Mercy.

Too many thoughts have been dancing through (and colliding within) my mind, and at this point its fair to say the pinball machine is ready to break down.

My friends, mercy. Mercy, mercy, mercy! Divine mercy, real mercy, living and generous, form-taking mercy. Mercy alive and breathing. Mercy as a child. Mercy as a man. Mercy on a cross. Mercy as King.

I was reflecting on what true charity is. On the mountain that we all have to ascend to reach that unbelievable challenge uttered by Christ, "Be perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect." That journey is uphill. That journey is full of sharp rocks and steep ascents. That journey is also filled with beautiful landscapes and invigorating experiences! Oh! The colors. The breaths of air that seem to have been saved for your lungs alone. The intoxicating scents of mountain air that teach you about a way of living that our little world has forgotten. You pant for more. Nothing ever tastes as sweet again. You are lost to it. These are woods you will happily wander into, map left behind, rejoicing at the idea of being lost. This is a trail your feet know without being told. This is a way that is clearly marked, simply by the desire in your heart. Follow the love inside of you! Run when you cannot bear to walk, and you will gain ground. Sing when you are stirred within, laugh at everything. Smile because it is too ridiculous not to.

Do not allow yourself to get over it. Never get over it. There is never room enough in you to exhaust all that you can take it! There will always be more beauties, more glories! Hans Urs von Balthasar says that glory is the fullness of beauty revealed. That means that glory is what you experience when your heart is too captivated to do anything else but adore what you have been captured by. And the mountain, the ascent to charity... it captivates. Not only the mountain, but the journey itself. Every step! Every breath. Every stone that digs into our feet. Every inch of dirt we move through. Every drop of rain or dancing stream or fierce wind or starry night or great oak. Not just these things in and of themselves, but our participation in them. Our encounter with them. Our harmonies to their symphonies. It is the moments of "them being" and "us coming to them" and "together, it being better." And forgive me for all the mountain imagery because this is just as applicable to the eyes of one meeting the eyes of another, or a still moment shared between old friends, or the explosion of a family reunited with one another (at least, that's the caliber of sound when my family is together), or the smile of teammates when the goal has been accomplished or the pride in a professor's eyes at the student who has excelled. All of this is what is part of our climb into the heights and depths of charity.

Today at mass the priest said, "Humility is not putting yourself down or thinking less of yourself, it is simply the truth." This is the epitome of true charity - mercy. The truth is our littleness, and the truth is also God's benevolence. The truth is our pitiful infidelity and the truth is his UNFAILING CONSTANCY. He is always there. Always. Never leaves us. Never gives up. Never ceases to love. Gosh! Do we have ANY idea of what the words "never" and "always" really mean? How could we? Look at our society, at our culture, at our world! Everything is so quick, so instantaneous, and sadly, so inconsistent. If there is any quality that is most endearing and most healing to me in the merciful love of God it is certainly his perfection made manifest in his unstobbable and eternal and infinite and constant being. Never means, never. There is simply no time, no space and no place that you could be that he will not already be there and will not follow you to. Just waiting to pick you up again, waiting carry you back home. "What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, 'Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep" (Lk. 15:4-6). And this is Mercy.

Who among us can turn to our brother after he has insulted us and genuinely love him, forgive him, even get up and make him something to eat because he is hungry? Who among us wouldn't consider this complete foolishness!? He didn't even apologize! He might do it again! Will he learn nothing? Are we to be so poorly treated? Oh, but was this not exactly the life of our Lord? Is this not the entire love story of the Scriptures, of the Hebrew people and God, of the Bride (the Church) and the Bridegroom? When have we ever given him true cause to lavish the grace upon us that he does? The justification that we could never earn for ourselves has been generously supplied by the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God. This is mercy. The truth is mercy. Humility is acknowledging the truth of the mercy of God.

Everything is mercy. The grace to have our hearts stirred by the beauty of the ascent to charity throughout our lives, even the sorrows and the darknesses and the freezing cold nights... that is mercy! The grace to see, that is mercy. Just to open our eyes is mercy; to have ears to hear, that too is mercy. He is embodied Mercy. Love made flesh is mercy. The Eucharist is Mercy.

I Will Never Have Words

I cannot honestly say the number of times I go to write something about love on this blog and then stop short.

What can I say?

Has not everything that could possibly be said been said already? Even if it had not, how could I presume to have something to add to the castle of thought and literature on this topic that has already been built?

Sometime I think a poem or song would be more managable, because at least in such prose there are some definite boundaries for me to work within. Other times I think just an ongoing list of descriptive adjectives and verbs would suffice. More often, I wish for a palette and every color in existence, so that I can just shade and draw and paint the beautiful explosion of color that I feel communicates what I think about love.

However, since I am not in a place to write poetry, my guitar is not handy and I have no paints or crayons, I will have to accept a feeble attempt with bare words.

The following will sometimes inappropriately use semicolons - ; - please do not hate. It made this easier.

Love. It is guttural and raw; fearsome and blinding; causing you to want to run in the complete opposite direction and hide until the storm passes you by, praying it doesn't notice you shaking there; white light that pierces through your soul, opens up your inner self so far that what you discover you never knew existed within you; purifying, making new over and over and over again; mesmerizing, gorgeous, beautiful, stunning, spellbinding, unhinging, you are left tripping over yourself with a little drool hanging off your lip; enlivening, lifting you up in ever higher concentric circles until all the world is far below and freedom and air and joy and hilarity are all you can sense around you; intoxicating, all that you do, every thought, every choice, every triumph or mistake, every moment is consumed with your love, and the lover - they go with you everywhere, you cannot be alone again, they exist within you and you within them, no distance can separate and no trial can break the "love" that has become its own person, the love that is freely given from one to the other; self-revelatory, clearing away fogs and cobwebs around the heart, breaking into the proverbial "west wing" and discovering the wiltin rose that must be brought to life again; enthralling, leaving the blood in your veins tingling for hours after you encounter love, and causing your heart to leave its common pace and awaken you throughout the night to remind you of the transformation taking place; deadly, in the most serious way - you will awaken as someone new - not that you lose who you are but that you find who you were always meant to be, and this new skin fits better than the old ever could have, and the new eyes you see with understand the world in all the glory you never could perceive before, and the new heart you carry drips with mercy and forgiveness, understanding and compassion, readiness to give of itself at every moment, for you have no way to pay back the gift that has been given to you, that you've received - to way to fulfill the debt of love created when another wholly and completely hands themself over to your miserable and faulty hands; there is no recovery, once you are taken in, and even in the most barren and lonely times, when all the world has failed you and your lover has failed first and foremost, and you are nursing the bitter wounds of your heart in dark places... even then, and perhaps more than ever, does the glory of what love is reveal itself - it is forever, and it cannot be shaken nor destroyed, not drowned nor killed in any way, it will not be deterred and it cannot be taken back - it is the gift that once given, only takes more of the person along with it next time, and more the next, until the only joy the person can experience is when it is giving itself in love; it is more than a habit, more than a virtue, more than a moral code, more than a way of life or a creed, more than a gospel or message, it is a state of being - a single Being (God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Love Himself) - and it is an existence that participates in this being so that the two beings are so united that it is hard to distinguish between them.

Certainly, our human love has far to go before it can ascend these heights, or before it can remain in these heights, or even begin to truly comprehend what sacrifice and self-abandonment is involved with these heights...but what is received, what is gained, what is given as a gift - it is worth everything, more than life itself, for it cannot die, and when we die it lives on, and when we are gone we are not gone at all, for Love has taken us into itself and made a home for us, and we have freely chosen to dwell in Love for all time, and there we are more fully made ourselves than we could ever fathom. "I did not know myself until I was Loved" should be our motto, and it should be renewed every day. Then, moreover, "I did not know myself until I learned to Love in return, to receive Love and then to Love back." This is that starting point, the door that leads to the path where all other journeys and travels converge.

Here we find life, and life in abundance. Because God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son.

Manhood

I promised I would write something about this topic, but I really do not have much wisdom (especially since I am not a man). However, for what it's worth I will share some thoughts:

I will begin with a few examples who are the standards I hold men to- Jesus, and my dad.
Yes, without question I am a "daddy's girl," but mostly because the two of us have always been able to understand each other well, and I typically have been the translator for my family, i.e: "what dad is trying to say...", "what she meant dad was that...", etc... :) With many children and many different tempers, we've needed to learn communication skills over and over again.

But that is tangental other than to make the point that if it wasn't heretical to idolize my father, I would. And in many ways I do, though not often intentionally. I am blessed beyond words because God our Father has allowed me to experience so much of his Fatherly love and goodness through my earthly father, which so sadly is not the case for many people today. Ever since I was little I remember my dad fasting often for our family and for other intentions. He put us to bed so often with the rosary. He had us watching saint movies and reading saint books. He worked long hours and then took care of my mom (who was ill for many years) and all of us (I have 7 siblings). Sure, we ate a lot of mac n' cheese, grilled cheese and hot dogs - probably not the most ideal diet. Overall, my dad laid down his life for us in dramatic ways all the time, and it was very clear to me as I reached my teenage years exactly how sacrificial he was. There was nothing he would not do for us. As I grew older, the analogy of my dad's ongoing gift of self and all of his time, energy and love was more and more evident. God, our Father, loved me in just such a fashion, although infinitely more strong! I know my dad would fight anyone to the death to defend me from harm. And my true Father would do the same, although magnified to a strength that is beyond our comprehension!

Now for a moment on Christ. Jesus is ever the humble servant, the child who has acknowledged his Father as the one who gives him everything, and in return, gives himself wholly over to his Father's will. He is the child who patiently accepts every challenge and suffering, never demanding recompense or expecting an easy pass through some trial. He sees himself as a slave before he considers himself God, though he is. His humility is the greatest strength that exists, for it ever defeats satan's evil works of pride and then defeats death itself! This is the purity of heart that every Christian is called to learn and posses. To know ourselves also as children of God who have received all from him and thus give all back to him. To be children who do not whine and complain as if we ever deserved any of the good things we're given, but to be children who praise and thank our Father in all things, good and bad. To be children who acknowledge our need for grace to presevere and who seek the support and aid of our Father in all things, always striving for him to be more loved, more known, more praised.

So I see the ideal of "manhood" as one which incorporates and balances these two great goods: strength and humility. The kind of strength that may waiver, but never fails. The strength that is made from humility. The strength that knows its greatest asset is the strength to let go, to lay down, to sacrifice and give up everything. The strength that knows it is a tool possessed by a heart that loves, and never the one who posseses. The strength that is not the identity of the man but the gift the man has to offer because he himself received it as a gift, and will ultimately return it back to its Maker. The humility to know oneself before the Lord, or to never cease to strive to know oneself better. The humility to acknowledge defeat, but to never despair. It is more than just humility, it is poverty of spirit. It is purity in the heart that sees with the eyes of faith. Faith reveals the goodness and love of God at every turn, every impass, every mountain and valley. The more simple and pure the heart, the more easily comes the prayer of thanksgiving and praise at all times, whether in the heights of joy or the valleys of sorrow.

I think of Aslan (The Chronicles of Narnia), or Aragorn (Lord of the Rings), male figures who understand the balance between shining strength that leads others to greater love and goodness, and the humility to be seen as weak, even mocked or despised, and yet triumphing in those times.

Now, is it in any way fair to say "the true man is like Christ"... yes. Certainly, no one is going to fill those shoes fully, and for many it is just a beginning of trying to get the shoe on that takes the whole lifetime. That is the point, however: the ongoing willingness to keep getting up, the goal at the end that is ever before the eyes of the man. As St. Paul says, he "runs the race" - it is not an instantaneous achievement or a personality one is born with. The world is diverse, man is diverse, and his call to holiness comes in many shapes and sizes and cannot be detailed out in a simple sentence. Yet, it is the call that is answered that is so surely formed in the image of Christ. It is the heart that is open to hear the call, the soul that is burning to follow the one who calls. It is the Christian journey for all people, but men are so often needed to lead that journey, to bring along many others with them. We are human. We sin, we fail, we get disappointed and depressed, we lose faith and sometimes even hope... but if we are striving to be humble children, hope will not disappoint, and God will always triumph, and as we pass through the purifications of life, we grow ever more into his image.

In some practicality, I believe true manhood is often marked by honesty, sincerity, courage, patience, generosity, and certainly mercy. Forgiveness comes hand-in-hand with humility. If we are quick to learn we will be quick to be forgiving. St. Francis of Assisi's prayer for peace says, "it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life." That beautifully summarizes how mercy itself is the active verb of love. Love in action is mercy. We forgive, we let go, we strive to forget as God forgets. He does not keep tally of our many offenses, but wipes them away as if they never happened once we come to him in the Sacrament of Reconciliation... and so should our hearts yearn to love, in a way that is actively merciful.

I believe for many women, trust is a very hard challenge. We are living in a culture that preaches the greatness of individualism, and no matter how we were brought up, we cannot escape some formation in that mentality. It is one of self-reliance, and one that does not consider "trust" to be a wise move. You wouldn't leave anything valuable out in the open because you never know who will steal it. It is a mentality that assumes the worst and thus expects it, and therefore cannot be surprised or disappointed when it happens. Trust, as God proclaims it, is quite the opposite. It calls for blind obedience, hoping without any assurity that what you believe will be real. We are asked to take God for his Word and believe it, come what may. This virtue must be present in healthy relationships between men and women, and it is often hard for both to learn how to rely on one another in a deeply trusting way. It's easy to adapt to spending time together or sharing thoughts and ideals and dreams, but it is very different to let down the walls and unmake the barriers we all construct as we grow up in this world. Men, therefore, make trust far easier when our hearts encounter these virtues in them. We we recognize their honesty, their truth, their mercy, their fidelity, their humility... we see what our faith teaches is worthy of resting-in, worthy of being a part of. That is a great grace in manhood, to be able to help foster trust that is real and deep.

I would also say that a great threat to "the ideal manhood" is laziness or despondency. I have many friends who are men and five brothers, and from all of my experiences with them, I can say that most men come alive at a challenge, and love to be needed in a way where they have some control or power. These come in many different forms, for some men I know are great with counseling and understanding the situations of life, and they come into their own when you seek their advice or aid, and others it is practical things like fixing a door or putting a bike together that they are delighted to be needed in such a way. No matter what the gift or talent that they are most alive in, men need to be needed and they need to be able to give. Just as women find a deep sense of what it is to be feminine through the sacrifice and gift of self in child bearing and raising, so men find the same understanding of what is masculine in the sacrifice and gift of self for others, especially family or friends. It is important, then, to appreciate them often, and be grateful for their service and leadership. It is also important to ask for their help and give them ways to take a stand and be strong. The man that is least satisfied is the one with little to do and no one to care. It seems like an ideal vacation, but there is emptiness down that road, and it is not one that leads anywhere.

This has been a very idealistic and abstract reflection, but we are speaking of something very universal, and particulars are challenging. St. Paul says to imitate Christ, and moreover to imitate him, that we might greater imitate Christ. This is perhaps a simple key for men to greater learn what good things God has set out for them in this life - to reflect on Scripture and discover the mysteries and adventures God has called them to, and in what ways they can ever more come to know their Father and be like Jesus, the pure and humble Son.