Now Begin The Glorious Forty Days.

He is Risen, These were the words of the angel who appeared to the women who went to the tomb of the Lord. The greatest event since the fall of Adam and Eve. Death is not the winner anymore, it does not have the last say. He who is Life itself, and who came to die for us, rises from the depths of death to a new living dimension never seen before. The forty days that followed were the most unique in the history of humanity. Imagine those simple men who were chosen to be His disciples. They saw Him many times, He invited them to touch His wounds, to eat with Him, to sit and listen to Him as He taught them about their upcoming mission to go and preach the Gospel, and to baptize. No one else in history had such a magnificent experience happen to them. How they must have finally understood what God really planned for us, that we would live forever without the limitations of our sin laden bodies, prone to suffering and illness, and death. How they must have rejoiced as they went to their beds to sleep, having discovered the great glory God has in store for us. No wonder Thomas's response when he saw the Lord was " My Lord and my God." It is the cry of a man who has crossed the threshold of doubt into full understanding of the new reality.
Easter is a time to rejoice, it is a time of celebration of the victory of humanity gained through its one and only Savior, Our Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be still and rejoice, for now we know that through Him we can only win. "I thank you Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent, and have revealed them to mere infants." ( Luke 10:21.)  May Your Name be blessed forever.
The great writer G. K Chesterton once said that "Peace and joy constitute the greatest secret of Christianity." A true Christian is a person full of hope and joy, knowing that eternal glory is his reward. I can imagine the angels singing to the Blessed Virgin the "Regina Caeli".

Queen of heaven rejoice, alleluia,
for the Son whom you merited to bear, alleluia,
has risen as He said alleluia.
Rejoice and be glad O Virgin Mary, alleluia.
For the Lord has truly risen, Alleluia.

This is the meaning of Happy Easter.
 

Blood On The Door Posts.

Dear friend in Christ.

On this Holy morning of Good Friday, the day God died for us, my heart is filled  with the desire to share with you this awesome mystery that paid for our sins and  brought us back to life. Yesterday, at the Mass of the last Supper, the Church celebrated the institution of the Holy Eucharist.  " Jesus, on the night when He was betrayed took a loaf of bread and when He had given thanks He broke it and said, 'This is my body that is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way He took the cup also, after supper, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it in remembrance of me. For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until He comes." (1 Cor. 11. 23-26).
On this night we encounter again the command about eating which God gave to our first parents in the Garden. Only the command is now inverted. In Genesis we read. "You shall not eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die." (Gen.2:17). But tonight, only a few hours before His death on the cross, He commands us to eat this bread which is His body, and drink this cup which is the cup of His blood. " Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood you have no life in you." (John 6:53.).
In today's Office of Reading, there is a reading from the letter to the Hebrews ( Heb 9:11-28.) explaining how God prepared His people in the old testament by commanding them to sacrifice an unblemished lamb and eat it, and also to sprinkle the blood of the lamb on their door posts to keep the angel of death away. St. John Chrysostom continues ( in the second reading.) by saying that the blood sprinkled on the door posts is a prefigurement of the blood of Christ smeared on our lips when we drink of the cup of His blood. Our lips being the doors of the temple of Christ.
Here we can understand what the Eucharistic St. Paul means when he says. " if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." (Rom 10:9). This is the true confession of faith, the saying of Amen at the moment of receiving the Body and Blood of the Risen Lord. A mystery hidden from unbelievers, but revealed to those who are being saved.

"How deep are the riches and the wisdom and the knowledge of God. How inscrutable His judgements, how unsearchable His ways."  Now, through His passion and death we can participate in the command to eat, so as to repair the damage done be the disobedient eating in the Garden.
As we celebrate God' gift of Himself on this Friday, let us meditate on the last moments of Our Lord on the cross, when He shed His blood to the last drop, and try to begin to understand how much He loves us.

God, The Great Investor.

My brother,
On this Holy Week, I write to you that I may share with you some thoughts about our loving God, "Who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for the benefit of us all." ( Rom. 8:32)
During these days, the Church Liturgy calls us to remember and meditate on the events that led to the last days of our Lord's life on earth.
The first five weeks of Lent have been preparing us for this very moment. The Son of Man willingly surrenders Himself to the Enemy, that the great drama of the redemption of humanity from the tyranny of death might unfold.
Through prayer and penance, we open our hearts that the Heavenly Father might give us the grace to comprehend what Jesus and His Mother went through in these final days on the way to the cross.
It is sad to think that God's greatest gift of love had to be mingled with sinful humanity's vilest acts. After a long period of machinations and plotting to destroy the Lord of Life, He is betrayed by a close friend, denied and abandoned by those who had promised Him loyalty, lied about, and made victim of the most shameful piece of lobbying in the history of humanity, condemned by a cowardly politician, even though he knew he was condemning an innocent man. He was jeered, scourged, crucified, and humiliated, then killed by violent men gone wild, who manifested what lies hidden in our sinful hearts.
This, the greatest event, reveals to us the unimaginable love God has for us. He was willing to invest this most precious gift of Himself, that He might, in the future, reap a harvest of love. For love can only be repaid by love.
Now, my brother, consider that God is not sadistic, Scripture tells us "He does not grieve or afflict anyone willingly." ( 3:33.) All that Jesus suffered He sufferred because it had to be suffered. If God had to make His Son suffer so much. How ugly must sin be that it needs so much to repair for it?
God, the Great Investor, "out of the very love He has for us, even when we were dead through our transgressions, brought us alive together with Christ." ( Eph. 2:4.).  He chose the Cross as the instrument of His investment, and thus turned the world's suffering brought on by sin, into a precious jewel made perfect in the dimension of the cross sanctified by Christ.

Is it a wonder then, my brother, that great friends of God teach us to treasure suffering? St. John of the Cross advices us that when something unpleasant happens to us, we ought to look at Jesus crucified and be silent. And, he asks, "What does anyone know who does not know how to suffer for Christ?" As we go through the mystery of our Savior's death on the cross, we rejoice in the knowledge that it leads to His Resurrection and victory over death. And, if the All Knowing God turned the hideous cross into a priceless investment instrument, how much ought we to treasure it and learn to see all the events of our lives as steps toward this now precious cross that will lead us to life?

I used to think of life
a chain of hits and misses.
But now I make of it
a garland of God's kisses.

I used to gauge each act
a change for gain or loss,
But now I know that all
combine to make the cross.

For God has said to me,
through grace.
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor your ways, my ways.

Our Suffering God.

Dear friend in Christ,
                                 It has been a while since I last posted. The past month was a very hectic time for me, in more ways than one. But God's mercies never cease, and so, with His help, here I am with the first blog of 2011. 2010 is gone for good, dumped in the junkyard of time with the billions that came before it. A mere speck in the vast ocean of eternity. All we have of it are memories in our minds, and experiences that further cooked our hearts on the journey to God. We will only take with us to eternity the good and kind deeds we performed in the name of love, for as St. John of the Cross says, "In the evening of life we will be judged on love alone".
One of my favourite contemporary artists is Paul Simon. Beautiful music, a gentle voice, and powerful lyrics that shoot piercing arrows into the human heart. In one of his songs (Slip sliding away), there is a very poetic and haunting verse that says, "I know a man who wears his passion for his woman like a thorny crown."  Who of us does not know someone who fits this description? We all struggle to love, and suffer, as we do so in this imperfect world we live in. Love hurts us, whether it is between a man and a woman, or between parents and children, or friends, or neighbours, Loving is a constant struggle. Whether we like it or not, since the Fall of our first parents, pain has been one of the ingredients of love.
But this verse can also truly and sincerely be applied to God.  "I know a God who wears His Passion for His children like a thorny crown." God is not idle or aloof, He chose to enter into our world of suffering by becoming one of us and sharing with us everything but sin. He did not make a wounded world, for everything He made was good. Recently I was reading the story of creation in the first chapter of the book of Genesis. In those 31 verses, seven times it says that God saw that what He made was good. And He saw that the light was good, He saw that it was good, He saw that it was very good. But with original sin everything changed, everything that is, except the immutable love of God. I have often thought that after the Fall of Adam and Eve, God had to make some executive decisions, one of which surely was that He would have a policy of infinitely generous forgiveness, knowing how weak and fragile humanity has now become.
God, who is rich in mercy and compassion, chose to suffer and weep with us. Even to this very day He suffers our ingratitude and our indifference.
We have just celebrated Christmas, the feast of the birth of the God made Man. It is of course, a joyful feast, for in the Christ Child we, who lived in darkness, have seen a great light. But few of us perhaps consider the fact that in the few days after Christmas the Church reminds us of those who suffered for Him and with Him, On the 26th of December we celebrate the feast of St. Stephen who was stoned to death for Christ. and on the 27th we celebrate the feast of St. John the evangelist who was exiled for Christ. And on the 28th. we celebrate the feast of the Holy innocents whom Herod killed when he found out through the wise men that a King of the Jews was born in Bethlehem. So the coming of Christ among us, while filling us with joy, also unites us with His redemptive suffering. We are all given this great opportunity to share in His suffering and be one with Him in His death.
And so I wanted to start this new year with the image of God as someone who wears His passion and love for us like a thorny crown. It is a beautiful  image, fully manifested in the Passion of Our Lord. The King of kings and Lord of lords, mocked and humiliated by the very ones He created to love Him. It is the image of Christ wearing His passion for the Church with all the sins of her members,, like a thorny crown. St. Paul says, "Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, love never ends."
I do not know where Paul Simon stands when it comes to God, may he, and his family, and all of us, come to know this God who loves us and suffers for us, who wears His passion for us like a thorny crown.

God is a Pillow.

A long time ago, as a young man, I spent some years working on oil tankers in the merchant marine. It was a crude existence, a rough adventure which, unless for somewhat dire financial reasons, only fools and hopeless romantics dare to embark on. But looking back I realize that those years and those experiences shaped my life in so many ways that even now, decades later, I still find myself surprised at how much that period of my life helped to form my own view of the world and its reality, of God and His power, and of my own inner workings and strengths.
I think seafaring is in some sense very much like mountaineering, or even farming, One is exposed to the beauty and majesty of nature which, though challenging, is also addictive and formative of character. One falls in love with the sea, with the mountains, or with the land, perhaps subconsciously, and  in spite of oneself. The saying is true that it takes a few years to put the sea in a man's blood, but it takes a lifetime to take it out.
Any good seaman will tell you that the sea must be navigated with prudence and respect, for in its power it can be a merciless and sometimes lethal enemy. The skill of a good captain is to let his ship be like a pillow, bending, twisting, and giving in to the forces of nature which, if resisted, will crush everything in their path. It is an art to sail a seagoing vessel safely through treacherous wind and waves, to help it gracefully peak and ebb with the raging surface of a storm powered sea. The ship, and her crew's safety, depends on her ability and willingness to be flexible and to adapt, to lose many battles in the hope of winning the war and making it back safely into port.
God so does with us, He is patient and flexible like a pillow, He allows us to impose our stubborn wills, He is willing to lose many battles with us hoping that one day He would win the war for our hearts. We know that He manages to win some wars but that He also loses some, Sadly hell speaks so eloquently to that fact, but in the end it is always our choice.
And we, like the Psalmist, ought to be grateful for God's great and infinite mercy towards us, "If You, Lord should mark our guilt, who would survive?" (Psalm 130). He does not behave like a wall with us, rigid and unbending, if He did He would crush us in a minute, we would not survive. But He is like a pillow, one can bump against a pillow and not get hurt, because it constantly gives in by changing its shape according to the forces imposed on it. I think the image of a pillow is a good image for God, if we only realize what this means. That this awesome and powerful God who "made the sea, it belongs to Him, the dry land too for it was formed by His hands." (Psalm 95.) is willing to bend His will and stoop down to this lowly creature who is man. St.Paul expresses this reality so beautifully in his letter to the Ephesians, "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love He has for us, even when we were dead through our sins, brought us alive together with Christ." (Eph. 2:4) We cannot even begin to imagine how much He loves us.
And where does this leave us? Love can only be repaid by love. We ought to respond with heartfelt gratitude by reciprocating His love with our love for Him and for our neighbour. And we too ought to be like pillows with those who oppose us, for so does He do with us.

Let Me Suffer.

Those who work in prison ministry can surely understand the anguish of people caught in the iron grip of the justice system, and the anguish of their families. A beloved son convicted of a serious crime and condemned to life in a penal institution, or even worse, to death, leaves a parent hopelessly heartbroken. Watching the child he or she raised, and loved, and hoped for,and dreamed for, now destined to a life of suffering and shame, to a life of unreached potential and broken dreams. No wonder Our Lord included prison ministry as an act of mercy, "I was in prison and you visited me."( Mt. 25: 36.). He should know, for God has long suffered the anguish and the pain of a convict's parent.
Imagine the day of the Fall, long ago, God, who in His infinite kindness, had set His hopes on our first parents, had given them everything, and allowed them to live in His Presence. He kept them from death, "for God did not make death, nor does He rejoice in the death of the living." (Wisdom 1:13).  He gave them dominion over all creation, He gave them free will, it was a gamble for Him, but He knew that love demands freedom, and that the first ingredient of a successful relationship is mutual consent. He wanted them to consent to His love by the way they lived in obedience to His command. "If you love Me you will obey my commandments." (John 14:15).
Jesus said to His disciples, whoever has seen me has seen the Father also. John the evangelist writes what is perhaps the most beautiful verse in Scripture, and all literature, "Jesus began to weep." ( John 11:35). Imagine the God of the universe, the God who has no beginning nor end, and who is all powerful and omnipotent, weeping, If we see Jesus the Son, weeping, then we see also the Father weeping for us. This verse of the Gospel of John is a window into God's heart, tender and loving, and in pain. Who can read those beautiful texts in the books of the prophets Jeremiah and Hosea and not share in God's anguish and pain? Jeremiah prays to God saying, Lord because of Your forbearance do not take me away, (Jer 15:15). Some translations write, "Because of Your long-suffering"  And Hosea quotes God saying;  "My heart recoils within me , my compassion grows warm and tender.( Hosea 11:18). Here we have Scripture's own testimony that God has long suffered and that His heart recoils with pain and compassion. This is something that those who are close to God do not overlook. St. Padre Pio says that we must hide our tears from Him who shed tears for us and continues to shed them because of our ingratitude. And sharing His pain is the task of those who love Him. Like the Son and His Mother who suffered so much for the Father and for us all.
In the book of Genesis we see how God answers the question to His question to Cain, "Where is your brother Abel?" and Cain answers shamefully, " Am I my brother's keeper?" (Gen. 4:9). God answers Cain's question with silence He does not answer with words but with action, by sending His only Son to suffer and die for our sins.
This is how God gives suffering a redemptive meaning, united with the suffering of His Son, our suffering is not just meaningless pain that destroys man's spirit, but a gift that ennobles and glorifies him because he is sharing in the loving mission of God.
In our vocation as Secular Carmelites we share in the mission of the Order which St. Therese so beautifully expresses in her book "The Story of a Soul."  "I stated what I had come to do in Carmel, I have come to save souls, and most of all to pray for priests." In other words I have come to share Your anguish Lord, I have come to share Your pain. To suffer with You and  for the sake of my brothers. It is a great mission.  Our Holy Mother Teresa of Jesus wrote in her "Interior Castle." That it is a great alms to pray for those who are in mortal sin.
Great is that day in our spiritual life, when we can say with joy, Good God, let me suffer with You. It is not necessarily to ask for suffering but to accept joyfully whatever comes. It is our prison ministry.

LET ME SUFFER.

Let me suffer in silence my God,

for You and for the sake of my brother.

For in anguish and pain

since the day of the Fall long ago,

You bear in Your Heart our disdain.

Let me suffer in silence my God,

with You on the cross.

You gambled with us,

You gave us free will, and You lost.

But You gather jewels of love

from the dust.

Let me carry Your cross,

as also I must.

Let me suffer in silence with You.

That not One be forbearing, but two

Let me share in Your hurt,

all my days on this earth.

Till the day You have planned,

till we all understand,

You are Love.

The Tomb, the Workshop of God..

Burial is a distinct sign of the presence of humans, for only humans bury their own.
It is amazing how the experiences we have in our childhood lie simmering gently in our heads until one day, years later, everything crystallizes nicely and we make sense of many things we could not understand before.
Keeping watch in prayer we can also discern God's loving hand throughout this growth process, and we may eventually come to somewhat comprehend why God led us through that specific path.
Some of my strongest childhood memories belong to a period in my life when as a young altar boy of nine or ten, my mother used to send me out to assist in almost every funeral celebrated in our parish. Celebrated is hardly the proper word, especially for a child, for those events had a macabre and melancholic odor about them that I was particularly sensitive to.
In those days people who died in their homes were kept there, generally overnight, until on the following day the priest, as minister of the Church, and some altar boys representing the faithful, would walk from the church to the afflicted home, and after a brief ritual of blessing and prayer, all would process slowly, bringing the dead to the church for the funeral Mass amid the mournful tolling of bells.The Mass was in Latin, and hardly comprehensible to a young boy. But even then the sense of the Divine was not lost on me.
After the liturgy we would then accompany the coffin to the horse-drawn hearse waiting outside. The elaborate woodwork gilded with gold and powered by two enormous Clydesdale type horses, snorting and fidgeting as they patiently waited to begin their trek to the cemetery. Behind the hearse, a horse-drawn black coach with leather seats which carried the priest and two altar boys as they accompanied the dead on the final journey. I remember those clipclopping trips that slowly made their way to the huge cemetery forty five minutes away. Then came the business of reaching the grave site, navigating steps and narrow pathways amid the countless statues, marble slabs and portraits that marked the graves. There the burial ceremony immediately took place accompanied by sobs, and silence, and  the occasional wailing of relatives. And I would watch the whole process quietly, mentally storing the experience for retrieval  and discernment in some distant future day.
I write all this because years later I came to realize the value and the beauty of funerals. God, the Great Psychologist, willed, that though the soul left the body at the moment of death, He would still be present even in those remains through His Divine immanence. He is present in all creation and in the living organisms that would eventually help the body to return to dust from which it came.
Here we see the love and kindness of God who allowed for a period of mourning and closure for those left behind. Furthermore and most importantly, in His infinite wisdom He provided for the future fulfillment of Scripture as St. Paul tells us. "for I handed on to you, as of first importance, what I in turn had received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried and on the third day He rose again in according with the Scriptures." 1 Cor. 15: 3-4)
God provided for the future burial and resurrection of His Son to give us victory over death. The damage done in the Garden was repaired in the Tomb.