Author: DVO

Questions. We all have them. It started for many of us before we could even speak as we explored the new world we had been brought into. Part of our makeup as human beings is this desire to know. It drives so much of who and what we become. While I never realized some of my childhood dreams, the journey of trying to bring them to fulfillment taught me many truths about life, one of them being the importance of staying steadfast to the truths I learned. I am reminded about the truth my father taught me of “first things first” and how distractions from the task at hand can lead to unfortunate consequences. This reality of distraction can be easily seen in the picture of the young boy standing in the outfield of a baseball game, his attention captured by a bumble bee feeding on a flower in the field. Suddenly a fly ball is hit his way, but he misses it because his focus was on the bee and not on the game [been there before].When we allow ourselves as adult believers, to become distracted from what Christ taught us, we can begin to drift away from him. This can lead to apathy, spiritual neglect, prayerlessness, and detachment from God’s Word. This is what we hear in the Lord’s words to the disciples today; stay steadfast to what I have spoken to you; remain in me so that I will remain in you.

What is a father? What is a dad?  What does your father do for you simply by fathering you and then do to you by his love and his absence, by his care and his neglect, and by his virtues and his weaknesses? If the Neo-Freudians are right, then your father and your mother have very different roles in the formation of your person. It is the mother who is your symbiotic link to life, and it’s from her, much more so than from your father, that you get your body, your link to the earth, and, to the extent that you have this, your sense of being loved, wanted, cradled, and cherished. It’s she who gestates, carries, and then licks, cradles, and nourishes the child. No child or adult ultimately ever forgets this and the constrictions or freedoms in our hearts are very linked to our mothers. But it is the father who mediates authority and who must give the child both permission to enjoy life and the challenge of discipline. It’s the father who must, especially by the way he himself lives, model for the child the correct combination of pleasure and renunciation. It’s from him, more so than from the mother, that the child learns the combination of release and control, submission to authority, and the freedom to walk one’s own path. A father’s task is also key in initiating you into adulthood, in helping to lead you beyond being the little boy or the little girl towards the adult, the man or the woman. A father does this to you by, first of all, showing you in his own life how erotic energy and warrior energy (your energy for love and your energy to fight) should flow into each other and form some harmony so that all the boundless and chaotic forces within you can be contained, focused, and then creatively opened and spent for the service of God and community. The father must show his child the purpose of both sexual and warrior energy, namely, how enjoyment and creativity blend with courageous self-renunciation and how erotic and warrior energy merge in the fight to protect the community (especially its weakest members). Your father must teach you how to be both a lover and a warrior.

My own father, imperfect as are all human fathers, didn’t always find, nor radiate, the perfect balance between enjoyment and discipline, lover and warrior, sexual enjoyment and self-abnegation. As one of his sons, I also do not always know how to walk the tightrope, and there is sloppiness between laziness and overwork, love and anger, self-indulgence, and masochism. Sometimes, I can protect the community, and sometimes, I cannot even protect myself. But I have steadiness, too, sometimes, beyond the slopping around. I had a good dad. He both loved and fought, and he was sometimes too hard on himself, but sometimes he thoroughly enjoyed his life.

“Joy is the gist of the Christian Good News. Yet only if we open wide our senses will we be able to drink from the source of this joy. Only then will the Good News prove truly good and ever new.” The above quote comes from a book by Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, The Way of Silence: Engaging the Sacred in Everyday Life. One of the takeaways from the book is the connection between the joy Jesus speaks to in today’s reading and gratefulness. Brother David makes the case that most of us go through life missing its true splendor because “We plod along half-blind, half-deaf, with all our senses throttled, and numbed by habituation. How much joy is lost on us? How many surprises do we miss? It is as if Easter eggs had been hidden under every bush and we were too lazy to look for them.” Brother David goes on to say that “joy goes beyond happiness because joy is not dependent on what happens. Joy springs from gratefulness, and gratefulness is the key to living life in its fullness. Here is a little exercise Brother David offers to help us understand gratefulness in a way that will lead to experiencing “complete” joy. Tomorrow morning, before you open your eyes, reflect on the reality that, at this very instant, there are millions of blind people in the world. Linger on that thought for a few moments. Now, open your eyes. You are most likely initially grateful that you can still see. Brother David says, “As soon as we stop taking our eyesight for granted, gifts spring into our eyes which we did not even recognize as gifts before. To recognize a gift as gift is the first step towards gratefulness.” Since gratefulness is the key to joy, we hold the key to joy in our own hands, the key to what we most desire.

Henri Nouwen writes that Jesus invites us to abide in his love, which means to dwell with all that we are in him. It is an invitation to total belonging, full intimacy, and unlimited being with him. “The anxiety that plagues me shows that a great part of me is not yet ‘abiding’ in Jesus. My mind and heart keep running away from my true dwelling place, and they explore strange lands where I end up in anger, resentment, lust, fear, and anguish. I know that living a spiritual life means bringing every part of myself home to where it belongs. Jesus describes the intimacy that he offers as the connectedness between the vine and its branches. I long to be grafted onto Jesus as a branch onto the vine so that all my life comes from the vine. In communion with Jesus, the vine, my little life can grow and bear fruit. I know it, but I do not live it. Somehow, I keep living as if there are other sources of life that I must explore outside of Jesus. But Jesus keeps saying, ‘Come back to me, give me all your burdens, all your worries, fears, and anxieties. Trust that with me, you will find rest.’ I am struggling to listen to that voice of love and to trust in its healing power. My true spiritual work is to let myself be loved, fully and completely, and to trust that in that love, I will come to the fulfillment of my vocation. I keep trying to bring my wandering, restless, anxious self home so that I can rest there in the embrace of love.”

When Christ’s story gets to his passion, the very darkness of the world seems to capture many people. This most horrific suffering, death by crucifixion, represents the worst part of our humanness. Yet, in the moments leading up to his suffering, Jesus is not sitting in fear worrying about himself; he is thinking of his disciples and his desire for them to have peace. We will read later in the Gospel of John on how the resurrected Jesus appears to the disciples who were huddled together in a locked room in fear. We know that Jesus came through the locked doors twice and stood amid them and said, “Peace be with you.” Jesus wants all of his disciples to have peace, to be deeply joyful, and to have a faith that is unshakable. Jesus’ life points to his desire for our true happiness. Time and again, he went into all the dark, taboo places and took in God’s light and love so that peace and joy would reign. He desires peace and joy for all—the kind of peace that is not of the world, the kind of joy that is not of the world, and the kind of faith that is not of the world. This Jesus gives freely to all who love and follow him. This promise of Jesus is our hope when we feel overwhelmed by life’s problems. Life offers us many joys, but it has its problematic side, too. We might have to do something that seems beyond our strength. Perhaps we’re burdened by the unrealistic expectations of others. Whatever our difficulties might be, Jesus is with us to help us through them. Our trust in his presence helps us mitigate our fear and strengthen our hope.

There is a reality that most Christians do not want to discuss or acknowledge, for it speaks to a topic that many find laughable or embarrassing to acknowledge. There is a great battle being fought each day for us. It is what C.S. Lewis wonderfully explored in ‘The Screwtape Letters’—being captured by the devil. The letters, written by a devil named Screwtape to his nephew, a young devil named Wormwood, are all about Wormwood’s tempting of a young man, the patient, to move away from God—the Enemy as Screwtape calls him—and embrace sin. Wormwood seeks to entice the patient [us] to live a life of sin, a life that separates us from communion with the Lord. It involves conduct on our part that could be described as impure, extravagant, idolatrous, mean-spirited, jealous, or being captured by the addictions of the world – drugs, sex, power, and the like. Wormwood’s secret is that he does this softly, with distraction, doubt, and fear. This is a real battle that Christ intimately knew of and is why he said the Father would send ‘The Advocate’ to be our guide, comforter, and warrior with the Evil One. The Advocate seeks to have our lives permeated with the light of love that is known by charity, joy, peace, patience, endurance, kindness, generosity, faith, mildness, and chastity. This dwelling in spirit is like, as Fr. Ron Rolheiser says, “the movement of giving and receiving in gratitude between two people that creates a warm hearth where others spontaneously come to seek the warmth in a world which offers too little peace, patience, joy, and the like.” The battle is real, and I pray that your life will be intimately connected to the power of the Advocate to fight the distractions of sin. 

In our readings this Sunday from Acts, First John, and the Gospel of John, the Church calls us to absolute faith in, and deep love for, God, in Jesus, risen to life after dying on the cross. Jesus is the cornerstone of our faith and our lives. “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” At first glance, human speech is absent from the holiness equation for disciples of Jesus. However, we know that our manner of speech can be a loving expression of our faith and the spirit that dwells within us. Love is expressed in deeds, and speech must never be a substitute for doing the right and often difficult thing. The only way to live out this truth is to be spiritually transformed by abiding in Jesus. The Greek word that John uses means to dwell or remain, and it becomes a metaphor for life in Christ. To abide in Christ throughout your life means doing so, not snippets of time like Sunday morning. The disciple must dwell continually in Christ’s heart, mind, and consciousness. That is how we are nourished spiritually and how we are transformed. John expressed this in the metaphor of the vine. Christ is the vine, providing spiritual sustenance; we are the branches fed continuously through this vine. Our words, thoughts, and actions will flow from this dwelling in Christ, for He is the source of our transformation and holiness. This is not religiosity or piety but a way of life. It is essential to remain connected, for our nourishment ceases once we sever that connection through laziness, sin, inattention, or any other reason. This is not punishment but the consequence of failing to remain connected to our divine source. Only when we abide in Him can we ask and receive whatever is needed to do His will, for in that state, we are not separate or distant from the Lord. The Lord is only as distant as we wish Him to be. The image of the vine also reveals that since we all drink from the same well and are nourished from the same source, we are not separate from one another. When we abide in Him, we become an extension of Christ Himself.

For centuries, the Israelites had been taught that the Gentiles were unclean. Just entering the house of a Gentile would render a Jew unclean, and he would have to go through a series of steps to become purified again. So, imagine the apostles’ shock when they realized that the Holy Spirit was also calling the Gentiles into the Church. Suddenly, for the first time in history, God was asking them to put aside the traditions of avoiding contact with Gentiles. He told them to embrace the “unclean” new believers and call them brothers and sisters in Christ. That must have been a lot for the Christians to work through, and it’s a testament to the power of the Holy Spirit that the merging of these two peoples went as smoothly as it did. Today, the ideal of a universal Church comprised of people from all over the earth has come to pass. Still, people sometimes complain that Catholics can be overly exclusive. Perhaps we subtly look down on Christians from other traditions. Maybe we avoid making friends with non-Christians. Or perhaps we emphasize the things that separate us from the rest of the world instead of the things that unite us. Pope Francis has made very bold steps to help overcome this division. When he travels, he is often accompanied by two old friends: a Jewish rabbi and a Muslim, both of whom he came to know while he was living in Argentina. These friendships are important to him because they help him keep his horizons wide and welcoming. Just as Pope Francis has made it a point to develop friendships with people of other faiths—or people who have no faith at all—he encourages us to do the same. Consider how you can open your life to people from other backgrounds or traditions today. Approach them with friendship, not the goal of converting them. Appreciate the unique person God has created each of them to be, and let the Holy Spirit bind you together in love.

The Apostles did not understand what Jesus told them, which is the reason behind Thomas’ question in today’s Gospel reading. St Augustine wrote that the Lord explains that he is the way to the Father because “He needed to say ‘I am the Way’ to show them that they really knew what they thought they were ignorant of because they knew him.” Jesus is the way to the Father through what he teaches, for by keeping to his teaching, we will reach heaven through faith, which he inspires because he came to this world so “that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” St Francis de Sales, in his book, “Introduction to the Devout Life,” writes that: “Just as children by listening to their mothers, and prattling with them, learn to speak their language, so we, by keeping close to the Savior in mediation, and observing his words, his actions, and his affections, shall learn, with the help of his grace, to speak, to act, and to will like him. Diana Gaillardetz recounts her journey with her son on the ancient pilgrimage across Spain, the Camino de Santiago, and the challenge they often faced in finding the route markers. Missing a sign meant miles of unnecessary travel. But she says they were blessed to find a local town elder when these occasions arose who would simply tell them, “Follow me, and I will take you there.” And so it was that in answering Thomas’s very human question, he provided all of us with our own pilgrimage path. Early Christianity was called “The Way” before it was a church or a formal religion. This ‘Way” is founded upon a deep, trusting relationship with Jesus. Today, we find it too easy to think of the “truth” of Jesus only in the language of formal, doctrinal statements that often say little about the challenges of daily living. Only in our decision to follow Jesus, who is “way” and “life” can the “truth” of Jesus be discovered.

Anxiety, like all tensions, eats at us at various levels. More superficially, we worry about many things. Deep down though we are anxious in a way that colors almost everything we do. We nurse the secret belief that if we have the right combination of these in our lives, we will have the substance we need to feel secure and non-anxious. But experience soon teaches us that these things, though good in themselves, are not our cure. We are forever trying to give ourselves wholeness, but we cannot. We cannot self-justify. We cannot make ourselves immortal. We cannot write our own names into heaven. Only love casts out anxiety and, indeed, only a certain kind of love can give us substance. Only God’s love can write our names into heaven. What’s the algebra here? Some years ago, I went on a weeklong retreat directed by Fr. Robert Michel, a French-Canadian, Oblate missionary. He began the retreat with these words: “I want to make this a very simple retreat for you. I want to teach you how to pray in a particular way. I want to teach you how to pray so that in your prayer, perhaps not this week, perhaps not even this year, but sometime, you will open yourself so that in your deepest self you will hear God say to you: ‘I love you!’ Because before you hear this inside you, nothing will be enough for you. You’ll be searching for this and for that, running here and running there, trying every kind of thing, but nothing will ever be quite right. After you hear this from God, you will have substance; you will have found the thing you’ve been looking for so long. Only after you have heard these words will you finally be free of your anxiety. In the Gospel of John, Jesus exhibits very little humanity. Near the end of the Gospel, we have that poignant, post-resurrection meeting between Jesus and Mary of Magdala. Mary, carrying spices to embalm his dead body, goes searching for Jesus on Easter Sunday morning. She meets him but doesn’t recognize him. Supposing him to be the gardener, she asks him where she might find the body of the dead Jesus. Jesus replies by repeating the question with which he opened the Gospel. Then, before she can answer, he gives the deepest answer to that question: He pronounces her name in love: “Mary”.  In that very particularized affirmation of love, he writes her name into heaven. He gives her substance, and he cures her of her anxiety.