Being Heart Smart

Today everyone tends to be "heart smart." We are concerned with cholesterol, with eating right and getting sufficient exercise to keep our hearts healthy and functioning at peak efficiency. Above all we work to keep the blood flowing through our hearts so that it reaches and nourishes every cell in our bodies. And we know that failure to do this spells death for the whole body as well. Our hearts are wonderfully dynamic organs which pump life throughout the whole. And yet, a single clot can still them forever.

In the New Testament, the word "heart" is a strictly theological term. What I mean by that is it refers specifically to the place within us, "Where God bears witness to himself." (Theological Dictionary of the New Testament). God is actually a constitutive part of the human heart. His ongoing love, his continuing and continual pouring forth of himself is part of what makes us human, what makes us to be most ourselves. The place, or perhaps better, the EVENT where this happens in us, is what the Scriptures call "heart". Let me be clear, in Scriptural terms it is not so much that we have hearts and then God comes to dwell within them; rather, it is the case that WHERE God dwells and is active within us summoning us ever anew and afresh by name to be, THERE is what the Scriptures call "heart." (By the way, I think this is part of what Pope Benedict is referring to in his book on Eschatology when he calls the human soul a "dialogical reality". Heart and soul are interchangeable terms in much of Scripture).

Like God himself, our hearts are dialogical or communal in nature, and just like with the physical organs in the center of our chests, it is through them that God's love flows through us and to our world, through us and especially to the rest of the Body of Christ. If that flow is stopped, our hearts die. If we refuse to allow this life to flow through us to others, if we try to hold onto it or refuse to pass it on, it will come to act like a clot in our spiritual lives and death will ensue. So it is that we are called upon to allow God's forgiveness to flow through us to others, his mercy through us to others, his love through us to the rest of his creation. It is actually only to the degree that we hand on what we have been given, only to the degree we allow these things to flow through us to others that we even receive them ourselves. While I believe it is true that God does not give us what we deserve (for we can never deserve Him), but rather what we will receive as gift, I think it is also true that what we receive as gift is what we allow to flow through our hearts to nourish and enliven the rest of the Body of Christ and his creation. This idea allows me to make greater sense of a recent lection from Luke:

[[Do not judge and you will not be judged. Do not condemn and you will not be condemned. Forgive and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you: a good measure poured out, pressed down, shaken together and running over will be poured into your lap. . .]] The ethics of the Christian is not one of quid pro quo, though this text can sound like it is. Christian ethics is a matter of dealing with others as God deals with us; it is a matter of freely letting flow to others what God speaks or pours forth in our hearts. To the degree we do this, the flow will continue with a vastness and generosity beyond all quantifying. To the degree we fail to do this, the very mercy God offers us as gift will stand unreceived as a clot in our own hearts --- whether shaped as fear or ingratitude or false pride, etc --- thus condemning us; the flow of life to our very self will be seriously restricted, and so too, fail to reach the world through us.

There is a second lesson in recent lections related to this dynamic and dialogical notion of the human heart. It involves what the psalmist was getting at when he said "I will walk with blameless heart" or what the author to Colossians was urging when he admonished, "let the peace of Christ control your heart!" Both phrases refer to a kind of integrity which is supposed to possess our lives (or be possessed by them!). Both are concerned above all with what or who is sovereign in (or controls) the human heart.

We know that the Christian life is above all an obediently loving life; that is, it is a life which is attentive and responsive, and while we are certainly called upon to listen and respond to the Word of God that comes to us from outside ourselves, most FUNDAMENTALLY, we are called upon to be attentive and responsive to this Word, to claim and embody the unique name which God speaks on a continuing basis deep within us. When the psalmist says he will walk with a blameless heart, he is referring, I think, to a life which is obedient in this way, a life where our own hearts do not bear witness against us. He is referring to a life where our outer selves and our inner selves are identical or in harmony, where what we are in the world is always an obedient response to the Word God speaks in the core of our being, and so too he is referring to what the author to the Colossians referred to when he said we are to allow the peace of Christ to control our hearts, namely an incarnational integrity born of attentiveness and responsiveness to the God who is part of our very being.

In one of the Gospels this week, a dead man was told by Jesus to "arise", and it is certainly tempting to want God come to us in such dramatic and miraculous ways. But in quiet, subtle, and equally miraculous ways, God calls us to arise out of death and nothingness at every moment. If we can only learn to hearken to this call deep within us, it will not only bring life on the biological level, but it will bring us the abundant life which is Jesus' gift to us. In light of this idea of the human heart, we need never fear that we are too far stuck in sin, too far removed from the living God, too "old" (in whatever way this manifests itself), or without fresh potential. There is quite literally a spring of living water at the core of our being, an ever-newly given identity where moment by moment God calls us by name to be. So long as we live, God dwells within us calling to us to "arise!" Where this really occurs on every level of our being I think we allow the peace of Christ to control our hearts and walk blamelessly in genuine integrity. Where this occurs, I think we are REALLY "heart smart."

Profession pictures

Eremitism: Call to the Chronically Ill and Disabled

(First published in Review For Religious @ 1986. Reprints available in "Best of the Review #8, Dwelling in the House of the Lord, Catholic Laity and Spiritual Tradition, or through Ravensbread Newsletter for hermits)

While applauding the end of a long period of narcissistic privatism in the church, Thomas Merton in his posthumously published, Contemplation in a World of Action makes an important case for the eremitism (that is, the lifestyle of anchorites and hermits) as a significant monastic lifestyle. Almost twelve years later in the 1983 Revised Code of Canon Law makes room explicitly for the inclusion of "nonmonastic" (that is, not associated with monasteries per se) forms of eremitism through canon 603, which outlines a life "in which Christian faithful withdraw further from the world and devote their lives to the praise of God and the salvation of the world through assiduous prayer and penance." Despite this attention, this little-known and mostly ill-regarded vocation has been ignored for far too long, and it is time to ask what vision Thomas Merton, perhaps the best-known of contemporary hermits, had of the eremitical life, and what vision others have of the nature and significance of this vocation in a contemporary church. In particular, with regard to this latter vision, I would like to explore the idea that the chronically ill and disabled may represent a specific instance of the eremitic life today.

At a time when religious and consecrated persons are described within their communities and the church as Poets, Prophets, and Pragmatists, the solitary vocation has achieved new vigor and significance. In some senses the eremitic vocation has always served to challenge society and the institutional church. Always hermits find themselves on the margin of society. Always they live at extremities which, whether gently or harshly, confront and challenge others in the mainstream of things. Unfortunately, the extreme marginal position has not always been one of marked sanity. Often hermits have justifiably earned and borne the label of lunatic, eccentric, rebel, heretic, or fanatic. But truly, whether the individual hermit functions as a prophet or as poet, the vocation is an eminently pragmatic one marked by sanity and profound sense, and is often possessed of a deep and significant conservatism. In fact, the vocation of the hermit today is seen by some as preeminently a vocation of healing, wholeness, and essential well-being in a society characterized by the sickness and disorder of alienation and disaffection.

Both theoretically and practically Merton has prepared the way for this understanding, while others, mostly in the Anglican confession, have confirmed it in their own living. Contemporary hermits live on the margins of society, but they neither remain on nor belong to its periphery. Instead, through simple and uncomplicated lives of prayer and penance, lives essentially free from the "myths and fixations" (Merton) imposed by and inordinately artificial society, they occupy a central role in calling a fragmented and alienated world back to truly human values and life. Above all, it is eremitism's characteristic and conservative witness to wholeness and spiritual sanity (sanctity) which is so very vital to a contemporary church and society.

Solitude is, after all, the most universal of vocations, and a specifically eremitic vocation to solitude serves to remind us of its basic importance in the life of every person, not only as existential predicament, but, as Christian value, challenge, and call. All of us struggle to maintain an appropriate tension between independence and committedness to others which is characteristic of truly human solitude. At the same time, all of us are, in some way, part of the societal problem of alienation, whether we are members of the affluent who contribute materially to the alienation of the poor even while struggling perhaps to do otherwise, or whether we are members of the impoverished who are consigned to what Merton refers to as "the tragically unnatural solitudes" of city slums and ghettos. It is to the church in and of this society that the hermit speaks as prophetic witness. In fact, it is as prophetic witness that the contemporary hermit is part of the answer to society's problems, and it is to that answer that we now turn.

Two dominant scriptural themes are absolutely central to the eremitic vocation. The first is that of wilderness, and the second, and related motif, is that of pilgrimage or sojourn. Together these make up the desert spirituality that is characteristic of eremitism, and constitute the major elements of the powerful criticism of the world of which it is a part. Additionally, in a world which is truly more characteristically "rite of passage" than anything else, these two themes and the life of religious poverty and consecrated celibacy which they attend provide a deeply apologetic spirituality which is an effective answer to lives marked and marred by the affectation, artificiality, estrangement, futility, and emptiness of our contemporary consumerist society. Perceptively, the church today recognizes that she is made up of a "pilgrim people." Hermits are quite simply individuals who choose to stand on the edge of society as persons with no fixed place and witness to this identity with absolutely no resources but those they find within themselves and those they receive through the grace of God. Further, they attest to the fact that these elements alone are indeed sufficient for a genuinely rich and meaningful life. Above all, in a world whose central value seems to be acquisitiveness, whether of goods, status, or of persons, the hermit lives and affirms the intrinsic wholeness and humanity of a life that says, "God is enough."

Even the hermitage itself testifies to the eminent sanity of the hermit’s vocation. As Merton observed, the first function of the contemporary hermitage is “to relax and heal and to smooth out one’s distortions and inhumanities.” This is so, he contends, because the mission of the solitary in the world is, “first the full recovery of man’s natural and human measure.” He continues, “Not that the solitary merely recalls the rest of men to some impossible Eden. [Rather] he reminds them of what is theirs to use if they can manage to extricate themselves from the web of myths and fixations which a highly artificial society has imposed on them.” Above all, as Merton concludes, “the Christian solitary today should bear witness to the fact that certain basic claims about solitude and peace are in fact true, [for] in doing this, [they] will restore people’s confidence first in their own humanity and beyond that in God’s grace.” The hermitage represents for the individual and society that place where the hermit “can create a new pattern which will fulfill (her) special needs for growth. . .and confront the triple specters of ”boredom, futility, and unfulfillment, which so terrify the modern American.”

One group of people are prepared better than most to assume this prophetic role in our world,and I think may represent a long-disregarded instance of the eremitic call to solitude. These persons are members of the chronically ill and disabled, and in fact the prophetic witness they are prepared to give is far more radical than that already suggested. The idea of a vocation to illness is a relatively new one, stemming as it does from renewed reflection on the meaning of illness and the place of the sacrament of anointing in the life of the church. But in fact the idea that the ill might be called to solitude rather than the cenobium dates back at least to the Council of Vannes (463) in a phrase reading "propter infirmitatis necessitatem." If no more than a suggestion, there is at least a similarity between this older notion and the one I am presenting here. The difference, however, stems from the fact that, far from suggesting a somehow inferior cenobitic religious life which must be accommodated by extraordinary provisions for solitude, I believe the call to chronic illness is itself, at least for some, an eremitic vocation to "being sick within the church" as a solitary whose witness value is potentially more profound because such a person is generally more severely tyrannized by our capitalistic and materialistic world.

In the first place, the chronically ill, whose physical solitude is not so much clearly chosen as it is accepted, testify to the poverty of images of human wellness and wealth that are based upon the productivity of the individual in society. They are able to clearly challenge such images and testify further to the dual truth of the human being's poverty and genuine human possibilities. Humanity possesses not only great richness, but an innate poverty as well, which is both ineluctable and inescapable --- a poverty in the face of which one must either find that God is enough or despair. It is a poverty that cannot be changed by a life of busy productivity or by any infusion of accomplishment, and it is a poverty that points to the essentially paradoxical "unworthwhileness" and simultaneous infinite value of the human life. The chronically ill and disabled live this "poverty of worthwhileness" and yet witness to the fact that their lives are of immeasurable value not because of "who" they are (Status) or what they do, but because God himself regards them as precious.

In the second place, the chronically ill person who accepts his or her illness as a vocation to solitude is capable of proclaiming to the world that human sinfulness (existential brokenness and alienation) can and will be overcome by the powerful and loving grace of God. Once again this is a radical witness to the simple fact of divine sufficiency, and it is a witness that is sharpened by the reintegration achieved in the recontextualization of one's illness.

In this recontextualization, illness assumes its rightful position as rite of passage, which, although difficult, need be neither devastating nor meaningless, and it appears clearly as a liminal (or boundary) experience which testifies to transcendence. In accepting this as a call to solitude, the chronically ill person is freed from the false sense of self provided by society, and, in the wilderness of the hermitage, assumes the identity which God himself individually bestows. And finally, the chronically ill solitary says clearly that every person, at whatever stage in his or her own life, can do the same thing --- a task and challenge which eventually eludes none of us.

Today the church has moved to appropriate more completely a lifestyle that has been part of her life since the 3rd century, and one which is rooted in her Old Testament ancestry. It is my hope that those doing spiritual direction, hospital chaplaincy, and so forth, will familiarize themselves further with the spirituality which undergirds this significant way of life, and, whether dealing with the chronically ill or not, maintain an attitude of openness and even of encouragement to their clients' exploration of eremitism as a possible vocation. This is particularly true with regard to those whose vocation "to be sick within the church" may represent a vocation to eremitical solitude. As Merton concludes, in a society fraught with dishonesty and exploitation of human integrity, the Christian solitary stands on the margin and,

[[in his prayer and silence, explores the existential depths and possibilities of his own life by entering the mystery of Christ's prayer and temptation in the desert, Christ's nights alone on the mountain, Christ's agony in the garden, Christ's Transfiguration and Ascension. This is a dramatic way of saying that the Christian solitary is left alone with God to fight out the question of who he really is, to get rid of the impersonation, if any, that has followed him to the woods.]]

Breaking away from the exorbitant claims and empty promises of contemporary society is crucial for each of us. The solitary, and especially the chronically ill solitary, fulfills this challenge with special vividness.

Profession Mass -- Part One

Video highlights from my profession Mass.

Profession Mass -- Part Two

The second segment of video highlights from the profession Mass.

Profession Mass -- Part Three

The third segment of video highlights from the profession Mass.

Profession Mass -- Part Four

The fourth segment of video highlights from the profession Mass.

Profession Mass -- Part Five

The final segment of video highlights from the profession Mass.

Profession

This is a slide show of the profession Mass. A video will be ready soon.

E.E. Cummings has the words!!!

Still working on processing all that happened at the Profession Mass. It helps to look at the pictures and reread some of the words: Bishop Vigneron said at the end of Mass: The Mass is ended; we have seen great mysteries;. . . ." and I think he was exctly right. I really don't have words yet (if ever!). However, my pastor, Fr John, reminded me that e.e. cummings DID have words appropriate to the day, when he recited from memory the following:

i thank you God for most this amazing
day; for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

{i who have died am alive again today,
and this is the sun's birthday;this is the birth
day of life and of love and wings:and of the gay
great happening illimitably earth)

how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any --- lifted from the no
of all nothing --- human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)


People continue to ask me if I feel different. I had not expected to, but yes, I do. When lying prostrate for those five or six minutes listening to my community call upon the whole church, in heaven and on earth, to attend and participate in what was to happen, it was tremendously profound. And it simply continued that way throughout the profession, granting of the ring and cowl, and kiss of peace. Receiving Communion after all this felt different too, eventhough Christ and I had been linked nuptially before this. So yes, now the ears of my ears awake, and the eyes of my eyes are opened! God has indeed worked great mysteries in the hearts of his people, and most especially, on this day at least, in my own!

Perpetual Profession Liturgy

I am sure I have only just begun to process all that happened yesterday morning. And while I want to write about it, I know that I will never do justice to the experience or the import of what happened. Perhaps over time, perhaps. Perhaps. Images of so many people, so many friends, so many who have touched me and allowed me to touch them as well --- so many celebrating the years of love and sorrow, of joy and pain, of fulfillment and waiting.

Again, the profession liturgy was AMAZING! It was wonderful for me, of course, but I have heard from a number of parishioners, etc that they were really blown away by something they had never seen before and were unlikely to see again. One friend was reduced to tears by the formal rite of calling forth on behalf of the Church of Oakland and faith community of St Perpetua's and my response, "Here I am Lord. You have called me, and I have come to do your will." Others were expecting a brief statement vowing poverty, chastity, and obedience in the course of an otherwise normal Mass, but were surprised by the examination, the content of the vows, the consecration, etc. Several thought the profession would be inserted into the Mass, but did not realize the entire Mass would be oriented to it from beginning to end. And MANY people who had not had a chance to meet the Bishop face to face, nor even to have seen him celebrate a confirmation, etc, were completely impressed by his warmth towards me, his own profound and personal involvement in the acceptance of my vows, his homily, clear concern and encouragement, etc. It was a wonderful way for the parish to meet a Bishop they had not been able to meet before.

Above all, I think it was a way to demonstrate how the Church esteems consecrated life, and --- I hope --- the gravity and sincerity of such a commitment. The simple fact is, I cannot live this vocation with integrity as fully as I need to without the support of this parish community. The call really was mediated from God through the local Church of Oakland and the faith community of St Perpetua's, and this was why Sister Marietta said precisely this when she formally called me to come forth to even ask for the privilege of admission to perpetual vows as a diocesan hermit. The call of vocation comes to each of us in the stillness of our hearts, yes, but in vocations to consecrated life, the church has always maintained these are eccelsial vocations: not just lived out in the heart of the church and in service to the church, but vocations where God's own call MUST come to the individual THROUGH the mediation of the Church. It is hard to say how influential the parish is in this vocation. 

There is no doubt, I don't think, that even though I journeyed this road for many years before being active in St P's, the parish has stamped the call with a character it would not have had otherwise. I know that my own thought in regard to eremitic life will turn increasingly to the reality of DIOCESAN eremitism, for I sense that it is different in some striking ways to monastic eremitism (that is, eremitism lived in a monastic community), and secular eremitism (perhaps not the best term for this, but noncanonical eremitism) --- even while they all share the same basic fundamentals: silence, solitude, prayer, greater separation from the world, and penance lived in Christ. Theologically I sense this is true --- though I can't yet speak intelligently on the theology of it --- but I also sense it simply from the change that has occurred in my own perceptions and explorations of this vocation in the last little while.

So, a few more pictures of people who were active both in and behind the scenes at the Profession (including one of the servers I know would be as happy in the back of the sanctuary and without extra attention), and as time goes on, perhaps I can include even more --- because there is no way to thank everyone adequately or recognize them in this blog, and certainly not in one single entry!!!

Profession Ring, "Power perfected in weakness"

This ring is the prototype for the profession ring I had made, and will be given this weekend. The difference is that the motto which is engraved on the ring is in Greek, and therefore does not cut all the way through the white gold to the yellow as Hebrew script allows. (Greek is composed of circles, so if they cut all the way through, most of the letter would fall right out!)

Also, it is taken from Paul's 2nd letter to the Corinthians, and is an abbreviation of his statement that, "My grace is sufficient for you; my power is perfected (or made perfect) in weakness." This is, of course, the way Paul characterizes the sovereignty of God being revealed in our world through and in the Christ Event, but for a very long time now, I have known this verse also characterizes my own personal story.

So much of spirituality is a matter of "staying out of God's way" and letting him work in us! By that I simply mean that self-assertion gets us into more trouble in the spiritual life than we can ever guess! But we are indeed, poor, fragile and ultimately ineffective individuals (ineffective in the sense of doing good of ourselves, though not in the sense of doing evil!), and to succeed in the spiritual life we really do have to learn not only notionally that God's grace, his powerful presence, is sufficient for us; we have to really let that be the case.

We may be tempted to hear this motto that God's power is perfected in weakness in a cynical way --- as though God enjoys lording it over us, or takes advantage of our weakness, but the real meaning is far from such a reading. Where we are weak, broken, and godless, God will step in and make us strong, whole, and holy. Where we are unable to save ourselves, God will step in and save us, and in all of these cases he does so by assuming a position of ultimate weakness and loving vulnerability himself in Christ. Where we are wont to resort to self-assertion, God shows us the way himself in kenosis or self-emptying. Where we grasp at life (which is not at all the same thing as receiving life as gift!), God submits to death, so that ultimately life-as-gift may win out over sin, and even over death.

This was the story of Paul's life, and it is the story of most hermits I know (admittedly, this is a fairly small group!). Certainly it is my own, and is one of the key things being celebrated this weekend! (Postscript: I want to thank my sister, Cindy, who bought this ring as a gift for my perpetual profession! She has always been generous, and once again, she demonstrates that; it is just one of those characteristics that has made her so very special to me through our lives as sisters.)

Dependence upon God

Preparing for perpetual profession has been stressful. And yet, there is a whole other side to it: the side of silence and of God's love for me, and my gradual, sometimes halting yielding to that love. I was rereading my favorite poet, e.e. cummings and the following poem reminded me of the journey these past years have been, and above all how it is that God's immense power is communicated to us in the weakness and self-emptying of Jesus' or the Spirit's gentle touch.

somewhere i have never travelled gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if it be your wish to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain,has such small hands

e.e. cummings LVII Complete Poems, 1904-1962

True and False Solitude/Solitaries

Recently a neighbor asked me some questions about the significance of my perpetual profession. She wondered what it meant, what would be different, what does it do? I started with the most basic ideas. Did she know what a hermit was? She responded, "Yes, it is someone who hides. . ." and then her statement sort of broke off, as if she realized how unflattering to me that definition must be!

And yet isn't my neighbor's idea pretty common? Isn't it true that even among hermits or those wanting to become religious hermits, there are strange ideas of what constitutes genuine solitude? Isn't there a sense sometimes that hermits embrace silence and solitude because they cannot and do not relate well to others? Isn't there a strong popular sense that hermits do not have close friends? That affirming that God alone is sufficient for us means we can dispense with the demands of social interaction, and beyond that, of deep friendship? Now let me be clear, reclusion is a unique vocation, and I am not referring to it here (though ordinarily authentic reclusion involves profound relationships and deep friendships too). I am talking about the genuine solitude of most hermits, a solitude whose heart is communion with God, and therefore, a solitude which spills over and finds another whole dimension of itself in relationships with others, and beyond that with the whole of God's creation.

Thomas Merton wrote about true versus false solitude and solitaries. For instance, he noted: [[“[the false solitary’s] solitude is imaginary … the false solitary is one who is able to imagine himself without companions while in reality he remains just as dependent on society as before – if not more dependent. He needs society as a ventriloquist needs a dummy. He projects his own voice and it comes back to him admiring, approving, opposing or at least adverting to his own separateness.”. . . “The true solitary does not renounce anything that is basic and human about his relationship to other men. He is deeply united to them – all the more deeply because he is no longer entranced by marginal concerns.”

One of the things that has become clearer and clearer to me as I live in solitude is just how much LIKE others I really am, and above all, how deeply related to them. This is true whether I am speaking about members of my parish, members of the orchestra I play violin in, clients, family, friends, etc. My vocation is unique but I am not. My circumstances are pretty common: a life marked and marred by illness, ordinary successes, some spectacular failures (some I am still coming to terms with and still feel embarrassment over), dreams yearning for fulfillment, a strong need to share what I have been given, etc. I spend a lot of time in silence and solitude, in contemplative prayer and study, and there is no doubt that I enjoy it and am sometimes tempted to use it as a way to withdraw defensively. But most of the time, so long as my life is profoundly prayerful, I do it because it allows me to be truly related in healthy ways with others, not to hide from those relationships. The hermit dwells in the heart of God, and the heart of God is a pretty populated place!!

[[The true solitary is not called to an illusion, to the contemplation of himself as a solitary. He is called to the nakedness and hunger of a more primitive and honest condition.”]]

Many things drive us to solitude and the notion of "hermitage", not all of them, or even most of them, necessarily positive. The immediate tendency when in physical solitude is to focus on self. One may be enamored of the IDEA of being a hermit, or even of the ROLE one is trying to assume instead of the person one actually is (not to mention the God who resides in one's heart). If one writes about eremitic life (or tries to do so!) this writing may simply be a not-so-veiled exercise in navel gazing and either self pity or self-aggrandizement. One could, conceiveably, justify many failures on many levels by considering oneself a hermit: social failures, emotional immaturity and the failure to achieve individuation, etc. Such a person might say to themselves, "Hermits don't have deep friendships!" "Hermits don't have to interact with the business/academic/ecclesial or other worlds; a hermit afterall, is 'dead to the world'", or again, "It is fine to rest in my suffering or to refuse to care appropriately for one's physical state, etc, because this is a form of 'mortification' in which I as victim participate in the redeeming suffering of Christ!", "God wills such suffering in my life," etc. Nevermind that such spiritualities are inherently dangerous and often the refuge of the deluded, or that their underlying theology is often bankrupt and a serious distortion of Christian theology.

But in an authentically DIVINE vocation to eremitic life, one will not indulge such pretense. If one has been brought to the desert by circumstances which are traumatic or negative and result in defense mechanisms which are destructive, in a genuine vocation, these will gradually be transfigured and transmuted into something far more positive and healthy. Religious language can be used to cover a plethora of sins: the inability to relate to others or reality can become a prohibition on particular friendships and allusions to dying to the world; a sense of victimization which casts the rest of the world in the role of perpetrators, can be recast and apparently (but not really) legitimized through the pious language of "victim souls" and "reparative suffering", one's own inner demons and need for either good spiritual direction or psychological assistance and personal work can be avoided, externalized, and superficially legitimated by calling our emotional states and defenses "attacks by the devil which God wills"

The hermitage is part sanctuary, part crucible, part battle ground, and part therapy space. No one comes to the desert for completely pure motives. We are all ambivalent. We are all complex and ambiguous mixtures of worthy and unworthy motives because at bottom we remain imago dei who are also sinners. At some point, in the authentic eremitic vocation though, the unworthy motives are worked through and discarded, while the worthy ones are purified and enhanced. If, once upon a time, our solitude, to whatever extent, was an escape and prison, it will become the doorway to engagement or communion and real freedom. If the subject of our meditations was ourselves AS SOLITARIES, our meditations will change and become those of a profoundly related solitary interested in and compassionate for others, and committed to God and God's OWN world of people --- with their problems AND possibilities.

Merton once pointed out that the person who went off into solitude also held a mirror up to themselves, and they would come away from that encounter either completely self-centered and insane, or other-centered and whole/holy (I admit this is a bad paraphrase, but it has been a number of years since I read this, and I would need to look up the exact statement to reprise it better; apologies to Merton). Either the things that pursued us into the desert will, with the grace of God, be met and transformed and transcended, or they will continue to define us, no matter what religious jargon we use to try to hide or "describe" the fact. Discernment of an eremitic vocation is not always easy, and when there are elements of a true vocation mixed with so much that is false, the job is always to move from inauthentic to authentic vocation, from false solitude to true solitude, from isolation and self-centeredness to a profound and compassionate relatedness established in the heart of God and spilling over into the rest of one's more tangible world.

Monastic (Eremitical) Cowl, Perpetual Profession

In preparing for perpetual vows this next weekend, I was informed by the Vicar for Religious that I would need a ring and a prayer garment. The ring I had had for several months, but the prayer garment? What really did they have in mind? Well, it turns out they were thinking of something like monastics use either in choir or in cell to pray in: a cowl or cuculla, a scapular with hood, or a tunic with hood.

Now these garments are very meaningful to monastics (and this includes hermits). In most communities, it is the cowl that is given at solemn profession, and the symbolism is rich and real. In the Camaldolese tradition the cowl is white, and reminds us clearly of white martyrdom ---the self-sacrifice of the hermit for the sake of Christ and his people, for instance. Echoes of wedding garments, baptismal garments, and putting on Christ are all a part of this garment's symbolism. It is designed so that one literally can do nothing other than pray in it! The sleeves are voluminous --- even on the modified version which my cowl will be. The hood closes one off to what is around one, and the full length ensures one is wholly covered, completely enwrapped.

I had not personally prepared for this, eventhough the cowl is also associated with perpetual profession in eremitic life. I was prepared for the ring (I will take off my silver band and replace it with a gold band), for my relationship with Christ has been nuptial for many years now and the bridal imagery of the perpetual profession resonated well with that. But, while I sometimes attend Mass and/or vespers at a Camaldolese monastery, and while I am used to the monks/nuns wearing cowls for choir and Mass, wearing such a garment myself much less being given one canonically to wear whenever I pray was relatively foreign to me! (And it was foreign to my sister as well, who, upon hearing the story, promptly responded: "Yo, Casper!")

I have had some time to work through this whole idea now, time to process it some, and it is meaningful to me --- though it is likely to become more so over time. It helped a lot that last week, the lections I chose for doing a reflection on were Thursday's! The first two lections were about vows and keeping one's vows, and the gospel was Matt's parable of the king who invites two different sets of people to the wedding feast. Once the second set have accepted the invitation and the feast is in full swing, the king looks around and spots a guy who has not worn the appropriate wedding garment, and without further ado, he has the man thrown out!!

Of course, the gospel is not about clothes per se. It is about God's unconditional love and the response it engenders and empowers. It is about "putting on Christ" in response to, and in the power of this love. What is clear is that if we accept the invitation of the king to the wedding feast, then we really do need to dress appropriately, and that means clothing ourselves in Christ. Even in situations where we will "look funny", be unfashionable, or out of step with our dominant culture, we really need to put on Christ. For me, the monastic cowl is a symbol of this --- and the fact that it does not represent just a sign of my new status as perpetually professed hermit, but is also still a bit "weird" is probably a good thing. Certainly it will not allow me to forget how truly marginal the hermit is, nor how truly countercultural either! Neither will it allow me to forget that the challenge to put on Christ is not an easy thing, nor one which is apt to keep me within some artificially determined comfort level. No, it will push the boundaries and take me where I might not have wanted or chosen to go otherwise.

This weekend, as a perpetually professed hermit, I receive canonically the monastic cowl. It is not yet as meaningful to me as the ring I will also receive, but it marks another new beginning to my hermit life, and one where every day I will struggle anew to put on Christ --- whether or not I put on the cowl (or a modified version of the same) at the same time!!

Sister Kristine Haugen, ocdh, "My Presence"

Thomas Merton, a brief public defense

Recently I participated in a discussion about Thomas Merton. It was a discussion in which some were quite critical of him, his later writings, and concluded that he was no real monk (he was said to be "inauthentic" and even supposedly hypocritical), and his later writings were to be eschewed except by "more advanced souls" who would not be led astray. Well, some of this discussion rankled with me, not only the idea that another monk could publicly state that, "He talked the talk, but he really didn't live the life," and especially the idea that Merton's work was B.S, in the sense that Merton had pulled the wool over the eyes of an unsuspecting and gullible world. I believe that to be a misconstrual of Merton's actual meaning, even if the exact words are correct. The simple fact is I owe my vocation to Thomas Merton in some senses, and because of that, I also owe him a public defense. The following is an excerpt from the comments of a critic of Fr Louis's, and my response.

[[A Trappist monk once told me that Fr Merton entered into a room and saw bookshelves full of all his writings and he laughed. A friend who was with him asked him why he was laughing. He nodded towards his writings and replied " half of that is just B.S!!!! ]]

And Aquinas, at the end of his life, characterized all of his writings and thought as just so much straw, dross, waste ready for the fire. There are two ways to read the term bullshit. The first either is or includes a verbal or active sense: it implies the act of fraud or hypocrisy --- as a freshman in college might BS their way through a presentation without really knowing what they are talking about. The second is simply a comment on the quality of the work. It means that in comparison with real brilliance or the incommensurability or ineffability of the thing being described, one has done a terrible (that is, all-too-human) job. In fact, we don't know how Merton was using the term (as an apophatic contemplative he could simply have recognized every statement about God experienced in prayer is also a kind of betrayal of the God of intimacy who is always wholly other too), but I don't think we should conclude facilely that he meant his work was "fraudulent," any more than we should do so with Aquinas' comment about his own work.

You have actually cited only two monks who made comments regarding Merton, and the simple fact is, we may be seeing their flaws (judgmentalism, envy, narrowness of vision for instance) more than we are seeing Merton's. (Anyone living in community for any time at all will recognize the phenomenon that occurs when a fellow Brother or Sister is brilliant or particularly gifted in some way, and those who are more mediocre in many (or at least some of those same) ways, evaluate them. Monasteries do not lack for pettiness just because the members are monks and nuns.) But we must ask ourselves, in light of such accounts, "If Father Louis was not living the life, why was he permitted to move through all the stages of formation, profession, ordination and the like? If his work was hypocritical, then why did the Order allow it to be published? Why was he allowed (indeed at times exhorted and commanded) to continue an activity which was contributing to and would therefore have exacerbated his hypocrisy? If he was not REALLY Cistercian, why, in fact, was he allowed an intimate role in the formation of novices, juniors, etc?" Other Cistercians and monks of other Orders and monasteries recognize Merton as "the real deal," and they know quite well, there is no ideal monk, no one who REALLY lives the life without ALSO struggling with the life.

Merton was a flawed individual, yes. But he was neither a dilettante, nor simply a monk "wannabe." There is, as far as I can see, no stage in Merton's life when he gave up on growing and maturing in his vocation. Did he match peoples' stereotypes of either monk or hermit? No, but then he did show us that stereotypes are far less real, less authentic than a flawed character struggling to grow in Christ and monastic life day by day. Hermits know there is no single pattern for eremitic life. There are constants or fundamental elements, yes, but it is both a flexible and extremely individual life. 

Looking at another brother/sister monk or hermit (presuming the one doing the looking is also a monastic), one can make serious errors in evaluating her or his life in two ways: one can focus on the constants, the fundamentals of the life and miss the individual elements which are as significant in the whole, or one can focus on the individual elements and either miss or downplay the fundamentals that are there while concluding the person is "not really living the life." In both cases, one has erred in determining what is authentic. In any case, some of us find that Merton's writings ring true, and that one cannot write thusly about something one does not KNOW in the biblical sense. Monastic gossip (and I am sorry, but I honestly can use no other word for the disedifying accounts mentioned) is not necessary to draw such a conclusion.

Prayer, Maintaining a Human Perspective

(First published in Review For Religious, Nov-Dec 1987)

For most of us, prayer during desperate, frustrating, seemingly futile, or insignificant moments is itself often an experience in desperation, futility or insignificance. At these times, most of us have accused God of remaining remote and distant, and often we have attempted to blunt the sharpness of the accusation by clothing it in the misleading language of a shallow and inadequate pseudomysticism. We say, for instance, that God has "hidden himself," or "withdrawn" from us, and in fact, we turn away from the actual situation at hand, focusing instead on the supposed "absence of God". In the worst cases our prayer degenerates into attempts to induce God to return and redeem the situation in the way we believe best. All of this activity is irresponsible and essentially cowardly. Certainly it is inimical to prayer. Properly understood, prayer allows no appeal to God's "remoteness," and certainly it is never an occasion which prevents us from drinking as deeply as possible from the cup of human experience.

The fundamental premise on which all prayer is based and in which all prayer is grounded and enabled is the assertion that in Christ God has drawn near to us. Prayer always involves the recognition of this nearness. Prayer involves neither summons nor dismissal, that is, we do not actually ask God to draw near to us as though he had in some way remained distant from us. Rather, in prayer we open ourselves to the fact of God's presence. Prayer does not have the character of invitation so much as it does of welcome and appreciation.

Although the soundness of this premise rest on a clear Christological basis, that is, we know this is true because this is what the birth, death and resurrection of Jesus reveal to us, we can begin to develop the assertion by appealing to our fundamental experience of prayer itself. Prayer is the interpreted experience of being comprehended by God. (Isaiah describes the experience as one of "being held in the palm of his hand.") In prayer, we are known by God. In prayer we are loved by God. And in prayer we are served by God. Prayer is the conscious appreciation of His comprehension if us. If we have prayerfully attended to any moment in our lives, we know that we have first been known. Of course it is true that if our prayer is successful, we too will have known, loved, and served God, but the priority of experience is clearly God's total grasp of us. The psalmist, who shares the Isaianic experience, sings of this priority with wonderful awe and eloquence in psalm 139.

O God, you have searched and known me! You know when I sit and when I stand. . .You come upon me behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Being known so (such knowledge)is too wonderful for me; it is beyond me in every way, I cannot attain it.

Neither is the psalmist's experience unique: his is simply the articulation of one who is intoxicated by his appreciation of something we have all known in those moments we have genuinely privileged with our attention. Simply, we are graced by the presence by the presence of God at all moments of our lives; the tragedy is we do not grace all of those same moments with our own presence. Stating this in another way, we could say that prayer is the experience of God as the One he wishes to be for us rather than as we alone are aware of needing him to be, or even as we alone believe him to be. Prayer begins, ends, and is sustained by our concern for our commitment to the life of God. We pray whenever we appreciate how very surely, gently, and completely God holds us.

Such an understanding of prayer undergirds our ability to "pray always," for it implies that we can learn to recognize, welcome, and appreciate God's presence, not only in our most positive and profound experiences, but in the most negative, and perhaps more importantly, the most prosiac and homely as well. Praying well insists that we learn to regard even the negative or seemingly insignificant as the potentially significant locus of revelation, profound in its capacity to mediate God's commitment to us. We must believe that not only that God is near to us in the apparently profound, but also that he is always profoundly near; to pray it is necessary to believe that in Christ God has drawn near to us in all experience and will not depart from our midst.

As long as we feel we must exclude negative experiences such as doubt and despair from the realm of faith or the province of prayer, or that we can blithely disregard the "mundane," we can be sure our prayer will remain severely inadequate and deeply troubled. For if the primary experience in prayer is that of being comprehended by God, to question that he knows, loves, and serves us in any of the moments of our life is to question the integrity of his commitment to and apprehension of his own creation in general. The result is human uncertainty and tentativeness in the face of divine assurance, and we will not be able to avoid asking whether his knowledge of us is incomplete, his love inadequate, and his grace uncertain if we cannot believe that his living presence is the ground of all of our existence and experience.

To exclude God, to assert his absence from any moment or mood of his creation, particularly our confession of our own sinfulness, is to abandon prayer. But note well, the failure of prayer results not when we experience absence, emptiness, or even abandonment; if that were the case much of our lives would cease to reflect God's real relationship to his creation in any way. Prayer fails when we forget that when we experience these, or any other feelings with regard to God, we can pray by attending to how God experiences us in these moments. Failure to evaluate the situation in this way can signify we have forgotten the fundamental experience of prayer and marks the most critical loss of perspective possible. Individual experiences are themselves wrongly interpreted in our interpretation is focused on our initiative rather than upon the initiative of God. Thus despair, for instance, does not represent the absence of God; rather it is a particularly difficult and intense, while mistakenly interpreted experience of God's nearness in conjunction with human brokenness and isolation.

But such an understanding of prayer is also necessary if we are to pray at all --- and for an even more significant reason: God is not someone subject to the coercion and whim of a human summons. It is true that the language of prayer uses expressions of invitation; but it does so only as expressions of our own desire for increased intimacy and in acknowledgement of the need for better appreciation on our own part. It is tragically misunderstood if it is interpreted as a form of summons, no matter how graciously extended; for no matter how "graciously extended," it will always lack the humility appropriate to humanity and necessary for prayer and summon a "God" who can only be inadequate to the role and a parody of the name. Prayer is the gift and activity of God attended to by sinners. It will always be inadequate insofar as it does depend upon our appreciation; however, prayer is possible only because God has acted, has loved us and determined to serve us in our need. Our prayer is required if God's activity is to come to fruition; it is never required, however, to summon God into action. If such an image lingers in our understanding of prayer, we can be very certain we have arrogated the divine initiative to ourselves, and diminished both ourselves and God in the process.

Yet, at the same time we renounce our supposed ability to summon God on the spot, we presume God's nearness. The Christ Event gives us the right to this particular presumption. In life, in death, and in our despairing over both, God has drawn near. Whether our experience sings of ecstasy or screams in doubt, fear, and hopelessness, above and below all, we presume God's nearness. Prayer is always an act of presumption, but it is the only presumption God's presence allows; it is always an act of profoundest humility. That God has drawn near, we who are sometimes aware of our seeing and tasting and touching of the Risen Lord, cannot doubt. But the paradox that we cannot doubt even when we feel we must, and even when we are only aware of doing so, must reduce us as it did the psalmist, and certainly as it did Jesus, not to arrogance but to awe.

We always give thanks. . .

Artist: Sister Kristine Haugen, ocdh Hermitage Arts (Please see link for Hermitage Arts on the right for Gallery and ordering information.)

Normal adolescent questioning: Is this really unfaith? Atheism?

Recently a mother approached an AOL bulletin board with questions regarding her adolescent daughter and the serious questioning she was going through with regard to her faith in God. The term atheism was thrown around, but left undefined; while most of the respondents pointed out the importance of this phase in the girl's faith development and encouraged the mother to continue dealing with the situation as she had been doing, one person posted she was concerned that this child had "cut herself off from God" at such a crucial time of her life. It seemed important to me to respond to this, not least because I am always amazed to find Catholics who believe that simply (or rather, ostensibly) questioning the existence of God (or of inadequate notions of God!) is genuine atheism or, more importantly, represents genuine unfaith and the relative (much less the absolute!) absence of God from the person's life. Here then (with some redaction of the opening) is that response:

Sorry, but how can we say this young girl has "cut herself off" from God??? He dwells within her; he is part of her very being (remember Ratzinger's work on the dialogical character of the soul?). Has she closed herself off to the life that is deep within her summoning her to grow and be? Has she closed herself to love, to being present for and with others? No, as her Mother's description of things makes very clear, she has not. She is questioning, yes, and doubting, yes, but how else is one to move from childish imitative faith to a more independent and mature faith of her own? To question, and even to doubt seriously is not the same as sin where we do reject God's presence (even this cannot make him absent from within us or our own subjective world). It is a way to actually engage with God and his creation --- a God who is always bigger than the notions of him we are taught as children --- and certainly it can be a way our faith matures and deepens rather than leading us away from faith itself.

On the subjective side of the equation (the side of the subject who is doubting or seeking), better serious questioning and doubt than a "faith" which never matures beyond the immature credulity and images of God that are best outgrown or transcended. The Apostle Thomas seriously doubted, and his doubt prepared him for God's revelation; it did not close him to it. And on the objective side of the equation (the side of objective reality: what is really there apart from the subject who is doubting), we must remember our OT: "if I go down into the depths of sheol, you are there . . .". God reveals himself as the One who will be with us in season and out; his name means he will be the One who he will be and implies this faithful being with us no matter what.

Again, the Apostle Thomas doubted as seriously as anyone could, and God did not reject him, did not absent himself from him. Indeed, he revealed himself in a fresh and heretofore unheard of and impossible way. Thomas' doubt CAN (and some commentators rightly suggest, should) be read as a recognition that the resurrected Christ had also to be the crucified Christ or he would not be believable, and isn't this the absolute truth? Isn't this the heart of our Gospel faith? We believe in a scandalous God, one who stretches former categories and ordinary ways of knowing him, coming to us in weakness, and kenosis. While we reject NOTIONS of God, we do not necessarily reject God himself, and in serious doubting and questioning we do not cut ourselves off from God, but open to finding him (indeed, we are often desperate to find him) in new and more profound ways.

Again, what is sometimes called atheism is rarely truly that, for the person continues to believe in objective value, continues to search for, be open to, and affirm meaning (of which God is ALWAYS the source and ground), continues to love others in a way which is (and can only be) empowered by God and open to knowing God --- eventhough the word God is rejected, and certain notions of him (many of which OUGHT to be rejected as parodies of the real God) are no longer helpful. It is nearly impossible to be consistently atheistic (this requires the rejection of meaning as such), and when we are speaking of an adolescent making the transition to more mature faith, the things called "atheism" are far from the embittered, cynical, nihilistic positions characteristic of genuine atheism.

Invocation: The essence of the Christian vocation (Reflection developed from the July 17th post):

Today's readings (Exodus 3:13-20, Psalm 105, Matt 11:28-38) center on God's revelation of his name and the instruction that we invoke it in our lives and ministry. Because of this I found myself thinking about a film that came out a couple of years ago. Two images in particular have stuck with me, and they are relevant to today's lections.

The first involves an emotional interview with the head of the camp (the film is a documentary of a religious Summer camp) where she expounds on the evils of Harry Potter. She is especially concerned that children not be taught or try to emulate the use of spells and incantations (the superstitious or "magical" use of formulae and names in order to influence or control the forces of nature, etc). As she rightly implied, such things demonstrate a lack of trust in the providence of God --- and more!

The second image is of a young girl trying to take with utter seriousness the lesson she had just learned about the importance of praying and living in the name of Jesus Christ, and the injunction to invoke the name of the Lord. She is jumping up and down shouting at a badly-thrown bowling ball, "Go straight, in the NAME OF JESUS, Go Straight!!!" Rarely have I seen anything more ironic than the juxtaposition of these two images. It probably goes without saying that something here has gone terribly wrong with an important piece of Christian teaching. Indeed, invocation has been distorted into incantation, the very thing the camp head decried!

Today's first reading is the key to understanding what is involved in genuine invocation of God's name. Although the lection uses the translation I AM, for the name YHWH, the Hebrew is more dynamic and filled with promise: it really means "I will be the One who I will be" and includes the implication that God will be faithful to himself, and will abide with us in season and out. When seen in this light the revelation of God's name is really a summary of what is involved in the covenants God makes with mankind. It reprises God's side of the covenant(s) and implies what our side will mean as well.

Invoking God's name means calling on the One who reveals himself as he who "will be who I will be." Thus, it also means letting this actually happen --- letting it be realized in our lives. It means that we allow ourselves to be open to the WHOLE person, not simply to aspects or characteristics of them we understand already or find congenenial. When we pray in the name of the Trinity, for instance, we open ourselves to a love greater and more sustaining and comforting than anything we can imagine. But, it is also a love which judges and purifies, chastens and challenges.

In this sense invocation is an act of vulnerability, not one of control. It does not mean insisting things go as we want, but rather, that we will allow them them to go as God wills and empowers. In the imagery of today's Gospel, we take upon ourselves the yoke of Christ, the freeing burden of humilty and obedience.

Invocation has a second and related sense then: it is our own acceptance of a commission or vocation to live our lives in the name of another rather than in our own name. It is not our prayers only that are to be undertaken in God's name, but every breath, action, and aspiration or accomplishment of our lives.

The story I began with says it is easy to get this wrong, easy to turn invocation into incantation, easy to trivialize and distort what should be the most profound act we undertake, the continuing ratification of God's covenant with us in a way which glorifies the Name of God. And in this week where the LAST Harry Potter book is awaited with bated breath in some circles (and Stillsong is among these), it is a good time to examine our own praxis with regard to the invocation of God's name. Does it really glorify God (that is, does it reveal God, or allow him to reveal himself, on his own terms)? Is it really an act of vulnerability and the ratification of the covenant, our commitment to letting God be the One he wills to be with and for us and our world? Or, has it degenerated into a more or less subtle form of incantation?

Introducing Junior!

Every Church should have a gargoyle. Since, according to Peter Damian, I am a little Church (ecclesiola), and a new one as well, Junior is a baby gargoyle. Besides, I thought he was pretty cute. He is formed to fit on his Mother's knee, but the two together were a bit too expensive for my budget, and a bit too large as well. Here Junior is protecting my profession candle (to be used at my consecration in September 2007).

In the Name of Jesus!!

This Thursday's readings begin with the Exodus story of Moses' commissioning by God, and with God's revelation of his name. It is a name best translated as, "I will be the One whom I will be" with the implication of complete and utter faithfulness to Godself, and to those he calls to himself. Following this is the responsorial psalm which begins, "Give thanks to the Lord, INVOKE HIS NAME, make known among the nations his deeds. . ." Finally, there is the Gospel from Matthew of the "Great invitation": come all to me you who are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

WIth all these references to name (and to the idea of being appropriately yoked to Christ) I guess it should not surprise me that the images I have in my brain are taken from a film from last year involving a children's Summer Bible camp where kids are taught to be "soldiers for Christ" and given lessons in the importance of praying (and acting) in the name of God. In particular I recall a scene in one of the out-takes where a young girl is standing at the foot of a bowling lane just having rolled a not especially good ball. She is jumping up and down screaming, "go straight, In the NAME of JE- SUS!! In the NAME OF JESUS, I command you, go straight!!" or something rather similar. Counterposed to this image is one of a tirade by the woman who taught the girl this style of "prayer," against Harry Potter (the books, movies, phenomenon, characters, author --- you name it), the demonic aspects of witchcraft, especially against the use of spells and INCANTATIONS. Afterall, one should never use magic words or formulae to influence reality in a superstitious way!!! Well, the irony of the juxtaposition of these two images was pretty powerful for me. What was this little girl doing, and what had she been taught if it was not INCANTATION??? Certainly this is not a Christian notion of what it means to invoke the name of God!! Invocation is NOT incantation!

So what are Thursday's readings trying to say to us about the Name of God, and what it means to invoke it? The first thing I think is that whatever else invocation of a name is, it implies we are faithful to the one named and to the meaning (or better, the content) of the name. Essentially then, invoking God's name implies our being faithful to God and entails a commitment to (as his name says clearly) let him be the one he will be for us; it means allowing God to reveal himself on his own terms, in his own good time, and according to his own infinite wisdom. Further, since acting in the name of another means acting in their authority and so, being empowered BY them, invocation will also mean that our prayer is something done in God's power and authority, not our own.

Names are powerful symbols. They open us to the person as a whole rather than to various characteristics and partial aspects of their being. Again,when we call another by name we commit ourselves to allowing them to reveal themselves on their own terms rather than just to certain things about them we find congenial or admirable. The name symbolizes (makes present to us) the whole person. Accepting a commission to go in the name of another and to make known their deeds, is to accept a commission to allow that name (person) to be revealed in integrity and fidelity. Invocation thus has a narrow sense (calling or calling upon the name of the other), and a broader sense (being the one who is the counterpart of the one invoked in whatever way is really appropriate). Fundamentally, invocation is a covenental act: it is that act which reflects the humility and the docility to allow our lives to be defined in terms of another.

Incantation, of course is another matter entirely. It involves the superficial and superstitious use of another's name (or some other formula or "magic" term) in an attempt to coerce reality to correspond to our own needs and desires. Unfortunately, ending and/or beginning our prayers with the formula, "In the name of. . ." can sometimes be more incantation than invocation. We may not scream and shout out our demands as the young girl did in the movie, but all too often we forget that ALL prayer is the work of God in us ---- God's revelation of himself on his own terms and in his own time. We are asked to pray and live our lives in the name of Jesus Christ --- and so, in the power of the Spirit of God. Only when we allow God to be the one he will be, have we REALLY invoked God's name. Everything else is incantation, and as unworthy of Christians as any other act of superstition or magic.

a man fallen among thieves

Tonight's Gospel reminded me of the following poem by e.e. cummings. He captures so very well, what being a good samaritan involves for us sometimes, and more, simply being a Christian for the least of the least amongst us.

a man who had fallen among thieves


a man who had fallen among thieves
lay by the roadside on his back
dressed in fifteenthrate ideas
wearing a round jeer for a hat

fate per a somewhat more than less
emancipated evening
had in return for consciousness
endowed him with a changeless grin

whereon a dozen staunch and leal
citizens did graze at pause
then fired by hypercivic zeal
sought newer pastures or because

swaddled with a frozen brook
of pinkest vomit out of eyes
which noticed nobody he looked
as if he did not care to rise

one hand did nothing on the vest
its wideflung friend clenched weakly dirt
while the mute trouserfly confessed
a button solemnly inert.

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars

ee cummings

I will have to look to see what book of poems this one is originally from, but it is contained in the Complete Poems of E.E.Cummings.

Motu Proprio, "Summorum Pontificum"

Well, the Motu Proprio authorizing the widespread use of the Tridentine Mass has been announced, and will become effective on September 14th. Unfortunately, the Motu Proprio is not limited to the Mass and allows for dual rites of Baptism and Confirmation as well, not to mention the older Roman Breviary which was extensively reformed over a seven year period ending @1971. The simple fact is there are serious theological reasons to view the Motu Proprio with concern. This is not merely a matter of language or the trappings of a liturgy which fosters a greater reverence, more sense of mystery or the like. It is a matter of serious theological differences, not only in the "limited" area of liturgy, but in ecclesiology, Christology, etc between the Tridentine and the current Ordo Missae.

The people enthused over the Motu Proprio seem to believe it is the beginning of a wholesale turning back of the clock in liturgy and theology to a pre-Vatican II period. That is certainly naive, but it may WELL occasion an outright schism in the Church over the next decade or so. These enthusiasts also characterize those of us who are concerned and cautious about the ramifications of the implementation of the Motu Proprio as "Haters of the ancient and eternal Mass" or "haters of Latin." They suggest we are afraid of the Tridentine Mass, or of a liturgy of beauty and reverence. Give me a break!!!

What seems clear to me at the same times these folks bemoan the poor level of catechesis in the post Vatican II Church they have not understood the significant theological reforms and underpinnings of the current Ordo Missae. Christ's presence in the Proclaimed and preached Word is underscored in today's normative (ordinary) Mass. So is his presence in the Assembly. These are both downplayed (if recognized at all) in the Tridentine rite. It is not hard to find parodies of the current Ordo Missae in the descriptions traditionalists provide, but it is almost impossible to find accurate descriptions of the Masses most of us Catholics attend day in and day out in most every parish and diocese in the world. These ARE liturgies of aesthetic quality, of reverence, power, and profundity. They are also liturgies where being a mere spectator to the priest's special and individual communication with God is not acceptable, where clericalism at the expense of the mission and dignity of the laity and their vocation in the world is unacceptable, where God's immanence is as important as his transcendence, and where the incarnation is not a cause for scandal as it seems to be for many traditionalists who want a Mass which is not sullied by the requirements of meeting and greeting one's neighbor or embodying Christ for one another right there in the assembly.

I sincerely hope Pope Benedict XVI is correct that this Motu Proprio will not be an occasion for division, much less of outright schism, but with a Church using different Offices (Breviary vs Liturgy of the Hours), different rites of baptism and confirmation, different Masses with different liturgical calendars and lectionaries as well as different underlying theologies of Eucharist, Church, lay vocation, views of ordained priesthood, and the presence of Christ in the Mass, I can't help but be concerned that Benedict has been naive in his analysis of the negative potential of this Motu Proprio which rejects (from what I have heard), both the wisdom, wishes, and concerns of the majority of Bishops of the Church in the world, and the not-so hidden agenda of many Tridentine enthusiasts to turn back the clock to pre-Vatican II liturgical theology. That is especially true as I read various bulletin boards where traditionalists have adopted a posture of gloating while discounting the real concerns the majority of Bishops (much less the rest of us!) have expressed.

Time will certainly tell. For those of us who truly believe in the urgency of Christ's prayer, "That they may all be One" (which surely includes Benedict XVI!) ---- the next few years may be some of the saddest and most tragic we will ever see. I hope not, and I pray both that Benedict XVI is correct in his analysis of the solution to the disunity that exists in the church today, and that Vatican II's wisdom and the movement of the Spirit in that regard will continue to be manifest as the real CONTEXT for the Motu Proprio, but I am not sanguine.

Final Oblature with Camaldolese Benedictines

Well, last Friday (July 6th) I celebrated my final Oblature with Transfiguration Monastery in Windsor, NY. Transfiguration is a Camaldolese Benedictine monastery of nuns, the only monastery of Camaldolese nuns in the United States. Sister Donald Corcoran OSB Cam (Prioress), received my oblature, and there were several other Oblates present, both from Transfiguration, as well as from New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, CA, and Incarnation Monastery in Berkeley, CA. The brief ceremony was held in the former convent chapel of my parish Church between the homily and offertory which allowed my parish community (my MAIN community really) to celebrate and support me in this step. Afterward, a few of us including most of the Oblates, Sister Donald, some parishioners and my pastor went out for breakfast. It was a great celebration and I was glad to have a chance for people to meet one another!

One of the reasons I decided to affiliate with the Camaldolese was their triple charism of eremitism, cenobitism, and evangelization. (More about that in a bit.) The fact that they live under the Rule of Benedict was also important. While I wrote my first plan of life for the Diocese back in 1985 or so, over the years it became clear to me that this was simply not sufficient for a diocesan hermit, despite it being all the Canon calls for. I thought at the time that a personal Plan or Rule of Life needed to be subsumed under a larger, more vital and challenging Rule, and one that has a history of successful monastic formation and inspiration. By the time I rewrote my Rule/Plan two years ago, it had become clear to me that the Rule of Benedict was the way to go here, and I added to that along with the Constitutions and Statutes of the Camaldolese Benedictines. When I finished my own Rule, it seemed clear that my own living had been formed by these influences and my own Plan of Life needed to continue to be informed by these sources. Otherwise, the personal Plan of Life may become a description of what one is doing, and can lack the scope necessary to ensure growth and sufficient challenge.

And of course, hermits need community. The stereotype of misanthropic recluses hardly fits any healthy hermit today (though healthy recluses there are!), and especially does not fit any Diocesan hermits who represent this form of consecrated life in the Church (such a person would never be admitted to vows I don't think, and likely would never even make it beyond the first appointment with the Vicar of Consecrated Life or Religious). The Camaldolese have @10 centuries of balancing eremitic and cenobitic life under their cowls, all while maintaining a simultaneous third emphasis on evangelization. Their triple charism is inspiring to me, and clearly what Christians of all sorts need modelled for them today. For Diocesan hermits, the Camaldolese story of Saint Romuald is apt to strike a chord as it did in me. Romuald, after all, went about bringing hermits under the Rule of Benedict and also brought them to live in lauras quite often. The lone hermit with neither Rule, superior, nor tradition, was anathema to him, and I suspect Diocesan hermits today would often find Romuald has anticipated their needs. This is even truer of non-canonical hermits living in today's world ---- hermits who have even less meaningful contexts for their lives than do Canon 603 hermits.

Chapel at St Perpetua Parish

Sister Donald made an interesting observation during her comments introducing the ceremony. She noted that I had told her how important my parish community was to me, what a blessing really, and then she suggested that this is probably the way consecrated (vowed) life will look for the most part in the future: solitary Sisters, or Sisters living in twos at most, living in parish communities and looking to the parish to be their primary community as they give their lives for (or at least live them integrally in) that parish. I think she is right in this, and more than I could ever have imagined, I know how it is that having a hermit in the parish who is really dependent upon the parish as her primary community changes the way we see one another (and ourselves as well)!! The Oblature ceremony brought our interdependence out strongly as it included a promise to support my commitment in prayer, etc over the years. I am hoping that the parish community is beginning to know how important they are to my own fulfillment of my vocation. I think that is a perspective that is new for them and one which can only help the parish grow in prayer and vigor (not that they are lacking in either --- they are not, and that is one of the reasons I am so very fortunate).