As we today celebrate the testimonies Sts. Peter and Paul, I offer three questions posed by the Lord to St. Peter as points of entry for reflection as we each discern God's call for our lives. Invite you to ponder and chew over these questions.
1. What are you looking for? (John 1:38)
What is it that your heart is seeking?
Where is it seeking it?
What is the cry of my heart?
Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there your heart will also be." (Matt 6:21)
2. Who do you say that I am? (Matthew 16:15)
Who is Jesus to you?
What aspects of his mystery have you encountered in your life?
Jesus said, "Whoever knows and obeys my commandments is the person who loves me. Those who love me will have my Father's love, and I, too, will love them and show myself to them." (John 14:21)
3. Do you love me more than these? (John 21:15)
What would 'these' be for you?
Would you be able to renounce them for the sake of Jesus?
Jesus said, "If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. What profit is there for one to gain the whole world yet lose or forfeit himself?" (Luke 9:23-25)
I believe these three questions are key to our discernment because a) it gets us in touch with the dynamics of our own hearts and b) it allows us to see where that heart stands in relation to the Lord.
As these questions are posed to us again in light of our discernment, it is important that we remember two things:
1) IT IS GRACE THAT SAVES US
Jesus builds his Church on the weak rock that is Peter. What I most appreciate about him is precisely his weakness. Every time Peter opens his mouth, he puts his foot in it. "He walks on the water – but then panics and starts to sink. He makes the first profession of faith – and moments later blunders into error and is called Satan by the Lord. He refuses to be washed, and then, when the purpose is explained to him, demands to be washed all over. And, of course, he betrays his master soon after having been warned that he will and having sworn not to. If Peter is the rock on which the Church is built, what a fissured and friable rock it is!...
In the end, it was grace that gave the coward the courage to bear witness when it counted, grace that gave the fool the wisdom he needed to set the infant Church on her way, grace that taught the impetuous man patience and forbearance."
No practice of virtue, however hard we may try, will ever give us that strength to overcome this humanity so deeply held by sin, evil and death. If ever we accomplish anything, it is the grace of the Lord at work precisely in our weakness.
Peter and Paul well understood this: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. (2 Cor 12:10-11) I hope in our journey of discernment that we too learn well this lesson.
2) PRAY PRAY PRAY
Discernment begins on our knees, in silent prayer before the Lord, because like Peter, our vocation emerges from our encounter with Jesus Christ, the Way, the Truth and the Life. Prayer reminds us that this is not our work, that we are but servants in the Lord's vineyard. In the white heat of Archbishop Romero words,
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision. We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent enterprise that is God's work. Nothing we do is complete, which is another way of saying that the kingdom always lies beyond us. No statement says all that could be said. No prayer fully expresses our faith. No confession brings perfection, no pastoral visit brings wholeness. No program accomplishes the church's mission. No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about: We plant seeds that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capability.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.
We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master builder and the worker. We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs. We are prophets of a future not our own. Amen.
Sts. Peter and Paul nourished the early Church with their blood. Through their intercession, may our own lives be poured out as a libation to the Lord so we can say with St. Paul: "I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give to me on that day, and not only to me but also to all who have longed for his appearing.” (2 Timothy 4:6-8)
Oremus pro invicem.
Let us also pray for one another as we each discern God's call for our lives.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
Sunday, June 14, 2009
DARK NIGHT
One of my favourite poems translated with captivating force by Roy Campbell
UPON a gloomy night,
With all my cares to loving ardours flushed,
(O venture of delight!)
With nobody in sight
I went abroad when all my house was hushed.
In safety, in disguise,
In darkness up the secret stair I crept,
(O happy enterprise)
concealed from other eyes
When all my house at length in silence slept.
Upon that lucky night
In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,
I went without discerning
And with no other light
Except for that which in my heart was burning.
It lit and led me through
More certain than the light of noonday clear
To where One waited near
Whose presence well I knew,
There where no other presence might appear.
Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each into the other.
Within my flowering breast
Which only for himself entire I save
He sank into his rest
And all my gifts I gave
Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave.
Over the ramparts fanned
While the fresh wind was fluttering his tresses,
With his serenest hand
My neck he wounded, and
Suspended every sense with its caresses.
Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
From all endeavour ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.
-- Saint John of the Cross
UPON a gloomy night,
With all my cares to loving ardours flushed,
(O venture of delight!)
With nobody in sight
I went abroad when all my house was hushed.
In safety, in disguise,
In darkness up the secret stair I crept,
(O happy enterprise)
concealed from other eyes
When all my house at length in silence slept.
Upon that lucky night
In secrecy, inscrutable to sight,
I went without discerning
And with no other light
Except for that which in my heart was burning.
It lit and led me through
More certain than the light of noonday clear
To where One waited near
Whose presence well I knew,
There where no other presence might appear.
Oh night that was my guide!
Oh darkness dearer than the morning’s pride,
Oh night that joined the lover
To the beloved bride
Transfiguring them each into the other.
Within my flowering breast
Which only for himself entire I save
He sank into his rest
And all my gifts I gave
Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave.
Over the ramparts fanned
While the fresh wind was fluttering his tresses,
With his serenest hand
My neck he wounded, and
Suspended every sense with its caresses.
Lost to myself I stayed
My face upon my lover having laid
From all endeavour ceasing:
And all my cares releasing
Threw them amongst the lilies there to fade.
-- Saint John of the Cross
Thursday, June 4, 2009
VERTIGO
A Reflection on U2's Song, Vertigo
You can listen to the song here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWZ7bpfQag
Ver·ti·go \ˈvər-ti-ˌgō\
a dizzy confused state of mind
Lights go down, it's dark, the jungle is your head, it can't rule your heart
A feeling so much stronger than a thought...
I can't stand the beats...The girl with crimson nails has Jesus 'round her neck
As a homosexual man, my contingent reality is Love as a dark jungle overwhelming emotion and logic.
And as a deeply religious man, my homosexuality often chocked my faith in frustration, struggling to make sense of two seemingly incongruous entities. In an effort to help, voices attempted to eliminate one in favour of the other dismissing dialogue as compromise: Personal experiences are used as weapons against faith and faith is often used as an escape from genuine experiences.
...I'm at a place called Vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But you give me something I can feel
In my own meandering journey, I recognized value in a dissonant, no-holds-barred dialogue between the two, mutually questioning each other. My contingent reality must question faith's reasons for the parameters that it sets and why it cannot simply rubber-stamp the current trend. Yet experience must also be open to faith's scrutiny: What ultimately do I want? Who defines me and why?
Faith without experience is an ideological fantasy and experience without faith is an impotent hope.
With these two wings, one is assumed into that Love who is the source and summit of our innate restlessness.
Your love is teaching me how to kneel, kneel...
You can listen to the song here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhWZ7bpfQag
Ver·ti·go \ˈvər-ti-ˌgō\
a dizzy confused state of mind
Lights go down, it's dark, the jungle is your head, it can't rule your heart
A feeling so much stronger than a thought...
I can't stand the beats...The girl with crimson nails has Jesus 'round her neck
As a homosexual man, my contingent reality is Love as a dark jungle overwhelming emotion and logic.
And as a deeply religious man, my homosexuality often chocked my faith in frustration, struggling to make sense of two seemingly incongruous entities. In an effort to help, voices attempted to eliminate one in favour of the other dismissing dialogue as compromise: Personal experiences are used as weapons against faith and faith is often used as an escape from genuine experiences.
...I'm at a place called Vertigo
It's everything I wish I didn't know
But you give me something I can feel
In my own meandering journey, I recognized value in a dissonant, no-holds-barred dialogue between the two, mutually questioning each other. My contingent reality must question faith's reasons for the parameters that it sets and why it cannot simply rubber-stamp the current trend. Yet experience must also be open to faith's scrutiny: What ultimately do I want? Who defines me and why?
Faith without experience is an ideological fantasy and experience without faith is an impotent hope.
With these two wings, one is assumed into that Love who is the source and summit of our innate restlessness.
Your love is teaching me how to kneel, kneel...
CONTINGENT GRACE
Then it seemed as if men must proceed from light to light, in the light of the Word,
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.
(T.S. Elliot, Choruses from the Rock)
Pain is the kiss of love.
Love offers the highest ideal yet also lacerates the deepest wound. Thus, Yeats diagnosed love as "the crooked thing. There is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it." (Brown Penny) Enraptured, the heart follows its own rhythm, at times overwhelming emotion and logic. Its ultimate goal: fulfillment. Restless by nature, the heart looks beyond itself to the other as the locus of its fullness in the affirmation of its existence, in the revelation of its meaning and reason for living. Pope John Paul II identified this restlessness as the lifeblood of that which is most deeply human: “the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience.” (Redemptor Hominis, 18) This pilgrimage to meaning is deeply rooted, inflamed by an innate affection for this 'other' to which I long to offer my life, time, treasures and talents. Some can choose to understand this as humans being innately selfish, desiring only their own self-realization. There is accuracy in this because humans begin with themselves. Where else can I begin other than myself, introspectively delving into my being, questioning my life and the meaning of my existence? In fact, isn't the best gift that which comes from the depths of the heart?
Love is more than a happy, romantic feeling. Its voice speaks to the deepest self, offering it the drive to look for purpose and beauty. As a man attracted to the same sex within a context where most of my male peers are attracted to the opposite, I felt the searing sting of unsatisfied desire. I went through times when I was caught up in love's dangerous embrace, simply to be teased by unfulfilled affection. I was so drawn that I preoccupied myself with everything that this collective 'he' did. I treasured every part of the little insignificant things that made our relationship, got raptured into pure bliss at every attention received from him and sank into deep despair when felt ignored or rejected. I recklessly delved into conjugal acts that only left me more empty and yearning.
The Song of Songs well worded the condition of my heart: "I sought him but I did not find him; I called to him but he did not answer me" (5:6). I was ushered into the dark side of love, to its night. Love has its nights as much as it has its days, its winter as much as it has summers and both have much to teach. The midnight of love, beyond infatuation and lust, is a refining fire burning away the impurities to have only pure gold, a pure, real and most authentic self. It is easy to run away from this, it is easy to fill the hole, to run to someone else just to avoid feeling lonely, feeling alone, feeling rejected and unwanted.
Then a voice within, with a forceful tenderness of a mother, asked, "What would happen if you allowed the pain to speak to you, if you stayed with the loneliness, the rejection and the abandonment?" It would be like Alice falling into the rabbit hole and continually being asked, "Who are you?" with the only answer being apophatic: "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid... because I'm not myself, you see. I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly... for I can't understand it myself to begin with." It is ultimately, in the words of Luigi Giussani, "the thirst for change in one's life and the desire for one's life to be coherent, that it may be changed on the strength of what it is at its root, that it may be more worthy of the Reality that "clothes" it." (From Utopia to Presence)
Passing through this valley of tears, what I thought made me ME was scrutinized. It returned me again to the beginning, to the question of existence and meaning, down a vertiginous quest that drove me to the limits of my understanding of myself and the world, almost to a point of sheer madness. Love pushed me to the peripheries of my world of comfort and plunged me into a realm beyond myself. Love transcended my humanity, my world, even humanity itself. The affection for love, in its very nature, carried me beyond the human and into the arms of this total 'Other' who dares to call himself LOVE, to this 'Other' whose face is one yet three: Love given, received and shared. It is the journey of the soul to its meaning, to its destiny. So why did I stay? Why take the red pill and dare jump into the rabbit hole of love? What was at stake was my very life.
In the words of Morpheus,
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.
Did not Dante pen a similar experience?
MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say,
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.
The forest of the dark night is deep. In this ascent, I am confronted with my own finitude, humbled by my own littleness in the face of Mystery in its totality. I cannot reach it unless it reveals itself to me, unless it makes itself accessible to my embodied existence. Is this not what makes love authentic? That it is seen, touched, heard, even tasted? Regardless of its infinite nature, Love desires to be made known through the body. Can love really be expressed outside of the body when this is our sole means of communication, or to better articulate it, that the body is the sole medium for our gift and reception of love?
Trinity and Incarnation. In my own meandering experience, this is the face of love revealed to me: Love whose nature is a unity of Persons who reaches out to me in embodied form.
The journey is far from over. It has just begun. Along this road, two lamps are my guide: The reality of my experience and the conviction of my faith. Experience and faith continually question each other, often in a dissonant dialogue. Experience prevents faith from becoming an ideology and faith prevents experience from superficiality. In the words of Tennyson: "All experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! (Ulysses)
In this invitation to depth and height, searching leads to surrender: "This passion is the opposite of moralism because it is not a law to which we must conform but a love to be ever more adhered to, it is a presence for us to follow ever more with our whole selves, it is a fact within which we can really abandon ourselves." (Giussani, From Utopia to Presence)
It is the sign of contradiction: My Redemption came through suffering, light travelled through night, chastity has dignified my sexuality. The end is the beginning, eternity has embraced time, grace has built on nature, deep has called on deep and the Beloved rests its head on the bossom of his Lover.
The fire of the wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction.
You fool, it is life that makes you dance: Have you forgotten? Come out of the smoke, the world is tossing in its sleep, the sun is up, the land is bursting in the silence of dawn.
You fool, the prisons are open!
(Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable)
Through the Passion and Sacrifice saved in spite of their negative being;
Bestial as always before, carnal, self seeking as always before, selfish and purblind as ever before,
Yet always struggling, always reaffirming, always resuming their march on the way that was lit by the light;
Often halting, loitering, straying, delaying, returning, yet following no other way.
(T.S. Elliot, Choruses from the Rock)
Pain is the kiss of love.
Love offers the highest ideal yet also lacerates the deepest wound. Thus, Yeats diagnosed love as "the crooked thing. There is nobody wise enough to find out all that is in it." (Brown Penny) Enraptured, the heart follows its own rhythm, at times overwhelming emotion and logic. Its ultimate goal: fulfillment. Restless by nature, the heart looks beyond itself to the other as the locus of its fullness in the affirmation of its existence, in the revelation of its meaning and reason for living. Pope John Paul II identified this restlessness as the lifeblood of that which is most deeply human: “the search for truth, the insatiable need for the good, hunger for freedom, nostalgia for the beautiful, and the voice of conscience.” (Redemptor Hominis, 18) This pilgrimage to meaning is deeply rooted, inflamed by an innate affection for this 'other' to which I long to offer my life, time, treasures and talents. Some can choose to understand this as humans being innately selfish, desiring only their own self-realization. There is accuracy in this because humans begin with themselves. Where else can I begin other than myself, introspectively delving into my being, questioning my life and the meaning of my existence? In fact, isn't the best gift that which comes from the depths of the heart?
Love is more than a happy, romantic feeling. Its voice speaks to the deepest self, offering it the drive to look for purpose and beauty. As a man attracted to the same sex within a context where most of my male peers are attracted to the opposite, I felt the searing sting of unsatisfied desire. I went through times when I was caught up in love's dangerous embrace, simply to be teased by unfulfilled affection. I was so drawn that I preoccupied myself with everything that this collective 'he' did. I treasured every part of the little insignificant things that made our relationship, got raptured into pure bliss at every attention received from him and sank into deep despair when felt ignored or rejected. I recklessly delved into conjugal acts that only left me more empty and yearning.
The Song of Songs well worded the condition of my heart: "I sought him but I did not find him; I called to him but he did not answer me" (5:6). I was ushered into the dark side of love, to its night. Love has its nights as much as it has its days, its winter as much as it has summers and both have much to teach. The midnight of love, beyond infatuation and lust, is a refining fire burning away the impurities to have only pure gold, a pure, real and most authentic self. It is easy to run away from this, it is easy to fill the hole, to run to someone else just to avoid feeling lonely, feeling alone, feeling rejected and unwanted.
Then a voice within, with a forceful tenderness of a mother, asked, "What would happen if you allowed the pain to speak to you, if you stayed with the loneliness, the rejection and the abandonment?" It would be like Alice falling into the rabbit hole and continually being asked, "Who are you?" with the only answer being apophatic: "I can't explain myself, I'm afraid... because I'm not myself, you see. I'm afraid I can't put it more clearly... for I can't understand it myself to begin with." It is ultimately, in the words of Luigi Giussani, "the thirst for change in one's life and the desire for one's life to be coherent, that it may be changed on the strength of what it is at its root, that it may be more worthy of the Reality that "clothes" it." (From Utopia to Presence)
Passing through this valley of tears, what I thought made me ME was scrutinized. It returned me again to the beginning, to the question of existence and meaning, down a vertiginous quest that drove me to the limits of my understanding of myself and the world, almost to a point of sheer madness. Love pushed me to the peripheries of my world of comfort and plunged me into a realm beyond myself. Love transcended my humanity, my world, even humanity itself. The affection for love, in its very nature, carried me beyond the human and into the arms of this total 'Other' who dares to call himself LOVE, to this 'Other' whose face is one yet three: Love given, received and shared. It is the journey of the soul to its meaning, to its destiny. So why did I stay? Why take the red pill and dare jump into the rabbit hole of love? What was at stake was my very life.
In the words of Morpheus,
This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends, you awake in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth, nothing more.
Did not Dante pen a similar experience?
MIDWAY upon the journey of our life
I found myself within a forest dark,
For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say,
What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,
Which in the very thought renews the fear.
So bitter is it, death is little more;
But of the good to treat, which there I found,
Speak will I of the other things I saw there.
I cannot well repeat how there I entered,
So full was I of slumber at the moment
In which I had abandoned the true way.
The forest of the dark night is deep. In this ascent, I am confronted with my own finitude, humbled by my own littleness in the face of Mystery in its totality. I cannot reach it unless it reveals itself to me, unless it makes itself accessible to my embodied existence. Is this not what makes love authentic? That it is seen, touched, heard, even tasted? Regardless of its infinite nature, Love desires to be made known through the body. Can love really be expressed outside of the body when this is our sole means of communication, or to better articulate it, that the body is the sole medium for our gift and reception of love?
Trinity and Incarnation. In my own meandering experience, this is the face of love revealed to me: Love whose nature is a unity of Persons who reaches out to me in embodied form.
The journey is far from over. It has just begun. Along this road, two lamps are my guide: The reality of my experience and the conviction of my faith. Experience and faith continually question each other, often in a dissonant dialogue. Experience prevents faith from becoming an ideology and faith prevents experience from superficiality. In the words of Tennyson: "All experience is an arch wherethro' gleams that untravell'd world whose margin fades for ever and for ever when I move. How dull it is to pause, to make an end, to rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use! As tho' to breathe were life! (Ulysses)
In this invitation to depth and height, searching leads to surrender: "This passion is the opposite of moralism because it is not a law to which we must conform but a love to be ever more adhered to, it is a presence for us to follow ever more with our whole selves, it is a fact within which we can really abandon ourselves." (Giussani, From Utopia to Presence)
It is the sign of contradiction: My Redemption came through suffering, light travelled through night, chastity has dignified my sexuality. The end is the beginning, eternity has embraced time, grace has built on nature, deep has called on deep and the Beloved rests its head on the bossom of his Lover.
The fire of the wild white sun has eaten up the distance between hope and despair. Dance in this sun, you tepid idiot. Wake up and dance in the clarity of perfect contradiction.
You fool, it is life that makes you dance: Have you forgotten? Come out of the smoke, the world is tossing in its sleep, the sun is up, the land is bursting in the silence of dawn.
You fool, the prisons are open!
(Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable)
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