Complete the circle
By George Evans
Elsewhere in this issue of Mississippi Catholic you will find coverage of educational opportunities offered by the Office of Faith Formation of the diocese covering all aspects of lay ministry and lay formation.  One does not need to have a title in the local parish, be a teacher in a Catholic school, an employee on the parish staff or have any designation whatsoever other than being an adult Catholic to participate in many of the offerings. In fact, by baptism we are all called to formation throughout our life by the Gospel of Jesus.
Many if not most Catholics have sold themselves short for years with the understanding that what they learned from their parents and families or the good Sisters in the parochial schools was and is enough for their spiritual formation for life. When we think about it and compare that understanding to what we do in every other aspect of our lives something doesn’t compute.
The lessons, prayers and devotionals we learned in our youth are invaluable. Without them it is likely that there is no foundation on which to build further spiritual formation. However, if we quit our spiritual growth, devotional life and understanding at 12, 18, 25 or whatever age, is there any reason we shouldn’t get bored, disinterested or turned off by our religious experience as the rest of our life continues to grow, develop, and mature?
We complain a lot about the consumerism, secularism, self-indulgence and selfishness of our current society. If we quit meeting God in a progressively adult way always being formed in our knowledge and spirituality as we are in our other education, work, social development and skills are we not responsible, at least in part, for the darkness of which we complain?  How can an education which stops in our youth serve our religious and spiritual development needed as a parent, head of a household, spouse and teacher?
Pope Francis in his extraordinary exhortation “Joy of the Gospel” admonishes us that the new evangelization he calls for not only requires a faithful acceptance  of the kerygma, the first proclamation that Jesus loves us, saves us and lives at our side, but “also calls for ongoing formation and maturation.” (Par. 160)  “Education and catechesis are at the service of this growth.” (Par. 163)  Our pope understands and challenges us to be prepared to impact and challenge a world more diverse, technological, sophisticated and multicultural than ever before. We cannot effectively do this with a lack of knowledge and spiritual formation.  He makes it clear:
It would not be right to see this call to growth exclusively or primarily in terms of doctrinal formation.  It has to do with “observing” all that the Lord has shown us as the way of responding to his love.  Along    with the virtues, this means above all the new commandment, the first and the greatest of the commandments, and the one that best identifies us as Christ’s disciples: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you”(Jn 15:12). Clearly, whenever the New Testament  authors want to present the heart of the Christian moral message, they present the essential requirement of love for one’s neighbor: “The one who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the whole law…therefore love of neighbor is the fulfilling of the law”(Rom 13:8,10) (Par 161)
Again, it’s up to us to be the Lord’s hands and feet, his messengers to those who have not heard his word and to a world aching for the love, peace and joy which only He can bring. First, as the pope tells us we need to be as formed and transformed as we can be in order to do the best job possible.  Does not the Lord deserve this if he entrusts evangelization to us?  Do we not owe it to ourselves to know the Lord as fully and as intimately as we can?
The diocese and many parishes offer great opportunities for “formation and maturation” as Pope Francis calls it in his challenge. May we all take full advantage so that we grow in faith and love to better love and serve our Lord and neighbor.
(George Evans is a pastoral minister at Jackson St. Richard Parish.)

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
The earthy, mercenary lust for gold, silver and precious stones drove prospectors to the California Forty-niners gold rush and the Klondike gold rush, and it pushed conquistadores from the Old World to risk everything – even life – in their quest for cities of gold in the New World.
It made no difference that mushrooming gold rush towns were rife with crime and immorality.
Changed only in venue and outer appearance, the gold rush syndrome lives today and thrives in virtually every corner of the planet. Mercenaries of every stripe abound in every nation and in all human activities. We have come to expect the gold rush multimillions routinely tossed about in negotiations and contracts of the National Basketball Association, the National Football Association, Major League Baseball, professional golf, hockey, soccer and entertainment.
Oddly, those outsized salaries are frequently dwarfed by multimillion-dollar endorsements made by famous athletes like Michael Jordan who continue raking in the megabucks decades after their heyday as athletes and retirement from the battlefield of world-class competition.
“What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” is the chant that describes but a small part of all that goes on in the erstwhile dusty townlet of the western desert that became Glitter City built on the human hunger and thirst to derive great profit from as little outlay as possible. But, lo, in magic Atlantic City and thereabouts, big names like Showboat Atlantic City and Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino are set to close within two months, mainly due to tough regional competition.
With all that, the gold rush fever sometimes invades, undermines and destroys our most  intimate and precious relationships in marriage, among family members, and with our friends. We even call those involved in such relationships gold diggers, because their mind is never far from lucre and gain.
Mark 8:36-37 extends the challenge of a stiff rebuke to people who drop all other interests and go all out for the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow, “What profit is there for one to gain the whole world and forfeit his life? What could one give in exchange for his life?”
A few days ago, an extraordinary rendition of “Somewhere Over The Rainbow” stopped me in my tracks and lifted my mind and emotions to a place beyond the everyday reach of our human understanding. Although it is frequently symptomatic of lazy distractions, daydreaming is a not uncommon subconscious indication of a transcendent longing of our hearts and minds.
Yearning and imagination fog the stardust and physical allures of people like Judy Garland who seem to have so much more of the good life than most of us have. But there seems to be an inverse relation of the good life to real transcendent values in perhaps most of those who are gifted with the good life. In other words, the good life does not deliver what its goods claim to embody. The more the good life is present, the less true values and happiness seem to thrive.
Whether the near mystical transport of our human being results from hallucinatory drug  accelerants or from a clear mind uncluttered by drugs of any kind, the end product is invariably a most desirable place tantalizingly beyond our mortal grasp. Thus, we have a contradictory huge attraction to the divine and simultaneously to the vanity of human longing for worldly things.
Our longing for the spiritual wonderland beyond all earthly barriers must be stronger than the terrible condition of the world summed up by St. John the Evangelist in 1 John 2:16-17, “All that is in the world, lust of the flesh, lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. Yet the world and its enticement are passing away. But whoever does the will of God remains forever.” Sadly, we remain suckers for what is so obviously passing away.
However, the proverbial pot of gold may not be conventional gold at all for some blessed people whose “gold” in life is something even more precious. For instance, true friends are worth more than gold, and, of course, our relatives should be worth even more than that, although such is, tragically, not always the case. Relatives are often the gold unappreciated until they are gone.
“Somewhere over the rainbow… dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” The lyrics go on to portray the intense desire to see clouds and troubles melt away. However, ironies demonstrate that the lack of clouds spell troubles in lands stricken by severe drought. Not every cloud is your enemy. Not every blue sky or Easy Street day is your friend. At times the hot cauldron of hardship and pain forges your mind, heart and soul into a fit instrument of service.
Our dreams must far exceed the worldly parameters of the so-called American dream. Of itself, that dream is earthy, hard limited by some decades of time, and too easily conducive to an attitude of selfishness, snobbishness, attachment to material things, and a drift away from God.
The stellar intellect of St. Augustine shares with us, “Our hearts are restless, oh God, and they will never find rest until they rest in you.” Augustine shares again, “Too late have I known you, Beauty so ancient yet so new!”
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.”   (1 John 4:16)
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
There are few more insightful studies into the spirituality of aging than the late James Hillman’s book, “The Force of Character.” Ironically Hillman was more critical of Christian spirituality than sympathetic to it; yet his brilliant insights into nature’s design and intent offer perspectives on the spirituality of aging that often eclipse what is found in explicitly Christian writings.
Hillman begins this book, a discourse on the nature of aging, with a question: Why would nature design things so that, as humans, just as we reach the pinnacle of our maturity and finally get more of a genuine grip on our lives, our bodies begin to fall apart? Why do we suffer such a bevy of physical ailments as we age? Is this a cruel trick or does nature have a specific intent in mind when it does this? What might nature have in mind when the ailments and physical foibles of age begin to play some havoc with our days and nights?
He answers these questions with a metaphor. The best wines have to be aged and mellowed in cracked old barrels. This image of course needs little explication. We all know the difference between a mellow old wine and a tart young one that could still use some maturation. What we don’t grasp as immediately is how that old wine became so mellow, what processes it had to endure to give up the sharp tang of its youth.
Thus Hillman’s metaphor speaks brilliantly. Our physical bodies are the containers within which our souls mellow and mature; and our souls mellow and mature more deeply when our bodies begin to show cracks than they do when we are physically strong and whole, akin to what John Updike wrote after undergoing a life-threatening illness. For Updike, there are some secrets that are hidden from health. For Hillman there is a depth of maturity that is also hidden from health.
With that fundamental insight as his ground, Hillman then goes on in each chapter of the book to take up one aspect of aging, one aspect of the loss of the wholeness of our youth, and show how it is designed to help mellow and mature the soul. And since he is dealing with various lapses in our bodies and our health, we can expect that what follows will be pretty earthy and far from glamorous.
Thus, for instance, he begins one chapter with the question: Why does it happen that, as we age, we find it more difficult to sleep uninterrupted through the night but instead are awakened with the need to go to the bathroom and heed a call of nature? What is nature’s wisdom and intent in that?
Hillman answers with another insightful analogy: In monasteries, monks get up each night while it is still dark and do an exercise they call “Vigils.” If you asked them why they don’t do this prayer during the day so as to save themselves getting up in the middle of the night, they would tell you that this particular exercise can only be done at night, in the dark, in the particular mood that the night brings. The night, the dark, and the more somber angels this brings cannot be artificially replicated during the day, in the light. Light brings a sunnier mood and there are certain things we will not face in the light of day, but only when the dark besets us.
So what happens when our aging bodies make us get up at night to heed nature’s call? We heed nature’s call but then often are unable to fall back into sleep immediately. Instead we lie in our beds trying to will ourselves back to sleep when something unwanted and unintended happens.
We receive a visit from the mythical goddess of night, Nyx. And she doesn’t come alone; she brings along her children: unresolved bitterness, lingering grudges, unwanted paranoia, frightening shadows and a bevy of other dark spirits whom we can normally avoid and whom we refuse to face when the lights are on. But now, in the dark, unable to sleep, we must deal with them, and dealing with them, making our peace with Nyx and her children, helps mellow our souls and helps us grow to a deeper maturity.
Monks already know this and so, each night, they schedule a session with the goddess of night. They don’t call it that of course and might even be offended by the reference to their Vigil prayer as a visit with this mythical goddess, but their spiritual wisdom mirrors that of nature. Both nature and monks know that a certain work inside the soul can only be done in the darkness of night.
Monks have secrets worth knowing and nature eventually teaches them to us, whether we want the lesson or not. Nature eventually turns us all into monks: Our aging bodies eventually become a monastic cell within which our souls deepen, mellow and mature, like wines being seasoned in cracked old barrels.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)