Friday, August 28, 2009

An Italian Boy's Confession

Someone sent this to me and I thought it would be an appropriate story for the feast of St. Augustine, who had something of a shady past.


'Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have been with a loose girl'.

The priest asks, 'Is that you, little Joey Pagano ?'

'Yes, Father, it is.'

'And who was the girl you were with?'

'I can't tell you, Father. I don't want to ruin her reputation'.

"Well, Joey, I'm sure to find out her name sooner or later, so you may as well tell me now. Was it Tina Minetti?'

'I cannot say.'

'Was it Teresa Mazzarelli?'

'I'll never tell.'

'Was it Nina Capelli?'

'I'm sorry, but I cannot name her.'

'Was it Cathy Piriano?'

'My lips are sealed.'

'Was it Rosa DiAngelo, then?'

'Please, Father, I cannot tell you.'

The priest sighs in frustration.

'You're very tight lipped, and I admire that. But you've sinned and have to atone.
You cannot be an altar boy now for 4 months. Now you go and behave yourself.'

Joey walks back to his pew, and his friend Franco slides over and whispers, 'What'd you get?'

'Four months vacation and five good leads.'

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Men at Forty

I was led to this poem (and another one which I might post some time in the future) by a thoughtful essay by Exie Abola about turning 41. Maybe mid-life is slightly delayed for Jesuits because of their long course of formation, but I think the poem could just as validly have been entitled Men at Fifty. At any rate, the images of the poem--doors that will not be opened again, catching one's breath on a stair landing, seeing layers of time in the same face reflected in the mirror, the sound of crickets filling the twilight air, and unfinished projects like mortgaged houses--are arresting and perfect evocations of the experience. And the quiet that suffuses the poem, the tinge of melancholy but also the note of mild surprise and uncoerced acceptance of the way things just are, are on-target as well. I suspect there are not a few of us who might resonate with this poem.


Men at Forty
Donald Justice

Men at forty
Learn to close softly
The doors to rooms they will not be
Coming back to.

At rest on a stair landing,
They feel it moving
Beneath them now like the deck of a ship,
Though the swell is gentle.

And deep in mirrors
They rediscover
The face of the boy as he practises tying
His father's tie there in secret

And the face of the father,
Still warm with the mystery of lather.
They are more fathers than sons themselves now.
Something is filling them, something

That is like the twilight sound
Of the crickets, immense,
Filling the woods at the foot of the slope
Behind their mortgaged houses.

1967

Saturday, August 1, 2009

"On the Death of the Beloved": A Blessing for Cory Aquino

Thank you to Inge del Rosario for posting this beautiful prayer by the Irish poet John O'Dononue on Facebook. It expresses the prayers of so many of us for the late President Aquino.

On the Death of the Beloved

Though we need to weep your loss,
You dwell in that safe place in our hearts
Where no storm or night or pain can reach you.

Your love was like the dawn
Brightening over our lives,
Awakening beneath the dark
A further adventure of color.

The sound of your voice
Found for us
A new music
That brightened everything.

Whatever you enfolded in your gaze
Quickened in the joy of its being;
You placed smiles like flowers
On the altar of the heart.
Your mind always sparkled
With wonder at things.

Though your days here were brief,
Your spirit was alive, awake, complete.

We look toward each other no longer
From the old distance of our names;
Now you dwell inside the rhythm of breath
As close to us as we are to ourselves.

Though we cannot see you with outward eyes,
We know our soul's gaze is upon your face,
Smiling back at us from within everything
To which we bring our best refinement.

Let us not look for you only in memory,
Where we would grow lonely without you.
You would want us to find you in presence,
Beside us when beauty brightens,
When kindness glows
And music echoes eternal tones.

When orchids brighten the earth,
Darkest winter has turned to spring;
May this dark grief flower with hope
In every heart that loves you.

May you continue to inspire us:
To enter each day with a generous heart.
To serve the call of courage and love
Until we see your beautiful face again
In that land where there is no more separation,
Where all tears will be wiped from our mind,
And where we will never lose you again.

John O'Donohue

Thursday, July 30, 2009

"The Final Word of Ignatius"

The following is the concluding section of the homily preached by Fr. General Adolfo Nicolas, S.J., at the Eucharist celebrated on July 12, 2009, at the Ateneo de Manila High School Covered Courts, on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the return of the Jesuits to the Philippines. The prayers and readings of the Eucharist were drawn from the Mass for the Feast of St. Ignatius. In a few simple and deeply personal sentences, Fr. General powerfully lays bare the heart of Ignatius' life and continued challenge to us, who dare to call him our patron and father. Happy feast to all!


"And the final word of Ignatius has always been: Give it all or go your way.

There is a poem of the Sufi mystic Rumi that says--and I paraphrase:
'This is the festival of love.
Give it all.
Or look for another festival.'


I am sure Ignatius could have made this poem his own if he had known it.

When I was elected General, I felt this was the last chance the Lord was giving me to finally 'Give it all.' I never contemplated the possibility. As the day approached and I began to see that things could get complicated, I was convinced I could easily decline and withdraw.

But when the hour came, I could not flee. Even now I am not sure I did the right thing accepting. But I felt deep down in my heart that this was the last call. You take it, or miss the flight of your life. It was time to give, time to love and serve, time to be grateful for everything received, time to give back, or rather, to let the Lord take back.

But this is not only relevant for the dramatic instant of being elected General. This is the call we all go through every time we approach the Lord with an open heart.

We might decide not to listen or to go on singing our own song. But the Lord is there giving, calling and waiting for us to say the final YES, the Ignatian YES, the YES that will finally make a difference.

One hundred fifty years is a good time to become aware of the fire that has kept the Province alive and creative and warm. But it also the time to realize that Lord is giving us another 150 years--on the condition that we say wholeheartedly the Ignatian YES and are willing to die as many times as our predecessors did . . . for the sake of the life of the Filipino people, of Asia, of the world.

Our imperfection, visible or invisible (although never invisible to our own selves) is our title of pride, as Paul would say. It is the best vehicle to share with people the ever life-giving goodness and mercy of God. We are not servants of a calculating and mean God, but of the life-giving God who can give life even to dead bones."


Adolfo Nicolas, S.J.
Superior General of the Society of Jesus
12 July 2009


Monday, June 29, 2009

Mourning Michael Jackson?

These past two days, I have contributed my modest share to the unprecedented spike in sales of Michael Jackson music and to the dramatic increase in Internet activity connected to him. I have been watching old music videos. I haven’t seen—or even thought of--the Black and White video in over twenty-two years, but now I find myself watching it repeatedly during my free moments—as I have various reincarnations of Billie Jean, Beat It and Say, Say, Say. Beat It and We are the World have my been on my Ipod since I got my first Ipod five years ago, and David Cook’s version of Billie Jean since last year, but in the past couple of days, Man in the Mirror, Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough, She’s Out of My Life, and, of course, Black and White have joined their company.

Last night, I went to Mass and dinner with a group of Filipino priests and sisters. But at the bus stop, on the bus ride to the Collegio Filippino and on the return trip to the Curia after Eucharist, my Michael Jackson Ipod playlist was playing over and over again. It seemed a bit strange to be listening to Michael Jackson as Rome ancient and modern passed before my eyes.

"What am I doing?" I asked myself. I actually didn't know.

When I got back to the Curia later that evening, I had to squeeze into a tiny elevator with two tall and amply built American Jesuits who got off on the floor before mine. I had taken my earphones off to engage in the normal friendly chat. As they alighted and before the elevator doors closed, one of them said in parting, “You can go back to listening to Michael Jackson now.” I was a tad embarrassed. It felt somehow like being found out. A fifty-year-old priest listening to Beat It (which the sharp ears of my companion apparently detected from my dangling earphones) seemed a trifle unseemly, for some reason.

“I’ve been mourning,” I managed to quip back before the elevator doors closed.

Is that what this is: mourning? And if so: for whom?

Maybe “mourning” is too melodramatic a word. I’ve noticed a similar thing happen to me when Jesuits die. People you live with and take for granted as part of the landscape are suddenly gone, and all of a sudden, it’s like you see them for the first time, and realize how good and gifted these men were. So, in a similar way, the stark realization that the King of Pop is gone forever has launched me into a retrospective review of his work, and I find myself almost shocked into realizing some things that I’ve somehow always known, but, like everyone else, kind of forgot in the course of the bizarre, repugnant circus of his later life: that this is wonderful music, complex, rich, and utterly enjoyable; and he was a great and dazzlingly gifted musician and performer, original in an epoch-defining way.

And so, I suppose there is an element of mourning pervading all this: sadness that an artist who gave the world such delight should have been so deeply unhappy and ended up this way, a cautionary tale about our capacity for self-destruction. Sadness too about this perverse tendency in me, and perhaps in others, to appreciate things or people only when they are gone. As Michael Jackson sang (and I quote this from memory):

Now I know that love’s not possession,
And now I know that love can’t wait.
Now I know that love needs expression—
But I learned too late.

--She’s Out of My Life

But I think the point that really hits me is that I am revisiting songs that I never really listened to that closely when they were new. I don’t think I ever owned a single Michael Jackson record or cassette. And so the mysterious thing is: how do I know all these songs? I know the riffs, the lyrics, the vocal inflections, where the musical interludes should be. I am proud to say I never owned a record of Ben, and yet I am embarrassed to admit that I can sing the lyrics practically by heart. How did I end up memorizing the lyrics of She’s Out of My Life (which came out when I was a senior in college)—including my favorite phrase about “damned indecision and cursed pride”? How is it that Say, Say, Say, Beat It, Billie Jean, Rock with You, We are the World are all burned into some part of my internal hard drive, all filed in the folder “Old Favorites”? I can even sing the first part of You Are Not Alone, which came out, I think, in the early ‘90’s, by which time I had already stopped listening to popular music.

The only convincing explanation I can think of is that this was music that was so intertwined with my life world in the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. To put it more simply, Michael Jackson’s music was the soundtrack of those years. His music came at me from everywhere: from the FM radio we listened to at home or while driving to and from the Ateneo; from the MTV’s I watched on TV; from the parties and the programs that were part of my teens and twenties. It was like the air. It surrounded you, and you breathed it in, hardly aware you were doing so.

So his music was intertwined with my youth, and the pleasure his music brought underscored and enhanced the heedless, unnoticed joy of being young.

And so, if there is an element of mourning, I suppose there is a bit of mourning for one’s irretrievably lost youth. The day Michael Jackson died, I read somewhere, the ‘80’s died. He is gone; those years and all they represent are gone; the world and I have grown old.

But lest that sound too maudlin and self-indulgent, I hasten to add that that the tinge of sadness is just that: a tinge. Mostly what I have experienced in my return to MJ music is pleasure. And gratitude: for good music, for the technology that makes access to it so effortless, and for the way that music brings back a time that, I realize now (again: the theme of not being present to one's own life as it happens!), was unburdened with regret, filled with possibilities, and uncomplicatedly happy. That Michael Jackson lives on in his music, and that there was such a time in my life are more than enough to assuage the sadness.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Holy Thursday Reflection, 9 April 2009


BLOOD COVENANT

"'Then he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them saying, "Drink of it, all of you; for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins."' Have we done it so often that we have forgotten to be shocked by it?

When Jesus holds up the cup and offers what is in it as the fluid of forgiveness, he is not talking to people with a short list of minor sins. He is talking to people who will turn him in, who will scatter to the four winds at the first sign of trouble, and who will swear that they never knew him. He is talking to people who should have been his best friends on earth, who will turn out not to have a loyal bone in their bodies, and he is forgiving them ahead of time, as surely as if he had said, 'I know who you are. I know you will not be innocent of the blood in this cup, but I will not let that come between us. Look, here, I bless it. I make it my gift to you. Let it mean life to you, not death. Let my life become your life, through the blood of this covenant.'

The death cannot be overlooked, but it is the life that is being offered, the life that rushes out of that cup like a spring of living water. It is the new covenant and the last one--new because it is offered to us fresh each day and last because there is nothing more that God can say or do. This is as close as God can get: blood kin, indissoluble union, friend bound to friend for life, forever. 

When we lift the cup to our lips and drink, we accept the gift, renewing the covenant and reminding ourselves that we do not live for ourselves alone. We are possessors of a double life, having taken our friend's life and nature into ourselves. Inside of us God rides our bloodstream straight to our hearts where the covenant is written: I shall be your God and you shall be my people."

--Barbara Brown Taylor

Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Holy Week Reflection, 8 April 2009

JUDAS AND JESUS

"Whatever Judas's degree of guilt and whatever his motive, it is extremely important to note that Jesus identifies his betrayer by feeding him. Not by turning over the table and casting him out. Not by tying him to his chair so he cannot carry out his plan, but by feeding him--dipping a morsel into his own cup and giving it to Judas, whose feet he has just washed.

Knowing who Judas is and what he is about to do, Jesus does not throw him out. He bathes hm and feeds him, which means that Judas is never--never--excluded from the circle of friends. He is included until he excludes himself.

Jesus went on giving himself away to the one who would give him away, because his faithfulness did not depend on theirs. When he dipped the morsel in his cup and handed it to Judas, he not only revealed who Judas was, he also revealed who he was. The one who feeds his enemies--who goes on treating them as friends--loving them to the end."

--Barbara Brown Taylor

Monday, April 6, 2009

Holy Week Reflection, 7 April 2009


EVEN PETER, EVEN US


"Peter said a number of important and good things but he also said some very foolish things. Here is what Peter said to Jesus after the Last Supper: 'Even if I must die with you, I will not deny you.'

Have you ever disgraced yourself like that? Of course you have; we all have. Think how many times you and I have said, 'I would never do what that other person is doing. I would never lie, steal, eavesdrop, hit and run, cheat on an exam, slap my child or drive drunk . . .,' whatever.

Now here is a question for us. How did this episode get saved by the Church? It could have easily been suppressed. Why wasn't it? Here's the reason. Peter himself wanted it to be there. Peter wanted the church to remember.

Until the cock crowed, Peter had never really looked into himself. He had never known what he was capable of. He had not seen his dark side clearly. He had believed his own words. Now he is unmasked, not only in the sight of the Lord, but in his own sight.

And so we come to Easter morning. "Go and tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you." (Mark 16:2-7)

. . . and Peter! Have you ever heard anything more wonderful than that? All the disciples had failed Jesus, but Peter had failed him the most, because he had been the biggest braggart of them all. Yet it is Peter who received the message of the Resurrection specifically, by his own name. We can translate the Greek to read, 'even Peter!'

Sometimes people speak of what happened in terms of Peter's sin being forgiven. That's true, of course. But it isn't really strong enough."

--Fleming Rutledge

Holy Week Reflection, 6 April 2009

THE PROPHET MARY (John 12:1-11)

"No one notices that Mary has gone until she comes back holding a slender clay jar in her hands. Without a word she kneels at Jesus' feet and breaks the neck of the jar, so that the smell of spikenard fills the room--a sharp scent somewhere between mint and ginseng.

When Mary stood before Jesus with that pound of pure nard, for a moment--just for a moment--it could have gone either way. She could have anointed his head and everyone there could have proclaimed him a king. But she did not do that. When she moved toward him, she dropped to her knees and poured the salve on his feet, which could mean only one thing. The only man who got his feet anointed was a dead man, and Jesus knew it. 'Leave her alone,' he said to those who would have prevented her. 'Leave her alone.'

So Mary proceeded to rub his feet with ointment so precious that its sale might have fed a poor family for a year, an act so lavish that it suggests another layer to her prophecy. There will be nothing prudent or economical about the death of this man, just as there has been nothing prudent or economical about his life. In him, the extravagance of God's love is made flesh. In him, the excessiveness of God's mercy is made manifest."

--Barbara Brown Taylor

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Holy Week Reflection, 5 April 2009

THE VOICE OF LOVE

"By noon he was panting on a cross, receiving the fury of those whose values he had offended. They worked things he had said to them into their insults, so that his own words came back at him like rocks. Even those who were crucified with him got in on the act. So they insulted him too, filling his ears with filth and hate while he strained--strained--to hear the voice of love that had sustained him all his life. If there were ever a day he needed to hear it--but there was no sound from heaven, no sound at all.

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" It was all he had left in him, and when it came out of him he died. 

Why him, why this, why today? I wish I knew. All I know is that, because of it, none of us ever has to feel what he felt again. Because he was alone, and most forsaken by God, we have this companion who has been there and will be there with us. If we say, 'Where are you, God? I'm all alone here,' he said it first. 

Jesus died talking to his Abba, who would not talk back to him. In his suffering, he is the comfort of those who have no comfort. In his abandonment, he is the God of those who have no God. Hearing no voice of love, he cried out, making a sound that--for many--became the voice of love."


--Barbara Brown Taylor

Friday, April 3, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 4 April 2009

PRAYER FOR THE RIGHT SPIRIT OF CHRIST'S PRIESTHOOD

On this joyful day, please join me in praying this prayer for my Jesuit brothers--Reverends Javy Alpasa, Francis Alvarez, Jason Dy, Ody Dy, Frank Savadera, and Robbie Sian--who today, because of God's mercy and faithfulness, receive, for the sake of the Church, the precious gift of ordination to the priesthood.


"Grant us, above all, the grace of prayer, and make us love You, O Jesus. What are we without You? Lost. We can only have You if we make You, by love and prayer, again and again and more and more the focus of our heart.

If You want us to be Your priests, then grant us, O Lord, that gift without which we cannot truly be Your priests. Grant us the grace of prayer, of collection, of inwardness, stop us when we want to run away from You in our distraction and absent-mindedness; bring us crazy people back to You, if need be by the prick of pain, the bitterness of heart and of distress.

Give us just one more gift: the grace to pray truly and become daily more. When we pray, we are and remain in fellowship with You, then we shall increasingly become what we are and ought to be according to Your will: Your disciples, Your apostles, Your priests, the witnesses of Your truth and the dispenser of Your mysteries."


--Karl Rahner, SJ

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 3 April 2009

PRAYER ON THE EVE OF ORDINATION

As you read this excerpt from a lovely prayer written by the great Karl Rahner, please join me in praying for my Jesuit brothers who will be ordained to the priesthood this Saturday, April 4, 2009: Reverends Javy Alpasa, Francis Alvarez, Jason Dy, Ody Dy, Frank Savadera, and Robbie Sian. 

"The bishop will lay his hands on me. And then, still silent, he will take them from my head. But Your hand, O my God, will still remain upon me.

Your hands will remain upon me.

The hands of the Omnipotent, gentler than a mother's hands . . .

And finally the bishop will take my hands in his hands, and I shall promise the Church obedience and loyalty: exacting and unwavering obedience, selfless obedience, obedience in a which a man forgets his life in work that matters more than he does . . . Behold, I lay my hands in Your hands, my God. So take my hands and lead me: through joy and grief, through honor and disgrace, in labor and anguish, in my ordinary life and at great moments, in the holy stillness of Your house but also on the long, dusty roads of the world. Lead me today and always, lead me into the kingdom of Your eternal life. "


--Karl Rahner, SJ

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 1 April 2009

DIRECTION

"Monks are always having processions. As a community, whenever we go from one place to another, we don't just do it helter-skelter; we go in procession. We process into church; we process out. We process to a meal. We process to our cells. We process to the cemetery. We process around the property. I am glad for all this marching about.. . . I am reminded again and again that I am not just vaguely moving through life. In my life I am inserted into the definitive procession of Christ. I am part of a huge story, a huge movement, a definitive exodus. I am going somewhere."

--Jeremy Driscoll, OSB

Monday, March 30, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 31 March 2009

TRUST

"Angelo was a cheerful and naturally religious boy who was delighted when his normally reserved father hoisted him on his shoulders to get a glimpse of a church procession in a nearby town. He recalled this incident when, as Pope John XXIII, he was first carried into St. Peter's Basilica on his grand seda gestatoria, the portable papal throne. 'Once again I am being carried . . . . More than seventy years ago I was carried on the shoulders of my father at Ponte San Pietro. . . . The secret of life is to let oneself be carried by God and so carry Him to others."


--James Martin, SJ

Lenten Reflection Series, 30 March 2009

EMBRACING THE WORLD

"Father in heaven,
the love of your Son led him to accept the suffering of the cross
that his brothers and sisters might glory in new life.

Change our selfishness into self-giving.
Help us to embrace the world you have given us, 
that we may transform the darkness of its pain
into the life and joy of Easter.

Grant this through Christ our Lord"


--the Roman Missal, 
Opening Prayer for the 5th Sunday of Lent

Saturday, March 28, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 29 March 2009

SACRAMENTS

"A sacrament is physical and within it is God's love; as a sandwich is physical, and nutritious and pleasurable, and within it is love, if someone makes it for you and gives it to you with love; even harried or tired or impatient love, but with love's direction and concern, love's again and again wavering and distorted focus on goodness; then God's love too is in the sandwich.

Making sandwiches while sitting in a wheelchair is not physically difficult. But it can be a spiritual trial; the chair always makes me remember my legs and how I lived with them. I am beginning my ninth year as a cripple. The memory of having legs that held me upright at this counter and the image of simply turning from the counter are the demons I must keep at bay. So I must try to know the spiritual essence of what I am doing.

On Tuesdays when I make lunches for my girls I focus on this: the sandwiches are sacraments. Not the miracle of transubstantiation, but moving in the same direction. Each motion is a sacrament, this holding of knives, of bread, this spreading of mustard, this trimming of ham. I drive on the highway to their school, and this is not simply a transition: it is my love moving by car; even if I do not feel or acknowledge it, this is a sacrament."


--Andre Dubus

Friday, March 27, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 28 March 2009

BREAKING THE SILENCE

"If God is silent, it may be because we are not speaking God's language yet, but there is still time. God has taught us how to break the silence and has even given us the words. "Here I am." They are the words we long to hear, but they are also the words God longs for us to speak--to stand before a sister, a brother, and say, "Here I am."

Those of us who decide to try it should listen real hard when we are through, because there is likely to be an echo in the air--not silence anymore, but the very voice of God, saying, 'Yes. Hello. Welcome home. Here I am. Here I am.'"


--Barbara Brown Taylor

Lenten Reflection Series, 27 March 2009

HOPE

"I am quite happy to be called an optimist, but my optimism is not of the utopian variety. It is based on hope. What is an optimist? I can answer for myself in a very simple fashion: He or she is a person who has the conviction that God knows, can do, and will do what is best for mankind."

--Pedro Arrupe, SJ

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 26 March 2009

FORGIVENESS

"Forgiveness means that we dare to face what we have done. We dare to remember all of our lives, with the failures and defeats, with our cruelties and lack of love. We dare to remember all the times we have been mean and ungenerous, the ugliness of our deeds. We dare to remember not so as to feel awful, but so as to open our lives to creative transformation.

Forgiveness is God's creativity breaking in and transforming us. Forgiveness means that our sins can find their place in our path to God. No failure need be a dead end.

In the eighteenth century there was a famous Japanese artist called Hokusai. He painted a vase with a superb view of the holy mountain, Fuji Yama. Then one day someone dropped the vase! Slowly he glued the pieces back together. But to acknowledge what happened to this vase, its broken history,he lined each join with a thread of gold. The vase was more beautiful than ever before."


--Timothy Radcliffe, OP

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 25 March 2009

SAYING YES

"There is much talk these days about all the choices we have, and about how it is up to each one of us to choose our own lives, but more often than not they seem to choose us. Our best laid ten-year plans are interrupted by life's own plans for us: by sudden illness and surprise babies, by aging parents and the economy. Terrible things happen and wonderful things happen, but seldom do we know ahead of time exactly what will happen to us. Like Mary, our choices often boil down to yes or no: yes, I will live this life that is being held out to me or no, I will not.

If you decide to say no, you simply drop your eyes until you know the angel has left the room. Then you smooth your hair and go back to your spinning or your reading or whatever is most familiar to you and you pretend that nothing has happened.

Or you can decide to say yes. You can decide to be a daredevil, a test pilot, a gambler. You can decide to take part in a plan you did not choose. It does not mean you are not afraid. It just means that you are not willing to let your fear keep you locked in your room."


--Barbara Brown Taylor

Lenten Reflection Series, 24 March 2009

Thanksgiving

"All Paul's letters begin with a prayer of thanksgiving. Paul knows how to give thanks, and his words do not come from an empty formula but express what he feels. The earliest section of the New Testament is the First Letter to the Thessalonians. Therefore, probably the first words of the New Testament to be written were 'Grace to you and peace. We give thanks to God always for you all. '(1 Thessalonians 1: 1-2)

Paul has the capacity always to see the good first. Beginning every letter with thanks means that he knows how to value primarily the positive in whatever community he is writing to, even if there are some weighty, negative things that will need to be said."


--Carlo Maria Martini, SJ

Monday, March 23, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 23 March 2009

PATIENCE

"Sometimes all we can do is to be in that dark place, and wait for Easter. Much of Christianity is a discipline in waiting, waiting in Advent for Christmas, waiting on Holy Saturday for Easter, waiting after Ascension for Pentecost.

God asks some people to wait long in the dark. We have discovered recently that Mother Teresa of Calcutta was plunged into aridity for decades. St. Teresa of Avila endured the dark night for much of her life, as did St. Therese of Lisieux. It seem to be dangerous to be called Teresa!

I must confess that I have never been fully plunged into the dark night of the soul, more like the occasional grey evening. Maybe God keeps it for his stronger friends."



--Timothy Radcliffe, OP

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 22 March 2009

COMPASSION



"Simone de Beauvoir was astonished to learn that Simone Weil wept when she heard of a famine in China. De Beauvoir said, "I envied a heart able to beat across the world."

--Timothy Radcliffe, OP

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 21 March 2009

CHOOSING


"A woman I know tells this story: She married a man she loved but was immature. One night she went to a party with her husband, drank too much, and left the party with another man. Her husband demanded neither explanation nor apology. He simply said to her: "I'm going away for a few days so that you can be alone because you need to decide who you are: Are you a married woman or are you something else?" Now, years later, she is inside a solid marriage and infinitely more aware that the pearl of great price comes precisely at a price.

Every choice is a series of renunciations: If I marry one person, I cannot marry anyone else; if I choose a certain career, that excludes many other careers; if I have this, then I cannot have that. To choose one thing is to renounce others. That's the nature of choice.

For what are you willing to renounce other things? What is our own pearl of great price? Are we willing to give up everything in exchange for it? Are we willing to live with its limits?"


--Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Friday, March 20, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 20 March 2009

FAITHFULNESS


"The greatest gift that we have to give is the promise of fidelity, the promise that we will keep trying, that we won't walk away simply because we got hurt or because we felt unwanted or not properly valued.

We are all weak, wounded, sinful, and easily hurt. Inside of our marriages, families, churches, friendships, and places of work, we cannot promise that we won't disappoint each other and, worse still, that we won't hurt each other. But we can promise that we won't walk away because of disappointment and hurt. That's all we can promise - and that's enough!"


--Ron Rolheiser, OMI

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 19 March 2009

LISTENING

"Now to hear what God is saying to us, we need to stop completely the mental noise. And this is easier than we think; all that I have to do is realize that talking to myself makes two of me, me and myself, and this can't be true, so I can let this me-with-me collapse into just me, and that's where God is and has been all along. . . It's a bit of a shock at first, but take a few deep breaths, and say, 'OK, I'm here, God. Your move.'"

--Sebastian Moore, OSB

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Lenten Reflection Series, 18 March 2009

Although it is already the third week of Lent, I thought it might not be too late to start a little series that might be of some interest. Every day (or so--depending on my free time), I hope to share a brief excerpt, for reflection and prayer--things that struck me, and that might be helpful to others too.


"If we go to confession, it is not to plead for forgiveness from God. It is to thank him for it. . . When God forgives our sins, he is not changing his mind about us. He is changing our minds about him. He does not change; he is never anything but loving; he is love."

--Herbert McCabe, OP


Sunday, March 15, 2009

For Your Birthday: a Poem

As I turn 50, I want to share a truly lovely poem sent to me as a birthday present by a good friend, Ellen Dionisio, who also celebrates her birthday on the 15th of March. The poem had earlier been sent to her by our common friend, Gina Magadia-Martinez. 

The poet, John O'Donahue, is Irish. He died last year.
 



For Your Birthday

Blessed be the mind that dreamed that day
The blueprint of your life
Would begin to glow on earth,
Illuminating all the faces and voices
That would arrive to invite
Your soul to growth.

Praised be your father and mother,
Who loved you before you were,
And trusted to call you here
With no idea who you would be.

Blessed be those who have loved you
Into becoming who you were meant to be.
Blessed be those who have crossed your life
With dark gifts of hurt and loss
That have helped to school your mind
In the art of disappointment.

When desolation surrounded you,
Blessed be those who looked for you
And found you, their kind hands
Urgent to open a blue window
In the gray wall formed around you.

Blessed be the gifts you never notice,
Your health, eyes to behold the world,
Thoughts to countenance the unknown
Memory to harvest vanished days,
Your heart to feel the world's waves,
Your breath to breathe the nourishment
Of distance made intimate by earth.

On this echoing day of your birth,
May you open the gift of solitude
In order to receive your soul; 
Enter the generosity of silence
To hear your hidden heart; 
Know the serenity of stillness
To be enfolded anew
By the miracle of your being.

--John O'Donahue


I have been re-reading this poem over and over again since I got it yesterday afternoon. It captures so much of what I feel, and says it so so much more strikingly and beautifully than I ever could. It invites me to prayer and thanksgiving for so much. 

So, following O'Donahue, I wish to give thanks. Thank you to my parents who "called me here before they knew who I would be." Thank you to the many who loved me and the much fewer who hurt me, all of whom helped me to grow. Thanks to those, kind and good, who found me in desolation and "opened a blue window in the gray wall" of life. Thank you for gifts, many and varied, that I never notice. Thank you, above all, to the One "who dreamed that day the blueprint of my life would begin to glow on earth." 

And I pray that, more and more, I may "open the gift of solitude in order to receive my soul."

In Memoriam: Miguel Anselmo Bernad (1918-2009)



I woke up this morning to the sad news of yet another senior Jesuit of legendary stature passing away. Fr. Miguel Bernad died today in Cagayan de Oro at the age of 91. 

I had the privilege of living with Fr. Mike when I was regent in Xavier University, from 1983 to 85. I know he had his flaws, as we all do; but he was always kind to me, and always, very thoughtfully, sent me his annual Christmas card and new issues of Kinaadman, the journal he had founded at Xavier U.

In his honor, I share this speech I gave in December 2007, at Xavier University, on the occasion of the conferment on Fr. Bernad of an honorary doctorate.



I hope you will not mind if I speak somewhat personally. I am proud to say that I was a student of Fr. Bernad. Twenty five years ago, when I was a Jesuit junior, I asked for and was granted permission to enroll in a Shakespeare course Fr. Bernad was teaching at the Ateneo de Manila. This was the first time I got to know Fr. Bernad “up close and personal,” as they say. He was a marvelous teacher, leading us to depth of insight, and helping us appreciate the greatness of Shakespeare’s poetry by his own dramatic readings of excerpts from the plays. Dr. Edna Manlapaz used to ask me, "How was last night's performance?"--referring to those famous dramatic readings of Fr. Bernad! I also came to realize that Fr. Bernad is a man of excellent judgment, because, at the end of the semester, he gave me an “A”!

From that time on, Fr. Bernad has continued to influence me. Let me just mention three points of influence. First, as a scholastic, I tried to read any book of Fr. Bernad that I came across, first of all because of the beauty of his writing. Whether reading 
The Lights of Broadway and other Essays, orTradition and Discontinuity, I found myself in constant admiration of what I can best describe as Fr. Bernad’s “chaste prose”. This was writing that was deceptively simple, even spare, without a single superfluous word, but utterly clear and always elegant, graceful, persuasive. 

Second, in 1988, during my first year as a priest and on my first assignment as assistant parish priest in Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur, I read Fr. Bernad’s slim volume entited 
Rizal and Spain. That book’s discussion of Rizal’s life and activities in Dapitan during his time of exile there helped “save my life” that first difficult year of priesthood. I was a Manila boy, and had never been assigned to as rural, as lonely and culturally unfamiliar a place as Ipil. Reading Fr. Bernad’s descriptions of how Rizal redeemed his time of exile in Dapitan with many and varied projects in the service of the people of Mindanao inspired and challenged me to overcome my self-absorption and to aspire to imitate the spirit, if not the achievement, of Rizal.

Finally, in 2001, when I was Rector of San Jose Seminary as the seminary was preparing to celebrate its 400th year of existence, I invited Fr. Bernad to give a lecture on the history of San Jose. His lecture was a model of impeccable historical research. But in the space of an hour or so, Fr. Bernad also captured the color and drama of 400 years. He opened our imaginations, expanded our vision, helped us glimpse past identity and future possibility. For many of us, Fr. Bernad’s lecture was the highlight of our quadricentennial celebration. 

I have taxed your patience with my personal testimony of Fr. Bernad’s influence in my life as a way of making more concrete my sense of the fittingness of this historic honor being bestowed on him. When Fr. Samson first broached the idea at the Board meeting of the Ateneo de Davao, and when his initial idea was enthusiastically received and amplified by the Presidents of the Ateneo de Zamboanga and Xavier University, I also gave my full support. At that time, it seemed to me a most appropriate way of honoring an eminent Jesuit scholar.

But now I see a deeper meaning. In honoring Fr. Bernad today, Ateneo de Davao, Xavier University and Ateneo de Zamboanga are also bringing before us a living symbol of the kind of scholarship that the three Mindanao Ateneo’s hope to develop: scholarship that is characterized by eloquent and persuasive communication; rigorous research and study; yet also capable of expanding our imaginations, opening up possibilities, especially in the service of Mindanao. As my experience has shown, these are all qualities of Fr. Bernad’s work. He is an icon, an embodiment of the educational aspirations of the three Jesuit universities in Mindanao.

Let me conclude by adding that I see Fr. Bernad as a living symbol, not just of scholarship, but also of the Ignatian ideals that the three Mindanao universities hope to promote. All of us know Fr. Bernad continues to do research, lecture and write, even though for the past twenty years, his eyesight has been seriously impaired and he has suffered various physical infirmities. Yet, I have never heard him complain about his difficulties; I have never heard him call attention to his failing eyesight or his diminished strength. Instead, I have seen him accepting suffering, aging, and physical diminishment with dignity and quiet grace; and instead of complaining or railing against fate, he has continued to do the service he can do within the limitations of life. This, to me, is Ignatian indifference and Ignatian 
magis "in action." 

And so today, Fr. Bernad, in the name of the whole Province, I offer congratulations and thanks. I share the sentiments of gratitude and respect of the Presidents and communities of the three Mindanao Ateneo’s. May you continue to be an inspiring model of scholarship and life for the men and women of Xavier University, Ateneo de Zamboanga, and Ateneo de Davao, who are honored by your acceptance of this distinction they bestow on you today.

Friday, March 13, 2009

Remembering Tom Green (March 19, 1932-March 13, 2009)

When I woke up this morning, I was shocked to discover—from Facebook updates, of all things—that Fr. Tom Green had passed away. I had known, of course, that he was sick; but the suddenness of his passing away still came as a sad surprise.

Soon after I had texted my condolences, the present Rector of San Jose Seminary, Vic de Jesus, kindly called me up long distance to inform me of the details of Tom’s passing: how Tom had come home from the hospital last night; how one of the seminarians had peeked into his room this morning and found him sitting in his chair, with his pipe on his chest. He went very quickly, which is a real mercy.

I first met Tom Green thirty years ago. In my senior year at the Ateneo, school year 1979-80, I was in Fr. Green’s philosophy of language class. It was a wonderful course, and thirty years later, the fact that I can still remember so much--of the logical positivists, of Wittgenstein, that language is inescapably metaphorical, that some concepts are essentially contested—is surely testimony to the outstanding clarity and excellence of Fr. Green’s teaching.

My second encounter with Fr. Green was through his books. Opening to God, which I read twice--once as a college student, and more seriously, as a novice in the Society—was a deeply influential book in my life. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that it taught me how to pray. I read all his other books too, but my personal favorite, the book which I think is his best and wisest, is When the Wells Run Dry.

Two key insights from that book have remained with me through the decades. The first insight: that darkness happens, not just in prayer, but in life, to move us, in his words, from “loving to truly loving.” I still recall, more or less accurately, a sentence from the book, in which he reflects on a married couple’s promise to love each other “for better or worse”: “The better, the good times are there to teach us the joy of loving; the worse happens to teach us to love truly.”

The second insight: at the end of the book, Fr. Green uses the image of floating (as contrasted with swimming) as a metaphor for the mature life of faith. You give up control over your life (“swimming”); you remain active (otherwise you would sink), but you allow yourself to be led; you let go and entrust yourself to the unpredictable flow of the sea of love that surrounds you, and you let it take you where it wills.

My third and most lasting encounter with Tom Green happened in the eight years, from 1996 to 2004, when we lived together in the same community and worked on the same formation team in San Jose Seminary. At that time, we were also co-faculty members of Loyola School of Theology. From 2000 to 2004, the years I served as Rector of San Jose, Fr. Green was my vice-Rector. He had the room right above mine in those years.

For eight years, we shared meals and attended many staff meetings together. With the rest of the Jesuit team, we processed hundreds of applications to the Seminary; sat through hours of semestral and yearly evaluations of seminarians; discussed and occasionally argued over Seminary policies. Almost every Monday evening, for eight years, we had common prayer together in the BVM chapel on the third floor of San Jose, and after prayer, shared a special meal in the Jesuit community recreation room.

When you live that long with another Jesuit, you get to know him quite well. I got to know about Tom Green’s legendary regularity of life. He followed the same schedule or cycles almost every day, every week, every year. If it was 130 PM, he could invariably be found in his rocking chair on the fifth floor reading the papers. If it was the third (I forget which, actually) Sunday of the month, he would have Mass in Balara or for the L’Arche community. If it was summer vacation, then he would be giving a retreat somewhere in the United States. And woe to you, if you moved that rocking chair, as one unwitting minister did!

I remember pleasant and witty Jesuit banter from those rec-room meals involving Tom Green. Once, Roque Ferriols was talking about Jesuit Bishop Honesto “Onie” Pacana, but kept on referring to him as “Honey Pacana.” The rest of us—Art Borja was there, I remember-- corrected Fr. Roque and told him that the bishop’s nickname was pronounced “Onie” not “Honey.” When Roque said that he had always thought the bishop’s nickname was “Honey,” Tom Green quipped in a deadpan way: “Oh, I thought you were just close.” That brought the house down.

Tom was not perfect, I discovered. (His devoted lay friends, “the Golden Girls,” who took such good care of him, also knew that.) He tended to want things his way. He got cross and cranky when things did not go the way he wanted them to. He could express his opinions a bit too dogmatically. He did not admit his mistakes easily.

And yet, I appreciated his presence in the community and on the Seminary formation team. He was a very generous (he had so many directees!) and wise spiritual director. He was a man of very good and balanced judgment where persons were concerned, and I always valued his perceptions of applicants or seminarians. When I consulted him as Vice-Rector on issues of the Seminary, I usually received very sensible counsel.

By the time I got to San Jose, Tom was a grandfather figure to the seminarians, and his cheerful and easy manner of dealing with them, and the personal witness he gave of a man who had grown old--and happily so--in the priesthood was something, I think, of inestimable value for San Jose. Having been part of San Jose for over three decades, he had become for generations of Josefinos, an icon, a living link between the past and the present, a symbol of their happy years in the Seminary. With Tom’s passing away, an era in the history of San Jose comes to an end, a presence that cannot be replaced has been lost forever.

I am happy that Tom went quickly. He would not have been a good patient. I cannot imagine him in the infirmary: he would have hated giving up control and having his customary routines disrupted. He would have been miserable and made others miserable.

In all my years as Rector and as Provincial, Tom always told me that he hoped he could die in San Jose. He got his wish. I am glad for him. Now, I trust that he is in the presence of the One whom he wrote about, spoke about and served so faithfully and generously for so many years. Now, I trust the darkness has become light for him, and, with a joy no words can describe, he can let go and, at last, float.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

"The supreme priority of the Church is love": The Pope's new letter

Today, the Holy Father released an amazing, moving letter that strikes me as historic in its content and tone. “Never before in his Pontificate has Benedict XVI expressed himself in such a personal manner and with such intensity on a controversial subject,” comments Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, head of the Vatican Press Office.

The letter, addressed by the pope to his “brother bishops,” is his personal reflection on the recent painful controversy brought on by his lifting of the excommunications of four Lefebvrite bishops, one of whom turned out to be a notorious denier of the historical reality of the Holocaust.

The letter is moving precisely because it is personal and humble. It is clearly written by an intellectual, and is characterized by the depth and nuance, the elegance and delicacy that are the hallmarks of Joseph Ratzinger’s writing. But this is also clearly a letter written from the heart, addressed to the heart. One senses that the Pope is seeking to respond to the hurt and bewilderment caused by his act, and hoping to contribute a measure of healing.

Without defensiveness or arrogance, the Pope tries to explain why he chose to lift the excommunications as an act of mercy. More importantly, he expresses real regret that the manner in which this was carried out created unnecessary confusion and pain. What he had intended to be a modest gesture of reconciliation was interpreted instead as a retrograde stepping away from all the recent efforts of the Church at Jewish-Christian reconciliation and a repudiation of Vatican II.

What is touching about the letter is the willingness of the Holy Father to show himself so vulnerable and human. His suffering at how he was misinterpreted is on clear display, as is his surprise at the controversy he unleashed. He admits mistakes and expresses a willingness to learn. To paraphrase him, the Pope says: we should have done our homework better; we should have paid more careful attention to the information available on the Internet; we should have made the announcement more carefully, explaining what it meant and what it did not mean.

As Father Lombardi points out, the Pope does not blame any of his collaborators in the Roman Curia, although he easily and justifiably could have done so. "With great nobility," Fr. Lombardi observes, "he doesn't make others shoulder the responsibility."

For me, the most significant part of the letter comes when Benedict addresses the anguished question raised by many bishops (most notably by the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna): even if the act of lifting the excommunications was defensible, was it necessary? At a time when the Church faces so many challenges, aren’t there more important problems to address, more urgent priority tasks?

What IS the priority of the Church today? I was deeply struck by the simplicity and the accuracy of Benedict’s articulation:

In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.”

It is within the struggle for faith, hope and love in an unbelieving world, Benedict explains, that his act finds meaning: “Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God.”

The world cannot believe when believers are divided. Their divisions call faith into question. So the building up of unity, the healing of polarizations, the prevention of extremism, the promotion of ecumenism and inter-religious dialogue are all concrete steps which contribute, however modestly, towards responding to the greatest challenge of our time: “If the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small.”

I find that there is much in the letter to reflect on, beyond the immediate issue that gave rise to it. How do we overcome the “biting and devouring” that, quoting St. Paul to the Galatians, Benedict sadly observes continues in the Church today? How do we, in his words, “always learn anew the supreme priority, which is love?” These are searching questions worthy of serious consideration, particularly during this Lenten season.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Holy Father reflects on Social Networking

Last January 24, the Holy Father published an important message on the new means of digital communication. It makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading, and deserves, I think, serious consideration by all of us involved in social networking.

The tone of the letter is very positive, appreciative of the "extraordinary potential" that these new technologies make possible. Pope Benedict's words resonate with the experience of many of us, young or old:  "Young people, in particular, have grasped the enormous capacity of the new media to foster connectedness, communication and understanding between individuals and communities, and they are turning to them as means of communicating with existing friends, of meeting new friends, of forming communities and networks, of seeking information and news, and of sharing their ideas and opinions. "

In this appreciative context, the Holy Father then highlights three important calls for Christians engaged in these new technologies: first, the promotion of respect for the human person; second, the promotion of dialogue with a certain depth rather than merely superficial contact; and third, the promotion of authentic friendship and of networks of solidarity concerned with global issues such as "peace and justice, human rights and respect for human life and the good of creation."

For Facebook and Multiply users,  some of the Pontiff's reflections on "friendship" seem to me to be quite "on-target": "The concept of friendship has enjoyed a renewed prominence in the vocabulary of the new digital social networks that have emerged in the last few years. The concept is one of the noblest achievements of human culture.  . . . We should be careful, therefore, never to trivialize the concept or the experience of friendship. It would be sad if our desire to sustain and develop on-line friendships were to be at the cost of our availability to engage with our families, our neighbours and those we meet in the daily reality of our places of work, education and recreation."

The letter ends with a striking invitation to mission, addressed especially to young people: "It falls, in particular, to young people, who have an almost spontaneous affinity for the new means of communication, to take on the responsibility for the evangelization of this "digital continent". Be sure to announce the Gospel to your contemporaries with enthusiasm. You know their fears and their hopes, their aspirations and their disappointments: the greatest gift you can give to them is to share with them the "Good News" of a God who became man, who suffered, died and rose again to save all people. Human hearts are yearning for a world where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. Our faith can respond to these expectations: may you become its heralds!"