Mixed Blessings: A Thanksgiving Sermon

On Thanksgiving Day, I wanted to share excerpts from a beautiful sermon preached by Barbara Brown Taylor--to my mind, one of the finest preachers in the "business" today. How does one give thanks when events in the great world, and in the smaller world of one's own life, do not seem to lead one to gratitude? Taylor's faith-filled response to that question merits reflection.

Without too much etymological violence, Thanksgiving Day becomes Eucharist Day, a day when we are called to offer thanks to God for the whole of our lives.

Which is not always an easy thing to do.

Last week, I found a bumper sticker that summed it all up, an example of the laugh-until-you-cry school of humor. “Life is hard,” it says. “Then you die.” . . . As I was showing it around yesterday to great hilarity, one perceptive person declined to laugh, cocked her head, and asked, “Have you had a hard week?”

I have had a hard year, and not just me; the world has had a hard year.

Three thousand years ago the Jews formulated blessings—berakoth—for every circumstance of their lives. Come weal or woe, they had a blessing. If it were good news, then “Blessed be he who is good and does good.” If it were bad news, then “Blessed be the judge of truth.” As far as they were concerned, humankind has a duty to pronounce a blessing on the bad in life as well as the good, because all life came from God.

And when we gather for eucharist, for thanksgiving, what we toast is the whole of our Lord’s life, the defeats along with the victories, the gentle birth alongside the violent crucifixion, the sleepless night in Gethsemane alongside the empty tomb on Easter morning. Because, in retrospect, in faith, we believe that it is all a single tapestry and the removal of a single thread diminishes the whole creation.

Our challenge this Thanksgiving morning is to see our own lives the same way, to learn how to give thanks at this altar not only for the mixed blessings of Christ’s life but also for our own, to say “thank you” for the whole mess, the things we welcome as well as the things we risk our souls to escape.

“Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that God is somewhere to be found in everything that happens to us. “Thanks be to God,” we say, because we believe that the cords of God’s love are never severed, however dark or convoluted our path through life may sometimes be.

God is God, and our lives are our lives, and we can love them or leave them, give thanks for them or whittle them away with regret. Our dare this morning is to embrace all that we have ever been and done and haul it up upon the altar, and there to recognize our lives as sacraments, outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace.

So happy Thanksgiving. Happy Eucharist. Whether we leave this place to join friends and family or to dine alone . . . God goes with us, and there is no corner of our lives that he does not inhabit. Let us be on the lookout for him, and ready with our chorus: “Thanks be to God. Alleluia. Amen.”

A Joyful Giver: St. John Berchmans

There is a lot that a cynic could make fun of in the story of St. John Berchmans, who died at the age of 22 in Rome in 1621, and whose feast we celebrate today.

For one thing, one could say that he died as a martyr to studies and because of the imprudence or, at best, the obliviousness of his Jesuit superiors. During a terrible Roman summer, he had studied perhaps too intensely for his final exams in philosophy (today, we would call them his “comprehensives”), and as a result, he felt very weak. Although he had hoped to get some rest after his “comps,” his superiors didn’t give him a chance. They chose him to represent the Roman College at a disputation with the Greek College. The effort of all this study was just too much for the poor scholastic. He developed a fever and died a few days later.

Too much study, one could say, led to Berchmans’early death. About which one can make two further comments. First, that some things change: one doubts whether too many scholastics today are in danger of dying from too much study; and second, that some things don’t, like clueless superiors.

Berchmans was also known as a paragon of fidelity to the rules. As he lay dying, it is said that he asked for three things: his crucifix, his rosary, and the rule book. “These are the three things most dear to me; with them I willingly die,” he is reported as saying.

I wonder what Scholastic X or Scholastic Y of today would clasp to his chest in his dying embrace. Perhaps a cell phone and an MP3 player? The latter, of course, would be dear to him only because that it is what he used, of course, for prayer, aided perhaps by the “Pray as you go” podcast of the British Province.

Having given in to cynicism for a while, however, one looks at Berchmans brief life and finds things one cannot mock. Such as his youthful passion for and complete dedication to Christ. The other “boy saints,” Kostka and Gonzaga, came from noble families and gave up their privileged lives and promising futures. Berchmans was the son of a shoemaker. He was what we would call today a “working student”; more specifically, Filipinos would call him a “convento boy,’ doing menial jobs in a priest’s rectory in exchange for the chance to study. To follow what he felt was Christ’s call he had to turn a deaf ear to his parents’ entreaties that he help the family in their needs. I do not know who made the bigger sacrifice: the noble Gonzaga or the Berchmans the shoemaker’s son. But having encountered situations similar to that of Berchmans in scholastics today, and having seen the real, heartbreaking pain of their not being able to help their families in the latter’s needs because of their faithfulness to their Jesuit vocations, I am inclined to see Berchmans’ choice as involving the greater cost.

One can see Berchmans’ famous fidelity to the rules in the light of this complete, loving dedication. There was nothing, it seems, of servile fear, or currying favor with superiors, or scrupulous self-righteousness in Berchmans’ attitude towards the rules of common life. In a letter to his parents, very simply, he spoke of Jesus as his “beloved.” It was in the desire to give himself completely to his beloved, to respond to Christ’s love with generosity, in all the ordinary details of daily and communal life that one finds the meaning of Berchmans’ attitude.

Finally, what clearly emerges from his biographers is the attractive, winning personality of Berchmans, particularly his joy and gentleness. The children he taught catechism to when he was a novice were greatly attached to him, because of his kindness and joy. He was clearly beloved by his community, and in his illness, the entire community, his classmates, and even the General of the Society, came to visit him. When he died on August 13, 1621, he was deeply mourned by all. There seems to have been a luminous kind of simplicity, goodness and gladness that flowed effortlessly from him, an overflow, one surmises, of his closeness to Christ.

So, in the end, it is not cynicism that has the upper hand where Berchmans is concerned, but inspiration and gratitude for the gift of this young saint, whose spirit continues to live in many formands and formed members of the Society. The lovely opening prayer for the Mass of the feast of John Berchmans captures well the grace one can pray for today: “Lord our God, you invite us always to give you our love, and you are pleased with a cheerful giver. Give us a youthful spirit to be like St. John Berchmans, always eager to seek you and to do your will.”

A Leader for Dark Times: St. Joseph Pignatelli

Two of the darkest moments in Scripture are the Exile, suffered by Israel, and the final desolation of Jesus on the cross. Both were experiences of apparent abandonment by God.

The Exile was that traumatic period in Israel’s history, when everything that spoke to the chosen people of God’s love and election, everything that gave them security and identity as a people—the Temple, the Land, the King—was taken away from them.

And of course, on the cross, Jesus, who only wanted to help people experience the merciful nearness of the God he called Abba, cried out in profound desolation: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” Everything he had built up in the three years of his ministry lay in ruins around him, and the absence of God mocked all his words and deeds. It is no wonder that later theologians conjectured that, on the cross, Jesus truly descended into hell, that he was “damned with the damned,” sharing the complete meaninglessness and lovelessness of the lost.

The experience of Israel in exile and Jesus on the cross, this sense of a familiar world collapsing all around one, of the loss of moorings, security, love, meaning, of abandonment by God, must have also been the experience of the Jesuits during the traumatic period of the Suppression.  One can only imagine the anguish and disorientation of the 600 Jesuits who, expelled from their home in Spain in 1767, had to travel for months to nearby Italy, and were refused safe haven repeatedly. With the stroke of a king’s pen, they had lost everything: their works, their home, their future.

What must they and all the 23, 000 other Jesuits have felt when after a few years of homelessness and exile, in 1773, they finally heard the decree of the Holy Father--the Pope they had promised special obedience to--dissolving the Society of Jesus? Again, one can only imagine their feelings: a gut-wrenching sense of having been betrayed by the Church; complete disorientation and senselessness as their world, their home, their identities collapsed; grief, disillusionment, despair, fear. How many Jesuits must have felt their faith in God tried almost to breaking point at that time.

In the midst of this darkness, Joseph Pignatelli was a light of hope. At the tender age of thirty, he was acting Rector and Acting Provincial of these lost and frightened men. With them, he suffered the trauma of suppression, of homelessness for almost forty years, as the Society of Jesus disappeared from the face of the earth (except in White Russia).And in the midst of this darkness, he did three things.

First, he abandoned himself  in faith to the incomprehensible will and Providence of God. Apparent abandonment by God led him to abandon himself to God, who is semper Maior: whose ways are not our ways, and whose plans are always greater than human beings can see or understand. What made his utter surrender to God so poignant and powerful was that Pignatelli sustained this trust in God’s mysterious Providence, not for a month or a year or even a decade, but for thirty years. Pignatelli knew how to wait, to endure and suffer in patience.

Second, he united, strengthened and encouraged his brothers. He provided leadership and sustenance for them during the initial years of expulsion. He invited them to see things through the eyes of faith, and with the spirit of Ignatian indifference and obedience. Throughout the long and dark years of suppression, he maintained contact, friendship, communication, hope.

Finally, he never lost faith in his Jesuit vocation.  As he wrote to his brother in 1767: “No reason will induce me to leave the Society, in which I have determined to live and die. . . . I implore you not to make any moves to have me transferred to another religious order. I should never accept such a proposal, even though I had to die a thousand times.”  And when, thirty years later, in 1797, the Society that was thought dead stirred slowly back to life in Parma, Pignatelli was ready to return home, to serve as novice master and later Provincial of Italy.

I pray to Fr. Pignatelli today on his feast, remembering all my brothers who, in different ways, might be experiencing something of the trauma of exile, something of the collapse of secure and familiar worlds, something of the pain of the apparent distance of God.  I think of young scholastics painfully struggling with disillusionment as they face for the first time the reality of the brokenness of the Society. I think of our missionaries, experiencing the shock of new cultures and languages, letting go of familiar ways and secure relationships, experiencing the lonely pain of rebirth in a new world. I think of Jesuits who worry about our falling numbers, about our apparent inability to attract a new generation to share our passion and our dreams, and who experience deep anxiety about the future of this least Society.

The prayer for the Feast of St. Joseph Pignatelli captures wonderfully my prayer for my brothers and myself:

“Lord God, in a time of trial, you gave St. Joseph courage and strength to unite his scattered companions. May we always receive support from our brothers, and remain faithful to our vocation in the midst of every change.”

The More Loving One

For the wedding of my friends Luigi Bernas and Luli Arroyo, I quoted in my homily two lines from a poem by W. H. Auden, which I had picked up from a novel by Alexander McCall Smith. Smith gently suggests through a character in his novel that the meaning of kindness is best captured by two lines of Auden:

If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me. 

Luigi emailed me today from Australia, asking for a copy of the poem—which I had never seen in its entirety. After finding the poem and reading it through, I now realize that while Smith aptly linked the two lines to kindness, in fact, they are not so much about kindness, but about the decision to love even if one is not loved in return. 

Here is the poem, written by Auden in 1957:

The More Loving One

by W. H. Auden

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time. 


This is a sad and brave poem about accepting the suffering of unrequited love—an experience that Auden was apparently familiar with. In this poem, he makes his peace with his experience of “stars” whose beauty inspires such passion and longing, but which care nothing for him in return. 

Being treated with indifference is not so bad, Auden says, in the first stanza; there are worse things in life. To love, even if one is not loved back, is more than enough, he suggests in the second stanza. And, in the final two stanzas, Auden tells himself that even if that which one loves were to disappear from one’s life, one would survive the grief and the emptiness—even if, as he poignantly understates it in the last line, being reconciled with that loss may “take a little time.” 

A Prayer of St. Patrick (John Rutter)

There are many variations of the Prayer of St. Patrick but this one, in a lovely setting by John Rutter, is particularly beautiful. "Christ behind me, Christ before me" reminds me that just as Christ has been with me in the past, so He will be waiting for me in what lies ahead. "Christ in hearts of all that love me, Christ in mouth of friend and stranger" calls me to be grateful for the many times Christ has spoken to me through the love of friends, but also to trust that, even among strangers, He will speak.

A Prayer of St. Patrick (John Rutter)


Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me,
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ above me, Christ beneath me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.