to the spiritual reality. For in the realm of the spirit heaven is as near up as it is down, behind as before to left or to right. The access to heaven is through desire. He who longs to be there really is there in spirit. The path to heaven is measured by desire and not by miles. For this reason St Paul says in one of his epistles, “Although our bodies are presently on earth, our life is in heaven.” Other saints have said substantially the same thing but in different says. They mean that love and desire constitute the life of the spirit. And the spirit abides where its love abides as surely as it abides in the body which it fills with life. Does this make any more sense to you? We need not strain our spirit in all directions to reach heaven, for we dwell there already through love and desire.

The Cloud of Unknowing
The Cloud of Unknowing was written in Middle English by an unknown mystic of the fourteenth century.

Distractions appear as the opposite of prayer

From The Magnificat

It is difficult to love and to be loved as one would like. It is painful to realize that there are whole areas in the life of the mind that will never be revealed. Every man, one day or another, becomes aware of his poverty as a creature. And since this experience is a crushing one, the natural temptation is therefore distractions, or, as Pascal said, diversions. There is an “impatience with one’s limitations,” a natural temptation that urges us to flee before such limitations. We experience a fear in coming face to face with them, and this fear arises again and again inside us. Distractions, therefore, appear as the opposite of prayer, a refusal of our real condition, an evasion of it in favor of illusion, dream, mirage (recall man’s pursuit of different kinds of drunkenness: evasion by the flesh, art, sports, etc.).

However, the first moment of true prayer occurs in the experience and awareness of one’s limitations. We do not know what our real needs are, and we must learn them all over again each day. In this sense, prayer has the value of pedagogy, it is the great pedagogy of God. While evasion and distractions draw us away from the road to real happiness, prayer brings us back to what is most authentic in man’s quest for happiness. “The truth will set you free.” Prayer makes us free; it preserves what is most fragile and most precious in us: the integrity of our desire, that desire which, in final analysis, is nothing but the need for God. This is what prayer preserves in us, and must teach us every day, this need for God, which is the distinctive, most profound trait that separates man from the animals. Man is the only being who turns to God to obtain what is lacking for his own fulfillment. - Father Bernard Bro, o.p. Father Bro is a French Dominican priest, a distinguished theologian, and the author of many books.

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation Part III

My third reflection in this series on Saint Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God" focuses on chapters 3 & 4 and what appears to be a miscalculation which has led many astray by narrowing our notion of what constitutes a person.

After revealing how to "see" God in all that is around us, now in chapters 3 & 4, St Bonaventure challenges his own premise of writing this book, which is based on the revelation that Christ reveals, with a meandering into human reason tied to Plato and then adopted by St Augustine, as he gives thought to: What does it mean to be human? Or how might we best understand what a human being is? In this third step on the journey to God, St Bonaventure, consistent with St Augustine and Richard of St Victor, brings us to a precipice where he has us "reenter" ourselves. Bonaventure warns that there are risks, sighting how the mind, memory and intellect (the 3 powers we possess within ourselves) can obscure God, to the point of deception, saying that, "you will be able to see God through yourself as through an image, indeed, to see through a mirror darkly." [I Cor., 13, 12]

To grasp how treacherous a reentry can be check out this clip as the news commentator explains the degree of difficulty facing the crew and control center.


G. K. Chesterton observed how important it is to account for the trajectory (looking both ways) of an idea; "If some small mistake were made in doctrine, huge blunders might be made in human happiness."  One only needs to see the sad reality of our personal and social world today to notice that we have made those huge blunders, due in part by our justification of a turn inward.  St Bonaventure's reentry by way of reason, following in the footsteps of St Augustine's notion of entering into yourself, inadvertently lent itself to what has turned out to be a bankrupt concept of what constitutes a "person" in the modern day world of psychology and counseling, thus emptying the reality of "personhood" revealed by Christ of its original grounding in dialogue and relationality.

In a 1990 article that appeared in Communio titled, "Concerning the Notion of Person in Theology," Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger writes:
"... God who is in dialogue, stimulated the concept 'person'... In God, person means relation. Relation, being related, is not something super-added to the person, but it is the person itself. In its nature, the person exists only as relation."
The article continues:
"I believe a profound illumination of God as well as man occurs here, the decisive illumination of what person must mean in terms of Scripture: not a substance that closes itself in itself, but the phenomenon of complete relativity, which is, of course, realized in its entirety only in the one who is God, but which indicates the direction of all personal being. The point is thus reached here at which there is a transition from the doctrine of God into Christology and into anthropology."
Cardinal Ratzinger continues:
"... if it is true, however, that Christ is not the ontological exception, if from his exceptional position he is, on the contrary, the fulfillment of the entire human being, then the Christological concept of person is an indication for theology of how person is to be understood as such... In Christ, in the man who is completely with God, human existence is not canceled, but comes to its highest possibility, which consists in transcending itself, ... Christ is the directional arrow, as it were, that indicates what being human tends toward... and implies "being on the way" in the manner of human history."
Romano Guardini’s observation in his book, "The End of the Modern World" is apropos bringing us back to revelation and 'a calling' that conquers reason and is analogous to St Bonaventure's meditation on St Francis receiving the stigmata on Mt Alverno:
With the coming of Christ man’s existence took on an earnestness which classical antiquity never knew simply because it had no way of knowing it. The earnestness did not spring from human maturity; it sprang from the call which each person received from God through Christ. With this call the person opened his eyes, he was awakened for the first time in his life.
In a presentation that my friend Gil Bailie made at the 2005 Vatican conference: The Call to Justice: The Legacy of Gaudium et spes 40 Years Later he shared this about Augustine's inward turn:
For all the confusion to which it inadvertently contributed, the saving feature of Augustine's (and Bonaventure's) inward turn was that, like Trinitarian interiority, it was premised on communal, not a self-contained subjectivity... Where Augustine (and Bonaventure) turned inward in order to find God, the Western thought turned inward in search of a self-sufficient source of knowledge, truth and identity.
The slippery slope of the inward turn, as it attempts to locate the concept of person at some place "in" the psychic inventory, has proven to be a major hurdle to what is the most essential, radical and counter-intuitive element in Trinitarian thought - the relationality of God revealed by Christ. Though both Augustine and Bonaventure fashioned 3 'powers' (memory, intelligence, and will) to the human mind paralleling the relation of the three Persons to the divine essence, their inward turn unfortunately brought with it an implosion and 'self-centeredness' that we in the Western world find ourselves buried under today.

Christ unveils self-sufficiency as a myth revealing humans as interdividuals like mosaics: we are beings that are fashioned in and by diverse relationships. The difference between the romantic myth of 'individual' and the anthropological revelation of 'interdividual' revealed by Christ is like the difference of someone hiding a light under (or in) a bushel versus someone placing a light on a stand. Another way of saying it is if you look at a stained glass window of an old cathedral from the street - from outside, you will only see pieces of dark glass held together by strips of black lead (the turn inward). But if you cross the threshold and view it from inside (embracing yourself as creature, God's instrument), allowing the light to shine through, you will see a breathtaking spectacle of colors and shapes.

The appropriate inward turn, revealed by Christ, provides an ever expanding view of God's love and sacrifice for us.  I thought this video clip apropos to help visualize the saving feature of Augustine's and Bonaventure's turn inward seeking God rather than conceiving of a subject as contained within itself.


The Journey of the Mind to God was born out of Bonaventure's meditation on the stigmata of St Francis. Bonaventure saw the imprinting of the wounds of the Crucified on St Francis as his union with Christ - a final emptying or dying of his self - thus like St Paul, he could say: "With Christ I am nailed to the Cross. It is now no longer I that live, but Christ lives in me." [Gal. 2:20]

So the seeking of God through yourself is not about any self-help, self-love, self-esteem or self sufficiency, rather, reentry is the sacrifice of the very self we cling to "revealing your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory." [Col. 3:3-4]

 I re-post Bonaventure's words as he meditated on St Francis receiving the stigmata:

Living for the "SOMETHING GREATER"

If you should ask how these things come about,
question grace, not instruction;
desire, not intellect;
the cry of prayer, not pursuit of study;
the Bridegroom, not the teacher;
God, not man;
darkness, not clarity;
not light, but the wholly fire
which inflames and carries you aloft to God
with fullest unction and burning affection.

This fire is God,
and the furnace of this fire leads to Jerusalem;
and Christ the man kindles it
in the fervor of His burning Passion,
which he alone truly perceives who says,
"My soul chooses hanging and my bones death" [Job, 7, 15].
He who chooses this death can see God because this is indubitably true:
"Man shall not see me and live" [Exod., 33, 20].

Let us then die and pass over into darkness;
let us impose silence
upon our cares, our desires, and our phantasms (imaginings).
Let us pass over with the crucified Christ
from this world to the Father [John, 13, 1],
so that when the Father is shown to us
we may say with Philip:
"It is enough for us" [John, 14, 8];
let us hear with Paul:
"My grace is sufficient for thee" [II Cor., 12, 9];
let us exult with David, saying:
"My flesh and my heart have grown faint; Thou art the God of my heart, and portion forever" [Ps. 73, 26].
"Blessed be the Lord God of Israel from everlasting to everlasting; and let all the people say:
So be it, so be it! Amen! Hallelujah!" [Ps., 106, 48].

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

In Our Weakness We Shall Become One With Him

This meditation from The Magnificat reflects on how radically different Christian spirituality is to modern day secular psychology where it is all about self - loving yourself.  What makes the righteous shine is not about first loving your self but truly loving our all loving God who shines forth upon His children, His Grace and Blessings. At mass this morning, Father asked us to thank all the wonderful grand-parents leaving their imprint and tradition on us.  In this thankfulness we see how we really are - a weaving of many relationships - we are more inter-dividual, being molded and shaped by our relationships along with the Holy Spirit than we are separate and 'individual' like pseudo-psychology would make us out to be.


What Makes the Righteous Shine

What then have we to do? We must realise that God is our tremendous lover, that he is our all and that he has done all our works for us. We must believe in God and not in ourselves; we must hope in God and not in ourselves; we must love God and not ourselves. As Saint Augustine told us, there is one man who reaches to the extremities of the universe and unto the end of time. We have to enter into this one man - this one Christ - by faith, hope, and charity. We have to find our all in him. He is our full complement and our perfect supplement. No matter how weak we are, he is our strength; no matter how empty we are, he is our full­ness; no matter how sinful we are, he is our holiness. All we have to do is to accept God's plan - to say as Christ said coming into the world: "A body thou hast fitted to me; behold I come to do thy will, 0 God." We have to accept the self, and the surroundings, and the story, that God's providence arranges for us. In humility we must accept our self - just as we are; in charity, we must accept and love our neighbour just as he is; in abandonment, we must accept God's will just as things happen to us, and just as he would have us act. Faithful compliance with his will and humble acceptance of his arrangements will bring us to full union with Christ For the rest, let us gladly glory in our infirmities, that the power of Christ may dwell in us. In our weakness and in our love we shall thus become one with him, and there shall be one Christ loving himself.

DOM M. EUGENE BOYLAN, o. ClST. R.

Dom Boylan (+ 1963) was a monk of the Cistercian Abbey of Mount Saint Joseph, Roscrea, Ireland.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Reason Must be Conquered by Revelation Part II

I did not originally intend to create a series of posts reflecting on Saint Bonaventure's "The Journey of the Mind to God" however as this is the second post on the book, and I am only through chapter 1, I got a feeling that I will be posting more reflections.

From the notes: "Saint Bonaventure follows Saint Augustine in his conception of history as a most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind.(1) The beauty of this drama and its meaning, however, can be grasped only through faith and on the basis of revelation. But since we are in such a position that we can witness only a small part of this drama, we need Holy Scripture to raise us to a point from which we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day."(2)

WOW! Gazing into this mystery is truly a challenge for any of us, especially if we are using only our reason, and that is why Bonaventure insisted that we see that reason must be conquered by revelation.

(1) "conception of history as a most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind."

My friend Gil Bailie gave a weekend retreat with Franciscan Father Richard Rohr in the '90s and out of that retreat came a number of tapes and tape sets. I particularly love, "Entering the Biblical Story at the Eucharistic Table" - so much so that I transcribed it. In this talk Gil refers to this "most beautiful drama, composed by God and acted by mankind:"
Jesus never claimed to be operating on his own. He even says in John’s Gospel, “If I had come in my own name you would believe me, but because I have come in the name of the one who has sent me you don’t believe.” We are asked to be like that. We are asked to re-present Christ to the world. To be actors in the great drama – like von Balthasar’s ‘Theo-drama’, a magnificent orchestration of the grandeur of the Christian drama in history - and so the language of drama is appropriate – and the language of re-presenting it to the world, in however way, even though we are all clay vessels, we are all clumsy, we’re all fallen and sinful, we don’t do a very good job of it, despite our clumsiness God knows how to use leftovers and misfits – in fact our clumsiness is part of it, our failures to do it are part of it.
We are called; we are incorporated; we are deputized to receive into our lives - personally and with our communion with one another - the spirit of Christ, and to step into the world and absorb all the anxieties, uncertainty and the confusion and be part of the light of Christ in the world.
In another section of the tape Gil continues:
So we take our lives, and this is our supreme privilege, we must not see this as some kind of melodramatic act of renunciation, it is the source of our freedom, to take our lives, thank God for them because it is a gift to us, and break them or let them be broken and give them away. And then, Jesus says, “do THIS in memory of me.” Do what? Do this in memory of me. Not just the gesture, of course we do the gesture; of course the Real Presence, but when Jesus says, do THIS, He is talking of something much more vast then that. He means doing that which the gesture represents – being Christ in the world. ...

... It is at the Eucharistic table that we receive this gift and are nourished for the journey to go back out into the world and be Eucharistic people - be Christ to the world, absorbing that unforgivenness and being people who are not there on their own, but rather people who are saying with Paul, "I live now not I, but Christ lives in me."
I am always blown away by his reflection... Ah, wait now, we have one more part to the original reflection.

(2) The beauty of this drama and its meaning, however, can be grasped only through faith and on the basis of revelation. But since we are in such a position that we can witness only a small part of this drama, we need Holy Scripture to raise us to a point from which we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day.

Again reread the words of Bonaventure from my last post that ring so true: There is something greater.

Christ instituted the Mass so that we can enter into His Mystery - This Drama. The Mass was not conceived in the language of modern day 'me-ism' rather we are first opened and prepared to receive the Liturgy of the Word (likened this to a willingness to sacrifice yourself) and then we actually enter into the drama - we take our part as actors in the Liturgy of the Eucharist.

Wondrously and mysteriously, The Story is presented and re-presented to us so as to jar our memory, the memory for which Christ asks us, "Do THIS in remembrance of me," so that with the opportunity, given to us at each Mass, we can shout 'yes' or amen and actually participate in it's trajectory so that "we can view and comprehend it in its entirety — from the creation of the world to judgment day."

At every Mass we are encouraged to repeat Mary's 'yes' and to enter into THIS Journey - to make our life apart of THE Story.  Saint Bonaventure's book is retelling this very journey to God. 

So memory matters!  We improve our memory through repetition and ritual and it is here that humankind enters the drama within the Mass.

AMEN!