IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The renowned spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen, made no secret about the fact that he was emotionally over-sensitive and that he suffered, sometimes to the point of clinical depression, from emotional obsessions. At times, he, a vowed celibate, was simply overpowered by the feeling of being in love with someone who was hopelessly unavailable that he became psychologically paralyzed and needed professional help.
Yet, given Nouwen’s moral honesty and the transparency of his life, one would hardly ascribe this to him as a moral flaw, however emotionally-crippling it was at times. He simply could not help himself sometimes, such was his emotional sensitivity.
Almost all sensitive people suffer something similar, though perhaps not as acute as what afflicted Nouwen. Moreover these kinds of emotional obsessions affect our whole lives, including our moral and religious lives.
What we do in the pain and paralysis of obsession rarely does us proud and is often far from a free act. In the grip of an emotional obsession we cannot think freely, pray freely, decide things freely and we are prone to act out compulsively in ways that are not moral. What is the morality of our actions then?
Classical spiritual writers speak of something they term “inordinate attachments,” and, for them, these “inordinate attachments” are a moral fault, something we need to control by willpower. However what they mean by “inordinate attachments” covers a wide range of things. In their view, we can be inordinately attached to our pride, our appearance, money, power, pleasure, comfort, possessions, sex and an endless list of other things.
They saw this as the opposite of the virtue of detachment.  And, since its opposite is a virtue, “inordinate attachment” is, for classical spirituality, a vice, a moral and spiritual flaw.
There is a lot to be said positively for this view. Normally, lack of detachment is a moral flaw. But, perhaps there is an exception. An inordinate attachment can also be an emotional obsession with another person and this muddies the moral issue. Obsessions, generally, are not freely-chosen, nor are they often within the power of the will to control, at least inside the emotions.
As our old catechisms and moral theology books used to correctly teach: We are responsible for our actions but we are not responsible for how we feel. Our emotions are like wild horses; they roam where they will and are not easily domesticated and harnessed.
Hence, I believe, the notion of “inordinate attachments,” as expressed in classical spirituality, needs to be nuanced by series of other concepts which, while still carrying the same warning labels, carry something more. For example, today we speak of “obsessions,” and we all know how powerful and crippling these can be. You cannot simply wish or will your way free of an obsession. But is that a moral flaw?
Sometimes too we speak of “being possessed by demons” and that also has a variety of meanings. We can be possessed by a power beyond us that overpowers our will, be that the devil himself or some overpowering addiction such as alcohol or drugs. Most of us are not overpowered, but each of us battles with his or her own demons and the line between obsession and possession is sometimes thin.
Moreover, today archetypal psychologists speak of something they call “daimons,” that is, they believe that what explains our actions are not just nature and nurture, but also powerful “angels” and “demons” inside us, that relentlessly haunt our bodies and minds and leave us chronically obsessed and driven.
But these “daimons”  are also very often at the root of our creativity and that is why we often see (in the phraseology of Michael Higgins) “tortured genius” in many high-achievers, romantics, people with artistic temperaments and people like Van Gogh and Nouwen, who, under the pressure of an obsession, cut off an ear or check themselves into a clinic.
What is the point of highlighting this?  A deeper understanding of ourselves and others, is the point. We should not be so mystified by what happens sometimes in our world and inside us. We are wild, obsessed, complex creatures, and that complexity does not take its root, first of all, in what is evil inside us. Rather it is rooted in what is deepest inside us, namely, the image and likeness of God.
We are infinite spirits journeying in a finite world. Obsessions come with the territory. In ancient myths, gods and goddesses often fell helplessly in love with human beings, but the ancients believed that this was a place where the divine and human met. And that still happens: The divine in us sometimes too falls hopelessly in love with another human being.
This, of course, does not give us an excuse to act out as we would like on those feelings, but it does tell us that this is more an encounter between the divine and the human than it is a moral flaw.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Word on Fire
By Father Robert Barron
Last week I spent six days at a place only about a ten-minute drive from my home, but I had, nevertheless, entered a country as “foreign” to my experience as Botswana or Katmandu. Hospitalland. I was brought in for an emergency appendectomy and then had to undergo a second surgery, due to complications.
As a priest, of course, I had visited Hospitalland many times, but I had never actually lived in it for an extended period. Hospitalland has its own completely unique rhythms, customs, language, and semiotic systems.
For example, the normal rhythm of day and night is interrupted and overturned. You are only vaguely aware of the movement of the sun across the sky, and people come barging into your room as regularly at two in the morning as two in the afternoon. Relatedly, the usual distinctions between public and private simply evanesce in Hospitalland.
As my mother told me many years ago, “When you enter the hospital, you place your modesty in a little bag and leave it by the door.” Nurses, nursing aides, medical students, doctors, surgeons, tech assistants — all of them have license to look over any part of your anatomy, pretty much whenever they want. At first, I was appalled by this, but after a few days, I more or less acquiesced.
Hospitalland has its own very distinctive language, largely conditioned by numbers: blood pressure rates, temperature, hemoglobin counts, etc. It was actually a little bit funny how quickly I began to banter with the nurses and doctors in this arcane jargon.
But for me the characteristic of Hospitalland is passivity. When you pass through the doors of the hospital, you simply hand your life over to other people. They transport you, clean you, test you, make you wait for results (an excruciating form of psychological torture, by the way), tell you what you have to undergo next, poke you, prod you, take blood out of you and cut into you.
And this is of more than merely psychological interest. It has, indeed, far-reaching spiritual implications. As I lay on my back in Hospitalland, a phrase kept coming unbidden into my mind: “the divinization of one’s passivities.” This is a line from one of the great spiritual works of the twentieth century, The Divine Milieu by the French Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. In that seminal text, Teilhard famously distinguished between the divinization of one’s activities and the divinization of one’s passivities. The former is a noble spiritual move, consisting in the handing over of one’s achievements and accomplishments to the purposes of God.
A convinced Jesuit, Teilhard desired to devote all that he did (and he did a lot) ad majorem Dei gloriam (to the greater glory of God).  But this attitude, Teilhard felt, came nowhere near the spiritual power of divinizing one’s passivities. By this he meant the handing over of one’s suffering to God, the surrendering to the Lord of those things that are done to us, those things over which we have no control.
We become sick; a loved one dies suddenly; we lose a job; a much-desired position goes to someone else; we are unfairly criticized; we find ourselves, unexpectedly, in the valley of the shadow of death. These experiences lead some people to despair, but the spiritually alert person should see them as a particularly powerful way to come to union with God.
A Christian would readily speak here of participating in the cross of Christ. Indeed how strange that the central icon of the Christian faith is not of some great achievement or activity, but rather of something horrible being done to a person. The point is that suffering, offered to God, allows the Lord to work his purpose out with unsurpassed power.
In some ways, Teilhard’s distinction is an echo of St. John of the Cross’s distinction between the “active” and “passive” nights of the soul. For John, the dark night has nothing to do with psychological depression, but rather with a pruning away of attachments that keep one from complete union with God. This pruning can take a conscious and intentional form or it can be something endured. In a word, we can rid ourselves of attachments — or God can do it for us. The latter, St. John thinks, is far more powerful and cleansing.
I certainly wouldn’t actively seek to go back to that land, but perhaps God might send me there again. May I have the grace to accept it as a gift.
(Father Robert Barron is the founder of the global ministry, Word on Fire, and the Rector/President of Mundelein Seminary. He is the creator of the award winning documentary series, “Catholicism”  and “Catholicism:The New Evangelization.” Learn more at www.WordonFire.org.)

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
“Father, I’m in town. Could a couple of my friends and I come by for confessions this afternoon?”
The phone call request had a familiar ring. Usually away for school, teenage Irish Travelers call frequently for confessions when in town. On the one hand, they are a congenial, delightful bunch of youngsters, but on the other hand they are very serious about their spiritual life. So I smiled and told them to come right over.
Three young ladies ranging from 15 to 17 came bustling in when I greeted them at the door. I can always rest assured that they will make themselves at home, raiding the unsalted, roasted pistachios and peanuts a bit, lolling around on the easy chairs and chatting nonstop about this, that and who knows what. Well disciplined, two stayed in the living room while one went to the secretary’s room for confession.
Those teenagers always give me a taste of the electronic age, sometimes using a cell phone to refresh their memory on the way of going to confession, at times just dialing up the list of DOs and DON’Ts that they can use to talk about their omissions and commissions. They might dial up the act of contrition to boot. They are quite electrified with modern gadgets, but nonetheless an electrifying group of youngsters, not allowing their cell phones to interfere with their social life.
As is customary among late-teenage Travelers, never far off is a discussion about an impending engagement or even the prospect of marriage. Despite the item of their yet-tender age, the heavy conversations on the weighty subject of the holy sacrament of matrimony invariably come up. Of course, negative experiences push me to slow down in the very young their desire to wed before they are mature.
Emotional, social and spiritual maturity in young ladies is generally achieved around their early twenties, but males usually lag years behind in achieving the same level of maturity. Keep in mind that severe immaturity is one of the main reasons marriage tribunals cite for granting the annulment of a marriage.
After the three had completed their confessions, I returned to the living room. Feet drawn up and holding their knees, two of the girls were squeezed together in one easy chair, looking for all the world like a duo of tiger cats. Yet, in spite of all that, far from being predators, they were likable and lovable teenagers.
Their mission accomplished, they socialized with me for a short while, then decided it was time to go. Hardly had I seen them out the door when I returned to the living room and spotted coins on the floor. It was an arresting sight, mainly because the youngsters had obviously left them there on display: 16 pennies, three nickels, three dimes, eight quarters, one Canadian dollar. It had to be the two tiger cats who went on a fishing expedition with their fingers down in the easy chair, discovering and extracting the unsuspected bounty lost over a period of several years.
That lineup of coins on the floor visible to anyone in the room bespoke a deep-set honesty in the trio of teenagers, any of whom could have made off with them without a trace, especially since I had no idea that the coins were there. More than any words could say, this incident bore witness to their trustworthiness.
It reminded me of my birthday two years ago when 21 of those youngsters trooped into the rectory armed with a small vegan birthday cake, candles and all. Hands down, it was the most memorable birthday I have ever experienced. Their thoughtfulness for someone five times their age was inspiring and touching.
Perhaps the most striking aspect of the teenagers was their spontaneous, unsolicited thought about making someone happy who perhaps was not being thought of much as he moved into the higher tiers of longevity. I am sure that all adults would like to see such qualities in all the teenagers in our lives.
With such thoughtfulness in their social and spiritual arsenal, it is no wonder that those teenage Travelers do not let their cell phones block their communication with those around them. Except where alert and tough-love parents intervene with prompt sternness and resolve, it is a veritable plague among youngsters – and some young adults as well – that cell phone use, texting, etc. sabotage family conversation at the table, in the living room, outside in picnic conditions and even in church.
We have a lot to learn from our teenagers, especially the Travelers. Other teenagers must learn to be alert and to learn from their inspiring peers.
(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
What’s the use of an old-fashioned, hand-held lantern? Well, its light can be quite useful when it’s pitch-dark, but it becomes superfluous and unnoticeable in the noonday sun. Still, this doesn’t mean its light is bad, only that it’s weak.
If we hold that image in our minds, we will see both a huge irony and a profound lesson in the Gospels when they describe the arrest of Jesus. The Gospel of John, for example, describes his arrest this way: “Judas brought the cohort to this place together with guards sent by the chief priests and Pharisees, all carrying lanterns and torches.”  John wants us to see the irony in this, that is, the forces of this world have come to arrest and put on trial, Jesus, the Light of the world, carrying weak, artificial light, a lantern in the face of the Light of the world, puny light in the full face of the noonday sun. As well, in naming this irony, the Gospels are offering a second lesson: when we no longer walk in the light of Christ, we will invariably turn to artificial light.
This image, I believe, can serve as a penetrating metaphor for how the criticism that the Enlightenment has made of our Christian belief in God stands before what it is criticizing. That criticism has two prongs.
The first prong is this: The Enlightenment (Modernist Thought) submits that the God that is generally presented by our Christian churches has no credibility because that God is simply a projection of human desire, a god made in our own image and likeness, and a god that we can forever manipulate to serve self-interest. Belief in such a god, they say, is adolescent in that it is predicated on a certain naiveté, on an intellectual blindness that can be flushed out and remedied by a hard look at reality. An enlightened mind, it is asserted, sees belief in God as self-interest and as intellectual blindness.
There is much to be said, positively, for this criticism, given that much of atheism is a parasite off of bad theism. Atheism feeds off bad religion and, no doubt, many of the things we do in the name of religion are done out of self-interest and intellectual blindness. How many times, for instance, has politics used religion for its own ends? The first prong of the criticism that the Enlightenment makes of Christian belief is a healthy challenge to us as believers.
But it’s the second prong of this criticism that, I believe, stands like a lantern, a weak light, dwarfed in the noonday sun. Central to the Enlightenment’s criticism of belief in God is the assertion (perhaps better called prejudice) that faith is a naiveté, something like belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny, that we outgrow as we mature and open our minds more and more to knowledge and what’s empirically evident in the world.  What we see through science and honest observation, they believe, eventually puts to death our belief in God, exposing it as a naiveté. In essence, the assertion is that if you face up to the hard empirical facts of reality without blinking, with honesty and courage, you will cease to believe in God. Indeed, the very phrase “the Enlightenment” implies this. It’s only the unenlightened, pre-modernist mind that still can believe in God.  Moving beyond belief in God is enlightenment.
Sadly, Christianity has often internalized this prejudice and expressed it (and continues to express it) in the many forms of fear and anti-intellectualism within our churches. Too often we unwittingly agree with our critics that faith is a naiveté. We do it by believing the very thing our critics assert, namely, that if we studied and looked at things hard enough we would eventually lose our faith.
We betray this in our fear of the intellectual academy, in our paranoia about secular wisdom, in some of our fears about scientific knowledge, and by forever warning people to protect themselves against certain inconvenient truths within scientific and secular knowledge. In doing this, we, in fact, concede that the criticism made against us is true and, worse still, we betray that fact that we do not think that the truth of Christ will stand up to the world.
But, given the penetrating metaphor highlighted in Jesus’ arrest, there’s another way of seeing this: After we have conceded the truth of the legitimate findings of science and secular wisdom and affirmed that they need to be embraced and not defended against, then, in the light of John’s metaphor (worldly forces, carrying lanterns and torches, as they to arrest the Light of world to put it on trial), we should also see how dim are the lights of our world, not least, the criticism of the Enlightenment.
Lanterns and torches are helpful when the sun is down, but they’re utterly eclipsed by the light of the sun. Worldly knowledge too is helpful in its own way, but it is more-than dwarfed by the light of the Son.
(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is president of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, Texas.)

millennial reflections
Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem.
This being the year dedicated to religious life and a  Holy Year of Mercy, both initiated by Pope Francis, we need to look at religious at the cutting edge of human misery serving the marginalized, the periphery, that Pope Francis speaks of in “The Joy of the Gospel.”
Religious life enables people to take risks and witness the Gospel in freedom of convictions, from the depth of faith. They make real, and concrete what we read daily in the Scriptures.
“When I was in prison you visited me… When I was homeless you took me in… When I was naked you clothed me…”   These paraphrases from Matthew 25 are actively changing people’s lives and healing families, and restoring hope, right now, today.
Two Sisters of Mercy, JoAnn Persch and Pat Murphy, like many other religious, inspired by the reforms of Vatican II, saw a need crying for help right under their noses in Chicago. They began the Interfaith Committee for Detained Immigrants.
They formed this interfaith committee after going to the Immigration Processing Center in nearby Broadview, Ill., in 2007. Each Friday morning buses filled  with shackled detainees leave for Chicago’s airport to be deported.
Their story is reported in the Global Sisters Report sponsored by the National Catholic Reporter. It states that according to the Transactional Records Clearinghouse, a data research group at Syracuse University, immigration judges issued nearly 79,000 removal orders last year. Only 23,000 people were granted relief to stay.
“We felt a strong call to do something about what we see,” said Sister Persh, executive director. “Families with men and women ripped from their arms.”
Here is what sets religious apart from lay social workers. They are grounded in a spiritual relationship with God, through community, directing them to meet human needs. Often people like them, who respond to a call, may have no professional training other than their religious formation and reading the signs of the times.
Sister JoAnn and Sister Pat began a weekly prayer vigil with those in detention, praying with them and even praying with the deportees on the bus. This witness alone was powerful both for the immigrants and the authorities. It was powerful because it was prayer, not criticism or judgment, but compassion and mercy. As their story unfolds they even got support from the court, Immigration and Customs Control, local sheriffs, the Chicago Archdiocese, the Catholic Theological Union, and those who advocate for human rights and immigrant justice.
They enlisted the help of Viatorian Brother Michael Gosch, who now oversees their two houses of hospitality. The one for men is in a former convent in Cicero Ill., a near western suburb, and the one for families takes over an empty floor in a former residence hall at the Catholic Theological Union in Hyde Park, on Chicago’s Southside lakefront. The building, a former hotel, has bathrooms in every room. It has cooking facilities, a common room, etc.
The impact on the immigrants was profound. The sisters have volunteers helping the residents adjust to a country they can’t even fathom, simple things like how to buy a gallon of milk, social customs, etc. One man spoke five languages, was a former banker in Syria, now he’s in no man’s land. His situation could change any day.
Their story reports just how they got cooperation from the court, and government agencies. They are applying a temporary  relief effort, to people whose status can change abruptly. At this point, compassion and mercy was needed.
They have two locations, more than 200 volunteers, a budget of more than a million dollars. They say they could use many more facilities like these, but, Sister JoAnn says, “It’s in the hands of God. Pat is 86 and I’m 80, who are we to do any of this? But God keeps sending us the right people.”
This is the religious life that energizes me. This is what Pope Francis wrote so well in the Joy of the Gospel. Throughout the country, throughout the world there are men and women religious, priests, brothers, sisters and deacons, bringing the Gospel in the form of genuine mercy and compassion, affirming the dignity and human rights of all they meet. They believe that love not hate is the hope for our future.
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)

reflections on life
Jerome LeDoux, SVD
The knuckles of Tanner and his brother Chase Brownlee turned white and bloodless as they clung to their $50,000 at the car auction. Having been able to raise only $50,000, they knew that they might easily be outbid for the car they coveted. The police cruiser was a 2010 Dodge Charger with 100,000 miles on it.
It was not just any car, mind you. The car being auctioned at the Weld County’s Sheriff’s Office was WC679, the Greeley, Colorado patrol car of their father, Deputy Sam Brownlee, who had been killed in a one of those dreaded car chases in 2010. Although Tanner and Chase were dealing in dollars, the car was priceless.
Valued at $12,500, the bar was set high above that price, since the auction was all about helping a charity. As the bids quickly soared above $50,000, their hearts sank and their spirits fell. Inconsolable, they bit their lips and fought back the tears that were beginning to wet their eyes. Little did they suspect that a guardian angel was hovering over them “all night, all day” in the guise of a stranger, one of the bidders who on the surface appeared to be their archenemy.
Everything turned into a black cloud without a silver lining for Tanner and Chase as oil-land-rich local rancher Steve Wells soundly outdistanced all bidders with his bid of $60,000. Almost too heartbroken to bear it, the brothers stared in anguish as the auctioneer closed the bidding with the statement, “Sold it your way, Mr. Steve Wells. Thank you very much. $60,000!”
But that guardian angel had been busy with a special plan all along. Smiling to himself as the Brownlee brothers suffered through the terrible ordeal of being outbid, millionaire Steve Wells sprang a totally unexpected surprise. Immediately upon receiving the car keys from the auctioneer, he whipped around toward Tanner and handed him the keys with the glad tidings, “Tanner, here is your car!”
While Tanner got up to hug Wells, the room exploded with applause. Not just one, but everybody had won. Steve Wells had won the bidding, but gained infinitely more by immediately giving his prize away. Tanner, Chase and their family had won through the inspiring generosity of Steve Wells. Concerns of Police Survivors (C.0.P.S.), a charity that helps the families of fallen police officers, won by receiving $70,000 from the $60,000 Wells bid and other donations. Suffice it to say that there were no losers there, but all huge winners going forward into the future.
“This is just so huge,” Tanner told Steve Wells and the adoring crowd. “I mean, me and my dad built a fence and stuff, but having something I can use and drive around that he drove around, it just means a lot.”
Some guardian angels are only five-years-old, as in the case of Josiah Duncan who asked his mother about a man hanging around a Prattville, Ala., Waffle House. Informed that the man was homeless with no place to stay and with a few rags and an old bicycle, Josiah begged his mother to buy him some food. But, when no one waited on him, Josiah gave the man a menu. He ordered only a cheeseburger.
“Get as much as you want!” Josiah’s mother Ava Faulk advised him. When the food came, Josiah stood across from the man and sang the blessing aloud, bringing the man and all 11 customers to tears. Going viral, the incident brought thousands of others to tears and no doubt is still reverberating endlessly over the cyberwaves.
Mary Lapkowicz has known her guardian angel since fourth grade when she and Ben Moser made a pact to attend their high school prom together. Ben watched over her throughout elementary school. A special Down syndrome student, Mary and Ben had gone to separate high schools. Mary became the equipment manager in her school, while Ben became the quarterback in his. When their schools met in a game, Mary and Ben reunited and renewed their pact for the upcoming prom. To no one’s surprise, but to the admiration of all, they were the hit of the prom.
Guardian angels appear with regularity at supermarket checkouts. With moving frequency, one sees someone struggling to find the last few dollars to complete a purchase when a voice from behind asks the cashier, “How much?”
It warms one’s heart to offer payment to a waiter or waitress, only to be informed that some unknown person has already paid the tab. On such and similar occasions, we are lifted far above all our earthly bonds of debt, and we are forced to recall that a most special Man died on Calvary that the baleful debt of all our sins and the sins of the world could be stamped once for all time, “PAID IN FULL!”
(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, is pastor of Our Mother of Mercy Parish in Fort Worth, Texas. He has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)