SEVENTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Matthew 13:44-52

Dear Friends, Many scholars of the Bible say today’s parable of the treasure is the most important of all the parables. It begins with the statement, “The kingdom of heaven is like…” (Mt. 13:44). “The kingdom of heaven” is at the center of Jesus’ teaching and ministry. It is God’s plan in Jesus to overcome evil with love. It something God is doing not something we possess or acquire. The kingdom frees us from the consequences of sin. It is the movement toward restoring the total harmony and goodness of Paradise. Jesus’ miracles all manifest God’s saving presence bringing this anticipated wholeness and freedom. The ultimate expression of the inflowing of this divine power is in the conquest of death in the Resurrection.

The kingdom is God’s gift. We do not earn it but we need to be open to its call. The kingdom allows us to enter and participate in the very life of God. The kingdom is walking with Jesus. It is letting the values of the gospel message fill our heart and life. This great action of God is like our winning the lottery of the everlasting values that are so in contrast to the passing and deceiving values of the lottery of our materialistic dreams.

The kingdom is not something we do. It is God calling us to participate in God’s saving action in our daily lives. It is our sharing in the action of the kingdom. The threefold action of today’s parable is finding-selling-buying. It is basic method of how we participate in the life of God. It is the process of our personal transformation. This means moving from the deceiving world of our self-absorption to the truthful world where God is the center of reality. This affects everything that we experience in a new way The treasure before us is the Good News of Jesus. It is the wonder of being able to love and be loved. This invites us into an entirely new world of service and compassion, reconciliation and healing, mercy and justice.

In chapter thirteen of Matthew the phrase “kingdom of heaven” appears nine times. So, the question for us is, how does the simple little story of the found treasure connect us to this great saving and liberating action of God revealed in Jesus? The parable of the treasure, more clearly than most other parables, tells us how we experience God and what we need to do to respond to this glorious call.

The finding is the very common human encounter with someone or something. The encounter touches the deepest hunger in the human heart. It might be an event as profound as falling in love, having a child or losing a loved one. Or it may be a bit more mundane like deciding to go to college or becoming more active in the parish or community. Endless expressions of this finding are all part of our human journey. They all may be simple or profound, nevertheless they are the action of God’s grace. God is never finished with the dynamic of his calling and coming into our life.

To get hold of this great gift of God, we need to sell. We need to make space in our heart. We need to die to our comfort and control. Our responsibility is to accept the fact that our little world needs a real change. We need to expand our horizons. In the end, selling costs no less than everything because it makes space for God and space for us to operate according to God’s will.

The final step is buying. When we accept the challenge, we become free and empowered to accept a new world, a new reality where God takes a more prominent place of honor. This leads us to action for the kingdom.

The finding-selling-buying process is an essential part of any authentic spiritual life, our search for God. The most critical part is this. All creatures either help us to seek God or they are an obstacle. Our joy is to bring all these relationships to people, things, ideas and whatever else occurs in our life into proper order. All either help us or hinder us in our quest for God. When we have our finding-selling-buying in order, we are sharing in the great action of God that is the kingdom.

The threefold process never ends. It is all leading to a personal and social transformation called the kingdom of heaven in the Gospel of St. Mathew.

The parable of the treasure with its simplicity exposes how we experience God in the normal course of our daily life. It is an unending call that comes from a gracious God to tap the deepest hunger in our restless hearts. The ultimate and most complete expression of the treasure is Jesus.

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SIXTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

St. Matthew 13:24-30 

Dear Friends, Today’s parable of the weeds and the wheat, like all the parables, speaks to us of Jesus’ main message, the coming of God’s kingdom, as we enter into the parable, we begin to learn how we experience the presence and action of God in our daily life. The basic conflict of the weeds and the wheat, of good and evil, permeates all of our reality.

It is clear that God is in charge of the harvest. We tend to take over the job. Most of us have at least a Master’s degree in determining the good guys from the bad guys. Jesus would rather that we let the Father take on that task. That is why in Jesus’ teaching, a turned cheek is much more the priority than a clenched fist.

I had my introduction into this parable of the weeds and the wheat when I was a sophomore in high school. It was the time of the McCarthy hearings on TV. The politics of the day stressed the infiltration of Communists into our government and society. I was very interested in this topic.

At first, it was very confusing because there were two items that were very clear in my South Side Irish ghetto. Communists were as bad as you could get and Catholics were good. As the TV political drama evolved, I slowly experienced an assault on my Catholic prejudice. Even though Senator McCarthy was against the Communists and a Catholic, he was being labelled as the bad guy. I painfully began to realize he was indeed the bad guy, the really bad guy. His broad and indiscriminate strokes of accusation left a long path of innocent victims. Justice got lost in the heat of the quest for political advantage. Eventually, he was censored by the Senate. This was one of only three such condemnations in the history of our country.

This was the beginning of a lifetime journey where the clear black and white of my world had to give way to an acceptance of the grey of a complex world, a world where the weeds and wheat were growing side by side.

Among other things, this parable is calling us to an ever-expanding gospel vision of including and accepting others. The summons of Jesus into the kingdom very much includes sinners. We have no right to do less. God is calling us to share God’s patience and mercy. Our heart is a field with plenty of weeds that incline us to divide and separate and isolate and most of all, to judge. The parable of the weeds and the wheat open up the mystery of the justice and mercy of God inviting us into an ever-expanding program of inclusion and forgiveness.

If I just take the topics of race, sexual orientation and respect for women in my own personal experience, I can see an abundance of blindness, ignorance, open hostility and profound prejudice ebbing and flowing to a very painful evolution of change. The coming of the kingdom has slowly challenged me to grow in tolerance, trust and patience. Self-knowledge only comes with this openness to God’s call to be compassionate and patient. Self-knowledge will always reveal a heart blossoming with a full harvest of both the weeds and the wheat. The struggle to live in a loving way with both will continue to the end.

The guidance of today’s parable will lead us to separate evil from the evildoer, sin from the sinner. We are all better off nurturing the wheat by living the gospel. Too much energy goes into the weeds as we sit in judgement of our brothers and sisters. We are all better off if our main task is following the meek and humble Christ. God is quite capable of discerning how to deal with the weeds within us personally and within our sisters and brothers. We need to grow in the awareness that the true power of God is in God’s mercy. This shines out in Jesus on the cross.

This is why the gospel approach to the endless encounters with evil calls for a different approach we need to proclaim a Jesus of mercy and compassion. We need to offer an open hand rather than a closed heart.

St. Teresa of Avila had a very gifted and graced understanding of herself. Even though she eventually would become recognized as the first woman Doctor of the Church and a famous Carmelite saint, she clearly saw her weeds. She knew her life was a gift from God. She said often, the story of her life was ultimately the story of God’s mercy. She truly had tolerance for others, trust in God and patience with herself. She understood, as we need to understand today, that God’s kingdom is coming and with it comes the love and mercy and justice revealed in Jesus. In the meanwhile, God wants us to be the faithful labors of the harvest.

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SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, PRAYER AND THE CALL OF THE GOSPEL -4

Teresa of Avila and the Importance of Self-Knowledge

In the special section on the prayer of the four waters in the book of her Life, Teresa has a rich quote on self-knowledge:

“This path of self-knowledge must never be abandoned, nor is there on this journey a soul so much a giant that it has no need to return often to the stage of an infant…Along this path of prayer, self-knowledge and the thought of one’s sins is the bread with which all palates must be fed.” (Life Ch 13:15)

The Loving and Merciful Creator And The Loved and Forgiven Creature

Teresa identified two elements as the foundation of her spirituality. The first was her sinfulness. Through self-knowledge, she slowly accepted the limits of her ability to break loose of her brokenness. Through the growing light of God’s presence within her, she truly saw herself as a world class sinner. This is one of great ironies of the spiritual life. The more we grow in love with God, the more we are mindful of our personal sinfulness. Her sense of sin centered on the time wasted in so many ways that kept her from loving Jesus.

Secondly, she realized she was loved and forgiven in spite of her deeply flawed condition. This is why Teresa held self-knowledge in such esteem. The path of self-knowledge gradually opened Teresa to the grandeur of God and her total dependence on God. She was the creature caught in sin. Nevertheless, she experienced herself as both forgiven and loved as a child of God. Her ever-expanding awareness of herself as a sinful creature let her realize that she lived in a sea of mercy. Self-knowledge was a critical component of Teresa’s fundamental grasp of her reality as a sinner both loved and forgiven. This experience motivated Teresa to place God as the loving and merciful center of her reality. At the same time, her self-importance diminished constantly as her love for God, and consequently, her love for her neighbor, intensified.

Self-Knowledge: Key to the Spiritual Journey

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, fallacies 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, blind 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 pointed our inability to see the log in our own eye yet totally aware of the splinter in our neighbor’s eye. (Mt 7:3) Self-righteousness dominates our worldview. As we become mindful 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 the special avenue 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.” (The Interior Castle 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) The Gospels contain numerous other statements with the same message. Fundamental to all these teachings of Jesus is the treasure of knowing ourselves in relation to God. This is self-knowledge.

The Importance of Prayer

Prayer becomes an energizing force on the passage to this life-giving self-knowledge. Prayer is an invitation to redirect our lives. The encounter with God’s Word and God’s will in deep personal prayer is our ticket to our true destiny at the center where God awaits. Meaningful reflection and prayer draw us into the light of the Scriptures which often open new horizons in our normal awareness. This unlocks the way to deeper self-knowledge.

This new spiritual maturity leads to novel ways of accepting others. Our relationships and responsibilities move out of a narrow world of self-concern. They grow into a more spacious stance of openness, acceptance and service for others.

For Teresa, prayer was the answer to almost all problems. However, she had an expansive notion of prayer. It took place in the context of the relationship between God at the center, our person and our life experience. In the interaction of these elements in prayer, self-knowledge has a pivotal role. The mystery of God unfolds in the dynamic of the person’s prayer and life experience. Self-understanding brings this process together. The movement, in accepting the reality of God’s place and our place, brings God’s mercy to the forefront. This is what the spiritual life hopes to accomplish. As she advanced in self-knowledge, the great Carmelite Saint became more convinced in her oft-repeated belief: “My life is the story of God’s mercy.”

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FIFTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt 13:1-9 

Dear Friends Todays message of the Sower is the first of three Sundays proclaiming parables from chapter thirteen of St. Matthew.

A parable is simply a story taken from the ordinary events of daily life that leads to a deep insight into reality. Even though the parables are prone to different interpretations, they all lead to an insight into the main message of Jesus, the kingdom of God. They unveil the saving presence of God in our ordinary human experience.

Today's parable is about the Sower of the seeds. A few facts about the agricultural practice at the time of Jesus are very helpful in coming to terms with the message of the parable.

First of all, the casting of the seed so indiscriminately does not seem like a bright idea. However, it makes a little more sense when one realizes the Jewish custom was to plow after the sowing. Most of the world does the opposite.

Secondly, a return between eight and ten percent was considered a very good yield on the seed sown.

In todays parable of the Sower. we are invited to compare the Word we receive to a seed. Each week we are summoned to once again hear the Word. The Church offers us the liturgy as a fruitful ground to encourage the growth of the Word in our heart and in our life. It is our task to let the Word blossom into the fruitful growth of the kingdom of service and love.

The parable of the Sower lets us know there was a range of responses to Jesus message in the early church. The same is true today. Even more so is it true in the depth of our hearts where the acceptance of Gods Word is always in turbulence and ambiguity. We need to continue the struggle to be generous enough to produce the thirtyfold and sixtyfold and one hundredfold.

For Jesus, the primary challenge of the kingdom relates to the human heart. It is in the heart where one resolves the struggle between sin and grace, love and hatred, inclusion and exclusion and, in todays example, between the weeds and the wheat.

Consequently, we can enter into the world of Jesus' parable and draw some true wisdom. The seeds are cast on all kinds of soil. Jesus' message is for all people, no matter what their circumstances. The universal call is at the heart of Jesus' message. Everyone is welcome at the table.

Of course, "all people" has always been a difficult choice for all Christians down through history. inevitably having a group of "those people" or outsiders who were not to be included has been a universal challenge for all followers of Christ. For centuries it has been the racial issue. Many decades ago, it was the Protestants and divorced. Recently, the gays and the Muslims were at the top of the charts for "those people."

Today, we are filling the void made by progress in societal understanding and acceptance of yesterdays rejects with new rejects, Today, transgenders are moving to become the top target of rejection. The fractured human heart will make sure we will never run short of groups to isolate and discard.

Another point to consider was the return of thirtyfold, sixtyfold, and one hundredfold. These numbers are outrageous. In the time of Jesus, an eight to ten percent level of return was considered very productive. Even more outrageous is God's love. The heart is the home of that good soil that opens up to incredible new possibilities even in this dark valley of tears.

The parable of the Sower reveals a mystery in life, a possibility of an explosion of love that is hidden in the ordinary flow of events. Reality is impregnated with a graciousness and giftedness beyond our dreams when we embrace the call of Jesus. The upshot of the yes to Jesus leads to a new life of freedom and reconciliation that guides us in seeking to create a new world of justice, healing and peace. Acceptance of Jesus' call is the transition to an innovative world of acceptance and inclusion, the beginning of God's reign here and now. In Jesus' lottery, the winning combination is 30, 60, and 100. The prize is in the victory of love over hate, peace over violence, harmony over division and a human heart with a deep sense of wholeness and integrity and freedom.

Todays parable of the Sower celebrates the universality of the gospel. There are no outsiders in Jesus agenda. It is a program of indiscriminate love and tolerance.

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SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, PRAYER AND THE CALL OF THE GOSPEL -3

Teresa and the Humanity of Christ 

Part Two

Devotion to the Passion

In responding to her mistake about the importance of the humanity of Christ, Teresa soon moved to a great love for the Passion and Death of Christ.

For Teresa, this emphasis on the suffering and death of Jesus gave her an anchor to embrace the deeper dimensions of the spiritual life. It let her be more connected and more committed to her everyday human experience.

Here are a series of quotes from the Holy Mother that enlighten the stages of her growth in devotion to the Passion:

“I could only think about Christ as He was as man…The soul can place itself in the presence of Christ and grow accustomed to being inflamed with love for is sacred humanity…this is an excellent way of making progress, and in a very short time.” (Life, Ch, 9:6; Ch12:2; Ch 13:22)

Teresa understood that the movement in all of Jesus’ life was a faithfulness to walk the Road to Jerusalem. Teresa recognized that in his Passion and Death, Jesus embraced all of humanity’s suffering and experience of evil. Jesus not only heard the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth; Jesus entered into this agony wholeheartedly. It is in the heartbreak and the mockery and the rejection and the crown and nails that Jesus became our cry for justice, for peace, for healing and reconciliation.

In her devotion to the Passion, Teresa was more connected to life than today’s headlines. The suffering and death of Jesus will always be the clearest expression of commitment and discipleship. There is no more concrete bond to our broken world and our broken lives than the Crucified Christ. Teresa understood that walking with Jesus always must move forward to the Cross on hill on the way to the glory of the Resurrection.

The Importance of Humility

It is at this stage of development, the genuine devotion to the Passion and Death of Christ, that Teresa returns to one of her most consistent teachings. “Since this edifice is built entirely on humility, the closer one comes to God, the more progress there must be in this virtue; and if there is no progress in humility, everything is going to be ruined.” (Life Ch 12:4)

Even when we are making real progress, we will eventually face the challenge of compromise. This is the ego’s desperate maneuver to maintain control. We are driven persistently to seek a space between the costly demands of the Gospel and the comfort of the world. We subtly create our own gospel and make Jesus over in our image. This produces the heavy burden of mediocrity. This has been a truly destructive element throughout Christian history.

We should let Peter’s example encourage us in this struggle that is the human curse of ambivalence. In spite of Peter’s total failure in the threefold rejection, Jesus did not give up on him. It is the same for us. He is always calling us to life. Each crisis manifests a deeper insight into the depth of our weakness and the magnitude of God’s merciful love revealed in Christ Crucified and Christ Risen.

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)

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SAINT TERESA OF AVILA, PRAYER AND THE CALL OF THE GOSPEL -2

Teresa and the Humanity of Christ
Parte one

One of the great blessings of today’s spirituality is the rich and challenging teachings of Vatican II. It is the steady effort to bring Jesus back to the center of our search for God. This venture of centering on Christ has always been an element of every authentic renewal in our long and varied Christian history

Teresa says one of her biggest mistakes was thinking reflection and awareness about the humanity of Christ was only for beginners. She came to understand the centrality of Jesus’ role and deeply regretted her error. Afterwards, she always put Jesus at the center of her personal prayer and her teachings and writings no matter how advanced her spiritual development.

In the book of her Life, there are special chapters, eleven to twenty two, on the four stages of prayer. Here, she has a special message on the importance of focusing on the humanity of Christ.

“The soul can place itself in the presence of Christ and grow accustomed to being inflamed with love for His sacred humanity. It can keep Him ever present and speak with Him asking for its needs and complaining of it labors, being glad with him in its enjoyments and not forgetting Him because of them, trying to speak to Him not through written prayers but with words that conform to its desires and needs,” (Life ch12:2)

Teresa has these types of statements on the sacred humanity throughout all of her writings. She always highlights the need for the encounter with Christ as an essential part of our search for our true self and for God.

Here is a statement from John of the Cross that is especially supportive of Teresa’s teaching on the sacred humanity. It describes the beginners’ need to encounter the Jesus of the Gospels.

“First, have a habitual desire to imitate Christ in all your deeds by bringing your life into conformity with His. You must then study His life in order to know how to imitate Him and behave in all events as He would,” (Ascent Book 1: Ch 13, #3)

Teresa found the humanity of Jesus truly helpful in developing a balanced approach to contemplation and all of her spirituality. Jesus was the center of her life and prayer. The Gospels were the primary source of her prayer. She was continually proclaiming to all the urgency of being friends with Jesus and lovers of Christ.

This commitment to Christ will always involve the cross. “Whether in the beginning, the middle or the end, all have their crosses even though these crosses be different. For all who follow Christ, if they do not want to get lost, must walk on this path that He trod.” (Life 11:5)

Teresa knew well that only in Jesus of the Gospels can we find genuine righteousness in our Christian faith. Every age must face deceptions and cultural flaws pulling 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 power of the ego is constantly attacking our Gospel commitment like a cancer. It is eating away at the Gospel truth. This leads to an image of Jesus far less demanding than the Jesus of the four Evangelists. This false Jesus has been an ever-repeating occurrence in the history of our faith.

Teresa taught that we always need to return to Jesus for the light and the truth, no matter how uncomfortable or challenging. Jesus alone is the source of all true integrity in life.

Taking the Risk of Jesus: “Not my will,, but thy will be done.”

We constantly have to keep our eyes on Jesus. We have to let his word enter into our mind and heart to transform our inner being.

The Gospel reveals the basis of all authentic 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.

Teresa teaches us that the heart of the encounter with Jesus is a transition moving from our vision for happiness, from our priorities, to Jesus’ vision and call. This initial conversion repeats itself many times. It expands our world as we stay faithful with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem. Prayer leads to an ever more generous acceptance of God’s will. A new and more mature experiences of prayer, flowing from the series of conversions, empowers us to live in a way that is genuinely guided by God’s will. The demands of justice and the environment are always knocking at the door of our heart as are the needs of our neighbor. This openness to our life’s circumstances is how faithfulness grows within us.

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FOURTEENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

Mt 11:25-30 

Dear Friends, In today’s gospel passage, we have an attractive invitation to be set free of our burdens. We will do this when we discover the true center of human existence. This a movement outside ourselves and in the God Jesus is revealing.

Many times, as a pastor, I counseled people that God does not allow us to be burdened beyond our ability to accept life’s troubles. More than a few times I got the response, “Well, God hasn’t checked my situation recently because I am on overload!” The message of today’s readings assures us God is up to date on the state of affairs in each of our lives. Indeed, the Father has sent Jesus to share our difficulties and trials and to show us a new way and a new wisdom that transforms our burdens into freedom.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus presents himself as one who truly knows the Father and his compassionate and saving will. When Jesus is inviting us to come to him, he is inviting us to make a choice not only against the religious leaders but of all human deception and distortion down through history even into the present day. He is inviting us to make a choice against the manipulation of the Law that the Priests, Scribes and Pharisees used to maintain power, privilege and wealth. We are invited to come to Jesus, free of the burdens of any and all misleading versions of the Law. Jesus did not offer the burdensome yoke of the slanted twisting of the Law. His was the yoke of the faithful and loving obedience to the will of God. With Jesus, we are invited into the sea of mercy and love that the true understanding of the Law produces. The honest acceptance of the Law brings genuine rest and freedom. The rest Jesus promises is not the lack of work and stress. The rest Jesus is proclaiming is rooted in God’s Day of rest on the seventh day of Creation, the Sabbath. This is the fullness of life in the kingdom. This rest is here and now, in this life, and it opens into eternal life.

Jesus says “Come to me.” (Mt 11:28). Jesus offered not the burdensome yoke created by the religious leaders of his day. As the full and privileged source of the complete revelation of the Father, the yoke he offers “is easy, and my burden light.” (Mt 11:30). We are to take his yoke; a yoke rooted in love not obligation. This is far different than the yoke of the leaders with its various intricacies, and even deceptions, of a legal system gone astray. This was the case in Jesus’ day and is often the same distortion in our day.

Jesus’ teachings all go beyond the rituals and external dictates. It is an invitation to the depths of our being. The message of Jesus is always centered on the engagement of the heart and relationships that are true and meaningful.

Where will we find rest for our souls? Where will we discover the peace that our hearts long for? Where will we encounter the wisdom that will set us free? Jesus opens the way in his invitation. “Come to me.” (Mt 11:28) Jesus is inviting us to embrace him and his summons to love. He is calling us to the depths of righteousness in the heart. He is calling us to live in openness and acceptance with all persons. He is calling us to cast off the burden of the endless “dos and don’ts” and to make our way into the freedom that true love offers.

When we come to Jesus, we will find another way to live. In Jesus’ way, we are engulfed in a love that enlightens us with the wisdom to see the way of truth and love. The continuing struggle to break loose of self-interest, to welcome the commitment to sacrifice and service, to eliminate the security rooted in excessive possessions, these preferences all lead to finding rest for our souls. “Yes, my yoke is easy and my burden light.” (Mt 11:30). Jesus calls us to a love of God and love of neighbor that promises joy and peace now and everlasting life in the future.

Love is the driving force behind Jesus’ transforming promise to ease the burden of life. We need to keep our eyes fixed on Jesus because he holds the seeds of wisdom leading us into the fullness of the Father’s kingdom.

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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.

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THIRTEENTH SUNDAY IN ORDINARY TIME

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.

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TWELFTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

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.

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ELEVENTH SUNDAY OF ORDINARY TIME

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.

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THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-11

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)

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THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-10

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.

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THE FEAST OF THE BODY AND BLOOD OF CHRIST

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.

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THE FALSE SELF AND THE TRUE SELF-9

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.

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