Love is a Noun That Becomes a Verb

For those of you who share in the need for perfection or the hunger for approval, let me say that I know the burden well. Whether it is achieving a high grade or making a good meal, many of us will work hard to improve and impress. However, we all know that the same fuel that drives us to impress can also be the tinder for disappointment and self-depreciation.

Essentially, the equation goes: A > B where C = B but if A < B, than C = 0.

A = Extremely high standards or expectations set for the self to accomplish

B = Achieving the minimum "high standard", usually above the average

C = The self

Please kindly keep in mind that math is something that I failed at horribly. Logic, I can handle. So.. not sure what happens when I try to combine the two. 

Anyway, the point is that it is not uncommon to equate one's self-worth with only the visible achievements or set goals that have been set forth, and to then in consequence find one's self-worth null if those achievements are not accomplished. 

What does this have to do with Love? 

Everything.

In the little discussion of self-worth and achievement, the underlying system that is at work is that there is a measurable value to an individual, and that it is measured in a system or hierarchy which the individual sets up. If the individual does not personally set forth all of that hierarchy, than the immediate family, the school, society and culture set up the rest. This means that value, which is a good, must be done, or requires action. Another way of saying it is that the good requires work, or must be shown or revealed by action. 

In general, many of us can probably agree with that system. We see hungry people, or homeless people, or people who need medicine or education; we understand that they cannot have these things unless other people assist them, and unless they themselves act to change their circumstances. 

However, we need to be cognisant of what isn't being said here; that good can exist de facto. If value or good had to be active, than many things could not be considered a good. I, for one, find many types of rocks to be very beautiful. I may be a nerd because of it, but the point is that the beauty is one that is still. It is good because it is beautiful, and not because it does anything. It can be a specific kind of good when it is used in the building of a house, for example, but that does not remove the good that it has simply by being a nice looking rock. 

Further, a baby cannot do much. We all know that they eat, sleep, pooh, cry, and that is about it. Of course they smile and laugh and respond, etc... but in a world of activity and accomplishment, babies seem to be on the bottom rung. Does that remove the value they have as a human being? God forbid! Of course it does not (though there are those who argue just that!). The point is that there is certainly and clearly a good that is inherent, innate, intrinsic to the person that cannot be nullified by his or her activity or inactivity. 

And therefore, to Love. Love, my friends, is not first and primarily a verb. We certainly do love. We act in love, or we can act unlovingly. We also speak, however, of being in love. This would imply that someone has a state of being which happens to be love. How is this possible? Is he or she constantly and at all times acting the love? Perhaps he or she is constantly feeling love, but there cannot be a perpetual acting of love. Unless, of course, your being (your existence), is acting and is Love. 

Hooray! God! Yep. He is always in-action, (and you can enjoy reading St. Thomas Aquinas and Aristotle another time, because it will take a few pages to go through it here) and he is always Love. He is Love. That is, Love is first and foremost a state of being, and that state of being is a Person, and in fact, that state of being is a Godhead, three Persons in One God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. St. John says it so simply: "Whoever is without love does not know God, for God is love" (1 Jn 4:8). This means that Love is first a state of being, a knowing, a NOUN, before love is an action-verb. 

This is vitally important for us to digest because we are going to spend our entire lives trying to love; most of the time, we are going to feel that we are failing to love adequately, or we are being failed by others who do not love us adequately, and we are not going to feel the warm fuzzies of accomplishment about that high and lofty goal of being a "loving" person or being "in-love" our whole lives.

Guess what? That's ok. It's actually a very good thing. This is because there is only ONE who is Love, and that is God. And therefore if we are to partake in love, whether that is to love another or to be loved by another, to do something good for a friend or family member, to be charitable, to be "worthy of love," we have to participate in the Noun of Love before we can act in the verb. 

So... get to praying. I cannot say how strongly my heart has been convicted of the need to pray! We must meet Him who IS Love in his revelation; first and foremost, through his Church, and in the Church, through Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition. This is how Love has revealed himself to us. We are to dialogue with him, to get to know him, to understand that he is a proper noun. We are to receive from him the love that he gives, which is always faithful and always true, and then we will be able to give some of that love ourselves. We need to know Jesus more and more, to understand that a living relationship means that daily we are fed by Love. As long as we keep living, we are going to need to actively love. Therefore, as long as we keep living, we are going to need to return to the source, to Love himself, to receive from his bounty. 

The value, the good of the Creator, of the Word, of the Holy Spirit, of Love himself in the Blessed Trinity, is given to us, to his creatures. We possess that goodness as a gift! Yet, we have an obligation, duty and requirement because of that gift, to nourish it and to aid it in growing, in maturing, so that the gift becomes actualized to its full potential! What is this full potential? Beatitude. Eternal Life with God, who is Love. That is the aim and the goal of the goodness inherent in us. That is the reason that we must meet Love as the Noun who is the One who came to save us all from sin and death and lead us to eternal life. We cannot give what we have not received; Love has offered himself to us. Will we accept?

The true equation must be something like:

A = B = C

Where A = God, who is Love

B = Love given to men by God, the invitation to know him and love him in return

C = The fulfillment of each of us as persons, known and loved by God, returning that love with all that we have

Exaltation of the Cross

The Gospel reading for today's Feast is the following:

"Jesus said to Nicodemus:
'No one has gone up to heaven
except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.'
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him might not perish
but might have eternal life.
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through him."
Jn. 3:13-17

Today I heard a reflection on the Scripture proclaimed at mass that I was truly moved by. Bishop Cisneros, Auxiliary Bishop of Brooklyn, meditated on what the "Cross", especially the symbol of the Crucifix, really means for us in our modern day culture. He discussed the Cross depicted in art, and also how it is worn in jewelry. He shared a story that contrasted the more "beautiful" or "artistic" vision of the Cross that is common today. He told us of his first day of school, how he accidentally walked into the Sacristy of the Chapel rather than the hall to the classrooms, and as it happened, the Chapel's large Crucifix had been laid on the floor for cleaning. He thought he saw a man who was dead and bloodied lying on a wooden cross, and he ran to his mother to say he did not want to go to school! The Bishop made the point that we often desire to escape or elude the crosses that are present in our life, because they do contain fear and suffering, and we would prefer the more gentle and pretty ideas.

The meditation went a little further, and drew upon the specific act of the Crucifixion, and what the Cross is meant to symbolize - the great act of love, that is remembered in every celebration of the Eucharist. The Cross is meant to be a sign of love, one that we would look to for encouragement, peace and joy, and yet it is understood either as something feared and avoided, or as something emptied of its meaning.

This made me ponder the images of the Cross of the Crucifixion that I have hung in my office, or in my house, or that I wear around my neck. Am I wearing this Cross because I feel protected by it, as if it is a charm that wards off evil? Sometimes, yes. Do I hang these images of the Cross out of habit or out of a limp attempt to remind myself that I believe, and that believing means doing? Yes. How often to I embrace the Cross? How often to I kiss the feet of the corpus hanging on the Cross in my room? How often do I pray in acceptance of suffering? How often do I thank the Lord for things that try me? How often to I embrace the Cross out of love, just as my Lord and my God embraced the Cross out of love for me?

I thought about how I wear my wedding ring all the time. I certainly believe that I will be married whether I have that ring on or not. Yet, I want the ring there, as a reminder of our promise, commitment, and of our love. Is this not the same attitude that should go with wearing a Crucifix around my neck? Should I not know, already and without doubt, that I belong to Him who loved me, whether I have a symbol of it or not? Yet, should I not desire to be reminded every day that love means action, and that action means sacrifice, and sacrifice means accepting the suffering and doing so in thanksgiving.

I recently read something that was discussing how it is unlikely that someone in our day and age would be asked to give his or her life for Christ in martyrdom, but that we can still choose to live in a sacrificial witness of Christ. It may very well be true. But moreover, there are many Christians who are being martyred, although perhaps not in this country. Yet, in this country or anywhere that persecution is not taking place, the call and challenge goes out to each Christian that we must make present, that we must witness, that we should re-present the Cross to the world in our humble service, silent suffering, and joyful acceptance of all that we are given from God, easy or difficult.

I pray on this feast for new grace, that the Holy Spirit would fill me with a sense of the depth and breadth of Christ's love for me and for all, specifically manifested in His willing death on the Cross. The second reading at mass was from Philippians, and the first half read:
"Brothers and sisters:
Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross."

Love, if we believe in the Lord, should be defined in these lines - that we would understand that it is emptying, humbling, and giving of our very self that is the most authentic and genuine act of love we will ever be able to show.

May the Lord assist us in our journey to His arms.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

      If I were to give you all of what was on my mind, we would be here for more pages than I can count. I cannot express the vigor with which I am burning up over the injustice that is rampant in our society. Now, granted, there are many injustices, and many small battles to fight on many fronts before the war of good and evil will be finished. Yet, the one battle I know myself to be forever caught up in is the attack on the human person specifically in the constant attempt to separate the soul-body unity into parts which do not affect one another. This attack also comes in various forms, but the most base is the attack on human sexuality. This attack distorts and disfigures human love, human relationships, the human family, human gender, human gift of life, simple human value and the entire human family.
     Contraception is a rejection of the fruit of love, a rejection of the gift that two people give to one another in their sexual intimacy. It rejects not only the gift that may come from their union, that of a child, a new human life, but also the personal gifts of each person. It rejects the intrinsic value of the person, of the body, of the unity between soul and body, of human action, and the value of the other person who is to receive the gift. The truth is, however, that this value cannot be rejected, precisely because it is intrinsic. It belongs to the character of the human being, the very nature of persons, to posses a dignity and power that is transcendent and beyond them. This is why the unity of body and soul which is the human person is so pivotal to anthropology and to this battle. To create a dichotomy that in reality cannot be created will most certainly cause confusion, darkness, injury and suffering. Note, in reality these two can never be separated (perhaps excluding death in this discussion, although I would argue there is still a unique bond that will be revealed and fulfilled at the Second Coming). Speaking of persons, one cannot ever be simply a physical being, for if you were, you would be dead. This is why Descartes' conviction of "I think, therefore I am" has so often captivated people - because in some sense, this is true. However, it cannot be true solely on that premise.
     Yet, this is not about Descartes or philosophy per se, this is a point on humanity. Once more, you cannot separate the body and soul. You can certainly think abstractly about each as if they were independent, and you can understand certain senses and affects that are proper to each, but neither is ever truly independent of the other. So it would seem that contraception inherently lies, a rather serious untruth. To say with your body and soul that you give yourself to the other while at the same time stating that your body has properties which you will withhold or limit is contradictory. Perhaps this is not clear - there is no way to participate in sexual union with another person and not imply the total gift of self to the other. The very nature of this type of intimacy demands a certain vulnerability and trust, whether conscious or not, that involves the utmost transcendence of the person in the act.
      These points must be fleshed out one hundred times over, but I do not have the room here. I highly recommend referring to various Church documents for further reading (a good place of collected sources is here: http://www.usccb.org/prolife/issues/contraception/index.shtml) and also some of the profound works on human sexuality by the soon-to-be Blessed Pope John Paul II. "Love and Responsibility" and "The Theology of the Body" are two excellent sources. Also recommended are "Humanae Vitae," "Familiaris Consortio," "Mulieris Dignitatum," "The Nuptial Body" by Angelo Scola, "Redemptoris Hominis," "Gaudiem et Spes," and of course, the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
      Once more, the battle is about recovering the human person within the truth and fullness of his being. There is no removing the gift of filiality - of sonship before the Father that is given to us primarily in our nature as created in His image, and then deepened in a profound way at Baptism and the reception of the other sacraments. Man is good, according to God's word. He therefore has a responsibility to be aware of this inherent value of his being, and to act accordingly. Not only to act according to his own good, but the inherent goodness of every other man. As I was discussing above, contraception cuts out the heart of the human person by insisting that man reject himself above all else. It is a lie to oneself even before it is a lie to another. It is a direct statement of doubt of the intrinsic value of the embodied person. Yet, this value is real, and is experienced in reality every day, at all times. It is existence. It cannot be removed. Therefore, man chooses to dwell in a state of self-denial in his acceptance of this demeaning activity.
      It is not hard to understand how this level of doubt or rejection that forms a base in our cultural behavior then feeds into the many other manifestations of the human rejection of the good of the person and of life. Abortion, homosexual activity, masturbation, other forms of sexual abuse, pornography, etc... are examples of the human family that has been torn apart, and the human person who is suffering from a lie that has become the bedrock of his self awareness. I have read personal testimonies of women on Planned Parenthood's facebook page insisting that they are more sexually pleased on their own than from their husbands. I have read personal testimonies of mothers who have chosen to have one of their conceived twins "removed" (aborted) because they had only been anticipating one child from their in-vitro fertilization. I have read of young children who at 9 years old have had their first full-out sexual union with someone, and have found that after they are unable to process their experience. They understand themselves as disembodied, as if they were not the acting subjects in the encounter. They are detached, much as young children are when they are sexually abused. Yet, these children choose to be intimate (if that word is even applicable with children since their emotional, physical, spiritual, and psychological elements still in growth and developing, and certainly not mature), rather than being forced into intimacy. But there is something distinct about our culture that has insisted to them that this is appropriate and normal. I have read of parents encouraging their three and four year old daughters to explore their bodies sexually and to stimulate themselves if that is possible. There are state programs offering condoms for free, discretely in the mail, to any young man age 9-18. There are of course an unbelievable amount of magazines, television shows, movies and free images that are purely sexual and are the constant experience of young people. Better Homes and Gardens is replaced with a barely-clothed Rhianna, and everyone is supposed to be alright with this.
     Children need protection, deserve protection. We all, actually, deserve protection from this onslaught. As we age and mature, we begin to develop a greater sensitivity to what "love" truly is, and how it encompasses more than just a physical body. Yet, our culture insists on the divorce between love and sex, between sex and marriage, between children and sex, and between children and marriage. We have watched as this has wrecked havoc on our society, and yet we continue to perpetuate the phenomenon. Divorce, rape, sexual abuse, prostitution, STDs, ABORTION, cohabitation, multiple sexual partners, and homosexual activity are simply "put up with," and by that, we must admit, we mean "accepted as a norm." C.S. Lewis wrote a brilliant discussion of love in a book titled "The Four Loves," in which he discusses love of affection (storage), love of friendship (philia), love of romance (eros) and love of totality or unconditional love (agape). This sort of discussion of love in all of its beautiful dynamism and richness, in the ways in which we participate and take up these elements of love within one another, is simply a foreign language today.
     I must go, but I beg of you to take some time to evaluate your understanding of the gift of love, and the beauty of the human person in its fullness. Recognize both the wonder of the human body and the gift of sexual union while also recognizing the depth and breadth of our personal participation in intimacy with another. We deserve not to sell ourselves short. We deserve to comprehend some of the gorgeous plan that our Creator had in mind when he formed us in our mother's womb. We deserve to recognize the generous and gratuitous gift of adopted sonship in Christ that has been offered humanity, and what it means to be in the image and likeness of God.

Let us pray for purity, for defense from temptation and evil, and for the gift of the Holy Spirit that we will come to greater wisdom of the goodness, truth and beauty of personhood.
Most Blessed Mother, protect us and pray for us.

What We Do In Life

"Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity." - Maximus Decimus Meridius (Gladiator)

(Might I mention now that if you have not seen the movie Gladiator, make that a #1 on your list of priorities. Thanks!)

My friends,

I believe it fair to say that many hearts have been stirred by these great words delivered by Russell Crowe in Gladiator. There's something somewhat bewitching to think that we have that sort of power. There's something very comforting about imagining that we could move the world, move the cosmos even, by our lives. There's certainly something that calls to us and builds in our imagination a picture of greatness or even of heroism. There may even be a bit of a challenge in our experience of those words, a pondering deep within about our own strength and courage, and if we too could do something that might "echo in eternity."

I have no intention of discrediting the power of that moment or the movie itself (I think it is a very good and dramatic reflection on what it is to be human), but I would like to draw a more universal point from the line. Assuming that one accepts eternal life and the immortality of the human soul (the human being) once in existence, there ought to be a simple question begged by this idea of our actions 'echoing in eternity.' It should be... don't all of our actions echo in eternity, if we are going to look at it in that light? If what we do at some pivotal and dramatic moment will necessarily affect our lives and the lives of countless others and in some way 'echo in eternity,' how could it not be the case that everything we do, at any and every moment, also affects ourselves and others and will have some effect in eternity? Please understand, I am not implying that eternity is what is up for grabs or subject to change here - we will leave that as a fixed mark, as a truth that we will understand in its fullness when our time comes. Yet, as far as we will one day exist in a state that is different and non-temporal, our actions here on earth (while we live this life) do have a relation to life after life.

This could become a very simple argument for "living a good life" so that we can "go to heaven" or so that we do not "end up in hell." Yet, my intention is more than just a moral life, although it does assume a moral life ultimately. The point is that most people in our modern culture can easily understand the separation between action and consequence that we grow up with. It is not that we refuse all responsibility for our actions (though that does happen), but that we seem to have some serious filters keeping our ideals or beliefs trapped in our vocabulary and making them unable to trickle down to our hearts, bodies and whole selves.

For example, there are many who profess to care greatly about health; they eat well, exercise, perhaps they only by farm-fresh produce...yet they engage in sexual activity that endangers them with diseases, or they binge drink on the weekends, or they smoke, etc... A different example could be someone who professes to be Christian (and lives as a Christian) but votes and advocates pro-choice agendas, which is essentially an advocacy for mothers to be able to kill their unborn and innocent children (which is NOT compatible with Christianity). Consider how our standards for movie ratings seem to imply that young people can appropriately view what ought to be deeply private and intimate between a man and a woman (sexual activity in PG-13 movies), but may not be able to appropriately view violence or death (often causes for R ratings for movies). I am not advocating that things in R rated movies ought to be viewed by more people, but rather, there is a disparity in modern culture between what is professed and what is acted out. A disparity between truth and the way we act according to a different set of truths we assume based on convenience or habit. Forgive me, but even the disconnect between a man who is a loving father and husband and the times when he is looking at porn...these examples are realities throughout our modern culture, and the roots are deeper than simply "we ought to be good" or "we ought not to be evil."

In all of these cases, the weight of the immoral or disordered behaviors seems to be lost or forgotten. Men and women seem highly susceptible to misunderstanding how deeply and thoroughly truths run. Our bodies mean something, in the here and now, and also for what will be. Our words also carry a level of profundity. Certainly, we are still mere creatures, and the mercy and love of God has been revealed to be abundant and unconditional, but this should mean that we recognize our need to accept the truth of our world and ourselves and our relationships to and with others, rather than behave as if it is all irrelevant since we can say sorry later. It is hard for me to really grasp the vapors of steam that are rising from my interior when I think about the duplicity we are raised with in society!

Needless to say, double standards exist all around us, and can be sighted quite easily when we open our eyes to them. Yet, the trouble is that so few people seem interested in being able to see anymore. People seem content with blindness, content with living in this limping fashion. But the blind are unable to see how bad the wounds are that they are creating for themselves and others by this kind of living. We are too integrated as human persons, too thoroughly body-soul, to survive this kind of constant tearing apart. We cannot continue to say we love Jesus and then abuse our brothers and sisters in our words and actions. And if "abuse" is too strong a word, than accept "lie." For when we tell someone we love them, or behave in a way that typically implies that we love them (such as sexual activity) whether we love them or not, but we do so while acting other than in true love (which requires a commitment and promise of oneself, a gift of self that can only be given in totality through marriage), than we do lie to them, and we do abuse them in different ways. We also abuse ourselves. This is the thing that I find most astonishing, how little connection we make even within our own interior awareness or self-knowledge. If we are unable to conceive of how we are hurting another whom we ought to treat with respect, we ought to at least realize the damage we are doing to ourselves. But sin has been denied. We will not be rebuked or told that we must behave according to some set of rules, even if they are so natural and inscribed in us that we cannot escape them for all of our refusal to acknowledge them.

Perhaps I am walking too far into the woods of abstract thought. To be concrete, I firmly believe that our lived experience of the world demands that we recognize that how we behave, the actions that we make, will always have some influence and effect on our own person and also on others and the world at large. It is really ridiculous to imagine that creatures who begin existence in-relation to other creatures (aka, no one is born without coming from two parents) could then live life without always being related to other creatures in this same type of constitutive sense. And if we are constituted in relation, than our responses, invitations, participations or refusals will always impact us and others. Sipping your water bottle is clearly less affective of others than it is for yourself, and most likely it is not an action that is in danger of immorality, but it still means something that we choose to sip it or are able to sip it, etc...

At the end of the day, the point is to reconsider how seriously one takes life. Do not give up fun, or laughter, or silliness, or impulsivity. Yet, do not allow yourself to be dominated by impulses that are not guided and ordered by a moral order of love, by the truth. Do not allow the duplicity that meets us at every corner to sink in and take root in your mind and heart. Do not accept that every barely-clothed woman on the cover of a magazine is beautiful simply because she is barely-clothed; she deserves more than that, she is certainly not only her body. You deserve more than that, you should not be in a position where you are only considering her as a body nor should you have it reinforced in your mind that beauty is nothing more than parts that have been emphasized that are really one with a much greater whole. It is the person who is beautiful, but our culture has forgotten what and who people are.

I challenge us all to consider Maxiumus' line once more. We cannot be so simplistic that we really accept that our actions and behavior in life affects only us, and that the affect is only skin deep. No, we feel, deep in our souls, the brokenness we live. We become shaped and formed by the habits we build. We need to sense once more in our hearts the transcendence of the human person. We need to reawaken our sensibility to our relationship to others, the world, and of course, to God. We need to reopen our eyes and ears to understand the depth and breadth of truth and love that order our world. We cannot find fulfillment, happiness, peace, hope, true love, if we will not strive to live as whole people, as truly human. We will never find an end to the restless search if we fail to understand how integrated we are, and how much our behavior can and does mean.

"Brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity."

Beauty

Hmm. There it is. There he is. There she is.
You can't really help yourself, you must keep looking.
You understand what it means to be held captive, to be riveted, to be spellbound.
The colors, the movements, the shape, the lines, the sound, the fabric, the many facets that are remarkable to your senses - they all collide and converge to trap you, right there, as you are, and you are helpless to be free.
Moreover, you have no desire to be free. No, you are a happy and willing captive, for the conquerer is living within your own heart.

This, my friends, is what I believe we experience when we encounter the beautiful.

Please, allow me to preface with the usual form of disclaimer: I am NOT Hans Urs von Balthasar, Joseph Ratzinger, Karol Wojtyla or any other person of consequence who has something to say about beauty.
That being said, I do have eyes, ears, a nose, a mouth, fingers, and a heart, and I do live in this world.
That does not make me an expert, but it does give me all the cause in the world to speak of the beautiful, for it is all around us and taken up in the world.

Some questions, pehaps, ought to be considered.
What is beauty?
What is "objectively beautiful"?
Is there such a thing?
Is beauty truly in the "eye of the beholder," or is there something more to this idea?
Is beauty simply an idea, or is it some type of reality?

Now, to be fair, I don't think these questions can be fully treated on this blog. However, I want them to be present in your mind when we speak of "beauty" because I believe the answers to be fundamental to our understanding of this concept and this reality.
To begin with, I would say that there is indeed an objective beauty, or at least an objective way to define what is beautiful. I mean "objective" here as "true" or "inherent" or "real." I would also say that our individual affinities and what we find familiar certainly do affect what is beautiful to each person, so that there is of course the subjective sense of beauty as well. However, I would also argue that overall, the objective truth of something beautiful is prior to, or has priority over, what is found subjectively beautiful. And I believe beauty is both an idea and a reality. This is because, above all else, beauty is personal. As something which is both an idea and a reality, beauty is something that we encounter. It is both the tangible reality which we see or feel or know in some way through our senses and the draw and desire that takes hold within us and makes its home in our mind and heart.

Consider something that you do find beautiful, whether it be a seashell or a woman or a symphony, etc... What is it that moves you? That captures you? Do you walk over to the orchestra and say, "you are beautiful!" before they have begun to play? Or is it rather that once the music reaches you and you enounter the movements, then you know it to be beautiful. To say that something like an idea is personal is to personify it in some sense. It is different than the personification of a spoon or some inanimate object, because this personality is more specific to the relation it has with you.

Perhaps I am drawn more to dark hair and you to light hair, as far as what we find beautiful or attractive. Both can be said to be good. Yet one reaches into my heart in a different way than it does to yours. What is important is that both of us can be aware that there is something outside of us or beyond us that is drawing us to it. What is also important is that we recognize that although our responses to this object are different based on the subjective desires we have, the goodness of the thing itself is the starting point and presence of the beauty that is inherent in the object.

It is vital that what is beautiful is good, because what is beautiful is something that displays "what it is meant to be," and fulfills to some extent the goodness that was always present within it. For example, let us take a table. I have a little side table in the living room which was made rather simply, out of something close to cardstock, and because it was made without real wood, it has little appeal as something of beauty. However, I also have a little side table in my bedroom, and this table is made out of wood. You can see the pattern of the wood throughout the table, and it has been stained so that there is a rich color to it. Both of these tables serve the same purpose. Yet one seems to "be" more of what a side table "ought to be," while the other seems to display little value in the sense of fulfilling its potential.

Another example could be when something is old or broken. When placed next to a new version, the object will typically show how limited it is in revealing what it was meant to be, and the fullness of its particular potential. Now, this must be qualified both in terms of what attracts an individual and in terms of what we mean by potential. For example, I may have a strong affinity for old and comfortable things, and find them most comforting and desirable when they are worn in and remind me of home. Therefore, an old couch might actually seemt to fulfill its "goodness" to me over and above a new one, because a couch is meant to be sat on and used. Yet, another could argue that the new couch is beautiful while the old one is threadbare and ugly.

So we cannot outright define something as "beautiful" simply if it is the "best it can be," but of course we can understand how there is some truth in the point.

We also need to consider what attraction or affinity mean. To be drawn to something means to recognize a good that we believe would be good for us, such as something that would make us happy, improve us, or be helpful. However, the highest attraction to things is when we can see the good in them for themselves, or of themselves, rather than something for us. In this case, we want to be with it or in it or participate with it - not only because it will make us happy (although that will probably be a nice side-effect), but simply because it is a good in and of itself. For instance, when the sunlight shines into a room and we can see all the dust particles in the air. Children will often try to catch them or at least stand in the sun to be part of this "magical" phenomenon. This is not because the child thinks that they are going to be able to hold onto the particles or that this experience is going to make them happier or better... it is simply because they see what they understand as good and beautiful and they want to be part of it.

Again, consider a beautiful scene, perhaps a sandy isolated beach or a far reaching field at the base of a mountain. These are typically things that stir in us a desire to participate. We don't want to put the sand in a bottle and think that we've taken what is beautiful for ourselves. We want to lay in it. We want to dig our toes in and feel the warm sand on top and the cooler sand below. We want to lay in that field and smell the flowers and hear the bees and feel the tickle of the tall grass. We want to accept the beauty around us into our hearts and into our memories. Certainly, we may want to try to take a souvenir with us, but we understand that to be a tangible memory of a beautiful experience, or the experience of the beautiful, rather than the containment of the beauty itself.

So we are dealing with a concept that requires our physical presence and the presence of something else which draws us, but also with the reality of things which in and of themselves are good, and possess a truth and therefore a beauty which we desire to be a part of and to know in more depth. This is ultimately the beauty we encounter in other people. When we come to know and love our family, friends and spouses, it is because we have first seen or experienced some amount of the beauty proper to the person, and have therefore been drawn more deeply into knowing the truth of their personal goodness. It is very hard to be a friend to someone who you cannot find this experience of the good in. It is hard not to be a friend to someone whose beauty profoundly moves you.

There is so much more to say about this, so perhaps I will attempt a bit of a series on the concept. For now, let us consider what it means to encounter the beauty of God. Is the love of our parents something we know as beautiful? What about the common prayer of the Church? Perhaps the family in their community? Are we left dumbstruck by the Eucharist? Do we sense the sacramentality of the world around us in its very nature as beautiful? Even driving through a busy city where there is far more concrete than there is grass, am I not still caught up in gratitude and longing when I see a sunset or a storm roll in? What does it even mean for man to yearn to be with the beautiful?

Let us consider St. Augustine's beautiful quote:
"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient, ever new, late have I loved you! You were within me, but I was outside, and it was there that I searched for you. In my unloveliness I plunged into the lovely things which you created. You were with me, but I was not with you. Created things kept me from you; yet if they had not been in you they would not have been at all. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness. You flashed, you shone, and you dispelled my blindness. You breathed your fragrance on me; I drew in breath and now I pant for you. I have tasted you, now I hunger and thirst for more. You touched me, and I burned for your peace."

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.

Most Holy Spirit, Enflame Us

I want to be where the light is. 


"Behind and before you encircle me and rest your hand upon me. Such knowledge is beyond me, far too lofty for me to reach. Where can I hide from your spirit? From your presence, where can I flee? If I ascend to the heavens, you are there; if I lie down in Sheol, you are there too. If I fly with the wings of dawn and alight beyond the sea, Even there your hand will guide me, your right hand hold me fast. If I say, "Surely darkness shall hide me, and night shall be my light" -- Darkness is not dark for you, and night shines as the day. Darkness and light are but one." Psalm 139:5-12


"What came to be through him was life, and this life was the light of the human race; the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." Jn 1:3-5


"I have come to set the earth on fire, and how I wish it were already blazing!" Lk 12:49


There are perhaps too many things to say about love. About zeal. About passion. About what the truth should mean to us and for us. There are so many aspects of what it means to be consumed by the Holy Fire. 


Saints upon saints have found all that they need to lay down their very lives for the sake of Christ the King within the sweetness of the Holy Spirit's intoxication. All the courage and zeal that could be found within a heart are necessarily enflamed when the soul seeks to be so filled and so consumed with Him. 


There should always be a two-fold aspect to this burning, similar to what we hear about in the story of the widow with seven sons who all die rather than forsake their faith. It is about humility and purgation, and then it is about faith and trust. This is the process of a life entrusted to Our Lord in the Spirit, and especially if we are also dedicated and consecrated to his holy Mother, Mary. She who had no sin and who was the most humble was able to live in the greatest faith and deepest trust any human has ever known. She is our perfect model, for she is the most perfect imitator of her Son, and she is truly Spouse of the Spirit. Daughter, Spouse and Mother of God! Gifts completely unasked for, unmerited, simply given and accepted and loved and cared for and cherished in this pure Virgin's Heart. 


Sorry, getting on a bit of a tangent (which is nearly unavoidable for me when I think about Our Lady), but back to the consuming fire! I am reading through the preparation for Consecration to Mary by St. Louis de Montfort, and yesterday's reflection spoke of the willingness to see ourselves as dust. Do we really want to know how sinful we are? Could we even handle it? I often fear I can't. If you love someone you want to make them happy, and to know that you are constantly failing to do this - it's a little disheartening. But only when it is conceived in that fashion. The TRUTH is that we are loved, infinitely, undeservingly, unconditionally, passionately, powerfully, purely, freely, consistently, faithfully, enduringly, perfectly. Yes, we will always fall short of this love. Yes, we will continue to sin. No, that will never separate us from his love if we are always seeking his mercy and striving to do better! He does not lose his children. We may wander off, but he always knows where we are, and he comes for us himself when we need him. 


So to address our sinfulness, to acknowledge it, to look at ourselves... this is important. And ick! It is never fun. But we cannot fear what is brought to our souls by Perfect Love. If we invite Him in, ask to be cleansed, seek forgiveness, admit our failure and are truly contrite - how quickly he will heal us! And this is something we should do often, daily. Of course, the Sacrament of Reconciliation is absolutely necessary and should be frequented often, especially (and immediately) if there is any danger of mortal sin. But even outside of the beauty and gift of efficacious grace that comes to us through the Sacrament, we should daily be willing to acknowledge our weakness and seek the grace to be made whole once more. 


This is what is so wonderful about the simple prayer of "Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful and enkindle in them the fire of your love..." To be warmed. To allow the fingers hot with the heat of holy love to melt away the ice from our hearts, to heal the aching wounds of our soul, to purge the darkness that clings to our mind, to burn within us so that there is no room for what is not of Him. 


What would this world be like if we were all little St. Thereses or St. Francises or St. Pauls? What if "zeal for His house" truly consumed us? What if we could not stand still! What if all of our energies were constantly burning up for the sake of his Kingdom here on earth! If every breath was a prayer. Every struggle made a sacrifice. Every long day of work made an offering. Every tedious task made on behalf of those in need. Every boring conversation, every disservice done to us, every rude driver or unkind coworker or terrible day of traffic given up in love for another. What if every thought that was tempted to hate or jealousy was caught in time and turned to mercy and love? What if every darkness that invaded, every lie that tried to take us hostage, every temptation to self-love over self-gift was conquered at the door by the blaze of Love within our hearts!? We would not recognize our world. 


How empty our lives often are. How hallow they become. Day in and out we fall away from community and family. Day by day we walk more on the path of solitude hoping to escape all the demands that threaten our meager existence, threaten to shatter our already-broken peace. Moment by moment we become more self-satisfied, more complacent, more accepting of our pitiful state. No longer does the realization of our humble presence make us weep! No longer do we lower our heads in shame. More often it is the safety of disinterestedness or indifference that blankets our ugliness. We do not grasp at crowns, but we do not balk at the image in the mirror. We are what we are, let it be. 


World! Brothers and sisters, my friends, myself - Christ wept over us. He wept because we were not on fire. He wept because we were lukewarm, and were to be spit out of the mouth rather than ingested into the Fire of the Trinity. We cannot accept this! Why should we? Why would we prefer chains to freedom? Why would we like our putrid pens when we have the open door staring us in the face? "And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God." Jn 3:19-21 We cannot remain still! We cannot be at home in the dark. We were not created for it. We were meant to see. We cannot be satisfied with blindness. Right before the verses I just shared from John Christ says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him." Jn 3:16-17 This is the hope, the victory, the mercy, the truth, the delight, the joy, the life that is offered to us all! Oh, that we would not hesitate to take it.


Let us pray to be burned up. To have the grace to look at ourselves in truth, the grace to ask for the grace to look at ourselves in truth. Let us pray that we can be truly contrite, and be healed of our infirmary. Let us pray that we can learn to build up habits of virtue in our lives, and habits of prayer, so that when the enemy comes for us we shall stand in the light. Let us be thankful, always and in everything, even in our trials and failures, because they too lead us back to his Heart, back into the Fire of the Holy Spirit. Let us never lose faith. 


Thomas a Kempis said,
“Love flies, runs, and rejoices; it is free and nothing can hold it back.”

Father, forgive them.

Yo peeps.
What can I tell you? If I had time to write the million things running through my head right now you would not have the time to read them all, that is for sure.
Do you know the feeling of your mind blowing up (thus making that convenient black hole we've all been told about) and everything being sucked up in a vacuum that then just deposits it all back where it started?
One day it will fall more neatly into place. For now, this is what I can grasp.

We have a very short time to learn how to love.

Love is not what we think it is.

We are no longer taught how to be humble. Therefore, only in those beautiful souls who seems to have been given such graces will we be able to see this humility brought to life. When we do see it, we must love it. We must want to imitate it with all that we are. We must pray for this grace.
Innocence is far from being something laughable. No, innocence is inexorably bound in purity. And purity goes nowhere without her sister, humility.
And these are the family members that strive to build true love in the heart of man.

We do not even understand what humility is!

Oh, it is a disposition of thinking less of yourself than of others. But it is far more, far deeper than that. No one can help those thoughts that spring into your head of their own accord that demand that you laugh at what someone is wearing or doubt the sanity of another human being or perhaps wonder if they've ever heard of soap, etc... Humility must be a disposition of the soul. It must possess you, as any passion would. Yes! Can you imagine being passionately humble? You must be. We must be. That is the path to love.

To be humble is to see ourselves as God sees us. He is the only Truth, and so humility means to see ourselves in truth. But once we see ourselves this way, that vision must be our only reality, our only truth. It cannot be that we are sometimes so sad and pathetic, or sometimes so weak or selfish, or sometimes so proud and vain, but other times not. No, we are always those things. And therefore, we are always in need of forgiveness, always in need of mercy, always in need of assistance and grace!

Does this mean we can do no good? Of course not! Quite the contrary! Just because we are so empty, we can be filled. So we can do great good, we can love with great love. But by this fundamental qualification - Only by the Lord. Only in His Spirit. Only because of grace. It is He who loves in us, through us.

Oh! There's a great song by Jeremy Camp called "Empty Me" that has the general idea down:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl85EU33jgo

Moreover, what is charity? Oh! Don't we see how humility and charity and purity truly come hand in hand, as little ones running to us with open arms, waiting for us to embrace them and hold them close? It is so simple! If my heart is pure I will be looking to see with eyes of purity, with a vision of the Lord. I will see in another his hurt or her sorrow, his need or her emptiness, his joy or her excitement, and I will share these things. I will bear them within me, take them within me. I will do what Christ did, and assume the suffering and joy of each of my brothers and sisters. I will be focused on those things, and on aiding them, serving them. I will not be worried about their appearances or social skills or statuses, etc... How could I be so blind? How could I fail to understand the other? Purity helps me to see, and humility helps me to take them into myself. Charity is the seal, the bond over life that binds me with my brothers and sisters and reveals our common hope.

If I want to love, I will learn more of humility. I will pray for the grace to be truly humble. Every time I begin to be shallow, judgmental, hard hearted, or even hateful, I will begin to pray to be changed. Transformation is never easy, and building habits takes time, and assuming virtues can take a lifetime - but we must! What kind of life will we have lived, if at the end we cannot say that we've learned what true love is? What kind of reality do we think we exist in? It is a reality where Love pervades all things! It is a reality where Love is our glue, our fiber, our reason. Will we stand outside of that reality and mock it? Or refuse it entry into our lives? May it not be so!

Oh Lord, make our hearts like unto thine. Sweet Mother, defend us from all evil.

It's all about Love.

You know those funny Christian songs that repeat things a lot and seem to say very little other than that God is good and we love him? Sometimes, I need those songs. Their purpose is a feeling more than developed lyrics. Sometimes they offer one profound thought, or one focus for your heart, and the rest of the time you are just being kept on track while you allow that single idea to settle and take root in you. Songs like "Blessed Be the Name of the Lord"... not that much of a new concept. But when you listen to the whole song, you understand the basic theme of praising God, in the good and bad times. Or "Lay it Down".. even more simple. You surrender yourself and your life to God. That's the crux, and the whole song. The songs that are a few short lines that find themselves repeated are often the ones that most swiftly lead you to true worship. You aren't worrying about following the notes all over the staff, and you aren't concerned with the words that are coming up either; simply, you enter into prayer. 

Now, please don't misunderstand me, I am a critic of music. Especially certain types, which I will not get into here. And likewise there are certain forms that I am very devoted to. The bands I love most are those that I find ingenious - those whose lyrics turn simple thoughts and phrases upside down or inside out, and allow me to think about life in new ways. I love poetry, and I love thinking outside of the box. I love imagery and analogy. The bands that run along these lines are those that I truly enjoy. However, that does not mean that each genre of music does not have it's place. I love jazz, and classical, and orchestra and latin chorus and punk and rock and boy bands and girls who sing their hearts out... each in their own place. When I need to get out some frustration, I will go run to my fun/angry/punky/yell-about-life songs. And when I need to be quiet and find peace, or even more importantly, pray, the Christian songs that are "worshipful" are the best. 

That being said, when I write a song that is in that style of worship-music, I get excited. I love repetition, when it is good. However, often when I go back I find myself disappointed with the music because it seems so tame or emotionless. That is when I recall that the purpose was for me to get over myself and into a place of communication and prayer, a place where I can thank God for life specifically in the form of music. In that case, I can't allow my annoyance that this song is nowhere near the symphony I feel God actually deserves. He wants to embrace us. Some people, I know, do not find music in anyway prayerful or worshipful, and these "Christian songs" are the worst. That's fine. I have found them to be excellent ways for me to pray, especially when I am with friends or family and can praise together. 

So here are some lyrics that were running through my head today. Granted, you can't hear the music (because I'm not going to put it on youtube right now.. I'm supposed to be writing a 10 page paper, haha), so you don't know the melody and that is part of the experience. But as it is, I wanted to put the words down. I wrote the song a few years ago, and periodically it just gets stuck in my head. 

We stand before your body.

We stand before your blood.

What gift could ever measure up

to the Love that you are?

So take my heart, it's all I have.

Take my faith, it's in your hands.

Take my life, all of my heart,

Take my fears and show me you.

We stand before your body,

and we stand before your blood.

What gift will ever measure up

to the Love that you are?

Take my heart, it's all I have.

Take my faith, it's in your hands.

Take my life, all of my heart, 

Take my fears and show me you.

Behold the body of Christ.

Behold, the God of the universe.

Behold the King of the world.

Behold, the Lamb who was slain.

If all that I am,

Would be only yours.

What could I fear?

What could I fail to love?

I'll be very honest here, I love music and poetry. I love words. I'm not always good at them though. Sometimes it comes very easily, and sometimes I feel like I can't find that natural rhythm that is usually there. But when I do find the current that is running inside of my veins and allow myself to float along its course, I usually find myself surprised at how simple it all is. Sometimes I want to be able to develop something truly literarily spectacular, but I understand that if what inspires me is sitting still in a tree or by myself somewhere, I'm probably going to reflect the simplicity of my inspiration. And once again, I'm just not a genius. :)

So anyway, go read St. John the Beloved, St. John Chrysostom, St. Therese of Lisieux, or any other of those wonderful saints whose poetry is truly gripping if you need something beautiful to mull over. In fact, read John Paul II, especially The Jeweler's Shop, a play he wrote. 

But take time to allow things to settle inside of you. I cannot tell you how often I need to slow myself down to hear my heart beat before I carry on with life. I see myself running off like the little four year old I was, getting lost in the mall because I forgot to look at where my mom was going, I was so intent on getting to whatever temptation the toy store may have held. Nothing has really changed. Deadlines, papers, friends, "fun," etc... the things that demand my time and effort and energy and presence begin to get me running toward them too fast, much too fast. Then I arrive and realize I left "me" behind. That is a terrible feeling, realizing you didn't bring the real "you" along because you were in too much of a rush. Give yourself time to breathe, to think, to discover, to wonder, to be. 

Allow the world to present to you its gifts. The dawn awaits your eyes, awaits your heart. Those pinks and purples and blues are painting the clouds and buildings and that ever-so-gentle sunlight is peaking over the horizon, hoping to meet your eager gaze. But where are you? Staring at the jerk in front of you who just cut you off in the four lane highway that you aren't getting anywhere fast on? (That would be my life.) The dawn is still there, right in front of your eyes. Do you want to see it? Will you allow it to bring its beauty before you? Gosh! How often this world, and PEOPLE, come before us, offering us their goodness. How often your coworkers have some small personal achievement in the day that is truly worthy of your appreciation. Although it may have been a minute task, they preformed it with the beauty that only they could bring to it. How often my coworker's issues mean little to me. What they have to offer goes overlooked because I can't slow down. 

Let us take some time to stand before life. Before God. Before others. Before ourselves. Who are you? Who is the Lord? Who are these people in your life? What is this life? Why do you do anything that you do? We never want to bother to ask these questions because the worst fear might just come to be true - that we aren't doing it for love, but because we are slaves. We cannot bear to live that way. It is a half-life. God has set us free. Free from sin and free from a world that would teach us that love isn't real, or isn't to be trusted. How foolish. God is the only true and eternal thing, the one who holds all of life in place, and we would believe that he is a fantasy or fictitious, just so that we don't have to face the pain that is entailed in love. What are we thinking? Pain is because we need to grow. Love is because we are. Love is how we are. To be should be to love. If that is not our life, we must find ways to make it our life.  Nothing else is going to satisfy! Nothing is truly enough, other than what is real love. We will always feel incomplete without Him. Even when we do pray and do strive to love, we face satan's temptations and the world's lies, teaching us to distrust the goodness and faithfulness of our Father. How often I am still tempted to disappointment and loneliness because I listen to the lies instead of the truth! The more we are in the habit of putting ourselves somewhere where we can be still and quiet, and truly pray, the more we will be able to weed out the truth from the lies, and hear only the voice we should hear. The only voice that speaks in love.

I'll end with my favorite image of all time. I've placed it on this blog before, but the face of love never gets old.

Amen.

Adequate Anthropology IV: HOpe

I just want to say this:

"Not only that, but we even boast of our afflictions, knowing that affliction produces endurance, and endurance, proven character, and proven character, hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us." (Rom. 5:3-5)

There are many words to say on this which I cannot say right now. But this is the anthem of the Christian. This is the anthem of the life of a man who has chosen to be in communion with God. This is the life of a person who has been invited, who has heard the call, and has responded. This is the truth that leads the follower of Christ. This is the mandate, the mantra, the goal, the end. This is the path and the way, the transforming power. This is the boat that carries and the sign that instructs. This is the bow that shoots the arrows of love straight into the heart of the world. It is Hope.

Hope cannot be separated from Love (nor from Faith, but specifically here, Love). These two walk hand and hand. It is the confidence, the assurance that stems from the knowledge of the Love that immediately evokes the Hope. In like form, the immanence of the Hope solicits the positivity of the Love, the complete presence of the other always with you.

One thing that cannot be taken for granted of forgotten is that Love transcends. This is the full character of the Hope that is present in the hearts of the Apostles and should remain present in our hearts today. They live in the knowledge of the One who was, is, and is to come. This is not just a method of thinking or a theological approach! Nor is it simply a traditional description of the work of God - no, that is too small a description for what is assumed here. This is the Truth of Love.
1. It endures.
2. It never fails.
3. It lives, it is alive.
4. Where it lives, it lives in its fullness.
5. In its fullness, love cannot be detached or disassociated from any of its "being" at any point in history.
6. This means that love necessarily brings with it all of its actions, intentions, desires, hopes, trusts, risks, gifts, etc... that have been a part of its nature and character from the beginning. From the beginning of each participant in the love and from the beginning of the love that is now its own by its shared character between persons.
7. This means that love destroys our typical mentality of "a fixed point on a line of history." Love assumes a horizontal and vertical character, and they cannot be divided. The one who loves, loves the other for all of the past moments, memories, experiences, leading up to that point. That one also loves the other in the light of what is to come, under the banner of the promise of more love to be present tomorrow, and the day after, and the year after that. The love requires the points on the horizontal line to be included and bound together. The moment of time being experienced cannot be taken as true without the other instances that have been and the many that will come. The horizontal character means that this love necessarily brings new birth, new life, to the hearts and lives of those who love. It must generate, it must develop, and it must transcend. It cannot be static nor can it remain solely within those who love! It must become its own, its own world and its own being. There, within the love, they can grow and foster the love, strengthen its bonds and deepen its foundation, always keeping in mind all that has been before and all that will come.
8. This leads absolutely to the sister, Hope, as perhaps is often not considered. Think of it! Where Love must contain all of the history and memory and possibility and potential of the lovers, it therefore could not exist outside of the realm of Hope. Hope is where every falsehood, every darkness, every attack, every affront on the beautiful and fragile wings of Love unfolding into its own life and otherness are turned back. In the face of Hope, they cannot persist. Defeated or laughed at, Hope requires the humility that is the deep power of Love. Such Love bears the inscription of awe and wonder at the gift of the other, at the beauty of the new love being born, at the presence of the other in the heart and life, at the transcendence of the love over all else...this awe is humbling. The gift is humbling. The truth is humbling. We are not worthy. We cannot care for it as we should. We fail to give our all in return. We are petty, selfish, worn out, impatient, foolish. We do not aspire to the heights this Love is rushing to reach! And so in this honesty we are humble, for we still love, and we are still loved, despite all of this. And so Hope, strengthened in this knowledge that, even in defeat, we will triumph, carries us over the breadths of the deserts and the tumults of the seas.

Oh, so let us never lose our Hope. To give up on Hope is to deny Love its truth. We cannot live like that. We must not. Hope will guide us, even in the darkest of places. "There is no fear in love, but perfect love drives out fear..." 1 John 4:18.

Adequate Anthropology I

"Love. Above all things, I believe in love. Love is like oxygen. Love is a many-splendored thing. Love lifts us up where we belong. All you need is love!"

... thank you Ewan McGregor for your stunning performance, and please ignore that some parts of that movie are less-than-tasteful. We're talking about a message here!

Currently, in real life, I am a student and one of my classes entails going through the entire work of Pope John Paul II's "Man and Woman He Created Them, A Theology of the Body." This is a great undertaking (that's 663 pages of John Paul II's depth), and it will hopefully reap great rewards (I LOVE it). As it is, I enjoyed having a structure to the blog (the series on the Beatitudes) and so I'm going to attempt to have a series of posts about love, humanity, sexuality, anthropology, etc...

I don't plan to go in order because to attempt to explain the topic in fullness would be to recopy the entire work and basically reiterate all of my class. I do not wish to do that here. Rather, I want to highlight small sections or even just statements that spoke to me specifically, and discuss them here.

So in that context, beginning with a quote from Moulin Rouge may seem a little... heretical? But in truth, this is exactly what the Holy Father was speaking to - our world, our educated average person, hungry and seeking for an adequate understanding of human sexuality. We've tried a lot of things, and nothing has worked. The Holy Father wished to give us more. Now it is for us to bring it to the world and shine its light in the dark places of the mind.

As with the Beatitudes series, I have named these and will number them accordingly to make it easier to follow. "Adequate Anthropology" is a term the Pope uses consistently in his work, and it is what I want to use as a guiding post for the reflections I share (not to mention that I love alliteration and assonance).

So now that you've had the "veggies and buttered bread" details (sorry that it is impossible for me to write without them... this is why J.R.R. Tolkien and I would have been great friends), let's move on to the meat.

"A wife's grace delights her husband, and her knowledge strengthens his bones" (Sir. 26:18).
Let's step back and read that line from Genesis that hopefully came to your mind just now.
Adam: "This one, at last, is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; This one shall be called 'woman,' for out of 'her man' this one has been taken" (Gen. 2:23).

The term "knowledge" in Scripture, especially in the Old Testament, often referred to a much deeper "knowing" than a simple awareness of the existence of the object in question. Moreover, when speaking about a person, it was assumed that "to know" someone implied an intimate, and typically physically intimate, knowledge. This is important here.

When we reread Sirach in light of this word's meaning, it would seem to imply that what Adam said from the beginning of time still holds true for men and women years later, even after the first fall and original sin. However, original sin created a space, a separation, a division, between man and God, man and the natural world, and even man with himself. Therefore, it also created a division between man and woman. So how can we understand Sirach then? If a 'knowledge' of his wife is a fulfillment of his person, a meeting or encounter that enables him to rejoice and to more fully know himself as well... wouldn't it seem contradictory to that divided state sin ushered in?

First, let's discuss this "delight" that is expressed in both verses. In Genesis, Adam's cry is one of rejoicing. Finally, after all the other possible 'helpmates' that God has presented, he has discovered one who is truly for and of himself. John Paul II would also say that in this discovery man comes to discover something of himself as well. This makes sense when you consider that, until the point of this encounter, man had known himself to be alone. He was in solitude with God, and this relationship, unique to what we can imagine now, was good-but-different. When man was face to face with woman, what he found was one he could be in-relation-with, as he was with God, but yet in a different way. There was a level of analogy between the giving-of-self that was naturally in place between God and man and the giving-of-self that was possible between man and woman. Now, clearly, the disanalogy is greater, for God is transcendent love, surpassing all made things, perfection of perfections, etc... you understand I am trying to protect the importance of God's so-much-more-than-us-ness. However, the actual seeing, the physical revelation of the woman to the man, was an experience not of lust or of need, but one of freedom. Man was able to give himself to this creature in a way he could not do so with any other. This creature, this woman, could receive his gift of self. She could understand him. She could see him in return. She could value him for the person he was. She could give back, her whole self, just as freely. They were able to know more about themselves in this relationship, for each came to know how they could give, who they could give.

It would be too much for me to wholly explain the "adequate anthropology" of how they were free to give themselves fully to each other in a perfectly pure and holy way, but I will at least try to sketch the bare bones (catch that? you're quick).

Remember, this is "original nakedness" we're speaking of. They were "naked without shame" because there was no sin yet. Without sin, there was no concupiscence, no lust, no greed. They were able to see one another in the physical flesh, naked before each other, and yet simultaneously see and love the whole person, the full self that was before them, the entire "other" being that was Eve or Adam. Surely they felt desire for the other, but this desire was holy because it was in no way divided or reduced or objectified. They did not yearn for each other as if the other were a satisfaction for a need, but they yearned for each other as their one-who-receives-me-wholly-as-I-am-and-returns-himself/herself-to-me-in-equal-freedom-and-love. They were simply, "one flesh."

So hopefully you get the gist of it, just try to imagine what loving another would be like if we never had to doubt them, never had to wonder if their love was real. These two had no fear. They were forever. They were total. It was that easy.

So Adam's rejoicing was certainly a holy and full delight! I mean, I know I'd be throwing a party. (I'd still like to throw a party if I ever get close to that, lol.) Sirach does seem to speak of just such a delight. He writes that a man's bones are strengthened by a holy wife. He cannot mean that separated from a two-become-one-flesh relationship, clearly. So what happened to man and woman after the fall? What happens to us? We, very sadly, often cannot stand naked-without-shame. We, rather unfortunately, are aware that our revelation of self is typically exploited. We are sensitive to the fact that man does lust, and struggles to love in truth and freedom. We are aware that our bodies will often be seen only as bodies. We can sense that the whole person (being ourselves) is not shining through or even being sought... if we're a naked body, we're a naked body. Why?

Well, as I have discussed, that would be sin's fault (thanks a lot satan, you really screwed that up). So concupiscence leaves man weak, open to temptation, without the "sight" that enables him to see the whole person, the true person, the one person. Man has lost the ability to not-reduce the other. We fail, so often, to not-compartmentalize. We typically cannot see another without objectifying them to some degree.

Cue grace! Now, remember that Sirach is writing pre-Incarnation, so we'll have to go back to that, but for those of us living in the post-Incarnation-and-Death-and-Resurrection-era (thank you Jesus), we have some help. It is true, we are going to fail. Sin happens. (I prefer that to the statement "life happens." Spread the words.) We will fall, and we will suffer from the consequences. That is the sad state of things. However, Christ gave us such wonderful gifts with his Church and the faith we profess! Through Scripture, prayer, a devotion to purity of heart and mind (especially through Our Lady), and of course through the Sacraments, we are able to bring our broken hearts to him that they would be made new. We can allow the Holy Spirit to live in us, and through this, to transform us in our daily work. This can enable us to build up virtuous habits in our lives, such as the gift of seeing others in purity and truth, rather than in reductive and usury ways.

As an aside, for married couples this challenge both still exists and the freedom is still possible. Simply because we are "married" doesn't give us the full freedom to be totally naked-without-shame, unfortunately. However, the sacrament does give a gift of grace, and through a life of consistent returning to our Lord, we are able to make marriages that are pure and holy. The fact of the matter is that until we are in our risen bodies with the Lord at the second coming, we probably won't fully understand what it was like to love one another so freely. However, we can come very close, and our relationships-in-love-and-truth should begin here and now with friends, coworkers, family, random people on the street. Asking the Lord for the eyes to see another as the whole person, mind, body, spirit, soul, heart, will, actions, thoughts, etc... is vital.

We must believe that a wholly-integrated-person is the only one we can love properly, and be loved in return by properly. You cannot give yourself, fully, to another, forever till death do us part, unless you are able to be seen as your full and whole self. Likewise, you cannot receive another, forever till death do us part, if you cannot see him or her as a whole and full self. We must never fear the body or think it bad - that is just as silly as thinking our minds or hearts are bad. We aren't here for reduction or disintegration! We're here for unification and wholeness! It is Manichaean to hold the physical in contempt or think it evil, and it is an incorrect idea. We simply must seek to know the flesh as the revelation of the entire person, and nothing less.

As far as Sirach is concerned, I think it is fair to say that this author, guided by the Holy Spirit, writes in anticipation of the time when Christ will give us a new covenant, a new law, a new spirit, to allow us to experience a holiness that is worthy of the dignity of mankind. This is why we are seeking to understand what an adequate anthropology is. We are beginning on the basis that man is good, so very good, as God created him, and that his dignity and goodness are reiterated throughout Scripture, most especially obvious in the Incarnation of Christ, God-made-man. If we exist in an image of this perfect One who is Love, than surely we should be only grateful that he would reveal to us this more-perfect existence that we can participate in, one which enables us to know what true love is.

Let us hope and pray to always know and love in truth and purity, to see each person as the whole self, and to hold them in our hearts with purity and gratitude. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of the faithful, and enkindle in them the fire of your love! O Mary conceived without sin, pray for us who have recourse to thee! Amen.

Sweet Lord

Let me tell you something I believe with all of my heart:


People do not know how beautiful they are. Beautiful in their own right, beautiful to others, beautiful before God, just full of beauty!


Let me tell you a little story.


One day I was at mass and the family in front of me had a charming little boy of around four years old. I was catching his eye at every possible moment because he was flirting right back (as all wide eyed, long-lashed little boys are so good at doing), and I was smiling so much throughout mass (try not to think how I probably should have been paying attention, lol). We knelt down to pray after mass had ended and their family moved towards the door. The little boy paused in front of me, and then pulled on his mother's pants. She bent down and talked to him quickly, and then he turned around again and looked straight at me. I had no clue what was coming, but I was so excited that he was going to talk to me! So adorable!
He seemed to take a moment to muster up the courage and then he announced to me, "You're really beautiful."
He turned and fled into his mother's legs, who proceeded to give me that parent smile of "don't be weirded out, he's only four." I smiled back the "don't worry, I'm not," smile, and that was that.
I just kept kneeling, thinking about what had happened. Let's be serious here, I'll take a four year old's opinion any day over an adult! I was so humbled, and so thankful. It made me think a lot about this topic.


I don't know if you've had some similar experience, and perhaps yours was actually through someone who loves you uniquely, but I wanted to get the point across - we just can't know how much good there is to us.


When we are created in the image and likeness of God, who are we to sit around muddying up our complexions? Don't get me wrong, I am seriously aware of our sinful natures. That's part of the point as well. I shouldn't be sinning in the first place, and then I really shouldn't be taking time to live in dejection, disappointment, despair and pity because I screwed up. Well, you know, we're kids. We're babies in the "being-perfect-as-your-heavenly-Father-is-perfect" game. We aren't supposed to have it all figured out. We never will! There will always be more to unlearn, better habits to adapt, more fulfilling prayers to pray, more peace to bring to our families, more forgiveness for those around us, more hope for the future... the growing process never ends. So we will fail, and fall, and then we will get back up again. We'll go say we're sorry, go confess and repent, and then we're going to let it go. We aren't supposed to forget our loveliness!!!


Sin damages our relationship with God, with the world, with those around us, and with ourselves. Sin does not remove the good nature we were given in the gift of existence! We are still His creatures, whether we accept it or not. We have the freedom to refuse his mercy and love but that light of his life that dwells within us is ever present and awaiting our invitation. We cannot allow our failures to keep us blind to the beauty that his mercy brings when we seek healing.


One of my favorite lines of all of Scripture is from Hosea 11:3
"but they did not know that I healed them." (RSV)
or
"they did not know that I was their healer." (NAB)


The whole context is this -
"When Israel was a child I loved him, out of Egypt I called my son.
The more I called them, the farther they went from me, Sacrificing to the Baals and burning incense to idols. Yet it was I who taught Ephraim to walk, who took them in my arms; I drew them with human cords, with bands of love; I fostered them like one who raises an infant to his cheeks; Yet, though I stooped to feed my child, they did not know that I was their healer." (NAB, 1-4)


Think about this though! When we grow up a little, all the things our parents have done for us, all the sacrifices we were so unaware of as children - they begin to be revealed and we find our hearts filled with gratitude. As the same responsibilities fall on our shoulders, we understand that they have always loved us so selflessly. Yet, when we are little, we cannot see or understand their working for us or their intention to keep us safe and happy, or to heal us when we are broken. 


Thus the Lord works in mysterious ways to move and change us, to aid us in our brokenness, to remake us into his image time and again. He never grows weary of us! He never tires of our same failures and our same vices. He never stops wanting to form us anew again. He has been our healer when we did not know him, and he will be so again. 

So if this is the case, is it so hard to believe we are beautiful, moreso than we understand or perhaps want to believe? I never thought I'd say it, but have faith that you are full of value, desirable, love-able, beautiful! 


This is a song that the Missionaries of Charity (Bl. Mother Teresa's order) pray everyday. I don't think you can get much more beautiful than they are:

"Sweet Lord, thy thirst for souls I satiate with my burning love all for Thee.

My chalice will be ever-full, sacrifices made all for Thee. 
Ever more I will quench Thy thirst. Ever more I will quench Thy thirst, Lord, for souls. 
In union with Mary our Queen, I will quench Thy thirst."