Faith in the Last Times

Msgr. Robert Hugh Benson died a painful death in his early forties, in the year 1914, two months after Pope St. Pius X- for whom Msgr. Benson had great love and admiration. He was born into an accomplished Anglican family from England, and was the first son of the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury. He made a splash by converting to the Catholic Faith and becoming a priest. Upon becoming Catholic, he seemed to endure a martyrdom of prolific writing, hearing confessions and speaking, for it seems he was a very sensitive and reserved man- but a man who loved Our Lord with all that he was. Anyone who has read Come Rack! Come Rope! or The Lord of the World will feel the torrent of deep Catholic piety and absolute surrender to God; yet, in his books, he clearly outlines the essence of faith as being a thing of the will; and that our faith is a work, in the Jamesian sense, a work of love- but not primarily of emotion or intellect.

It is said that his eleven short years as a Catholic priest, until his death, were “each years of eleven years”, so great was his output of novels, poems, lectures, sermons, and non-fiction works. In my estimation he was a literary giant, whose powerful and profound descriptions; depth of themes and human experiences; and even his prophetic moments, rank him with the greatest of the world’s ‘bards’. I’ve always said there is something in the water in England, which produces such writers! However, my thought is that the water of Msgr. Benson’s soul was the Blood of Christ.

This brings me to arguably his most influential novel, The Lord of the World, which outlines the Last Times, the Anti-Christ and the Coming of Our Lord. Benson sets the novel one hundred years ahead- and as he was writing in 1907, we are living on the threshold of the time he imagined. Benson denied that his book was ‘prophetic’ in the literal sense- and it is very interesting to see what he could imagine in terms of technology, and what was beyond him. For instance, he could not imagine either the television, the computer, and certainly not the internet, so he thinks of the characters using a private and very fast telegraph; yet his ‘airplanes’ are really quite sophisticated.

The one area that strikes me as interesting in terms of prophecy, is that he characterizes the Church in the last times as a fortress- a very Pre-Vatican II characterization. Little could Msgr. Benson imagine that the smoke of Satan would literally enter into the very enclaves, through the little cracks of ambiguity left in the proscriptions of the Council, and primarily through the bad will or weakness of those who are meant to protect Her! Little could he understand how the Church could remain and yet be shrouded so that it would be hard even to find Her; or that some of her very shepherds would be leading so many astray. No, he could not imagine it. All of us who love the Church have a hard time grasping the snaking confusion, even though we are witnessing it daily. It is as if The Lord of the World is prophecy drawn in thick marker, a too-clearly unfolding of the decisive battle Sr. Lucy talks about, or a condensed version of real events. It seems that reality is really stranger than fiction, and that the development of the Last Times has taken centuries rather than a hundred years.

Where Msgr. Benson becomes prophetic is at the existential and faith level of the Last Times. How the Anti-Christ gains his power is not so important in the book - rather it is the experience at the levels of reason, emotion and will of the Catholic in the novel that becomes important for us, and those who come in later years. The protagonist, Fr. Percy Franklin, begins the book by a three-man discussion of the last hundred years’ history, in the subterranean apartment of an old, dying Catholic, along with with a young, doubting fellow priest, who later apostasizes. From the rather abstract understanding of the historical processes toward a ‘unified world’, Father Percy goes out into the reality of a world cowering under the prospect of a Great War. There is an unbearable juxtaposition between fear and ultra-modern convenience ( as we are living in today): and yet he spends his most important time in contemplative prayer- he has practiced for years this silencing of thought and emotion, to stand simple in the Presence of the Lord, in the inner recesses of the will. This practice, this understanding, this place of simple will, will be all he has left when the tide of the Anti-Christ comes.

Fr. Franklin’s faith survives the incredible temptation and power present in the ‘peace’-bearing Anti-Christ, because he simply hangs on to Our Lord, the Suffering Lord, with his will. He later hangs on, through the destruction of Rome and the last days of the world, as he leads the remnant of the Church from Nazareth as the last Vicar of Christ. Msgr. Benson’s message to us here is a prophetic message: If your faith in Christ and His Bride is based primarily on reason, or on emotion, it will not withstand the Last Times. It must be a faith forged within the Cloud of Unknowing, within the terrible and silent darkness of simple will. It must be a practiced faith, a faith bolstered by prayer-neither the whining prayer of the emotional nor the abstract faith of the academic- it must be the prayer of the will: the will to love God and to receive His grace. It must be a receptive prayer, for none of us will survive another minute without God’s grace; and we need to be aware of our total dependence upon Him even when we don’t feel Him or see Him in the normal channels or places.

Our faith must be a faith imbued with courage from God, for we will have to hang on in a terrible, sick-peace storm: and hang on to the death, if need be. There was nothing more terrible in Msgr. Benson’s book than the spectacle of former priests leading a liturgy for the Anti-Christ; a close second is the attractiveness of euthanasia for the characters without faith; and third, the superhuman pull of the forces of false peace with the Devil.

It was very interesting to me that Msgr. Benson included the destruction of Rome and the Pope leading the remnant of the hierarchical Church with the Monstrance toward the forces of the Anti-Christ- eerily similar to the visions of Fatima- although in Msgr. Benson’s book, the destruction and the procession take place apart in location and time-one in Rome, one at the edge of the plain of Mageddo (Armaggedon).

Are we living in the Last Times? My reason says, “yes”. The fruit seems to be ripening on the tree; but again, none but the Father knows the hour. However, it is still important to be watchful, to be prepared; for at no time is it easy to be a Christian in the world; and The Lord of the World is a powerful teacher about what it means to be in the world but not of it.

The Unlovable(There's a World Full of Us)

I've had some important people in my life who have had something in common- and perhaps it is more common than I first thought. It is a person, most often a son and father relationship, where the father has been more or less sadistic-usually emotionally, not physically. I've seen it in my women friends, also, but in my experience, more often with men.

The sadistic comes out in making the son feel, over and over, from infancy, that somehow he is just not making it as a man, or that there is something flawed or even evil in the son, something that has to be rooted out quickly and forcefully, so that his son can 'make it in the world'. This isn't tough love. This is fear on the part of the father, a fear that was perhaps handed down to him from his parents in some form: fear of failure, fear of oneself not being a good enough father. It is a warped love, and so ceases being love to the son.

What happens to the son? He is either berated, abandoned or critcized from his earliest years. Usually, I've thought, it isn't always all the sons in a family, but the sadistic 'discipline' (emotional abuse) may often focus on one son especially- and it seems to be the son who actually has the most masculine tendencies- perhaps the father thinks, "Ah. If I can just work on this one, he may have a chance to do something with himself: he's got potential". What actually may be happening is that the father, in his fear, feels most threatened by the stronger son. He feels that this son may get out of control and he may not be able to 'save him'.

The son then may take a couple courses: either he runs away physically; or mentally, by establishing a false self to please the father and placate him. Unfortunately, this sets off a cycle that may well end up in narcissism (the narcissist begins to put the maintenance of this false self at the center of his universe). Then the son grows into a man who cannot come out of himself to really love anyone, or to really recieve love. He has locked himself, his true self, away to protect himself from, primarily, the father-but as his father's influence recedes in reality, the son replaces 'father' with 'real world', 'commitments', or 'God'. He then relates to everything through this false self, which is actually not relating to anyone at all. He becomes essentially alone- and to be alone like that within oneself is a precursor to being in hell; we are not meant to exist like that.

The other course is that the son simply rebels. This is probably the most healthy, because it is in touch with reality. However, rebellion to any legitimate authority is a dangerous course, and can produce guilt and self-hatred, or again, narcissism. The best course would be that the son is strong enough to find other father-figures, healthy ones, who will discipline him in love and selflessness, not in fear. He can then develop in tune with the real world, the world that God made and will meet him within.

Only through right, sane, true faith in God can the son, wounded by a wounded father, begin to be himself, and to love himself as God loves him. This is the only cure: and it comes often through a very tough road of blind faith in God. Most often, as Aquinas says, the Lord uses normal means of healing- He doesn't usually zap us and we're set. Therefore, I like the term used by a great counselor I know: "Incarnational healing". This means, basically, that God uses people and relationships, incarnate realities (not abstractions or words) to heal wounds in people and relationships. The wounded person needs the grace to be able to trust God when he's been so wounded by the first father in his life, and the grace to accept love from whoever God sends to heal him. But as we know, the Lord gives everyone the grace he needs- and each person always, until death, maintains his free will to choose or to reject the love God continually sets before him. The free will part is good news because it allows even the most messed-up of us to make choices to get better and learn to love.

We are composite beings, beings whose souls are interspersed throughout a physical body-somehow! This means that, in order to receive full healing, we need to work at all these levels. When a person like the son I have been mentioning is wounded, in such a primordial way (by a sadistic father), he needs to be healed by being loved.

They say the saint is one who loves the unlovable. A narcissist, an angry (or worse, not angry) person whose spirit has been beaten up for many years, IS unlovable. This is their torment and it drives their existence. They can never find anyone perfect enough, or safe enough; they can never be satisfied because they are asking something impossible of another person. They do not truly see other people, often, until it is 'too late'. But then this is a grace: to be humble, to learn that you missed something so important- and then to be more open to the possibility that what you see as reality may be mistaken. Then there is a chink in the iron wall: and infinite hope! For the Lord always remains, waiting to insert love, usually through who He puts in our lives: friend, co-workers, religious, counselors, family members, a legitimate marriage-partner(or if that is not possible, Himself as Spouse of the soul).

So how does the saint love the unlovable? The pattern is how Christ loved. He laid down his life. In practical, daily terms, this means that the saint must have an over-abundance of God's love flowing through him, so that his heart can become a stepping stone for another, especially the unlovable. As Our Lord said to Blessed Angela: "Make yourself a capacity, and I will be a torrent of love through you." Through saints and potential saints making themselves capacities, wounded people continue to have a chance to experience true love, over and over.

True love can come in a friendship, a marriage, a family relationship. But the saint has to remain primarily in love with God. All his source of strength is the Holy Spirit. And he must be a person of prayer and commitment to the Sacraments, the Sacraments which nourish both body and soul.

Most situations are people in a relationship or family who are mixtures of potential sanctity and woundedness in different areas. With God, and right religion (how we relate to God), these mixtures of love and problems can slowly improve.

My early years of romantic thought about marriage and relationships have been blown out of the water. And good thing, too. For I'm starting to see that real, deep love has romance, but of a different color than the tinny stuff we're brought up to expect. It is the romance of Christ with a soul, the King with the scullery maid. Romance between two people is lovely and real, but it needs to be in a situation that always has potential to grow into the love of God: in the tough places of commitment, of sacrifice, in the places where we must wait on God to help us. Asking God to fill us with His love, and thus to help with problems, especially amongst the unlovable parts of us, is how it can happen.

Union With God in the Tempest

A Reprint

In the movie Therese, there is a very simple but profound scene: a climax, a turning point. It is where St. Therese herself says in A Story of a Soul, “my life was changed, in the time it took to go round the turning of a stair"; it is her passing from one with the will of a child to one with the will of a maturing Christian. It the movie, this change is shown visually as Therese kneels before the crucifix in her room and stretches out her hands in imitation of the small ivory figure nailed to the polished wood.

In the following days and months, Therese begins to conform her will to the Lord’s. She starts with very small things, she starts with the denial of self: not complaining when something unpleasant is asked of her; not weeping when something is said which hurts her pride. Then she moves to actively conforming her will to the Lord’s, by taking that habitual denial and filling the residual emptiness of self with acts of love and kindness towards others. Her eyes begin to be opened, and she begins to see all that there is to do for others, in very small and unseen ways; and then, she begins to see that in the strange economy of God, even her small acts, although done “with great cost to myself” can accomplish big things- even to the point of saving a soul. She once said, “A soul can be saved in the picking up of a pin”-that is, in conformity to God’s will.

In her conformity to God’s will, she begins to realize, as the years go by, that her vocation is to be in the center of the Church, in the heart: “My vocation is love”. And sheis the saint who knows in a special way that all of us, especially in the beginning of our journeys, have the wills of children, to whom each small sacrifice is insurmountably hard- because she herself was "a small soul." The journey, the success, the contemplation, the union, the love: all are God’s, all are His gifts! Also in the movie, Therese, the Mother Superior says to Therese, “The closer you come to God, the simpler you will become”. This is also the essence of contemplation.

Therese in all of this, is following in the august footsteps of the other great Carmelites, like St. John of the Cross and St. Teresa of Avila. These two were people who had their feet firmly planted on the earth- they were of humus, of the soil, or humble- but they were also two of the great contemplatives of the Church, and the mountain of Carmel was their haunt: they seem to be very high above us, on the sun-kissed peaks of that misty mountain. St. Therese of Liseux comes to us three hundred years afterwards as another great contemplative, but a contemplative flower in the meadow below the great mountain. Her road to contemplation is simpler, smaller, quieter. It is as if the Lord grew the Little Flower to show us that contemplation is a call for all of us- for contemplation is, simply, living in the presence of God. It is the daily, hourly, minute by minute practice of being aware of, and living immersed in, a Presence which is all around us and has always been all around us.

The mission of St. Therese, I believe, was to show with her life, her little life, that all can accomplish this with the help of God. But perhaps some are wondering still, what is contemplation and why is it so important? How do I practice and accomplish this?

Dom Zeller says, “Contemplation expresses itself in actively receiving.” There is a passive receptivity, which is more like fatalism. Then there is the more fully feminine idea of active receptivity, which can best be visualized in the conjugal relationship described in the Song of Solomon. The soul, whether it be that of a man or woman, is always the spouse of the Lord- to His activity, we are actively receptive. He sees the image of Himself in us, and as we actively conform to His will, we are receiving Him. As we love Him, He pours Himself into our being.

Contemplation is, really, at its highest level, total union with God. But all of us who are searching for God, longing for Him, trying to love Him and obey Him on somewhere on the journey towards union with God. As C. S. Lewis said, there is no such thing as ‘static’ in the spiritual life. We all, every person, are either moving away from God or towards Him; and now, in these times, I think the movement towards or away is much more clearly life or death. The battle lines are being drawn now, like blood in the snow. The writer David Hart, in his profound article “Christ and Nothing” argues that now the choice for Westerners is between union with Christ or union with the self- and the self is, set by itself with no reference to anything higher, a nothingness. Our modern culture in the West is now largely built upon this principle- that there is no greater moral law than that which each person makes for himself. This is the abyss incarnated: it is the Body of Satan. And as we see now, the West is globalizing itself and its values through the channels of economics, cultural outlets like the mass media, and pure force.

Therefore, as Mr. Hart argues, the choices for Christians becomes clearer and clearer. One cannot be of the world and be of Christ. It has always been thus, but it seems now that the murky options are clearing away: each rival cultus, from paganism to Islam are being corrupted into the worship of self, or the nothing. This is the meaning of the process of secularization.

How is this all related to contemplation? Because Christians who must live in the now largely pervasive culture of the nothing must learn to be aware in deeper ways of the presence of God. The traditional, visual and accessible societal means of being encultured into Christ are disappearing. One thinks of the typical religious service and how they are largely centered around the ‘congregation’ rather than the ‘bringing of the congregation to God”. There are too many examples to enumerate.

This does not mean that we must eschew all communal religious activity. To the contrary- we must search out and cultivate those small communities of authentic worship within the Catholic Church, which enculturate us to the union with God. And we must make, as our goal, to be in union with Christ. Contemplation is the daily, hourly, minute-by-minute expression of this. It is the longing look at the One we love. It is waiting upon the Lord. It is being like Our Lady, in her fiat. And contemplation can only flourish in prepared soil: a soil fertilized with the prayers, Rosaries, small denials of self, ascetical practices appropriate to one’s state in life, consecration to the Lord through Our Lady. The highest means of preparation for the life of contemplation is the reception of the Holy Eucharist. In a paradox, this is also a union with God in an incarnate way. It is the capstone of the life of the Church- for the Eucharist is Christ. Our Holy Church carries within Her all the means to union with God: but now they must be searched for under the crustations of modernism which have grown on Her.

There are some general practices which help: and the books A Story of A Soul by St. Therese of Liseux and The Choice of God by Dom Van Zeller are my recommendations. The expert is probably St. John of the Cross.

I think St. Therese, St. Teresa, and St. John of the Cross, all under Our Lady’s brown mantle of Carmel (the same material as the Brown Scapular), are calling every soul who wants Christ and eschews the nothing, to aim for contemplation as a means of the soul’s survival in the tempest.

Miralee, Kensa, and the Crippled Lebanese Man

These three people are not related at all, in any way, except in my heart. They are especially colourful stones in the mosaic of people in my life, the many people who have some tie to the navel of the world, that is, the Middle East. They are in a special grouping: those pieces whom I cannot quite categorize, except to place them carefully together in the place on my mosaic in which the grout is prayer for the special grace of God.

Miralee was my nanny, my grandfather who cared for me when we lived in Afghanistan. I have dim memories of his wizened and gentle hands patting me on the arm, “Imjabeeb, Tamee, imjabeeb”; his quiet and sun-bleached eyes smiling, always smiling, until the day we left and they were wet and sparkling, with the words, “When you are big, Tamee, come back to visit me.”

I have never gone back-except in spirit, many, many times- for I am sure Miralee is dead, he was a grandfather in truth when he was traveling the dirt roads of Kabul, back and forth from our house to his. He was a Muslim, a simple man too, and like the poor can, he loved me with a care and purity. He warned my naïve young parents about the bad gardener and the packs of dogs outside, the scorpions the size of a man’s hand. I remember Miralee as the most pure gift of Fatherhood, a spark of older, wiser gentleness. When we left Afganistan in 1973, I had a recurring dream of the land engulfed in flames, totally destroyed. The dreams receded and were replaced by reality only a few years later. And as my own life entered into the metaphysical flames of confusion and uncertainty, the fate of Miralee and how he’d loved me were always in the back of my heart, because he’d given me his heart, many times over- and my soul has hope for his in the mercy of God.

Kensa is my neighbor here in California. She comes from Morocco but of an American mother and an English/Iranian/Moroccan father. She is a mosaic within a mosaic piece- responds easily and naturally to pulls of compassion and virtue, but skeptical to any organized religion. She sees selfishness clearly and has no pretensions to the upper class being somehow better, yet also seems strangely, loosely luxuriant. She fits both in the Quaker Meeting House and belly dancing in someone’s sitting room in Morocco. We go on long walks and I talk sometimes about Christ and she questions me on hypocrisy and real love and politics; she is extremely reasonable but suddenly hurt and sensitive, putting the Hand of Fatima around her child’s neck. She understands the situation in Lebanon from a Western and an Eastern point of view.

Somehow, the Kensa I see inside does not fit with the secular, environmentally ferverous, international, third-culture kid. Her soul seems to be a religious one: in that when her children and her husband fail her, when she is faced with something raging like a fire in her life (as we all face, both failure and fire, in ourselves and in others) she will raise a metaphysical cry- and I hope that she will remember the little glimpses of Christ (I hope were see-able) she may have encountered. When she asks me what made me change into a religious person, and I say that I finally understood that God loves me- that simple truth- she does not say anything, there is a flat and closed silence. I do not understand this silence, and it grieves me. It as if she cannot grasp the paradox of intimacy and omnipotence I am presenting to her. But I love her, nonetheless, because I see something in her, like love set to the music that floats along the harbor-water in Tangiers. I have never heard it, I have never been to Tangiers, but I hear it in her. In some ways, she, like those of her father’s culture, has from the beginning of my knowing her, given her heart to our family and to me- the heart-giving of an open tent, a sharing of food, time and care. She treats my children like she does her own and catches them when they jump to her in the pool; she saw that Ana was ready to swim before I did. Yet, I know that also in this giving, there is great responsibility to walk therefore carefully, because once betrayed, even inadvertently, and the tent will never be the same. So I pray but know that I am not her answer- only Christ will be, as He is for the whole world.

The Crippled Lebanese Man is the only name I have for him- just a chance meeting outside a Catholic Church somewhere you wouldn’t expect to meet him. He told me something that brings Miralee and Kensa together, and places them in the context of the suffering in Lebanon, Iraq and Israel. “A Muslim,” he said, leaning on his walker, “will give you his heart if you approach him with open hands in peace. He will give you everything he has. But if you approach him with war he will fight you until he dies.”

Is this right philosophy? No. It lacks prudence, forgiveness and holy balance. It lacks the Wisdom of Christ: “Do not throw your pearls before swine”- that is, know with whom you are dealing- and “ be gentle as doves, wise as serpents”- that is, be gentle but with the firm constitution that survives to forgive- “ if a man asks you for your shirt, give him your cloak as well”- that is, in the context of detachment and love for your fellow man, but with no conditions of return- “ if a man slaps you on your left cheek, give him the other also”- that is, forgive all the way to the Cross.

So now the Semites are in a civil war- for the Lebanese, the Iraqis and the Israelis are all Semitic, all descendants of Abraham. Their lines of division are religious and political- but it is essential to remember, essential, that neither side explicitly has Christ informing it- except among small communities and individuals like Miralee and Kensa who are trying to follow the lights of love as they understand it, who are singing songs of love with their lives. We Christians are the salt granules who must answer those songs with the Word that will fulfill the nascent melodies.

The difficult thing is that the communication cannot come through UN Resolutions, armies, or frontal assaults. It comes when one lays his life down for the other in the Spirit of Christ. It is like a live-wire connecting one wire to another, passing the electricity along until all is connected: and there will be the Kingdom of God. And this is not a Western project- how presumptuous! No, it is a project the Lord started in the Great Command, "Go ye unto all the world, making all men my disciples". Nothing less will do.

My Beloved Father Edmund

I met St. Edmund on Ender’s Island, Connecticut. To be more accurate, I came across his arm. I was attracted by the gentleness and beauty, the long, slightly curved fingers and the delicate bone structure of the hand. I marveled at the thought that a hand can tell so much about a person, because I was immediately aware of St. Edmund’s presence. I was struck by the sense of peace and loving interest in my hurts and fears. His island, possibly like his other resting place, the Abbey of Pontigny in France, is a place of beauty, peace and refuge for the burdened spirit. After observing many emotional healings in the families and people who visited the island, I became aware that there was a great saint interceding, humbly and quietly, without recognition- a great lover of Our Lord and Lady.

In preparing for this icon, I researched the life of St. Edmund. I felt the hairs stand on my neck as I met the same man in words as I met in spirit on Ender’s Island. His titles: Peacemaker, Father of Poor and Afflicted Children. Thus the icon shows St. Edmund interceding for one of his poor and afflicted children, encouraging another to reach out in charity.

St. Edmund was born in England in 1174, a contemporary of St. Francis of Assisi. He was primarily a man of prayer, and then a scholar. He became a priest, then was pulled up through the ranks of the Church until he occupied the Archbishopric of Canterbury, at that time, the second highest place in Christendom. Like his saintly predecessor, St. Thomas a Becket, he was forced into exile by problems of politics. On his landing in France, he blessed a young prince who would become the future King and Saint Louis. He was not a politician, but a saint, who loved his neighbor. He was not a worldly man, but made his decisions based on the justice and love of God and thus he failed in politics. His life was like a perfect mold of the beatitudes. I take many quotes from the beautiful biography of St. Edmund, Edmund Rich : Archbishop and Saint, by M.R. Newbolt (first published in 1928). I give here examples of a few of the beatitudes:

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“One might subtract everything else from him — all his gifts of learning and the powers of leadership which carried him from the position of a poor scholar to the Primacy of England — and still, by virtue of those long hours spent night after night in solitude before our Lady's altar, he would remain a saint, retaining what is essential in his character.”

Blessed are the meek: for they shall posses the land.

“Rather he knew that it becomes the servant of the Lord to suffer. "Eadmundum doceat mors mea ne timeat" ran the legend on his seal. It was Becket's martyrdom which pointed to him the true way to victory. He would strive till he could strive no more, yield till he could yield no further without sin, endure to be browbeaten, humiliated, flouted, and disillusioned, and then, since Henry was no tyrant to give him the glory of martyrdom, he chose the humbler self-immolation of retirement.”

Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.

“For saints are unaccommodating people, excessively inconvenient to live with in an evil world where Christian principles have to be elastic if they are to square with politics and economic laws...(my sic). We get the impression of a gradually growing sickness of heart, a progressive agony of resistance to forces which he could neither make alliance with nor overrule.

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.

“As a bishop he stood for the very highest ideals of the churchman ; he is in the true succession of saints of apostolic life who ruled the flock of Christ, not from ambition nor for filthy lucre, but as a true shepherd, ready if need be to lay down his life for the sheep.”

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.

“When according to the law he received a "heriot"—that is, the best animal from the estate of a deceased tenant — he always listened to the natural complaints of the widow. " My good woman," he would say, speaking to her in English, "this is the law of the land, and custom demands that thy lord should receive the best animal which thy husband had when alive." Then turning to his retinue he would say in French or Latin, "Truly this law was invented by the devil, not by God. After the poor woman has lost her husband, the best thing her dying husband had to leave her is taken away." He would then say to the widow in his mother tongue, "If I lend you the animal, will you take good care of it for me?" Thus the requirements of the laws of man and God were satisfied, at the expense of the archiepiscopal estate.”

Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.

“He was seen to wash with wine and water the marks of the five wounds on his crucifix, then, making the sign of the cross over these ablutions, he drank them with great devotion saying the words of Isaiah, " Ye shall draw water with joy out of the wells of salvation." His love for the image of the Crucified was notable throughout his life, and in the history of Christian devotions this practice of his was famous in the development of the cultus of the Five Wounds, which finally crystallised into devotion to the Sacred Heart, in which the spear made the chiefest of the wounds of Christ.”

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

“We too need scholarship allied to sanctity, and our generation, like his, is overwhelmed with an access of fresh knowledge which requires to be assimilated by religious thought, and is assailed by an epidemic of unbelief which only doctors of the faith can conquer.”

Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice's sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“The world being what it was, and he possessing the character he did, no other result of his life was possible, for, as has been said, he is one of those whom our Lord sends as lambs into the midst of wolves, and the wolves of his day were hungry and formidable. He may not have combined in equal proportion the protective wisdom of the serpent with the harmlessness of the dove, but no tact or subtlety could have evaded the issues he was called to face.”

St. Edmund of Canterbury, to me, is a saint akin to St. Joseph: a true father, gentle and loving, but never losing sight of the truth. His life gave a perserverant and humble glory to God.

Enclaves of Heaven

Shaw Island, part of the San Juan Island chain in Puget Sound, is truly an island from regular suburban or city life; even more so than the other islands in the chain. Shaw makes Orcas Island look like a hopping metropolis.

We traveled over on the ferry from Orcas to Shaw this morning because we were looking for a reverent Mass, and hoping that the Mass at the Benedictine Monastery on Shaw would be just that. Part of the charm of these islands is that they are like small countries unto themselves, complete with mountains and farmlands tucked in between the boundaries of the blue, cold water. The monastery is in one of these farming areas; a quiet, gravel-crunching turn under a wooden archway, with a large rust-coloured Benedictine cross melding into the red and brown trees. Along the road cows, llamas, peacocks, chickens and wheat are growing and living silently under the resplendent sunlight of a Sunday morning.

The first good sign is that a nun barrels by us in an ancient red Subaru, in full work-habit with a blue and white bandana tied like a pirate’s over her headpiece. Coming in from haying, she is hurrying to change for Mass. The chapel is the second good sign, for it is lovingly built- how can one see that? The straight lines of the roof, the carefully allowed moss on the Japanese-style gate, the trimmed bamboo reeds, the small touches here and there of both beauty and sturdiness. It is a strange combination, this San Juan-style-sturdy(pine logs and cedar siding) and the beautiful Oriental décor and garden: but somehow, it fits together: the whispering of the wind in the pines and the green, sleepy sound of the water flowing down a rock into a carefully placed pool; the island rocks placed in the cracks of the slate path, but island rocks polished to a beautiful sheen, little tiny works of art; the off-center apex of the building held aloft by a rugged pine log, left in it’s natural but shaven state- off-center in a stance of demure, subtle reverence to the altar which becomes the focus of the space rather than the building itself.

The Benedictine sisters come quietly into the cloister area of the chapel, behind a transparent grille of bamboo, and begin to sing: we look at eachother in gratitude, because it is a beautiful, simple, “Asperges me…” and the Mass begins. The quiet reverence of a Novus Ordo Missae said the way it was promulgated, complete with the priest facing the East- ad orientum-the worshipful rythym of a people looking towards the Lord with one another.

I was thinking about this, this quiet enclave, the beautiful farm with its centerpiece this little piece of heaven, and wondering how we all present got to this beauty, this intersection of ourselves and Our Lord, on this small island in the more or less pedestrian State of Washington. How can I describe these moments, whether you are in a little town in New York, or Mexico, or a makeshift altar on pilgrimage? They are moments where you look around gratefully to the serious, reverent neighbor, the wise, sacrificial and quiet-spoken priest, the plaintive air of the Gregorian chant, and the air becomes heavy with the supernatural, as if the Lord sees the feeble human attempts to worship Him and gently turns His gaze our way, filling us all in ways unspeakable.

For myself, I was thinking about this miracle, and then the Old Testament was read: “ I Myself will gather a remnant, I will shelter them in a good land, I will be their Shepherd.” I thought of how the Lord Himself grants the enclaves, the tiny pockets of real worship, real life, in the midst of the Ellulian flight from Him that is the world.

I was thinking about the small number of nuns and their age, I was thinking in a worldly way about the survival of this place with the lack of vocations; for most people cannot even see this place, they hear its name, perhaps, and look no further- for they are not looking further than convenience or of ‘uplifting service’. I myself fall into this convenience thinking very often.

I was wondering about the mystery of these small enclaves of heaven, compared with the busy, alternating current of suffering and entertainment of the world. But I was, again, thinking in a worldly sense.

But these enclaves are the Lord’s, it is His will that allows them, grows them and leaves them in the hands of His creatures: they remain His. When we ignore them, or do not look for them, we are poorer and we are culpable.

As we left, the little valley spreading below the road, I saw a peacock sitting majestically on the balcony of the nun’s house, across from the barn. As he spread his wings and moved in his silvery, slow way, I was forcefully reminded of the loss of Eden- and the Deep Beauty that must have been there. It was the combination of the light, the reverent Mass, and the Presence of God that made me see an ordinary day as a slice of Paradise. It was a grace.

If you seek, you will find.

The Cure of Narcissism

She waited there, by the sandy window ledge, as the clouds beyond the desert mountains caught the last light like white cloth hung behind the oil lamps. The darkness of her unbound hair covered the side of her face as she leaned down on one arm, still attending the glorious colours of evening; she mused that it seemed the world was underwater, and that somehow this glorious sky was the real land, that the heavens that caught light were somehow like the glowing shore surrounding the blackness that was the fallen world.

As she focused on a certain cloud sculpture, her peripheral vision seemed to catch a movement in another part of the sky, like a sudden whirlpool in water. The next instant she felt a presence at her back, and she peeped out from under the strands of hair as slowly as she could. She felt a sudden rush of fear, and love, and glory, as if indeed all the beauty of that sky had pulled itself together into a person, who was now addressing her: “Hail, O Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee”.

Immediately she got herself turned around, still in a half-sitting position. Her face became white, even in that soft pink light of sunset; and any admiration or fascination she might have entertained on this creature’s behalf was immediately stifled by both her awe and outright fear, and also by her habitual practice of looking for the unknowableness of the Lord. She was not distracted by earthly beauty- and even this unearthly beauty could not entice her to want it for herself. She was afraid because she did not know who this was or what this meant for her soul.

Gabriel, or Power of God, knew all this about the young woman humbly looking at the floor, and so he said gently, “Be not afraid, for the Lord has found favor with thee.” She did not speak, but waited. The angel continued, and each word seemed very heavy to the young woman, a heaviness of massive, bright diamonds. She had to take in each syllable, and they almost hurt because of their immensity, as if they were actual physical things. He said, “Behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and shalt bring forth a son; and thou shalt call His name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God shall give unto Him the throne of David His father; and He shall reign in the House of Jacob forever. And of His kingdom there shall be no end.”

The corners of the room were darkened, but between Mary and the Gabriel there was a strong focus of all the light in the heavens. She looked up with a mixture of timidness and holy, solemn joy, her faith in the power of God already evident in her features: “How shall this be done, because I know not man?" The question had come from a heart lost in the mystery of God, a heart lost in the highest love, a love of passionate, loss-of–self humility and sacrifice. A heart like unto God, because He had filled her with His grace and prepared her for this moment and all others after. A helpless creature’s heart, but one He had transformed into a vessel of supernatural beauty, a heart inflamed with all loves coming out of the fiery furnace of charity, like the rays of the sun.

The angel inclined his glowing features a little, and lifted his hands: "The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee. And therefore also the Holy which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”

Mary tried to take in all these words. But she only understood them in the realm of her soul which is beyond words, the part of all of us that simply trusts God. In that realm, she was pondering a real question of love, but from One Whom she could not see or know in the way a maiden expects to know before acceptance. In the place beyond words, however, she’d lived in prayer for most of her young life; she had waited, a servant of the Living God, she had practiced virtue and forgot her self in contemplation of the beauty of the Lord as she understood Him in a myriad of ways. Here was no selfishness, no errant sensuality, no thought of a place in the world at all: only room for a clear, pure stream of servanthood that was fashioned by the Lord Himself, unbeknownst to the object of His grandest plan. In that silence-full place, Mary’s answer had been formed over all the hundreds of days that comprised her life to this point: "Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it done to me according to thy word."

Each day thereafter, her life was that answer, over and over, from the long journey to Bethlehem and the cave, to the Holy City and the Cross, to the Empty Tomb and the Upper Room of Pentecost. She was, and is, a true Echo of True Beauty: and she calls in full tones the rest of us to the cure of narcissism.

Narcissus’ true sin was to miss True Beauty and put something, a reflection of himself, in the place of God. The genius imbedded in the naming of the nymph, “Echo” is multi-layered: Echo not only provides Narcissus with more of his own reflection in a symbiotic relationship, she also, like the echoes, or ripples from a splash of water, spreads the narcissism into a society. Narcissus can be renamed Nemesis, or inverted image, for he is symbolic of the fallen part in all of us that wishes to invert the image of God in ourselves into a self-image. This is idolatry, plain and simple, and wreaks havoc upon the world, because it destroys and absorbs others into itself like Echo. It is like a virus, numberless absorbent selves trying to remake creation in their own creature image.

True Beauty once walked in Palestine, and His Echo was Mary. He is the only one with the right to love His own image in others, for He created them all, and Him loving Himself is, by its essence of Charity, loving the other and transforming them into true beauty. He is the Source of Love. Real love begets love and builds up on a strong foundation; and selfishness begets selfishness and destruction.

The cure for narcissism, both on a personal and cultural level, is not a thing like a pill or a method or a social program- it is a Person, the Person of Christ. This sounds like an unattainable answer until we understand the true role of religion (Latin, to tie). Like the weaving of a net which pulls men to safety, religion slowly and surely ties us to the Person of Christ: and if it is true religion, it does not bind into selfishness, but into the freedom of a disciple and a slave of Love. This slavery is joy, this discipline is gratitude and celebration, and ultimately freedom from the pit of living for self.

The daily practices, the examples of those who have gone before heroically (the saints), the architecture, the liturgy, the prayer books, the hierarchical nature of the Church, the different members of the body both clerical and lay, the chant, the spiritual direction, the holy education: all these little pieces work together to form a religion that ties one to the Person of Christ- or, if it is a man-made religion and thus false, again to self. These pieces must all work together, they must be informed by the Person of Christ in order to lead back to Him. That is why these seemingly small things, like prayer books and liturgical norms, are so very important. They become like the individual ropes of the net; if one of them is weak, many fish will fall back to the sea of destruction.

It is, of course, not left to chance that Our Lord used the parables pertaining to the fishing barques, the nets, and the fish. In His choice of First Apostle, He chose a master fisherman. It is also no accident that in mystical writing, the Church is called 'Peter's Barque'. The sea is murky and a dangerous place for fish, but they cannot see this at all, being unable to survive anywhere else: they are helpless as prey. The fisherman lowers his net, and is careful to lower a mended one, lest his work be in vain; and he pulls in a catch ordained by forces greater than himself. In pulling the fish out of the water, he is putting them in a position to die- they will no longer be fish, but in order to be born to a new life, they must come into the fisherman’s boat and die to self. The more resistant may jump out, but those that die will be changed in the confines of the boat, they will begin to become new creatures in Christ, creatures meant for heaven.

Narcissism, which is really just a precursor to hell, is cured by a death to self and an infusion of supernatural charity. This is brought about not usually by a single act of extraordinary grace from God, although this does and can happen. The most usual way, nonetheless miraculous, is through accepting the net of true religion, in order to be brought into Peter’s Barque, in which the Lord is waiting to transform us into fires of charity(Religion is like a slow-motion miracle). When we finally become Echoes of Truth, rather than of self, we can begin to transform the narcissistic culture we live in.

The Culture of Narcissism

Part Two of three

Most of us, without knowing it, swim like tadpoles in a sea of narcissism. We grow up, absorbing the public school culture, the TV, the movies, the news, the street culture in modern Western life. We are formed, in large part, by the seemingly random and existential accidentals around us: and they form us more deeply the less we are aware of their presence.

We are the child who sits watching a Disney movie of a young woman who strives to break the bonds of natural authority in order to plant her image on the world around her; we are the middle school student who suddenly realizes that in order to matter to our peers, we must conform by asserting ourselves with the clothing we wear (which, by the way, ends up looking as a facsimile of the clothes that everyone else is wearing). We are the teenager who knows nothing of the word vocation and ‘lives for the weekend’- a weekend of trying, via some substance or another, to reach intimacy but never to build true friendship. We are the young adult on a gap year, feeling that the loss of identity in the midst of a European twilight is somehow our right; and we are the twenty and thirtysomethings, feeling the weight of new responsibility as if it were meant for someone else, and not really seeing the importance of it beyond what it means for us, as an ‘autonomous individual’. We are the middle-aged sixties washouts who cannot commit to anything, because it threatens our boundaries of surface happiness: and it directly threatens our false view of ourselves as loving individuals. We are the citizen who cannot see that our own secular government, founded on deep pluralism, can and does commit evil (although even a numbskull free of narcissism could put that together). We are the adults who cannot think for ourselves, or think abstractly, because the culture we live in does not produce freedom, but rather narcissists and their symbiotic Echoes.

In the fifties, a Muslim cleric named Kutu came to the United States to study our school system and lived in a small American town. He came to a devastating revelation: even in the American heyday of law and order, the philosophies of radical individualism would produce a people who could not see beyond themselves; they would become selfish, to the point of seeing reality in the image of themselves- and that this was the great danger of the future to his fellow Muslims.

In time, Kutu himself became unattached to reality, in that he was the founder of a radical group of Muslims who came to the (ironically) rather narcissistic conclusion that they were allowed to kill anyone who didn’t practice the faith the way they did. However, amongst the false religious views producing fanaticism were some valid observations. At the time of his American sojourn, Kutu was an educated, moderate Muslim: he was a religious man, who understood something correct and fundamental: that the truly religious person could not be selfish, and that selfishness (narcissism) can be cultural and not just an individual problem. He saw the devastating effects that narcissism, or radical individualism, would produce on a culture at large: it would destroy the ability for people to have faith.

The Latin root of religion is religare, which means “ to tie”. In religion, which is the way in which we practice our faith, we are tied to God: we are obedient to Him, we are the feminine soul in relation to the Creator, the I to the Thou, face to Face. A truly religious person is in the process of forgetting self, or "losing one's life to gain it (in Christ)". But a radical individual, one who “has the right to create the universe as he or she sees fit” (paraphrase from Planned Parenthood vs. Casey) becomes fundamentally a narcissist. And when our own Supreme Court makes statements anywhere close to the one paraphrased above, we have a narcissistic culture. We begin to lose the very ability to see beyond our own image to the other, most importantly to the most Other, God. We cannot think in terms of abstraction, or principles, or faith, because everything is immanentized, everything is reduced to Descartes’ “I think therefore I am”- or the modern version- “As I think, therefore everything is”.

M. Scott Peck wrote a great book titled The People of the Lie in the late seventies or early eighties. In it, he documents that people who are evil are essentially narcissists, those who cannot see beyond the image that they have of themselves. This way of life is not only diametrically opposed to a truly religious life; it is necessarily propped up by bundles of lies. Dr. Peck also describes how a group or nation can become narcissistic, and thus begin to see that making the rest of the world in their own image is somehow righteous and necessary. It makes a person, and a nation, unable to see beyond themselves to reality, and unable to see those whom they are remaking in their own image. Others simply become echoes outside the veil of self.

The Myth of Narcissus Retold

Part One in a Series of Three

Narcissus was a beautiful young man, it is said; and he was given such physical beauty that he was a living picture of the Platonic form of Manly Beauty. He walked alone in the woods on a summer evening and was attracted to the smoothness of the darkening water. As the last rays of creamy sunlight caught his face, he looked into the water and fell in love. He sat curled on the side of the lake, staring at the elusive image on the surface until the light deserted him; he slept, then awoke in the morning sparkle to look at his reflection in this new aspect, the tentative light of dawn.

All day, he watched his beautiful countenance changing in the water: Here, this was the answer to his need for love, for the ideal, for the hunger after perfection, so often thwarted in the ugliness of daily life in the town and farm. Here, here was simplicity of form, crafted like a seamless garment, with no blemish, perfect in its predictability: his reflection was not only perfect beauty, it was something he could love and control at the same time. For Narcissus, the world was a terrifying place of chaotic particularities and blind duty; there had been no soil of love in his growth as a young sapling: only exposed and raw roots clinging to rock and drops of water. His physical beauty combined with his deep and abiding hunger for love had made a deadly potential mix: and the paint-base was the lake, the reflection. Narcissus had found a psuedo-love, a love which both answered his hunger and a controllable image which assuged his deep fears.

From the purple recesses below the surface of the water, a nymph saw the angelic face staring, as if at her through a window. She loved him immediately, and thought rashly but understandably that the look was meant somehow for her. Was her look for him born of true love or a desire to share beauty?- for she, Echo, was very beautiful, and had never found her equal until, she surmised, now. Here he was, his rich curls tapered gently around a golden, strong jawline, the eyes like the mystical waters in which she lived. In her nymphlike way, she came very close to the surface, and blew soft bubbles upward, globes resplendent in color and reflective power: painting a complex and symphonic picture for him of the foliage, the water, the sky. She was fecundating his mind, she was beginning to show him the divine fingerprints in nature all around. This, for her, was a primordial offering to budding love.

Narcissus only saw his reflection garbled by the disturbance in the water. His face grew harsh. He pulled away from the lake and threw in a stone contemptuously, hitting Echo on the cheek. Frozen in the unexpected nature of this abuse, Echo retreated and the water again was glasslike. Narcissus smoothed his own features and again poured his soul into conversation with the reflection.

Echo, from behind a submerged tree, saw him speaking and with timid strokes, came to answer. Surely, she thought, he must be teasing me and now is trying to talk with me. She came out of the water and began to sing, in small, childlike tones, the story of her soul, of her hopes in his regard, her new discovery of love, a love that would fill the world around them. It was like the song of many leaves, but if one listened closely, the words were clear and delicate, small pictures of the glory of life. It was the best gift she had to offer: it was herself.

Narcissus heard her, he heard the beauty and he smiled; but strangely, he did not look at her. He was taking her song and applying it dextrously to the reflection. He was assimilating her song into the image he'd chosen; and when he sang in reply, a song with all the beauty of his Imago Dei, it was to the reflection. Echo was only the instrument to fulfill Narcissus' deep desire: that his reflection would indeed love him in return. He was already feeling the loneliness of his choice, and so he began to use the sounds and smells of reality to fuel his tyrannical dream. Echo was a perfect source for fuel and he used her easily, greedily: and without guilt: because he never really knew she was there, in his focused blindness.

After many minutes, each an epoch of delight and pain, Echo began to understand: but the truth was too horrible to accept. Surely someone as beautiful could not be a cold serpent inside. This was a paradox of nature, one that she did not want to understand, nor could she shoulder it along with her own loneliness.

Perhaps if she could put herself in the place of the reflection, perhaps he would see her in time and begin to love her. Perhaps she could be a bridge to reality, perhaps her heart could be used as a means by which the reflection would lose its power. So, steathily, she placed her face under the water at the very point of the reflection: eye to eye, nose to nose, mouth to mouth. Like a warm breeze off the tropical sea, she felt his glance connecting with hers. It was like manna, it was like succulent fruit, it was pure feelings of joy.

She, too, was caught. She and he stayed there in a time-limbo. As the time slipped away, so did her understanding of herself. She began to thin, like fine reed-paper left on the water. She was dying, giving all of herself to try and reach him through the reflection in the water. Finally, she had no strength to keep herself afloat, and she let a gasp of air escape her mouth. The water once again bubbled, moving with the last strength of the nymph. Narcissus grew desperate, the loss of the reflection threw him into a panic- because unbeknownst to him, Echo had become the very lifeblood of the reflection's power. He reached downward to pull her up and held her there for another long minute. Her heartrate was slowing into the erratic rythym of the near-dead.

Finally, he fell on the bank, asleep. Echo floated up to the surface, and began to take in the cool night air. She saw once again, the trees and the voluminous sky, the ripples on the water she'd loved so much as a child. She saw the night bird cut across the ink expanse, the homely sounds of the racoon along the tree roots. She began to breathe again, to live again. She was hungry.

She did not look back at the still form on the bank as she began to tear joyfully away through the undergrowth, for she knew that Narcissus would not, perhaps, ever miss her. He would have his reflection. She grieved finally, for the loss of her own ideal, her own dreams of love with Narcissus: but later, wiser, she grieved for the real loss of his soul; she felt pity, finally, for the soul trapped in it's own reflection: in fine, she appealed to Divinity for his rescue. The mystery, cloaked in the girds of providence, is whether or not even the Most High was able to reach Narcissus.

The Scarred Face of Love

In the 2004 film production of Thornton Wilder's Bridge of San Luis Rey, there is a moment that stands alone in beauty and depth: the words, the scene, the faces of the actors, the looks captured; to me, this moment is the true flowering of the story.

The original book, to which this production is said to be 'slavishly' correct, is a story about a priest in eighteenth-century Peru who witnesses the sudden fall of an ancient foot-bridge, path to a popular place of pilgrimage. Five people perish suddenly; and it so affects this priest, who has begun to fall into the doubting of those who wish to understand before they will believe, that he makes it a work of six years to find out either God's providential designs for these five, or whether this was random. The conclusion would be final: either God exists or the whole universe is meaningless, and with a definite foundation of tragedy and sadness. However, the very question was the unbelief; for those who will not see (seeing is an act of faith in the spiritual) are already blind.

The priest traces carefully the lives of each person who fell to their deaths that day in the heat of Peru, and he remains inconclusive. It is the author, Wilder, who tells the real story, the story that the priest could not get to in his digging. We begin to see that each of the five people who died had suffered for love, they were, in a sense, the penitents, the ones who had finally learned what love really was: not selfish desire, addiction, lust, not a life in a peaceful garden, not even the ties of blood. They finally understood that love was to let go of all these, to look out of oneself to the ones God has put in one's life, and to learn to love as Christ loved: from the pilgrimage of the road, teaching and healing; from the synagogue, fighting hypocrisy;from their homes, helping the widow and the orphan; from the Cross, killing sin and death. To love is to lose one's life for the sake of Love, watering the vineyard of the Lord with one's own blood. To love is to love Love Himself above all.

This understanding the five came to, and as a direct result of their loving this way, they literally lost their lives: but what, again, is the end of that verse: "If you seek to save your life you will lose it, but if you lose your life, you will gain it". The five lost their physical lives but gained something more: it is apparent from the threads of the story that the omniscient narrator tells, they had gained love; and their blood watered the lives of those they left behind.

The most important of those whose life was radically changed by the death of those on the bridge was La Perichole. In the years before the accident, she was a talented and vain actress who had caught the eye of the Spanish Viceroy of Peru. She bore him a child out of wedlock, and was certainly on her way to perdition. But, in His mysterious way, the Lord had designs to save her, and the first deep knell heralding this redemption was her falling ill of smallpox. It destroyed her beauty and the surface sin of vanity began to be eradictated from her soul. The man who truly loved her, albeit imperfectly, came again and again to see her in her recluded state. She finally allowed him to take her son to Lima so that he could be educated. On his way, her friend and her son were two of those who died on the bridge.

La Perichole finally appeared at the convent in Lima, a broken and contrite woman, a woman ready to recieve Christ into her life. In the years that the priest was searching out God's providence in the fall of the bridge, La Perichole was living it. Living God's providence, finally understanding love, she was now "Sister Camilla".

The moment of beauty in the film comes when Sister Camilla appears at the court arranged by the Bishop of Lima and presided over by the very Viceroy with whom she had sinned. She comes into the court to give evidence in this trial of the priest, who is charged with heresy for trying to systematize and prove God's providential design (ignorantly trying to destroy a need for faith and make heaven on earth).

Sister Camilla flows into the court, her whole body and head veiled in a white-cloud habit, and stands easily and gracefully on the witness platform. The bishop asks the Mother Superior accompanying her, "Is this the woman who used to go by the name of La Perichole?"She answers in the affirmative and when Sister Camilla is asked to remove her veil to make sure, the Mother tries to vouch for her identity. The Bishop makes disparaging remarks about the honesty of a former actress, and without self-defense or reply, Sister Camilla removes her veil, revealing a horribly scarred face. The Viceroy winces, and the Bishop bids her step forward, asking the Viceroy pointedly if he recognizes her: after all, he knew her the best.

Sister Camilla steps forward, and looks up at her former lover, the Viceroy. To the shock of the court, he says after studying her face, "No. No. I do not recognize this woman. For all her passion, La Perichole had no love in her eyes."

Sister Camilla looks at her former lover for a moment, her eyes full of peace: and love: and forgiveness, for as some saint said, "Where there is true love, forgiveness is already there." She replaces her veil over her face, which despite all its scarring, has grown truly beautiful: beauty where before was only sparkling, hard charm.

Is this not the moment of God's providence? Are not those of us with scarring able to look yet beautiful, an eternal beauty, a spiritual beauty, a piece of heaven shining through the charred remains of our sin?

As the Sister leaves the courtroom in silence, the Mother Superior stops and says, "Those who will not see are truly blind."

See, oh see, the greatness of the Lord, see Him in all things, great or small: see Him in the sadnesses and storms, see Him in the calm and joy: for He is Lord of them all. May His face, a face scarred, a face of beauty in love, be our face; may His open side be the door by which we all enter His Kingdom.

White Martyrdom

A thirty-something mom who likes classical and Gregorian is an unlikely candidate to connect with a Tool song: but I did. The song is 10,000 Days (Wings Part 2), and it seems to capture, at the root, the feeling one has when understanding finally something of the cost of martyrdom. The creative man behind this song is the son of a Christian mother who was afflicted with a stroke and spent the last 10,000 days of her life paralyzed. Her son, a rock star, with some pretty dark and disturbing songs under his belt, seems to come up for air because of her death. I don’t have a judgment as to his personal faith or not, but to me he captured something profound in this particular song. He seems to be shocked into realizing that she is now facing her eternity, and he cries to God in this song for her salvation: he rages, how can she, who loved and suffered, deserve anything less than the greatest welcome from God? How can He not give her soul wings?

10,000 Days starts out in a harmonic minor, and by bridges, slowly layers on other harmonies and finally a clamored melody (like a journey upward). Using the minor key (think of Jewish music from the captivities), but starting out with the sinews underneath, bare and vulnerable, seems to me to be less purely sentimental than akin to the deep suffering that undergirds life in the world; and accepting this as the providential disjunct between this life and the next is a fundamental part of martyrdom for the lover of Christ. Back to the song: Waiting for the melody, the following is sung quietly, bemoaning the fact that many of our churches are filled with those (-is it I, Lord?) who consider themselves saints and martyrs for Christ, but who are actually hypocrites of the worst order:

Listen to the tales and romanticize,
How we follow the path of the hero.
Boast about the day when the rivers overrun.
How we rise to the height of our halo.

Listen to the tales as we all rationalize
Our way into the arms of the Savior,
Feigning all the trials and the tribulations;
None of us have actually been there.
Not like you.

Ignorant fibbers in the congregation
Gather around spewing sympathy,
Spare me.
None of them can even hold a candle up to you.
Blinded by choices, hypocrites won't [seek / see].

But, enough about the collective Judas.
Who could deny you were the one who
[would have made it, / illuminated]
You'll have a piece of the divine.

Another layer of rhythmic harmony, in the minor, but higher on the scale and lighter, is added at the the end of this small verse and the song takes a heavenly turn, almost a turn from resentment to hope:

And this little light of mine, the gift you passed on to me;
I'll let it shine to guide you safely on your way,
Your way home ...

In the next section, he speaks about the lights going down- the loss of a suffering servant, those who are marked by their love and patience and fidelity to Christ in the midst of great trial- that this loss will leave those with little or no faith at the mercy of the inevitable judgment of God. The music echoes this by the entrance of a new and demanding rhythm from an electric guitar, but as yet still soft and in the distance. At the line, “You’re going home”, the song again takes a turn and we begin to hear a hint of the only melody, a real cry of anguish from the heart of the son left behind:

Oh, what are they going to do when the lights go down
Without you to guide them all to Zion?
What are they going to do when the rivers overrun
Other than tremble incessantly?

High as a wave, but I'll rise on up off the ground.
You [are / were] the light and the way, they'll only read about.
I only pray, [Heaven / God] knows when to lift you out.
Ten thousand days in the fire is long enough, you're going home.

Here the son lets loose the blood-gorged prayer of one who has seen a martyr but as yet does not trust God to take care of her; but understands subliminally both her and his position as penitent and supplicant before the Face of God. I resonate with the cry in the lines, “It’s my time now! Give me my wings!” Although cloaked in demanding language, I find the arching intensity of the music, and the guitar above beginning the melody, the exact representation in music of the intensity of both a martyr’s desire and thirst for God, and the lesser soul’s awe at the work and mystery of the Lord in the life of a suffering soul ascending:

You're the only one who can hold your head up high,
Shake your fists at the gates saying:
"I have come home now!
Fetch me the Spirit, the Son, and the Father.
Tell them their pillar of faith has ascended.
It's time now!
My time now!
Give me my, give me my wings!"

Give me my wings!

You are the light and way, that they will only read about.

Should we all not live, at the deepest levels, in this intensity, and thirst for the Living God? Can we desire something less and be truly human? We can only do this by making the capacity inside ourselves for God, who will then fill us with His torrent. Then we live as martyrs, white and red. A red martyr is one who we are most familiar in story- the ones who gave their lives for Christ by shedding blood. A white martyr is one who, like this singer represents his mother, as accepting suffering, accepting loss, accepting God’s will as over and above their own with love, but to the point of death: internal, unseen, but death nonetheless:

Set as I am in my ways and my arrogance,
Burden of proof tossed upon the believers.
You were the witness, my eyes, my evidence,
Judith Marie, unconditional one.

Daylight dims leaving cold fluorescence.
Difficult to see you in this light.
Please forgive this bold suggestion:
Should you see your Maker's face tonight,
Look Him in the eye, look Him in the eye, and tell Him:
I never lived a lie, never took a life, but surely saved one.
Hallelujah, it's time for you to bring me home.

A white martyr, like the priest-saint who gave his life-blood to hear confessions many hours a day for many years; the nun who desired to die a thousand martyrdoms-and did so all within the pastoral walls of her convent in the daily giving over of her will to Love; the woman who prayed her husband and her children into sanctity at great loneliness and cost to her own dignity- the list goes on and on. We read these stories with some tremulousness and awe, but at a certain distance, as if a wall of glass separates us from these silent sacrifices of love, these heroic sacrifices. Only when we begin to desire to have the capacity for the love of God does He begin, gently, and perfectly contoured to our weaknesses, show us the immensity of any martyrdom; that death is death- of the self or the body. But no martyrdom is true that is not born of –simply, love- and love at an intensity that 10,000 Days portrays. It is that pounding thirst of the doe at the stream, the hunger of Christ for souls- the baptized eros that colors and warms charity. For to give your body to the flames, without this Love, is worth nothing. It would be the stupidest thing I can think of to do. May God preserve us from that.

Rather, it is the angst of seeking the Beloved in the cloud, the handing over of one’s will to Him in the silence and darkness, with no word spoken, no prenuptial agreement, no deposit-guarantee. It is to love, to give oneself because of deep, passionate love for God. The secret is that we could not have this but that He loved us first. He watches ardently at the gate for the approaching soul. He looks for us to have courage, and to cultivate strong desire, which are the necessary preparation for real love to take root: and then martyrdom for love of Christ and the souls He loves- the greatest thing we can, each of us, do.

In these light and dark swirled days of ours, we will most of us, be called to some penultimate moments of white martyrdom: for the sake of truth, or purity, or protection of the innocent. It will only be fruitful in love, love for God and the other. Fruitful in the sense that we do not necessarily know, in this life, what our sacrifices of love and will have done, like a providential wind blowing seeds. I do know that it becomes difficult to look at ten thousand days, or fifteen thousand, in this restless world, searching for the Lord through the dark glass. St. Paul says that we wish to exchange our earthly tent (body) for the heavenly one; but that those who are holy wish to stay or go, as the Lord wishes. This is love. But it doesn’t make the thirst less, but the thirst in itself has its own consolations; and I believe the Lord delights in consolation of His children. I understand now St. Therese’s desire: I want to spend my heaven doing good on earth. To be able to love, deeply and freely, to be allowed some small part in the salvation of others (Christ’s gift).

Yet how can I, like Tool’s writer, make this bold suggestion? In my small, white martyrdoms, I see how weak I am, how narcissistic: but I can hope, and all, all of this is my romance with the Lord. Religare, the root word of religion, means to ‘be tied to’. To be tied to something is to be constricted, and everything on this earth would constrict for ill if we tied ourselves to it- but many of us do. The glory and power of God bursts out clearly, like a pole of light piercing and destroying darkness, when we know that to be tied to God (or tied for the sake of God) is to be tied like as to a life-cord, pulling us up out of the frothing sea; to be tied to God is to be pulled to freedom and love. The Catholic Faith (religion) is the cord, martyrdom the weight of Love.

Epilogue to Salt

In the year or so since writing about salt and the Jews, I have had some thinking moments-on this subject. I recently read an article asking the question, “Who are the Jews?”- and this brought me to read Romans, and also gave me a new focus in my reading of The Life of Christ by Ven. Catherine Emmerich.

Who are the Jews, who are they with whom the Covenant of Salt was made? Are they the occupants of Israel, the somber families in black clothing in the Bronx? I suppose the very questions reveal some new confusion in my mind; but a very big clue tugged at me in my reading about the meeting of Our Lord and Nathanael. “Ah”, said Jesus, “Here is a true Israelite, in whom there is no guile.”

I noticed here a few things. Jesus does not call him ‘Jew” or ‘Hebrew’ or ‘Semite’, all of which would have fit him. He chooses ‘Israelite’. St. Paul, in Romans, uses this term as well, and on an overview look, seems to make a differentiation by the use of the different terms. Both Our Lord and St. Paul seem to speak of ‘Israelite’ and ‘true’ as being connected.

It is said that Heber, the father of the Hebrews, was given a language that was different from all others, to make his descendents better able to live apart from other families, or races. Six generations later, Abraham was born into his line and Abraham’s faith became the stuff of future nations. Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, became Israel, the father and personification of ‘isra-el’, or he who struggles with God. It is true; he fathered a nation who struggled with God, like a child struggles to be born. In the providence of God, the connection between Himself and mankind was a national, racial one, although it seems that even at the early stages, people were grafted in, like Joseph’s wife.

This nation, in the desert, struggled with God and despite their weaknesses and betrayals, was allowed to receive the law, the first step in regeneration for all of us. They struggled with God and were sent into captivities. What were they at the time of Christ, at the time of St. Paul? Were there any left to hold God’s grains of salt?

Jesus rejoices in Nathanael as a true Israelite. He recognizes one who struggles with God, without guile: struggling can have two meanings, and the fullness of the saying is apparent in both meanings for a true Israelite. They struggle in the sense of allowing themselves to be yoked with God for truth and salvation, and in failures they fight with God and later plead from Him His forgiveness. Yet in all this struggle, they are without guile, or cunning and deceitfulness.

One can also see who the true Israelite is, inheritor of God’s promises, that Jesus is showing us- by whom he denounces as false. Although they call themselves Jews and Israelites and worship in the Temple and teach in the synagogue, although they claim to interpret the religion for the people, many of the Pharisees are full of guile, full of their own interpretations, full of their heritage and race- they reject God in person, instead of truly struggling. In reading Holy Scripture and books of the life of Christ, like Fulton Sheen’s or Ven. Catherine Emmerich’s, one can begin to put together a picture of what Christ was looking for. The leaders of a town, usually the Doctors of the Law or the Pharisees, would invite Him to a feast and He would say, “I have other hunger” and would go out to find those who were waiting for Him. Often this was the poor and the sick, but also included some wealthy people.

He looked for those who, as St. Paul says in Romans, were circumcised primarily in the heart: that is, the sign of salvation was in the disposition of the heart. He went among the Jews first, looking for “true Israelites in whom there is no guile” and to try to convert those whose hearts were hard; but of course, He knew where it was useless and where there was hope. At the end of His mission to the Jews, He begins to speak more openly of Himself as the Temple, a Temple that would be destroyed and rebuilt: Ven. Catherine Emmerich has a vision in which He says to the Pharisees of one town, “You are destroying the Temple, stone by stone, you are tearing it down with your own hands”; and she was given to understand that He was speaking mystically of the destruction of the particularly Jewish claim to salvation, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, and the Crucifixion of God they brought about most directly.

Thus, in Romans, St. Paul speaks of the Israelite of the circumcised heart, the true Israelites. He is following on Christ’s words and example and on his own deep experience both as a Pharisaical Jew and as a true Israelite, who came to belief in his Savior God. He speaks of those Israelites who have been made jealous by the salvation of the Gentiles, those who God will come to save in the end: he says, “And all Israel will be saved.” There is much worth pondering here, because in the present age, where are the Israelites? It is not by color or pedigree necessarily: it is by the heart. This only God can truly see, only He knows where the salt will draw out the impurities before the end- that is, where the Church will be able to reach among those who call themselves Israelites. It is not for us to know now, and so we must reach out to all and call, “Come and see! I have found the Messiah!”

Resting on the stupid idea that the “Jews have their own covenant and we shouldn’t offend them by evangelizing” is failing the true Israelites.

You Are The Salt of the Earth

A Reprint

A little more than two years ago, there was some furor in Catholic news circles about the claims of some bishops that "the Jews have their own covenant, they don't need to convert to the Catholic Church."

This shocking statement, in its various forms, must be making the Brothers Lemann laugh at the stupidity, or weep at the consequences. They were twins, born into a Jewish family in the later 1800's, and later converted to the Catholic Faith- finally, becoming priests and evangelists to the Jews. In fact, during Vatican I, they were trying very hard to have a document approved by that council which dealt with the desire and purpose of conversion to the Catholic Faith for the Jews. It is with irony that we look back at the statement made at the time that Vatican I was interrupted by WWI- "It is with great hope that the document prepared by the Frs. Lemann will indeed be approved by the council when it is again convened." When the Vatican Council was recovened, the world was shuddering under imminent social and moral revolutions, and the Vatican Council would become the least likely forum in which a document by the Frs. Lemann, advocating evangelization of the Jews, would receive approbation.

True, it would be very interesting to see how the Frs. Lemann might deal with the Jewish question of conversion after the horrors of both WWII and the revolutions that destroyed the entire fabric of societies- and possibly dragging the Church's worldly understanding of Herself and Her role into the smoke of the ruins. However, the passion of the Apostles, notably St. Paul, all the way down to the twin priests, the driving desire to help their brethren in blood to see the reality of the Messiah in the person of Jesus, is the same. No amount of historical events, as terrifying as they may be, could possibly account for the Jewish-convert bishop in Israel, who stated sometime in 2004 that conversion of the Jews was not necessary. This is not an organic change of thinking, it is not on the same spectrum, it is a radical departure. What is the rationale?

In my last post, I discussed the Covenants of Salt- one with the priests in the desert during the Exodus, and later with David. These covenants, because of the nature of the 'salt-covenant', are kept forever. Therefore because the Jews consider these to be proof that although God may punish them for millennia, He will never completely reject them. The idea of there being a New Covenant, or New Testament, which supersedes the Old, including the Covenants of Salt, is completely foreign and blasphemous to the Jews. And since the horrors of WWII, including the Jewish Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel, and the growth of Jewish power in media, politics and culture the world over, the question of Catholic evangelization to the Jews has become a hot-point for controversy and charges of intolerance, "old-time Catholic imperialism". "Anti-Semitism". The stance of the Frs. Lemann, or Fr. Fahey, that of the passion to convert everyone, but especially the Jews since they are the nation out of which the Lord came, is simply against the current of mainstream Catholic thinking since Vatican II. Opening wide the doors and windows to the world does not mesh with sending out the calvary to convert the Jews.

It is quite possibly and probably true that the Covenants of Salt are indeed forever: yet they were made between God and the Jews- He does not change, He does not break faith. That same God came to Moses in the desert as one friend to another, to David as a loving and disciplining Father, and then He came to the Jews through the immaculate womb of a simple Jewish girl, as was promised and foretold for hundreds of years. He came as a bringer and omniscient interpreter of the Law, and as the heir of David's kingdom. Indeed He came and at the same time, fulfilled both Covenants of Salt. But the Jews rejected Him. Yet the salt remains, neither could retrieve the salt from the other's pouch, and so even in an attempt to reject Him and thus break the Covenants, the salt says: "No, you cannot break this covenant. It is forever."

Does this mean, then, that the Jews have their own covenants with the Lord, and that they will be saved regardless of our converting them? It is true that St. Paul tells the Christians in Rome, "I say then..Hath God cast away His people? God forbid, for I also am an Israelite of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin... God has not cast away His people, which He foreknew ...I say then, have they so stumbled that they should fall? God forbid. But by their offence, salvation is come to the Gentiles; that they may be emulous of them. Now if the offence of them be the riches of the world... that blindness in part has happened in Israel, until the fullness of the Gentiles should come in. And so all Israel should be saved, as it is written...For the gift and calling of God are without repentance. For as you also in times past did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy, through their unbelief; so these also now have not believed, for your mercy, that they also may obtain mercy"(Romans XI).

We do not know what is in God's mind concerning the Jews. But He is the same God as did die on the cross at the hands of His own, and they will know Him as the Messiah with certainty someday. So why would we not be called, as always, to convert them to the God to Whom they will most certainly recognize before the end of the world? And I think it is of course no accident that Our Lord said, "You are the salt of the earth, if this salt loses its flavor, it is of no use but to be thrown in the fire."

The salt of the earth. The mineral that keeps the heart beating, that preserves, that purifies, so precious and so necessary to life. It was salt that enabled the ancient Hebrews to stop being a nomadic people, a people moving along with and depending upon the herds for sustenance, for salt is necessary to the body for life. Meat carries its own salt; but with the possession of the mineral, the nomadic Hebrews were able to settle and provide their own salt, seasoning foods grown in the fields.

We, the ragged beggars hauled from the streets to the banquet of the King because His own people would not come, we are the salt for the world, and I think, for the Jews. We are, as St. Paul says, "to make (the Jews) emulous"- of the salvation given us by the King of the Universe. We are the intermingled grains of the Salt Covenants, grains provided by God, which cannot be recovered, because we are spread out throughout the earth, and therefore, we are in some way the keepers of the Covenants: we are the grains of salt, not inert, but alive and with the flavour of passion for Our Lord, the Messiah.

If we lose that flavour, that passion to have all know Him as their Saviour, if we opt out of our calling to preach to all nations, that desire and thirst for souls, Jew and Gentile alike ( "In Christ there is no Jew or Gentile"), then we have lost our flavour as salt and are fit for naught than the fire. We must evangelize in season and out of season, in times of ease and times of persecution. Woe to those shepherds who not only lose their flavor, but discourage others from evangelization.