IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
A friend of mine, somewhat cynical about the church, recently remarked: “What the institutional church today is trying to do is to put its best face on the fact that it’s dying. Basically, it’s trying to manage a death.”

What he’s suggesting is that the church today, like a person struggling to accept a terminal diagnosis, is trying to reshape its imagination to eventually accommodate itself to the unthinkable, its own dying.

He’s right in suggesting that the church today is trying to reshape its imagination, but he’s wrong about what it’s trying to manage. What the church is trying to manage today is not a death, but an ascension. What needs reshaping in our imagination today is the same thing that needed reshaping in the imagination of the first disciples in the forty days between the resurrection and the ascension. We need to understand again how to let go of one body of Christ so that it can ascend and we can again experience Pentecost. What’s at stake here?

Among the elements within the paschal mystery, the ascension is the least understood. We are clearer about the meaning of the death and resurrection of Christ and the descent of the Spirit at Pentecost. We have less understanding of the ascension.

The forty days between the resurrection and the ascension were not a time of unadulterated joy for the first disciples. It was a time of some joy, but also of considerable confusion, despondency and loss of faith. In the days before the ascension, the disciples were overjoyed whenever they recognized again their risen Lord, but most of the time they were confused, despondent, and full of doubt because they were unable to recognize the new presence of Christ in what was happening around them. At one point, they gave up completely and as John put it, went back to their former way of life, fishing and the sea.

However, during that time Jesus slowly reshaped their imaginations. Eventually they grasped the fact that something had died but that something else, far richer, had been born and that now they needed to give up clinging to the way Jesus had formerly been present to them so that he could be present to them in a new way. The theology and spirituality of the ascension is essentially contained in these words: Refuse to cling to what once was, let it go so that you can now recognize the new life you are already living and receive its spirit. The synoptic gospels teach this to us in their pictorial rendering of the ascension, where a bodily Jesus blesses everyone and then rises physically out of their sight. John gives us the same theology but in a different picture. He does this in his description of the encounter on Easter morning between Jesus and Mary Magdala when Jesus says, “Mary don’t cling to me!”

Today, the church is trying to manage an ascension, not a death. I can easily see where my friend can be confused because every ascension presupposes a death and a birth, and that can be confusing. So where, really, is the church today?

Edward Schillebeeckx once suggested that we are living in that same despondency that was felt by the early disciples between Jesus’ death and their realization of his resurrection. We are feeling what they felt, doubt and confusion on the road to Emmaus. The Christ we once knew has been crucified and we cannot yet recognize the Christ who is walking with us, more alive than before, though in a new way. Hence, just as those first disciples on the road to Emmaus, we also frequently walk with faces downcast, in a confused faith, needing Christ to appear in a new guise to reshape our imaginations so that we can recognize him as he is now present to us.

I think Schillebeeckx is right about this, except that I would put it in another way. The church today is in that time between the resurrection and the ascension, feeling considerable despondency, with its imagination attuned to a former understanding of Christ, unable to recognize Christ clearly in the present moment. For many of us who grew up in a particular understanding of the faith, our former understanding of Christ has been crucified. But Christ is not dead. The church is not dead. Both Jesus and the church are very much alive, walking with us, slowly reshaping our imaginations, reinterpreting the scriptures for us, telling us again: Wasn’t it necessary that the Christ (and the church) should so suffer. …
For many of us today, to live in faith is to be in that time between the death of Christ and the ascension, vacillating between joy and despondency, trying to manage an ascension.

On the road of faith, there’s always bad news and good news. The bad news is that invariably our understanding of Christ gets crucified. The good news is that Christ is always very much alive, present to us still, and in a deeper way.

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

From the Hermitage
By sister alies therese
In Madeleine L’Engle’s marvelous Wrinkle in Time, Meg learns what to long for in darkness and foreboding. When she discovered Mrs. Whatsit loved her, Meg could use it. Only hatred and deception filled It, yet by love, Meg would make all things well again, despite her fears. The more she insisted she loved her brother Charles Wallace, the more he was freed from It’s powerful falsehoods to become himself again; freedom reigned, and they escaped. I wonder if Julian saw something like this in her shewings, her wrinkle in time; the passion being full of hatred and darkness yet ultimately exposing great love?

“In a world that is in danger of losing sight of the fact that ‘all shall be well,’ Julian’s soteriology has something to contribute to hope…unity between all things: God, creation and humanity…it generates hope that our present experience of divine love will come to eschatological fruition for all creation, all things, in the fulness of God’s time.” (Gifted Origins to Graced Fulfillment: The Soteriology of Julian of Norwich, Kerrie Hide)

Consider some similarities: Julian (1342-1416) was surrounded by plague…the Black Death killed over 55,000 in Norfolk when she was six. The Hundreds’ Year war, peasant revolts, the troubled reign of Richard II, prosecution of heresy, and the Great Schism splitting the Latin and Eastern rites were among top news items. Today’s issues are sadly familiar. Many languish looking for hope, wondering what to desire.

To discover the hope and joy that Julian will finally tell us about, this ‘all shall be well,’ invites us into the search to discover the demon of deception who tries to overcome God’s kindness. We find Julian disclosing her encounters with Jesus in her book.

What did the revelations on May 8, 1373, unveil? God’s love for all He had created. The first fifteen came three days after pain left her during a near-death experience; the sixteenth came after a gap where she was confronted by the devil in frightening darkness. God’s love keeps and sustains all and though there is sin, God looks on all God has made with pity, does not blame, and assures us that ‘all will be well.’

Julian was in her 30’s when she picked up her cat, moved with her maid, and set off to pray in an anchorhold, rooms attached to the church. The local Bishop sealed her in with a liturgy of the dead and consecration, and she never left, speaking only to her maid, the priest and those who came to her window for consolation facing the busy streets of Norwich, then England’s second-largest city.

“Concerning my third petition, I conceived a very great desire to receive three wounds: the wound of true contrition, the wound of natural compassion, and the wound of fullhearted longing for God.” (Revelations of Divine Love, Intro)

God answered her plea.

What do I ardently long for? Julian’s three gifts are stark in our world of opposites. The wounds are central to her life, and she says: “…in grief and sorrow, I said this to my Lord, in fear and trembling: ‘Oh good Lord, how can all be well when great harm has come to your creatures through sin?’” (chapter 29)

In chapter 31, the good Lord answered with this: “I am able to make all things well, and I shall make all things well. And you will see for yourself that all manner of thing shall be well.”

Consider this: “Find delight in the Lord, who will give you your heart’s desires.” (Psalms 37:4) Jesus will quote from this psalm when teaching the beatitudes: “But the meek shall inherit the earth; and will delight in great prosperity.” (37:11) These ‘meek’ are those ‘overwhelmed by want,’ the anawim, and ‘denotes those who are aware of their dependence upon God.’ (New Jerome Biblical Commentary, 532). Those deceived are sure they are in control. Julian, however, like these anawim, banked on Jesus whose: “Hidden dynamism was at work by which all manner of thing would be well. This ‘secret,’ this act which the Lord keeps hidden is the full fruit of the Parousia. It is not just that ‘Jesus comes,’ but Jesus comes to reveal with God’s final answer to all the world’s anguish…the ‘great deed’ the Lord will do on that day, not of destruction and revenge, but of mercy and life…all will be made right in spite of all its sorrow. The ‘wise heart’ remains in hope and contradiction…fixed on the secret.” (Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander, Thomas Merton)

Finally, Julian wants to reveal this love, this joy, this ‘secret’ Merton speaks of. In chapter 14 she shares: “I saw in my imagination heaven, and our Lord as the head of the house, who had invited all dear servants and friends to a great feast. The Lord occupied no one place in particular in the house, but presided regally over it all, suffusing it with joy and cheer. Utterly at home, and with perfect courtesy, Jesus was the eternal happiness and comfort of friends, the marvelous music of unending love showing in the beauty of His blessed face full of joy and delight.”

(Sister alies therese is a canonically vowed hermit with days formed around prayer and writing.)

Reflections on Life
By Melvin Arrington
The acclaimed English mystic known to us as Lady or Dame Julian (or Juliana) of Norwich (c. 1342-1416) was, in all likelihood, a Benedictine nun whose birth name has been lost to history. Lady Julian lived during the 14th century, an age that historian Barbara Tuchman in her study A Distant Mirror characterized as “calamitous.” Those were indeed dark and perilous times besieged by plague, wars, pogroms, famines and schism. Yet, despite all the societal upheavals and her own personal tribulations, Julian remained surprisingly upbeat and hopeful.

In 1373 she became deathly ill, a condition she had actually prayed for in an effort to become united with Christ in suffering. On May 8 of that year, while near death, Julian received 16 visions (or “showings”) of Our Lord, beginning with the Crown of Thorns. Although claiming to be a “simple unlettered creature” (probably a reference to not knowing Latin), she wrote, not long after her recovery, a volume of meditations based on these visions. This work, Revelations of Divine Love, now considered a classic of Western spirituality, is also noteworthy for being the first book in English authored by a woman.

Julian produced two versions of the Revelations, both written in Middle English: the “short text,” containing 25 chapters, composed shortly after receiving the “showings,” and the “long text,” consisting of 86 chapters, written over a period of twenty years. The latter offered a more detailed account as a way of explaining and clarifying the meaning of the visions.

Following her brush with death, she withdrew from the world and lived the remainder of her life as an anchorite or, to use the feminine form, anchoress, an urban recluse, confined to a small, cell-like room attached or “anchored” to the outer wall of the Church of St. Julian in Norwich, England – the same church by whose name we know her today. She spent those last years meditating on the 16 revelations and offering spiritual advice to all who came to seek her council.

I first became interested in the life and writings of this holy woman last fall while recovering from a life-threatening illness. Unlike Julian’s infirmity, which she had asked God for, mine was thrust upon me. I remember the emergency room physician telling me, “Well, it looks like you’re going to survive.” What? Wait a minute! Survive? My situation couldn’t be that grave! But it was, and as I soon learned, I was facing several months of medication therapy and recovery time. Later in that conversation the doctor remarked that he couldn’t figure out how I had made it to the hospital alive. Here’s my explanation: God must have intervened on my behalf and performed a miracle because He had something more for me to do. Miracles do happen, and when they occur, it’s for a reason.

To the modern-day observer the fact that Julian would pray for an illness that would cause terrible suffering and bring her to the door of death is beyond perplexing. Was this unusual petition made in an effort to purge some mortal sin? We don’t know. But clearly, she believed that through her agony she could draw nearer to Jesus. As for me, my ordeal brought me closer to Our Lord in a way I had never known before and gave me a renewed sense of hope. He can truly bring forth good from a bad situation. (Romans 8:28)

According to the Catechism, by the theological virtue of hope “we desire the kingdom of heaven and eternal life as our happiness, placing our trust in Christ’s promises and relying not on our own strength, but on the help of the grace of the Holy Spirit.” (1817) Furthermore, this virtue “keeps man from discouragement; it sustains him during times of abandonment; it opens up his heart in expectation of eternal beatitude.” (1818) The Catechism adds that hope “affords us joy even under trial.” (1820) During Julian’s close encounter with death she could claim this joy because of the reassuring words Our Lord had spoken to her, the same words we remember her by today: “I am able to make all things well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

Although sometimes referred to with the title “Saint” or “Blessed,” this remarkable English mystic was never officially canonized or beatified. Nevertheless, the church commemorates her on May 13; in addition, the Catechism (313) cites her as an authority. The important lessons she can teach us may be summarized as follows: we all have a cross we must bear, and no matter the weight of that cross, no matter the trials and tribulations we face, the severity of the affliction or the intensity of the pain we have to endure – in short, no matter how bad it gets – “All shall be well.” As Archbishop Sheen says, “We need never fear the outcome of the battle of life; we need never ask whether we will win or lose. Why, we have already won, only the news has not yet leaked out!”

Lady Julian of Norwich was able to proclaim “all shall be well” because she could see the big picture. Her hope was based not just on this life but also on a longing for union with God and a desire to spend all eternity with Him in the world to come. If we have this same hope, we can experience a similar joy and peace that no one can take away.

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
It’s hard for a child to have to go to bed in the middle of an evening when the rest of the family is still celebrating. Nobody wants to go to bed while everyone else is still up. No one wants to miss out on life.

Remember how as a child, tired and unable to keep your eyes open, you still struggled against anyone who would try to put you to bed. Exhausted or not, you didn’t want to miss anything. You didn’t want to leave and go to sleep while so much life was going on.

We never really outgrow that. That resistance is congenital and still haunts us on our deathbeds.

One of our more painful anxieties is triggered by a sense that we are forever missing out on something. This is also one of our major fears about dying. For most people, the heaviness and darkness of dying come not so much from a fear of what they might meet in the next life, judgment and punishment, but from a fear of annihilation.

Moreover, the fear here is not so much that their personal identity will be snuffed out (though that is a real fear) but rather that they will be taken away from all the life of which they have been part. The sadness lies in the having to let go, in knowing that life will now go on without us, of being taken off to bed while the party continues. And, this is deep inside us, so deep, that we find it difficult to imagine how the world can even go on without us.

However, this is not a sign that there is something wrong with us, some neurosis that needs fixing or some moral or religious issue that needs attention. It’s the human condition, pure and simple, and God is the architect of that. In short, we’re built to be part of a fabric, not single threads content in their isolation.

I was twenty-three years old when I watched my dad die in a hospital room. He was still young, sixty-two years old, and ideally should have had a number of years still ahead of him. But he was dying, he knew it, and despite a faith that gave him some comfort, was deeply sad about it. What he struggled with in his dying was not with some fear of the afterlife or some amends he still needed to make in this life. None of that. There was no unfinished business with God, nor religious and moral issues still to mend. Nor were there unhealthy fears of the afterlife. His only unfinished business had to do with this life, and what he would now miss out on in terms of (figuratively) being put to bed early while the party was still going on. In addition, for him, the party was in full swing.

His adult children were just beginning to establish their lives and give him grandchildren, and the younger half of his family were actively preparing to enter into their adult lives. He wasn’t going to be around to see how all of this turned out and he wasn’t going to be around to see most of his grandchildren. More important still, he had a wife, a soulmate, whom he would be leaving. It wasn’t a good evening to be sent to bed early.

Beyond all this, he still had his own siblings, neighbors, friends, a parish, civic involvements, sports teams and countless other life-giving connections, and he was aware, not without huge heartache, that these were all about to end, at least on this side of eternity.

Why shouldn’t he have been sad? Indeed, why shouldn’t any of us be sad whenever we are facing a death of any kind, when we are being put to bed while the rest of life is still going on?

We are constitutively communitarian. As God himself said when he created the human family, it is not good for anyone to be alone. We are meant to be part of a family and a community, part of the fabric of life, and a fabric is made up of multiple threads. Thus, it’s understandably saddening whenever our single, fragile, lonely thread is being pulled away from the rest of the fabric. No wonder little children don’t want to be put to bed while everyone else is still carrying on with the evening.

Moreover, this isn’t just true for the sadness we experience when we face our deaths. The same dynamic is operative whenever we undergo the various mini deaths that beset us as we age, lose our health, retire, get fired from jobs, lose people we love, lose marriages, are geographically dislocated, or in any other way are pushed out of the mainstream of life towards the margins.
So, it can be helpful to know that nothing is wrong here. Dying is hard. Letting go is hard. Being pushed aside is hard. Disappearing from life is particularly hard. That’s why little children don’t like being put to bed.

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

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
It doesn’t matter whether you picture the origin of time the way science does, as beginning with the Big Bang, or whether you take the biblical account of the origins of the world literally. Either way there was a time before there was light. The universe was dark before God created light. However, eventually the world grew dark again. When?

We are told in the Gospels that as Jesus was dying on the cross, between the sixth and ninth hour, it grew dark and Jesus cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me!” What really happened here?

Are the Gospels saying that it actually grew dark in the early afternoon, an eclipse of the sun, or are they referring to another kind of darkness, of a spiritual kind? Was there an eclipse of the sun as Jesus was dying? Perhaps. We don’t know, but that is of secondary importance anyway. What the Gospels are referring to is a kind of darkness that envelops us whenever what’s precious to us is humiliated, exposed as powerless, ridiculed, terminally defeated and crucified by our world. There’s a darkness that besets us whenever the forces of love seem overpowered by the forces of hatred. The light extinguished then is the light of hope, but there is deeper darkness and this is the kind of darkness that the Gospels say formed a cloud over the world as Jesus hung dying.

What’s being insinuated here is that at Jesus’ crucifixion, creation went back to its original chaos, as it was before there was light. But what’s also being insinuated is that God created light a second time, this time by raising Jesus from the dead, and that this new light is the most staggering light of all. Moreover, unlike the original light, which was only physical, this light is a light both for the eyes and for the soul.

For the eyes, the light of the resurrection is also a radically new physical phenomenon. At the resurrection of Jesus, the atoms of the planet were shaken up from their normal physical workings. A dead body rose from the grave to a life from which it would never again die. That had never happened before. Moreover, the resurrection of Jesus was also a radically new light for the soul, the light of hope. What is this latter light?

There’s a famous song written by Robbie Robertson made popular in the early 1970s by Joan Baez, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Narrated in the first person by a man called Virgil Caine, the song is a sad lament about the distress experienced by a poor white Southern family during the American Civil War.

All that could go wrong for them, seemingly had gone wrong, including the death of their young son, killed in the war. Their situation is dark, lacking any hope. At a point in the song, the narrator offers this lament about his brother’s death:

He was just eighteen, proud and brave;
But a Yankee laid him in his grave;
I swear by the blood below my feet;
You can’t raise the Cain back up when it’s in defeat.

Can life be raised back up when it’s in defeat? Can a dead body come out of its grave? Can a violated body again become whole? Can lost innocence ever be restored? Can a broken heart ever be mended? Can a crushed hope ever again lift up a soul? Doesn’t darkness extinguish all light? What hope was there for Jesus’ followers as they witnessed his humiliation and death on Good Friday? When goodness itself gets crucified, what’s the basis for any hope?

In two words – the resurrection. When darkness enveloped the earth a second time, God made light a second time, and that light, unlike the physical light created at the dawn of time, can never be extinguished. That’s the difference between the resuscitation of Lazarus and the resurrection of Jesus, between physical light and the light of the resurrection. Lazarus was restored to his self-same body from which he had to die again. Jesus was given a radically new body which would never die again.

The renowned biblical scholar Raymond E. Brown tells us that the darkness that beset the world as Jesus hung dying, would last until we believe in the resurrection. Until we believe that God has a live-giving response for all death and until we believe God will roll back the stone from any grave, no matter how deeply goodness is buried under hatred and violence, the darkness of Good Friday will continue to darken our planet.

Mohandas K. Gandhi once observed that we can see the truth of God always creating new light, simply by looking at history: “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 can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it, always.”

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