God's Operating System

We heard one of Jesus’ most challenging commands last Sunday as we anticipated the season of Lent: “I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust” (Mt 5: 44). This command is echoed by St. Paul: “Bless those who persecute [you], bless and do not curse them…. Do not repay anyone evil for evil” (Rom 12: 14, 17).

Isn’t it God’s job to judge those who hurt others and are unjust? Why does God provide the sustenance of light and water for such people? One answer is found in Ezekiel 33:11: “I do not wish the death of the sinner, but that [s]he turn back to me and live.” Apparently, God’s operating system runs on love and mercy, and so if we wish to live in the kingdom of God, we will not curse those who do harm or seek retribution because those actions are not likely to lead to their conversion. They are more apt to turn from their destructive ways (which ultimately are as oppressive to themselves as to others) if we “hate the sin but love the sinner.”

We absolutely need to resist and halt the damage being inflicted on marginalized people and the environment by those who act out of greed and ignorance. However, our intention and the methods we use matter. Gandhi said, “Love is the strongest force the world possesses, and yet it is the humblest imaginable.” Wouldn’t it be wise to use the strongest force the world possesses to deal with those who are unjust, even if doing so makes us appear weak? Apparently Jesus thought so (“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”). Although his submission to the law of love led to great suffering, he was resurrected into the fullness of life and brought his enemies along with him.

When we are tempted to respond to evil and ignorance with hatred and judgment, we need to fall back on God’s ways. All of us have experienced God’s love and mercy. The truest form of gratitude is to do as Jesus asked: “Live on in my love.”

Lenten Discipleship

Making Lent a time of spiritual renewal requires discipline. For many of us, this means first setting aside time to take stock of our shortcomings and determining ways we can challenge ourselves to get closer to God through the three primary tools of the season: prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. Then, following the advice of St. Benedict in chapter 49 of his rule, it means that we share our intentions with a spiritual guide to ensure our plans are formed out of humility rather than ego and that they are life giving. After that, our discipline consists of attempting to follow through with our intentions by putting them into practice every day during the six weeks of Lent.

An alternate approach to Lent is to focus on the discipline required to keep an open heart. This type of discipline requires monitoring our thoughts and feelings so we can weed out pride and judgment as soon as they arise. It means being willing to change our plans when God appears to us in the form of someone who needs our assistance or has something to teach us. It means creating space to hear what God has to say by resisting busyness and spending more time in prayer.

The word discipline comes from the Latin word discipulus, meaning “pupil.” As students of Jesus, our primary goal is to learn how to see and love others as he did. The approach we take to being his disciple will differ based on our temperament, strengths and weaknesses, upbringing, and experiences. How we go about practicing discipleship doesn’t matter as much as being faithful to our call and staying focused on the goal of living in God’s love with as much of our heart, soul, and mind as we can muster.

Falling Into the Hands of God

Dorothy Day in 1916

On Saturday I attended the one-woman play Haunted By God about the life of Dorothy Day. In one scene, after the first issue of The Catholic Worker newspaper had been published, Dorothy answered a knock on the door. A homeless woman wanted to know where she could find one of the houses of hospitality that were envisioned in the paper. Of course, no such houses existed yet, and Dorothy faced a difficult decision: would she turn this woman out on the street, or invite her into her own cramped apartment that she shared with her daughter and Peter Maurin? “You can have the sofa,” she said to the woman. And thus the first house of hospitality changed from a vision to a reality.

After this scene, Dorothy said, “It is a fearsome thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” Indeed, to see and act as God does means being merciful, for God is merciful. It means being generous, for God is generous. It means setting aside our own ideas about how our life should unfold and responding to the needs of the people we encounter, knowing that this will mean sacrificing our own comfort and desires. A fearsome thing—and yet the path to wholeness, integrity, and joy as we practice what we say we believe: that we should love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, with all our mind, and with all our strength, which means loving our neighbor as ourself, for it is in our neighbor (and in ourselves) where the living God dwells.

A Life of Servant Leadership

If there had been such a thing as psychological testing when Sister Mary Ethel Burley entered the monastery of Mount St. Scholastica in 1942, she surely would have been scored high on on the “accepts responsibility” metric. As the oldest of six children on a farm in Beaconsfield, Iowa, and later as an elementary school teacher and a principal for almost 50 years, she shouldered the responsibility of caring for, educating, and guiding others with determination and good humor.

It is no wonder that as Sr. Mary Ethel entered her late 90s, long after she had been retired and was living in Dooley Center, she still talked about needing to go out and milk the cows and get to school. Highly responsible people do not let go of their duties easily. It was telling, then, that a few days before her death, she told a sister, “I don’t have to go to school today” and “I guess the cows have already been milked this afternoon.” On February 20, she who had accepted the yoke of Christ found rest for her soul and was surely met with the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant!”

I’m grateful that we were able to celebrate Sr. Mary Ethel’s diamond jubilee in May 2019. We need to acknowledge the people among us who quietly and effectively toil to bring the kingdom of God to fruition. Sometimes we don’t appreciate their steadfast work until they die, but even then, their love and faithfulness live on. As it says in one of Sr. Mary Ethel’s favorite scripture passages from Psalm 52, “But I am like an olive tree growing in the temple court; I trust in God’s love forever.”

Becoming a Sacrament

Today in Give Us This Day, I came across the following quote from Fr. Walter Burghardt, which every church and chapel would do well to post above the doors where people exit after mass:

As you exit this sacred spot hosting the Bread of Life, pledge yourselves to be a kind of sacrament—vibrant symbols that speak to the fears and tears of a broken world.

We need to be reminded that when we consume the body and blood of Christ, we become hosts to God who chooses to “come to our house”—to dwell within us. Good hosts make room for their guests, spend time with them, and serve them. The service God asks of us is to tend to the needs of the hungry, thirsty, homeless, imprisoned, grieving, and ill, for God dwells in them as well.

Webster’s dictionary says that a sacrament is “a Christian rite that is believed to have been ordained by Christ and that is held to be a means of divine grace or to be a sign or symbol of a spiritual reality.” When Jesus gave bread to his disciples (and, by extension, us) and said, “Take and eat; this is my body, which is given up for you,” he was in effect making us a living sacrament. When we receive the Eucharist, we ourselves become a means of divine grace and a sign of a spiritual reality: that we are all one in the body of Christ. If we remembered that every time we leave mass and lived as if we truly believed it, our broken world would be well on its way to becoming mended.

The Road Less Traveled

I gather from a few posts on social media that some of my high school classmates are planning a 40-year reunion this summer. Although I haven’t seen many of them in 20+ years, I doubt they would be surprised to hear that I have become a Benedictine sister. However, I think they would be surprised at some of the other things I’ve done in the past 40 years, such as working at the National Catholic Reporter Publishing Company in Kansas City, attending graduate school in the Baltimore area, residing in racially and economically diverse neighborhoods in St. Louis for 13 years, buying two houses, and traveling to England and Wales. I was surprised that I did those things myself!

I believe that our soul—the unique essence of who we are—is established early, perhaps even at birth. However, it often takes time for us to accept and grow into who we are, as it were. I was drawn to God from childhood, but it took me a long time to figure out that joining a monastic community was the best way for me to live out that primary relationship, given my temperament, gifts, limitations, and cultural/familial influences. I also was timid and lacked self confidence as a child, but over the years, God provided me with ample opportunities to challenge myself and learn that courage is part of my soul’s makeup as well.

Although aging has its drawbacks, it also includes blessings. For me, that means I have finally learned how to be comfortable in my own skin, accept my limitations, and recognize that I have a responsibility to share my gifts, even when that’s not convenient or comfortable. Since graduating from high school 40 years ago I’ve traveled a lot of unexpected avenues, but I’m grateful for all of them because of the people I’ve encountered who have mirrored Christ for me along the way.

Trusting God's Ways

Many people would attest that they have been touched by God’s love and compassion. However, few have known the physical intimacy experienced by the deaf man with a speech impediment described in Mark’s gospel, for Jesus “put his finger in the man’s ears, and, spitting, touched his tongue.” What an odd, intrusive sensation that must have been! Yet, as the man discovered, when we allow Christ to enter into our lived experience of pain, trauma, and limitation, healing can occur.

Naturally, the man was exultant at recovering his hearing and speech. However, apparently he needed to relearn how to listen, because he disregarded Jesus’ instructions not to tell anyone.

We don’t know why Jesus didn’t want news of the healing to spread; perhaps he wished to continue his work a while longer before attracting the attention of the Jewish religious leaders, which he knew would lead to his death. Often we don’t understand why God asks something of us, especially when it counters our own instincts and desires. However, the perspective of Scripture and the hindsight of our own experiences teaches us that we need to trust God’s motives, which are always centered in love and wholeness.

Out of compassion, God responds to our desire for healing, but in return we are asked to trust in God’s ways. Those who do so are drawn into a deepening intimacy with the Author of life.

The Best of Humanity

Something remarkable happened last night at the Academy Awards ceremony when Joaquin Phoenix made a speech that echoed Benedictine themes of humility, forgiveness, and the need to support each other on the path to eternal life. Here is what he said, in part:

"I've been a scoundrel in my life. I've been selfish. I've been cruel at times, hard to work with, and I'm grateful that so many of you in this room have given me a second chance," he said. "And I think that's when we're at our best -- when we support each other. Not when we cancel each other out for past mistakes, but when we help each other to grow, when we educate each other, when we guide each other towards redemption. That is the best of humanity."

These are the words of one who has put on the mind of Christ. Jesus was constantly giving people second chances, such as Zaccheus, the woman caught in adultery, Simon Peter, and the thief crucified next to him. He did not “cancel them out” because of their past mistakes; rather, he affirmed them through his attention and forgiveness and challenged them to break free of old patterns by living in a different way (“Go and sin no more.”) We who are followers of Jesus are called to do the same.

The best of humanity is when we recognize we are part of the Body of Christ and act accordingly by forgiving and supporting each other. Reminders of that reality often surface in surprising ways—even in a speech made at the Academy Awards.

Timely Memories

My dad was a watchmaker and often fixed watches for the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth. They sometimes told him to keep the watches of the sisters who had died, and he offered me one of these timepieces. I found myself wearing it the past two days, probably in anticipation of his death anniversary today.

Although he died 17 years ago, my dad’s spirit is still with me, especially when I need patience and perspective. His life still provides me counsel: Plant a garden every year. Be kind. Don’t neglect prayer. Respond to the needs of others.

I find the following reflection by Victoria Weinstein helpful when I’m missing those who have died:

There is no need to end our relationship with our dead, for they are still ours. Still ours to struggle with, to learn from, and to love. There is no timeline for grieving them and there is no finitude to loving them. Through time—as long a time as it takes—we take their dream and their desires and their issues and integrate them into our own. We make use of whatever hard-won wisdom they were lucky enough to gain while they lived. We continue to forgive them, if forgiveness is called for. We continue the work of their hands. (From Beyond Absence, collected by Edward Searl.)

Like the watch my dad gave me, I can wind up my memories, and they keep ticking to help me be present to the important things in life. February 7 will always be a bittersweet day for me, but ultimately it is a time of gratitude that my dad and I are still connected as we each follow paths of new life.

Seeking Help with Humility and Confidence

Often at the Mount our call to prayer at vespers is “O God, come to my assistance; O God, make haste to help me.” This acknowledgment that we need God is key to developing humility, which, as Sr. Jeanne Weber says, “…is nothing other than knowing the truth about who I am.” The truth is, we need help from God and others from the moment of our birth until our death. When we have the hubris to believe that we can go it alone outside the body of Christ, we live out of falsehood and create problems for ourselves and others.

Another aspect of the truth about who we are is that, because we are children of God, we have the right to ask God for help. Scripture provides many examples of this privilege: “Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know” (Jeremiah 33:3); “Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I am’” (Isaiah 58:9); “I have called upon You, for You will answer me, O God” (Ps 17:6).

In the book Consolations, David Whyte notes, “To ask for help and…to feel that we deserve it may be the engine of transformation itself.” When we have both the humility to ask for help and, paradoxically, the confidence that God will respond out of love, then our lives will be transformed because we will be living the truth of who we are: persons with limitations who need help and can trust our loving God to listen and answer.

Patiently Waiting for Sharper Vision

We have fewer opportunities to practice the virtue of patience these days because of instantaneous communication through the internet, the availability of fast food via microwave ovens, and streaming capabilities that offer us entertainment at the click of a button. However, as persons in the Kansas City area well know, we still must wait for some things—such as a World Series title and a Super Bowl championship. Perhaps because it took 30 years to win a second World Series title and 50 years to win a second Super Bowl championship, the fans who had been waiting so long for their teams to win were extraordinarily jubilant.

It is easy to understand, then, the excitement of the people who recognized the Messiah in the person of Jesus. The Jewish people had clung to the promise of the coming of the Messiah as foretold by the prophet Daniel not for 30 or 50 years but for close to 500 years. What joy when he finally arrived! No wonder Mary and Simeon broke into song when they first encountered Jesus.

Of course, not everyone recognized him because he wasn’t the Messiah they expected—a healer rather than a warrior. The same could be said of us today; we don’t recognize Christ in our midst in the refugee, the homeless person, the peacemaker—all of which Jesus was at one time or another. Perhaps, then, the patience we need today is for our sight to grow sharper, as people who have cataracts removed must wait for their vision to clear. As Jesse Manibusen sings, “Open my eyes, Lord; help me to see your face.” And may we have patience with our weak vision and lack of understanding while we are waiting.