Third Day of Retreat: Question On Matters of Focus

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, If you are on retreat how can your attention be focused outward to "the wider world" as you recently wrote? That's not my idea of retreating!]]

 Well,  you are entirely correct that some of my attention has been so focused and that is mainly because of two things: 1) my heart is profoundly engaged here and that naturally includes people who enrich my life by loving me and allowing me to love them, and 2) this is a natural rhythm for me at this time. I can certainly focus inward and there are times that I have done and in fact must do that to the exclusion of really thinking much about people outside the hermitage (or my room here at the mission), but going on retreat is a sort of paradoxical reality for me. It is a time when I leave the hermitage, meet and interact on  a limited basis with others, worship with those I don't really know (yet), and to a very limited degree when I am out of my room and somewhere else in the mission, answer occasional questions about this vocation, my own ties to Franciscanism and my journey from there to Diocesan Eremitical life and Camaldolese Benedictinism. While my time here is no different from the annual retreat taken by any religious, whether ministerial or not, it is the case that it is a bit more relaxed in some ways (not least that I can check email at noon time if I choose to and read questions like yours!) and that it frees me from some everyday concerns which are part and parcel of my life at Stillsong. Still, it is very much retreat time and I will do my best to simply allow it to be what God wills and thus, what I need it to be (and vice versa!).



Perhaps the first reading from today's liturgy captures this sense of rhythm and the appropriateness of flexibility best (it was because of this that I actually chose to answer your question today rather than next week some time): [[To everything there is a Season, and a time for every purpose under heaven. . . .a time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces. . . .A time to seek, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away. . . .a time to be silent, and a time to speak. . . .He has made everything appropriate to its time, and has put the timeless into [our] hearts]]

You see, I understand retreat as a privileged time to honor what is in my heart because the heart is that place within me where God bears witness to Godself. I do that by allowing myself to be taken hold of by what dwells therein in ways which may differ from when I am home. The different context assures that I perceive things from a different perspective because different things trigger meaningful associations for me and because it is all differently illuminated. I hear texts and prayers proclaimed or recited with new voices and so, in new ways. Similarly, I am vulnerable in different ways, that is, all of this and more serves to open my heart in fresh and surprising ways to our living God who is always new. 


You must admit that superficially at least there is a bit of irony or something just a little "mind-bending" in the idea of a hermit "going on retreat". In any case it hardly makes sense to go from "sitting in one's 'cell'" to sitting in another one and paying for the privilege of doing so --- unless, of course, there is something meaningfully new or different about the situation. You see, most people take retreats to break from their usual surroundings. It's important to do this and I do the same. What may be a bit different is that where "retreat" in the mind of most folks implies a move from busyness or routine that militates against prayer, from the world of noise that prevents silence, from relative superficiality, and so forth, in order to turn or return to God at a greater depth, for me it does not mean these things, at least not generally. (I can certainly relate to the need to move from a routine that can become stultifying or at least less than helpful sometimes in terms of prayer, and also to becoming caught up in some forms of busyness! I can also relate to the need to respond to God more deeply at almost any time or place so retreat does mean an opportunity for that for me.)

But for me retreat generally means an opportunity to take a step back and look at my everyday life from a new vantage point. (It is amazing the way daily struggles and the battles with the demons of our own hearts become less huge and intransigent when one can do this.) Of course it does mean taking time apart from directees and some limited parish commitments, but above all it means providing a new space  in which my heart can breath according to a different time signature and be stretched and sing itself in a new key. In that way I gain more perspective on living my life and hear more clearly the song I am called to be --- free of the muddle and  facile embellishments which sometimes accrue to and detract from it.. When I return home from retreat, I tend to see everything there with fresh eyes and a more truly grateful heart as well. In any case, retreat provides me with the opportunity to better honor all the ways God bears witness to Himself within my own heart.

Feast of the Most Sacred Heart (Reprise)

Today we celebrate a feast that may seem at first glance to be irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theology of grace and freedom point directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways which are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all  persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term which points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing which could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Sometimes it is the pain of compassion or empathy or grief. These are often bittersweet experiences, but they are also life giving. Other times love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover.

In such cases our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened" and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, callousedness. Such hardening is self-protective but it also locks us into a world which makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons --- and I use only Sons because of the prophetic, countercultural sense that term had for women in the early Church), we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence.

Like the Sacred Heart our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and (made) transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic (self-emptying) dimensions and therefore too by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart which heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts which love as God loves, and therefore which do justice. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!

Feast of the Sacred Heart (Reprise)

We are faced today with a feast that seems sometimes to be irrelevant to contemporary life. The Feast of the Sacred Heart developed in part as a response to pre-destinationist theologies which diminished the universality of the gratuitous love of God and consigned many to perdition. But the Church's own theology of grace and freedom point directly to the reality of the human heart -- that center of the human person where God freely speaks himself and human beings respond in ways which are salvific for them and for the rest of the world. It asks us to see all  persons as constituted in this way and called to life in and of God. Today's Feast of the Sacred Heart, then, despite the shift in context, asks us to reflect again on the nature of the human heart, to the greatest danger to spiritual or authentically human life the Scriptures identify, and too, on what a contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart might mean for us.

As I have written here before, the heart is the symbol of the center of the human person. It is a theological term which points first of all to God and to God's activity deep within us. It is not so much that we have a heart and then God comes to dwell there; it is that where God dwells within us and bears witness to himself, we have a heart. The human heart (not the cardiac muscle but the center of our personhood the Scriptures call heart) is a dialogical event where God speaks, calls, breathes, and sings us into existence and where, in one way and degree or another, we respond to become the people we are. It is therefore important that our hearts be open and flexible, that they be obedient to the Voice and love of God, and so that they be responsive in all the ways they are summoned to be.

Bearing this in mind it is no surprise that the Scriptures speak in many places about the very worst thing which could befall a human being and her spiritual life. We hear it in the following line from Ezekiel: [[If today you hear [God's] voice, harden not your hearts.]] Many things contribute to such a reaction. We know that love is risky and that it always hurts. Sometimes this hurt is akin to the mystical experience of being pierced by God's love and is a wonderful but difficult experience. Other times love wounds us in less fruitful ways: we are betrayed by friends or family, we reach out to another in love and are rejected, a billion smaller losses wound us in ways from which we cannot seem to recover. In such cases our hearts are not only wounded but become scarred, indurated, less sensitive to pain (or pleasure), stiff and relatively inflexible. They, quite literally, become "hardened" and we may be fearful and unwilling or even unable to risk further injury. When the Scriptures speak of the "hardening" of our hearts they use the very words medicine uses to speak of the result of serious and prolonged wounding: induration, sclerosis, callousedness. Such hardening is self-protective but it also locks us into a world which makes us less capable of responding to love with all of its demands and riskiness. It makes us incapable of suffering well (patiently, fruitfully), or of real selflessness, generosity, or compassion.

It is here that the symbol of the Sacred Heart of Jesus' is instructive and where contemporary devotion to the Sacred Heart can assist us. The Sacred Heart is clearly the place where human and divine are united in a unique way. While we are not called to Daughterhood or to Sonship in the exact same sense of Jesus' (he is "begotten" Son, we are adopted Sons --- and I use only Sons because of the prophetic, countercultural sense that term had for women in the early Church), we are meant to be expressions of a similar unity and heritage; we are meant to have God as the well spring of life and love at the center of our existence. Like the Sacred Heart our own hearts are meant to be "externalized" in a sense and transparent to others. They are meant to be wounded by love and deeply touched by the pain of others but not scarred or indurated in that woundedness; they are meant to be compassionate hearts on fire with love and poured out for others --- hearts which are marked by the cross in all of its kenotic (self-emptying) dimensions and therefore too by the joy of ever-new life. The truly human heart is a reparative heart which heals the woundedness of others and empowers them to love as well. Such hearts are hearts which love as God loves, and therefore which do justice. I think that allowing our own hearts to be remade in this way represents an authentic devotion to Jesus' Sacred Heart. There is nothing lacking in relevance or contemporaneity in that!

Empty Houses are Vulnerable Houses

The pericope of the house exorcised of a single demon from yesterday's Gospel passage by Luke provides some real spiritual wisdom. It also serves to illustrate Paul's own concern in what he is is writing to the Church in Galatia and is especially meaningful when read within the context provided by Paul's letter to the Galatians. Remember, the passage from Luke speaks of clearing a single demon from a house; the demon then wanders around arid spaces looking for a place to inhabit. Eventually it returns to the original dwelling and finds it all swept clean and in order, but yet uninhabited. The demon thus  goes out to find seven more demons and they all move into the now clean and orderly but empty house.

The first part of the context for hearing this Gospel passage is provided by Paul's own theology and is summarized by the first lection: namely, the Law, a Divine gift,  functions as a curse apart from Christ. It provides rules on the way we are required to be and persist in being but it cannot empower us to do what it requires. The law instructs us regarding what is truly human, it can convict us of sin and point clearly to the demons which occupy our own divided hearts  but it cannot actually bring about Communion with God. The Law is important, especially as a schoolmaster preparing us for adult life in faith, but it cannot be thought to replace faith.

The second part of the context is provided by Luke's theology itself. A major theme of the Gospel is hospitality. Luke is concerned not only with our call to provide hospitality to strangers of whom we make neighbors, but with providing hospitality for God in our world, and further, with becoming ourselves God's own guests dwelling within the Kingdom of God's own sovereignty. In  the stories we heard this week from Luke's Gospel hospitality figures largely, and so does law to some extent. On Monday we heard the story of Mary and Martha, both offering hospitality to Jesus. Martha adopts a kind of legal maximization and busies herself going beyond the strict requirements of the Law (to provide a single dish for the guest) and  in the process, avoids actually providing the guest what he most desires --- her own hearkening (obedient) company. Mary, on the other hand, sits down at Jesus' feet and "hearkens" to him. What Martha seems to do is something Paul associates with the "curse of the law,"  namely she assumes that if x is required, 5 times x will be even better.

On Wednesday we heard the Lord's Prayer, which itself is about being taught to pray and thus 1) coming to allow God a place where he may be powerfully present in our world, and 2) becoming participants in the Kingdom of Divine Sovereignty where all dwell in communion with God and one another. What the pericope makes clear is that Law has NOT taught the disciples how to pray. Only Jesus (God's own empowering presence) can do this. On Thursday, there was the story of the importuning guest banging on his neighbor's door for bread to feed an unexpected guest. It is unclear whether or not all in this story eventually act as the Law requires them to act (the entire village is responsible for hospitality) but one can hardly praise the attitude of heart or spirit of hospitality demonstrated by (or lacking in!) the man who was sought out to supply the bread, for instance! And yesterday we heard the story of Jewish leaders who are concerned with the Law and presumably keep it faithfully as God's gift, but refuse to receive Jesus as God's own presence in their lives and world. They even accuse Jesus of acting by the power of Beelzebul to cast out demons. Jesus confronts them with their inconsistency by asking what power it is by which they themselves exorcise demons; he then tells today's parable of the demon exorcised from the house with the house then being left uninhabited and vulnerable.

Probably very few of us are legalists in the strict sense, but how many of us tidy up our own hearts in a kind of spiritual housekeeping and fail to give those same hearts over to God to fully occupy? How many of us are intrigued by techniques and tools, workshops, etc, but resist actual prayer, that is, the giving of our lives over to God? I suspect this is a far more common problem in Christian living than legalism per se. Law of all sorts assists us in dealing with the demons which inhabit our own hearts: those of covetousness, greed, dishonor, dishonesty, anger, and so forth, but we have to go further and allow God to be powerfully present in whatever way he wishes. We have to allow our hearts to truly become Temples of the Holy Spirit. After all we are not called merely to be respectable (neat, clean, orderly, well looked after, with the right structure, facade, and all the right appointments), but to be Holy --- a new Creation, in fact. That means not merely being occupied WITH God or the concerns of his Law, but being occupied BY God in a way which transforms our hearts into God's own home.


Despite the humor involved in Luke's image of the returning demons, the image is serious. We have all seen houses that were abandoned, and especially we have seen houses owners fixed up but left unoccupied; they become  dens for animals, nests for squatters of all sorts, dump sites for lazy neighbors, sources for scavengers and thieves  drug houses, and so forth. In short, they are made unfit for human (or Divine) habitation. So too with our own hearts. Law helps us clean them of all those things mentioned above, and more. But Luke's Gospel also reminds us that God in Christ stands at the door and knocks. If we don't REALLY allow him to make himself fully at home, if we allow our hearts to be less than wholly hospitable to a God who desires an exhaustive Communion with us, then other and worse demons will replace the demons already exorcised: those of ingratitude, self-righteousness, complacency, fear, works-righteousness, pride, and so forth. Houses are made to be inhabited and so is the human heart; an empty house is dangerous and vulnerable and so is an empty human heart ---no matter how orderly and respectable. Law helps us ready our hearts for Communion with God, but at some point we really do have to allow God to move in as fully as He desires and take complete "ownership".

Solemnity of the Sacred Heart (and Feast of St Romuald!)

Today is ordinarily the Feast of the St Romuald, founder (after Benedict) of the Camaldolese Benedictines, but June 19th this year is also the Feast of the Sacred Heart. Thus it is a special day for me in several ways, for my former congregation was dedicated to the Sacred Heart and my present congregation (as an oblate) is Camaldolese. Further, my first real meeting with my former Bishop took place on the Feast of the Sacred Heart and I remember it with special vividness. Evenso, devotion to the Sacred Heart was not important to me; theologically it made little sense to me, and neither was it particularly appealing. It seemed to have to do more with the overly emotional or too-sentimental spirituality and private revelations of a 17th Century French nun, and less with the Jesus I personally knew and loved. Nor did it help that the usual pictures of the sacred heart were sort of garish and hard to relate to.

But this year I have spent some time on the notion of heart, on the idea that heart is defined theologically as the place within us where God bears witness to himself, on the startling idea that it is not the case that we have a heart and God comes then to dwell within it, but rather that the heart is first of all the place WHERE he dwells and speaks, loves, breathes, and sings us into existence moment by moment; it is therefore the "place" where we learn to listen or else close ourselves to this dynamic presence and power. More, it is also the broad or narrow reality which is created by that listening, or alternately by our refusal to hear and respond generously. It is, as I have written before, a dialogical reality or event which constitutes the very core of who we are.

Further, if you have read this blog for any length of time, you know that I have also spent time this year thinking about the hermit's vocation to love and the absolute imperative that our hearts must become ever wider as the dialogue between God and ourselves which constitutes that heart becomes deeper, more intense and pure, and more extensive as well. The struggle of the hermit to balance solitude with ministry is always a struggle to allow 1) the deepening of genuine interiority in solitary dialogue with God, and 2) to let the fruit and grace of this to spill out in the way God wills for the good of the rest of his creation. Finally, I recently (this week) lost someone whose long-patience and faithful love worked to heal me and empower my own capacity for love, and as I think about her life and work, I believe I have come to genuinely BEGIN to understand and appreciate the Sacred Heart.

We hear time and time again in the Scriptures, "If today you hear my voice, harden not your hearts!" The Greek words used for harden is the root of a medical term applied when tissue which has been wounded or injured in some way. It is the word we translate as "indurate" and it points to a failure to heal properly (or at least to return to normal), a subsequent lack of flexibility and sensation, tissue that has been damaged and never fully recovered having been replaced by scarring and simply by hardness. Unfortunately, I think so often this induration (or callousness) --- this hardening --- is precisely what happens to our own hearts when life wounds us in so many ways. We are hurt by others, by loss and bereavement, by failure, by betrayal. We are wounded precisely where we are most vulnerable and so we sometimes become both hardened against such injuries and wounding and less responsive, less vulnerable, and more fragile in the process. (Remember that fragility lacks vulnerability while vulnerability is a sign of strength and resiliency.)

And here I think is the key to understanding the Sacred or "pierced" Heart of Jesus. It is, precisely as it should be, the place where God bears witness to himself, the place where he summons Jesus into full humanity and responsive, loving existence. It is the center of Jesus' being, the event (for, despite my using the word "place", heart is really more an ongoing event than it is a place) constituted by the loving dialogue between God and man, the core of who Jesus really is in himself and of who he is for us. Further, of course, it is also a wounded heart, wounded in the mystical sense by the love of God as people like John of the Cross describe, but also wounded in the more prosaic sense of having been pierced by rejection, betrayal, cruelty, indifference, and the like. Yet, precisely because it is is the "place" where God's love dominates (that is, where that love is sovereign), where his creative and challenging Word is embodied ever more fully articulate, and where that Word is responded to faithfully in spite of all of the exigencies of life, it is a tender, flexible, strong and (for these very reasons) vulnerable heart untouched by induration or callousness. It is a heart which pours itself out for others even (and especially) as it receives the love and life of God ever-anew and more abundantly.

In many ways, I think, Devotion to the Sacred Heart is therefore devotion to what God desires to achieve and, in fact, does achieve on an ongoing, never-ceasing basis at the very center of ourselves; it is especially devotion to the One through and in whom this is achieved in a definitive way. Certainly it is devotion to a symbol of human fullness and that abundance of life which has the love of God as its center and driving force and to the Christ in whom that was exhaustively embodied. More, it is all these things in spite of the times and ways life wounds us and tempts to induration or hardness, inflexibility and callousness, and it is these things precisely for the sake of God, our truest selves, and our neighbors. Devotion to the Sacred Heart is devotion to a truly human heart whose very life blood is at the same time the Word and Spirit of God. It is devotion to the pierced heart which is also whole and tender, and lies at the service of mankind, devotion to one who loves without limit and embodies the Word and love of God without diminution or diffusion.

The Feast of the Sacred Heart celebrates God's love for us, a love which God offers without condition, and which he poured out without ceasing, kenotically and at his own expense -- not only in creation as he looked for one who would be a true counterpart, but as one who would therefore share it exhaustively with the whole of creation as well. It celebrates the embodiment of that love in a human life, and marks the vocation of each of us to do likewise. As well, it is a symbol of truly human love then, a love which flows through us and out to the world, out of our interiority in spite of our woundedness and brokenness, our callousness and fragility, but also out of our wholeness, our flexibility, and our strength in light of that love. Our God, in Christ, is the original wounded healer and I find that both immensely comforting and hopeful, as well as tremendously challenging. For that reason too, I find the symbol of the Sacred Heart freshly meaningful.

(Painting of the Sacred Heart by Salvador Dali)

Pentecost 2008 -- Cave of the Heart: Word of God, Fire of the Spirit and a World Remade

Pentecost is upon us and we celebrate with the ancient prayer, "Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love!" So many of the images that precede this feast use references to a Christ who leaves us behind while we are left looking forward to him returning "in glory," we are apt to miss just whose Spirit it is we celebrate is being poured out into our hearts and how it is Christ is still present. We are also apt to miss the import of the pouring out of this Spirit or what it is that it is in the process of creating. A Church, yes. The Body of Christ, yes. Perhaps even, a New heaven and a new earth," But how often do we hear these as bits of poetry, mere metaphors we hardly take seriously?



Last week though during vigils (actually it was on the feast of the Ascension) one of the readings struck me with a force that was visceral. The reading was from the letter to the Ephesians, and the passage went as follows: [[It is he who gave apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers in roles of service for the faithful to build up the body of Christ, till we become one in faith and in the knowledge of God's Son, AND FORM THE PERFECT MAN WHO IS CHRIST COME TO FULL STATURE.]]

Now, isn't that an awesome thought? We as church are to become "the perfect man who is Christ come to full stature"! Poetry? Assuredly, but also a poetry we are to take with a literalness and deadly seriousness that will transform the way we see ourselves, our notion of Church, and the responsibility we have to BE Christ with and for others. Apparently the Christ Event is "not finished," --- even with the resurrection and Ascension --- nor did the Ascension spell the movement of Christ to some remote heaven. Instead, it signalled a new kind of presence, a presence marked by the coming of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Father and Son, the Spirit of Love, with a new power into our midst. Heaven and Earth interpenetrate one another in a new way --- if only we could learn to see it --- and, as Christ's own Body we are now an integral part of the Christ coming to full stature in what will truly be a single reality the Scriptures call "a new heaven and a new earth"!!



The reading continued, [[Let us be children no longer. . . let us profess the truth in love and grow to the full maturity of Christ the head. Through him the whole body grows, and with the proper functioning of the members joined firmly together by each supporting ligament, builds itself up in love.]]

To love we must first be loved; to profess the truth effectively and with integrity we must first be made true; to speak and live with the integrity and maturity of real adults (Daughters and Sons rather than children) our hearts must be transformed in the power of the Holy Spirit that does indeed enkindle within us the passionate and powerful fire of Divine love. The really privileged places we encounter such a love and open ourselves to the Spirit of Christ are in the Scriptures we contend with daily, and the Eucharist we receive similarly. As we move forward from this Easter Season in the power of Pentecost, let our hearts truly become those places where the Word of God is enthroned a living and sovereign reality, where the Fire of the Spirit burns with a passion the world both needs desperately and cannot deny, and, wholly transparent to the light of heaven, transform our world with the presence of Christ "come to full stature" into that place of true peace and justice where God is "all in all."

(Pictures from Sky Farm Hermitage, Sonoma, CA) These pictures of a hermitage chapel (one of the most beautiful and powerful I have ever seen) convey very well what our hearts (and selves) are to become in the power of the Holy Spirit. Beautiful, solitary -- though communal -- enflamed with love and steeped in the Word of God. A "place" where others are always welcome and find a peace and freedom they hunger and thirst for. "Come Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love! Make us together into the perfect One who is Christ come to full stature!"