Tag: <span>Joy</span>

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021

The Veil

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s psalm tells us, “The glory of the Lord will dwell in our land,” and, “Near indeed is his salvation to those who fear him.”

The utter fullness of God’s might and glory is near indeed, just a breath away from us. But, as St. Paul tells us in the first reading, it is veiled to most people–but not to those who choose God’s path, and thus live in the Spirit.

It is veiled to those destined to perish, Paul tells us; thus, the glory of the Lord is veiled to those who choose not to strive to fulfill God’s challenging demands. They live in continual spiritual darkness.

Conveniently, in today’s gospel Jesus gives an example of just how challenging those demands can be. God does not tolerate angry name-calling or ongoing resentment toward neighbor, for He cherishes charity and unity.

This is what living up to God’s challenges means: It means a daily intimate prayer life, and striving to cooperate with Him in an effort to displace the center of our objectives from ourselves to others. Quite a challenge; quite an undertaking.

But the reward is incalculable. Even in this life, the veil is partially removed, and we sense God’s immediate closeness, His guidance, His love, and a we receive a small foretaste of the joy that eternal life with Him will bring.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell Jesus that you choose Him with all your heart. Ask Him to come and transform the focus of your life from your own earthly needs to the needs of others. Tell Him how daunting this challenge is for you, and ask Him to take charge.

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May 22, 2021May 10, 2021

Happy in House Arrest

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

In a sense, Paul would have every right to be frustrated with his life. He was imprisoned in Jerusalem, and wound up having to appeal his case all the way to Rome. When he was sent to Rome for the appeal, he wound up under house arrest for a full two years. This, all at the urging, not of the Romans, but of his brother Jews. His own countrymen and brothers in the Jewish faith were urging for him to be put to death. And the effect on his ministry was real: He was severely limited geographically for an extended period, with consequent drastic limitation to the reach of his message.

But the first reading presents his situation in a tone that shows that this is all just “part of the story.” It even portrays his reality in a positive light: “He remained for two full years in his lodgings. He received all who came to him, and with complete assurance and without hindrance he proclaimed the Kingdom of God and taught about the Lord Jesus Christ.”

Because of the positive tones of the whole book of Acts, we can superficially think that everything was easy, exciting, productive, successful in the nascent Church. But in reality, it was setback after setback after setback. What made for the positive outlook, then? Simply this: The apostles saw everything–logical and random, helps and hindrances–everything as coming from the hand of God for the furthering of His Kingdom. In their eyes, He was the author, the protagonist, and the driver; they, merely the willing vehicles of His grace.

In today’s gospel, we see Peter curious about the fate of John the Evangelist. As Peter went out and fed Jesus’ sheep, and ultimately died for Him, what would happen to John? Jesus essentially responded that it was none of Peter’s business. But it was more than an admonition not to be overly curious about others. When He said, “What if I want him to remain until I come? What concern is it of yours?”, Jesus was also affirming that the circumstances of the mission are not what matters–but rather fulfillment of God’s will, that is, a continuous “yes” to God. God takes care of the rest.

Filled with a sense of the power of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, the early apostles were filled with joy and optimism. What difficult circumstances are you enduring right now? With that same sense of Jesus’ sovereign power, are you able to be similarly optimistic?

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to fill you with joy and optimism in the most bewildering and difficult of circumstances, certain that He is curating with tender care every aspect of your life–the life you have given to Him freely to care for.

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March 29, 2021March 10, 2021

Smart Phones Don’t Bring Happiness

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s psalm: “The Lord is my light and my salvation.”

When we think of what makes our lives better, our minds might tend toward reality, or tend toward fantasy. If they tend toward reality, we might speak of health care, or convenience technology such as smart phones, which put control over many things in our lives right at our fingertips.

If our minds tend toward fantasy, we might consider the stuff of movies: If only I could find a fountain of youth, win the lottery, wield magic, etc., then my life would be utterly transformed into happiness.

When, in the day to day, we think of what makes our lives better, the first thought that comes to mind might not be Jesus.

His coming, His passion, death, and Resurrection–it was not like a lottery win. From one day to the next, for example, all the apostles’ worries were not over. Even having met Jesus, even having experienced His Resurrection, as wondrous as that was, they still had a difficult walk ahead of them to walk, one that would for most lead to martyrdom.

Nor did Jesus make their lives more convenient, like technology does for us. Quite the opposite. They went from the relatively convenient and familiar life of fishing to one of spending themselves tirelessly for others, in many cases in foreign lands.

And yet, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Mary of Bethany, who poured perfume over Jesus’ feet in love and gratitude in today’s gospel, understood this.

Jesus does not transform our external realities. Well, correction: He does help us with those as well. After all, Lazarus of today’s gospel had just risen from the dead at Jesus’ command. Jesus’ life was full of miracles of healing. Also, by God’s grace, Christians in all ages have made the world a better place, inventing the very notion of hospital care and universities, and striving to insert more justice and respect for the human person into the imperfect institutions of government.

But transformation of the exterior world is not the focus of Jesus’ mission. Rather, “The Lord is my light and my salvation.” Jesus brings light and salvation back into our souls. We find in our relationship with Him a permanent, overflowing joy that transcends and permeates all the imperfect, passing realities of our exterior world. As the first reading says of Jesus:

I formed you, and set you
   as a covenant of the people,
   a light for the nations,
To open the eyes of the blind,
   to bring out prisoners from confinement,
   and from the dungeon, those who live in darkness.

When it comes to truly making our lives better, no fantasy, no reality comes close to the experience of an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ in our hearts.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus in this Holy Week to bring your heart back from distraction with the fretful external realities of this world, to the true light and joy of your life, which is His grace and friendship. Tell Him how grateful you are, like Mary of Bethany, for His gift of self for you, even if the world doesn’t seem particularly impressed by it. Ask Him for the grace to center your life on that which really brings happiness.

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March 15, 2021February 26, 2021

Dancing

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

When He finds it in a human heart, true, pure love is a fulcrum that God uses to shower His grace. In this sense, there is an insight in so many merely human allegories, such as the Disney movie Frozen, that emphasize pure, self-sacrificing love. This insight can be found even in some secular idealism of our time that stresses authentic concern for the welfare, even the temporal welfare, of others.

The first reading talks about God turning weeping into dancing, creating a new Jerusalem where there will be no more suffering. The reading foreshadows the eternal life that Christ wins for us on the Cross.

In the gospel, Jesus brings the message of the first reading to life, as He turns the royal official’s mourning into dancing. The official asks Jesus to come and heal his son, who is near death. Jesus accuses the man of looking for a sign, but rather than defending himself, the man ignores the accusation entirely and insists that his son be saved.

The man is focused entirely on the welfare of the object of his love, his son. He will not be distracted by questions to his motives.

Jesus does not go with the man, but assures him that his child will live. Instead of growing angry with Jesus, the man is inspired to faith in His words–and He returns home, in the spirit of that faith.

The official’s faith is rewarded with the life and health of his son. His mourning is turned into dancing.

We have every opportunity to gain a foretaste of the dancing to come in heaven here on earth, if we wish; all we need do is beg God’s Providence, full of faith, to look after our welfare in every way, and then trust Him to do so, even when the means we foresee are not those He chooses.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to take over your life and do things His way. Tell Him you trust His plan to be the right one, and beg Him in His Providence to take over the direction of your life and the lives of your loved ones.

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March 10, 2021February 24, 2021

Law and Order

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Today’s readings fit beautifully into Lent. Lent is not just a time for sacrifice. It is a time for conversion: Conversion back to the path of the Lord. And we all need it, every year–each of us who has sins in his or her life, and also imbalances and poor habits that easily lead to sin. We all need a moment to get back on track.

Today’s readings underscore heavily how this “getting back on track” involves a return to God’s Commandments. Too often, like the Pharisees, our mind gets over-complicated with all sorts of minor goals and worries, rather than simple focus on what is pleasing to God: The Ten Commandments, and their Christian summary of loving God above all things and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Jesus tells us in today’s gospel that He did not come to abolish these precepts, but rather to fulfill them. The need for focus on the straightforward commands of God is more pressing than ever.

But what about St. Paul’s assertions that it is not the Law that saves, but rather the Spirit? And that we are no longer under the Law (cf. Gal. 5)? Does Paul contradict today’s readings?

Paul correctly emphasizes that the Law does not save. No matter how perfectly we followed God’s commands, without the grace that comes from Jesus’ Passion, death, and Resurrection, we could not attain to salvation, because we were born into sin.

Paul also tells us that we are not under the burden of the Law. This too is important. With the coming of Christ, the Law is no longer a burden. Compliance with God’s will, which we cannot achieve on our own, becomes a joy with Christ, because the grace He won by the act of salvation provides us with more than enough resources to stay on the path of God.

Thus, the grace of Christ gives us salvation. It also gives us the strength in the Holy Spirit (through the gifts of fortitude and understanding) to shoulder what was once an onerous burden and reach what was once an unreachable ideal, that is, faithfulness to God’s Law, which outlines the path to the salvation He won for us.

It is in this very Pauline sense that Jesus is the fulfillment of the Law. Salvation in Christ, and the grace and strength to attain it through the gift of the Holy Spirit, is now within the reach of those who wish to align themselves with the path of God’s will and His commands.

So, let us shoulder the yoke of Lenten conversion joyfully. For Jesus’ yoke is easy, and His burden light. (cf. Mt. 11:30).

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Contemplate joyfully how Jesus returned to us the ability to follow the path of God through the Holy Spirit’s gifts of fortitude and understanding, and how He made the ideal of that path, that is, eternal life, attainable. Tell Him how grateful you are, how much you love Him, and ask Him to help you succeed in converting more thoroughly to the path of God this Lent.

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February 24, 2021February 9, 2021

From Ashes to Exuberance

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Repentance–the theme of today’s readings–is not in fashion. Not even in Christian circles.

People come to Church to feel better about themselves. And, as congregations gradually diminish, pastors scramble to meet this need.

The entire topic of salvation, therefore, is also at an all-time low in popularity in the Church. Often, it does not even come up, because the topic itself implies a risk of not being saved. When it does arise, the context is often the assumption that, because God is merciful, most people reach heaven because down deep they are “good.”

The truth is, as we see in today’s readings, while God’s unconditional love is a true and lasting foundation for personal security, part of His love is His demand that we be the best that we can be. And the Church teaches that eternal salvation depends on our embracing that demand and striving to meet it, by means of the all-powerful grace that Jesus won for us on the Cross.

Repentance appears to contrast with joy, and with personal security. On the contrary, full acceptance of ourselves in the reality of what we are as sinners, without excuses or cheap escapes, forms part of the very basis of personal security. The other part is the knowledge that the omnipotent God is investing all His resources, including great personal sacrifice, to bring us up out of sin and into the relationship of His love. We can’t do it; He can.

The quest for salvation through transformation in grace is what makes Christianity exciting, breathtaking, full of hope. The knowledge that through prayer and offered sacrifice we can “stack the deck” for others to reach their salvation in Christ is immensely consoling.

A life lived in a spirit of repentance is a life lived joyfully, courageously, realistically, and filled with hope.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Tell the Lord about some of your sins, and how you repent of them; tell Him how hard it is to avoid them. Full of absolute trust, ask Him to take charge of the process of your repentance and transformation; lovingly place your life, your future, and your eternal salvation in His hands.

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February 17, 2021February 2, 2021

Even Now

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

Lent strikes us as a dreary time, and with good reason. We make sacrifices, spend more time in prayer, and give more alms to the poor–none of this is fun.

So, we would expect today’s readings to tell us essentially to buck up, to brace ourselves, to jump into the cold water of sacrifice and purification.

The first reading, however, which is all about fasting and repenting, is full of joy. It would appear, even, that the weeping mentioned is not driven by sorrow, but rather the people are weeping out of relief and hope.

“Even now, says the LORD, return to me with your whole heart,” is how the first reading begins. Even now. The people have been procrastinating that return. The context of the reading suggests that they are thinking they may be too late to repent. But the prophet assures them that it is not too late. Even now, if they turn back to Him, God will have mercy on them.

We are weak human beings, full of sinfulness and selfishness. Like Judas, we have sold Jesus for thirty pieces of silver–we have chosen sin over Him for some silly, passing satisfaction that makes no sense in the greater scheme of things.

Yet even now, at whatever age we find ourselves, even if our prior attempts at conversion have been half-hearted, even now, He is waiting to forgive us and transform us, if we return to Him with all our heart.

Lent is not a dreary season. It is another chance, even now, to convert our hearts fully to the Lord.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to help you to take advantage of this Lent, every single day of it. Ask Him to show you your sins and give you a repentant heart. Tell Him that you want Him in your life above every single other priority, and that He has carte blanche to manage your life as He sees fit–even if this means that you will go through some suffering for your own good and that of others.

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February 14, 2021February 16, 2021

The Leper

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

As so often happens with biblical readings, those of today are both history and allegory.

Moses was told what to do with lepers. They were to be proclaimed as unclean, and cast outside the Israelite camp. Here we see an image of the ejection of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden, after their sin. All disease and uncleanliness came into the world with original sin–and more importantly, with sin, we were ostracized from the easy friendship with God that Adam and Eve enjoyed.

But with Christ, all that changes. In the gospel we see how. Simply, Jesus cures the leper. He leaves him clean, without blemish. The leper is told to keep it to himself, but he is exploding with joy. Everywhere he goes, he proclaims what God has done for him.

We must be realistic. With His death and Resurrection, Jesus did not remove all pain, suffering, and disease from Christians. With all the healing He did in life, we might have expected this to occur through the power of His Resurrection–but He did not come to overthrow Adam by utterly reversing the consequences of original sin. He came to rescue Adam, by opening for him–and us–again the door to life that Adam had closed.

But nonetheless, the time of salvation is now. Christ is healer, in our lives, now. If we gamble all on Him, if we make our relationship with Him our top priority, He will remove misery from our lives and put happiness in its place. It is not that we will have nothing to endure; what we do endure, we will bear full of His peace and joy, until that time when all suffering ends and we are united with Him forever in Heaven.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Ask Jesus to come and heal your heart. To heal it of all the scars left by abuse you have received. To heal it from its attachments to sin. And then, to transform it into a catalyst for the healing of others.

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December 3, 2020November 17, 2020

Joy in the Heavenly City

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

How can our joy be complete in Heaven, when there will be many who are not saved?

When, as foreseen in the first reading, the gates are opened, and a nation that is just is let in, He simultaneously brings down the lofty city, the city of the proud and arrogant. As glory as our heavenly destiny is, how can we truly rejoice when these are lost to eternal suffering?

When contemplating the most dramatic element of the human reality, this eternal division between the just and the condemned, we must remember that the latter choose their fate. It is true that (generally speaking) they do not see Heaven and Hell set before them, and choose Hell, but they firmly choose not to undergo the radical transformation God asks of them in this life, whatever the consequences.

There is perhaps no more eloquent metaphor for this choice in the Gospel than today’s parable of the house built on sand. Those who build on sand make a choice. They may want the sand for its location and the associated ease, pleasures, gratifications, but they know it is not destined to last. “And it collapsed and was completely ruined.”

We may rejoice wholeheartedly, because we have a God who is so merciful and so humble that He chooses to respect absolutely the freedom of His creatures, who would rather suffer in the long run than accept His challenges. It is safe to say that people are not as naïve as we think; we are not as special as we sometimes think in understanding life as a grand choice. People know this. But many simply choose the broad, easy path.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: In this Advent time, contemplate the world in its darkness ahead of Jesus’ coming at Christmas. See yourself as His hope for getting an opportunity to infuse a disproportionate amount of the grace He brings at the Incarnation into others, to help them convert to Him, and give yourself to Him for this purpose. But do so serenely, understanding that it is His will to leave the final choice up to them.

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October 10, 2020September 20, 2020

Amusement Park Lines

This is a reflection on the Mass readings of the day.

St. Paul’s juxtaposition of the Old and new Testament periods, to which in a general way he refers as the Law and Faith, is fascinating and rich, and includes many deep layers.

Today, he tells us that the Law held God’s people under discipline as they awaited liberation by faith, that is, by the unmerited and free gift of redemption in Christ, which no amount of adherence to the Law could deserve. The image comes to mind of schoolchildren on a class trip to an amusement park waiting in an orderly line for the park to open. The discipline of the line is certainly not the liberating joy of the park–but it is a prerequisite for getting in.

One fascinating layer of this is that this dynamic applies not only to the Old and New Testaments, but also to the spiritual life of each of us. In so many words, St. Teresa of Jesus, from 16th-century Avila in Spain, teaches us that as we get underway in the spiritual life, much of our focus is on the effort of clearing our lives of voluntary sin, which she compares to the clearing of a garden for planting. At some point, we have a taste of God that really turns our head around. Then, we find that in order to live a life in God, we need to change our lives. Upon which follows the arduous work that St. Teresa describes of removing voluntary sin, both big and small, from our lives.

Needless to say, the effort to avoid sin continues throughout the whole trajectory of our spiritual growth. But it is particularly central earlier in that trajectory.

This effort to avoid sin, that is, essentially, to follow the Ten Commandments, closely resembles the Old Testament rule of Law that reigned before the coming of Christ, which Paul describes. Even though Christ has already come to save us, we go through a period when we need to really focus on following the basics of Divine Law, in order to align our lives with acceptance of His free gift of salvation.

But like the Old Testament period of Law-focused preparation, our focus on avoiding sin is less like the joy of the amusement park and more like the discipline of the line to get in. Perfection in this discipline, as much as it might be the ideal we strive for, is not our ultimate destination, any more than it is in the amusement park line. As we progress in our life in Christ, and in particular, our contemplative prayer life, the experience of Jesus Himself becomes deeper and richer and eventually supersedes the experience of our own sin and the need to rid ourselves of it. We begin to experience the joy of the park that we will only experience fully in Heaven, and our spiritual life begins to focus on it.

Interestingly, St. Teresa and St. John of the Cross also describe how deeper moments of purification can follow after great periods of the “joy of the park.”

Two things to note here: 1) We must not rush the process of purification or grow impatient with it. God is very wise about human nature embedded in time, and that our nature needs time for purification and growth. The humility to accept God’s will associated with every phase in our spiritual growth itself is a beautiful gift to God and sign of a certain spiritual maturity. 2) We will never fully escape here on earth the need for great vigilance against sin and the sometimes discouraging awareness of our spiritual weakness and fragility. But if we make the sacrifice associated with this very realization our daily gift to God, he uses that gift as a great lever that brings disproportionate blessings and an outpouring of the grace He merited on the cross into our lives and the lives of many souls in need.

“Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it,” Jesus says in the Gospel. This means following God’s lead in our spiritual life–which may mean heavy emphasis on following the Commandments and avoiding sin at certain moments in our spiritual life, and focusing on simply enjoying God’s presence for a deepening of our union with Him at others.

Ideas for conversation with the Lord: Jesus indirectly references the Blessed Virgin Mary in today’s Gospel passage as her who “hears the word of God and observes it.” Meditate on her instruction at the wedding at Cana: “Do whatever He tells you.” (cf. Jn. 2:5) She modeled this instruction in her own life, following God’s lead without missing a beat, even when it jolted her in a moment out of one whole reality and into another at the Annunciation. Chat with her about her expertise in this area, and ask her to help you discern God’s promptings in your spiritual life.

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