Preface Note: This is part of a family email chain that I wrote during Advent 2014. I want to add that the re-creation that Jesus works in us through our Baptism, that lives in us, isn’t just a remaking but a NEW making. We are a NEW creation, and this describes what I meant by re-creation! In being made new in our Baptism there is being (soul stuff and whatnot) added to us that we did not have before, that Jesus added to us for his glory, for our participation in his love.

Cross that arose in World Trade Center Wreckage.

Advent 2014: Christ is the king of wreckage and the re-creator of broken things. The way of the world is to swim in wreckage, rearrange it, shine it, and ask people to come and buy it, or approve of it, or laud and honor it. The re-arranged wreckage is the idol of the self, that part of us that sees the wreckage and says “there must be some way to salvage this. It can‘t really be as bad as it looks. Lets rearrange, recast, re-frame!” And the people who are best at this sort of thing are the idols of this world, and no matter how much we hold them up they always seem to fall apart in the end.

Here is a nice music cooperative that is putting out some good spiritual music. It is called Mystic Chapel, and they are writing songs about particular Martyrs. This one is about Becket.

Here is their website: The Martyr’s Project

Eighth Rule. The eighth: When the consolation is without cause, although there be no deceit in it, as being of God our Lord alone, as was said; still the spiritual person to whom God gives such consolation, ought, with much vigilance and attention, to look at and distinguish the time itself of such actual consolation from the following, in which the soul remains warm and favored with the favor and remnants of the consolation past; for often in this second time, through one’s own course of habits and the consequences of the concepts and judgments, or through the good spirit or through the bad, he forms various resolutions and opinions which are not given immediately by God our Lord, and therefore they have need to be very well examined before entire credit is given them, or they are put into effect.

I got the chance to be with my baby boy for a long time today. I haven’t spent that much time alone with him since he was born about ten weeks ago. I went to pray with him in an Abbey Church. It is a special thing when an Abbey Church somehow intermingles with your day’s events. I was slightly weary from many hours of caring for him alone, of trying to provide with bottles what my wife does in her sleep. At first I wished he would sleep through, that I could pray in silence. But soon his cries began to echo through the stone church, and I was struck with thoughts of our infant Lord as he lay there in the tabernacle.

Our Lord would cry to ask his Mother for  milk just as any baby does, and his human infancy echoes in an eternity of Divine love. He is always an infant, always a young boy, a young man, and finally a grown man who would die for each of us. What does it mean though that he would cry? It means that he is hungry, that he became one of us, helpless, weak, begging for help from those he hopes will love him. It means that he thirsts not just for mother’s milk but for the milk that only Mother Church can give to him, the souls of the just, of those who love him as he loves them, of those willing to accept this screaming child. Our Lord asks us to hold him and to feed him, to keep trying to give oneself to him through all the failure inherent in the weakness and sin that he took upon himself for our sake. He is a screaming child, screaming for the souls that are being taken from him through sin. He is a beaten, bruised, and bloody man. He is tortured and yet says “I thirst” for you who have done this to me.

Until we seek to feed him even as he feeds us, with the bread of eternal life, until we offer back to him what he gives to us without considering the price, he will come to us crying, hoping, screaming for milk. He will come to us beaten, bloody, bruised, asking for us to feed him. He will come to us with cries echoing in a Church of stony hearts, and the harder our hearts become with sin the more his cries echo in the emptiness of our inner being. Let us seek to comfort him, no matter the cost, let us live to see him still, happy, smiling, and cooing with delight that he has found his Mother’s face.

In the wake of tragedy one often wonders whether God has allowed this or that suffering as a chastisement. This notion often meets with vehement disapproval or a tacit acceptance that can seem void of meaning. I’ve wondered about this, and I came to the conclusion that God does not allow a tragedy for the chastisement of one person or of even a few. When God allows some tragedy he does so according to his all knowing plan for the salvation of man kind. When we consider the interconnection of everything that God does we can see that there cannot be one reason for any one thing that happens. Everything that happens is connected and there are thus a thousand or a million reasons for everything that happens according to the mind of God. Of course we can’t know the mind of God, how he intends for us to suffer and the things that he does or allows to that end. But it might be helpful to consider that it is possible to be chastised by God without somehow taking the full brunt of some tragedy onto oneself. We need to accept God’s chastisements for whatever they mean in the particularity of our lives. We too often create a straw man saying “God could never allow such a thing because he is loving.” But the reality is that God does allow suffering in our lives even at times in the form of tragedy. This does not mean that God would seek to saddle us with the full weight of some tragic event, but it does mean that he intends to allow suffering in our lives for our good and the good of others. Any one thing that happens might have a thousand or a million causes and a thousand or a million effects, and God is taking all of this into consideration in his plans. It is not for us to fear God’s love by isolating one of a million reasons and making it the only cause or the only effect. The causes and effects that we need to worry about are the ones that God desires to communicate to our hearts in the personal relationship we have with him. God is speaking to us in the depths of our being concerning these matters if we would only listen. Allowing God to chastise us will alleviate our suffering as we become acquainted with his plan for us. Even a small insight into his plans for our welfare will give us great joy and consolation as we attempt to offer back to him with gratitude the sufferings he intends for us.

Mother of Sorrows, Pray for us

Today the Church celebrates the day that God became man in the womb of our Blessed Mother. Happy Annunciation Day!

May God announce to you the good news of his coming, speaking to your deepest heart a language of eternal love to be received by you his beloved with tenderness and trust. We are all sinners so let us turn to our Mother to teach us how to become her brothers and sisters in Christ. Let us turn to our sinless Mother to teach us how to defeat sin that God might grow within us as he came to life within her, by unborn moments that echo in an eternity of Divine Love.

God became man. Every beat of your human heart echoes in an eternity of his love.