IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

All things considered; I believe that I grew up with a relatively healthy concept of God. The God of my youth, the God that I was catechized into, was not unduly punishing, arbitrary or judgmental. Granted, he was omnipresent so that all of our sins were noticed and noted; but at the end of the day, he was fair, loving, personally concerned for each of us, and wonderfully protective to the point of providing each of us with a personal guardian angel. That God gave me permission to live without too much fear and without any particularly crippling religious neuroses.

But that only gets you so far in life. Not having an unhealthy notion of God doesn’t necessarily mean you have a particularly healthy one. The God who I was raised on was not overly stern and judgmental, but neither was he very joyous, playful, witty or humorous. Especially, he wasn’t sexual, and had a particularly vigilant and uncompromising eye in that area. Essentially, he was somber, heavy and not very joyous to be around. Around him, you had to be solemn and reverent. I remember the assistant director at our Oblate novitiate telling us that there is no recorded incident, ever, of Jesus having laughed.

Under such a God you had permission to be essentially healthy. However, to the extent that you took him seriously, you still walked through life less than fully robust and your relationship with him could only be solemn and reverent.

Then, beginning more than a generation ago, there was a strong reaction in many churches and in the culture to this concept of God. Popular theology and spirituality set out to correct this, sometimes with an undue vigor. What they presented instead was a laughing Jesus and a dancing God, and while this was not without its value, it still left us begging for a deeper literature about the nature of God and what that might mean for us in terms of a health and relationships.

That literature won’t be easy to write, not just because God is ineffable, but because God’s energy is also ineffable. What, indeed, is energy? We rarely ask this question because we take energy as something so primal that it cannot be defined but only taken as a given, as self-evident. We see energy as the primal force that lies at the heart of everything that exists, animate and inanimate. Moreover, we feel energy, powerfully, within ourselves. We know energy, we feel energy, but we rarely recognize its origins, its prodigiousness, its joy, its goodness, its effervescence, and its exuberance. Moreover, we rarely recognize what it tells us about God. What does it tell us?
The first quality of energy is its prodigiousness. It is prodigal beyond our imagination, and this speaks something about God. What kind of creator makes billions of throwaway universes? What kind of creator makes trillions upon trillions of species of life, millions of them never to be seen by the human eye? What kind of father or mother has billions of children?

And what does the exuberance in the energy of young children say about our creator? What does their playfulness suggest about what must also lie inside of sacred energy? What does the energy of a young puppy tell us about what’s sacred? What do laughter, wit and irony tell us about God?
No doubt the energy we see around us and feel irrepressibly within us tells us that, underneath, before and below everything else, there flows a sacred force, both physical and spiritual, which is at its root, joyous, happy, playful, exuberant, effervescent, and deeply personal and loving. God is the ground of that energy. That energy speaks of God and that energy tells us why God made us and what kind of permissions God is giving us for living out our lives.

God is ineffable, that is the first truth that we hold about God. That means that God cannot be imagined or ever circumscribed in a concept. All images of God are inadequate; but that being admitted, we might try to imagine things this way. At the very center of everything there lies an unimaginable energy that is not an impersonal force, but a person, a loving self-conscious mind and heart. From this ground, this person, issues forth all energy, all creativity, all power, all love, all nourishment and all beauty. Moreover, that energy, at its sacred root, is not just creative, intelligent, personal and loving, it’s also joyous, colorful, witty, playful, humorous, erotic and exuberant at its very core. To live in it is to feel a constant invitation to gratitude.

The challenge of our lives is to live inside that energy in a way that honors both it and its origins. That means keeping our shoes off before the burning bush as we respect its sacredness, even as we constantly receive permission from it to be robust, free, joyous, humorous, and playful – without feeling we are stealing fire from the gods.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

Called To Holiness
By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe

If there’s one thing we can learn from those who encountered the Risen Lord during the 40 days between his Resurrection and Ascension, it’s this: Seeing Jesus isn’t the same as recognizing him. To Mary Magdalene, distraught at the tomb, Christ looked like the gardener. To the two disillusioned disciples on the road to Emmaus, he was a clueless stranger. To former fishermen returning to Galilee uncertain of what to do next, the Master was just a man hoping to cook breakfast on the shore.

The Gospel accounts are strange – maybe even troubling – to us. When we read or hear these stories at Mass, we can’t help but wonder what in the world was going on. How is it possible that the people who knew Jesus best, those who were among his closest followers, didn’t know him when they saw him?

But before we take a disparaging view of those very first Christians, perhaps there is another question we ought to ask: How many times do we see Jesus and fail to recognize him?

Based on my own experience, I’ll venture to guess that the answer is somewhere between countless and infinite. By faith, I know that Jesus keeps his promises, that he is always with me and that he never abandons me. But if I’m honest, I don’t recognize Christ’s presence with me most days – not even on the days when I go to adoration or Mass.

And yet, the Eucharistic encounter at adoration and Mass can show us how to see Jesus and know that it is Jesus when we see him. The impact of being able to say, “I have seen the Lord’’ is orders of magnitude greater than simply making a credal statement like “I believe in God” or “I follow Jesus,” or even “I’m Catholic.” It makes us far more convincing witnesses.

The faith formation we all need most can be found at the feet of the Eucharistic Lord. And like those first disciples, we also come to know him in “the breaking of the bread.” (Luke 24:35) The “school of the Eucharist,” as it were, teaches us where to look for Jesus; where we are likely to see him at work in our own lives. We see him in presence, sacrifice and communion. We experience God’s presence in creation, in Scripture, in silence, in the presence of others, most especially the poor. We see him in the sacrifices that are made for us, those we value deeply but also those we easily take for granted. And we see him in the community he gathers, those who resonate with us in shared life experience and those who don’t.

I think that’s why St. Mother Teresa of Kolkata (Calcutta) made the daily Mass and holy hour a priority for her Missionaries of Charity. The Eucharist may well have been the secret to how she herself was able to see Jesus in the poorest of the poor. It may also be the source of the prayer Mother so often shared, the one in which she recited the words “You did it to Me” on her fingers.

This much is clear: if we are to become Christ in our world, we must see him there first. That shouldn’t be as difficult as it often seems to us because he is there. In fact, he is everywhere. Christ Jesus is cultivating life among the dead and in all the cemeteries of our lives.

He is walking along with us on the road when we are confused and disappointed. He is explaining to us the truths we thought we understood, calling out to us from the shoreline, and preparing to feed us when we are hungry. He comes to us in shame and isolation, behind the locked doors we are afraid to open. He breathes peace over our souls, forgives our sins and shows us how to forgive one another. And yes, he is with us in the Most Holy Sacrament of the altar. And because he has never left us, because the Eucharist is his body, blood, soul and divinity, we can say with all those who came before us in faith: “I have seen the Lord.”

(Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a sinner, Catholic convert, freelance writer and editor, musician, speaker, pet-aholic, wife and mom of eight grown children, loving life in New Orleans.)

On Ordinary Times
By Lucia A. Silecchia

By now, the eclipse glasses have been put away. The photos of the April 8 nature show have all been posted to Facebook and Instagram to prove that it really happened. The stories from the day have, likewise, also been told – ranging from the “wow” from those in the path of totality to the “meh” from those who saw a partial eclipse through a cloud shrouded sky.

I was in the latter camp since my cloudy neighborhood seemed merely and anticlimactically overcast. Yet, it was still a “wow” day. For me, the excitement was not what I saw in the heavens. It was, rather, what I saw here on earth. For a day, I saw busy people catch their breath and look skywards. I saw genuine excitement about a natural sky show. I saw all too cynical people embracing the excitement, without seeming self-conscious at all.

Since then, I have wondered why. Perhaps it was simply a case of FOMO, the fear of missing out of a big event. Perhaps it was mere curiosity. Perhaps it was the desire to be part of something bigger and to be connected to others even if only for a few minutes.

Perhaps it was something else.

Perhaps there is, in all of us, the search for wonder. Perhaps there is the fervent hope to catch a glimpse of the face of God in those things that seem far bigger than ourselves. Like many, I learned more about eclipses these past weeks than I have ever known before. To my amazement, I learned that the sun is both 400 times larger than the moon and 400 times further away. This is a symmetry that demands wonder at the One who made it thus. What demands even more wonder is that He also cares deeply and completely for each one of us.

I almost wished, for a while, that I had become a student of science because that seems a direct path to the divine. It is not surprising that so many great men and women of science have been, through the centuries, people of deep religious faith. It is perhaps far more surprising that any true scientist can remain unconvinced of God.

Yet, we do not have to wait for the next eclipse to keep that sense of divine wonder. I am a person of little patience, so I cannot wait until 2044 when an eclipse next returns to the continental United States!

Fortunately, every single day, I can see a flash of a sunset and the rise of a silver moon and know that Christ himself once gazed on them too. I can listen to the roar of an ocean and know that God filled the seas. I can see a bird fly and marvel at how well engineered the tiniest feathered creature is, or watch a cat lie in wait for that same bird and wonder how well designed the lowliest feline is.
I can see a butterfly and know that nothing exactly like it has flown before or will again. I can see a crocus burst from what was just soil a day ago and wonder how it got there.

I can be dwarfed by a tree whose peak I cannot see or be amazed at photographs of the cacti that dot our deserts and the creatures that fill the dark depths of the oceans.

I can look at a coral reef or smell the first rose of summer and know that I need not look to the heavens for a rare burst of wonder. I can touch the tiny toes of the smallest child or gaze into the gleaming eyes of a great-grandmother and be left without words. There is so much that inspires awe down here too.

As the eclipse of 2024 recedes in memory, I hope that it leaves in its wake that sense of wonder that turned our eyes upward. May that same wonder also turn our hearts upward, to the God who gave us all the extraordinary splendor that fills our ordinary time.

(Lucia A. Silecchia is a Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research at the Catholic University of America’s Columbus School of Law. Email her at silecchia@cua.edu.)

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Theologians sometimes try to express the meaning of Jesus’ resurrection in one sentence: In the resurrection, God vindicated Jesus, his life, his message and his fidelity. What does that mean?

Jesus entered our world preaching faith, love and forgiveness, but the world didn’t accept that. Instead, it crucified him and by that seemingly shamed his message. We see this most clearly on the cross when Jesus is taunted, mocked and challenged: If you are the son of God, come down from there! If your message is true, let God verify that right now! If your fidelity is more than plain stubbornness and human ignorance, then why are you dying in shame?

What was God’s response to those taunts? Seemingly nothing, no commentary, no defense, no apologia, no counter challenge, just silence. Jesus dies in silence. Neither he nor the God he believed in tried to fill that excruciating void with any consoling words or explanations challenging people to look at the bigger picture or to look at the brighter side of things. None of that. Just silence.

Jesus died in silence, inside God’s silence and inside the world’s incomprehension. And we can let ourselves be scandalized by that silence, just as we can let ourselves be scandalized by the seeming triumph of evil, pain and suffering in our world. God’s seeming silence in the face of evil and death can forever scandalize us: in the Jewish holocaust, in ethnic genocides, in brutal and senseless wars, in the earthquakes and tsunamis which kill thousands of people and devastate whole countries, in the deaths of countless people taken out of this life by cancer and by violence, in how unfair life can be sometimes, and in the casual manner that those without conscience can rape whole areas of life seemingly without consequence. Where is God in all of this? What’s God’s answer?

God’s answer is the resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus and the perennial resurrection of goodness within life itself. But resurrection is not necessarily rescue. God doesn’t necessarily rescue us from the effects of evil, nor even from death. Evil does what it does, natural disasters are what they are, and those without conscience can rape even as they are feeding off life’s sacred fire. Normally, God doesn’t intervene. The parting of the Red Sea isn’t a weekly occurrence. God lets his loved ones suffer and die, just as Jesus let his dear friend Lazarus die, and God let Jesus die. God redeems, raises us up afterwards, in a deeper, more lasting vindication. Moreover, the truth of that statement can even be tested empirically.

Despite every appearance to the contrary at times, in the end, love does triumph over hatred. Peace does triumph over chaos. Forgiveness does triumph over bitterness. Hope does triumph over cynicism. Fidelity does triumph over despair. Virtue does triumph over sin. Conscience does triumph over callousness. Life does triumph over death, and good does triumph over evil, always. Mohandas K. Gandhi once wrote: “When I despair, I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

The resurrection, most forcibly, makes that point. In the end, God has the last word. The resurrection of Jesus is that last word. From the ashes of shame, of seeming defeat, failure and death, a new, deeper and eternal life perennially bursts forth. Our faith begins at the very point where it seems it should end, in God’s seeming silence in the face of evil.

And what does this ask of us?

First, simply that we trust in the truth of the resurrection. The resurrection asks us to believe what Gandhi affirmed, namely, that in the end evil will not have the last word. It will fail. Good will eventually triumph.

More concretely, it asks us to roll the dice on trust and truth, namely, trusting that what Jesus taught is true. Virtue is not naïve, even when it is shamed. Sin and cynicism are naïve, even when they appear to triumph. Those who genuflect before God and others in conscience will find meaning and joy, even when they are deprived of some of the world’s pleasures. Those who drink in and manipulate sacred energy without conscience will not find meaning in life, even when they taste pleasure. Those who live in honesty, no matter the cost, will find freedom. Those who lie and rationalize will find themselves imprisoned in self-hate. Those who live in trust will find love. God’s silence can be trusted, even when we die inside of it.

We need to remain faithful in love, forgiveness, and conscience, despite everything that suggests they are naive. They will bring us to what is deepest inside of life. Ultimately, God vindicates virtue. God vindicates love. God vindicates conscience. God vindicates forgiveness. God vindicates fidelity. Ultimately, God vindicated Jesus and will vindicate us too if we remain faithful.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser is a theologian, teacher and award-winning author. He can be contacted through his website www.ronrolheiser.com.)

GUEST COLUMN
By Jaymie Stuart Wolfe

“We are an Easter people and ‘alleluia’ is our song.” We love to quote St. Augustine when we talk about what the church of Jesus Christ is. And honestly, there may be no better description. But I think a lot of us, somewhere along the line, have lost hope that we will experience the fullness of salvation that Christ’s resurrection signifies on this side of eternity. Instead, we settle for something far less than God intends for us.

What do I mean? Basically, that a lot of Catholics have simply given up.

It often goes something like this. We get a bit older, weighed down with adult responsibility, and the glow of our faith – our childlike trust in God – can begin to wear off. We pray, but the answer we want doesn’t occur. We undergo times of suffering and loss, but there is little relief or consolation to be found. We grow frustrated banging our heads against the same walls, and falling to the same temptations and sins again and again.

So we throw up our hands and decide to accept the way things are, and even more to the point, the way we are. We convince ourselves that nothing will ever really change, that all we’ve been taught to believe just isn’t going to work for us. God may be very busy blessing other people, but we can’t expect to be holy, healed or forgiven anytime soon. Life, we tell ourselves, just doesn’t work that way. The Gospel stories may well be true, but it is unlikely that Jesus will ever speak to us or transform us – let alone raise us from the dead.

Amid that kind of hopelessness, we may well be tempted to throw in the towel. Many have done just that. It’s understandable, of course. There are only so many times we can ask ourselves, “Why am I here?” before we decide not to be. Or before we allow the lies of the enemy to distract, discourage and distance us from what God wants to give us. The problem is that once we expect nothing, we become incapable of receiving much of anything.

Easter sets us straight.

The evil one wants us to believe that the character defects we’ve always had – the ones that are responsible for the bulk of the sins we confess – aren’t going anywhere. That is not the case. While we may not reach perfection in this life, we can make genuine and significant progress. Old habits are tough to beat. But God’s grace makes up for where our efforts fail. The Holy Spirit dwelling in our hearts is the gift of sanctifying grace. What doesn’t happen here on earth will be completed in purgatory. The good news is that everyone who wants to be a saint will, in fact, become one.

We may be tempted to give up on healing past hurts. Dogged by brokenness and struggling to find peace, we can lose sight of God’s healing presence. But the glorified wounds of Jesus show us not only what God can do. All we have suffered is given a part in our redemption and in the redemption of others. Easter means that what is ugliest in our lives is made not only beautiful, but glorious.

Our sins, no matter how great, can be forgiven. There is nothing that puts us beyond God’s reach, other than our own choice to reject his mercy. The enemy of our souls would be happy to see us wallowing in our own sinfulness, uncertain of God’s willingness to forgive us. Easter shows us that is precisely what the Savior does for anyone – anyone – who asks.

Salvation is not just a happy ending in another life. The stone has been rolled away. The reign of the Victor King begins here and now. We don’t become who we were created to be only by leaving this world behind. Death in all its forms has been conquered by the Risen Christ. We don’t have to die with a full complement of all our sins and failures. Jesus breaks the bond of sin. We might be tempted to doubt the truth or power of the Resurrection as some of Jesus’ disciples did. But Easter really does change everything, and it can change us. Even more, Easter can raise us from the dead.

(Jaymie Stuart Wolfe is a sinner, Catholic convert, freelance writer and editor, musician, speaker, pet-aholic, wife and mom of eight grown children, loving life in New Orleans.)