IN EXILE
By Father Ron Rolheiser, OMI

To fall in love! We use the expression to cover many things. You can fall in love with a baby, a sports team, a city, a job or another person. However, we reserve the prime analogate for this expression for one thing, emotional infatuation, that intoxicating feeling we first get when we meet someone who we sense as a soulmate.

Iris Murdoch once wrote that the world can change in fifteen seconds because that’s how quickly you can fall in love with someone. She’s right, and falling in love emotionally can literally paralyze us with a grip so strong that even death seems preferable to losing the one with whom we have fallen in love. Countless heartaches, broken hearts, depressions, clinical breakdowns, suicides, murders and murder-suicides testify to this. Emotional infatuation can be a deadly addiction, the most powerful cocaine on the planet. Where does it come from? Heaven or hell? And, what’s its meaning?

Ultimately, God and nature are its author and that tells us that it is a good thing. We are built for this to happen to us. Moreover, it is a healthy thing, if properly understood, both in its intoxicating power and in its innate failure to be a sustaining power in love.

What happens when we fall in love so powerfully with someone? Are we really in love with that person or are we more in love with being in love and the feelings this brings us? As well, are we really in love with that person or are we in love with an image of him or her we have created for ourselves, one that projects a certain godliness on to that other?

Let me risk some answers. Imagine a man falling deeply in love with a woman. Initially, the feelings can be overpowering and literally paralyze him emotionally. However, inside of all this, a certain question begs to be asked: with whom or with what is he really in love? His feelings? The archetype of femininity the woman is carrying? His image of her? She herself?

In reality, he is in love with all of these: his feelings, his image of her, she herself and the divine feminine she is carrying. All of that is of one piece inside of his experience. As well, all of this can be healthy at this stage of love.

God invented emotional infatuation, just as God invented honeymoons. We are not meant to be drawn to each other by cold analytics alone. But, this kind of falling in love is an initiatory stage in love (albeit a delightful one) that needs to be understood exactly for what it is, an initiatory stage, nothing more, one that invites us into something deeper. Emotional infatuation is not yet a mature stage in love.

Unless one dies in its grip, as did Romeo and Juliet, it will one day lose its hold on us and leave us disillusioned. When Iris Murdoch said that we can fall in love in fifteen seconds, she might also have added that, sadly, we can also fall out of love in fifteen seconds. Emotional infatuation can be that ephemeral, both in its birth and in its dying.

So falling in love (in this emotional way) comes fraught with certain dangers. First, there is the adolescent proclivity to identify this with deep love itself. Consequently, when the powerful emotional and psychosexual feelings let go, the person easily concludes that he or she is no longer in love and moves on. Next, more subtly, there is this danger. When we are in this initial gripping stage of love, our image of the other carries with it a certain godliness. What’s meant by that?

St. Augustine coined this timeless dictum: You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you. Hence, nothing in life can ever really be enough for us. We are always restless, always yearning for something more. However, in this initial phase of love, when we have fallen into the grip of emotional infatuation, for a time the other is enough for us. That’s why Romeo and Juliet could die happy. At this stage of love, they were enough for each other.

However, the hard truth is that infatuation does not last. The other person, no matter how wonderful he or she might actually be, is not God and can never be enough (and we are unfair to him or her when we unconsciously expect them to be enough). For a while, they are able to carry that godliness for us, but that illusion of godliness will eventually break and we will realize that this is just a person, one person, wonderful perhaps, but finite, limited and not divine. That realization (which is ultimately meant to be the ground for mature love) can, if not understood, jeopardize or sour a relationship.

God invented falling in love! In it, we get a little foretaste of heaven, though, as experience tells us that is not without its dangers.

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

THINGS OLD AND NEW
By Ruth Powers

Although the weather may still be damp and chilly, as we move past Candlemas the lengthening of the days reminds us that we are moving ever closer to spring and to the season of Lent. Most Catholics are aware of the familiar progression of “seasons” of the church as the wheel of the liturgical year turns, but the history of this season may provide us with some food for meditation on ways to observe Lent more fruitfully today.

The word Lent in English is a shortened form of the Old English word lencten, meaning “spring season” and may possibly refer to the lengthening of days during this time. In the languages derived from Greek or Latin, however, the name of the season is derived from the word meaning “fortieth” and gives a hint to the ancient nature of the observance.

St. Irenaeus, writing toward the end of the second century, talked about the Lenten fast, saying it originated in the “time of our forefathers”– an expression for the days of the apostles – but varied in length and character from one or two days to a full 40 days before Easter. Often this fast was associated with the catechumens who were preparing for Baptism at Easter. By the time of the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D., Lent had become more regularized to a 40-day period meant to reflect the time that Jesus spent fasting in the desert before beginning his public ministry. In the fourth century, several church fathers such as St. Athanasius and St. Cyril of Alexandria wrote of Lent as a forty-day period dedicated to fasting and prayer. Finally, in 461 A.D. Pope St. Leo preached that the whole church was to observe this “Apostolic institution of the 40 days” with fasting and prayer.

Initially the fasting of Lent lasted for the entire 40-day period and included giving up all meat, dairy, eggs and milk, and also eating only one meal a day in the evening. Over the centuries, this was modified to allow eating fish and dairy products, and an additional small meal was allowed for those who engaged in manual labor.

Further modifications were made as time went on until in 1966 Pope Paul VI reduced the obligatory fast days of Lent to Ash Wednesday and Good Friday and days of abstinence to Ash Wednesday and the Fridays of Lent. Bishop’s Conferences were given the ability to replace the fast with other forms of penitence such as charity or piety, with the understanding that this was aimed particularly at parts of the world where poverty is widespread and food scarcity is already a problem. This was made part of the 1983 Code of Canon Law, which made fasting obligatory for those aged 18 to 59 and made abstinence obligatory for those over the age of 14. If the Feast of St. Joseph (March 19) or the Feast of the Annunciation (March 25) falls on Friday, the rule of abstinence does not apply.

However, fasting is only one of the three traditional “Pillars of Lent.” The other two pillars are focused more on positive acts. The second pillar is prayer, and includes extra acts of prayer, worship or study. Stations of the Cross and the rosary are just a couple of examples of extra acts of prayer. Lent may be an opportunity for someone to begin to pray one of more of the hours from the Liturgy of Hours each day. There are several free smartphone apps which make this very easy to do. Many parishes offer special Lenten study programs as well.

The third pillar is almsgiving, or charity. This does not simply refer to giving money, although donating to charity is certainly a good thing. It also refers to performing other acts of charity, such as volunteering at a local soup kitchen or helping an elderly neighbor. Sharing time and talent with those in need are also acts of charity.

It might be good to look back into our church’s history to find ways to enrich our Lenten observance, beginning with a period of preparation before Ash Wednesday. Most of us in this area are very familiar with Mardi Gras, a season of merrymaking beginning with the Epiphany and lasting until Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday. This season is also known as Carnival, which literally translates as “farewell to meat.”

Less well known now is the observance of Shrovetide, which begins 17 days before Ash Wednesday on what the traditional church calendar called Septuagesima Sunday. People used this time to begin preparing themselves for the austerities of Lent and deciding on the penitential practices they would choose. Going to Confession was always a part of this observance and gives the period its name: to be absolved of sin was to be “shriven,” hence Shrovetide.

In many English-speaking countries, such as England and Canada, the day before Ash Wednesday is known as Shrove Tuesday. A traditional meal served on the day is pancakes! These were eaten to use up the butter, eggs and sugar which would not be used during the Lenten season. Those who want to do something more austere in the way of fasting might try a Black Fast, which echoes the early Christian practice of fasting all day until supper is eaten after sunset. They may also be interested in the Daniel fast, based on Daniel 10:3. In this fast one abstains from meat, fish, eggs, dairy products, sweets and wine or any other alcoholic beverages.

Whatever extra penitential practices one chooses, Lent is a time meant to help us grow in self-discipline and spirituality so that we can come to the Easter celebration more closely conformed to Christ.

(Ruth Powers is the program coordinator for St. Mary Basilica Parish in Natchez.)

GUESt COLUMN
By Adrienne Curry

Sitting at a kitchen table in Chicago more than three decades ago, I had a chance to get to know a holy woman who might one day be recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church.

Sister Thea Bowman, granddaughter of slaves and the first African American member of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, was in Chicago for a series of speaking engagements. She stayed that weekend with the lay community where I was living.

Many people in the Black Catholic community and beyond were aware of Sister Thea because of her dynamic presentations around the country – lively gatherings that combined singing, Gospel preaching, prayer and storytelling. She spoke in a direct way to break down racial and cultural barriers. She also encouraged people to communicate with one another so they could understand other cultures and races.

I was relatively new to Catholicism at the time Sister Thea stayed with my lay community, but I had previously heard Sister Thea speak when she visited Chicago for frequent revivals and workshops. One of my housemates attended the Institute for Black Catholic Studies at Xavier University in New Orleans and had the chance to take classes with Sister Thea.

Like Sister Thea, I was the only Catholic in my family. I remember that we spoke about what that common experience was like. We talked about being Black and Catholic, and the gifts we bring by being our “authentic Black selves to the Church.”

Being Black and Catholic is kind of an enigma: We aren’t accepted by the wider Black church, and, unfortunately, our gifts are still not fully accepted in the wider Catholic Church.

“I bring myself; my Black self, all that I am, all that I have, all that I hope to become,” Sister Thea told the U.S. bishops in a famous 1989 address. “I bring my whole history, my traditions, my experience, my culture, my African American song and dance and gesture and movement and teaching and preaching and healing and responsibility – as gifts to the church. I bring a spirituality that our Black American bishops told us (they just told us what everybody who knew, knew), that spirituality is contemplative and Biblical and holistic, bringing to religion a totality of mind and imaginations, of memory, of feeling and passion, and emotion and intensity. A faith that is embodied, incarnate praise – a spirituality that knows how to find joy even in the time of sorrow – that steps out on faith that leans on the Lord.”

Sister Thea lived a full life. She fought evil, especially prejudice, suspicion, hatred and things that drive people apart. She fought for God and God’s people until her death in 1990. Throughout her life, Sister Thea pioneered the rights of African Americans in the Catholic Church and refused to accept the racial injustices she witnessed within her community.

This holy woman is now one of six American Black Catholics who are in the process of canonization. The U.S. bishops endorsed her sainthood cause during their 2018 fall general assembly in Baltimore.
I would like to close with a prayer by Sister Thea. Her words are so needed today.

“O, Lord, help us to be attentive to your commands. Help us to walk in unity. Help us to celebrate who we are and whose we are. Help us to overcome selfishness, anger and violence in our hearts, in our homes, in our church, in our world. Help us to knock down, pull down, shout down the walls of racism, sexism, classism, materialism and militarism that divide and separate us. Help us to live as your united people, proclaiming with one voice our faith, our hope, our love, our joy. Amen.”

Sister Thea Bowman, pray for us!

(Adrienne Curry’s piece first appeared in the Catholic Review. Find them at catholicreview.org.)