Monastery of the Holy Cross

Articles under Contemplative Prayer

Mary Magdalene, Model for Monks

Mary Magdalene, whose feast day we celebrated yesterday, might not seem like a model for contemplative monks. When we look at the liturgy of her feast, however, we discover many relevant themes. After all, she was the person chosen by God to see Christ first after His Resurrection. Saint Gregory the Great pointed out that she received this privilege because she did not give up seeking Christ, whereas the Apostles, upon seeing the empty tomb, went away. She persevered in her quest.

What was the source of her resolution? Surely, the Church tells us, it was because of her great love and devotion to Jesus. Her life at this point was completely focused on Him. As Jesus had purified her of seven demons, her heart was further purified by her love and devotion. Blessed are the pure of heart! For they shall see God. This Beatitude summarizes the monastic life. After the pattern of Mary Magdalene, the monk seeks purification by repentance, and by constant prayer and devotion to God. Even when God seems distant, the monk perseveres. His hope is to encounter the risen Christ, and then, after the pattern of Mary Magdalene, to announce to the world, “He is truly risen!” with the conviction of one who has truly seen Him.

Homily: Improving the Soil of the Heart

About twenty-five years ago, our community, looking to expand our property, purchased a lot just south of the monastery, upon which sat an old house. The house, alas, was not salvageable, for reasons that would take too long to explain. In any case, the decision was made to have the house demolished and to convert the lot into a garden.

If only removing a house were as easy as picking it up and dropping it somewhere else. In fact, demolition, as you can imagine, is an untidy business. Making the conversion to a garden took many years, as we continually, gradually removed all the broken concrete, glass, pieces of metal and the like. Today, we have a pretty well-functioning garden with decent soil and generally good yields, especially in chard, green beans, and berries.

The lesson here is that soil can be improved, which is good news for us as Christians.

That’s because Jesus today tells us that our hearts are like soil, some of it rich, some of it poor. What grows in our hearts is not literally weeds and wheat, but their spiritual counterparts, the Word of God and the habits of mind that are contrary to the flowering of God’s Word. Our Lord gives us several helpful images for understanding the work that we need to do if God’s Word is to take root in our hearts and bear abundant fruit.

The first obstacle to the Word taking root is a lack of understanding. This is likened to seed that falls on a footpath, where lots of people trample upon it. It’s important to connect this image with Jesus’s explanation. He says that the seed that falls on the path is akin to the Word falling upon a heart that fails to understand it, so the Word fails to take root.

So understanding is an important thing to seek. It’s not enough to hear the Word. Sometimes we need to take the time to puzzle over it, even to listen to homilies about it.

What Jesus implies here, however, is that the lack of understanding does not come from a lack of intellectual capacity. The point of the footpath is that the seed doesn’t ever settle into the soil because it’s being trampled upon by many people walking by. Surely this must be related to distraction in our minds and hearts, a failure to distinguish between what is truly important and what simply attracts our attention at the moment.

And we have a lot to distract us. We have access to more information than any previous generation. More than that, by means of tools like the internet, it is information clamoring for our attention. We now even have terms like “The Attention Economy” or “Attention Capitalism.” In a paper last year, Georgetown law professor Rai Hasen Massoud warned that, “The attention economy erodes core democratic values, undermining the cognitive autonomy, reflective reasoning, and informed citizenship necessary for healthy democratic societies.”

I’m less interested in the connection with democracy, and more concerned about the idea that all of these entities trying to capture our attention erode reflective reasoning, which seems to be the good soil that we are trying to cultivate. We can’t allow ourselves to fall into a situation where God’s Word is just one more voice clamoring for our attention. We need to take time deliberately, as you are at this moment, to sit with God’s Word and assimilate ourselves to it.

But more of that when we get to the good soil. We still have two examples of poor soil to examine. The second example is the seed that falls on rocky ground. This is the person who does understand the Word, at least in a superficial way. The roots don’t go very deep. Gardeners will know that the weeds that have little root are a cinch to pull up, whereas the ones that have deep roots can be almost impossible to eradicate. God’s Word will drive roots deeper and deeper into our hearts to the extent that we shape our actions in conformity with it.

We will need to go beyond having a grasp of the principles of revelation. The goal is consciously to take on God’s values and desire what He desires, as Jesus always did. Then God’s Word will be very difficult to uproot in us.

This also does require regular work. Routine can be a potential enemy here: we have to find ways each day to choose what God wants because God wants it, and not simply because it is painless or convenient for us at the moment.

Now on to the third example, the seed sown among thorns. Our Lord again has a specific idea in mind: that the thorns, the problematic thoughts growing up alongside the Word of God, are thoughts about worldly anxiety and the lure of riches. In the limited time we have, let’s focus on worldly anxiety. This is the temptation that Jesus teaches us to combat by saying “Give us this day our daily bread,” in the Lord’s Prayer.

God has given us all work to do to provide for ourselves and others, but He ultimately is the one who provides for us, who makes the work fruitful. Anxiety about procuring what we need can lead us to a place, where, rather than pray and listen to God’s Word, we need to get just one more thing done. I’ll pray and worry about my interior when I get everything in order, when I have all of my work done, and that work is determined not by God’s gracious generosity, but by my fear of failing to provide for myself. Work is good, but it is intended to be subordinate, in some way, to our relationship with God, who can easily provide what we need, and knows better than we do what we truly do need.

And so we arrive at the good soil. Let us notice that a thirtyfold yield in the ancient world was considered true abundance. And though a hundredfold yield was not impossible, it was spectacular. This is the kind of good that Jesus promises to those who truly take the time to interiorize His message, the message of love, forgiveness, and eternal life that Jesus came to earth to bring.

So let’s take a little extra time this week and see whether we can’t make some improvement in the soil of our hearts.

Homily for the Nativity of John the Baptist

Typically, we celebrate the feast days of the saints on the date of their death, their entrance into their heavenly reward. However, there are three people whose birth we celebrate. And, as it happens, we can see these three persons above the altar: Our Lord Jesus Christ, Blessed Mary, the Mother of God, and John the Baptist.

Clearly, John is an important man in the Church’s understanding of salvation history, though I think that we often overlook him. Yet Jesus Himself testified that, of those born of woman, no one was greater than John the Baptist.

So what is it about this man that is so important, and what does his feast day mean to us?

To understand this, we need to understand what is important about the prophets, for John was a prophet, indeed the greatest and last of the prophets. In popular understanding, a prophet predicts the future. This isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s a partial understanding.

The prophets do point to the future, but more specifically, to a future intervention by God—which is to say, toward God’s judgment. In the icons above the altar, we see Christ returning as king and judge, and see that John is pointing to Him. And this awareness of a coming judgment has immediate implications for the present.

When we call to mind that God will judge us—our culture, the rich and the poor, the great and small—our consciences are engaged. We have to ask ourselves: what does God make of my life? Am I prepared to receive God, or are there choices I’m making, duties I’m avoiding, that will make me want to avoid God? Is my culture one that celebrates God or rejects Him, and to what extent am I compromised by that culture?

We see, early in the gospels, John the Baptist pricking consciences. People come to him and ask, “What do I need to do to be prepared to welcome God?” In John’s gospel, we see that Saint Andrew, the brother of Saint Peter, was first a disciple of John the Baptist. When the Son of God appeared, John pointed to Him and said, “Behold the Lamb of God,” and Andrew left John to follow Jesus. Throughout the book of Acts, we see the apostles going out from Jerusalem and frequently encountering groups of people who were disciples of John, who were waiting to receive the news of the gospel and the baptism of fire and the Holy Spirit.

One last point about John is that he embodies the Beatitudes. He was poor in spirit inasmuch as he always points away from himself toward Jesus, the Son of God. Again, in the fourth gospel, he says that Jesus must increase and he, John, must decrease. He hungered and thirsted for justice, and was persecuted to the point of death for the sake of righteousness.

John the Baptist was also meek. He came from a family of priests, and in his day, the priests were often politically very well-connected. But he left the privileges of the priesthood aside to go and live as a poor man in the desert, praying and watching for God. And by these renunciations, his heart became pure, and he was given the grace of seeing God. That is to say, John was the one who witnessed the Holy Spirit descend upon Jesus at His baptism.

So we see that the Church’s celebration of John’s greatness is no mistake.

That leaves the question of what it all means for us. By our baptisms, we are called to become prophetic people. Like John, our mission is to point away from ourselves toward Christ. By a holy life in imitation of John, we bear witness to the fact that God will come to judge, and by this witness, to call those around us to be prepared.

To do this effectively, we may need to find ways to separate ourselves from the perks and conveniences that our culture offers us, since these conveniences often entangle us that culture’s overall mindset, which is largely oblivious of God and the things of God.

By gathering here today, we have taken a good first step: setting aside time to celebrate the gift of God that we have in John’s example, and to prepare ourselves to see and receive the Son of God in the Holy Eucharist.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The Third Precaution Against the Devil

The third precaution is to rejoice in others’ progress as if it were our own, preferring their advancement to our own. John says that we should do so especially with regard to those who are least attractive to us. In one sense, this is a corollary of the dominical teaching to love our enemies, which is the real test of charity. If there is someone we work with or otherwise encounter on a regular basis whom we find disagreeable, we may profit from doing some extra work at prayer. We can pray for this person’s well-being, perhaps his or her conversion, and take the time to think about what gifts he or she brings, even if these gifts are not immediately accessible because of some brokenness or ignorance.

This doesn’t mean lying about others’ shortcomings. It means being honest about what it’s going to take to love that person in his or her reality, rather than loving what we wish he or she would be if only our superior insight would be heeded. In my experience, this is more readily done when we know how profoundly God loves us despite our own failings, remembering that we have not earned our friendship with God. While we were God’s enemies, His Son died for us.

This brings me to an important conclusion: the necessity of meditation on the life and actions of Jesus Christ. We will notice, for example, that He did not help everyone He found. He often asked what the person needed before He helped, even though He would have known what that person needed. He could be very patient with sinners but also quite forthright with those who assumed their own righteousness or spiritual competence. He acted with authority where it was called for and, as a human being, submitted even to unjust authority. He sought out our salvation rather than His own safety and, by His humility and obedience, rescued us from death. We should ask Him frequently to fill us with His Holy Spirit, that we may know the difference between true goodness and its counterfeit. To be Him be power and glory forever. Amen.

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh. Here is The Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil. Here is The First Precaution Against the Devil and The Second Precaution Against the Devil.)

Homily for Corpus Christi

What goes into preparing the food that we eat?

Ten years ago, a man named Andy George decided to try and find out by making a chicken sandwich completely from scratch. This meant growing, harvesting and grinding wheat, slaughtering a chicken, collecting salt water to extract salt, growing and pickling cucumbers, pressing sunflower seeds to extract the oil to make mayonnaise, and, last but not least, milking a cow and making his own butter and cheese.

This process took a mere six months and cost Mr. George $1500.00. Even worse than the cost: the sandwich didn’t taste all that good, at least according to his less-than-amused family members, who shared it.

And of course, there still was quite a bit of work that predated Andy George’s foray into deep agriculture. He didn’t have to domesticate a cow or a chicken. He used an electric fan to winnow his grain and an electric blender to grind it.

What all of this says is that we are very dependent on a whole series of systems in order to eat well. In fact, it’s a kind of miracle that we can go to the store at all and buy bread, deli chicken slices, pickles and onions, mayonnaise, and cheese.

Every meal is a faint glimpse of human unity and cooperation, and unconscious yearning of men and women for a common, shared life.

By calling it a miracle, I mean to imply that behind it all is a mysterious God Who has made the human race in such a way that we can cooperate and provide for one another, with systems too complex for anyone to fully understand…except God Himself.

Every meal is a sign of God’s bountiful love. But since everything happens so routinely, we can easily miss out on the wonder of it all.

It is a good practice to take a moment before we eat to ask God to bless all the persons whose work made the meal possible: from the farmers to the cheese and bread factories, meat processing plants or butchers, truck drivers and grocers.

The Israelites, after they left Egypt, suffered a bit from the myopia that often afflicts us when it comes to eating. Egypt was one of the most sophisticated civilizations of the day, and this meant that they could provide a variety of foods for delectable consumption. The Israelites forgot that much of this luxury was produced on the backs of foreign slaves. We all have selective memories sometimes.

The bigger problem was their inability to trust that if God were to lead them forth, that He would know how to provide nourishment for them. He did this through the miracle of the manna, the bread that came down from heaven.

And Moses tells us that this sign was about more than making regular provision for the people. It was a visible reminder that we depend on God for everything. We live by God’s Word.

This is the same Word through Whom all things were made, and the same Word that became flesh to walk among us. The Greek term for Word is logos, and like the Hebrew word for Word, davar, it has a much broader meaning than simply “word”. Our English term “logic” derives from logos, so that when we say that through the word of God all things were made, we are saying that God’s creatures participate in a king of logic, a rationale, a purpose.

This is why things like food distribution can work in spite of the complexities being beyond human comprehension. All things are governed by God’s Word.

God oversees and underwrites our lives. I’ve already said that the fact that we are able to eat each day because of the manifold activities given by God for men and women to carry out is a kind of miracle. This is the case for the sustenance of our natural life. What we celebrate today is the sustenance of our supernatural life. The life given to us in baptism is now nourished and grows by the gift of the Holy Eucharist.

No longer do we discern God’s Word through the insights we get into the complex interaction of God’s creatures. Rather the Word comes to us very directly, Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity under the appearance of bread and wine. We discern His presence by faith rather than by deduction.

It has long interested me that the elements consecrated at the Eucharist are not “natural” in the sense of being directly taken from the fields or vineyards. They are the product of human artifice, just like our everyday food. Someone harvests the grain, someone grinds it, someone adds water and bakes it until it becomes bread, a symbol of the entire human cooperative project. And then God receives and blesses this offering. Our project is no longer human only, but all of our natural human projects have now been taken up into the divine project of salvation, the reclamation of humanity from sin and dispersion.

Many grains and many grapes go into the production of the bread and wine that become the Body and Blood of the Only-Begotten Son of God. He is bringing unity out of our diversity, showing what true unity and cooperation are, and not only unity with our fellow men and women, but unity and cooperation with God Himself.

And today, we will take this message out quite literally to the world, maybe just a small portion of our neighborhood, but the symbolism is that of a grand cosmic vision. As we process with Jesus, we are a sign of His desire to gather all peoples into one. We will be a silent invitation to everyone we meet to return to God, to discover in Jesus Christ the answer to our deepest longings for life and love.

The one who feeds on me, says the Lord, will have life because of me.

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The Second Precaution Against the Devil

The second precaution that Saint John of the Cross offers the religious is to see Christ in the superior. Again, this is not possible in a strict sense outside of religious life, but when he expands this precaution, we can get some insight into the principles behind it. The monk must obey the office, not the personality of the one inhabiting it. We do not obey authority to curry favor, nor do we resist authority because we don’t like the person wielding it.

One of the strangest aspects of the modern liberal order is the corruption of our understanding of authority. There isn’t space to go into detail on this question, but we have a default conviction that authority is bestowed by competency, and that it is mostly a question of power. All true authority derives from God, as we read in the Scriptures. It manifests itself in any corporate exercise: in the governance of a city or state, or of a university, family, team, or business. To be a university president, it is not necessary to be the best scholar. But whoever the president is, he or she has the authority to act in the interests of the university by setting policy. The presumption is that these policies should be followed, whether we like the person who is president or not, and even whether we even think the policies are unwise or unjust. When the latter is the case, we do have a certain right to raise the issue, perhaps first with someone with mediating authority, but it always must be done with respect for the office. Respect for authority is respect for all the persons under that authority.

To see Christ acting directly through authority figures is not strictly necessary and perhaps not advisable. We may be involved in an instance of accepting God’s permissive will rather than His positive will. Think of Saint Thomas More as he went to his execution: “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first.”

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh. Here is The Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil. Here is The First Precaution Against the Devil.)

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: The First Precaution Against the Devil

John of the Cross offers us three precautions when engaging in spiritual warfare against the Devil. He is writing for contemplative religious, and so we will need to translate these into terms that will make sense in the world. But it probably is good to bear in mind his original teaching in its religious context, so that we don’t subtly weaken his points.

The first precaution is that we never take on any good work, outside of what is assigned under obedience and the obligations of our state. In translating this to the secular situation of the laity, it’s important to note that we cannot, for example, equate a boss, or a pastor, or even a spouse with a religious superior, to whom religious make an explicit vow of obedience.

Outside of the cloister, this then calls for discernment and an earnest effort through prayer and consultation to hear the Holy Spirit and have the docility to say yes. How does this work, practically?

First of all, the obligations of our state in life do present an analog between the cloister and the Christian life of the laity in the world. If we are students, we have an obligation to do our study, show up for class and the like. If we are parents, we have obligations to our spouses and children. If we are employed, we have obligations to our company and coworkers, and so on. If a new project will cause us to fail to meet these obligations, then it is probably not from God.

In cases that are unclear, Ignatian spirituality offers us a method for discernment. First, we must be clear about the likely outcomes of competing plans of action. Let me use an example from the late Cardinal George of blessed memory. When he returned from the conclave that elected Pope Francis, he spoke to a meeting of religious leaders and described the awesome responsibility of choosing, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the next successor to Peter.

The first question is, who are the candidates likely to be in the running? If there are, let’s say, three strong candidates, I need to ask myself: What are their strengths and weaknesses? What situations in the Church is each one likely to address? Are there situations in the Church that I find urgent, and how will each one meet these challenges?

The next step is the one that calls for prayer and deep faith. I need to imagine each person being chosen pope and imagine the likely good or lack thereof that will come of each candidate’s potential papacy. Only when I arrive at peace with the prospect of each candidate as pope, with all of his strengths, weaknesses, and personal experiences, will I be ready to vote. At that point, I will no longer be at the mercy of my own fears, whims, preferences and agendas. I can ask myself: which one of these options genuinely seems best for the Church? And answer it honestly.

So when we are presented with an initiative of some kind, if a colleague asks me to join in a new project, I need to be clear about what the likely effect will be of saying yes and of saying no. When I am ready to accept both options with peace in my heart, then I am ready to ask which one is best for me, for my family, for the Church.

There is one more piece to this process for those who do not have a religious superior. Are there persons in my life from whom I am obliged to seek counsel before a decision of this weight? Are there persons whose counsel I respect who could help me think through the decision? I said a moment ago that a spouse is not a religious superior. Spouses are not bound to obey each other in the way a religious obeys a superior. But married persons are bound to make important decisions only after consulting their spouses and listening to counsel openly, without trying to sway their response with emotional reactivity. The decision may still be yours to make, but it should take into consideration the counsel of the spouse. And if we trouble someone for advice, we should take it very seriously.

Another thought along these lines: when should I help someone? In the monastery, I’ve discovered that this isn’t as obvious as it sounds. Monks like to be helpful, but not everyone wants to be helped. Important questions include, “Has this person asked for my help, and am I willing to offer the help that he says that he needs?” “Is someone else supposed to be helping, and will my help be an implied criticism of someone in charge?” Helping someone can be delicate if there is an imbalance of power. Can I help in such a way that the person isn’t shamed by my magnanimousness? Can I do so as a true sister or brother rather than as a benefactor?

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh. Here is The Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil.)

The World, the Flesh, and the Devil: Introduction to Precautions Against the Devil

By the sixteenth century, the era of Saint John of the Cross, the Church recognized three particular enemies of the soul: the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. While this formulation doesn’t appear explicitly until the high Middle Ages, the monastic Fathers wrote about spiritual warfare from a similar set of considerations. Their view of the soul was based on the three appetites or desires that move us to act. The lowest, the concupiscible, is our desire for bodily life and pleasure. The corruption of this desire is what Saint John calls the Flesh. He also says that the attacks against by the Flesh are the most tenacious and continue as long as the old Man survives in us. This comports well with what the monks of old warned their disciples, that sexual desire and the desire for inordinate eating will be temptations to the end of our lives for most of us.

The virtues that help us to govern these desires are especially temperance and courage.

More noble than the concupiscible desires are the irascible desires, which we normally think of as related to emotions like anger and sadness. We desire safety, honor, recognition, and the freedom to act, and when these are thwarted we are tempted to lash out in anger or grow sullen and cynical. These desires are nobler because they relate our souls to the world around us, rather than simply to our own bodies. The corruption of these desires is what John calls the World. He says that these are the simplest temptations to vanquish.

The virtues that we need to cultivate to fight back against the World are courage and especially justice.

The most difficult temptations to understand arise from the Devil, and these attack the intellect and will. The will is our “intellectual appetite,” meaning it is what we want to do after we’ve weighed options and made a decision. The vice that is especially dangerous here is pride, which is the vice that characterizes the Devil himself. The cardinal virtue that needs cultivating in this case is prudence. The Church’s own reflection on the Incarnation helps us to see the importance of the dispositions of humility and obedience.  These two stances, modeled for us by Christ Himself, show us how to develop a truly Christian prudence, one that can fight back against the Devil’s temptations.

What are these temptations? The Devil wants us to misjudge, to choose what is evil disguised as good. In other words, we are likely to be led astray by projects that appear to be good, but in fact weaken our docility to God and to the obligations attached to our state of life. This is connected to pride because we often choose tasks with an unrealistic view of our own ability to bring them to a good completion. We may seek out projects that will make us appear more virtuous to others than we are, rather than choosing a less spectacular path that leads to genuine virtue.

John of the Cross offers us three precautions when engaging in spiritual warfare against the Devil. He is writing for contemplative religious, and so we will need to translate these into terms that will make sense in the world. But it probably is good to bear in mind his original teaching in its religious context, so that we don’t subtly weaken his points.

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh. Here are The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh.)

The Word, the Flesh, and the Devil: The First, Second and Third Precautions Against the Flesh

(Here is the Introduction to the whole series. Here are The First Precaution Against the World and The Second and Third Precautions Against the World. Here are Part 1 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh and Part 2 of the Introduction to Precautions Against the Flesh.)

Now we turn again to Saint John of the Cross. In the autumn, I mentioned that he had written a short work on our theme for a new Carmelite convent. So he is writing to women who would presumably already be committed to a program of celibate chastity, regular and difficult fasting, and other typical deprivations associated with religious life. But I also believe that what he has to say will be very much of use to persons in the world.

In his first precaution against the flesh, John asserts that every one of my religious brothers and sisters was sent by God to fashion me, as a sculptor fashions a sculpture by blows. Unkind actions, words and gestures cause me pain, but if I see this as purposed by God, I can remain submissive under these treatments. He believes that we will not make headway against sensuality if we are not able to bear these difficulties with patience.

To translate this into the secular state, I think that we can say that, in any line of work that we have undertaken to serve God, our first presumption should be that the difficulties caused by others in that line of work can be borne for just this purpose. We can to learn to bear with irritation, annoyance, pain and the like. Granted, these areas of work do not come with the same guarantee that religious vows are meant to safeguard. Still, bearing the weakness of body and character of those whom God gives us in our walks of life will go a long way to purifying us of self-regard and a lazy selfishness.

John’s second precaution is that, if a work is in the service of God, we should not give it up when it ceases to bring us satisfaction or pleasure. The liturgy, keeping the accounts, cooking, whatever it is. We should learn to do these things apart from whatever pleasure we might expect from them.

This, again, will happen in any line of work. There will come a time when it no longer pleases. The world today urges us to move on rather than accepting the possible benefits of tedium and self-conquest. Again, I am not saying that there will never come a time when the problems associated with your work will not be a good reason to look for another job. But we can first use that boredom and nuisance for spiritual gain.

What derives from this is his last precaution, that we should no longer hope for pleasant feelings in lectio divina, in the liturgy, in any prayer or spiritual exercise that we undertake. Indeed, when they bring bitterness, we should embrace the difficulty, what Benedict would call the dura et aspera.

John’s suggestions seem timely in our world today. The world is geared toward maximizing choice, which usually means maximizing pleasure and comfort, avoiding anything we find inconvenient or annoying. We are frequently told that authenticity requires giving in to any and all desires and curiosities, regardless of whether the kind of instability this invites does real damage to our character. It is a sign of the loss of a larger Christian worldview, centered on the Cross and the hard work of redemption. This season is an opportunity to re-engage in recapturing the world for Christ beginning with our own hearts.

Homily for the Fifth Sunday of Easter

Every human being that ever lived was created for eternity with the God of infinite love. This is part of the Good News that Christians need to share with the world. And that’s because without the Gospel, this infinite longing that we have is easily converted into infinite suffering. Why is this? Because we seek to satisfy this longing with finite things. These can bring us a certain amount of joy, temporary satisfaction and comfort, but soon we begin longing again. As finite creatures ourselves, we cannot obtain the infinite on our own. As Cistercian Father Michael Casey has put it, seeking transcendence sounds great until you realize that it leaves you perpetually out of your own depth.

There are several common secular solutions to this human dilemma, our desire for transcendence and our utter inability to achieve it. There is the tragic option, to recognize the longing as real, and our intimations of transcendence are real. This is the Stoic or philosophical solution. The Stoic purifies his mind and heart and may even rejoice at the beauty of truth. But he knows that eventually it all comes to an end and he must surrender himself to death. His is a life without hope.

To such persons, Jesus says, “I am the Way. Be baptized into my Body, and I will carry you to heaven, to the eternal dwelling with My Father. For there are indeed many dwelling places there, and there is one for you. You cannot reach it on your own, but I have been sent by the Father to be the bridge, the Mediator. No one can come to the Father except through Me, and here I am, and I offer myself to you in the Bread of eternal salvation.”

This is the Way of Hope.

There is a second solution, that of transhumanism, as we call it today. Transhumanists want to use human intelligence and creativity to crack the code of human morality, to rewrite our genetics to reverse aging, to live forever in this world with no need of God. There is something desperate about this approach, and oddly, something anti-human, since to be human simply is to be a finite creature. Nor will it truly address the desire for transcendence, for the transhumanist will only extend biological life, remaining very much a human being, and therefore mortal, prone to accidents and the like.

To these persons, Jesus says, “I am the Truth. Before my Incarnation, you desired to be like God, but because you did not know the truth about yourselves, you attempted to grasp at divinity by eating of the forbidden fruit. In my Body, see the Truth of humanity, that your nature is compatible with the divine. This Truth unlocks every other truth, explains the universe, even the invisible world of spirits. The Truth is that you are my most precious creature. If only you would trust in me, you would have more than you even know how to desire.”

This is Truth that is sought by Faith.

There is a third attempt to deal with the aspiration for transcendence. I will call this strategy the aesthetic. This one appealed to me when I was younger because I was a musician. Several times in performance, I had the sense of being lifted up into some different realm of experience. Time slowed down. Interestingly, after those performances, I discovered that my fellow musicians had a similar experience, expressed in similar ways. There was a sense that we lived for those experiences, an experience of tranquility amidst change, a sensation of harmony with not only the other musicians, but with the audience and with nature itself. It was a feeling of being unusually alive.

But inevitably, the music ended. We would pack up our instruments and go home, rejuvenated for a while. We could perform the same piece a few days later with no particular effect. The poet and the prophet see the beyond and report it to the rest of us. If only we had the strength and acuity to reach it!

To these Jesus says, “I am the Life. Receive Me and receive true life, a spring of water welling up to eternal life. You have seen traces of Me in all things beautiful in all things harmonious, but I have come to give you Myself, the Life that can never be taken away, that never grows weary or dull.”

This is the Life of Love.

Whatever causes us restlessness is a sign of our thirst for God. Let us then take to heart what Christ is teaching us today: to know Him as the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus, in rising from the dead and ascending to the Father has opened up a Way for us to cross over to our true homeland. Not only that, but in sending us the Holy Spirit, He has opened the eyes of our minds and hearts to see the Truth of all things, a Truth that had been obscured by human sin. And this Spirit is also the Giver of Life, Who desires to be the spark and inspiration of all that we do, that the True Transcendent Life of Christ may shine through our words and actions and bring many others to the rest that only God can give.

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