Feast of the Transitus of Saint Benedict

When we are very fortunate we will have been given by God the gift of great men and women formators, those who serve us as mentors, guides, older Brothers and Sisters in the faith and in our religious life. We recognize over time that we have been formed by the work we do with these gifted men and women, that God's Holy Spirit works through them and in us so that we are privileged to share their name in some way. While I never had a Benedictine Novice director, I have been privileged to read Benedict's Rule most days of my life for the past 30+ years and to have learned from Saint Benedict through his writing and his followers for many more years than this! Especially this includes the Sisters of Social Service and the Camaldolese --- both Camaldolese Monks and Nuns. 

Today is the anniversary of Saint Benedict's passing into eternity, the day we mark his "transitus" or transition to a new form of life and presence with and for us. It is thus, also the day he became a co-formator for all of those Monks, Nuns, and Oblates who would follow him and his Rule into monastic (and eremitical) maturity as Benedictines of whatever stripe or habit. Thanks be to God for the gift of Saint Benedict and for his lifegiving presence with God and amongst us!! 

The Silence of Solitude and the Distinction Between Physical Solitude and Existential Solitude

[[Dear Sister Laurel, You speak of the silence of solitude and of solitude as a form of penance; at the same time you have written about the need hermits have for relationships. Don't relationships mitigate the degree of solitude you are also embracing? Could you say more about the way this all works? I really like my solitude and could never consider it to be penitential! I would think you or any other hermit would be drawn to solitude as well, no? ]]

Many thanks for these questions and for your patience is awaiting a response! Let me draw some distinctions that are central to eremitical solitude. I tend to use the term eremitical solitude when I am speaking about the reality c 603 specifies as a central element of consecrated solitary eremitical life. I also distinguish between physical solitude, which has to do with being physically separated from others, and eremitical solitude, which includes physical solitude but is not exhausted by it and, especially, is not to be defined in terms of it alone. Instead, I experience eremitical solitude as an incredibly rich symbol with a number of dimensions and defining characteristics. At its heart, I think, is the experience of being irreducibly alone, not "belonging" to anyone or anything except God from whom, this side of death, we are at least somewhat alienated. I identify this dimension of eremitical solitude as existential solitude. This dimension of eremitical solitude does not change, that is, it does not matter whether we are with others or not; in terms of existential solitude, we are always essentially alone with God. 

Eremitical solitude allows one to experience existential solitude with a kind of sharpness and depth that many never experience until their last years when they are isolated by illness or age and bereavement, for instance. In fact, (we) hermits practice physical solitude precisely to sharpen our experience of existential solitude. Our prayer does this all the time. We learn to depend more and more profoundly on God and God alone, knowing that without God there is no real challenge or ability to grow truer, no genuine consolation, no personal strength, and no life, but especially no meaningful life. This sense of what it means to exist and for one's life to be meaningful only through the grace (i.e., the presence and power) of God is sharpened and honed to a razor edge within the hermitage. For consecrated hermits under c 603, even the fact that our vocation is ecclesial and that the Church has specifically called us to live this in her name does not really ease this existential solitude. Often these elements of our life (i.e., ecclesiality, living this life in the Church's name) along with our limited ministry to others, only sharpen it further. The same is true of most relationships.

When I speak of the need for friendships, it must be recognized that these are a Divine grace that not only allows us to grow in our capacity for and ability to love but also helps make us aware of our existential solitude. They are an important way God is mediated to us! Yes, you could say they mitigate physical solitude, but existential solitude is a different matter. Friendships can ease our experience of this for a limited time, but inevitably, and ironically, they lead to a sharpened sense of existential solitude. You have heard the adage "One is never so alone as when one is in a crowd". We experience existential solitude as well when we know loss and grief with regard to those we have loved. Thus, while friendships allow us to share and grow in our capacity for love, they also cause us to run up against what I described above as our irreducible aloneness. This is the aloneness that occurs whenever we realize that what is deepest in us (our relationship with God and the eremitical vocation that stems from this) is not understood by even our best friends (unless, of course, they also happen to be contemplatives and even hermits). And even then, this is really more a matter of their experience resonating with our own, rather than the other person actually knowing our unique experience.

When you say that you could never consider solitude to be penitential it sounds to me like you are saying it would never be uncomfortable for you. Penance does not need to be uncomfortable. When I think of penance (or asceticism), it can mean anything that helps integrate, deepen, extend, or regularize my prayer. It is not necessarily uncomfortable any more than what are genuine consolations** are necessarily pleasant. My Rule says the following:

Prayer represents an openness and responsiveness to the personal and creative address of God which is rooted in and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Penance seems to me to be any activity or practice which assists in achieving, regularizing, integrating, deepening and extending, 1) this openness and responsiveness to God, 2) a correlative esteem for myself, and 3) for the rest of God's creation. While prayer corresponds in part to those deep moments of victory God achieves within me, and includes my grateful response, penance is that Christian and more extended form of festivity implicating the victory in the whole of life . . . . (Eph 1:4; Lumen Gentium 5, 48) from O'Neal, Sr. Laurel M, Canon 603 Eremitical Rule of Life, approved by Bishop Allen H. Vigneron, Diocese of Oakland, 02. September. 2007.)

The role of solitude (here I mean physical solitude since this is the only kind of solitude we can actually choose) is precisely something the hermit chooses in order to become a contemplative person of prayer. It is a discipline that helps us become open and responsive to the personal and creative address of God. At the same time, physical solitude makes keener the existential solitude that represents our deepest aloneness and also our most profound communion with God. This experience of physical solitude, then, can be immensely creative; at the same time, it can be incredibly difficult and even painful for us. In the Old and New Testaments, long-term solitude involving physical isolation from other people, is looked at with pity and even horror.*** And yet, it is a discipline we hermits embrace as a necessary element of eremitical life. 

When most folks speak of desiring solitude they are speaking of degrees of physical solitude that allow them respite from daily demands involving others and which give time and space to solitary, relaxing activities one doesn't ordinarily have time or space for. Hermits are speaking instead of a reality that throws them back upon their own existential solitude, and so, ultimately, upon their relationship with the ultimate and absolute Mystery we call God. This is at once awesome and terrible, what Rudolf Otto called "mysterium tremendum et fascinans" --- the mystery that at once repels and attracts!! (cf also, The Paradox of Faith: Loved into Ever Deepening Hunger for God)

I hope this is helpful. There are other distinctions I ordinarily make in speaking about solitude or "the silence of solitude", so I hope it is okay that I limited myself here. While this response might not be what you expected, it reflects what I am reflecting on personally these days. If you want to push me a bit further by asking clarifying questions, please do that!

______________________________________________________

** Consolations, in the Ignatian sense of the term are experiences that bring us closer to God, not simply experiences that feel good or are pleasant. Consolations can be difficult, even painful experiences while desolations are experiences that lead us away from God --- even if they feel pleasant in the process!

***Barbour, John D, The Value of Solitude, The Ethics and Spirituality of Aloneness in Autobiography, University of Virginia Press, 2004, p 12.

Solemnity of Saint Joseph

Especially poignant in the stories we associate with God's incarnation is the Matthean story of Joseph as the icon of those who struggle to allow God's own justice to be brought to birth as fully as possible. It is, in its own way, a companion story to Luke's account of Mary's annunciation and fiat. Both Mary (we are told explicitly) and Joseph (we are told implicitly) ponder things in their hearts, both are mystified and shaken by the great mystery which has taken hold of them and in whose story they have become pivotal characters. Both allow God's own power and presence to overshadow them so that God might do something absolutely new in their world. But it is Joseph's more extended and profound struggle to truly do justice in mercy and to be a righteous man who reveals God's own justice in love.

The Situation:

I am a little ashamed to say I have never spent much time considering Joseph's predicament or the context of that predicament until this week. Instead, I have always thought of him as a good man who chose the merciful legal solution rather than opting for the stricter one. I never saw him making any other choice nor did I understand the various ways he was pushed and pulled by his own faith and love. But Joseph's situation was far more demanding and frustrating than I had ever appreciated! Consider the background which weighed heavy on Joseph's heart. First, he is identified as a just or righteous man, a man faithful to God, to the Covenant, a keeper of the Law or Torah, an observant Jew who was well aware of Jeremiah's promise and the sometimes bitter history of his own Davidic line. All of this and more is implied here by the term "righteous man". In any case, this represents his most foundational and essential identity. Secondly, he was betrothed to Mary, wed (not just engaged!) to her though he had not yet taken her to his family home and would not for about a year. That marriage was a symbol of the covenant between God and his People Israel. Together he and Mary symbolized the Covenant; to betray or dishonor this relationship was to betray and profane the Covenant itself. This too was uppermost in Joseph's mind precisely because he was a righteous man.

Thirdly, he loved Mary and was entirely mystified by her pregnancy. Nothing in his tradition prepared him for a virgin birth. Mary could only have gotten pregnant through intercourse with another man so far as Joseph could have known --- and this despite Mary's protestations of innocence. (The OT passage referring to a virgin is more originally translated as "young woman". Only later as "almah" was translated into the Greek "parthenos" and even later was seen by Christians in light of Mary and Jesus' nativity did the term "young woman" firmly become "a virgin".) The history of Israel was fraught with all-too-human failures that betrayed the covenant and profaned Israel's high calling. While Joseph was open to God doing something new in history, it is more than a little likely that he was torn between which of these possibilities was actually occurring here, just as he was torn between 1) believing Mary and continuing the marriage and 2) divorcing her and casting her and the child aside.

What Were Joseph's Options?

Under the Law, Joseph had two options. The first involved a very public divorce. Joseph would bring the situation to the attention of the authorities, involve witnesses, repudiate the marriage and patrimony for the child, and cast Mary aside. This would establish Joseph as a wronged man and allow him to continue to be seen as righteous or just. But Mary could have been stoned and the baby would also have died as a result. The second option was more private but also meant bringing his case to the authorities. In this solution, Joseph would again have repudiated the marriage and patrimony but the whole matter would not have become public and Mary's life or that of the child would not have been put in immediate jeopardy. Still, in either instance, Mary's shame and apparent transgressions would have become known and in either case, the result would have been ostracization and eventual death. Under the law Joseph would have been called a righteous man but how would he have felt about himself in his heart of hearts? Would he have wondered if he was just under the Law but at the same time had refused to hear the message of an angel of God, refused to allow God to do something new and even greater than the Law?

Of course, Joseph might have simply done nothing at all and continued with the plans for the marriage's future. But in such a case many problems would have arisen. According to the Law, he would have been falsely claiming paternity of the child --- a transgression of the Law and thus, the covenant. Had the real father shown up in the future and claimed paternity Joseph would then have been guilty of "conniving with Mary's own sin" (as Harold Buetow describes the matter). Again Law and covenant would have been transgressed and profaned. In his heart of hearts, he might have believed this was the just thing to do but in terms of his People and their Covenant and Law, he would have acted unjustly and offended the all-just God. Had he brought Mary to his family home he would have rendered them and their abode unclean as well. If Mary was guilty of adultery she would have been unclean --- hence the need for ostracizing or even killing her!

Entering the Liminal Place Where God May Speak to Us:

All of this and so much more was roiling around in Joseph's heart and mind! In one of the most difficult situations we might imagine, Joseph struggled to discern what was just and what it would mean for him to do justice in our world! Every option was torturous; each was inadequate for a genuinely righteous man. Eventually, he came to a conclusion that may have seemed the least problematical even if it was not wholly satisfactory, namely to put Mary away "quietly", to divorce her in a more private way, and walk away from her. And at this moment, when Joseph's struggle to discern and do justice has reached its most neuralgic point, at a place of terrible liminality symbolized in so much Scriptural literature by dreaming, God reveals to Joseph the same truth Mary has herself accepted: God is doing something unimaginably new here. He is giving the greatest gift yet. The Holy Spirit has overshadowed Mary and resulted in the conception of One who will be the very embodiment of God's justice in our world. Not only has a young woman come to be pregnant, but a virgin will bear a child! The Law will be fulfilled in Him and true justice will have a human face as God comes to be Emmanuel in this new and definitive way.

Joseph's faith response to God's revelation has several parts or dimensions. He decides to consummate the marriage with Mary by bringing her to his family home but not as an act of doing nothing at all and certainly not as some kind of sentimental or cowardly evasion of real justice. Instead, it is a way of embracing the whole truth and truly doing justice. He affirms the marriage and adopts the child as his own. He establishes him in the line of David even as he proclaims the child's true paternity. He does this by announcing this new Son's name to be Jesus, God saves.  Thus Joseph proclaims to the world that God has acted in this Son's birth in a new way which transcends and relativizes the Law even as it completely respects it. He honors the Covenant with a faithfulness that leads to that covenant's perfection in the Christ Event. In all of this Joseph continues to show himself to be a just or righteous man, a man whose humanity and honor we ourselves should regard profoundly.

Justice is the way to Genuine Future:

Besides being moved by Joseph's genuine righteousness, I am struck by a couple of things in light of all of this. First, discerning and doing justice is not easy. There are all kinds of solutions that are partial and somewhat satisfactory, but real justice takes work and, in the end, must be inspired by the love and wisdom of God. Secondly, Law per se can never really mediate justice. Instead, the doing of justice takes a human being who honors the Law, feels compassion, knows mercy, struggles in fear and trepidation with discerning what is right, and ultimately is open to allowing God to do something new and creative in the situation. Justice is never a system of laws, though it will include these. It is always a personal act of courage and even of worship, the act of one who struggles to mediate God's own plan and will for all those which that involved. Finally, I am struck by the fact that justice opens reality to a true future. Injustice closes off the future. In all of the partial and unsatisfactory solutions Joseph entertained and wrestled with, each brought some justice and some injustice. Future of some sort was assured for some and foreclosed to others; often both came together in what was merely a sad and tragic approximation of a "real future". Only God's own will and plan assure a genuine future for the whole of his creation. That too is something yesterday's Gospel witnessed to.

Another Look at Joseph:

Joseph is the star in Matt's account, the one who points to God and the justice only God can do. It is important, I think, to see all that he represents as Mary's counterpart in the nativity of Jesus (Son of David) who is Emmanuel (Son of the One who, especially in Jesus, is God With Us). Mary's fiat seems easy, and graceful in more than one sense of that term. Joseph's fiat is hard-won but also graced or graceful. For Joseph, as for Mary, there is real labor involved as the categories of divinity and justice, law, and covenant are burst asunder to bring the life and future of heaven to birth in our world. May we each be committed to mediating God's own justice and bringing God's future into being especially in this Advent-Christmas season. This is the time when we especially look ahead to Christ's coming and too, to his eventual coming to full stature when God will be all in all. May we never take refuge in partial and inadequate solutions to our world's problems and need for justice, especially out of shortsightedness, sentimentality, cowardice, evasion, or fear for our own reputations. And may we allow Joseph to be the model of discernment, humility, and courage in mediating the powerful presence and future of God we recognize as justice and so yearn for in this 21st Century.]]

A Contemplative Moment: Keeping Hope Alive in a Troubled World

Kepping Hope Alive

by

Joyce Rupp, OSM

When fear of the Unknown and other concerns

move my spirit to feel uneasy or troubled,

I will look for trust in my heart.

When pain or soreness in some part of myself

continues unabated and will not leave me,

I will look for comfort in my heart.

When grief due to the death of cherished persons

take over a large portion of my emotional space,

I will look for solace in my heart.

When night arrives and the endless attempts 

to fall asleep fail to bring peaceful slumber,

I will look for quiet in my heart,

When I experience disappointment

and become increasingly disheartened,

I will look for joy in my heart.

When I feel useless, ignored, and rejected

and cannot find purpose in my life,

I will look for self-worth in my heart.

When the days fill with medical visits

that entail an over-extension of energy,

I will look for patience in my heart.

When I long for peace in our world

to alleviate and cease global suffering,

I will look for compassion in my heart.

When I attempt to commune in prayer

but the Ancient One seems unreachable,

I will look for faith in my heart.

When I ignore the hurts inside myself

and forget to provide self-compassion,

I will look for empathy in my heart.

Compassionate Holy One, there are always reasons for hope, no matter how precarious or challenging the days might be. I turn to you with trust that you will not abandon me. You will be my companion throughout the remainder of my earthly life. I place my sufferings and uncertainties in your care. I will continue to make an effort to live with a positive spirit even when days are especially difficult.

Shared from Evening Prayer, Sisters of the Holy Family, Tuesday, 18. March. 2025

The paradox of Faith: Being Loved into an Ever-Deepening Hunger for God

[[Sister Laurel, thanks for your posts on "being full of oneself" and dealing with that. I was thinking about what you have said about being loving and allowing ourselves to be loved as the way to deal with the problem of being full of ourselves. I appreciated the focus you gave to paradox in what you wrote. . . . . I agree there is a paradox involved in the fact that trying to empty ourselves really leads to a greater focus on ourselves. I am thinking that one particular instance of this is when someone begins to focus on their own imperfections and proclaims themselves as sinners! . . . It is paradoxical that when some religious people begin to speak publicly about their sin or overall sinfulness, they become more and more full of themselves, more and more in need of the love of God that is the only thing that can save anyone at all from themselves.  . . . Do you understand what I am saying here? I think it really calls for all of the things you wrote about recently, and particularly, spiritual direction.]]

Thanks for writing and especially for specifying as you do the problem of proclaiming one's sinfulness and the way this tends to lead to even greater "being full of oneself"!! I agree completely and think you have said this very well. Your comments lead me first of all to consider the way the Catholic Church handles personal sin. We do that in secret and in absolute confidence. Yes, we confess to others because we really do need to say it out loud and within the church community, not least to see it clearly ourselves, but we do not shout it from the rooftops or reveal it publicly. 

Doing this is not only not ordinarily helpful, but, as you note, it can all too easily become a form of being full of and even a proclamation of self! Even in public liturgies, though we confess many times that we are sinners and need the mercy of God, the focus is never on public confession of our sin; instead, it is on God's love and welcome of the sinner as well as on the commonality of our identities as sinners with other sinners. Our sins themselves, however, are a private matter and, generally speaking, we keep this private except with our spiritual director, or perhaps a therapist or really good friend. There is a certain degree of discretion required to be reverent in this matter. To do otherwise risks very real self-aggrandizement in regard to our relationship with God and self.

The same thing happens with the intimate moments we have with God in prayer, for instance. Our prayer is also a private matter and the NT says as much, [[When you pray, go into your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.]] The question this raises is an important one, namely, do we want a relationship with God, or do we want to be known as someone who claims to have or wants to be known as having a relationship with God? One of these is worthy of us (and of God), and one of these is not. This part of the situation is not paradoxical. What is paradoxical is that the more one speaks of unusual or special prayer experiences, particularly when these are made to represent the ordinary way God comes to one, the less credible they become as instances of communication with the real God and the more they, at least apparently, reflect an overactive ego. After all, when God is trivialized in this way we neglect the fact that we are dealing with Mystery itself. Even if this is not true and one simply has a poor sense of boundaries, it is theologically unsound and pastorally ill-advised.

Again, though, I believe that the answer to the problem of ego and "being full of oneself" whenever we are speaking of loving God is to keep in mind the most basic paradox. We love God best and most truly when we allow God to love us. To love another is to want for them and to act in ways that allow them to be themselves as fully and truly as possible. With God who is Love (or, better, Love-in-act), for us to act in this way must mean that we allow God to love us as fully and truly as possible (which itself is dependent on God empowering us to do so). To speak of our loving God becomes quite difficult otherwise, and it would put the focus back on ourselves. This is why Tillich's definition of faith, for example, is so brilliant and sufficient. (Faith is "the state of being grasped by that which is an ultimate (or unconditional) concern" ("Glaube ist das Ergriffensein von dem vas uns unbedingt Angeht") It is both paradoxical and focuses attention entirely on God and what God does. Even the term "ultimate (or unconditional) concern" (unbedingt Angeht) has to do with what we experience in light of being made for and grasped by God and God's promises --- for these really are our truest needs or "concerns" only because we are made for them by God.

Faith is a profoundly paradoxical reality; it is most really our own only to the extent it is God's "being and doing" within us.  I began struggling with this as an undergraduate theology student. At that time, in the midst of a discussion on grace, faith, and works, I asked if it wasn't the case that faith was a work. The professor explained the situation and concluded by saying that perhaps faith was the one "work" that was not our work at all. He did not go any further than that but left me with a puzzle I would need to figure out ( as I have said elsewhere, he was a very fine teacher!). About a year later, he introduced me to Paul Tillich's Systematic Theology and his Dynamics of Faith. I finally began to understand how faith could be defined in terms of God's work in us and the trap of treating faith as something we did. Instead, faith is the state that results when we are grasped or taken hold of by God's Self and promises. God, quite literally "knows us" and we in turn become the very imprint or image of God's knowing us --- the very thing we were made to be. 

Likewise, this produces within us a hunger for more. We desire or yearn to be united with God and thus, more fully and completely known by God (and also by others). Whenever we continue to allow ourselves to hunger in this way, and especially whenever we embrace whatever allows God to increase our hunger for Himself, we are acting in a way that is 1) contrary to egoism, 2) is inspired by God and 3) is the very form of suffering that Jesus plumbed the depths of himself in his life, passion, and death.

For me, this is the deepest paradox of our existence, namely, that often we know God best in our hunger and it is in the sharpening of our hunger that we know we have been drawn closer to God by Godself. As a hermit, I am coming to know that on this side of death, the greatest consolation we can know is not so much that we are filled by God, but rather, that our hunger for God is developed, sharpened, and deepened. This profound hunger, however, can also be extremely painful since God is not only the ground and source of being, but of all meaning as well. To yearn for being and meaning and all these imply and require can lead us to the very brink of despair unless and until we realize that, paradoxically, this agonizing hunger for God is itself the deepest sign of God's presence and love we can know, entirely unadulterated as it is by egoism. Jesus' cry of abandonment, especially in the presence of so much other suffering, is at once the measure of his greatest hunger and a sign of God's undoubted love echoing within him. 

Happy St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patrick's Day all! Just a musical version of the Irish blessing that has become so popular. This was done during the COVID pandemic I believe and is a wonderful version I think. Also, it strikes me that while I sometimes make fun of how Irish everyone claims to be during this holiday, it would be wonderful if we could all claim the same identity in this way every day of the year -- not because we are Irish since most of us are not, but simply because we are human beings, created by the One God, and trying to become more truly human with and for one another! Could you imagine parades, and costumes, and pageants, and celebrations of our unified and unifying humanity that had the same kind of spirit and passion as St Patrick's Day celebrations of often merely putative Irishness? Just a thought!! 

I wish you God's own blessing. May he make his face shine upon you and bring you the fullness of life and peace!!

Another Look at the Transfiguration (Reprise)

Have you ever been walking along a well-known road and suddenly had a bed of flowers take on a vividness which takes your breath away? Similarly, have you ever been walking along or sitting quietly outside when a breeze rustles some leaves above your head and you were struck by an image of the Spirit moving through the world? How about suddenly being struck by the tremendous compassion of someone you know well, or seeing their smile in a new way and coming to see them in a whole new light because of this? I have had all of these happen, and, in the face of God's constant presence, what is in some ways more striking is how infrequent such peak or revelatory moments are.

Scientists tell us we see only a fraction of what goes on all around us. It depends upon our expectations.  In an experiment with six volunteers divided into two teams in either white or black shirts, observers were asked to concentrate on the number of passes of a basketball that occurred as players wove in and out around one another. In the midst of this activity a woman in a gorilla suit strolls through, stands there for a moment, thumps her chest, and moves on. At the end of the experiment observers were asked two questions: 1) how many passes were there, and 2) did  you see the gorilla? Fewer than 50% saw the gorilla.  Expectations drive perception and can produce blindness. Even more shocking, these scientists tell us that even when we are confronted with the truth we are more likely to insist on our own "knowledge" and justify decisions we have made on the basis of blindness and ignorance. We routinely overestimate our own knowledge and fail to see how much we really do NOT know.

For the past two weeks we have been reading the central chapter of Matthew's Gospel --- the chapter that stands right smack in the middle of his version of the Good News. It is Matt's collection of Jesus' parables --- the stories Jesus tells to help break us open and free us from the common expectations, perspectives, and wisdom we hang onto so securely so that we might commit to the Kingdom of God and the vision of reality it involves. Throughout this collection of parables, Jesus takes the common, too-well-known, often underestimated and unappreciated bits of reality which are right at the heart of his hearers' lives. He uses them to reveal the extraordinary God who is also right there in front of his hearers. Stories of tiny seeds, apparently completely invisible once they have been tossed about by a prodigal sower, clay made into works of great artistry and function, weeds and wheat which reveal a discerning love and judgment which involves the careful and sensitive harvesting of the true and genuine --- all of these and more have given us the space and time to suspend our usual ways of seeing and empower us to adopt the new eyes and hearts of those who dwell within the Kingdom of God.

It was the recognition of the unique authority with which Jesus taught, the power of his parables in particular, which shifted the focus from the stories to the storyteller in the Gospel passage we heard last Friday. Jesus' family and neighbors did not miss the unique nature of Jesus' parables; these parables differ in kind from anything in Jewish literature and had a singular power which went beyond the usual significant power of narrative. They saw this clearly. But they also refused to believe the God who revealed himself in the commonplace reality they saw right in front of them. Despite the authority they could not deny they chose to see only the one they expected to see; they decided they saw only  the son of Mary, the son of Joseph and "took offense at him." Their minds and hearts were closed to who Jesus really was and the God he revealed.  Similarly, Jesus' disciples too could not really accept an anointed one who would have to suffer and die. Peter especially refuses to accept this.

Looking at Today's Gospel:

It is in the face of these situations that we hear today's Gospel of the Transfiguration. Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on a mountain apart. He takes them away from the world they know (or believe they know) so well, away from peers, away from their ordinary perspective,  and he invites them to see who he really is. In the Gospel of Luke (today's Gospel, 16. March.2025) Jesus' is at prayer --- attending to the most fundamental relationship of his life --- when the Transfiguration occurs. Matthew does not structure his account in the same way. Instead he shows Jesus as the one whose life is a profound dialogue with God's law and prophets, who is in fact the culmination and fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, the culmination of the Divine-Human dialogue we call covenant. He is God-with-us in the unexpected and even unacceptable place. This is what the disciples see --- not so much a foretelling of Jesus' future glory as the reality which stands right in front of them --- if only they had the eyes to see.

For most of us, such an event would freeze us in our tracks with awe. But not Peter! He outlines a project to reprise the Feast of Tabernacles right here and now. In this story Peter reminds me some of those folks (myself included!) who want so desperately to hang onto amazing prayer experiences --- but in doing so, fail to appreciate them fully or live from them! He is, in some ways, a kind of lovable but misguided buffoon ready to build booths for Moses, Elijah and Jesus, consistent with his tradition while neglecting the newness and personal challenge of what has been revealed. In some way Matt does not spell out explicitly, Peter has still missed the point. And in the midst of Peter's well-meaning activism comes God's voice, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!" In my reflection on this reading this last weekend, I heard something more: "Peter! Sit down! Shut up! This is my beloved Son! Look closely!! Listen to him!!!"

The Lesson for Us Today:

The lesson could not be clearer, I think, and yet, how hard it is for us to see what is right in front of us! Recently I wrote about a view that sees the Church as "too temporal." This perspective is not merely concerned with the Church buying into models of power more appropriate to princes and potentates. It sees the entire Church, insofar as it is committed to this world, as having given itself over to something that is "not spiritual." But this perspective forgets it is speaking of a Church that lives in this world and mediates the Spirit to that world, a Church who mediates Christ's presence for those with eyes to see. It is not an either/or way of seeing, but a both/and way: both ordinary and extraordinary, both material and spiritual, both temporal and eternal. Central to this Church is the notion of Sacraments; in fact, the Church herself is a primordial sacrament, a sign where ordinary reality is allowed to shine forth the power and presence of God. They take the ordinary matter of our world and in them, see this transformed into the very power and presence of God. And yet, it requires the eyes of faith to perceive and appreciate this transformation. The either/or perspective I referenced above tends to see reality in a particularly Gnostic or neo-Platonic way. What it cannot see, and what remains scandalous to it is an incarnational God who is fully present in the ordinary matter of our world, divinizing it with God's presence. How very different is the Sacramental way of seeing reality!!

Here I am reminded of a story I once told of a video of a man who was given Enchroma glasses --- a form of sunglasses that allows colorblind persons to see color, often for the first time in their lives. By screening out certain wavelengths of light, someone who has seen the world in shades of brown their whole lives are finally able to see things they have never seen before; browns are transformed into yellows and reds and purples and suddenly trees look truly green and three-dimensional or the colorful fruit of these trees no longer simply blend into the same-color background. The man was overwhelmed and overcome by what he had been missing; he could not speak, did not really know what to do with his hands, was "reduced" to tears and eventually expressed it all as he hugged his wife in love and gratitude. Meanwhile, family members were struck with just how much they themselves may have taken for granted as everyday they moved through their own world of "ordinary" color and texture. The entire situation involved a Transfiguration almost as momentous as the one the disciples experienced in today's Gospel.

Like Peter, like the Gnostic or neo-Platonist who divvies reality up into the temporal and the spiritual. and like the colorblind man who needed to wear the glasses consistently enough to allow his brain to really begin to process colors in a new way, we must take the time to see what is right in front of us. We must learn to see the sacred, which is present and incarnated in ordinary reality. We must listen to the One who comes to us in the Scriptures and Sacraments, the One who speaks to us through every believer and the whole of creation. We must really be the People of God, the "hearers of the Word" who know how to listen and are obedient in the way God summons us to be. This is true whether we are God's lowliest hermit or one of the Vicars of Christ who govern our dioceses and college of Bishops. Genuine authority, coupled with true obedience, empowers new life, new vision, new perspectives, and reverence for the ordinary reality God makes sacramental. 

There is a humility involved in all of this. It is the humility of the truly wise, the truly knowing person. We must be able to recognize how very little we see, how unwilling or unable we often are to be converted to the perspective of the Kingdom, how easily we justify our blindness and deafness with our supposed knowledge, and how even our well-intentioned activism can prevent us from seeing and hearing the unexpected, always surprising, and sometimes scandalous God standing there right in the middle of our reality.

This Alone by Tim Manion

Once Again on C 603 Vocations as Ecclesial Vocations

[[Hi Sister, when you speak of consecrated eremitical life as an ecclesial vocation, are you saying more than that the vocation is lived within the Church? Does this reflect the difference between hermits who are consecrated and those that are not?]]

Thanks for your question. Yes, I am saying that ecclesial vocations imply much more than that these are lived within the Church, though that will also be true. I have written here that such vocations belong to the Church before they belong to an individual called to live them. I have also said that such vocations are edifying to the Church; that is, they build up the Church and are a call to do that. Finally, I have noted that ecclesial vocations call for both clergy and laity to be faithful to their vocations as clergy and People of the faith. The essential meaning of an ecclesial vocation combines these dimensions. It refers to a vocation that builds the Church in a way that lets it truly be the Church God wills it to be, and that does all of this in the name (authority) of the Church.

To be called to an ecclesial vocation means that one embraces this vocation not only because the Church explicitly calls one to do so (note the public call at the beginning of the rite of perpetual profession which symbolizes the culmination of a whole process of mutual discernment by diocesan personnel, mentors working with such personnel, and the candidate herself), but because one is prepared to consciously do so "in the name of the Church". Yes, one lives one's hermit life as part of the Church (as do non-canonical hermits in the Church), but one also does so by the authority of the Church. Because of this explicit authorization, one also accepts the responsibility to "be Church", to pray as the Church is called to pray, to minister in one's solitude, to grow and mature in Christ and the power of the Spirit as is true of the Church and to do so because the Church as Body of Christ has herself called one to do so. The Church entrusts such vocations to some because she believes that only through such vocations can the Church be what God calls it to be. She recognizes that such vocations are an integral part of her own call to holiness.

While c 603, for instance, explicitly provides for flexibility in this vocation, the hermit takes on a meaningful place within a tradition of eremitical life. This does not allow the hermit to make up her life out of whole cloth. She prays as God calls her to, yes, and at the same time, she does so with forms of prayer the Church sets at the center of her life and in an ordered way that reflects the rhythm of prayer that sanctifies the whole of one's life. I believe most non-canonical hermits will do the same in their personal response to God, but not all and not necessarily. 

Unfortunately, some self-designated "hermits" do indeed make up a way of eremitical life without reference to the Church's supervision and vision of it; they embrace prayer lives essentially cut off from the liturgical life of the Church, for instance, and justify it in terms of a theologically, spiritually, psychologically, and historically naive notion of "solitude", among other things. Hermits with an ecclesial vocation cannot and do not cut themselves off from the historical Church, the ecclesia (assembly of "called ones") that exists in space and time. We cannot omit going to Mass (or receiving Communion as an extension of the community's Eucharistic liturgy) regularly, for example, nor can we neatly divide reality up in terms of the spiritual and the temporal and then reject the temporal in the name of the Spirit of God. That would be a betrayal of the Holy Spirit herself. Our Church is a sacramental reality where the spiritual and temporal presuppose and even require one another if the Church is to be what it is called and empowered by God to be, namely, a primordial sacrament where heaven and earth interpenetrate one another in a paradigmatic and yet-proleptic way. 

I believe such "hermits" are exceptions and, as I already noted, most non-canonical hermits live their lives in ways that, of course, also build up the Church even if they do not do this consciously or in the name of the Church. Canonical hermits are meant to do so consciously as part of a public vocation. When I speak of ecclesial vocations, then, I am speaking of those whom the Church herself calls forward in her public liturgy and formally commissions through profession** and consecration to 1) live and build up the life of the Church in a conscious way and 2) to do so in the name (authority) of the Church as solitary hermits under c 603, or alternately, as part of a canonical congregation or community of hermits. It is a specific responsibility given publicly by God through representatives (Bishops) of the Church to some hermits who receive and commit to undertaking this specific commission formally in their acts of profession and their embrace of God's consecration. Let me reiterate once more that it does not make canonical hermits better than non-canonical hermits, but it does say their formal and canonical responsibilities differ from those of non-canonical hermits.

** Despite common misuse of the term, profession is always a public act of the whole church that initiates one into a new state of life. There is actually no such thing as private profession. Because of the misunderstanding of this term, it has also become common to qualify profession as public or private. In this post my use of the term profession always means a public act linked to a new state of life and new canonical rights and obligations.

Followup Questions on What to do if One is Full of Oneself

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, What do you mean when you say [in your last post] we are not to grasp at God but are to be grasped by God? Also, I have heard the idea of emptying our hands in order to be able to have them filled with more before. Why doesn't it go far enough or why isn't it radical enough and what do you mean when you say the truth of [the situation] is paradoxical?]]

Helpful questions. Thank you! The idea of being grasped by God is a way of speaking of the experience that grounds human faith. Paul spoke of this several times, reversing the "human-knowing-first" way we often think of things being ordered. So, for example, he said, [[Not that I have already reached the goal or am already perfect, but I make every effort to take hold of it because I also have been taken hold of by Christ Jesus.]] or [[But now that you know God—or rather are known by God—how is it that you are turning back to those weak and miserable forces? Do you wish to be enslaved by them all over again? (Gal 4:9)]] What Paul demonstrates in these passages and similar ones is twofold, 1) it is very difficult to get away from "me-first" ways of thinking and speaking, even after we have been grasped by God and know that God comes first, and 2) God's activity always has priority in any human movement towards faith or self-emptying. It is not so much that you or I know God, but rather, that we become aware of God already knowing us, and knowing us in the intimate biblical sense that is akin to sexual knowing.

The notion of being grasped by God was made particularly famous by Paul Tillich, a 20th-century Lutheran theologian, when he defined faith as the "state of being grasped by that which is an ultimate (or unconditional) concern" ("Glaube ist das Ergriffensein von dem vas uns unbedingt Angeht"). While this definition is a bit opaque for most of us, it is what Paul is speaking of when he builds on his experience of being grasped or taken hold of by the one who promises to be the answer to our deepest hungers and needs, and specifically for Paul, to the prayers and hopes of the Jewish People and the whole of God's Creation. 

We can begin to get a sense of this state of being grasped when we do something where God can speak to us. For instance, we open the Scriptures and, as we start reading, we may begin to find ourselves intrigued and even a bit excited by what we are hearing. We want to read further, meditate on it, ponder it, and consider the world in light of it. Or, for instance, we hear a sermon on the early Church or Jesus's resurrection, and suddenly we ask ourselves if we believe that, or perhaps we feel some wash of fresh understanding, a flash of curiosity,  the quiet flush of consolation, etc. Those are times, I believe, when God has grasped us and seeks a response to that experience. God looks for us to entrust our lives more fully to him and what we have heard, felt, and otherwise experienced. The way God comes to grasp us does not need to be overtly religious or Scriptural. Maybe for you, it is a passage from a Beethoven symphony, a Rumi poem, or the moment the clouds turn magenta and purple at sunset. Anything dealing with truth, beauty, integrity, futurity, hope, and many other things can be an avenue by which we experience our Creator God taking hold of or grasping us.

Emptying our hands is not analogous to emptying our hearts:

When I wrote that the idea of emptying our hands is helpful as a beginning to understand the dynamics necessary for letting go of being too full of oneself, I said, [[The imagery of emptying our hands so they may hold something else is helpful as a starting point, but it really is not radical enough. The truth is, we don't empty ourselves and then allow God to fill the emptiness. Instead, we allow God to gradually displace whatever it is that takes his place and fills us inappropriately. It is all God's work!]] What this means is that our hearts do not function in the same way our hands do. We do not learn to love, especially God, by emptying our hearts. Loving is not about grasping anything. It is about receiving reality as a gift and so too is "emptying our hearts."

Emptying our hearts of hate (or of anything else that is unworthy of or an obstacle to us, for instance) is only accomplished when someone loves us beyond that hate or obstacle, and we accept this love. We cannot "empty" our hearts except by filling it with something else. We can be so badly personally wounded that our capacity for love is dramatically injured, but again, the answer to this kind of injury is being loved (and healed) beyond it and into fullness. We can embrace a form of selfishness and self-centeredness that, over time, seems to empty our hearts, but our hearts have gradually become filled with self, and the only solution is to allow a love that transcends all of this. Emptying one's hands is simple, and one can ordinarily do this oneself. The human heart is radically different. It is not only made for love, but Love itself dwells in it. It is incapable of ever truly being emptied in the way hands are emptied.

When I spoke about the paradoxical nature of all of this, I was thinking of the way a focus on emptying ourselves of ourselves only makes us the greater center of attention. A heart is emptied only at the moment it is filled with something (or someone) else. If we try to empty ourselves of self, the house, as the Gospels of Luke and Matthew tell us, will be filled with even more unclean spirits, and the situation will be much worse than it was originally. Our salvation from being "full of ourselves" cannot come from ourselves, but only from God and only on God's own terms. It requires we allow God to love us, that we allow God's love to open us to God more and more fully. It means we allow God to displace the unworthy concerns and obsessions of our hearts more and more fully with Godself.  In that way, we come to be our truest selves.

And all of this is paradoxical. Even our yearning for such redemption is the work of God within us. We only hunger for that we have already tasted. Again, though, we are truly selfless only when we love others and accept the true Self, which is God's gift to us and the fruit of God's loving us into truth and wholeness. We do all of this by learning to be aware of and attending to the God who has already grasped and taken up residence within us. 

A Little Girl Tells the Story of Jonah

I posted this about 10 years ago and I think it is wonderful. In case you haven't heard the story of Jonah recently (or even if you have read today's lections) and would like to hear a wonderful dramatic "interpretation" from someone who has clearly thought long and hard about it; give it a listen!! (In this video we hear the first part of the story, where Jonah runs from God's call to go to Nineveh; today's first reading only deals with the second part of the story where Jonah finally goes to Nineveh.)

 

What to do if One is Full of Oneself?

[[Dear Sister, if someone is full of themselves, is there a way they can empty themselves of this tendency? It seems to me to be kind of ironic. What I mean is I know someone who believes that God has asked them to take care to not be so full of themselves and in trying to "empty" themselves of this self-focus, they become even more focused on themselves!! It is really sad to watch!! It also makes me laugh [not because it is funny but] because it almost seems to be impossible to spend time trying to prevent oneself from being too full of oneself without causing the exact opposite thing!! So, is there a way to empty oneself of "being full of oneself"? Because you are a hermit, let me also ask you if this is a harder task for you than it might be if you were living in community or were an active religious? 

You know, these are really good questions (cf Part II below for your second paragraph)! One of the first things that occurs to me is how this kind of struggle or these conundrums are a good indicator of the need for a competent spiritual director. While it is not impossible to be emptied of inordinate self-concern and focus, it takes time and real effort, and one can only do so if one opens oneself discerningly to the world outside oneself and comes to depend on someone else's insight and capacity to reflect back regarding what they are hearing or seeing. If one doesn't have access to a good spiritual director, a good friend can often be helpful in the same way. The one seeking to change needs to be able to truly listen to others who know them and are aware of their flaws as well as their strengths and potential. It seems to me this is the only way to get out of the vicious cycle that otherwise ensues in trying to empty oneself of self. This is a beginning, and for me, I would say it is indispensable.

There is another related elementary principle involved here as well. Namely, the only way to empty ourselves of our false self is to open ourselves to the Creator God who makes real and true. But how we achieve this is important and paradoxical. Granted, we are not supposed to grasp at things. Rather, we are to allow ourselves to be grasped by the Mystery we call God and to not resist this. The imagery of emptying our hands so they may hold something else is helpful as a starting point, but it really is not radical enough. The truth is, we don't empty ourselves and then allow God to fill the emptiness. Instead, we allow God to gradually displace whatever it is that takes his place and fills us inappropriately. It is all God's work! 

There is a story in the Gospels of both Luke and Matthew that illustrates this principle. A man is exorcised, and his house is cleared out, swept clean of an unclean spirit, and left empty for a brief time. The unclean spirit returns to the house, and it is then filled by even more unclean spirits than originally; the man and house are left in even worse shape than at first. Luke's point is that the human heart is meant to be filled with God/Love. It is made for that. What is counterintuitive, perhaps, is that in this case, this is only achieved by allowing God to displace the demons and fill the house (heart) as only God can. This is really all about grace and the salvific action of God, not our own, except to the limited extent that we must refuse to stand in God's way as we let him love and move us as he wills! The basic truth here is that only Love can make space for Love; only God can make room for God.

One's life needs to be focused on others and open to growing in one's love of others. Remember that, while it is focused on God and on living one's own self as fully as one can, even the hermit life is meant to be lived for others. This is important in achieving a life that is not solipsistic or inordinately focused on oneself. While I can't say whether it is harder or easier for someone living in community, it is somewhat different. One example might help: Recently, I was surprised to find myself writing about what is happening to this country and the current political situation. I have not done that in the past. When I explored this with my director, it became clear to me that I was not particularly interested in politics, but I was concerned with the state of this country, its people, and the terrible degree of pain that the administration's apparently careless and blatantly cruel actions were causing and will continue to cause as our democracy continues to be dismantled. 

One person I know (a non-hermit) criticized me for my concern with all of this because it didn't comport with her notion of what hermits are to be about, but I recognized it as an instance of my own growth in compassion. At the same time, it led to a unique intensification of my prayer life in the hermitage and a careful limiting and focusing of my consumption of news. All of these factors led me to conclude that this was what God willed in my life, and I am grateful to be called to this as an integral part of my hermit life. I could have said no to this in the name of an abstract definition of eremitism, but again, it was about saying yes to love and discovering how that, in turn, enhanced and strengthened my life as a diocesan hermit. (This is another place c 603's requirement that the individual hermit writes her own Rule is critical for complementing the constitutive elements of the canon that apply to every such hermit. She must have experienced and be moved by love, and she must be free, within the limitations of her vocation, to risk herself for love.)

Yes, it takes some discerning to be able to negotiate an appropriate degree of reliance on and independence from others, but the only way to become less involved with self or "less full of oneself" is to become more involved with others, and specifically, to become more attentive to and loving of others while allowing them to love us. Jesus was called "The Man for Others," and those of us who want to become an imago Christi are called to the same vocation. I have sometimes heard people suggest that hermits are all about focusing on becoming holy and getting to heaven. As Cornelius Wencel, Er Cam, reminds us, 

[[Not in order to achieve perfection does the hermit set out on his solitary voyage. On the contrary, he considers his way and mission to be part of a great common effort to change and renew the cultural and spiritual life of humanity. . . . So, we can hardly take a hermit for a person who limits his entire mission to a few prayers he recites and some daily routines necessary in everyday life. The hermit has to take into account all the difficult problems endangering the world today. . . . realizing how deeply he is rooted in the life of society and how greatly responsible he should be for the world and its future, the hermit wants to take part in coping with the difficulties and anxieties of today.]] pp 121-122, The Eremitic Life

And yet, even hermits cannot depend on God alone to speak to them in the way a good friend or competent spiritual director can and does. God does not relate to any of us, hermits or not, on that level or in that same way. Yes, God loves us each profoundly and communicates Godself to us intimately. God "speaks" to us in innumerable ways, including through others; occasionally, we may even hear a voice inside our heads/hearts that we can identify as God's own. Still, we all need to learn to listen to and trust 1) another human being whose competency is greater than our own and 2) our own consciences as the voice of God within us and our true selves (as opposed to our false selves). Even so, God is Mystery itself, and intimate though our relationship may be, it is not the same as speaking with another human being. This brings me to your second paragraph's questions.

Part II:

My last questions have to do with asking God about every little step one takes during the day. The person I am asking about is trying to "ask God about every little thing" she is considering doing. She even says she asked God, "May I go to the restroom or. . ." do another trivial task and what his will was in that. While I think that turning to God is important in becoming less full of oneself, this [way of conceiving of that] also seems self-defeating to me. She seems to me to be becoming even more full of herself in this way, but I am not sure I can explain why that is so. Do we only do the will of God by losing our own will? Are we to truly be emptied of ourselves and filled with God? Do you understand what I am asking?]]

The situation you have described of asking permission for every little thing was once the way some religious congregations operated in centuries past. It was abandoned as infantilizing, and rightly so. In those days, the novice or junior religious thought of the commands of the superior as the will of God**, and this asking of permission for every little thing was supposed to form men and women who were attuned to the will of God. Unfortunately, it backfired, and the religious found they were unprepared to make significant decisions for themselves, had badly formed consciences incapable of making prudent conscientious judgments except when told what they "should" do, and were incapable of hearing the will of God apart from the voice of the superior. Given that there is apparently no superior in the situation you describe, this also means that God is being asked to micromanage a person's life; God does not do this!!! This is why God gave us hearts, intellects, consciences, and wills. We are to listen to these, and yes, we are to allow them to be formed and shaped according to God's will. But asking God to tell us whether we should use the restroom or do another task first literally places us back before the days when we were potty trained!!!

What you have described is a literal example of a so-called "spiritual" practice that, despite its intention, infantilizes one!! And what it does to God is similar, for it trivializes Him and His role in our lives. Ironically, it makes things all about us again, and this ties into your original question. If we diminish God in the name of some flawed notion of "seeking his will," we divert attention from the real God and substitute ourselves and our own miniscule conceptions in God's place. We will never truly worship him in such a situation. J.B. Phillip once wrote a classic book called Your God is too Small.  It was seen as a significant and common, even universal, error we make, typical of idolatry in all of its forms. In the case you describe, trivializing God, especially by infantilizing ourselves, makes us the center of the universe, something that always happens unless and until our God is no longer too small and we grow in relation to Him! That means, as you say but could not explain, the person you described is making things all the more about herself. Ostensibly, she claims to be seeking the will of God, but really, it is an elaborate charade (she may not even be aware of this), emptying the real God of His true role in her life and substituting a cosmic micromanager who "speaks to her" as she demands and is comfortable with. As I noted above, God does not speak to us on this level or in this way.

Neither are we asked by God to lose our will, but to allow it to be formed and shaped in communion with the loving will of God. That is what allows Paul, who has been crucified in Christ, to say, "I live, yet not I, but Christ in me." (Gal 2:20). Note the paradox in the sentence as well as the emphasis on personal truth. It is I, yet not I. It is really Paul who is alive, but it is Christ in Paul at the same time. Paul is essentially describing what happens when God has made us truly ourselves and freed us from the false self that once held sway. We become truly alive (and that means with our own will), but we are alive in and through Christ. I think this is a much better way of considering what happens and is meant to happen than thinking we are emptied of ourselves in some way that leaves us only a shell that is then filled with God. God wants a relationship with a person, not a receptacle, and he wants an adult who is capable of adult love, not an infant!

** Today, when a superior asks someone publicly vowed to obedience to do x or y, we still consider this a way God is speaking to us, but not the only way. We discern what this means for us and how we prioritize and will carry it out. If we need to pray over and discuss the matter, we will do that. We do these things not to avoid what is being asked of us but to be sure we have rightly attended to and understood what is being asked of us. Today, we speak of the ministry of authority and recognize that this is rightly exercised with love and should be responded to in the same way. 

Installation of Cardinal McElroy, Archbishop of Washington DC

Another Look at the Three Pillars of Lenten and Christian Praxis

[[Dear Sister Lauren (sic), a couple of us were talking about Lent and how to approach it this year. (We're students at Saint _____ College so we are beginning to look at Lent in new ways! My friend wants to be a nun but probably not a hermit and reads your blog.) At a college ashes service yesterday we listened to a homily on prayer, fasting, and almsgiving and thought it was pretty good, but we also saw your article speaking about the crisis in the US right now, where you said it was not the time to give up chocolate or let go of some TV program we didn't really need anyway!! So we thought we would take a chance and decided to write you and ask how you choose something to do for Lent. Do you do fasting, prayer, and almsgiving or something else?]]

The Three Pillars of Lenten and Christian Praxis:

Thanks for your questions. Yes, I pray, fast, and give alms, but this may not look exactly like what you are expecting. The three pillars of Lenten practice also tend to be the three pillars of all Christian life, namely,  

1. some form of self-emptying or self-denial that allows us to become aware of and pay appropriate attention to our truest and deepest hungers (fasting), 
2. openness to and reception of the presence and power of God who satisfies those deepest and truest hungers (prayer), and  
3. giving to others something of what we have received in this process (alms or almsgiving). 

As you can see, our Lenten praxis is not about merely doing something extraneous to who we are; it involves choosing to do things that allow us to be our truest or most authentic selves. And, since we are only our truest or most authentic selves with God and within the human community, it first involves finding ways to allow God to be God for and with us. Likewise, because we are also most authentically or truly human in relation to others, and especially in our compassion for and generosity to others, the third pillar of Lenten and Christian praxis has us giving of our time and treasure to them with a careful eye toward what they most need if they are to be the persons God calls them to be. 

Becoming Truly Human:

Lenten praxis (or practice) is always about the things that make or allow us to be truly human, namely our loving relationship with ourselves, with God, and with others. 

1. 
   Fasting (or any kind of self-denial that could go by this name) helps free us from selfishness, self-centeredness, and concern with our own comfort or our fear of (or, less often, our preoccupation with) discomfort and actual suffering. It's a way of opening ourselves so we can receive more freely than we ever can when we are self-centered or fearful. 
2. Prayer opens us to being constituted by and as a dialogue with God (i.e., authentically human life is such a dialogue) that is both challenging and consoling; it helps us affirm that alone we are always incomplete and even inauthentic, while with and in God, however difficult things get, we are never alone and are moving toward fullness of life. Prayer helps us to live our own life more intensely, expansively, and truly as those who are infinitely loved and who, despite our very real weaknesses and incapacities, are called to be God's own counterparts in this world. 
3. Almsgiving reminds us that the ways God loves and gifts us, especially with Himself, are never for our sake alone. Eventually or ultimately, they are meant for others who need such love/gifts as much as we once needed and still need them ourselves. (As with God, we who are images of God are made to be a self gift. The triad of fasting, prayer, and almsgiving constitutes the heart of a continuing dynamic of Divine self-giving, human reception, and human self-giving that defines us as human beings who glorify (reveal) God with our lives.)

On Making Concrete Choices:

So, that's the theological analysis of the pillars of Lenten praxis and all Christian life. It's all really about a cycle of loving and becoming loving so others can enact the same cycle in their own lives. How do we translate that into concrete choices for any given Lenten Season?  

Fasting asks us to identify what prevents us from being aware of God and others. What is it that makes us less able or willing to depend on or be vulnerable to the love of God or of others? What isolates us and tempts us to believe we can go it alone? What allows us to be less conscious of others and the deepest hungers of our own hearts? (This can include some misguided notions of hermit life, by the way.)  So, for instance, what do we fill ourselves (or our lives) with instead of the "food" that comes from God and truly nourishes us? While this could be some form of unhealthy food, it could also be binging on the computer or being a workaholic, or refusing to take our schoolwork seriously. Thus, paradoxically, fasting might mean getting more rest than we ordinarily do or taking better care of ourselves more generally. We can determine how we might fast during Lent when we have identified some of these things.

Prayer asks us to give time and space to God so that he might love us as he desires so profoundly to do. If fasting helps make us vulnerable, prayer is the courageous and generous act that turns that vulnerability over to God to do with whatever he wills. What this mainly means is that we give God a chance to love us into wholeness. We let God be God-With-Us (for God is Love that wills to be Emmanuel), even if we are not necessarily aware of God's presence during this time. I would encourage you to do whatever helps you remain vulnerable during this time. That might include silent prayer with occasional breaks to walk around the room or prayer space, silent prayer followed by a favorite oral prayer (Hail Mary, Glory be, Our Father, a verse of a psalm or the refrain of a favorite hymn (spoken or sung), for instance). You might want to use a lighted candle to help you return to focus when that wavers. If vulnerability like this is difficult, feel free to wrap up in a blanket and imagine God holding you safely and warmly during this prayer time.

Alms or Almsgiving: Whatever fasting and prayer lead you to experience, I would encourage you to spend some time journaling on what these have been for you and anything you have learned, seen, heard, sensed, or imagined because of it. You need not write a lot, and it would be most helpful if you included an expression of gratitude to God. This practice will prepare you to be ever more aware of and able to give to others as mercy and compassion prompt you to. Some things you might not think of that qualify as almsgiving could include calling your parents or other family members more regularly while you are away at school, giving time and attention to someone you don't ordinarily regard adequately, or tutoring another student. You get the idea.

I don't always use the terms fasting and almsgiving, but the things I choose for Lent correspond to the meanings and dynamics I provided above.  My focus is always on personal growth and that means that it involves my relationship with God, with myself, and with others. Sometimes that means focusing on weaknesses and working through those in ways that strengthen or heal me, other times it means focusing more on potentialities that need to be more fully realized or talents and gifts that are to be used for the larger Church or my immediate faith community. Of course, I have a Rule of Life I live and try to live ever more deeply and truly. Attending to the way I reflect the vision of this Rule is one way I discern what God is calling me to. Another is through meetings with my director, who probably knows me better than anyone. Usually, ideas surface during our conversations, and occasionally, she will make an explicit suggestion of something I might do during Lent.

The current situation in the United States (and thus, the world) almost could not be more serious. If you can find ways to work toward justice as you see this needs to happen while being faithful to your studies, I would encourage you to do this. As I wrote earlier, the word crisis comes from the Greek κρισις, and it means a time or occasion of decision; this Lent is surely calling for such decisions from all of us. Ask yourself what is loving for the country and how you can specifically participate in that love. It may not be the way I do it or your friend does, but it is very important this year. Pray about this and then act as you feel called to act, that is, as is most faithful to God's loving will and most lifegiving for yourself and for others.