All Things to All People

It is nonsense to say that the Christian faith appeared in a simple age; in the sense of an unlettered and gullible age. It is equally nonsense to say that the Christian faith was a simple thing; in the sense of a vague or childish or merely instinctive thing. Perhaps the only point in which we could possibly say that the Church fitted into the pagan world, is the fact that they were both not only highly civilized but rather complicated. They were both emphatically many-sided; but antiquity was then a many sided hole, like a hexagonal hole waiting for an equally hexagonal stopper. In that sense only the Church was many sided enough to fit the world. The six sides of the Mediterranean world faced each other across the sea and waited for something that should look all ways at once. The Church had to be both Roman and Greek and Jewish and African and Asiatic. In the very words of the Apostle of the Gentiles, it was indeed all things to all men.

G.K. CHESTERTON The Everlasting Man

Mary, Mother of the Church

"Behold your Mother." In entrusting his Mother Mary to the Beloved Disciple from the cross, our Lord is concerned for much more than her practical living arrangements: He establishes a relationship between his holy Mother and all who are untied to him, that is, the Chruch. We, too, behold our Mother, for she is the Mother of all who live the new life of grace. We turn to her especially when we experience the cross, knowing she is "standing by." Today's memorial teaches us that "growth in the Christian life must be anchored to the mystery of the cross, to the oblation of Christ in the Eucharistic banquet, and to the Mother of the Redeemer and Mother of the redeemed, the Virgin who makes her offering to God" (Robert Cardinal Sarah).

Pentecost Homily

There was one passage of Scripture that kept coming to my mind as the Feast of Pentecost approached. It was the story of Paul’s encounter at Ephesus with the group of 12 disciples. Paul asked them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you became believers,” and they responded, “We have never even heard that there is a holy Spirit.” I think there are many Catholics who would say something similar. They have heard about the Holy Spirit, but they have either forgotten what they heard or they have not experienced the Spirit in their lives. This is understandable. I have experienced it. The Holy Spirit is self-effacing. He does not sound a trumpet nor speak about himself. At one time he makes himself known in a tiny whisper and at other times like an irresistible summons; sometimes intangibly like a breath and at other times with the absolute certainty of truth that calls for action; sometimes like a finger pointing at my lack of faith, and at other times like a finger touching my soul with forgiveness. Well, today’s feast is God’s answer to the mystery of the Holy Spirit: who he is, what he does, and where we can find him. The sending of the Holy Spirit is the essential linchpin of all that we have been celebrating for the last 90 days, a culminating revelation.

Let’s begin with the most important revelation: the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost completes the revelation of the Most Holy Trinity. The Spirit is a person, like the Father and the Son are persons. He is distinct from the Father and the Son yet one in power, majesty, and essence. He acts with the Father and the Son in all things, especially preparing our souls for the seed of faith, like a farmer breaking up the soil of a field. He removes the weight of sin that drags us down through his forgiveness. He anoints our eyes so that we can see Jesus, and the Father in Jesus. He reveals the Holy Trinity to us.

But the coming of the Spirit not only completes the revelation of the Trinity, he completes the mission of Jesus. Listen to Jesus’ words: “But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.” In other words, all that Jesus said and did—his birth, his passion, his resurrection and ascension—would be like a car with only two wheels without the Spirit. We would have Jesus’ words and commands but no power to carry them out. The Holy Spirit gives us this power. It is the power of love that makes the mission of Jesus continue in us. 

Finally, today we have the revelation of the Church, the Body of Christ. It is the Spirit that brings forth the Church, as he did when he overshadowed Our Lady. Jesus has gone to prepare a place for us in heaven, but in the meantime, he has prepared a place for us on earth, a place where all the birds of the air can make their nests, that is, the Church. Here the Spirit leads us into all truth as Paul did the 12 Ephesians. Here the Spirit distributes gifts and charisms from the greatest to the least, from the head to the feet, even to the less presentable parts of the body. Here he teaches us how to pray by putting the right words in our mouth: “Abba, Father,” and again, “Jesus is Lord.” In the Church the Spirit immerses us in the signs that Jesus instituted for our salvation: the bath of rebirth in baptism; the anointing with strength in Confirmation, and above all, the bread of life in the Holy Eucharist, in which we are all given to drink of the one Spirit.

All this is God’s answer to the question of who the Spirit is, what he does, and where we can find him. The Spirit is the linchpin of our 90-day journey from Ash Wednesday to Pentecost, the culminating revelation. Let us humbly welcome this Father of the Poor, this delightful guest of our soul, our coolness in the heat of the day…The Spirit of the Father and the Son. 

Suffering and Prayer

One must not think that a person who is suffering is not praying. He is offering up his sufferings to God, and many a time he is praying much, more truly than one who goes away by himself and meditates his head off, and, if he has squeezed out a few tears, thinks that is prayer.

ST. TERESA OF ÁVILA

Consequence of the Resurrection

Christ has conquered death, not only by suppressing its evil effects, but by reversing its sting. By virtue of Christ's rising again, nothing any longer kills inevitably, but everything is capable of becoming the blessed touch of the divine hands, the blessed influence of the will of God upon our lives.

PIERRE TEILHARD DE CHARDIN

Evangelical Lightheartedness

We cannot be peaceful if we are restless, full of anxieties about sins, weaknesses, the future, friends, everything. By contrast, the Gospel invites us to have a certain lightheartedness, a lightheartedness quite properly scandalous in the eyes of practical people, sufficient in themselves, accustomed to anticipating the future, planning for every eventuality.

We must forget the past and not disquiet ourselves over what may happen; we must live uniquely in each present moment, because the present alone has reality. We so easily risk losing the present reality for the sake of reminiscences of a past that no longer exists and in daydreams about ephemeral desires in a future that does not yet exist. To be in God, to live in God: this is being, living in reality, in the present moment because in God there is neither past nor future but only an eternal present, full of being and joy.

Give us today our daily bread. May your kingdom come.

ANONYMOUS CARTHUSIAN The Way of Silent Love

Beauty

[Beauty points to] the ultimate source from which all beauty in its appearing flows. The name of the source and centre is, without qualification, love, in its incomprehensible passing over from itself into what is other than itself.

 

Beauty retails the mystery of being on every street corner, yet only those who have an adequate sensibility can understand it.

We can be sure that whoever sneers at [beauty’s] name as if she were the ornament of a bourgeois past—whether he admits it or not—can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.

HANS URS VON BALTHASAR

Contemplative Living

When I speak of the contemplative life, I do not mean the institutional cloistered life, the organized life of prayer…. I am talking about a special dimension of inner discipline and experience, a certain integrity and fullness of personal development, which are not compatible with a purely external, alienated, busy-busy existence. This does not mean that these special dimensions are incompatible with action, with creative work, with dedicated love. On the contrary, these all go together. A certain depth of disciplined experience is a necessary ground for fruitful action. Without a more profound human understanding derived from exploration of the inner ground of human existence, love will tend to be superficial and deceptive. Traditionally, the ideas of prayer, meditation and contemplation have been associated with this deepening of one's personal life and this expansion of the capacity to understand and serve others.

THOMAS MERTON Contemplation in a World of Action

Life After the Ascension

Saint Luke says that having seen Jesus ascending into heaven, the Apostles returned to Jerusalem “with great joy”. This seems to us a little odd. When we are separated from our relatives, from our friends, because of a definitive departure and, especially, death, there is usually a natural sadness in us since we will no longer see their face, no longer hear their voice, or enjoy their love, their presence. The Evangelist instead emphasizes the profound joy of the Apostles. But how could this be? Precisely because, with the gaze of faith they understand that although he has been removed from their sight, Jesus stays with them forever, he does not abandon them and in the glory of the Father supports them, guides them and intercedes for them.

POPE FRANCIS General Audience, 17 April, 2013

Where Self-Knowledge Leads

As long as I look at myself I see nothing but what grieves me. But once I look up and raise my eyes towards God and [God’s] pitying help, the glad sight of God soon makes up for the sad sight of myself…. Such is the experience and sequence of getting to know God as one's helper: first, one finds oneself in need of help, and second, one calls to the Lord and he listens…. In this way self-knowledge leads to the knowledge of God.

ST. BERNARD OF CLAIRVAUX Sermon 36.6 on the Song of Songs

The Ascension

As he makes his ‘exodus’ to Heaven, Christ ‘makes way’ for us, he goes to prepare a place for us and, from this time forth, he intercedes for us, so that we may always be accompanied and blessed by the Father. Christ does not want to limit our freedom by his presence. On the contrary, he leaves space to us, because true love always generates a closeness that does not stifle, is not possessive, is close but not possessive; on the contrary, true love which makes us protagonists. And so, ascending to Heaven, instead of remaining beside a few people with his body, Jesus becomes close to all with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit makes Jesus present in us, beyond the barriers of time and space, to make us his witnesses in the world.

POPE FRANCIS

Simple And Humble Poverty

In the contemplative life this renunciation must be effected in our inmost heart. Only pure hearts may see God (Matthew 5:8). The more intimate the union to which we aspire, the greater our purity of heart must be. Only simple and humble poverty is able to receive the infinite without appropriating it. Only pure love, that seeks no return for itself can love Love.

It is good to be aware from the beginning that it is this to which we are called: not to a perfection or usefulness according to our standard, but an almost unbearable, shattering encounter with Love that ravages and burns all that is not him.

ANONYMOUS CARTHUSIAN The Call of Silent Love

Eternal Novelty

The deepest love cannot be boring. The vision of Beauty can never be dull. Finite experiences become commonplace, stale, flat, wearying, but never this one. If the mystic cannot find words to describe his enthrallment on earth, who is going to find words to speak of what eye has not seen nor ear heard?

FR. THOMAS DUBAY, S.M. God Dwells Within Us, Ch. 8

Sensing The Divine Presence

Most of the time, we don't see the glory of ordinary things. In general, the presence of the divine in our lives is not only mysterious, but downright opaque. The connecting spiritual membrane is murky, blurred, obscure. How can we become more aware of God in our day-to-day routine? How can we sense God present in our lives more often? What might help us see things as we believe they really are in the times and the places of our lives? Silence. The discipline of silence gives us a foundation on which to orient our lives to the reality of the Divine Presence that we know by faith is with us always.

NORVENE VEST No Moment Too Small, Ch. 1

Love of Neighbor

To describe love of neighbor Scripture uses a very wise and profound phrase: Love your neighbor as yourself. It does not demand any fantastic and unreal heroism…. No, it is as yourself…. People who are dissatisfied with themselves will not be really good to others. Those who do not accept themselves take exception to others. True love is fair: where it is leading us is to love oneself as one of the members of Christ’s body. Oneself like the others—becoming free of that false perspective with which we are all born, as if the world revolves around me and my ego. Through faith we must all learn a kind of Copernican revolution. Copernicus discovered that it was not the sun that went around the earth but that this earth along with the other planets revolved around the sun. We all begin by seeing ourselves as a tiny earth around which all the sons must turn. Faith teaches us to leave this error and to behave like brothers and sisters, joining together with all the others in the round dance of love around the one center that is God. Only if God exists, only if he becomes the center of my life, is this love my neighbor as myself possible. But if he exists, if he becomes my center, then it is also possible to reach this inward freedom of love.

POPE BENEDICT XVI

The Devout Life

Consider that nothing save holiness and devotion can satisfy your soul in this world: behold how gracious they are; draw a contrast between each virtue and its opposite vice; how gracious patience is compared with vengeance; gentleness compared with anger; humility with pride and arrogance; liberality with avarice; charity with envy; sobriety with unsteadiness. It is one charm of all virtues that they fill the soul with untold sweetness after being practiced, whereas vice leaves it harassed and ill at ease. Who would not speedily set to work and obtain such sweetness?

In the matter of evil, he who has a little is not contented, and he who has much is discontented; but he who has a little virtue is gladsome, and his gladness is for ever greater as he goes on. O devout life, you are indeed lovely; sweet and pleasant; you can soften sorrows and sweeten consolations; without you God becomes evil, pleasure is marred by anxiety and distress. Truly, whoever knows what you are may well say with the woman of Samaria, “Lord, give me this water” (John 4:15), an aspiration often uttered by Saint Teresa and Saint Catherine of Genoa.

ST. FRANCIS DE SALES Introduction to the Devout Life

Contemplative Prayer

Contemplative prayer is silence, the “symbol of the world to come” or “silent love.” Words in this kind of prayer are not speeches; they are like kindling that feeds the fire of love. In this silence, unbearable to the “outer” man, the Father speaks to us his incarnate Word, who suffered, died, and rose; in this silence the spirit of adoption enables us to share in the prayer of Jesus.

CATECHISM OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH Christian Prayer, 2717

God Has Said Everything In His Word

And giving us his Son, his only Word (for he possesses no other), he spoke everything to us at once in this sole Word—and he has no more to say…because what he spoke before to the prophets in parts, he has now spoken all at once by giving us the All Who is His Son. Any person questioning God or desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behavior but also of offending him, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.

ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS The Ascent of Mount Carmel