A Daily Lent

Happiness Rises Saturday of the Third Week of Lent – March 21, 2020 I don’t want to undersell the difficulty and challenge in de Mello’s words this week. The work he describes with attachments is some of the most rigorous interior work we can undertake. At the same time, we experience a growing sense of interior freedom when we engage this spiritual work. There is a lightness of being that comes from not being weighed down by those people and things we cling to. And we have the experience, Fr Anthony describes, of “happiness rising.” Happiness arises between persons who are meeting without the desire to control, manipulate, or impress one another . . . happiness arises when we hear a beautiful piece of music . . . happiness arises when we participate in an act of kindness that makes a difference in the world . . . happiness arises when we see an object of beauty and stand still just to take the moment into ourselves. I love de Mello’s phrase. Happiness rising does not sugges...

Inner Freedom Wednesday of the Second Week of Lent – March 11, 2020 We are social beings. All of our lives, from our first days to our last day, we constantly are learning how to live in relationship with each other. Often, though, the clues we take from others are about people-pleasing, adapting ourselves and our behaviors to the expectations of those in our life-world. It is quite common – and in fact, may have become the cultural norm – for persons to shape their lives to the expectations and demands of those around us. Inner freedom is one of the key ideas in the spiritual life. Inner freedom does not have to do with our outer freedom, that is, how free we are to come and go and do as we please. This kind of outer freedom is what adolescents strive for, and what most adults continue seeking throughout life. Inner freedom is different. It is the freedom to be the person you were created to be, rather than the person who is pushed and pulled by circumstances, conditions, a...

A Larger, Freer, More Truthful Way Saturday after Ash Wednesday – February 29, 2020 When Beatrice Bruteau describes a contemplative as someone who lets go of the old ways that seem “natural” to us in favor of that which is larger, freer, and more truthful, something in me says, “Yes!” and something else in me says, “I can’t!” She’s right. It’s not “natural” to us that we should love others without qualification. But this is part of the transformative process, the slow and messy shift in the interior life to which the contemplative is invited. Our vocation is to live in union with God, and this is the way God loves. This is how Bruteau says it: We have now identified the basic life principle of the communion of the saints. That is what is meant by abiding in Jesus’ love. Live in the kind of love-world he has created, the love-context in which he lives. Do it the way he does it. “Love one another as I have loved you,” leaving out any regard for “deserving” or “lovability,” eith...

Ash Wednesday February 26, 2020 I’ve come to believe and experience that a chief characteristic of God is God’s endless Self-giving. God gratuitously gives away who God is. God is not stingy, but generously spends Divine mercy, compassion, love, and goodness on the world. That this Self-giving is gratuitous means that we do not earn it, deserve it, or win some worthiness contest to receive it. God’s Self-giving is not conditioned upon our actions, our morality, or the vibrancy of our faith. We cannot begin any discussion of “unconditional love” until we jettison our notions that various degrees of spiritual performance get different quantities of God’s goodies. Yet, at the root of most religious systems, humans have developed complex notions for how to win God’s favor. We teach them, preach them and instill them in our young and old. These systems work for crowd control, but they are generally unworkable in helping us relate intimately to God. Self-giving that is not predicat...

Resurrection Sunday Daily Reading : John 20:1 – 9 Focus Passage : So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go in. Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw the strips of linen lying there, as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus' head. The cloth was still lying in its place, separate from the linen. Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. (They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.) (Jn. 20:3 – 9) In the two verses before this reading, we are given an important piece of information about the burial place of Jesus. John 19:41 – 42 says this: At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one ha...