Haiku

Two boys playing catch,

     learning to let go, wanting

the game to go on.

Blind

Blind eyes see past and future.

Set your gaze at the velocity

of now.  Nothing more dynamic

than the present.

The Futility of Night

Even time has its own dark

habit, an inexorable affinity

for the oppressive night, that

spectral inversion of hidden

light to which it returns,

time and again,

time and again,

desperately clutching at

a vapid shadow of

eternity, defending its

vicious movement as divinely

ordained.  Yet in the brief span of

the collective life of man, the darkness

has yet to conquer the onward

march of the pale breaking

morn, who with but the first

whisper of dawn shatters the

deaf silence of  cowering night, paving

the way for the beam of golden

joy that this very moment

beats down on the back of my neck,

my arms,

my legs,

soaking me in this radiant

shower of hope and

beauty and truth.

The Gate of Light and Dark

In the place of that forlorn

altar where I sacrificed

my life with you in the

Temple of My Ages Past –

an altar which you yourself

shattered, as I could not –

in that place now rises the fragrance

of hope from the excavated Altar

of My Hallowed Wounds.  This is your

dwelling place.  My pain

is your tent of meeting, where

I fear to enter, both because of

and despite

your presence there.

Please, O Lord, please

find another place for us

to meet, that my trembling

may be halved.  Why must you be absent

from the place

of my longing?  Be where I want

you to be, somewhere more pleasant

than the blighted slum

of sin’s decay.  Futile,

I know,

is my pleading, yet still

I cannot – I will not!

- go where he is.  And so

despondent I sit, alone and

estranged from my own

self, stubbornly deaf to his

beckoning.  But eternity

always beats time in the battle

of persistence, and so his patience

conquers my steely will.

“My son,

my son!

Come with me!”

            How sweet his voice!  I am weakened!

“You know that I won’t save you

without you.  I only want

you to be with me where

you need me most.  Do

you think ugliness can

endure in any place where

I Am?

Let us be together in that

place you fear the most,

loath the most,

for only in the darkness can you clearly

perceive my Light.  Be with me

there, my dear, and I will be always

with you here.”

When he finished speaking, he

wrapped me in the arms of

his silence, and for a moment

he gave me his own eyes

to see.  And for the first time,

at last,

I knew that I was beautiful –

the day that Beauty

made me cry.

Pope Benedict XVI On Prayer - Part IV

Following is Zenit's translation of the Holy Father's fourth installment of his ongoing catechesis on prayer.  This one focuses on Jacob's wrestling with God:

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today I would like to reflect with you upon a text from the Book of Genesis that narrates a rather particular episode in the history of the Patriarch Jacob. It is not an easily interpreted passage, but it is an important one for our life of faith and prayer; it recounts the story of his wrestling with God at the ford of the Jabbok, from which we have just heard a passage.

As you will remember, Jacob had taken away his twin brother Esau's birthright in exchange for a dish of lentils and then, through deception, had stolen the blessing of his father Isaac who was already quite advanced in years, by taking advantage of his blindness. Having escaped Esau's fury, he had taken refuge with a relative, Laban; he married and had grown rich and now was returning to the land of his birth, ready to face his brother after having put several prudent measures in place. But when he is all ready for this encounter -- after having made those who were with him cross the ford of the stream marking Esau's territory -- Jacob, now left alone, is suddenly attacked by an unknown figure who wrestles with him for the whole of the night. It is this hand to hand battle which we find in Chapter 32 of the Book of Genesis that becomes for him a singular experience of God.

Night is the favorable time for acting in secret, the best time, therefore, for Jacob to enter his brother's territory without being seen, and perhaps with the illusion of taking Esau unawares. But instead, it is he who is surprised by an unexpected attack for which he was not prepared. He had used his cunning to try to save himself from a dangerous situation, he thought he had succeeded in having everything under control, and instead he now finds himself facing a mysterious battle that overtakes him in solitude without giving him the possibility of organizing an adequate defense. Defenseless -- in the night -- the Patriarch Jacob fights with someone. The text does not specify the aggressor's identity; it uses a Hebraic term that generically indicates "a man," "one, someone;" it therefore has a vague, undetermined definition that intentionally keeps the assailant in mystery. It is dark. Jacob is unsuccessful in seeing his opponent distinctly, and also for the reader he remains unknown. Someone is setting himself against the patriarch; this is the only sure fact furnished by the narrator. Only at the end, once the battle has ended and that "someone" has disappeared, only then will Jacob name him and be able to say that he has wrestled with God.

The episode unfolds, therefore, in obscurity and it is difficult to perceive not only the identity of Jacob's assailant, but also the battle's progress. Reading the passage, it is hard to establish which of the two contenders succeeds in having the upper hand. The verbs used often lack an explicit subject, and the actions progress in an almost contradictory way, so that when one thinks that either of the two has prevailed, the next action immediately contradicts it and presents the other as the winner. At the beginning, in fact, Jacob seems to be the strongest, and the adversary -- the text states -- "did not prevail against him" (verse 26 [25]); yet he strikes the hollow of his thigh, dislocating it. One would then be led to think that Jacob has to surrender, but instead it's the other who asks him to let him go; and the patriarch refuses, laying down a condition: "I will not let you go, unless you bless me" (verse 27). He who by deception had defrauded his brother of the firstborn's blessing, now demands it from the stranger in whom perhaps he begins to see divine characteristics, but still without being able to truly recognize him.

The rival, who seemed to be held and therefore defeated by Jacob, instead of submitting to his request, asks his name: "What is your name?" And the patriarch responds: "Jacob" (verse 28). Here the battle undergoes an important development. To know someone's name, in fact, implies a kind of power over the person, since the name, in biblical thinking, contains the most profound reality of the individual; it unveils his secret and his destiny. Knowing someone's name therefore means knowing the truth of the other, and this allows one to be able to dominate him. When, therefore, at the stranger's request, Jacob reveals his own name, he is handing himself over to his opponent; it is a form of surrender, of the total giving over of himself to the other.

But in this act of surrender, Jacob paradoxically also emerges as a winner, because he receives a new name, together with an acknowledgement of victory on the part of his adversary, who says to him: "Your name shall no more be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with men, and have prevailed" (verse 29 [28]). "Jacob" was a name that recalled the patriarch's problematic beginnings; in Hebrew, in fact, it calls to mind the word "heel," and takes the reader back to the moment of Jacob's birth when, coming from the maternal womb, his hand took hold of his twin brother's heel (cf. Gen. 25:26), as though prefiguring the overtaking of his brother's rights in his adult life; but the name Jacob also calls to mind the verb "to deceive, to supplant." Now, in the battle, the patriarch reveals to his opponent, through an act of entrustment and surrender, his own reality as a deceiver, a supplanter; but the other, who is God, transforms this negative reality into something positive: Jacob the deceiver becomes Israel; he is given a new name that signifies a new identity. But also here, the account maintains its intended duplicity, since the most probable meaning of the name Israel is "God is mighty, God triumphs."

Jacob therefore prevailed, he triumphed -- it is the adversary himself who affirms it – but his new identity, received by the same adversary, affirms and testifies to God's triumph. When in turn Jacob will ask his contender's name, he will refuse to pronounce it, but he will reveal himself in an unequivocal gesture, by giving him his blessing. That blessing which the patriarch had asked at the beginning of the battle is now granted him. And it is not the blessing grasped by deception, but that given freely by God, which Jacob is able to receive because now he is alone, without protection, without cunning and deception. He gives himself over unarmed; he accepts surrendering himself and confessing the truth about himself. And so, at the end of the battle, having received the blessing, the patriarch is able finally to recognize the other, the God of the blessing: "I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved" (verse 31 [30]), and now he can cross the ford, the bearer of a new name but "conquered" by God and marked forever, limping from the wound he received.

The explanations that biblical exegesis can give regarding this passage are numerous; in particular, the learned recognize in it intentions and literary components of various kinds, as well as references to a few popular stories. But when these elements are taken up by the sacred authors and included in the biblical account, they change in meaning and the text opens itself up to broader dimensions. The episode of the wrestling at the Jabbok is offered to the believer as a paradigmatic text in which the people of Israel speak of their own origins and trace out the features of a particular relationship between God and man. For this reason, as the Catechism of the Catholic Church also affirms: "the spiritual tradition of the Church has retained the symbol of prayer as a battle of faith and as the triumph of perseverance" (No. 2573).

The biblical text speaks to us of the long night of the search for God, of the battle to know his name and to see his face; it is the night of prayer that, with tenacity and perseverance, asks a blessing and a new name from God, a new reality as the fruit of conversion and of forgiveness.

In this way, Jacob's night at the ford of the Jabbok becomes for the believer a point of reference for understanding his relationship with God, which in prayer finds its ultimate expression. Prayer requires trust, closeness, in a symbolic "hand to hand" not with a God who is an adversary and enemy, but with a blessing Lord who remains always mysterious, who appears unattainable. For this reason the sacred author uses the symbol of battle, which implies strength of soul, perseverance, tenacity in reaching what we desire. And if the object of one's desire is a relationship with God, his blessing and his love, then the battle cannot but culminate in the gift of oneself to God, in the recognition of one's own weakness, which triumphs precisely when we reach the point of surrendering ourselves into the merciful hands of God.

Dear brothers and sisters, our whole life is like this long night of battle and prayer that is meant to end in the desire and request for God's blessing, which cannot be grasped or won by counting on our own strength, but must be received from him with humility, as a gratuitous gift that allows us, in the end, to recognize the face of the Lord. And when this happens, our whole reality changes; we receive a new name and the blessing of God. But even more: Jacob, who receives a new name, who becomes Israel, also gives a new name to the place where he wrestled with God; he prayed there and renamed it Peniel, which means "the Face of God." With this name, he recognized that place as filled with God's presence; he renders the land sacred by imprinting upon it the memory of that mysterious encounter with God. He who allows himself to be blessed by God, who abandons himself to him, who allows himself to be transformed by him, renders the world blessed. May the Lord help us to fight the good fight of faith (cf. Timothy 6:12; 2 Timothy 4:7) and to ask his blessing in our prayer, so that he may renew in us the anticipation of seeing his face. Thank you.

[Translation by Diane Montagna]

Your Generosity

So in less than twelve hours you all donated some $325. You're amazing! Thank you so much! That is already enough to purchase the four City Passes that I was hoping for, and if more donations come in I'll get them a Metro Pass for the D.C. end of their trip. Otherwise I'll just give them the extra cash as spending money for the trip. Either way, my friends came through in a big way, and I thank you so much. The family doesn't know about this yet, but it's safe to say that they thank you, as well. Your generosity is truly inspiring.

Also, Longwood Gardens donated four tickets to that sweet botanical adventure, so the family is going to have a really great Philly trip. Now prayers for the real reason for their trip. Fox Chase is a fantastic cancer center, and it's the best hope they have, medically speaking. Please keep Cathy and her family in prayer.

Thank you all again for the generosity.

Help a Family Fighting Cancer

Friends, I've never done anything like this before, but I'm asking for your help. There is a family here in my parish going through a really difficult time. Two years ago one of their sons was diagnosed with testicular cancer, and after a long battle is finally in remission, and doing well. Unfortunately, just as he began to go into remission, his mother was diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, the rarest and most aggressive form of breast cancer. She has been through chemotherapy, and is now on a second round of chemo, and unfortunately the cancer has spread into her lungs, it appears.

There is a doctor in Philadelphia at the Fox Chase Cancer Center who specializes in this form of cancer - my understanding is that he has pioneered a form of treatment, and so she has an appointment scheduled soon. The family has a tremendous faith and is, publicly at least, in very high spirits. Because the family has been through so much these past years, and because they've never visited the East Coast before, they've decided to make a little vacation out of it, and so will be spending a few extra days in Philadelphia and then take a trip down to Washington, D.C.

This is where you all come in. As you can imagine, even with health insurance, battling two cancers back-to-back in a family produces a tremendous financial strain, to say nothing of the emotional and spiritual struggles and darkness. Philadelphia is one of the cities that participates in the CityPass program, which allows access to a variety of attractions throughout the city. If we can raise enough money to purchase four adult city passes to cover each of the family members making the trip, I believe this would be a fantastic gift for their trip. The tickets cost $60 each, so I would need to raise $240. I would also need to raise it by Friday, May 27 no later than Saturday. Given the large number of people I have access to here, the smallest donation, $5 or so, would go a long, long way.

So below I have the Donate button, through PayPal. It's secure, and it's a really good cause. Please consider making a donation by Friday, and pass this along to everyone you know. Anything that is raised above and beyond the amount required for the City Passes will be given directly to the family. Thank you in advance for your generosity.

Happy Feast of St. Rita!

On the Feast of St. Rita

Spiritual Vigilance

The latest post on St. Basil the Great is up at the Patristics Blog: On Watchfulness

Pope Benedict XVI On Prayer - Part III

Following is Zenit's translation of the Holy Father's third part in a series of catecheses on prayer, this one focusing on the prayer of Abraham:


Dear brothers and sisters,

In the two last catecheses we reflected on prayer as a universal phenomenon, which -- although in different forms -- is present in the cultures of all times. Today, instead, I would like to begin a biblical review on this subject, which will lead us to deepen in the covenant dialogue between God and man that animates the history of salvation, up to its culmination in the definitive Word that is Jesus Christ. This journey will bring us to pause on some important texts and paradigmatic figures of the Old and the New Testaments.

Abraham, the great Patriarch, father of all believers (cf. Romans 4:11-12.16-17), will offer us the first example of prayer, in the episode of his intercession for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. And I would also like to invite you to take advantage of the journey we will make in the forthcoming catecheses to learn to know the Bible more, which I hope you have in your homes and, during the week, pause to read and meditate in prayer, to know the wonderful history of the relationship between God and man, between God who communicates with us and man who responds, who prays.

The first text on which we wish to reflect is found in Chapter 18 of the Book of Genesis; it recounts that the iniquity of the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah had reached a peak, so much so as to render necessary an intervention of God to carry out an act of justice and to halt the evil by destroying those cities. It is here that Abraham comes in, with his prayer of intercession. God decided to reveal to him what was about to happen and brings him to know the gravity of the evil and its terrible consequences, because Abraham is his chosen one, chosen to become a great people and to make the divine blessing reach the whole world. His is a mission of salvation, which must respond to the sin that has invaded man's reality; through him the Lord wishes to bring humanity back to faith, to obedience, to justice. And now, this friend of God opens to the reality and the need of the world, he prays for those who are about to be punished and prays that they be saved.

Abraham sets out the problem immediately in all its gravity, and says to the Lord: "Wilt thou indeed destroy the righteous with the wicked? Suppose there are fifty righteous within the city; wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it? Far be it from thee to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous fare as the wicked! Far be that from thee! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?" (vv. 23-25). With these words, with great courage, Abraham puts before God the need to avoid a summary justice: if the city is culpable, it is right to condemn its offense and inflict punishment, but -- affirms the great Patriarch -- it would be unjust to punish in an indiscriminate way all the inhabitants. If there are innocents in the city, they cannot be treated as the guilty. God, who is a just judge, cannot act like that, says Abraham rightly to God.

However, if we read the text more attentively, we realize that Abraham's request is even more serious and more profound, because he does not limit himself to ask for the salvation of the innocent. Abraham asks for forgiveness for the whole city and he does so appealing to God's justice. In fact, he says to the Lord: "Wilt thou then destroy the place and not spare it for the fifty righteous who are in it?" (v. 24b). By so doing, he puts into play a new idea of justice: not the one that limits itself to punish the guilty, as men do, but a different, divine justice, which seeks the good and creates it through forgiveness that transforms the sinner, that converts and saves him. Hence, with his prayer Abraham does not invoke a merely retributive justice, but an intervention of salvation that, taking into account the innocent, also liberates the wicked from their guilt, forgiving them. Abraham's thought, which seems almost paradoxical, can be synthesized thus: obviously the innocent cannot be treated as the guilty, this would be unjust; instead, it is necessary to treat the guilty as the innocent, putting into act a "superior" justice, offering them a possibility of salvation, because if the evildoers accept God's forgiveness and confess their fault letting themselves be saved, they will no longer continue to do evil, they will also become righteous, without any further need to be punished.

It is this request of justice that Abraham expresses in his intercession, a request that is based on the certainty that the Lord is merciful. Abraham does not ask of God something that is contrary to his essence; he knocks on the door of God's heart, knowing his real will. Sodom was certainly a large city; fifty righteous seems but little, but are not God's justice and his forgiveness perhaps the manifestation of the force of goodness, even if it seems smaller and weaker than evil? The destruction of Sodom should have halted the evil present in the city, but Abraham knows that God has other ways and other means to check the spread of evil. It is forgiveness that interrupts the spiral of sin and Abraham, in his dialogue with God, appeals precisely for this. And when the Lord agrees to forgive the city if fifty righteous can be found, his prayer of intercession begins to descend to the abysses of divine mercy. Abraham -- as we recall -- makes the number of the innocent necessary for salvation diminish progressively: if there are not fifty, perhaps forty-five would suffice, and then ever lower to ten, continuing with his supplication, which is made almost bold in its insistence: "Suppose forty are found there ... thirty ... twenty ... ten" (cf. vv. 29.30.31.32). And the smaller the number becomes, the greater is the manifestation of God's mercy, who listens with patience, accepts and repeats to every supplication: "I will spare, ... I will not destroy, ... I will not do it" (cf. vv. 26.28.29.30.31.32).

Thus, by the intercession of Abraham, Sodom can be saved if in it are found just ten innocent. This is the power of prayer. Because manifested and expressed through intercession, prayer to God for the salvation of others is the desire of salvation that God always harbors for sinful man. Evil, in fact, cannot be accepted, it must be singled out and destroyed through punishment: the destruction of Sodom had precisely this function. But the Lord does not desire the death of the wicked, but that he be converted and live (cf. Ezekiel 18:23; 33:11); his desire is always to forgive, to save, to give life, to transform evil into good. Well, it is precisely this divine desire that, in prayer, becomes man's desire and is expressed through the words of intercession. With his supplication, Abraham is lending his own voice, but also his own heart, to the divine will: God's desire is mercy, love and will of salvation, and this desire of God found in Abraham and in his prayer the possibility of manifesting itself in a concrete way within the history of men, to be present where there is need of grace. With the voice of his prayer, Abraham is giving voice to God's desire, which is not to destroy, but to save Sodom, to give life to the converted sinner.

This is what the Lord wishes, and his dialogue with Abraham is a prolonged and unmistakable manifestation of his merciful love. The need to find righteous men within the city becomes ever less exacting and in the end ten will suffice to save the totality of the population. For what reason Abraham stops at ten is not said in the text. Perhaps it is a number that indicates a minimum community nucleus (also today, ten persons are the necessary quorum for Jewish public prayer). Nevertheless, it is a small number, a small particle of good from which to save a great evil. However, not even ten righteous are found in Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities were destroyed. A destruction attested paradoxically as necessary precisely by Abraham's prayer of intercession. Precisely because that prayer revealed God's salvific will: the Lord was ready to forgive, he wished to do so, but the cities were closed in a total and paralyzing evil, without even a few innocent from which to begin to transform the evil into good. Because it is precisely this way of salvation that Abraham also requested: to be saved does not mean simply to flee from punishment, but to be liberated from the evil that dwells in us. It is not the punishment that must be eliminated, but sin, that rejection of God and of love that already bears punishment in itself.

The prophet Jeremiah would say to the rebellious people: "Your wickedness will chasten you, and your apostasy will reprove you. Know and see that it is evil and bitter for you to forsake the Lord your God" (Jeremiah 2:19). It is from this sadness and bitterness that the Lord wishes to save man liberating him from sin. But, of service therefore is a transformation from within, some occasion of good, a beginning from which to transform evil into good, hatred into love, revenge into forgiveness. Because of this the righteous must be inside the city, and Abraham continually repeats: "perhaps there, they will be found ..." "There": is inside the sick reality that the germ of good must be which can heal and give back life. It is a word addressed also to us: that the germ of good be found in our cities; that we do everything so that there will be not just ten righteous, to really make our cities live and survive and to save ourselves from this interior bitterness which is the absence of God. And in the sick reality of Sodom and Gomorrah that germ of goodness was not found.

However, the mercy of God in the history of his people widens further. If to save Sodom ten righteous were sufficient, the prophet Jeremiah will say, in the name of the Almighty, that just one righteous will suffice to save Jerusalem. "Run to and fro through the streets of Jerusalem, look and take note! Search her squares to see if you can find a man, one who does justice and seeks truth; that I may pardon her" (5:1). The number has gone down again, God's goodness shows itself even greater. And yet this is still not enough, the superabundant mercy of God does not find the answer of goodness that it seeks, and Jerusalem falls under the siege of the enemy.

It will be necessary for God himself to become that righteous one. And this is the mystery of the Incarnation: to guarantee a righteous one, he himself becomes man. There will always be a righteous one because he is: it is necessary, however, that God himself become that righteous one. The infinite and amazing divine love will be fully manifested when the Son of God becomes man, the definitive Righteous One, the perfect Innocent One, who will bring salvation to the whole world by dying on the cross, forgiving and interceding for those who "know not what they do" (Luke 23:34). Then the prayer of every man will find its answer, then every intercession of ours will be fully heard.

Dear brothers and sisters, the supplication of Abraham, our father in the faith, teaches us to open our hearts ever more to the superabundant mercy of God, so that in our daily prayer we will be able to desire the salvation of humanity and to ask for it with perseverance and trust in the Lord who is great in love. Thank you.

[Translation by ZENIT]

St. Basil On the Renunciation of the World

The latest post at the Patristics Blog is up: St. Basil the Great On the Renunciation of the World

Dear Mary, Give Me Your Heart

Just a quick update. A few weeks ago I wrote about a little bout of depression I was going through. One of the things I talked about was that it was possible that it was related to my lowered dosage of my thyroid medication. I'm now pretty well convinced that that was it. It's been twice this year that I went through a depressive cycle, and both coincided with a lowering of the thyroid meds. The first time it eventually was raised, this time it wasn't, but my body I think has adjusted to the new medication. Additionally, I had been pretty seriously Vitamin D deficient, which has been corrected. Anyway, the depression is totally gone now, whatever the cause may have been, and I'm back to my normal self, which is great.

At the time of my first posting about the depression, a dear friend suggested that I re-read Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light, the collection of her private writings and correspondence that detailed her own darkness and her profound spiritual journey. I'm just about finished now, and there is so much to learn from this great saint. More and more I am seeing how important it is to give myself entirely to Jesus through Mary, and how much my own pride and my own egotism prevents me from allowing Jesus the freedom to do in me what He will. The battle against the ego will always be a great struggle, and so I continue to commend myself to God to help remove all of my self in everything I do, to empty me of all that is not Him so that I may be filled entirely with Him.

As I mentioned in another previous post, for me this emptying can only happen in the course of my daily interactions with people, because it is in the way I treat my neighbor, the brothers that I live with and the people I encounter every day, that my selfishness and pride concretely become obstacles to holiness and to my ability to be a simple vessel of Christ's love. Simply developing an awareness of this shows me just how poorly I love, how self-centered I am on a regular basis. But inspired by Mother Teresa and her humility and her absolute surrender to God, I am more and more praying constantly throughout the day, in the very midst of my interactions with people, that God remove my pride and liberate me to love with His love.

I don't know if my interactions have changed all that much in this very short period of time, but I do know that I'm becoming more aware in the moment of what vice or sin or disordered disposition is arising within me in the midst of these interactions. So for instance, I may be talking to one of my brothers with whom I am often unkind and judgmental, and expressively so. As we're talking I notice the same patterns of judgmental thoughts arising in my mind, but now before speaking I offer a quick prayer, asking Mary to teach me gentleness and compassion, asking Jesus to purify me, and it is just enough to hold back my tongue from saying something hurtful. It's a little thing, and yet it's so huge.

Ultimately, too, it gets to the heart of the Augustinian charism, and it shows me even more why I am called to this Order, to this community, because it is here that God has chosen as my own path to holiness. As Augustinians we stress that our community life is the heart of our charism and our spirituality, and that it is how we learn to live with and love our brothers in community that will be a model for love to the world, and will be a path to peace and love and holiness in our own lives. This is precisely what Mother Teresa stressed over and over to her Sisters, that they must learn to love one another before they can truly love their beloved Poor, the Poor of God. After setting up a foundation in Baghdad after the war in 1991, she wrote:

Looking at the terrible suffering and fruit of war - same thing, I was thinking, can happen through uncharitable words and actions. We do not destroy buildings - but we destroy the very heart of love, peace and unity and so break the beautiful building, our Society - which was built with so much love by Our Lady.

For Mother Teresa, her Society, her Missionaries of Charity, could only be agents of peace and of the love of Christ if they first learned to love one another. She saw an intrinsic connection between the hostilities and lack of charity in the daily interactions of peoples and the violence and lack of peace in the world. It is in this way that I am beginning to see how I daily contribute to the violence in the world by my own lack of charity, by my lukewarmness towards God, by the judgments and malice that I carry in my heart.

For me, the only cure for this is prayer, is silence, is pleading with God daily to enkindle in my heart a true longing for Him, a longing which I must honestly admit is absent from my heart. I do not long for God, but I am finally developing at least the desire to desire Him, to be united with Him. That's a start, at least. In a poem a few days ago I wrote on prayer, I ended it with, "Time is all I have to give." I have to give my time to God, and thus give God the opportunity to do in me what He pleases. If I cannot even give God my time, then I can never be the servant and the child and the lover that I am called to be.

So during these last three months of my novitiate, in this month now especially dedicated to Mary, through whom I wish to offer myself entirely to Jesus, I hope simply to give Jesus my time, and let Him do with me in that time whatever He will. My simple prayer is that He ignite that fire of longing in me, and that this fire will purify me from all in me that is not Him. Especially I pray that He remove from me all that prevents me from loving my neighbor well, that I be strengthened to resist the temptations that afflict my daily interactions - not that the temptations be removed, but simply that I be able to resist them and through them grow in love. To do this I must continually ask Mary to give me her heart, that I may be pleasing to Jesus, for with the heart of Mary I have hope of loving Jesus as she did, and with her humble heart I may learn the holiness of Christ.

Pope Benedict XVI On Prayer - Part II

Following is Zenit's translation of the second installment of the Holy Father's ongoing catechesis on prayer:


VATICAN CITY, MAY 11, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. With his address the Pope continued the new series of catechesis on the subject of prayer.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today I would like to continue reflecting on how prayer and the religious sense have been a part of mankind throughout history.

We live in an age in which the signs of secularism are evident. It seems that God has disappeared from the horizon of many persons or that he has become a reality before which one remains indifferent. However, at the same time we see many signs that indicate to us an awakening of the religious sense, a rediscovery of the importance of God for man's life, a need of spirituality, of surmounting a purely horizontal, material vision of human life. Analyzing recent history, the prediction has failed of those who in the age of the Enlightenment proclaimed the disappearance of religions and exalted absolute reason, separated from faith, a reason that would have dispelled the darkness of religious dogmas and dissolved "the world of the sacred," restoring to man his liberty, his dignity and his autonomy from God. The experience of the last century, with the two tragic World Wars, put in crisis that progress that autonomous reason, man without God, seemed to be able to guarantee.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church affirms: "In the act of creation, God calls every being from nothingness into existence. [...] Even after losing through his sin his likeness to God, man remains an image of his Creator, and retains the desire for the one who calls him into existence. All religions bear witness to men's essential search for God" (No. 2566). We could say -- as I showed in the previous catechesis -- that there has been no great civilization, from the most ancient times up to our days, which has not been religious.

Man is religious by nature, he is homo religiosus as he is homo sapiens and homo faber. "The desire for God," the Catechism also affirms, "is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God" (No. 27). The image of the Creator is imprinted in his being and he feels the need to find a light to give an answer to the questions that have to do with the profound meaning of reality; an answer that he cannot find in himself, in progress, in empirical science. Homo religiosus does not emerge only from the ancient world, but he crosses the whole history of humanity.

To this end, the rich terrain of human experience has witnessed the emergence of different forms of religiosity, in the attempt to respond to the desire for plenitude and happiness, to the need of salvation, to the search for meaning. "Digital" man and the caveman alike seek in religious experience the ways to overcome his finitude and to ensure his precarious earthly adventure. Moreover, life without a transcendent horizon would not have complete meaning, and the happiness to which we tend, is projected toward a future, toward a tomorrow that is yet to be attained.

In the declaration "Nostra Aetate," the Second Vatican Council stressed it synthetically. It states: Men expect from the various religions answers to the unsolved riddles of the human condition, which today, even as in former times, deeply stir the hearts of men: What is man? What is the meaning, the aim of our life? What is moral good, what sin? Whence suffering and what purpose does it serve? Which is the road to true happiness? What are death, judgment and retribution after death? What, finally, is that ultimate inexpressible mystery which encompasses our existence: whence do we come, and where are we going?" (No. 1). Man knows that he cannot answer on his own his fundamental need to understand. Even if he is deluded and still believes that he is self-sufficient, he has the experience that he is not sufficient unto himself. He needs to open himself to the other, to something or someone, which can give him what he lacks, he must come out of himself toward the One who can fill the extent and profundity of his desire.

Man bears within himself a thirst for the infinite, a nostalgia for eternity, a search for beauty, a desire for love, a need for light and truth, which drive him toward the Absolute; man bears within himself the desire for God. And man knows, in some way, that he can address himself to God, that he can pray to him. St. Thomas Aquinas, one of the greatest theologians of history, defines prayer as the "expression of man's desire for God." This attraction toward God, which God himself has placed in man, is the soul of prayer, which is cloaked in many forms and modalities according to the history, time, moment, grace and finally the sin of each one of those who pray. In fact, man's history has known varied forms of prayer, because he has developed different modalities of openness toward the on High and toward the Beyond, so much so that we can recognize prayer as an experience present in every religion and culture.

In fact, dear brothers and sisters, as we saw last Wednesday, prayer is not linked to a particular context, but is found inscribed in every person's heart and in every civilization.

Of course, when we speak of prayer as man's experience in as much as man, of the homo orans, it is necessary to keep in mind that this is an interior attitude, rather than a series of practices and formulas, a way of being before God, rather than carrying out acts of worship or pronouncing words. Prayer has its center and founds its roots in the most profound being of the person; that is why it is not easily decipherable and for the same reason, it can be subject to misunderstandings and mystifications. Also in this sense we can understand the expression: it is difficult to pray. In fact, prayer is the place par excellence of gratuitousness, of the tension towards the Invisible, the Unexpected, the Ineffable. Because of this, the experience of prayer is a challenge for everyone, a "grace" to be invoked, a gift of the One whom we address.

In all the periods of history, in prayer man considers himself and his situation before God, from God and in regard to God, and he experiences himself as being a creature in need of help, incapable of achieving by himself the fulfillment of his existence and his hope. The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein reminded that "to pray means to feel that the meaning of the world is outside the world." In the dynamic of this relationship with the One who gives meaning to existence, with God, prayer has one of its typical expressions in the gesture of kneeling. It is a gesture that bears in itself a radical ambivalence: in fact, I can be obliged to kneel -- condition of indigence and slavery -- or I can kneel spontaneously, confessing my limit and, hence, my need for the Other. To Him I confess that I am weak, needy, a "sinner."

In the experience of prayer, the human creature expresses all his awareness of himself, all that he is able to understand of his existence and, at the same time, he addresses himself wholly to the Being before whom he is, he orients his soul to that Mystery from which he awaits the fulfillment of his most profound desires and help to surmount the indigence of his life. In this looking at the Other, in this addressing "the beyond" is the essence of prayer, as experience of a reality that surpasses the sentient and the contingent.

However, the full realization of man's search is found only in the God who reveals himself. Prayer, which is the opening and raising of the heart to God, becomes a personal relationship with Him. And even if man forgets his Creator, the living and true God does not fail to call man to the mysterious encounter of prayer. As the Catechism affirms: "In prayer, the faithful God's initiative of love always comes first; our own first step is always a response. As God gradually reveals himself and reveals man to himself, prayer appears as a reciprocal call, a covenant drama. Through words and actions, this drama engages the heart. It unfolds throughout the whole history of salvation" (No. 2567).

Dear brothers and sisters, let us learn to spend more time before God, let us learn to recognize in silence the God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, to recognize in the depth of ourselves his voice that calls us and leads us back to the profundity of our existence, to the fount of life, to the source of salvation, to make us go beyond the limits of our life and to open ourselves to the measure of God, to the relationship with Him who is Infinite Love. Thank you!

[Translation by ZENIT]

Untitled Poem

A heart in prayer beats
like so many silent
echoes, where nothing
reveals the all-in-all,
an emptiness so full
of dazzling love and
living flames.  Or so I've heard.
For me, I just try to sit still.
Time is all I have to give.

Overcoming Sin

The good Friar Charles, OFM, has an excellent post about a struggle that afflicts us all: overcoming sin. Check out his advice here. If he isn't on your blog reader already, he should be.

St. Basil on the Ascetical Life

Second post on St. Basil the Great over at the patristics blog.

Integrity and Holiness

One of the real challenges in the spiritual life that I encounter is the struggle for authenticity. In all manner of things I can become, in one extreme, fixated on accidentals as if they were the essentials, and on the other extreme, so worried about what others will think of me that I forsake who I am and who I feel called to be, and how I feel called to live and to manifest my religious vocation. In each of these extremes I lose sight of the true goal, which is the ever-present discovery of who I am in God. That alone, I think, is the ultimate goal of the spiritual life, and remaining steady on that journey of discovery is what will enable me to live authentically and with a true sense of integrity, which, I believe, is exactly what the Church needs in this present age, men and women living in integrity within their own vocations in the Church.

One of the things that strikes me most about the life of Mother Teresa is her constant desire to hold nothing back from God, to refuse Him nothing, to do whatever He asked at any cost, no matter how painful or great. I read the lives of the saints as an opportunity to look in a spiritual mirror, and to ask myself questions based on the great virtues that these women and men embodied in their own lives. As I've been re-reading Come Be My Light, that mirror has been reflecting back on my soul and showing me how often I continue to refuse so much to God, how I continue to hold things back, whether because of fear, or pride, or selfishness, or apathy, or something else. Not only do I not give my all to God, in fact I give Him very little, considering how much He continues to give me. This is the challenge that I am presented with now, and that I am being asked to respond to: how will I grow spiritually in a way that allows me to forget my self and to give all to God, to stop holding back from Him, but rather to give all to Him in total surrender and total trust?

In my prayer, more and more I am turning myself over to Mary, asking her to teach me surrender, and gentleness, and compassion, and kindness, and humility, and trust. Inviting her into my heart and asking her always to give me her heart, this is essential for my growth in virtue and in holiness.

It is important for me also to keep in mind that holiness, or any of the virtues after which I am striving, are not abstract concepts, not merely Platonic forms, but instead only have value and concrete reality when they are applied to the daily moments of my life. There is no such thing in the Christian life as a generic holiness. There is loving the person in front of me right now, there is forgiving the person who has just hurt me, there is doing this little thing for my brothers out of love for Jesus, there is turning away from the computer and throwing myself in the chapel to be with Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament, there is stopping myself from gossiping and talking about others when I am strongly tempted to do just that. It is in the daily living of our lives that holiness becomes real, and it requires a constant seeking of opportunities to love and to serve, a constant awareness of the very present moment in which I find myself and asking God's wisdom and guidance in that very moment. "God, what do you want from me right now?" If I am living with someone who annoys me, then holiness is going out of my way to be kind and open to that person. If I am living with someone who is ailing, then holiness is going out of my way to bring them relief. If someone that I don't like very much asks for my help at a time that's really inconvenient for me, then holiness is giving them all the help that they need and doing it cheerfully, with a smile on my face that radiates the love of Jesus Christ.

This also is where the daily examination of conscience is so important - something I am terrible at doing on a regular basis. In the examination of conscience, or the examination of consciousness, I go through every moment of my day and see where, concretely, I have failed to be Christ in the world, where I have failed to love, where I have held back from God, where I have lacked in generosity, as well as making myself aware of the many blessings and graces throughout the day. This daily examen will help me to grow concretely in the virtues that I long to live and possess, to make them pass from abstract prayers to practical realities of my daily existence.

One last thing that strikes me about the lives of the saints is that typical among them was a true and sincere desire to be a saint. Not in the sense of being a canonically recognized holy person with a liturgical feast day, but rather to live a life that is truly saintly, truly holy, and this desire then informed every manner of their life and existence. Today it seems that so often people think humility should prevent us from being open about our desires to be saints, or that we should just be happy to be "human." But we are called to be imitators of Christ, who is the perfect model of all humanity, and thus being a saint really means being authentically human in the fullest sense of the word. But it requires great work, great diligence, and constant striving towards real self-forgetfulness. Perhaps this is what turns so many of us off from the thought. But being a saint is who God calls me to be, and so now I want to begin the real work in becoming one. It will require from me everything that I have not yet demonstrated to this point in my life, but all things are possible with God. With prayer and hard work, there is hope that even I can live this life with the sort of integrity and authenticity that true holiness requires.

Pope Benedict XVI on Prayer, Part I

Today the Holy Father began a series of catecheses on prayer, which is very exciting.  Following is Zenit's translation of the first installment.  I will try to keep up with them and post them all as they come along:

"Virtually Always and Everywhere, People Have Turned to God"

VATICAN CITY, MAY 4, 2011 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave today during the general audience held in St. Peter's Square. With his address the Pope began a new series of catecheses on the subject of prayer.

* * *

Dear Brothers and Sisters,

Today I would like to begin a new series of catecheses. After the catecheses on fathers of the Church, on great theologians of the Middle Ages, on great women, I would now like to choose a subject that we all have very much at heart: It is the subject of prayer, specifically, Christian prayer, which is the prayer that Jesus taught us and that the Church continues to teach us. It is in Jesus, in fact, that man is made capable of approaching God with the depth and intimacy of the relationship of fatherhood and sonship. Together with the first disciples, we now turn with humble trust to the Master and ask: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).

In the forthcoming catecheses, approaching sacred Scripture, the great tradition of the fathers of the Church, the teachers of spirituality, and the liturgy, we will learn to live yet more intensely our relationship with the Lord, as though in a "school of prayer." We know well, in fact, that prayer cannot be taken for granted: We must learn how to pray, almost as if acquiring this art anew; even those who are very advanced in the spiritual life always feel the need to enter the school of Jesus to learn to pray with authenticity.

We receive the first lesson from the Lord through his example. The Gospels describe to us Jesus in intimate and constant dialogue with the Father: It is a profound communion of the One who came into the world not to do his will but that of the Father who sent him for man's salvation.

In this first catechesis, by way of introduction, I would like to propose some examples of prayer present in ancient cultures, to reveal how, virtually always and everywhere, people have turned to God.

I begin with ancient Egypt, as an example. Here a blind man, asking the divinity to restore his sight, attests to something universally human, as is the pure and simple prayer of petition on the part of one who is suffering. This man prays: "My heart desires to see you ... You who made me see the darkness, create light for me, that I may see you! Bend over me your beloved face" (A. Barucq -- F. Daumas, Hymnes et prieres de l'Egypte ancienne, Paris, 1980, translated into Italian as Preghiere dell'umanita, Brescia, 1993, p. 30).

That I may see you; here is the heart of prayer!

Prevailing in the religions of Mesopotamia was a mysterious and paralyzing sense of guilt, though not deprived of the hope of rescue and liberation by God. Hence we can appreciate a supplication by a believer of those ancient cults, which sounds like this: "O God who are indulgent even in the most serious fault, absolve my sin ... Look, Lord, to your weary servant, and blow your breeze on him: Forgive him without delay. Alleviate your severe punishment. Free from the shackles, make me breathe again; break my chain, loosen my ties" (M. J. Seux, Hymnes et prieres aux Dieux de Babylone at d'Assyrie, Paris, 1976, translated into Italian in Preghiere dell'umanita, op. cit., p. 37).

These are expressions that show how, in his search for God, man intuited, though confusedly, on one hand his guilt and on the other, aspects of divine mercy and kindness.

At the heart of the pagan religion of ancient Greece we witness a very significant evolution: prayers, though continuing to invoke divine help to obtain heavenly favor in all circumstances of daily life and to obtain material benefits, are oriented progressively toward more selfless requests, which enable believing man to deepen his relationship with God and to become better. For example, the great philosopher Plato reported a prayer of his teacher, Socrates, who is justly regarded as one of the founders of Western thought. Socrates prayed thus: "Make me beautiful within. That I may hold as rich one who is wise and possess no more money than the wise man can take and carry. I do not ask for anything more" (Opere I. Fedro 279c, translated into Italian by P. Pucci, Bari, 1966).

Above all he wanted to be beautiful and wise within, and not rich in money.

In the Greek tragedies -- those outstanding literary masterpieces of all time that still today, after 25 centuries, are read, meditated and performed -- there are prayers that express the desire to know God and to adore his majesty. One of these reads thus: "Support of the earth, who dwell above the earth, whoever you are, difficult to understand, Zeus, be the law of nature or of the thought of mortals, I turn to you: given that, proceeding by silent ways, you guide human affairs according to justice" (Euripide, Troiane, 884-886, translated into Italian by G. Mancini, in Preghiere dell'umanita, op. cit., p. 54).

God remains somewhat nebulous and yet man knows this unknown God and prays to him who guides the affairs of the earth.

Also with the Romans, who constituted that great Empire in which a large part of the origins of Christianity was born and spread, prayer -- though associated to a utilitarian conception fundamentally bound to the request for divine protection on the life of the civil community -- opens at times to admirable invocations because of the fervor of personal piety, which is transformed into praise and thanksgiving. Apuleius, an author of Roman Africa of the 2nd century after Christ, is a witness to this. In his writings he manifests contemporaries' dissatisfaction at comparing the traditional religion and the desire for a more authentic relationship with God. In his masterpiece, titled Metamorphosis, a believer addresses a feminine divinity with these words: "You, yes, are a saint, you are at all times savior of the human species, you, in your generosity, always give your help to mortals, you offer the poor in travail the gentle affection that a mother can have. Not a day or a night or an instant passes, no matter how brief it is, that you do not fill him with your benefits" (Apuleius of Madaura, Metamorphosis IX, 25, Translated into Italian by C. Annaratone, in Preghiere dell'umanita, op. cit., p. 79).

In the same period the emperor Marcus Aurelius -- who was as well a thoughtful philosopher of the human condition -- affirmed the need to pray to establish a fruitful cooperation between divine and human action. He wrote in his Memoirs: "Who has told you that the gods do not help us even in what depends on us? Begin then to pray to them and you will see" (Dictionnaire de Spiritualite XII/2, col. 2213). This advice of the philosopher-emperor was put into practice effectively by innumerable generations of men before Christ, thus demonstrating that human life without prayer, which opens our existence to the mystery of God, is deprived of meaning and reference. Expressed in every prayer, in fact, is the truth of the human creature, which on one hand experiences weakness and indigence, and because of this asks for help from heaven, and on the other is gifted with extraordinary dignity, as, preparing himself to receive divine Revelation, he discovers himself capable of entering into communion with God.

Dear friends, emerging from these examples of prayer from various periods and civilizations is the human awareness of his condition as a creature and his dependence on Another superior to him and the source of every good. The man of all times prays because he cannot fail to ask himself what is the meaning of his existence, which remains dark and discomforting, if he is not placed in relationship with the mystery of God and of his plan for the world. Human life is an interlacing of good and evil, of unmerited suffering and of joy and beauty, which spontaneously and irresistibly drives us to pray to God for that interior light and strength which aid us on earth and reveal a hope that goes beyond the boundaries of death. The pagan religions remain an invocation that from the earth awaits a word from Heaven. Proclus of Constantinople, one of the last great pagan philosophers, who lived already at the height of the Christian age, gave voice to this expectation, saying: "Unknowable, no one contains you. Everything that we think belongs to you. Our ills and goods are from you, every breath depends on you, O Ineffable One, may our souls feel you present, raising a hymn of silence to you" (Hymn,ed. E. Vogt, Wiesbaden, 1957, in Preghiere dell'umanita, op. cit., p. 61).

In the examples of prayer from the various cultures that we considered, we can see a testimony of the religious dimension and of the desire for God inscribed in the heart of every man, which receive fulfillment and full expression in the Old and New Testaments. Revelation, in fact, purifies and leads to fullness man's original longing for God, offering him, with prayer, the possibility of a more profound relationship with the heavenly Father.

At the beginning of this journey of ours in the "school of prayer" we now wish to ask the Lord to illumine our minds and hearts so that our relationship with him in prayer is ever more intense, affectionate and constant. Once again, let us say to him: "Lord, teach us to pray" (Luke 11:1).

[Translation by ZENIT]