A Praying Servant

From the January 2020 edition of First Things

LITANY

For the fire that answers the covering dark,
For every marriage that ends in faith,
For the hand that finds desired work,
And for every reconciled death,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
             we may be added to their number.

For the wall that answers wind’s assault,
For every roof that withstands weather,
For the level and square and the justly built,
And for long lives that have kept their savor,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
        we may be added to their number.

For the hour that we have squandered,
       Have mercy on us.
For the hour we have begrudged,
       Have mercy on us.
For the good that we have coveted,
       Have mercy on us.
And for the good we have neglected,
       Have mercy on us.

For the day lived with its end in mind
And for the remembrance of such a day,
For the losing race, run to its end,
For the blue sky and the night sky,

We bless you, O Lord, and we ask that
       we may be added to their number.

—Timothy Dusenbury

On the Becoming of a Child

 Balthasar, early in his short essay on becoming a child, takes us to the most intimate of our connections, the creative ability of God. The mystery into which his contemplation takes the reader is portrayed as the sacred union of God and mankind and reflected in this union is the sanctity  of the the union of man and woman. Contemplating this collaboration between God and mankind and God’s highest forms of creation, man and woman, we can appreciate God’s plan of creation with wonder and awe. Yet, we in our hubris and self-reliance reduce our sexuality by considering this magnificent gift to be just another form of recreation or make of it a merely physical process that can be manipulated to cater to our desires and whims. In so doing the sacred nature of the mystery loses its hold on our spirit.

Quoting from the essay:

Nevertheless, there does exist the sphere in which every person born possesses an archetypical model in keeping with which he is to direct his conscious life, surely following the course of his existence into the future but always with the memory of his origins before him.

Between the mother and the child she bears in her womb there exists an "archetypical identity", a unity which by no means is purely "natural", "physiological" or "unconscious": the child is already itself, it is already something "other" than the mother because it derives from the man's seed as much as from her. She had to conceive in order for the child to come to be in her, to come out of her most intimate being, as of course the father too had to receive from his wife in order to become fruitful in her. They had to be "two in one flesh", with mutual gratitude, in order to be able to procreate and love the new life that surpasses them both, the new life that will owe its existence to both of them together but for which they, together, will always have to be thankful in the site of the absolute creative Power that transcends them: "Children are a gift of the Lord" (Ps 127:3). Neither father nor mother would pretend that their contribution has given the child its spirit, its freedom, its immediacy with God.

Unless You Become Like This Child, Hans Urs von Balthasar, pp. 15-16

Mary of Magdala Mourns for Jesus

Sholem Asch's portrayal of Mariam of Magdala's mourning on Jesus' death from the final pages of his novel, Mary.

p. 424

Of all Yeshua was mourners no one, with the exception of the mother, felt his loss more poignantly then Miriam of Magdala. If for all others the Nazarene had been Israel's, even the world’s, Messiah, for Miriam he had been her personal Redeemer. The others, after all, were of the holy community of Israel. If there hopes in Yeshua had faded, they still had the root from which the Messianic faith had sprung. This was not the first, no, nor the last time that Israel had been deceived. Jewry loved its Messiah, sickened for its coming. Their love and their nostalgia would in time nurture the new Messianic fruit. If the Nazarene had failed them, another would arise, the true Redeemer who would rally the heavenly host and descend in the panoply of vengeance.

But for Miriam of Magdala, Yeshua and none other had been the Messiah, and with his death perished her hope. What other Messiah, or what other rabbi, would stoop to lift her kind out of the gutters, cleanse her polluted body and soul, efface what was past even as the light of day scatters the bad dreams of the night, and infuse her with a new spirit to thirst for purity and holiness? What other rabbi would turn his back on the mighty, the learned, and the elect to embrace sinners; and finding her among the most unclean, on whom sin lay like a constrictor snake, would call out to her judges, "Let him among you who is without sin cast the first stone?" What other master would admit her to his presence?

But if Yeshua was not the Messiah, then all her effort was in vain, and vain was her purgation in the fires of penance. She would relapse into the clutch of sin from which he had delivered her. With all her longing and hunger for purity, she would be thrown back into the gutter that had been her cradle.

For her no hope existed outside Yeshua, the redeemer who had come with the blessing of God in his hand to help fallen ones like herself. All things passed away with him – the love and the splendor of God, the thirst and the longing, the hope and the remission of sins. Life with him had been blessed, without him it would be perdition.

St. Peter the Rock

A brief of decription of St. Peter.Note the spectacular composition of the second paragraph. Could more be expressed with so few words as is done in these lines?

"This Friday eve, when the meal had been eaten with the disciples together, Yeshua slept once more under his mother's roof. And when he had laid himself down to rest, Miriam went out into her garden to learn what manner of men her son had chosen for his followers. She had seen them before, at the marriage in Cana; they were the three whom he had apparently elected to be his closest intimates, for they never stirred from his side.

St. Peter

Among them was the stocky fishermen with the leathery face – Simon, whom they were already calling Cephas, signifying "a rock." A curly black beard, which seemed continuous with his hair, framed all his features. His eyes were overhung with heavy brows and made a pattern of crow's feet at their corners, all of which would have expressed only simplicity and kindness had not the frank gaze of his eyes suggested the practical sagacity of the people, the accumulated wisdom of generations.

Simon showed her all possible reverence, addressing her with utmost humility and catering to her where he could, and Miriam sensed in him the love and devotion which the simple Jew of Galilee had for her son. She soon came to understand why Yeshua held him in such high regard. For the man was all faith, and this faith had begotten his conviction that the ways of his rabbi were those of righteousness and that his every act was performed on the word of God. It fortified his hope and assured him that no harm would come to his rabbi, that Yeshua, like Elijah before him, would avoid the narrow Strait of death and ascend, undying, into heaven, there to sit on the right hand of God for the judgment of the world. In this hope Miriam found her affinity with him, for since his coming to her house, Simon had been strengthening and consoling her, saying:

"Do I not see the Angels going in and out of his door as in Abraham's house? What evil can befall him, or what hurt can come to him, when a host of ministering angels stand at his right and left, waiting to act at his bidding?"

This hope of Simon's for happy issue of his rabbi's ministry brought him close to the mother and awakened her love."

from Mary, by Sholem Asch, p. 366-368

Coincidence of experience and disconnect of experience. What do we seek in life? What is our personal experience of life and are the conclusions we draw from these experiences valid as a measure of how we should live our lives?

To provide light on the answers to these questions we look the many sources of reinforcement of or cause to abandon our experience based conclusions. One of the ways we seek such guidance is by examining the experience and conclusion of those who have placed their experience at our feet and allowed us, at their great risk, to either accept their offerings as validating our own or rejecting their conclusions as inconsistent with our own.

In our effort to validate our own experience and the conclusions we can draw from them, the seeker could be guilty of only seeking the experience of others that reinforces their own conclusions. Such a seeker could be accused of not being open to new ideas or new ways of looking at our experience, of not “thinking outside the box” so to speak.

On the other hand one could be so open to new ideas that in efforts to accept the new experiential offering, which has not been coincident with our own, that they could be guilty of abandoning accepted norms and accused of “following false prophets” so to speak.

Where then is the balance between these two opposite tendencies? Can one actually attain such a balance? When one is faced with choosing one or the other on a particular issue how is one assured that their choice is consistent with the will of God, that being the ultimate goal of existence.

Particular dangers exist in our philosophical environments that enjoy the practice of deconstruction. By deconstruction I mean the deliberate practice of trying to reinterpret certain accepted cultural axioms, even moral norms, and presenting them in innovative ways. This being “thinking outside the box”. We are constantly presented with ways in which practices once considered unacceptable to a prudent way of life are re-presented in ways which attempt to make them appear to have virtues, opposite to their original intent, which can justify their acceptance.

I offer an answer. Only look at things plainly. When you hear something or read something it evicts from you a sense of truth or a sense of self-service, believe in that initial sense. Whichever sense (feeling) you experience is probably due to the coincidence with or disconnection from your own personal experience. Follow that sense in the direction of truth.

Critics of what I say may argue that feelings are not a reliable indicator of truth. God gave us emotions for a reason. Our emotions are guided by that “tabernacle in our heart” placed in us by our creator when we were formed in the womb and through which our God speaks to us.

From Christian Perfection and Contemplation, by Rev. R. Garrigou-LaGrange, O.P., p. 207:

"Prayer is a more powerful force than all physical energies taken together, more powerful than money, than learning. Prayer can accomplish what all material things and all created spirits cannot do by their own natural powers.  According to Pascal: "All bodies, the firmament and its starts, the earth and its kingdom, are not equal to the least of spirits . . . . By assembling all material things one could not succeed in producing even one small thought.  This is impossible and belongs to another order. . . . All material bodies together and all spirits, and all that they produce are not worth the slightest movement of charity, which belongs to an infinitely more elevated order." [Pensees (Havet ed.), art.17,1.] Prayer can obtain grace for us which will make us produce this act of charity.
"Prayer thus plays an infinitely greater role in the world than the most amazing discovery."

Jesus Comes of Age

Court of the Women in Jerusalem

At the age of twelve Jesus went with his family to Jerusalem for the feast of the Passover. The author depicts a scene when Jesus and Mary were together in the Court of the Women. Jesus was attempting to understand the practice of burnt offerings as against the psalmist’s admonition in Palm 51, “For thou hast no delight in sacrifice; were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased, the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not spurn.”

While Jesus was pondering reconciling these two realities Mary knelt at his side and prayed –

 “Father in heaven, I have brought him safe into thy house who is Thy pledge to the world. Behold, he is grown to manhood, but in seeing and hearing he is not like to other men. For his young heart is bruised by our sinful lives and his spirit troubled by the injustice he has met so soon in his way. Even now, standing at my side, he burns with the sacred indignation that raged in Thy Prophets. With contempt he views the flesh and fat they kindle on Thy altar, and like Isaiah he demands that the heart alone be offered before Thee.

“I know not to what paths he shall be led, nor what road Thou hast paved for him. But I do see him, like a launched arrow, speeding toward the target Thou dids't set, and my heart trembles between joy and fear. Father, I fear for him, for I see the walls of fire in his path. He is too young, Father in heaven; the thread of his life is too frail. For a little while yet, let him see the flowers, not the thorns. Leave him to me for a little while longer. And teach me what to do, Father in heaven, for I am in awe of the power of his spirit and feel too weak to be his mother.     Mary, by Sholem Asch, pp. 256-257