Category Archives: Columnists

Poverty, chastity and obedience in secular age

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Father Ron Rolheiser

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Cardinal Francis George was once asked what he thought of the radical pacifism of people like Dorothy Day and Daniel Berrigan, SJ, prophetic figures who believed in absolute nonviolence. How can this be practical, he was asked, it’s utterly naïve to believe that we can live without police and without soldiers. This was his reply: The world needs pacifists in the same way as it needs vowed celibates: They’re not practical. They’re out of place in this world. But they point to the eschatological world, the world of heaven, a world within which there will be no guns, where relational exclusivities will not exist as they exist now, where family will not be based on biology, blood or marriage, where there will be no poor people, and where everything will belong to everyone.
I thought of that recently as I was conducting a workshop on religious life for a group of young people who were discerning whether or not to enter vowed religious life. My task was not to try to persuade them to join a religious community but to help them understand what that life, should they join it, would entail. That meant, of course, long discussions on the three vows that people take to be in religious life: poverty, chastity, and obedience (classically termed “the Evangelical Counsels”).
What’s to be said about poverty, chastity, and obedience in a world that, for the most part, places its hope in material riches, generally identifies chastity with frigidity, and values individual freedom above all else?
Well, no doubt, poverty, chastity, and obedience are seen as radically counter-cultural; but that’s mostly because they are generally not very well understood (sometimes even by those who are living them out). For the most part they are seen as a drastic renunciation, the sacrificing of a full life, the unnatural denial of one’s sexuality, and the adolescent signing over of one’s freedom and creativity. But that’s a misunderstanding.
Poverty, chastity, and obedience are not a missing out on riches, sexuality, and freedom. They are rather a genuine, rich, modality of riches, sexuality, and freedom.
The vow of poverty isn’t primarily about living with cheaper things, not having a dishwasher and doing your own housework. It’s also not about renouncing the kinds of riches that can make for the full flourishing of life. A life of voluntary poverty is a lived way of saying that all material possessions are gift, that the world belongs to everyone, that nobody owns a country, and that nobody’s needs are first. It’s a vow against consumerism and tribalism, and it brings its own wonderful riches in terms of meaning and in the happiness and joy of a shared life.
Likewise for the vow of chastity: Properly understood, it is not a missing out on the joys of sexuality. It’s a rich modality of sexuality itself, given that being sexual means more than having sex. Sexuality is a beautiful, God-given drive within us for lots of things: community, friendship, togetherness, wholeness, family, play, altruism, enjoyment, delight, creativity, genital consummation, and for everything that takes us beyond our aloneness and makes us generative. And so the very real joys that are found in community, friendship, and service of others are not a second-rate substitute for sex. They bring their own sexual flourishing in terms of leading us out of our aloneness.
The same holds true for obedience. Properly understood, it’s not a missing out on real freedom. Rather it’s a rich modality of freedom itself, one practiced by Jesus (who repeatedly says: “I do nothing on my own. I do only the Father’s will.”) Obedience, as a religious vow, is not an immature sacrificing of one’s freedom and adulthood.
It’s rather a radical submitting of one’s human ego (with all its wounds, desires, lusts, private ambitions, and envies) to something and Someone higher than oneself, as seen in the human and religious commitments in persons from Jesus, to Teilhard de Chardin, to Dag Hammarskjold, to Simone Weil, to Mother Teresa, to Jean Vanier, to Daniel Berrigan. In each of these we see a person who walked this earth in a freedom we can only envy but clearly too in a freedom that’s predicated on a genuflecting of one’s individual will to something higher than itself.
Our thoughts and our feelings are strongly influenced by the cultural software within which we find ourselves. Thus, given how our culture understands riches, sex, and freedom today, this may well be the most difficult time in many centuries to make the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience and live them out. Small wonder religious communities are not over-flooded with applications. But because it is more difficult than ever, it is also more important than ever that a number of women and men choose, voluntarily, to prophetically live out these vows.
And their seeming sacrifice will be amply rewarded because, paradoxically, poverty brings its own riches, chastity brings its own flourishing, and obedience provides us with the deepest of all human freedoms.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Timely prescription for holiness

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guest Column
With his new apostolic exhortation on holiness, “Gaudete et Exsultate” (“Rejoice and Be Glad”), Pope Francis delivered an easy-to-read guide to living an authentic Christian life in today’s world.
Don’t be afraid of holiness, he wrote, for “it will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy.”
God calls each of us to be holy “by living our lives with love and bearing witness in everything we do,” the pope wrote.
He cited as an example a woman who refuses to gossip with a neighbor, returns home and listens patiently to her child even though she is tired, prays the rosary and later meets a poor person and offers him a kind word.
The 104-page document, released April 9, is a timely reminder that we all need to dial down the intensity as we navigate the fast-moving journey of modern life.
Some of the specific issues addressed in the document – behavior on social media and the welcome of migrants – could have been taken from the day’s headlines.
For instance, although he’s one of the world’s most popular social media figures, with more than 40 million Twitter followers and 5.3 million on Instagram, Pope Francis warned against the “verbal violence” found online. “Even in Catholic media, limits can be overstepped, defamation and slander can become commonplace, and all ethical standards and respect for the good name of others can be abandoned,” he wrote.
On the controversial topic of migrants, the pope said the condition of migrants is often considered, including by some Catholics, to be a lesser issue than “grave” bioethical matters such as abortion. But kindness to the poor and the abandoned is a basic tenet of Christianity, “not a notion invented by some pope, or a momentary fad.”
The pope also wrote explicitly and at length about the devil as an evil force who poisons us with “hatred, desolation, envy and vice,” and warned us to be on guard. Intentional or not, that section of the document seems to put to rest a recent uproar caused by an elderly Italian journalist who claimed the pope told him he did not believe in the existence of hell.
Overall, though, the pope’s road map to holiness is rooted in Catholic traditions from the beatitudes to the Jesuits’ call for “finding God in all things” to the Little Way of St. Therese of Lisieux.
The simple acts of daily living, the kindnesses we extend to others and, yes, the care we give to ourselves are all part of it, the pope wrote.
And while we should not mistake excessive piety for holiness, Pope Francis called on us to cultivate a prayer life, become involved with a parish, receive the sacraments and examine our conscience regularly as part of a holy life.
We heartily endorse that prescription, and we heartily endorse the notion that God’s call on us to live a holy life requires a personal response given our individual state in life, talents and circumstance.
To be sure, there are challenges in the pursuit of holiness in a world hostile to the notion, but nothing we do is without challenge – and attaining a holy life is cause to “rejoice and be glad.”

(This is an unsigned editorial from the April 12 issue of Catholic New York, newspaper of the Archdiocese of New York.)

Married life’s stages of love

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Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD,

Reflections on Life
By Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD
When a man and woman are joined in marriage as young people, the first stage of their love is easy to discern. It is safe to call their first decade of marriage ten years of passion, for it was the magnet of passionate love that first drew them to communicate with each other. Percy Sledge sang it best, “When a man loves a woman, can’t keep his mind on nothing else!” This is how most marriages begin.
The exception might be the case where a couple were friends (storge, the Greek for friendship love) before eros (Greek for erotic love) was ignited. In many ways, experiencing storge before eros is a much better guarantee of lasting love.
In that first decade of marital love, the chemical power and magic of estrogen and testosterone mix with the outreach and imagination of the human longing for love to create the human foundation for the treasure of love. That foundation we refer to as young love that has all the ingredients for fulfilling, lasting love, but must be tested, tempered and matured in the cauldron of everyday living. Those who refuse to grow will soon find that the wellspring of their love has been poisoned.
Ten years of fashion can be a description of the second decade of marital love. By then, a young couple have hit their stride in love and family life, tiptoeing into social life. Where children have entered their life, the couple is keenly aware of and faithful to their first obligation of rearing and educating their children. As their children grow, the young parents are gradually able to participate a bit in social life.
With most of the initial fire of passion still burning, they nevertheless feel freer to integrate their statements of fashion in social circles with the wonders of love and family. Almost imperceptibly, their initial decade of passion is beginning to morph into ten years of fashion, indicating that they are now a settled couple.
Of course, not consciously taking stock of the nature of their decades of married life, the settled couple move into ten years of compassion. No longer hot, the fire of passion is now warm and comfortable, leaving lots of room for heartfelt compassion and generous sharing among their own family members and in their workaday contacts with friends, coworkers and strangers alike. We say of a couple who are at this juncture in life that they are mellowing out. The years or decades between these stages of love are not necessarily well-defined.
Somewhere in this love mix, there are usually three other forms of love.
Pragma (the Greek for everyday business) is the name given to pragmatic love that does not allow itself to get lost in the fire of erotic love or the closeness of friendship love. Usually, pragmatic love is intimately tied into the pedestrian personality of an individual whose bent is to make everything, including love, as practical as possible.
Pragmatic love can be of great importance in our human quest for love, for it keeps our feet on the ground while our heart and mind explore the heights of emotion and human sentiments. Pragma should be complementary to all other forms of love.
Ludus, the Latin word for play or game, is the name given to ludic love that is lighthearted and playful. Full of cheerfulness, ludic lovers are jovial and prone to tease each other, fulfilling the old saying, “People who love each other tease each other.” As in the case of pragmatic love, ludic love is closely related to the personal temperament of individual lovers. A healthy amount of playfulness is desirable in an intimate relationship, except where the personalities of the lovers make it annoying.
At this point, it should be obvious that the makings of marital bliss are like a wonderful cake whose recipe consists of certain desirable ingredients. If one uses those ingredients in proper proportions, they will balance off and merge into the longed-for product. The ingredients in this case are love of friendship (storge), erotic love (eros), pragmatic love (pragma), ludic love (ludus) and benevolent love.
Agape, the Greek for benevolent love, the highest form of love predicated of God alone (from the Latin bene = well and volens = wishing), means well-wishing, the same as the Christmas message of “Peace on earth, good will to people.”
Finally, pulling all forms of love together, we wish endless years of Agape for married couples as well as for the unmarried. Although properly predicated of God alone, we humans do our best to work benevolent love into our lives, trusting that agape will animate and supercharge storge, eros, pragma and ludus.
Seldom do Italians literally say, “I love you,” which would be “Ti amo” in Italian (Te amo in Latin). Usually, they tell the beloved, “Ti voglio bene,” that means literally, “I wish you well.” That is agape, benevolent love.,
“God is love, and all who abide in love abide in God and God in them.” (1 John 4:16)

(Father Jerome LeDoux, SVD, has written “Reflections on Life since 1969.)

Moral outrage becomes self-condemnation

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Father Ron Rolheiser

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
Moral outrage is the antithesis of morality. Yet it’s everywhere present in our world today and is everywhere rationalized on the basis of God and truth.
We live in a world awash in moral outrage. Everywhere individuals and groups are indignant and morally outraged, sometimes violently so, by opposing individuals, groups, ideologies, moral positions, ecclesiologies, interpretations of religion, interpretations of scripture and the like. We see this everywhere, television networks outraged at the news coverage of other networks, church groups bitterly demonizing each other, pro-life and pro-choice groups angrily shouting at each other and politics at its highest levels paralyzed as different sides feel so morally indignant that they are unwilling to contemplate any accommodation whatever with what opposes them.
And always, on both sides, there’s the righteous appeal to morality and divine authority (however explicit or implicit) in way that, in essence, says: I have a right to demonize you and to shut my ears to anything you have to say because you’re wrong and immoral and I, in the name of God and truth, am standing up to you. Moreover, you’re immorality gives me the legitimate right to bracket the essentials of human respect and treat you as a pariah to be eliminated – in the name of God and of truth.
And this this kind of attitude doesn’t just make for the angry divisions, bitter polarizations and the deep distrust we live with today within our society, it’s also what produces terrorists, mass shootings and the ugliest bigotry and racism. It produced Hitler – someone who was able to capitalize so powerfully on moral outrage that he was able to sway millions of people to turn against what was best inside themselves.
But moral outrage, however much it tries to justify itself on some lofty basis, religion, morality, patriotism, historical hurt, or personal injustice, remains always the opposite of genuine morality and genuine religious practice? Why? Because genuine morality and religious practice are always characterized by the opposite of what’s seen in moral outrage. Genuine morality and genuine religious practice are always marked by empathy, understanding, patience, tolerance, forgiveness, respect, charity and graciousness – all of which are glaringly absent in virtually every expression of moral outrage we see today.
In trying to draw us into a genuine morality and religiosity, Jesus says this: Unless your virtue goes deeper than that of the Scribes and the Pharisees you will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. What was the virtue of the Scribes and Pharisees? On the surface, theirs was a very high virtue. To be a good Scribe or Pharisee meant keeping the Ten Commandments, being faithful to the prescribed religious practices of the time and being a man or woman who was always just and fair in your dealings with others. So what’s lacking in that?
What’s missing is that all of these things (keeping the commandments, faithful religious observance and being fair to others) can be done with a bitter, accusatory, unforgiving heart just as easily (and perhaps even more so) than with a warm, empathic, forgiving heart. Keeping the commandments, going to church and being a just person can all be done (as is only too clear sometimes) out of moral outrage. To paraphrase Jesus: Anyone can be gracious to those who are gracious to you. Anyone can love those who love you. And anyone can be good to those who do good to you … but can you be gracious to those who are bitter towards you? Can you be loving towards those who hate you? And can you forgive those who kill you? That’s the litmus test for Christian morality and religious practice – and nowhere inside of anyone who passes this test will you still find the kind of moral outrage where we believe that God and truth are asking us to demonize those who hate us, do us evil, or try to kill us.
Moreover what we do in moral outrage is deny that we are ourselves morally complicit in the very things we demonize and pour our hatred out on. As we watch the world news each day and see the anger, bitter divisions, violence, injustices, intolerance and wars that characterize our world, a deep, honest, courageous scrutiny should make us aware that we cannot fully separate ourselves from those things. We live in a world of longstanding and present injustice, of ever-widening economic inequality, of endemic racism and sexism, of countless people living as victims of plunder and rape in history, of millions of refugees with no place to go and in a society where various people are branded and ostracized as “losers” and “sickos.” Should we be surprised that our society produces terrorists? However sincere and innocent we might personally feel, how we’re living helps create the ground the breeds mass killers, terrorists, abortionists and playground bullies. We’re not as innocent as we think we are.
Our moral outrage is not an indicator that we are on the side of God and truth. More often than not, it suggests the opposite.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Further up … further in … all shall be well

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Sister alies therese

From the hermitage
By Sister alies therese
‘The difference between the old Narnia and the new Narnia was a deeper country: every rock and flower and blade of grass looked as if it meant more. I can’t describe it any better than that: if ever you get here you will know what I mean…it was the Unicorn who summed up what everyone was feeling. He stamped his right fore-hoof and neighed, and then cried: I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it until now…come further up, come further in!’ (The Last Battle, Chapter 15).
C. S. Lewis invites his readers to reflect ever more deeply upon heaven and the Easter story when in the very last book of the Chronicles of Narnia, he challenges the false and the phony in us and in our world to strip away the masks and costumes that we might live a fuller and more glorious life.
You might remember when Aslan the great lion is executed, taking upon himself the sins of a traitor, in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. This is his first written book but second in the series, a powerful analogy of the passion, death and resurrection of Jesus. The witch and her “Deep Magic” reminded him that the traitor belonged to her and he stepped up and said, ‘Fall back, all of you and I will talk to the witch alone…you can all come back I have settled the matter. She has renounced her claim on your brother’s blood…’ Later that night the girls came to him and saw him, thinking him ill. ‘What is wrong, dear Aslan? Can’t you tell us? Are you ill?…No I am sad and lonely. Lay your hands on my mane so I can feel you are there and let us walk like that.’ They walked for quite a spell and then he said: ‘O children, children. Here you must stop. And whatever happens, do not let yourself be seen. Farewell.’” And he walked out to the crowd of haters gathered around the Stone Table and let himself be bound and shaved and muzzled. Then he was tied. She came to him, whet her knife, and delivered the blow after saying: “And now, who has won? Fool, did you think that by all this you would save the human traitor? Now I will kill you instead of him as our pact was and so the Deep Magic will be appeased. But when you are dead what will prevent me from killing him as well? And who will take him out of my hands then? Understand that you have given me Narnia forever, you have lost your own life, and you have not saved his. In that knowledge, despair and die.”
She knew nothing of resurrection.
“There, in the sunrise, larger than they had seen him before, shaking his mane (for it had grown again) stood Aslan himself… ‘aren’t you dead?…Not now!…Oh, you’re real, you’re real!’ And both girls flung themselves upon him and covered him with kisses!” And then he explained: ‘though the witch knew the Deep Magic, there is a magic deeper still which she did not know. Her knowledge goes back only to the dawn of time. But if she could have looked a little further back, in the stillness and the darkness before time dawned, she would have read there a different incantation. She would have known that when a willing victim who committed no treachery was killed in a traitor’s stead, the table would crack and Death itself would start working backwards…’
Shall we never forget that ‘magic’ that truth fundamental to all Christian belief: Jesus was raised from the dead. Death met its match. We, the traitors, are set free. It has only been two weeks since Easter Sunday…have we already forgotten, or have we been moving further up and further in?
Julian of Norwich, whose feast day is May 8, reminds us in her Revelations of Divine Love, that sin results in an abyss of nothingness and endless disorder. She emphasizes the immanence of God.
‘See, I am God. See, I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never remove my hands from My works, nor ever shall without end. See, I guide all things to the end that I ordain them for, before time began, with the same power and wisdom and love with which I made them. (3:11.199).’
Julian sees creation as gift and promise, according to Kerrie Hide, and God is the source and ground of all things, creation’s hope and destiny. ‘All shall be well, and All shall be well, and All shall be well. ‘What is impossible to you is not impossible to Me. I shall preserve My word in everything and I shall make everything well.’ (13:32.233).’
Perhaps she knew Aslan, the great lion? What they both tell us is to go further up and further in where we will discover where our real country is, where we really belong!
Blessings.

(Sister Alies Therese is a vowed Catholic solitary who lives an eremitical life. Her days are formed around prayer, art and writing. She is author of six books of spiritual fiction and is a weekly columnist. She lives and writes in Mississippi.)

Mass sometimes misunderstood

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Deacon Aaron Williams

Spirit and Truth
By Deacon Aaron M. Williams
During this past Holy Week, I read a homily a friend of mine delivered on Holy Thursday. He raised an important point about the identity of the Mass which I had not given much consideration until now. He said that in the Mass, “We are in no way re-enacting the Last Supper…the Mass is not the Last Supper.” The reason I find this statement so striking isn’t because I disagree with him — I couldn’t agree more that he is right! But, far more important than that is that most Catholics, and indeed some people who teach others about the Mass, get this point wrong or falsely assume that simply because our Lord instituted the Eucharist at the Last Supper that the Mass itself is a reenactment of that same supper.
The fact of the matter is that when Christ gave us this Sacrament, he gave it as a sign of his own passion, death and resurrection — what the Second Vatican Council termed the “Paschal mystery.” The Passover meal of the Jews recalled the meal that the enslaved Hebrews ate before they were led in Exodus out of Egypt. To eat the Passover (Seder) meal, was to recall the moment before God rescued them. But, not the Eucharist. Christ the Lord took this Passover meal and made it not a sign of another meal before a saving act, but a sign of the act itself — “This is my Body, which will be given for you.” Thus, the Catechism of the Catholic Church very rightly proclaims, “In the liturgy of the Church, it is principally his own Paschal mystery that Christ signifies and makes present” (1085).
This is one area where Catholic theology strongly diverges from our Protestant brothers and sisters. For the Protestant, to eat the “Lord’s Supper” is like a Seder meal — a symbolic meal that we use to remember Jesus’s ‘last meal’ on Earth. But, when the Catholic gazes upon the sacred host held aloft by the priest, we look not upon a simple meal, but upon Christ crucified and sacrificed for us all. The Cathechism says, “The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it re-presents (makes present) the sacrifice of the cross…the sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice” (1366-7).
The celebration of the liturgies of the Triduum each year gives us time to reflect particularly on the individual aspects of the Paschal mystery, but in each Mass we experience these events in a single expression. In every Mass, we receive the benefits of our Lord’s passion, death and resurrection.
This revelation should enable us to undergo a different sort of preparation for the Mass. We are not coming together each week for a simple family meal — although this idea has been promoted in recent times. The concept of the Mass as a sit-down meal between God the Father and the human family, while quaint and charming, hardly does justice to the reality of Christ’s sacrifice. Is the Eucharist a meal? Yes, of course. But, it is a meal that comes as the fruit of sacrifice — just as in the old covenant, the Hebrew people would eat the flesh of sacrificed animals in order to reap the effects of the sacrifice. In the Mass, the Lord himself feeds us his own sacrificed flesh so that we can benefit from the effects of that same sacrifice.
The altar in every church is therefore both the altar of sacrifice and the table of the Lord — the two aspects go hand-in-hand. This is the reason that the architectural legislation of the Church requires the altar to be made from a solid material and to be dignified. It is not meant to be a mere family dinner table, but a true altar. In fact, it is strongly recommended that the altar of each church be completely immovable as the focus and center of that church. Likewise, we do not adorn our altars in the same way we would prepare a thanksgiving meal at home — with tablecloths and cornucopias of produce. The Catholic altar is wrapped in white linen (signifying the burial shroud of Christ), and the only objects which are set upon it are those things needed for the sacrifice, namely the elements of bread and wine along with other things such as the missal and candles.
Finally, because the Mass is a true sacrifice, it is demanded of us that we bring something to it to be offered to God. I am not speaking of a physical object or a monetary donation, but of the spiritual sacrifice of our own good works, sufferings and sins. All of those things, we can place in the hands of the priest who, obedient to God’s command to “do this in memory of me,” offers it all with and for us to the Father.

(Deacon Aaron Williams and his classmate, Deacon Nicholas Adam, will be ordained to the priesthood May 31 at the Cathedral of St. Peter the Apostle.)

When time stands still

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Father Ron Rolheiser

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The theory of relativity tells us that space and time are not what they appear to be. They’re relative, meaning that don’t always function in the same way and they aren’t always experienced in the same way. Time can stand still.
Or can it? This side of eternity, it would seem not. Ever since the universe started with a mammoth explosion some 13.8 billion years ago the clock has been running non-stop, like a merciless meter, moving relentlessly forwards.
However, our faith suggests that time will be different in eternity, so different in fact that we cannot now even imagine how it will be in heaven. As St. Paul tells us in his letter to the Corinthians: Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God has prepared for them that love him. How will time be experienced in heaven? As we’ve just affirmed, that cannot be imagined now.
Or can it? In a wonderful new book, Is This All There Is? On Resurrection and Eternal Life, the renowned German scripture scholar, Gerhard Lohfink, suggests that we can and sometimes do have an experience of time as it will be experienced in eternity. For Lohfink, we experience this whenever we’re in adoration.
For him, the highest form of prayer is adoration. But what does it mean to “adore” God and why is that the highest form of prayer? Lohfink answers: “In adoration we ask nothing more of God. When I lament before God it is usually my own suffering that is the starting point. Even when I petition God, the occasion is often my own problem. I need something from God. And even when I thank God, unfortunately I am usually thankful for something I have received. But when I adore, I let go of myself and look only to God.”
Admittedly, lament, petition and thanksgiving are high forms of prayer. An old, classical and very good, definition of prayer defines prayer as “lifting mind and heart to God” and what’s in our hearts virtually at all times is some form of lament, petition, or thanksgiving. Moreover, Jesus invites us to ask God for whatever is in our heart at a given moment: “Ask and you will receive.” Lament, petition and thanksgiving are good forms of prayer; but, in praying them, we’re still focused in some manner on ourselves, on our needs and our joys.
However in adoration we look to God or at some attribute of God (beauty, goodness, truth, or oneness) so strongly that everything else drops away. We stand in pure wonder, pure admiration, ecstatic awe, entirely stripped of our own heartaches, headaches and idiosyncratic focus. God’s person, beauty, goodness and truth overwhelm us so as to take our minds off of ourselves and leave us standing outside of ourselves.
And being free of our own selves is the very definition of ecstasy (from the Greek, EK STASIS, to stand outside oneself.) Thus, to be in adoration is to be in ecstasy – though, admittedly, that’s generally not how we imagine ecstasy today. For us, ecstasy is commonly imagined as an earthshaking standing inside of ourselves, idiosyncrasy in its peak expression. But true ecstasy is the opposite. It’s adoration.
Moreover, for Lohfink, not only is adoration the only true form of ecstasy, it’s also a way of being in heaven already right now and of experiencing time as it will be in heaven. Here’s how he puts it: “In the miracle of adoration we are already with God, entirely with God and the boundary between time and eternity is removed. It is true that we cannot now comprehend that adoring God will be endless bliss. We always want to be doing something. We want to criticize, intervene, change, improve, shape. And rightly so! That is our duty. But in death, when we come to God, that all ceases.
Then our existence will be pure astonishment, pure looking, pure praise, pure adoration – and unimaginable happiness. That is why there is also a form of adoration that uses no words. In it I hold out my own life to God, in silence and with it the whole world, knowing God as Creator, as Lord, as the one to whom belongs all honor and praise. Adoration is the oblation of one’s life to God. Adoration is surrender. Adoration means entrusting oneself entirely to God. As we dwell in adoration, eternity begins – an eternity that does not withdraw from the world but opens to it utterly.”
Time can stand still! And it stands still when we’re in pure admiration, in awe, in wonder, in adoration. In those moments we stand outside of ourselves, in the purest form of love that exists. At that moment too we are in heaven, not having a foretaste of heaven, but actually being in heaven. Eternity will be like that, one moment like a thousand years and a thousand years like one moment.
When we adore, time stands still – and we’re in heaven!

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Labor Unions are Prophets for Our Time

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Father Jeremy Tobin

Millennial reflections
By Father Jeremy Tobin
Pope Francis clearly is a pope for our time. He has been the voice of those with no voice, the advocate for those on the margins. From the very beginning of his papacy he has urged the church to “Go to the margins, to the outcast…” He urges clergy to immerse themselves in the struggles of their people saying “shepherds should smell like the sheep.” He has blasted clericalism as a new idolatry.
Recently he spoke to the Italian equivalent of the AFL-CIO. He refocused labor and those who advocate for workers in the frame of Pope John Paul II, seeing the social as well as the human dimensions of work, even creativity in doing any work. No job is just a job, it should be the expression of the worker. Further he sees the necessity of leisure. “Leisure is not laziness,” said the pontiff. It is a necessity to fill out the rest of the worker’s life.
He sees work as the product and expression of the worker, not merely tasks to be done for profit. The advent of robotics used to replace human workers only amplifies the problem of profit being the exclusive motive for work. One might surmise companies who choose robots over people have no social purpose other than amassing wealth for their shareholders and owners.
Pope Francis is a firm critic of capitalism. In some circles to criticize capitalism is to espouse Marxism and immorality. This is not the focus of Pope Francis’ criticism. The negative aspects of a Marxist-based economy is to further reduce people to things, not agents of their own destiny. Marxism and predatory capitalism both gouge workers.
In addressing the Italian labor unions he firmly states, “Labor unions are prophetic and innovative.” Unions are prophetic when they give voice “to those who have none, denounce those who would ‘sell the needy for a pair of sandals’ (Amos 2:6) unmask the powerful who would trample the rights of the most vulnerable of workers, defend the cause of the foreigner, the least of the discarded.”
Today labor unions, together with the Church, have been speaking up for immigrants, joined in their struggle for equality and inclusion The leadership of the AFL-CIO under Richard Trumka the labor movement recognized it was not immigrants stealing workers jobs, it was the exploitation of immigrants that drove down wages. It is the ongoing “race to the bottom” that has split groups who should be allies.
A powerful way to combat this is through solidarity. We can go back to the glory days of early 20th Centuries organizing with that hymn, “Solidarity Forever” and chants liker the “Mighty, mighty Union!! The truth is, the works are the union. More than the chief officers away in offices. They can direct, inspire and mobilize, but the union is on the ground. It is the workers, organized and holding management accountable.
Pope Francis’ concept of solidarity is expansive. Unions represent all workers not just their members. True solidarity is respect for the workers, the company’s respect for the larger community. Today these are pitted against each other solely for profit. Today we hear speakers denounce balancing budgets on the backs of the poor. These denunciations often fall on deaf ears.
Our teaching on labor, like so much other issues, is the focus on the human person. From this lens it is people, communities that come before profits. It is seeing workers with respect, not as human machines.
Pope Francis emphasis on the prophetic role of unions is inclusive, reaching outward. He says, “Prophets are sentinels, who watch from their lookout. The union, too, must keep vigil over the walls of the city of work, like a watchman who guards and protects those who are inside the city of labor, but also guarding and protecting those who are outside the walls.” He continues saying, ”Your vocation is also to protect those who do not have rights., those excluded from work who are also excluded from rights and democracy.”
This is why I often write that our Catholic teachings on labor and social justice are well kept secrets. They should not be. At a time when so many people are being attacked and exploited in so many ways we should be preaching and teaching social justice from the housetops.
(Father Jeremy Tobin, O.Praem, lives at the Priory of St. Moses the Black, Jackson.)

Faith includes ups and downs

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Father Ron Rolheiser

IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI
The poet, Rumi, suggests that we live with a deep secret that sometimes we know, then not, and then know again. That’s a good description of faith. Faith isn’t something you nail down and possess once and for all. It goes this way: sometimes you walk on water and sometimes you sink like a stone.
The Gospels testify to this, most graphically, in the story of Peter walking on the water: Jesus asks Peter to step out of a boat and walk across the water to him. At first it works, Peter, unthinking, walks on the water, then becoming more conscious of what he is doing he sinks like a stone. We see this too in the massive fluctuations in belief that Jesus’ disciples experience during the “forty days” after the resurrection. Jesus would appear to them, they would trust he was alive, then he would disappear again, and they would lose their trust and go back to the lives they’d led before they met him, fishing and the sea. The post-resurrection narratives illustrate the dynamics of faith pretty clearly: You believe it. Then you distrust. Then you believe it again. At least, so it seems on the surface.
We see another example of this in the story of Peter betraying Jesus. In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus tells us that there is a secret which separates those who have faith from those who don’t: To you is given the secret of the kingdom, but to those outside everything exists in parables. That sounds like Gnosticism, that is, the idea that there’s a secret code somewhere (e.g., the Di Vinci Code) that some know and some don’t and you are in or out depending upon whether you know it or not. But that’s not what Jesus is saying here. His secret is an open one, accessible to all: the meaning of the cross. Anyone who understands this will understand the rest of what Jesus means, and vice versa. We are in or out, depending upon whether or not we can grasp and accept the meaning of Jesus’ death.
But, being in or out isn’t a once and for all thing. Rather, we move in and out! After Peter denied Jesus, we’re told: “he went outside.” This is intended both literally and metaphorically. After his denial, Peter stepped outside a gate into the night to be away from the crowd, but he also stepped outside the meaning of his faith.
Our faith also bounces up and down for another reason, we misunderstand how it works: Take for example the Rich Young Man who approaches Jesus with this question: “Good master, what must I do to possess eternal life?” That’s an interesting choice of a verb: to possess. Eternal life as a possession? Jesus’ gentle correction of the young man’s verb teaches us something vital about faith. Jesus says to him: “Now if you wish to receive eternal life,” meaning that faith and eternal life are not something you possess so that they can be stored and guarded like grain in a barn, money in a bank, or jewelry in a box. They can only be received, like the air we breathe. Air is free, is everywhere, and our health doesn’t depend upon its presence, for it’s always there, but rather upon the state of our lungs (and mood) at any given moment. Sometimes we breathe deeply and appreciatively; but, sometimes, for various reasons, we breathe badly, gasp for breath, are out of breath or are choking for air. Like breathing, faith too has its modalities.
And so, we need to understand our faith not as a possession or as something we achieve once and for all, which can be lost only by some huge, dramatic, life-changing shift inside of us, where we move from belief to atheism. “Faith isn’t some constant state of belief,” suggests Abraham Heschel, “but rather a sort of faithfulness, a loyalty to the moments when we’ve had faith.”
And that teases out something else: To be real, faith need not be explicitly religious, but can express itself simply in faithfulness, loyalty and trust. For example, in a powerful memoir written as she as dying of cancer, The Bright Hour, Annie Riggs shares her strong, but implicit, faith as she calmly faces her death. Not given to explicit religious faith, she is challenged at one point by a nurse who says to her: “Faith, you gotta have it, and you’re gonna need it!” The comment triggers a reflection on her part about what she does or doesn’t believe in. She comes to peace with the question and her own stake in it with these words: “For me, faith involves staring into the abyss, seeing that it is dark and full of the unknown – and being okay with that.”
We need to trust the unknown, knowing that we will be okay, no matter that on a given day we might feel like we are walking on water or sinking like a stone. Faith is deeper than our feelings.

(Oblate Father Ron Rolheiser, theologian, teacher and award-winning author, is President of the Oblate School of Theology in San Antonio, TX.)

Turning frustration into positive action

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George Evans

COMPLETE THE CIRCLE
By George Evans
I finally acknowledged to myself that I am a news junkie and that it fills time with unhappiness. The more I watch and read the more concerned I get. I am afraid our country is in a rudderless free fall. Republicans are awash with Trump and don’t seem to know what to do with him. Democrats are just lost going around in circles hoping the merry-go-round stops somewhere so they can get their act together before the mid term elections in order to take back some power in Congress. It seems to me God is testing us as individuals and as a country to try to do the right thing.
What is he calling us to do? My thoughts for whatever they are worth follow. My prayer and meditation in the morning is more and more involved with begging direction for our elected leaders both in the White House and Congress. I still believe that America offers the best chance possible to make present the kingdom of God. Jesus proclaims in the gospel that the kingdom is at hand and calls us to follow him in bringing it to fruition. He gives us a blue print in the New Testament by completing and fulfilling the Old Testament. He spent three years giving us directions in the gospels. Some of those directions are very hard to follow, like turning the other cheek and giving away all we have in order to follow him more completely.
We parse a lot of what he says to justify how we try to follow him. Politically we do a lot of that to try to make things work and to get “our people” elected or reelected as the case may be. We debate taxes and economics, immigration and national loyalty, education and jobs, health and welfare, infrastructure needs and many other things. We don’t spend as much time discussing what is best for the common good or how to practically close the ever increasing gap between rich and poor. We tend to leave these latter matters to think tanks, nonprofits or religious endeavors so that answers are slow, if ever, to appear.
I like the fact my retirement account has recently done well. But I grieve over all the people I visit on St. Vincent de Paul home visits who have no IRA and are trying to live on a less than $1,000 a month disability check, a minimal social security check, or two minimum wage jobs.
There seems to be little hope that government will take any meaningful steps to help in these or similar cases. Do we then just despair and give up? No, we can’t do that. I think we have to recommit to do all we can to make a difference. We are needed to bring the best we can to politics by bringing to bear our values, gospel values and Church values to the present morass. As Pope Francis tells us we are needed in the public square regardless of how unpleasant it may be.
The deeper I search myself, I realize that I can do more through the Church or other organizations to make some difference in the gap between rich and poor, unvulnerable and vulnerable, active and homebound, established and migrant. Its not fair to just blame politicians if we are not improving on our own selfishness in not reaching out and serving those in need.
Only we can do the proper self exam in this regard. The Old Testament prophets call for this repeatedly. Jesus mandates this repeatedly and in Matthew 25 makes it a condition for salvation in the dramatic depiction of the last judgment.
Writing this column has convinced me to be less frustrated with our times and more dedicated to making a difference myself in service and compassion and I invite anyone who has been struggling with some of the same things to join me in the effort. Wouldn’t it be fun to make a contribution by what we do?

(George Evans is a retired pastoral minister from Jackson St. Richard Parish.)