Crazy Catholic Questions #49: Silence

Are there local places that offer silent retreats?
Yes! Several! Treat yourself to a weekend retreat at the Capuchin Retreat Center! www.capretreat.org. This year’s theme is “Sacred Listening.” Nancy Clancy and I are part of the extended preaching staff there and she wrote this beautiful piece for our retreats this year…What a wonderful family prayer and discussion this would make!!! A little mini-retreat at home!

The gift of the Rosary as a way of prayer has survived many centuries. It is meant to be a sort of mantra prayer, the repetition of familiar prayer releasing us to focus on the life of Jesus. The Church has established four traditional sets of mysteries (Joyful, Sorrowful, Glorious, Luminous). For our theme at the Capuchin Retreat this year, we offer you this combination of mysteries.

The Mysteries of Sacred Listening
The Annunciation – how quiet Mary had to be in the depths of her being to hear this strange and unexpected message from God. How willing am I to be that open? What might God be asking of me today? Let us pray this decade, asking for the virtue of Spirit filled openness.

The Baptism of the Lord - Early on, Jesus learned to listen to His Father’s words of love and tenderness. Those words, once heard, transform all relationships. That same God speaks to me today…you are my beloved child. Let us pray for a listening heart.

Jesus visits Martha and Mary - Within each of us lies a Martha and Mary personality, sometimes we scurry about doing, much too busy to sit and the feet of Jesus to listen. Then there are times when we must stop, slow down, and pay total attention to what the Lord is saying to us. Let us pray this decade seeking balance in our lives.

The Agony in the Garden – To hear God’s Will is hardly ever easy; in fact there are times that it is absolutely agonizing. Let us find strength in Jesus’ surrendering to His loving Father. We pray this decade asking for the virtue of surrender.

The Coming of the Holy Spirit - How important to be able to listen in the midst of noise, confusion and excitement! The results of our openness and surrender to God are always meant to result in bringing the Joy of the Gospel to the world. Let us pray for a renewal of the energy given to us at our Baptism…an energy which comes only from God’s Holy Spirit. 

Manresa Jesuit Retreat House also offers wonderful silent retreats. https://www.manresa-sj.org/.

"Nothing approximates the language of God so much as silence." - Meister Eckhart

Crazy Catholic Question #48: Finding our Calm

What do you think Jesus would prescribe for our chronic “busyness” so prevalent in our culture today?

I don’t know about you, but when autumn arrives, my chest hurts. I look at my calendar and think “when am I going to squeeze in a shower?” I think many of us recognize how different our culture is from even 30 years ago. I miss being unplugged and unreachable, how about you? Anybody else answering emails at 2AM? I instruct my teenager to unplug and I know that is a key part of being a good parent these days, but if I’m honest with myself I also see how ridiculously hypocritical it is of me to demand of her.

In talking with other people, I’m quite confident that I’m not alone in feeling like we never have enough time to accomplish everything we want or need to do; to be truly present to those we love (evident too by the submission of this “not-so-crazy” question). The ticking clock has the urgency and alarm that reminds us of some late-night thriller movie. Getting a decent meal on the table every night, shuttling the kids to and from school and “sportsball” (what the nerdy folks in Portland call ALL sporting-like activities according to my cousin …love it!) in relatively clean clothes, meeting work deadlines, keeping our car insurance current, cleaning the gutters…and then we hear in our souls the Pope passionately urging us to thoughtfully contemplate our environment and the billions of people on this planet that have it waaaay worse than us. I feel like such a whiner, missing God’s cues no matter how hard I try, because I know in the deepest part of my being I must do something when 2-year old refugees are dying to escape war. But..but...but I didn’t get a chance to shower today, Lord. There is little doubt that the pace of our life sometimes causes us to lose touch with what is most important.

I’m not sure what Jesus would “prescribe” for our culture but we can and do observe that during Jesus’ earthly ministry, He Himself escaped the busyness of the crowds occasionally to renew His strength. Mark 6:31 reads “Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to [His disciples], ‘Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.’” Jesus knew the importance of stopping, eating and finding our calm in order to hear God’s still, quiet voice over the roar of our lives. But I don’t think this stopping and paying attention comes naturally to us these days. We need to be very intentional about how we spend our hottest commodity these days: time.

Romans 2:12 reads “Do not be conformed to this world, but continuously be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may be able to determine what God's will is—what is good, acceptable, and perfect.” So, with that, though I don’t want to add yet another thing to your list, I do want to invite you to reserve the 6 Thursday evenings of Lent in your calendar now (Feb. 11 – Mar. 17, soup supper & childcare provided) to stop and “renew our minds” together as a community. To spirituality nourish ourselves so that we may hear the will of God more clearly and hone our ability to ruthlessly prioritize!

Crazy Catholic Question #47: Wake Up!

All four gospels tell us that Jesus said “For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it.” What did Jesus mean by this?

I’m not sure I’m qualified to say with any surety “what Jesus meant” but I can share what I would guess at this time in my life, though I will most likely read this article 5 years from now and laugh at myself (I hope). Maybe he meant that if we over-focus, over-identify with our individual lives as separate beings, we will lose our life. We will remain unfulfilled and dead inside. But if we do not over-identify (navel-gaze) with our separate individual life, the death of that self-centered life becomes a stage in a process of transformation. We awaken to what is most important in life and we are joined with God’s Spirit…God’s way of thinking about things….

Perhaps all our little sacrifices, our little deaths to our self-centered selves to develop the habit of self-giving that Jesus calls us to are not a loss but a key part of our growth and transition into abundant life; the route to a true and meaningful life. Maybe by dying to our self we, paradoxically, experience new life. Jesus said “unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.”

In his autobiography Nikos Kazantzakis tells how a young man went to visit a famous monk in search of the love of God and hope of salvation. He describes their encounter as follows:

Working up courage, I entered the cave and proceeded toward the voice. The ascetic was curled up on the ground. He raised his head. I did not know what to say, where to begin…Finally I gathered up my courage.

“Do you still wrestle with the devil, Fr. Makarios? I asked him.

“Not any longer, my child. I have grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength…I wrestle with God.”

“With God!” I exclaimed with astonishment. “And you hope to win?”

“I hope to lose, my child. My bones remain with me still, and they continue to resist.”

“Yours is a hard life, Father. I too want to be saved. Is there no other way?”

“More agreeable?” asked the ascetic, smiling compassionately.

“More human, Father.” He replied “One…only one.” “What is it?”

“Ascent. To climb a series of steps. From the full stomach to hunger, from the slaked throat to thirst, from joy to suffering. God sits at the summit of hunger, thirst, and suffering; the devil sits at the summit of a comfortable life. Choose.”

“I am still young. The world is nice. I have time to choose.”

Reaching out his hand, the ascetic touched my knee and pushed me.

“Wake up, my child. Wake up before death wakes you up.”

Crazy Catholic Question #46: Holding on too tight?

A little parable for your spiritual pondering this week from Jesuit Anthony De Mello….to what are we holding on to too tightly?

A Hindu monk had reached the outskirts of the village and settled down under a tree for the night when a villager came running up to him and said, "The stone! The stone! Give me the precious stone!"

"What stone?" asked the monk.

"Last night the Lord Shiva appeared to me in a dream," said the villager, "And told me that if I went to the outskirts of the village at dusk I would find a monk who would give me a precious stone that would make me rich forever."

The monk rummaged in his bag and pulled out a stone. "He probably meant this one," he said, as he handed the stone over to the villager. "I found it on a forest path some days ago. You can certainly have it."

The man gazed at the stone in wonder. It was a diamond, probably the largest diamond in the whole world, for it was as large as a person's head.

The villager took the diamond and returned home in great celebration. But all night he tossed about in bed, unable to sleep. The next day at the crack of dawn he returned to the outskirts of town and woke the monk and said “Please, give to me that which made it possible for you to give this diamond away so easily."

Crazy Catholic Question #45: Limbo

Do Catholics believe that babies who die before being baptized go to Limbo?
It was once widely held that if a baby should die without being baptized that they didn't have God's life within them; they were missing the grace needed for salvation which is given at the time of baptism. Limbo wasn't a place of suffering, but not a place of intimacy with God either. This funky theological idea formally emerged for the first time during a 5th century controversy between St. Augustine and the British monk Pelagius.

But even before this public debate there was an intriguing bit of ancient lore circulating that claimed that sometime around the early 4th century some random monk was reading about how we receive grace and the erasure of original sin through the sacrament of Baptism and he wrote a little note in the margin of the book he was studying “What about un-baptized babies?” perhaps with the intent to follow up on this question later or remember to ask his professor about it. This question that was scribbled in the margin of the book in the days before the printing press was then inadvertently copied into another edition of the book by a scribe, and then copied over and over again. Aaaand here’s the twist….the word for “margin” in Latin is "limbo"! So it eventually it became common language to say that un-baptized babies are in the "margin" or "limbo" state. True story? Who knows…but fun nonetheless.

The bottom line is limbo has NEVER been and is not now a bonafide Catholic doctrine. But it definitely continues to linger in our Catholic imagination because whenever I ask people “Hey, do you have a Crazy Catholic Question I could use for this week’s bulletin?” their question usually has to do with limbo, hell, or purgatory (or they just take the opportunity to tell me how awful their experience of confession was when they were a kid. Not sure if there’s a question in that last one or not, but we’ll have to find one for a future article because the “ack!” of confession seems an almost universal experience. For another time…).

So, the church has never taught or held limbo as a doctrine of the faith…ever. This concept of limbo does not appear anywhere in scripture. The word is not even mentioned in our Catechism. Sadly for many years it was taught AS IF it was official teaching, leading to much unnecessary and downright cruel suffering for already devastated parents and families.

Now, have theologians debated it? Yes. But thankfully limbo gets about as much attention and debate today as the question of how many angels can sit on the head of a pin, and rightly so, because it is a rather trivial discussion at best. Would any of us ever doom an infant that died before being baptized to eternal life separate from God? Of course not! I think it’s safe to assume that God is AT LEAST as merciful as us, no? Our church teaching instructs us to trust the fate of un-baptized babies to the boundless love and providence of God knowing that we have no power to limit or shackle God’s grace. God’s very essence is love…God in God’s self IS mercy.

Since Vatican II our language around Baptism has shifted too, from erasure of sin to the centrality of Baptism as a sacrament of Initiation. Baptism is a ritual that celebrates our belonging to the body of Christ.

Fr. Ron Rolheiser once said “To submit to love is to be baptized, that is, to let one's life be forever interrupted. To not let one's life be interrupted is to say no to love.”