St. Bernard of Clairvaux

Saturday of Week 20 in Ordinary Time

St. Bernard of Clairvaux, Abbot, Doctor

Reading the ‘About Today’ tab in my Universalis Ap I quickly found so much to admire in St. Bernard…apart from the adorable dog and the kindred name;)

-Born near Dijon (love mustard of all kinds)

-Up in arms about the creeping laxity and worldliness of the Benedictine order

-Worked for a return to primitive poverty and austerity (for the monks of        course…maybe he means that for me too)

-Founded new monastery in Clairvaux in Champagne (mustard AND champagne!)

But the biographical note that caused me real pause was:  He was also a prolific writer, of an inspiring rather than technical kind.

There is a kind of active battlefield in the air…a bombardment of the inflammatory.  Nothing inspiring there.  And yet the inflammatory exerts a strong magnetic pull on my psyche.  The Good News is that the inspiring is more attractive still…I just have to find it and get close enough.

St. Bernard, show me way…GPS coordinates would make it nice and easy;)

Hip Bone Connected to the...

Friday of Week 20 in Ordinary Time

Saint John Eudes

Ezekiel 37:1-14

“And God said / Shall these bones live?”

TS Eliot, Ash Wednesday

Yesterday we heard:

I will take away

I will gather

I will bring you back

I will sprinkle

I will cleanse

I will give you a new heart

And a new spirit

I will take your stony hearts

I will give you natural hearts

You shall be my people and I will be your God

Today Ezekiel walks among the very dry and brittle bones that are Israel.  Only God knows if they can live again.  God tells Ezekiel to prophesy. Tell them to receive the breath of God and put on sinews!  Tell them to get back together…make skeletons.  Eventually God tells Ezekiel to prophesy for the breath to enter the bodies…ahhh at last, LIFE!

There is nothing that God cannot bring back to life…even a whole people!  But I respect Eliot’s ever-present skepticism.  It seems to me a skepticism about our human response.  Shall these bones live?  I mean live and flourish?  Our freedom, always in tact, demands our constant response (one way or another) to the love of God.

My prayer is often too personal…I forget that I am a part of a ‘people.’ All of us dry bones trying to hear the Word of the Lord.  EZ 37:4

(This reading always makes me think of that song ‘Dem Bones’ from my childhood…which I never did connect to Ezekiel!)

...a crack in everything

20^th Sunday in Ordinary Time

Luke 12:49-53

The homilist at Saturday evening’s Mass began with a question:  What! Did you just say “Praise to you”?  Praise to you…to fire, division, and family ‘against-ness’?

We say it routinely, I think, because we believe that there is ‘good news’ somewhere in there;)

Right now, division appears to be the backdrop of many a day’s news.  And heaven knows that it seeps into family life stealthily.

With “Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship” in mind, I’m thinking today that the problem is not division.  Perhaps the problem is how/who I choose to be in response to the divisions that heat up near me.  I am reminded to engage charitably and respectfully.  I am called to a different kind of political engagement one not characterized by “partisan attacks, sound bites, and media hype.” (no.14)

I am also reminded of a line from Leonard Cohen:

There is a crack in everything, that is how the light gets in!

(Lyrics Anthem 1992)

May I be a participant in the light that gets into those divisive cracks…for the life of the world.

Shame or Contrition?

Friday of Week 19 in Ordinary Time

Ezekiel 16:1-15, 60, 63

I love this rich and vivid allegory.  The story of Israel is the story of a female baby, helpless and abandoned and left to die.  Her umbilical cord is uncut.  She is dirty, bloody, and un-pitied.  Enter God, stage left. God walks by and rescues her.  She is smothered by over-the-top God-attention!  She emerges as a rare beauty.

Trouble!  She is WOWED by her own beauty! 

Things turn south quickly:

-Idolatry

-Whoredom

-Not regular whoredom though…whoredom where the whore pays the Johns

-This is bad!

But God never abandons!  Punishment…hell yes!  But never abandonment!  (check out missing verses)

But what catches my attention today is verse 63:

…that you may be utterly silenced for shame when I pardon you for all you have done, says the Lord.

It reminds me of Romans 12:20.

No, if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.

Somehow it is the experience of shame…un-literal burning coals…that saves.  Shame is not a good thing…right?  When I think of shame I think one person shaming another.  But this shame seems to come from within.  It appears to emerge after a well-placed mirror (held by God or St. Paul or a really really good friend) allows one to see oneself for real.  It sounds more like what I would call contrition…contrition of a very powerful sort.

This shame happens when I witness another expressing the love of God in such a way that my own response to God’s love falls pretty short.  My shame is a sign of my desire to close the gap between my insufficient response and the deeper response of another.

I need such others. 

I need a little more of that kind of shame.

But the word is a little too loaded in my cultural context…

Contrition it is!

a grain's potential

Wednesday of Week 19 in Ordinary Time

2 Cor 9: 6-10

John 12: 24-26

Some television shows start with “previously on ---“ and a re-cap helps set the stage for the night’s unfolding drama. 

“Previously, in John’s drama” there has been a growing gathering around Jesus as he moves to his hour.  That hour which had not yet come is now here.  Jesus has been anointed by Mary at a dinner stop at the home she shares with Martha and Lazarus.  Jesus has entered Jerusalem amidst Hosannas and branches of palm.  More people are seeking Jesus. 

But the hour is now come.

Time for a parable.  The grain of wheat is just a grain of wheat unless it falls to the earth and dies.  Then it is so much more.  Whoever loves his life loses it because theirs is a fearful grasping love.  Holding on to the seed, seeing only the seed, and not the potential abundance within it, is a death of what could be.

My life is just a life.  I can make it the absolute end all.  I can be the beginning and end of all my imagining.  Or I can give it away is acts of love and service.  The highly prized self-sufficient life is sacrificed in favor of the life of self-gift.  Such a life, according to the parable, produces beyond all measure.

I know that.  

I believe that. 

I have even experienced this truth.

Why oh why is it so easy to lose sight of?