SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, PRAYER AND THE CALL OF THE GOSPEL -1

Over the ten plus years of my blog on deep personal prayer, Praying Alone Together, I have referenced Teresa of Avila many times. During this time, my understanding, experience and love of Teresa and her teachings has matured. I hope to share that spiritual growth and insight in a series of blogs on this great Carmelite Saint and her vison on prayer and the Gospel calling

I am going to emphasize Teresa’s teaching on the beginning of deep personal prayer as described in her special message on prayer in chapters eleven to twenty-two in the book of her Life. There are many other rich teachings on prayer in her numerous other writings. I will make a few references to her other works. However, I will focus on the twelve chapters from her Life. This section offers a clear, practical and manageable expression of the Carmelite’s profound teachings on deep personal prayer.

Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Church and Superb Teacher of Prayer

Teresa does not offer a well-defined theological message on prayer. Her writings are dominated by her personal experience. Likewise, her writings, while most often clear and deeply insightful, are also disrupted by almost continual interruptions and distractions from her designated theme. This makes it a little difficult to read. The extra effort benefits the reader with a pathway into true wisdom and spiritual enrichment.

The Experience of God

Teresa’s mysticism, like all other true mystics, was about the extraordinary experience of God in the ordinary activities of her daily life. While she had many visions and other spiritual occurrences of various kinds, she always would point to the lived daily experience, free of self-interest and committed to the love of neighbor, as the most authentic experience of God. When you read Teresa with an open and searching heart, the sense of the reality and the presence of God shines out in a spectacular way.

God feels so real and so special and so inviting that it is truly an overwhelming experience. She drives us from a shallow awareness of God to an indisputable experience of God. One author describes Teresa’s writings as “taking a bath in God”.

Few authors on prayer would be as emphatic in stressing the importance of silence, solitude and withdrawal as part of any trustworthy prayer life. Yet, Teresa was far from proclaiming an escape from the demanding realities of daily life. She clearly teaches that we will find God among “the pots and pans”, by which she means the often challenging “give and take” of living in a sinful and broken world with sinful and broken people. For Teresa, we withdraw into silence, solitude and prayer only to enter into life with a more intense and genuine presence.

Today, any meaningful spirituality is going to attack the false separation of the experience of God and truly responsible presence to our daily life and the concrete demands of being faithful to relationships and our expanding and ever-more inclusive responsibilities. This requires a commitment to prayer and a life of meaningful service in our actual historical situation. It is not life or prayer, not service or a true spiritual life. These items always go together in Teresa’s agenda.

However, for Teresa, the historical experience first takes place in prayer. She saw prayer every bit as part of our human experience as a form of service and ministry. For Teresa, there was no substitute for prayer in our pursuit of God which is the most real measurement of life’s true goal. We suffer drastic, and often destructive consequences, when we share in the common belief today that prayer is supplementary to the truly important issue of service to our brothers and sisters. Teresa is clear that prayer is a non-negotiable on our journey to God. Fraternal service needs to complement and be integrated with prayer.

For Teresa, prayer is part of life. In our day, there are many obstacles blinding us to the true importance of prayer. One must struggle to keep a genuine focus on the value of prayer in one’s life. Teresa clearly understood the pull of the ego to diminish the importance of prayer. Likewise, she was clear we have no authentic prayer without self-sacrifice and discipline.

Teresa sees prayer as the development of friendship and intimacy with God through the person of Jesus. The Carmelite Saint defines prayer “in my opinion is nothing else than an intimate sharing between friends; it means taking time frequently to be alone with Him who we know loves us.” (Life Ch 8, 5) This is a skill that needs to be developed. This demands much work and sacrifice in the practice and growth in prayer. The following reflections will attempt to describe and encourage the use of the many guides Teresa offers to achieve a vital life of prayer.

Mt 10: 37-42

Dear Friends, Today’s teachings our Jesus’ final words on mission in this section of Matthew. The first three deal with the disciples’ reply to Jesus’ challenge to mission. They lay out the demands of being a missionary. The next three statements are about the response of those who receive the gospel message.

It is clear that if we are going to walk with Jesus, we have a price to pay. Sacrifice and suffering are part of the journey. This is the way to life and freedom in the experience of the gospel. The gospel law of love means that there is no room for selfishness in following Jesus. Our salvation is found in moving out of ourselves in service and reconciliation. With the perennial challenge for racial justice, with drugs feeding the scourge of gangs and gun violence, with intensifying threat of climate change, all we need to do and is to check our favorite media for the rest of our always growing chaos. Calamity seems to always be drawing closer. Jesus teaches us that the most realistic answer to our crisis is the call to a self-sacrificing witness proclaimed in today’s gospel.

Today’s seemingly severe words of Jesus about family are simply an invitation to put everything in order. When we love God first, not only do we love our family more, this love is more selfless and life-giving. This love is free of deception and illusion.

I like to reflect about our encounter with Jesus’ call to mission with this example. Each morning, we wake up with a short note from God awaiting us on this imaginary table next to our bed. This divine text is our to-do list for the day. The top priorities are our relationships and our responsibilities. Each of the tasks for responsibilities and relationships identifies some people who our marvelous gifts from God in all aspects of our life. Some of these individuals represent the cross that Jesus is talking about: “Whoever does not take up his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.” (Mt 10:38) Each of us in the journey of life has created a network of folks of all different kinds who need our love and service. These specific persons are the clearest expression of God’s will for us.

The discipleship Jesus calls for enriches and expands our vision of the world. Our daily responsibilities of family, work, communal and social obligations open up to new horizons to guide us in walking with Jesus. We are invited beyond the surface and outside the narrow limits of our comfort zone.

We are called to enter into the depths of life where we meet the wonder of God’s love in the ordinary flow of daily life. Our task is to cross the “T” s and dot the “I” s to bring love to the concrete circumstances of our day.

The gospel law of love seeks to drive us beyond the ever-present pull of our deeply ingrained selfishness. The saving will of our God will be found in our openness to the needs of our brothers and sisters.

Jesus makes it clear. We need sacrifice and deeper reflection to transform our lives with our families and our communal and professional responsibilities. This same sacrificial effort opens up how we relate to our neighbors including how we face the challenge of a suffering world that is immediately related to the indulgence of our lifestyle. Our consumer culture is always seeking to expand and saatisfy our desires. We are on the edge of destroying our planet. God’s will is clear. Enough already!

Today’s gospel tells us those who seek themselves are on the road to self-destruction. Our relationship with God, with our loved ones, with our life situation only finds life through self-giving.

“Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.” Mt 10: 38-39

Jesus of the gospels is clear. The way to life is through sacrifice, self-denial and our daily cross. Our great and continuing temptation is to create a new Jesus in our own image that frees us from the clarity and immediacy of this potent message.

Mt 10:26-33.

Dear Friends, Today’s gospel selection has the disciples about to begin their first missionary venture. Jesus is counseling them to cast off any fear. He is telling them about the Father’s constant providence. Jesus is addressing a universal human experience of fear in its many manifestations.

In addressing the perplexing issue of fear, the Bible has over seven hundred statements on this topic. Each time some form of fear is mentioned, the biblical text has a response expressing a deep sense of God’s providential loving care.

Today’s passage, like so much of the Word of God, shows that faith liberates, empowers, encourages, and offers hope. In contrast, fear imprisons, weakens, paralyzes and invites hopelessness.

Jesus’ message offers us a three-fold approach against fear. His first statement against fear is that his teachings will have liberating power. This point had been hidden but is now revealed. Secondly, Jesus had earlier told them they would be like sheep among the wolves. (Mt 10:16) Nevertheless, they need to move ahead without fear. Finally, the third declaration against fear is based on God’s loving and compassionate care. Jesus uses the everyday examples of the sparrows and the hairs on our heads.

In the time of Jesus, the sparrows were sold two for a penny and five for two cents. Yet, God knows their every movement. The hairs on the average person’s head offer a real test to maintain an accurate count. If God can keep track of these two obscure and almost frivolous items, infinitely more forceful is God’s loving care for each of us. This loving providence of the Father is the central truth of today’s teaching. All other elements need to be understood in this testimony.

There are two kinds of fear. The first is helpful and reasonable. Jesus is talking about the second fear that is rooted in ignorance and illusion. This fear is a crippling force that grips the frightened person. This fear distorts reality to the detriment of one’s responsibilities and relationships. This is a fear that stunts growth and deceives reason. This pathological fear destroys hope and freedom. Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of this fear in his famous Inaugural address: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”

We all find ourselves these days in senseless wars and growing divisions at almost all levels of society. We all must come face-to-face with fear at many levels of our daily life. The wrong kind of fear often is damaging to our effort to live the gospel. We are drawn to an ordinary and mediocre effort devoid of the gospel’s challenge and new horizons. Do we fear the honest power of the gospel that will show us the deception of our cultural customs so removed from Jesus’ teachings? We all have to ask ourselves what kind of fear is motivating us? Is it calling us forward into the new world of the teaching of Jesus or is it crippling us in the captivity of our comfortable but often rigid world that blinds us to our own mortality and concern for our neighbor? Is it building fences or bridges? Is it drawing us deeper into the inclusion of all others as the gospel teaches or into the isolation of our prejudices?

Much of Christian service and true charity involves drawing our brothers and sisters away from the entanglements of destructive fear. Likewise, a true Christian love will identify and support true salutary fear. This is what Jesus is doing in today’s gospel passage. A true awareness of God’s loving presence will help us to see and embrace our true and final fear, a fear of missing out on eternal life.

The vision of Jesus in today’s gospel is clear and forthright. What we truly need to fear is the final separation from the source of all life, our gracious and loving God. All else, even the destruction of the body in death, rests in the hands of our loving Father who is always calling us to life.

Mt 9:36-10:8

Dear Friends, Today we begin Ordinary Time. Having finished our communal celebration of the Pascal Mystery with added celebrations for the Trinity and Eucharist, we now journey with Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew. In this special time, the love of God in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen shines before us enlighten the presence of God in our daily experience. We will never discover a more insightful and more inviting expression of God’s loving mercy than in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. It is our constant invitation to walk in the footsteps of Jesus. This special time is our passage through the debris of life, through the pull of our selfishness and through our ever-expanding yet still floundering search for happiness. We are challenged to realize where Jesus fits into the very ordinary stull of our daily burdens.

This is our liturgical journey of Ordinary Time. For the next twenty-four weeks we will delve into the Gospel of Matthew. It will invite us to make our search for meaning, our search for justice and, most of all, our search for that very elusive love that lasts forever. Each Sunday, we will meet Jesus once again in the wonderous gift of the Liturgy’s Word and Sacrament. This journey with Jesus will be an encounter of faith. We will bring our daily experience to God’s holy Word. We will be challenged to slow down and open our hearts to the presence of God in our daily struggles. We will be offered a weekly gift of Jesus calling us away from our confusion and distractions. This call of love will open our hearts to a God who passionately loves us. In fact, there is no way this one and only God could love us more.

Our weekly encounter with Jesus in the season of Ordinary Time is calling us into the extraordinary time of mercy and love. Jesus will lay before us the continuing gift of forgiveness and merciful love leading to eternal life.

In today’s gospel selection, we see Jesus moved to awe-inspiring compassion for the sick and suffering, stirred by the pain of others and by the hunger and thirst of the crowds. His heart aches with concern for the alienated, marginalized and all of burdened humanity. His message to the disciples is to teach and heal.

If we open our eyes and cast off the false security of our consumer-driven and materialistic culture, we will be able to see ourselves much in need of Jesus’ compassion. An open and uncluttered heart will let us see the marvel of God’s intense concern for our dire situation. We will find ourselves engulfed in deceiving attachments and a reality immersed in a message of mortality that we deny with obsessive intensity.

We read in today’s gospel text: “At the sight of the crowds, Jesus’ heart was moved with pity for them because they were troubled and abandoned, sheep without a shepherd.” (Mt 9:36)

Jesus calls the twelve to share his ministry of witnessing to the kingdom with healing and service. This kingdom is God’s plan to restore our original innocence. This will be the beginning of the elimination of sickness, hatred, isolation, racism, and every other form of prejudice along with the beginning of justice, peace, the integrity of creation and the reign of love.

Most of all, we will grow to appreciate and embrace the victory over death.

Today we are called to both receive and share that loving response to human suffering, isolation and marginalization. Jesus wants us to help and heal. Jesus wants us to share in the unleashing of the power of love that is the Father’s reign.

The task of the kingdom is love, love for God and love for our neighbor. If we are honest in responding to Jesus’ call, we can truly make a difference. Not all of our pleas will be heard on our schedule and not every heart we approach will be healed. However, our effort, no matter how seemingly inconsequential it may appear, will be wrapped in divine love. It will be like the mustard seed that blossoms beyond human comprehension. We have been sent. We are not by ourselves. Jesus makes it ever so clear, “I am with you always.” (Mt 28:20)

As our relationships and responsibilities meet the challenge of the gospel proclamation, our heart will be challenged to change and grow, most often one small step at a time. Nevertheless, it will be a relentless call to reach out rather than to settle down to our comfort. Our effort may seem negligible but when it shares in the divine love that Jesus gives us, it can transform the world.

Victory For the True Self
This is the last of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

Only in Jesus
Down through the history of the Church there always has been a tendency to distort the central truth of our faith, Jesus Christ. In our times, we are blessed to return to a clearer understanding and growing commitment to the person of Jesus Christ.

The Gospels give us today, and all through Christian history, an opportunity to discover Jesus just as the first disciples did when they joined him on the dusty roads of Galilee. Jesus walks into our lives through the Gospels. The Gospels are a privileged part of the Word of God. The rest of the Bible leads up to them and flows from them.

The Gospels are structured so that we, like Peter and the others, meet Jesus in the wonders of his ministry. We are called to hear his teaching and view his healings. We are challenged to respond to the radical message of forgiveness and inclusion.

We are invited to ponder the marvel of his compassion. We are asked to enter into the stories. It is helpful to see ourselves as the blind person who gains sight, the leper who is cleansed, the paralytic who is forgiven and healed.

Just like the disciples who witnessed the healings, the loaves and the fishes, the walking on the water and the other activities, we are confronted with Jesus’ critical question, “Who do you say I am?” (Mk 8:29) There is no more important question and challenge in our life. Who is Jesus for us?

Like the disciples, we do not understand it all at once. The message slowly takes root in our mind and heart. We are on the road but the total package is the work of a lifetime. This experience of encountering Jesus is a model of the constant discord between the True Self and the False Self.

Only in Jesus of the Gospels can we find real righteousness in our Christian faith and the final victory of the True Self. There are always deceptions and cultural deceits attracting us to an easier route. Whether it is the search for true fraternal charity or honest prayer, the demands of justice or our clinging to our possessions, the False Self is constantly assaulting our gospel commitment like a cancer. It is eating away at the gospel truth. We always need to return to Jesus for the light and the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or demanding. Jesus alone is the source of all true integrity in life.

The Gospel Comes at a Cost
The gospel shines with clarity. We need to walk with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it.” (Mk 8: 34-35)

The disciples were following Jesus at the beginning with a mixed agenda. A good portion of their goal was for their personal advantage. They wanted to be in an honored position. They wanted to be in control. Power and prestige were rewards they sought for following Jesus. Most often, it is the same with us. We want Jesus to grant us our plans. An honest encounter with Jesus always comes at a price, and a price that continues to escalate. Jesus is gentle but consistent in continuously asking for more. One conversion is never enough.

This is the heart of the encounter with Jesus. It is a transition moving from our vision for happiness, from our priorities, to Jesus’ vision and call. The conversion repeats itself as we stay faithful with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. Prayer leads to an ever-expanding awareness of God’s will that is always moving away from the deceptions of the False Heart.

Keeping Our Eyes Fixed on Jesus
The disciples, unlike the rich young man, continued their commitment Jesus. They were consumed with broken dreams, confusion and fear but, in the end, they were faithful. They were caught in the most profound battle of the human heart. They were seeking the True Self in the midst of the False Self’s deceiving illusions.

They experienced the heart creating idols which distorted reality. The attraction of evil blinded and weakened their spirit.

In their effort to understand Jesus, the disciples began to recognize the human dilemma of the heart’s epic struggle. They were living what Paul articulated a few decades later in Romans: “We know that the law is spiritual but I am carnal, sold into slavery to sin. What I do, I do not understand. For I do not what I want, but I do what I hate.” (Romans 7: 14-15)

On that fatal weekend, the disciples faced a traumatic choice: to walk with Jesus or to flee. This was happening in real time on the actual journey to Jerusalem. The frightening call to continue to walk with Jesus meant not only the absolute shattering of their hopes and ambitions but actually placing their lives in physical jeopardy.

They caved in and ran away from Jesus. Yet, they still clung together in disbelief and fear at the edge of despair in the locked upper room. Then Jesus appeared with the amazingly merciful, “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:21) For Jesus, there was no finger pointing but only unconditional acceptance and encouragement. Now, they had the last piece of the puzzle, the Death and the Resurrection, in their hand. It was their job to put the mystery of Jesus together in their lives. This experience of God’s mercy both cleansed and renewed their commitment. They were ready to shed the uncertainty and panic. Now they were free to walk with Jesus in spite of the continuing ambiguity of life.

Following Jesus
The gospel reveals the basis of all spirituality and calls us to the transparency of a true Christian identity. It teaches us that to be a disciple of Jesus is to follow him. This is what Christian life is, following Jesus.

The four Gospels, in all their diversity, finally bring us a picture of Jesus which is a mirror for us. We look at Jesus and see what is most authentic about ourselves. We are children of God, loved and forgiven. In his exhortation, The Joy of the Gospel, Pope Francis describes the joy and beauty of discovering our true selves when we respond to Jesus’ call.

“The Lord does not disappoint those who take this risk; whenever we take a step toward Jesus, we come to realize that he is already there, waiting for us with open arms. Now is the time to say to Jesus, “Lord, I have let myself be deceived; in a thousand ways I have shunned your love, yet here I am once more, to renew my covenant with you. I need you. Save me once again, Lord. Take me once more into your redeeming embrace.” (The Joy of the Gospel: #3)

This is the tenth of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

Teresa of Avila tells us prayer is the key to this journey. Teresa offers a program to help us to pray. For her, prayer is always an encounter with God who transforms and purifies us in contemplation. This is the only way to unity. To strengthen this prayer, Teresa insists on an agenda based on humility, detachment, and charity. These virtues have a dynamic relation with prayer. They bring an order in our life. This order helps us to pray. At the same time, prayer helps us to grow in these life-giving virtues.

The Three Virtues

Humility
For Teresa, accepting the foundational reality that God is the Creator and we are the creature is the heart of humility. This truth shines on all of God’s creation in way that it necessitates humility as the way we experience God. This is why Teresa says humility is the truth. Humility lets us see ourselves and the world the way God sees it.

Thomas Merton adds this supportive insight about humility in his book, Contemplative Prayer, “Our knowledge of God is paradoxically a knowledge not of God as the object of our scrutiny, but of ourselves as utterly dependent on God’s saving and merciful knowledge of us.”

To know and embrace the humble truth about ourselves is the source of our freedom. We slowly begin to see more clearly who God is. This is the fundamental source of our humility. We see the truth about ourselves with the gift of this virtue. Humility opens us up to the necessary personal conversion in our self-understanding. It lets us grasp the wonder of God calling us into the Mystery of Love even in our broken state. This is the movement into the True Self.

Detachment
By detachment Teresa means that we must put all things in their proper perspective. Detachment lets us be free from desiring that certain things happen and open to what is happening. This attitude will lead us to a peaceful reconciliation with reality. We need to relate to all things in a way that they bring us closer to God. This particular relationship, this hobby, our cell phone, and all of our other possessions and relationships will either bring us closer to God or be an obstacle in this search. The effects of Original Sin drive us to make creatures our idols, most often in our image and under our control. Detachment attacks this distortion. This virtue brings clarity to our deceiving hearts.

Only when things are seen in the right light, with a detached heart, do they open the way to God. Otherwise, things are used only to prop up our selfish agenda. They are, then, contrary to our goal: to seek God. This is the result of the False Self.

Teresa had no problem with the world. Its richness and beauty only have meaning, however, as they help us in our search for God. She had arrived at this vision of detachment as part of her long spiritual journey. Detachment allowed her to possess herself in a way that made her free of all things in the pursuit of God. John of the Cross shared her enthusiasm for detachment. “Peace comes for a heart free for God since cares do not molest the detached.” (A.3.20.3)

Charity
Charity is the proper acceptance of others. Love for our sisters and brothers is the index of our spiritual growth. For Teresa, the authenticity of our spiritual journey is measured by the quality of our interpersonal relations with others. This neighborly love moves us towards the center where God awaits.

This call for communal love is the most difficult obstacle on our pilgrimage to God. Our selfishness has incredible powers to twist things in justifying our judgmental self-righteousness. Teresa understood this well. She said, “Beg our Lord to give you this perfect love of neighbor. Let his Majesty have a free hand, for He will give you more than you know how to desire because you are striving and making every effort to do what you can about this love, and force your will to do the will of your Sister in everything even though you lose your rights; forget your own good for their sakes no matter how much resistance your nature puts up; and, when the occasion arises, strive to accept work yourself so as to relieve your neighbor of it.” (IC.5.3.12)

The journey to God is an interaction between the three virtues and prayer. To be humble, detached, and loving we need to pray. There is a mutual support of both prayer and the virtues in the movement towards God. This process is the work of a lifetime. This is what it means to walk with Jesus.

Teresa has a simple example of how profound this practice is in ordinary life. She says if there is a person that we find difficult, we should go out of our way to support and help that person. If that individual receives praise, we ought to rejoice as if the praise is for us.

There is no way I could be able to do that for many of my brothers and sisters whom I know I do not love as I should, to put it charitably. This is the same for most of us. We have a long way to go. There is a lot of ego that has to go out the window. The problem is that the ego likes to stay at home. Very few of us will ever imitate Jesus on the cross, “Father forgive them for they do not know what they do.” (Lk 23:34)

This is where prayer and Teresa’s program of the virtues unite. They support each other leading to contemplation. This is the action of God that roots out the final remnants of egoism and self-centeredness that are beyond our power to eliminate. This is the purification that precedes transformation. The embedded forces of self-righteousness and being consistently judgmental only give way to the purifying love of God in the fifth and sixth dwelling places of Teresa’s Interior Castle. We can go just so far by ourselves. God alone can close the deal on the love that unveils the fullness of the original unity in seventh and final dwelling places of the Interior Castle.

In Merton’ description of the original unity, as he experienced it in his famous Louisville experience, human frailty and human faults become totally inconsequential. They disappear from view. One sees God in the individual. The pull into the unity is irresistible. “For all of you were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free person, there is not male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Gal 3:28) Someday, hopefully, we will be gifted to encounter this precious reality. We will be enlivened to see the beauty and wonder in all our brothers and sisters and as well as within ourselves.

The True Self/False Self Dynamic in Prayer
On the road to that day, we need to recognize two things. First, it is essential to continue to grow in awareness of how far we are from truly sharing God’s love for our neighbor. Secondly, we need to stay in the struggle to be more humble, more detached, and more loving by our faithfulness to prayer. This will prepare us for God’s purifying and transforming gift of contemplation. This is the true and final victory of the True Self.

John 6:51-58

Dear Friends, Today, we celebrate the great gift of Jesus, his flesh and blood in the Eucharist. In this boundless wonder of divine love, we embrace the mystery of the Crucified and Risen Christ. Likewise, we are invited to enter more deeply into the reward of Christian community. Through our encounter with the Eucharistic Christ, we are encouraged to open our hearts in service and love to all our brothers and sisters. At God’s table there is no accent that is not welcome. Shades of skin add to the beauty of the experience. There is space and welcome for everyone at this sacred breaking of the bread. Our Eucharistic Banquet is all about making us rush out to our world as servants and as healers and as celebrants of love.

Jesus is telling us if we share his flesh and his blood we need to be different. We need to be witnesses to love. We need to be our sister’s and brother’s keeper.

When I became pastor with this view of the Eucharist, I soon came to see First Communion celebrations as deeply flawed with a lot more party and a lot less Jesus.

My response was to require the parents to participate in twelve faith assemblies. These are evening sessions included a basic presentation of salvation history from Abraham to Jesus. They were much more than simple Bible classes because the emphasis was on seeing the Word of God intersecting their personal lived experience. There was much sharing of their stories and time for reflection and prayer.

The parents learned a fundamental lesson. To live by the bread that comes forth from the mouth of God requires a willingness to listen, to grow, to change and to be transformed by the Word

The end result was that the parents acquired a sense of personal power to be teachers of the faith for their children with a grasp of Jesus’ fundamental call to conversion into God’s love.

Parents were invited to a deeper appreciation of Jesus and his gift to us in the Eucharist. In his teachings, his healing ministry and his surrender to the Father’s will, Jesus opened a vision of a God both personal and involved with all people. In this journey, parents began to see the Eucharist as a great expression of God’s love in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen. This challenged parents to go beyond the superficial in their child’s First Communion.

Parents were encouraged to see the Eucharist as a real treasure of our faith. In this ritual, we go beyond the symbol of bread and wine. This is the real presence of our saving Lord Jesus Christ coming to nurture and love us. His real presence is a call for us to be caring, loving and giving to our brothers and sisters.

The goal was not just to help the parents prepare their children to understand what happens on that beautiful day of their First Communion. It was to convince the parents that this is the task of many years. Part of that task was their family participation in the Liturgy on a regular basis. The Liturgy is truly an on-going adult school of religious education where the daily experience is connected to the saving act of Jesus here and now.

Unless the parents grasp the importance of the basic experience of regular participation in the Liturgy, First Communion celebrations have the real possibility of becoming distorted and inconsequential.

The real goal is faithful participation in the Church’s worship and praise. Regular Mass attendance brings us into the encounter with the great act of love that is the fundamental story of the Bible. That love literally takes the form of flesh and blood to nourish and guide us on the troubled journey that is our life. That is why the Church teaches us that the Liturgy is the source and summit of our faith. Liturgy helps us take the information about our faith and lets it transform our heart drawing us into an encounter with our loving God.

On this feast of Corpus Christi, I would like to invite us to go beyond the mantra about Liturgy as the “source and summit” of our faith. I want to invite you to ponder and pray over a fuller expression of the teaching of Vatican II on our participation in the Eucharist.

“The celebration of the Eucharist, as an action of Christ and the people of God…is the center of the whole Christian life, for the universal church, the local church and for each and everyone of the faithful….the Liturgy is the summit toward which the activity of the Church is directed; it is also the fount from which all its power flows….All who are made children of God by faith and baptism should come together to praise God in the midst of the church, to take part in the sacrifice and to eat the Lord’s supper.” (Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, 1963, #2, 10, 41) Each Mass should be like a First Communion where there is a lot less party and a whole lot more Jesus.

Prayer: Pathway to Personal Renewal
This is the ninth of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

The Carmelite tradition states clearly that we are called to union with God as the goal of our full human development. This is another way of saying that our goal is the victory of the True Self. This is the pilgrimage to the innocence of Paradise. We achieve this transformation by a process of purification that begins with our effort to live an authentic and prayerful life. It concludes by the action of God in the state of contemplation. Our Christian life leads us through prayer to the experience of God that purifies and transforms us.

St. Teresa of Avila had a high regard for vocal prayer. For her, the key point was that we need to pay attention to whom we are praying along with the message of the words of the prayer. The common practice of mental prayer in her day was called meditation. It involved using the mind and the imagination to stir the heart. It led her to one of her more famous sayings, “For mental prayer, in my opinion, is nothing else than intimate sharing between friends. It means taking the time to be alone with Him whom we know loves us.” (L 8.5)

The thinking and imagining of meditation are meant to stir the heart to know Christ better and to seek God’s will. This develops our personal transformation. Teresa told us the goal of prayer is “not to think much but to love much.” (IC.4.1.7)

Teresa always saw prayer’s importance as drawing us into a deeper loving relationship with Christ. Meditation for Teresa was a necessary endeavor. With growth and dedication, the hope is that God will call us into the gift of contemplation. In the meanwhile, we need to make the steady practice to pray as we can each day.

Effects of Prayer

When we pray regularly with deep personal commitment, things happen within us. The purification and transformation are witnessed in a new consciousness. We begin to trust with a new sense of spiritual security. Faith leads us to be open to God leading the way, guiding us through the darkness. Our relationships are enriched with a new sense of compassion. Likewise, we become more accepting and gentler with ourselves and with others. Failures become less traumatic and even seem like an opening to let God take over. Our faults are accepted. We do not need to be in endless pursuit of looking good. We begin to see our search for personal worthiness as truly laughable without God’s mercy

As our prayer becomes more authentic, there is a movement to our true center where God is. This means moving beyond the superficial self, the self-engrossed in the advertising world of never-ending new products to fill the void of a misdirected heart. This is the self-propped up by a lifetime pattern of self-absorption. This is the False Self. Prayer opens the passage to the True Self. While this journey inward in prayer offers innumerable blessings, it is always limited and deficient. It gradually allows us to see how distant we are from our real destiny: union with God.

With this new focus on God in prayer, there are even more deep-seated changes within us. We begin to see the need for more honesty and authenticity in all our relationships to persons, things and ideas. We find it easier to cast out the log in our eye and to be more accepting of others in all their faults. The either/or situations begin to fade away. The both/and view of life blossoms as a real possibility for us. Finally, we gradually begin to experience life as rooted in an overwhelming sense of God’s gracious presence. Prayer, indeed, opens the road for our return to Paradise. This is the experience of moving from the False Self to the True Self.

John 3:16-18

Dear Friends, There is no place in the teachings of Jesus where we will find a description of the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It took the Church centuries of reflection, almost continual conflict and deep prayer to articulate the reality of Trinity as we have in our Creed today.

Jesus was the revelation of God. His was a message of love and mercy. As a Church we learned we cannot think our way into God. The only passage into the Divine Mystery is a way of love guided by faith that is open and searching obedience to love. Jesus taught us the way of love. It is love for God, for our neighbor and for our world.

Through Jesus, we have learned that our call to fidelity is mirrored in God’s fidelity to humankind. All through the painful and conflict-driven history of the human venture, God has responded well beyond our understanding in love and mercy. Our resistance and rebellion to the call of love has always received a Divine response of patience, compassion and merciful love. This is the only possible response from a Trinitarian God who is love.

We have an exquisite picture of what a true response to God’s love would look like. Aristides, a learned Greek philosopher, described the Christians in the second century this way: “They love one another. They never fail to help widows; they save orphans from those who would hurt them. If they have something, they give freely to the person that has nothing; if they see a stranger, they take him home and are happy as though he were a brother. They do not consider themselves brothers in the usual sense, but brothers instead through the Spirit, in God.”

Today’s Gospel passage has often been called a gospel in miniature. It describes in just a few lines the unlimited love of God. In Jesus, we have the continual unveiling of this love of the Father. Jesus is the ultimate gift that keeps on giving, keeps on calling and keeps on loving!

Today’s Gospel tells us why God has saved us. It is all about love. God has chosen to lay out the magnitude and power of this love through the saving acts of his Son and through the continuing action of the Spirit. This love knows no boundaries, has no conditions and needs no invitation. It simply engulfs all reality. As St. Therese, the Little Flower, declared, “Everything is grace!”

Today’s Gospel sets this divine love before us very clearly. God takes the initiative: “God so loved the world.” (Jn 3:16)

In loving the world, God shows us that all are invited into the mutual love that is the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Jesus fleshes out this totally inclusive love in the stories of the Good Samaritan, the publican, Magdalene, the father of the troubled sons and so many other expressions of acceptance and mercy.

Likewise, today’s Gospel tells us the purpose of God’s mission: “God did not send the Son…to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him and enjoy eternal life.” (Jn 3:16-18)

This divine love portrayed in John’s Gospel is beyond our understanding, hopelessly out our reach for us to merit, and outside the limits of our capacity to respond in kind. God has loved us first and with a generosity we will never be able to match. In the end, all we can do is to attempt to walk in the footsteps of Jesus and embrace the merciful love.

Jesus invites us into the mystery of love and life that is the Father and Son and Holy Spirit. The choice is ours. We can accept or reject.

The great joy of today’s feast of the Holy Trinity, like every proclamation of the Gospel, is that God never gives up on us. Jesus is constantly calling us to accept Him as the way, the life and the truth. Slowly, life tends to teach us that Jesus really does have a better plan both for here and hereafter. Our calling is rooted in this God of love and we are destined to be one with God, Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

This is the eighth of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

Teresa repeats over and over again: humility is the truth. Our essential reality is that God is the Creator and we are the creature. This essential virtue helps us to recognize and accept the actual person we are before God. Humility lets us integrate this certain truth.

Humility is not about a loss of self-esteem. This is a dishonest and damaging application of humility. Such a state is disturbing and conflicted. Teresa, on the contrary, says, “Humility does not disturb or disquiet however great it may be; it comes with peace, delight, and calm…this humility expands the soul and enables it to serve God more.” (W. 10.2)

To know and embrace the humble truth about ourselves is the source of our freedom. As we break away from the bondage of the False Self, we slowly begin to see more clearly who God is. This is the essential source of our humility. With the ascendance of the True Self, we also see the truth about ourselves. Humility opens us up to the necessary personal conversion that leads to constant growth in self-knowledge. It lets us grasp the wonder of God calling us into the Mystery of Love, even given the power of the False Self. Through the gift of humility, God allows us to see the unrelenting divine embrace of mercy and love even in the midst of our many faults and failures.

Teresa has numerous statements on humility. The following one, however, seems to best capture her basic message on the topic of this virtue.

“Once I was pondering why our Lord was so fond of this virtue of humility and this thought came to me… It is because God is supreme Truth; and to be humble is to walk in truth, for it is a very deep truth that of ourselves we have nothing good but only misery and nothingness. Whoever does not understand this walks in falsehood.” (IC 6.10.7)

Merton has a practical application of the insight of Teresa. He says we seldom see the truth that would lead to the solution of our personal, social and political problems. We need to recognize that we all are more or less wrong in one way or another, we share mixed motives, self-deception, pride, self-righteousness, and a tendency to aggression not to mention hypocrisy.

The Big Lie of “Honor”
A good example of living the lie for Teresa was the dominating role of “honor” in her time. For Teresa, this was a lie that infiltrated all of society, and even religious life. It is not that much different in our day. Countless petty grievances rooted in a false sense of respect, privilege, prestige and control prohibit the path to forgiveness and reconciliation. Walking in the truth of humility frees us from this crippling false consciousness that is a singular obstacle to love of God and love of neighbor.

The Humble Father of the Two Sons
Recently, I was reflecting on the parable of the Two Sons. I began to realize that it was a powerful example of true humility in the person of the father.

The whole scene of the returning Prodigal Son is a litany of violations of the expected behavior for the father. It was totally uncouth to leave the house, and even worst, to run. The embrace was completely out of character for an older man in this culture. The fattened calf in these circumstances was simply unheard of. Every accepted ritual for an offended father was shattered resulting in a total loss of dignity. All the broken cultural norms gave further force to the father’s overwhelming cry: I love you! I forgive you! I accept you in great joy! You are back and nothing else matters. On with the party!

The same routine, in a more subtle way, was carried out in the case of the second son.

The father left the house once again in violation of the demands of his dignity. He gave no credence to the despicable description of him as a horrible and unconcerned father. The hostility and anger were met with his hand reaching out in mercy and understanding. The self-pity was countered with a declaration that all that he had was intended for his son. The withdrawal was challenged with the invitation to join the celebration.

The father had before him the clear biblical choice of life or death. On the one hand, he had the societal requirement of what was fitting behavior for a deeply offended father. He had the choice of protecting the respect and privilege appropriate to his role as a severely insulted father. It was his right to apply the painful consequences of this outrageous neglect of parental privilege. All of this was propped up by the expectations of his culture and societal rituals of parental respect. It was a non-negotiable fact that his honor must be protected. On the other hand, if he chose this set of values, it was death to his two sons.

His choice of life, driven by his humility, set him free from the crippling demands of respect and privilege demanded by society’s rigid norms. This is a clear and forceful example of a choice of the True Self over the False Self. Now, his humble presence to the two sons offered them life and freedom. It was a rich expression of God’s Truth.

Reconciling Power of Humility
All of us suffer from the biased perceptions that protect our claims of privilege, prestige and control. This is the false consciousness that strangles and blinds the possibility of reconciling love and forgiveness. Teresa has this to say about this death-dealing mentality.

“You should run a thousand miles from such expressions as: “I was right.” “They had no reason for doing this to me.” “The one who did this to me was wrong.” God deliver us from this poor way of reason. Does it seem right that our good Jesus suffered so many insults and was made to undergo so much injustice? I don’t know why the nun who doesn’t want to carry the cross, except the one that seems to her reasonable, is in the monastery.” (W 13.1-2)

To reconcile, we need to forget ourselves in humility. This frees us from the possessiveness of our works and reputation that are a blockage to serving God and living in harmony with our brothers and sisters. Here, again, we have an example of the power of the True Self in action.

The Story of God’s Mercy
Humility helps us appreciate two fundamental truths about our human condition. We are created in the image of God and union with God is our true destiny. Right at the beginning of The Interior Castle Teresa says: “We realize that the soul of a good person is nothing else but a paradise where the Lord says He finds His delight.” (IC 1.1) The other truth is a basic challenge to our true destiny. Without the mercy of God, we are caught in a helpless impasse. These two truths are at the heart of the struggle between the True Self and the False Self.

Our task is to accept this two-fold truth of our broken situation. We are helpless sinners but loved and forgiven in Christ Jesus our Savior. This is the reality rooted in the True Self. This the reality that humility opens to us as we are gradually set free from the immobilizing captivity of sin rooted in the False Self.

Hopefully, we will accept the truth of who God is and who we are. Then, we can share the truth of humility with Teresa and say: “The story of my life is the story of God’s mercy.”

John 20:19-23

Dear Friends, The feast of Pentecost is the celebration of breaking through the barriers of time and space and opening the whole world to the re-creating wonders of love. In his Passion and Death Jesus confronted evil. This was the climatic encounter of all history. Love won out!

All of a sudden, Jesus is in their midst. His message is not vengeance. Amazingly, He does not even point the finger at their cowardly collapse. His trusted disciples were too awe-struck to feel the shame. It was a “wow” moment to the thousandth degree. Jesus had risen as he said! Alleluia!

His message was direct, clear, and simple: “Peace be with you.” (Jn 20:19). His peace conveyed the treasure of forgiveness. These two gifts of peace and forgiveness are in the context of His commissioning and gifting the disciples. “‘As the Father has sent me, I send you.’ As He said this, He breathed on them and said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’” (Jn20:21-23)

That message of victory is handed over to the disciples along with the gift of the Hoy Spirit. This frightened and despairing group, fresh off their abandonment in the crisis of the Garden, now receive the peace and forgiveness of Jesus along with the ultimate gift of the Holy Spirit. The fear and confusion will now slowly grow into an unstoppable conviction of joy and fiery enthusiasm. Nothing was going to overcome their certitude in the Spirit. Nothing was going to close down their message of the Crucified and Risen Christ. Against all odds, the gift of the Holy Spirit was going to win out through these frightened, confused and disillusioned band of brothers and their sister disciples.

Receiving the Holy Spirit is a symbol of a new creation. Just as God breathed life into Adam in the Garden, so too, Jesus breathed new life into the disciples that makes them holy and leads them to conquer evil.

Luke, in today’s second reading from Acts, gives another biblical connection. The many foreigners with such a variety of languages hear in unity. This is the Spirit manifesting elimination of the division and isolation caused by the Tower of Bable.

After the reception of the Holy Spirit, the disciples’ story is very different. Fear gives way to courage and commitment. A new conviction leads them to confront power with patience and perseverance. The two-edged sword of Jesus’ gospel message cuts through the yoke of terror and cowardice. The gospel is proclaimed in spite of conflict and misunderstanding. Cultural barriers and native parochial narrowness open up to a vision of a universal community that continues to grow to this very day.

Gifted with the Holy Spirit, they join the Risen Christ in witnessing to the victory of love over evil and death. The seeds of the new creation were sown in the hearts of these very weak and pedestrian followers of Christ. They began an ever-expanding community of faith that has survived and prospered over these two thousand years.

Today, on this feast of Pentecost, we are invited again to receive the gifts of the Spirit. To do so, we need to turn away from sin which is the refusal to love. As with the first disciples, the Spirit beckons us to continually expand the horizons of our love.

The Spirit empowers and invites us to pray. The Spirit offers a peace that transcends our endless search for security in the things of the world. The Spirit allows us to break loose from the captivity of the cultural bondage to racism, sexism, a blindness to the destruction of creation, and most of all, a failure to simply love one another. Pentecost is the feast of liberation from our fears, anxieties and divisions.

The Spirit calls us to be the hands and feet and, most of all, the heart of Christ within the world of our responsibilities and relationships. We are called to be true witnesses to Jesus´ gospel message. Less we forget, a witness is one whose life’s actions speak so loudly that people cannot hear what you say.

The peace of Christ comes at a price. The patience and gentleness along with the joy and kindness and the other fruits of the Spirit are ever so precious gifts. They are possible only in a heart that is seeking reconciliation. This new life in the Spirit brings peace and forgiveness into a world ravaged by sin and death. This is the call for us on this Pentecost: transform our lives by the gift of Christ’s peace and His call to forgiveness. Slowly, we must understand that, for the Spirit, there is no limit on forgiveness and the target of inclusiveness is ever expanding and dynamic. The numerous descriptions of “those people” in our hearts have to give way a new definition of “us”. In this struggle to move out of our comfortable world, we must be open to the Spirit to find the only way that leads to the prized gift of Christ’s peace.

This is the seventh of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

When Jesus began his public ministry, the universal longing for the Messiah was the dominant reality. The question of what kind of Messiah soon became a defining element in Jesus’ life and ministry.

Jesus knew that the intensity and depth of the universal conflict of good and evil would demand that he become a suffering Messiah. As early as Mk3:6 the leaders of all sides began to plot for his death. This has become the life-giving mystery of the Christian message. When Jesus proclaimed, “the Kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe the gospel.” (Mk.1:15) few were ready to accept the Crucified Messiah as the centerpiece of that Good News of God’s love.

There was a second major obstacle to Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom. The people were anticipating a complete transformation by the sudden burst of God’s saving activity. Jesus had a different plan. He insisted that his followers be part of this divine transformation by taking up their cross and following him. This had startling implications in Jesus’ day as it does in our day. It calls for deep seated changes in how we see reality.

Transformation of Consciousness

As we continue pondering the True Self/False Self dynamic to enter more deeply into the gospel, we have seen the vital importance of self-knowledge. An important part of self-knowledge is to surface and change the values that create on our worldview. This clearly is part of the ongoing conversion process. This is called the transformation of consciousness. This is an activity of raising up and challenging false values within our mindset. Most often, these are values that we inherit and embrace with minimal awareness. They are part of our culture and ambiance. They mostly fall under the umbrella of what we call conventional wisdom.

Most of Jesus’ teaching was to challenge this conventional wisdom. His teachings and his life and death put the emphasis on God rather than self. This is at the heart of the True Self/False Self dynamic.

In this inherited worldview of conventional wisdom, mostly contrary to the gospel, we are engulfed in hidden prejudices and distortions. We are bombarded by values incompatible with the gospel. We are presented with false idols, sometimes obscure, but often clearly evident in their call to self-indulgence. We are told the right patterns of consumption will guarantee our control of reality, give us the assurance of youth, allow us to determine the future not to mention advancing our ability to deny death and to secure true and lasting happiness with the right credit card, the correct medicines and wise investments.

Something as simple as watching a sporting event or a weekly TV program offers an onslaught of consumer initiatives secretly enticing us away from the message of Jesus. We are in a very challenging situation where we have seemingly countless encounters with the consumer, indulgent and materialistic message. This is in contrast to the hour or so on Sunday, if we still attend church. For most of us, this is the only organized time we open our life to the gospel story and values.

The hidden power behind the conventional wisdom results in a false consciousness. This distorted view of reality accepts the gross neglect of the poor and marginalized, blinds us to the dehumanization of excessive consumption, trivializes a need for openness in community reducing it, often, to fear and exclusion of “the other”, draws us into an indifference toward the ongoing devastation of God’s creation for economic gain, and supports a widespread denial of death that genuinely distorts the reality of our creaturehood.

These are just a few of the many factors that nurture a worldview in constant conflict with the message of Jesus. It truly models the eternal battle of the True Self and the False Self.

The only place we will find freedom from the incessant offensive of false values is to return to the gospel. We are in constant need to renew and enhance our acceptance of Jesus’ call, “Repent and believe the Gospel!”

All of Jesus’ teaching calls for his disciples to share in his saving activity to bring about the long-awaited Kingdom of God. All his teaching leads to a personal transformation and participation in the basic battle between good and evil. The lessons of the gospel reversal where “the first shall be last…” (Mk 9:35). “to save your life you must lose your life” (Mk 8:35), “whoever wishes to be great among you will be your servant” (Mk 10:43) demand deep personal change and commitment far removed from the conventional wisdom of our day or any day. Likewise, the message of ever-expanding inclusion in “the least of my brothers or sisters…” (Mt 25:40), and the Good Samaritan (LK 10:29-37) demand active involvement in the Kingdom’s coming.

Jesus was clear. The battle of the True Self and False Self, of the weeds and the wheat will continue to the end (Mt 13:24-30). The disciple’s task is to let one’s life be a witness to bring love, light, truth and healing to a world caught in the darkness, isolation, division and destruction of hatred and selfishness.

The coming of the Kingdom continues in the faithful commitment of all followers of Christ and people of good will. Wherever there is love, there is the continuing conquest of hate, division, prejudice and all that dehumanizes. Wherever there is love, no matter how small and hidden, it is like the seed that is the smallest of seeds that blossoms into the tree for all the birds of the sky. (Mt 13:31-32).

The life lived in fidelity to the Gospel will bring God’s love to a broken world. (Jn 15). This fidelity to the Christian mission is sharing in the saving love of God. This is the ultimate reality of overcoming evil by the ever-expanding presence of love in the human heart. This

love demands service and responsible action. This love has no meaning without concern for the poor and needy. The Christian community will always be expanding the boundaries to include the forsaken and forgotten. There will be action but this action must be rooted in love to bring about God’s victory over evil. This happens as the True Self reigns within us individually and with ever-growing influence in our world. All this will not happen without deep personal prayer.

Mt 28:16-20

Dear Friends, In today’s feast of the Ascension, it is difficult for us to understand the enormity of the Apostles shock. We need a truly profound faith to grow into an honest awareness of the depth of the Apostles’ upheaval and turbulence at Jesus’s departure.

First of all, they are on their own. They had little organization and less clarity on their mission. No matter the beauty of Jesus’s comforting final words, their mentor, teacher, guide and support for three intense years was gone.

Try to imagine how alarming and distressful was the message of universality. The early Church would struggle with it for decades.

A significant part of Matthew’s Gospel was on the fulfillment of the Mosaic Law not the withdrawal from it. After a lifetime of experience and centuries of tradition, the concept of being “The Chosen People” was simply part of their Jewish DNA. Now, in a flash, they are missioned to turn everything around and upside down and inside out and preach the gospel to the heathen Gentiles.

Jesus made it clear, over and over again, his mission was to the family of Abraham. Now, in this final encounter, the mission is to “make disciples of all nations.” (Mt 28:19) It was going to take some time for the first disciples and the early Church to grasp the depth of Jesus’ call to universal inclusion. The consequent confusion is portrayed clearly in The Acts of the Apostles. To tell the truth, we have more than enough trouble accepting the stranger in our own parishes today.

Secondly, we read in the Gospel text: “when they saw him, they worshipped, but they doubted.” (Mt 28:17) While Matthew is much gentler than Mark, he too, portrays the original twelve as a flawed group of human beings. This text is an example of that. Right from the beginning, the Church was struggling with the clear limits of the human condition no matter how exalted the divine commission to preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth. The affliction of human weakness is every bit as present in the Church and its members today.

Doubt and confusion have been part of the reality of the Church down through history. There has been little time in the history of the Church that some group has not been in the process of breaking away. Infidelity and conflict have been present from the earliest times of The Act of the Apostles to the crisis of the Latin Mass today. The abuse of youth in the sex scandal in our time is just part of a long history of sin and unfaithfulness. In the Church’s long journey of sin and grace, Jesus has kept his promise to be with us in the Church until the end.

A final observation is more comforting. In Mt 1:23 we read: “Behold, a virgin shall be with child and they shall name him Emmanuel which means “God is with us.” Now again we are given this divine assurance of Jesus: “And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the ages.” (Mt 28:20)

While there has always been large numbers of problems, there always has been a more than substantial group of witnesses in the Church calling us in word and deed into the Gospel message.

Today, we also face our daily reality and have the call of Christ to live and preach the Gospel. There is no greater challenge in life if we truly respond with generosity. The obstacles are enormous. Seemingly countless of our children and friends and relatives have abandoned the Church. The young people of today seem much more inclined to find their spiritual way outside of organized religion. Our culture gets more materialistic by the hour and less inclined to take spirituality seriously. Along with these, and many other negative factors, we have the seemingly endless onslaught of the sexual abuse in the Church.

In it all, we need to cling to the promise of Emmanuel, God is with us.

The meaning of this beautiful feast of the Ascension is further captured in the words of today’s Preface of the Mass:

Christ, the mediator between God and men and women,

Judge of the world and Lord of all

Has passed beyond our sight

Not to abandon us but to be our hope.

Christ is the beginning, the head of the Church;

Where he is gone, we hope to follow.

Our hope is rooted in the reality that Jesus is with us all of the time. Our fate is not hopelessness and confusion. It is a simple commitment to live with faith and trust in a God who has a better plan. We pray in the opening prayer of the Mass of the Ascension, “May we follow him into the new creation, for his Ascension is our glory and our hope.”

We will celebrate the other great gift of the Pascal Mystery, the Holy Spirit, in next week’s feast of Pentecost!

This is the sixth of eleven reflections on Thomas Merton’s teaching on the True Self/False Self dynamic. This conflictual but enlightening relationship permeates Merton’s huge quantity of writing on the spiritual life. The basic point of the conflict is the individual’s pull toward and away from God, one’ true and ultimate destiny. Merton’s exposure of the consequences of original sin is ruthless in its intensity. This is the task of the False Self. At the same time, the pull of the True Self, the ever-present call of God’s personal and passionate love, is even more powerful. The human heart is the battlefield of this seemingly endless confrontation.

In our day, we are gifted with many different and effective programs that deal with various pathological addictions. The heart of all these movements of freedom from addiction is self-knowledge.

In the long spiritual tradition of the Church, we have shared the same basic insight. At the heart of the True Self/False Self dynamic is the critical and life-giving issue of self-knowledge.

Self-Knowledge: Key to the Spiritual Journey

While the issues of pathological addictions seem far removed from the spiritual journey of most who are not burdened in this way, the basic pattern is the same for all of us. Self-knowledge demands a relentless quest for a deeper and more extensive awareness of our personal reality. The demands and benefits of self-knowledge will never be exhausted in this lifetime. Learning what truly is going on within ourselves is a task that is never completed. One way of getting insight into the search for self-knowledge is seeing the conflict in our lives as a struggle between the False Self and the True Self, between sin and grace

The False Self involves layer after layer of self-deception, delusions and a sense of self-grandiosity that places us at the center of our consciousness. We tend to become blinded to our faults and failures and, more importantly, to the presence of God at the true center of our being. We emphasize the shortcomings of others. Jesus put it ever so clearly when he compared our blindness to a log in our eye in contrast to our stress on the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. (Mt 7:3) Self-righteousness dominates our worldview. As we become aware of the false values flowing from our fragmented heart, we find ourselves facing a fork in the road.

We have a choice of life or death. We choose death when we double down on the clamoring of the False Self for more attention. We choose life when we open ourselves to the mercy of God which draws us toward the True Self. At the heart of this decision is the perennial challenge of knowing ourselves.

Teresa of Avila was unyielding in declaring the importance of self-knowledge as our guide for the path to God in the center of our being. In one of her many statements on self-knowledge she said:

“Well now, it is foolish to think that we will enter heaven without entering ourselves, reflecting on our misery and what we owe God and begging Him often for mercy.” (IC 2.1.11)

Many of the gospel mandates are an expression of this practice of leaving the False Self of our self-centeredness and moving on to the True Self which is seeking God at our center. In Mark we read: “If anyone wants to be first, he must make himself last of all.” (Mk 9:35) Matthew tells us: “Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.” (Mt 10:39) Again, John says: “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains a grain of wheat, but if it dies, it produces much fruit.” (Jn 12:24) Finally, Matthew adds: “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” (Mt 16:24)

Conclusion

Teresa of Avila offers a wonderful vision of the connection between the True Self/False Self dynamic and self-knowledge. For her, self-knowledge always is a critical component in one’s search for God. It is a movement from the False Self to the True Self.

In the First Dwelling Places of her classic, The Interior Castle, the individual has the first glimpse of a life beyond the crippling confines of the False Self.

In the Second Dwelling Places the life-giving forces of the True Self make an initial thrust in one’ consciousness. This leads to the beginning of a prayer life and an opening conversion. Likewise, growth in self-awareness lets one see the first stages of evil in one’s life. Even in these minimal phases, the acceptance of one’s sinfulness is a real breakthrough.

These early steps away from the blinding control of the False Self sow the seeds of freedom in the True Self’s rise to consciousness. This is the path to greater self-knowledge.

This self-knowledge, with the shocking realization of one’s sinfulness, leads to a rich experience in prayer and spiritual progress in the Third Dwelling Places. Here there is the introduction into a baffling paradox: real spiritual progress flows from deeper self-knowledge of one’s sinfulness. This, in fact, is a new insight to the truly deceptive bondage of the False Self. We are on the road to learning that we are truly sinners, but loved and forgiven sinners called to journey to freedom and joy in our new ability to live out our True Self in the footsteps of Jesus. This program continues in the contemplative shift that calls us into the remaining Dwelling Places of The Interior Castle.

John 14:15-21

Dear Friends, As we draw close to this Easter Season, it is good to reflect on The Acts of the Apostles. Only in the Easter season do we have the first reading from The Acts. Every other Sunday the first reading is from the Hebrew Scriptures.

The Acts is a book about the birth and growth of the Church. It also is a revelation of what happens to people when they understand and our committed to the Pascal Mystery, the Death and Resurrection of Jesus.

Jesus could have made many promises to the first disciples. He could have them fulfill their early dreams of success, power, privilege and wealth. He could have told them of easy triumph and great admiration among an ever-expanding body of believers. None of these scenarios fit Jesus’s agenda.

His message was to follow Him on the Road to Jerusalem and take up your cross. This was conflict and confusion. This was rejection and death. The Acts follows this script rather clearly.

On the other hand, Jesus did promise the Paraclete to guide them in the way of the truth and the way of love just how Jesus was so faithful in embracing his Passion, Death and Resurrection.

The Acts of the Apostles has two main characters, Peter and Paul. There are a few idyllic moments at the beginning where all are resting in harmony and peace. They are short lived. Quickly there is a shift to the reality so expressive of the human condition in the parable of the weeds and the wheat.

A couple holds back on giving all the proceeds of a sale of property to the common purse. They die on the spot. The Greek widows quickly find themselves the victims of prejudice in the not all perfect new Christian community. Both Peter and Paul find themselves questioned about their orthodoxy by the Jerusalem home office. In the opinion of many, their openness to foreigners is dangerous to the faith.

This issue of accepting Gentile believers led to the major split in the early community. The volatile choice that confronts the new community in a very powerful way is this: Is the new reality of Jesus’ message simply and exclusively a fulfillment of the Mosaic Law or is it a completely new reality. This was a challenge to a cultural transformation that became painful, divisive, and violent. However, in the end, it became totally liberating. Peter and Paul were challenged at every level by the explosiveness of this fundamental and formative issue that gave birth to the Church. At the same time, they were persecuted by the Jewish leaders.

The results were frequent jail time, assassination attempts, constant conflict and truth squads who were destructive and brutal. Paul had to often escape in secrecy to save his life. More than once, he was beaten to the point of death. He was lucky in this. Stephen and many other early Christians were not so lucky. They were martyred.

As the story in Acts progressed, it became clearer that the Paraclete that Jesus promised and delivered had a powerful role. Just as Jesus had become the way and the life and the truth for the first disciples, the Holy Spirit became the way, life and truth for the developing reality of the early Church. The Spirit was guiding them through the tumult and persecution.

Yet in the midst of it all this conflict and confusion, decisions were made. The Gospel was proclaimed. The Church eventually embraced new cultures and new peoples. The journey was neither smooth nor straightforward. When both Peter and Paul died after decades of preaching the Gospel, there were at most several thousand faithful Christians. Any Papal Mass on the road these days will have at least twenty to thirty times that many people in attendance.

Yet the seeds were sown in the lives and witness of Peter and Paul. They were true believers who walked their difficult journey with a sense of joy and wonder in the Risen Christ. They took to heart Christ’s words in today’s Gospel from John, “I will not leave you orphans; I will come to you…whoever has my commandments and observes them is the one who loves me. And whoever loves me, will be loved by my Father and I will love him and reveal myself to him.” (Jn 14:18,21)

For Peter and Paul, the concluding act of Christ, the Death and Resurrection, was a consuming reality that filled their hearts with a fire of love that drove them to preach Christ in the midst of chaos, confusion and discord. This preaching became a source of peace and direction. It spread a sense of hope and faithfulness that grounded a new Church in truth and love.

We need to take to heart today’s Gospel passage and the message of this Easter season. If we do, it will lead us to discover the peace and strength that comes from the Risen Christ. The circumstances of our Church today share much of the same chaos and turmoil. We have the scandal of sex abuse, the division the Christian denominations, the curse of clericalism and the fear of a more powerful and meaningful role for women and the beat goes on.

But we are not orphans. We need to turn to the Risen Christ and pray for the gift of the Spirit and the power to love one another. This will open the way in our search for His direction and guidance. There is no doubt, we will find the way in loving one another!

Praying Alone Together

SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, PRAYER AND THE CALL OF THE GOSPEL -1

Teresa of Avila: Doctor of the Church and Superb Teacher of Prayer

The Experience of God

THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

Mt 10: 37-42

TWELFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt 10:26-33.

ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt 9:36-10:8

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-11

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-10

The Three Virtues

THE FEAST OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

John 6:51-58

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-9

Prayer: Pathway to Personal Renewal

Effects of Prayer

TRINITY SUNDAY

John 3:16-18

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-8

PENTECOST

John 20:19-23

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-7

Transformation of Consciousness

THE FEAST OF THE ASCENSIÓN

Mt 28:16-20

THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-6

Self-Knowledge: Key to the Spiritual Journey

THE SIXTH SUNDAY OF EASTER

John 14:15-21

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