Three Gifts from Fr. Galdon: An Appreciation

I was never close to Fr. Galdon. Even though I took at least five courses under him, he was always a teacher to me, and never a friend or a confidant. The guys in our Ateneo freshman English class, school year 1976-77, used to joke, perhaps not inaccurately, that Fr. Galdon was always closer to the girls in the class. He would give them additional marks if they came to his class wearing skirts instead of the usual slacks. If memory serves me right, the Assumption girls—Candy Monserrat, Liza Lesaca, and Miel Esteban—and Tina Infante were Fr. G’s favorites. The mestizas.

Looking back, though, I realize that I didn’t mind at all, because he was such a good teacher, and that was more than enough.

I was sixteen years old when I first experienced being Joe Galdon’s student. In the summer of 1975, I had the privilege of being one of those chosen to represent Xavier School at the Ateneo Junior Summer Seminar. I remember very little about those two months between junior and senior year in high school, except that every morning, I looked forward to going to the Ateneo just to sit in Fr. Galdon’s English class. I cut classes a lot that summer, but I never missed a single class of Fr. Galdon. Thirty five years later, I still remember two revelatory pieces we took up: Nick Joaquin’s novella, Candido’s Apocalypse, and Tennessee William’s The Glass Menagerie. As a result of that class, I went on to read all the other plays of Tennessee Williams, and I decided that I would go to the Ateneo for college, if they would have me.

As luck, fate or providence would have it, I did get accepted to the Ateneo. Even more fortunately, by the second semester of freshman year, I was back with Fr. Galdon in two classes: poetry and composition. During the next four years of college, I took at least two (possibly three) other courses with him. Fr. Galdon’s death yesterday made me think of him in a way that I haven’t for a very long time. And when I think of my debt of gratitude to Fr. Galdon, I realize I can express things quite simply. First, he taught me how to read. Second, he taught me how to write. Third, he taught me how to teach.

First, he taught me how to read. I think the title of a book by Robert Alter captures well what Fr. Galdon taught me: The Pleasures of Reading in an Ideological Age. Fr. Galdon was an unabashed humanist in his approach to literature. There were no ideological readings of literary works; no cultural studies-based analyses; no post-colonial deconstructions of the work of dead white males. In class, we read dead white males and dead white females, as well as living writers of different colors, and he always asked us to look for the SHE: the “Significant Human Experience”—not, heaven forbid, a “moral lesson,” but what the work revealed about the grandeur and the misery, the complexity and the ambiguity of the human heart and human existence. And in the process, he showed us how to delight in the peculiar beauties of poem or play, essay or narrative. It was

Fr. Galdon who introduced me to many a great work of literature. In his class on classical criticism (which I confess I remember very little about), he made us read Horace and Longinus, Tasso and Alexander Pope. In the course on classical drama, I read Aeschylus’s Oresteia for the first time and still recall the frisson of excitement I felt when, at the end of the trilogy, the Furies are renamed the Eumenides (“the Kindly Ones”), and the dark, barbarous history of bloodshed and vengeance finally finds resolution in justice, reason and civilization. In that same class, we also read Euripedes’ The Trojan Women and I still recall being overcome by the power of its depiction of the unspeakable atrocities of war: the child Astyanax hurled off the battlements of Troy ; the noble Hecuba, bereft of all she loved—kingdom, husband, children, grandchildren--being dragged off to be the slave of the scoundrel Odysseus. In that freshman poetry class, Fr. Galdon introduced us to Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress, T.S. Eliot’s The Journey of the Magi, Robert Browning’s My Last Duchess, W. H. Auden’s Museé de Beaux Arts, and that glorious Shakespeare sonnet that begins, “When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,” among so many others. This was heady, potent stuff to fill the minds of teen-agers with, teen-agers still so blissfully, stupidly unaware of life, its depths, its impending heartache. As if reading were not enough, he made us memorize. I realize now that most of the poetry that I still know by heart were poems that Fr. Galdon obliged us to memorize: Macbeth’s soliloquy (“Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow . . .”); A.E. Houseman’s “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now” and “With rue my heart is laden”; most amazing of all, Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach, which speaks to me more powerfully now at 51 than it did when I was 17:

Ah, love, let us be true
To one another! for the world, which seems
To lie before us like a land of dreams,
So various, so beautiful, so new,
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Second, Fr. Galdon taught me how to write—or at least, how to write with a little more clarity, a little more simplicity, a little less pretentiousness. Among the things I learned: Always use simple words, rather than “big” words. Try to use concrete words rather than abstract ones. (I remember he used Oscar Hammerstein’s lyrics to My Favorite Things as a writing exercise to stimulate concrete thinking and communication). Don’t be “OA”—which I suppose meant, don’t be pretentious or inauthentic to yourself or to the experience you are trying to communicate. (I recall the mortification of receiving compositions checked by Fr. Galdon and finding a red circle around some offending patch of prose, accompanied by the dread letters: “OA.”) Seek to communicate significant human experience.

Third, Fr. Galdon taught me how to teach. His striking resemblance to Bob Hope was a good start, but along with it, he brought an engaging classroom manner. There were never dull lectures from Fr. G, who was something of a performer, almost larger than life, in the classroom. His classes were always inter-active, dialogical, deeply involving, funny and fun. Yet he made us work hard: a quiz every blessed class, to aid fallen human nature and ensure that we read the works he assigned; regular compositions, at least once a week, I believe. He worked hard too: every quiz, every composition meticulously corrected and promptly returned. And his standards were high. I remember bemoaning why the masterpieces I poured my soul into ended up so often with a lousy, surely undeserved “7” or “8” (out of “10”); the occasional “9” for a composition produced a glow of pride that lasted for days. When, four years out of college, as a Jesuit regent, I taught my first English classes in Xavier University High School, so much of what I had experienced from Joe Galdon as a teacher I sought to bring to my own students. And now, after almost two decades in the classroom as a teacher myself, I still reverence Fr. Galdon as a teacher nonpareil.

When the news came last week that Fr. Galdon was dying, I confess that I was happy for him. I don’t remember exactly when the dementia began. All I know is that this once vibrant, intelligent Jesuit had become unresponsive, inaccessible, zombie-like. I suspect it’s been almost a decade, and it was painful to see. But I was relieved to know that this diminished half-life would soon come to an end. And yesterday, 15 March 2010, it did.

As I said, I never became close to him, even after I became a Jesuit. I read his homilies with profit and admiration, but I never really benefited from his ministrations as a priest. He was always a teacher to me. But, that was more than enough. He taught me—and so many others like me—how to read, how to write, how to teach. He honed our abilities; opened our imaginations; deepened our humanity. For these precious gifts, thank you, Fr. Galdon. May you now enjoy the fullness of life.

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.'

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

"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

"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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lenten Reflection Series, 2 April 2009

RECONCILIATION

"Another trademark of the Holy Spirit is to give people a way back into relationship. Maybe this has happened to you. You are estranged from someone you really care about--because of something you said or did or something the other person said or did--it really does not matter which. The point is, you are tired of it, so you start plotting ways to get through. You draft letters, rehearse phone calls, only none of them sounds right. You are still hanging on to your hurt, or your anger, and it keeps leaking through.

Then one day for no apparent reason something inside of you says, 'Now.' You grab the phone, the persons says, 'Hello?' and the rest is history. Your heart opens and the right words come out. A reunion gets underway. You can call that anything you want. I call it an act of the Holy Spirit."

--Barbara Brown Taylor

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

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

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

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