Continuing my use of past "Theological Thoughts," the doctrinal points addressed in this reflection follow a theme I have written about often, one that is probably quite familiar to you by now, namely that God desires our salvation and that through grace we respond to God’s call to us. These themes recur frequently in our Catholic theology. What connects these two points is the middle one, “God alone satisfies us (CCC 1718).” Part of the way that God calls all of us to eternal life and salvation is through the gift of our restlessness. It is what theologians and philosophers would call our human transcendence. In other words, the dynamism of our spirit eventually transcends or surpasses every finite thing in our life. Whatever we have or achieve is never enough. When we complete one task, we move on to another. Have you ever worked on a really big project at work or in school? Often when we have been putting a lot of our time and energy into something, there is an incredible relief when it is completed, but along with that relief comes a sense of restlessness. It is as if we don’t know what to do with ourselves all of the sudden. That feeling is an example of our transcendence. In theological terms, that restlessness is a gift from God. No finite thing or project or even person completely satisfies and fulfills us because only the infinite God can satisfy that longing. Only the One whom we can never transcend or surpass can fulfill that yearning. Oftentimes our relationships suffer because we place expectations on another human being that only God can realize. A spouse is someone who can be a companion and a partner on that mutual journey to fulfillment in God, but even a spouse cannot be God for us. We are finite beings, but we have been created with a capacity for the infinite, a capacity for God. Only the inexhaustible mystery of God can fill that capacity. God is a mystery that we cannot ever totally grasp or comprehend. If we could comprehend God, God would be a finite object like all of the others we are able to move beyond. We can never move beyond God. Furthermore when we let ourselves go and surrender into the abyss that is the infinite God, we discover that we have fallen into an abyss of love. Thus St. Augustine says, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee, O Lord.”

The desire for God is placed in our hearts by the God who desires our salvation. By that gift of God’s grace, we are drawn relentlessly toward God. At the same time we must consent to God’s gift. Often human beings try to fill that restlessness with material things or power or other finite things that they make into false gods or idols. However, it is important to note here that I am not saying that the things of this world are bad. In fact, it is only through the things and people of this world that we experience God. It is only through the things and people in this world that we can accept God’s call to us. We do so by actualizing the gifts God has given us: freedom, a conscience, the ability to love. Every time one acts in love, freedom, or truth, every time one recognizes beauty and goodness, one affirms the presence of our God who is love, freedom, truth, beauty, goodness, etc. Our movement toward God is always a movement that is acted out in the midst of our world. In doing so, we do not make the things of this world into gods, but we see the presence of God being mediated through the people and events of our lives.

We see the perfect actualization of God’s call and the human response in Jesus Christ. Christ is God’s offer to us and our response to God. Christ has enabled us to respond, so that through the power of the Holy Spirit, we say ‘yes’ to God in and through the ‘yes’ of Jesus Christ. Jesus lived a fully human life, a life of love, freedom and truth, and he calls us to imitate him. We see his ‘yes’ acted out in the events of his life, in his preaching, in his love for all people, and finally in his crucifixion. And in the resurrection, we see God’s ‘Amen’ to the life and death of Jesus, as well as God’s ‘Amen’ to our lives lived fully in freedom and love.

I apologize for not being as good about staying on top of writing these entries as I had hoped! How is it that summer always ends up being such a busy time? I have also been working on preparing the courses I am teaching this fall, so I admit, I am going to take the easy way out! During my first years at St. Monica, I wrote reflections each week on the doctrinal points given in Celebrating the Lectionary, the program we were using in the Sunday School at that time, and sent them home to parents. Over the next few weeks I am simply going to share some of those reflections with you, so here is the first of them! The doctrinal points in this reflection dealt with the fact that God is creator, that creation is good, and that the Christian community has been tragically divided, so those are the points I address in what follows. I hope you are all having a good summer!

We believe that God is creator, and as such, all that God created is good. This is the message of the story in Genesis, in which God creates and then God proclaims that what has been created is good. Theologically, the Catholic Church teaches that creation proclaims the presence of God. Even without revelation, one would be able to come to a natural knowledge of God as creator through contemplating the beauty and the wonder of the created world. St. Bonaventure, a Franciscan friar who lived in the 13th century, wrote The Soul’s Journey Into God in which he reflected that creation is a book that has been written by God. The first movement of the soul toward God is the ladder of creation. For Bonaventure, in nature we see the footprints of God. To say that the world is sacramental is to say that it is a visible way in which God is present to us – if we know how to look at it.

When God creates the humans, he gives them dominion over creation. Dominion, when used in this way is not understood as domination, but rather as stewardship. God has given us the gift of creation, but has also entrusted it to our care. We are the stewards of the earth and its resources. Part of our job as stewards is to protect the earth and to make sure the resources are sustained. Part of our job as stewards is to make sure those resources are used justly and responsibly. To lose parts of the natural world through extinction or destruction is to lose part of God’s revelation to us.

In the creation account in Genesis, we also learn that God made human beings in the likeness and image of God. The fact that all human beings are created in God’s image means that all human life is sacred. All human life has dignity, not because of anything a human being does, but simply by the fact that he or she is created by God as an image of God, regardless of race, religion, gender or any other ways we categorize human beings. Such dignity is called inherent dignity in moral theology, because it is given to us as part of who we are, as opposed to ascribed dignity, which we grant to people on the basis of things they do or how they act. The inherent dignity and sacredness of human life means that as Christians we must protect all lives and make sure people live in conditions that are worthy of their dignity as images of God. We use the language of the seamless garment to talk about issues of life, which means that all of the issues around protecting and sustaining life are connected in such an integral way that you cannot stand for one and not the other. Many Catholics are familiar with the concept of pro-life in terms of being anti-abortion, but in Catholic teaching pro-life also means that one should stand against capital punishment, against war unless there is absolutely no other way to defend oneself, against assisted suicide. It also means that we must stand for life-giving and sustaining issues – making sure that people have proper food, clothing, and shelter, making sure children are being nourished and nurtured, making sure neighborhoods are places of safety instead of violence. As Christians, we must be scandalized that people still starve to death every day in our world. As stewards, especially stewards that live in the wealthiest nation in the world, we must work to see that the resources we have, resources that have been given to us by God, are distributed in a just manner.

It is especially important these days to remember that as Christians we also called to be peace-makers. We strive for peace both because war violates the sacredness of human life and because we have been given the peace of Christ and are compelled to share it with others. We believe that the reign of God is both already here, having broken through in Christ, and not yet fully here. Thus we work with God to give hope to the world that peace is possible, to keep alive the vision of Micah and Isaiah who looked to the day when the nations will “beat their swords into plowshares, their spears into pruning hooks;” a vision of a world in which “one nation shall not raise the sword against another, nor shall they train for war again (Is. 2:3-4, Micah 4:3).”

In a world seeking peace, we also must face the fact that the Christian community has been tragically divided. We have come a long way in our relations with our brothers and sisters of different Christian denominations. Unfortunately we also have a long way to go. How can we be true symbols of peace in the world when our own community stands divided? We look to the witness of those who are in mixed marriages, i.e., a Catholic Christian and a non-Catholic Christian (of course, marriages between Christians and those of other religious traditions also witness to us about dialogue between religious traditions!), and hold them up as examples of how love conquers the divisions between us. We stay in dialogue with one another, and we pray for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in continuing to heal past hurts and to move toward a future that celebrates all of our unity in the midst of our diversity.

As we celebrate the birth of our nation on this upcoming 4th of July, we must think about what it means to be America - who we are as a country and who we want to be. This is a question we have faced since the founding of our country and is intimately connected to the issue of religion. Without a doubt our country was founded on Christian principles (along with principles from Greek philosophy and the Enlightenment). What is interesting is to look at the fact that those very Christian principles were used to to espouse freedom from and for religion, though not without controversy. I am currently reading Diana Eck's book, A New Religious America: How a "Christian Country" Has Become the World's Most Religiously Diverse Nation. I highly recommend this book as a way to understand both where we have come from, what our country actually looks like today, and the choices we will have to make about who we are in the future. For a great overview of her research project, go to her website, The Pluralism Project.

In the book Eck talks about the history of the colonies and the different approaches they took to the issue of religious tolerance or exclusion, from colonies that had an established religion to those that did not, and that both sides argued their case on biblical grounds. In seventeenth century Boston, "an anti-Catholic law was enacted stating, 'that no Jesuit or ecclesiasticall person ordained by the authoritie of the pope shall henceforth come within our jurisdiction" (Eck, 36). Eck also points out that

while the Catholic founders of Maryland passed a Toleration Act in 1649, when Protestants came to power in the following decades, Jesuits were banished from the colony and Catholics were denied the right to hold office. Harsh anti-Catholic laws were passed, such as the 1704 law straightforwardly titled An Act to Prevent the Growth of Popery Within This Province. (Eck, 38)

We all know (I hope) that the issue of "establishment" and "toleration" was dealt with in the First Amendment to the Constitution that both prevented the establishment of a state religion and protected the freedom to exercise one's own religion. Of course, no problem is so easily settled.

Today we live in the most religiously diverse country in the world, and the challenge of diversity is always whether we will view it as a gift or an obstacle. Issues of religious diversity often intersect with issues of immigration. Eck cites the following example:

The vast alien immigration is, at the root, an attack upon Protestant religion with its freedom of conscience, and is therefore a menace to American liberties. . . . For forty years the alien, unassimilable masses have been de-Americanizing America. . . . A few more years of our present sentimental, irrational hospitality will reduce the American people to a hopeless minority. (Eck, 27)

That passage could be read today on many websites or heard on talk radio shows referring to Muslims or even to Spanish speaking Christians. It was not directed to either of those groups however. The statement was written in a publication of the Ku Klux Klan in 1924 and was referring to Catholics and Jews. In a post 911 world, unfortunately too many people react to people of other religious traditions with suspicion and hostility. Fortunately, for as many acts of hatred and violence that have been committed, there have also been efforts to reach out to other religious communities and learn more about one another. Just as the founders of our country had to make choices about how to deal with religious diversity and as Americans in the the 1920s and post-war Civil Rights period had to make choices about how to deal with religious diversity, today we are once again faced with this question of who we are, who we are referring to when we say "We the people." Eck points out that

America's response to this question is important, perhaps not only for America but also for the world. Building a multireligious society seems to be increasingly difficult in a world in which religious markers of identity are often presumed to be the most divisive of all differences. (Eck, 66)

Drawing on the sentiment of the American Catholic theologian John Courtney Murray that pluralism requires that we engage one another in dialogue, Eck proposes that such engagement

is vital also to the health of religious faith so that we appropriate our faith not by habit or heritage alone, but by making it our own within the context of dialogue with people of other faiths. Such dialogue is not aimed at achieving agreement, but at achieving relationship. (Eck, 71-72)

This Fourth of July, let us look around at "we the people," people of all different faiths - Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Christians, etc. (and if you doubt that this is the reality that exists today, use the The Pluralism Project directory to look up the communities of these different faiths that are active your own community) and choose to celebrate the gift and opportunity we have been given to engage others and come to mutual understanding through openness and friendship rather than reacting with hostility and fear.

At the end of Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus says, “I am with you always, until the age.” This is Jesus, Emmanuel, God with us. Christ is always present to us, so what does it mean to say, where two or three are gathered in his name, he is in our midst? Why do we gather? Why do we come together on Sunday? Why do we gather in prayer groups? Why can it not just be about God and me? What does it mean to be Church?

Of course, Christ is always present to us, no matter what. We gather together because we believe in the sacramental presence of God, the presence of God made tangible and manifest through the created world. That presence is felt in the bread and wine that becomes the body and blood. That presence is felt in the oil that anoints or the words of the priest that assure us of forgiveness. That presence is felt in the vows of love that are exchanged between a man and a woman making a lifetime commitment to one another. And that presence is felt when two or three gather in his name.

Our relationship with God is like a relationship with another human being. Like any good marriage, there is a need to just spend time alone with God, to come to know God in a very intimate, personal way. But also like marriage, this relationship with God is not meant to turn you in on yourself, but should foster in you a desire and willingness to go out to others, to be more loving and active in the world. The love that you experience in that personal, intimate relationship, is meant to make you more compassionate, more aware of the needs of others. It is a love that is not selfish and self-absorbed, but one into which you bring others, it is a love of hospitality. And just as in a marriage there are times you struggle in your relationship, there are also times we struggle in our relationship with God. At those moments we need the support of friends who will encourage us and give us hope. We need those who will help us believe when we seem to have lost the ability to believe. We need the assurance that we are not alone, no matter what happens.

We gather together in his name because doing so holds an incredible power. In the actual passage from Matthew, the same Gospel in which Jesus assures us he is with us always, Jesus tells us:

Again, amen, I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything for which they are to pray, it shall be granted to them by my heavenly Father. For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. (Mt. 18:19-20)

Maintaining belief, maintaining trust in God is not always easy. We gather together to support each other, to strengthen our belief, to share our joys and out sorrows, and to pray for and with one another. In doing so, Christ is in our midst. Sometimes we are the ones who need that tangible, sacramental presence of God that we experience in the love and concern of another. Sometimes that other person says exactly the words that we need to hear at that moment, and we know that God is present. But we can also not ever forget that sometimes we are gathered with others in prayer or at Church, because we are being called to be that sacramental presence of God to another, because someone else needs to hear something we will say or just needs someone to listen. Sometimes being with others is not about what we get, but what we will give, and the blessing of this is that in those graced moments, we too feel and know that God is present, that Christ is Emmanuel, God with us.

I attended the annual meeting of CTSA (Catholic Theological Society of America) this past weekend, and I wanted to share a bit about one of the talks with you! Julie Hanlon Rubio, a professor at St. Louis University, gave a talk on "A Familial Vocation beyond the Home." In her talk Dr. Rubio reminded us that in Familiaris Consortio Pope John Paul II speaks of the family as being given a commission to serve society and to be a communion of love. Families are meant to build communion and solidarity, a place in which we form deeper relationships with others both within our family, but also outside of our family. Dr. Rubio challenged our parishes to really form families, to be more than just a place of spiritual comfort and friendliness. She said that parishes should help families live out their familial vocation outside of the home, to challenge a lot of the tendencies in our culture about the pace of our lives and how we resist that frantic pace in order to build communion within our families so that we can then enter into service to the greater community. She noted that the practice of service is crucial to a Christian life, and that in parishes families are too often either "excused" from service or directed to service in their own homogeneous communities of parish and school. Only when we include families in the call to service, she warned, can Catholic social teaching penetrate the Church.

Dr. Rubio was drawing on John Paul II's apsostolic exhortation, Familiaris Consortio. I want to share some of the passages in this text that highlight the point Dr. Rubio was making in her presentation. On the topic of service, John Paul II states:

The social role of the family certainly cannot stop short at procreation and education, even if this constitutes its primary and irreplaceable form of expression. Families therefore, either singly or in association, can and should devote themselves to manifold social service activities, especially in favor of the poor, or at any rate for the benefit of all people and situations that cannot be reached by the public authorities' welfare organization (44).

He goes on to state that:

The social role that belongs to every family pertains by a new and original right to the Christian family, which is based on the sacrament of marriage. By taking up the human reality of the love between husband and wife in all its implications, the sacrament gives to Christian couples and parents a power and a commitment to live their vocation as lay people and therefore to "seek the kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and by ordering them according to the plan of God."(113) The social and political role is included in the kingly mission of service in which Christian couples share by virtue of the sacrament of marriage, and they receive both a command which they cannot ignore and a grace which sustains and stimulates them. The Christian family is thus called upon to offer everyone a witness of generous and disinterested dedication to social matters, through a "preferential option" for the poor and disadvantaged. Therefore, advancing in its following of the Lord by special love for all the poor, it must have special concern for the hungry, the poor, the old, the sick, drug victims and those who have no family (47).

And so I ask, with Dr. Julie Hanlon Rubio, how can we as Church help our families achieve their familial vocations beyond the home?

I was involved with a Cursillo retreat this past weekend and it reminded of me of three (well, more than three, but only three I am going to talk about here) very important pieces of my spiritual life. The first is the power of prayer. My own personal prayer is the cornerstone of my life. It is what centers me on a daily basis, both my formal morning prayer and the numerous informal ways that I interact with God throughout the day. My favorite line from the movie Shadowlands is Anthony Hopkins, playing C.S. Lewis, stating to his friend, "I don't pray because it changes God; I pray because it changes me. I pray because the need flows out of me constantly." I believe that prayer changes us and changes our relationships with one another. Those of you who know me well know that I am quite fascinated by quantum physics. I think that we will discover more and more about how truly interconnected we are through science, how truly interconnected we were created to be. I sometimes forget about this interconnectedness, about how much I also need the prayer of others, how much I am strengthened by knowing that others are praying for me and that I am not alone. The power of prayer is not simply my own prayer, but it is the prayer of those who pray with me and for me, which brings me to my second point.

I remembered this weekend (not that I had really forgotten, but had reinforced) the power of community. I have said many times that to be human is to be in relationship. There is an incredible amount of power in a group of people coming together in love and support and celebration. This piece of being human is why we worship as a community. My relationship with God is not just personal, it is also communal (or ecclesial in theological speak!). Part of the reason our relationship with God is also communal is that we are embodied. We experience the world in and through time and space. We also experience God in and through time and space, which means that our relationships with one another can mediate our experience of God. I can't even begin to describe how much I felt God present this past weekend in and through this group of women gathered on retreat. There is great power in community.

My third point is clearly the most obvious. I "remembered" the power of God. Again, not just the power of God in my own life, but hearing the stories of how God is present and acting in the lives of others (another reason why community is so important). My own faith is deepened and strengthened by that witness. I also believe that God was strongly acting in bringing this particular group of women together at this particular point in all of our lives. I find God works in that way quite often. We always say that in RCIA (the process of becoming Catholic) as well, that on any given year the group that is formed is the group that is meant to be together. In theology, this is what we call God working through secondary causes. I used to love to explain this to the teenage Confirmands at the parish, that God works in their lives through other events and people, so that yes, God can even work through their parents forcing them to attend Confirmation classes! Every woman on this retreat had different people and events that led her to be there. Some had planned to go on an earlier retreat, but life had interfered. Others were hesitant to go on this retreat but something pushed them. The result was what it was meant to be. Of course, I don't want to eliminate the role of freedom either. Maybe there were others we will never know about that were meant to be there as well, but were not open to the working of God in their lives at this moment. The great thing about the power of God is that a missed opportunity is rarely definitive; God simply works in our lives to offer us new opportunities. Wherever you are today and whatever you are doing, I hope you experience the power of prayer, community, and God in your life.

I want to share with you part of a mediation I wrote on Martha for a retreat this weekend: As we think about how we encounter Christ, I want to turn to the Scriptures to look at an encounter between Christ and Martha of Bethany.

As they [Jesus and the disciples] continued their journey he entered a village where a woman whose name was Martha welcomed him. She had a sister named Mary (who) sat beside the Lord at his feet listening to him speak. Martha, burdened with much serving, came to him and said, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me by myself to do the serving? Tell her to help me." The Lord said to her in reply, "Martha, Martha, you are anxious and worried about many things. There is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part and it will not be taken from her." Luke 10:38-42

Martha is a good and faithful woman, performing the duties that were expected of her. Jesus sees her efforts and loves her for them, but he invites her to set aside her concerns and enter into a deeper relationship. Like the rich young man who is too attached to his material possessions to surrender to God, Martha is too attached to duties and expectations to surrender. Maybe she is also attached to what others will think of her. We do not hear what she did after this – did she too let go of her concerns, her attachments and sit attentively at the feet of Jesus? Or did she maybe sit at his feet while still trying to cling to her attachments, half listening to his words, glancing anxiously back at the kitchen and wondering what they would do about a meal. Or looking nervously at the men around her, wondering if they were offended by her presumptuousness of sitting at the feet of the Master with the men, trying to be like one of the disciples. Would they tell the others in the village? What would the other women say? Imagine her unhappiness, wanting to be with Jesus and yet pulled away by the things that were distracting her, filling her mind. Imagine her sorrow once he was gone and she thought, if only I had taken more time to be with him.

OR did she freely give her heart over to the Lord, letting go of her attachments? Which story is yours? Do you find yourself free to give your whole heart to God or are you caught up in your attachments? What are your attachments? We all have them – for some they are material possessions, for others doubt. For some the attachment is a matter of letting their identities get caught up in their performance of certain roles – at work, as a parent, even as a member on a church committee! Are there areas where you lack the courage to trust God with all of the details of your life?

What would it take for you to let go of your concerns and spend some time sitting at the feet of the Lord? Surely Martha learned to do this over the course of her time with Jesus, because the Gospel of John tells us that when her brother Lazarus dies, she is able to profess her faith and belief, stating:

"Yes, Lord. I have come to believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world." John 11:27

Last Sunday we celebrated Trinity Sunday, so I want to offer you a couple of ideas to reflect upon, neither of which are my own! The first is my current favorite Trinitarian description, and it comes from Elizabeth Johnson in a Catholic Update she wrote titled, "Who is the Holy Spirit?" Johnson talks about the Trinity as God beyond us, God with us, and God within us. God beyond us refers to the first person of the Trinity and emphasizes the transcendence of God, the God who is incomprehensible mystery. Were God not beyond us, were we able to comprehend God, God would not be God, because God would then be something finite and graspable. Instead our God is infinite, and as such always beyond our finite minds. Karl Rahner talks about God as the horizon - we move closer but never arrive. He also talks about our asymptotic relationship to God. If you think back to your geometry classes, an asymptote is a curved line on a graph where the line continously approaches the axis, but will never actually touch the axis because the amount of space between the two can always be divided (click here for an image). While we never reach God by our own efforts, the good news is that we don't have to because God has reached us, God has drawn near to us. God with us refers to the second person of the Trinity, God Emmanuel, incarnate in Jesus Christ. God has entered into unity with humanity in the incarnation. At the end of Matthew's gospel, Jesus, Emmanuel, assures his followers,

"I am with you always, until the end of the age." Mt. 28:20

Finally God within us refers to the third person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit that dwells within us uniting us to the Father through the Son. Paul refers tells us,

"the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the holy Spirit that has been given to us." Romans 5:5

The second idea I want to leave with you is a passage from St. Athanasius, one of the early theologians who had a profound impact on the Church's understanding of the Trinity. This passage is part of the Office of Readings in the Liturgy of the Hours and is taken from Athanasius' First Letter to Serapion.

[T]he Father makes all things through the Word and in the Holy Spirit, and in this way the unity of the holy Trinity is preserved. Accordingly in the Church, one God is preached, one God who is above all things and through all things and in all things. God is above all things as the Father, for he is principle and source; he is through all things through the Word; and he is in all things in the Holy Spirit. . . . [W]hen the Spirit dwells in us, the Word who bestows the Spirit is in us too, and the Father is present in the Word. This is the meaning of the text: My Father and I will come to him and make our home with him. For where the light is, there also is the radiance; and where the radiance is, there too are its power and its resplendent grace.

This is also Paul's teaching in his second letter to the Corinthians: The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. For grace and the gift of the Trinity are given by the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit. Just as grace is given from the Father through the Son, so there could be no communication of the gift to us except in the Holy Spirit. But when we share in the Spirit, we possess the love of the Father, the grace of the Son and the fellowship of the Spirit. (Italics indicate quotation of Scripture.)

I wanted to share with you some comments about last week's blog that were sent to me in an email, because I think that they offer a lot to think about!

I just read your 5/7 Theological Reflections and was struck in particular by the specific phrase: "Chastity, while often understood as celibacy, actually means to remain true to one’s state in life." I was also impressed at how your thoughts seemed to somewhat parallel what I had read in Fr. Rolheiser's column: The Secret of a Monk’s Cell.

Since I can't really even paraphrase what Fr. Rolheiser said I will copy a few passages and underline [italicized here instead] to point out the similarities I see between your thoughts and his.

"This advice (to stay in one's cell) is being given to monks, to professional contemplatives, to persons living inside a monastic enclosure, to persons whose very vocation it is to live in solitude, to persons whose primary duty of state it is to pray in silence. In such a context, the word "cell" becomes a code-word that encapsulates the entire vocation and duties of state of a monk. Thus when Abba Moses says, "Go, sit in your cell, and your cell will teach you everything" he is, in effect, counselling due diligence and fidelity. Do what you came here to do! To remain in one’s cell is synonymous with fidelity.

And that’s sound spiritual advice for everyone, not just monks. Our "cell" is another word for our primary set of responsibilities, for our duties of state, for due diligence and fidelity inside of our vocations, relationships, marriages, families, churches, and communities. To "leave one’s cell" is to neglect our responsibilities or to be unfaithful. To let "our cell teach us everything" is to have faith that if we remain faithful inside of our moral values and our proper commitments then virtue and fidelity will themselves teach us what we need to know to come to maturity and sanctity."

First of all, let me say how profoundly I was struck by the insights offered here! I love the connection with being "in one's cell" and fidelity to our calling and the responsibilities those callings entail! I also think of the command to dwell in one's cell as the call to go within oneself, to spend time just being with oneself and God, again for those leading active lives as well as contemplatives. For me the line about "your cell will teach you everything" brings in that idea of self reflection as well. We come to know ourselves and our God through living our lives with faithfulness to our primary responsibilities and commitments. Likewise we find the energy to live that faithfulness through coming to know ourselves, taking some time to be in the "cell" of our own self, as well as in taking time to just be with and in God.

I highly recommend Ron Rolheiser as an author. I have frequently used his book, Against an Infinite Horizon, in one of the courses I taught.

On Sunday we celebrate Pentecost, and in doing so, we each celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit in our own lives and our commission as disciples to go out and continue the work of Christ in the world. Jesus calls us into a special relationship with God through our baptism giving us the mission of continuing his work of being the presence of God’s love to all people. Part of that mission is to spread the gospel message of God’s love among all people and to call others to join us as disciples of Christ. The Catholic tradition tells us that human beings have a natural ability to know and love God, that is to say, that human reason can lead a person to God, even if he/she has never been exposed to Christian revelation. Being created with the ability to know and love God means that all people are called to know and love God, regardless of whether or not they are Christian. People can know and experience the existence of God just by looking at the world around them and reflecting on their own experiences of love, goodness, beauty and truth. A brief study of history and other cultures witnesses to that truth when we see the phenomenon of so many people across different places and times having a belief in some type of God. Hence when missionaries go into a non-Christian territory, they are taught to look for the ways that God is already working among the people that live there before they try to teach people about God.

Too often people do not experience the Church as a sign of God’s presence in the world, but rather see the humanness and failings of the people that make up the Church. One of the greatest scandals of the Christian Church is the divisions between the different denominations. Thankfully, we have made great strides toward unity in the Christian Church in recent decades. I have always thought one of the greatest gifts of the Catholic Church is its principle of maintaining unity in diversity and diversity in unity; that we have many gifts, but the same spirit. In other words, there is a great blessing in the fact that the Church is able to hold together in the one Body of Christ so many people who come from different perspectives and who have different experiences of God and of life. We can celebrate our differences, while holding onto the firm foundation of our faith in one Lord, one baptism and one Church.

Our Church is made up of people who live out their baptismal calls in many different ways. Those who live out their baptismal vocation through religious life take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience (the evangelical counsels), but as disciples we are all called to be witnesses to the world through lives of poverty, chastity and obedience. We embrace poverty by not clinging to our possessions and by realizing that God has called us to be good stewards of our resources, making sure the goods of our world are fairly distributed. The first Christians actually held all of their good in common, dividing them “among all according to each one’s need (Acts 3:45).” Chastity, while often understood as celibacy, actually means to remain true to one’s state in life. Thus for single people, priests or religious, it means to be celibate; and for those who are married, it means to remain faithful to one’s spouse. Finally, all disciples are always called to be obedient to the will of God in their lives. As we celebrate this Pentecost, I pray that we will all feel renewed in the Spirit to recommit ourselves to living out our baptismal vocations, to being Church, to being the Body of Christ in the world.

All of our language about God is metaphorical. We use finite human words and concepts to try to capture something of our experience of the infinite and incomprehensible mystery of God. Theology has different ways of talking about this process. Aquinas used the idea of analogy to deal with this issue, in which we say, God is 'a', but God is not 'a' in any way we experience or understand 'a', God surpasses all human comprehension of 'a'. In other words, we say, God is love, but God is not love in the way we experience human love because God far surpasses any human way of understanding love. Other theologians will talk about dialectical theology (Barth) or the coincidence of opposites (Bonaventure), in a way that recognizes contradictions in our experience of God that simply cannot be reconciled by our human minds. Christian theology has a long-standing tradition of what we call cataphatic and apophatic theology. Cataphatic theology is all of the things we affirm about God. Apophatic theology is the theology of silence and darkness, the theology that says ultimately before the mystery of God we can say nothing because any word we utter ends up being false in some way, because the most intimate experience of God is an experience that can never be put into words. Nonetheless, because we are human and we do have a need to communicate, we must struggle to put our experience of God into words, even while acknowledging that those words and concepts will always fall short.

We run into trouble when we start to take our words and concepts too literally. We run into trouble when we do not adequately understand the historical context of certain images. I want to use two examples of this issue. The first is the statement in our creed that Jesus "is seated at the right hand of the Father." For much of my life I had a mental image of two thrones in heaven with God the Father in one and Jesus in the other (probably with a dove flying overhead). The problem with this image is that it is di- or tritheistic - it is an image of two (three, if you count the bird) gods. We profess a belief in one God. So what is behind this image? Only when I started to study Scripture more in depth did this image become clear to me. As I became more familiar with the imagery used in the Hebrew Scriptures to talk about God, I learned that the right hand of God is a reference to the saving power of God. The psalms are filled with references to this image. Just yesterday the psalm for daily mass used it:

Though I walk in the midst of dangers, you guard my life when my enemies rage. You stretch out your hand; your right hand saves me. -Psalm 138:7

God's "right hand" saves us, delivers us, upholds us, sustains us. (For references to God's right hand, click here!) One of my favorite references to this concept is in the Book of Job. When Job is questioning God, God responds by questioning him. God basically asks Job, "Are you God?" Did you create the earth? Can you command the morning or bring the rain? God says, if so, if you are God,

"then will I too acknowledge that your own right hand can save you." Job 40:14

In other words, if you are not God, then you are dependent on God's right hand to save you. So what does all of this have to do with the Creed? To say that Jesus is seated "at the right hand of God" is simply a metaphorical way of professing that Jesus is the saving power of God. It is Jesus who saves us, delivers us, upholds us, and sustains us. Like Job, we cannot save ourselves, but are utterly dependent on the saving power of God in Christ to save us. By taking that line of the Creed literally, we not only fall into heresy by imagining Jesus to be separate from God, we also miss the very power the image is meant to convey!

The other example I want to use is the image of God that Jesus gives us, the image of God as Abba. We translate this image as father, a word that in our usage often conveys a very formal parent-child relationship. The tragedy of that translation is that the power of Jesus' calling God Abba was precisely in the fact that it shattered that formality in the relationship between us and God. Abba cries out to God with a child's familiarity, trust, and affection. To refer to God as a father would not have been shocking in Jesus' time as the Hebrew Scriptures use such imagery to talk about God. The informal and affectionate relationship with God is the legacy Jesus was giving to his disciples and to all of us. We also miss the point if we focus on the fact that Abba is a masculine term. God is not male or female. To try to categorize God as either becomes heresy and idolatry. We use personal pronouns (which in our language are gendered) to refer to God because our relationship with God is personal, not because we take literally the gender of the pronoun. Therefore it makes no sense to get upset when people use either male or female terms to refer to God, because neither one should be taken literally and Scripture uses both (for feminine imagery, see for example the beautiful passages in the book of Wisdom or Proverbs!)

Language is one of our greatest gifts and biggest frustrations as human beings. Just think about your human relationships to know the truth of this statement. How marvelous that we have been created with this gift of the ability to communicate, and yet, how often our words fail to capture our intention. So much human misunderstanding is based on the fact that we struggle to capture our feelings and experiences with language. Our relationship with God is not only no different, the disconnect between our language and concepts and the reality of God is that much greater because of God is ultimately infinite and beyond our comprehension. Nonetheless, because we are in relationship with God and do experience God, we continue to use our words and concepts, no matter how fallible they are, to try to articulate and communicate the relationship that makes us who we are.

A couple of weeks ago a friend emailed me the following question, so I thought I would use it, along with my response, in my blog this week:

Does our soul have a beginning? I know once created (at conception?) we have eternal life which I presume to mean our souls of course. But I have been having a conversation with someone that thinks "we have no beginning, we are eternal". That is not my understanding. Would you enlighten me or perhaps you could blog on this?

Souls are created and so do have a beginning. Only God is without beginning. When we use the phrase "eternal soul," what is meant is that our souls are everlasting, that they have a beginning, but not an end. Thus we also talk about eternal life, that is, life without end (not without beginning). In theology the soul is considered the principle of life, and so would be understood to be created by God at the moment of conception giving life to the baby. For Thomas Aquinas all living things had souls - so plants have vegetative souls that enable the plant to process nourishment, etc., animals have sensitive souls which include the elements of nourishment, etc., but also basic feelings (e.g., an animal can be afraid), and humans have intellectual or rational souls which include all of the above but also intellect and will. For Aquinas, however, only the human soul was immortal. (Interestingly enough, Aquinas thought the human soul was given at the moment of "quickening," which made sense from his perspective in an age before modern science. Quickening was the moment when the woman first physically felt the baby move, and thus at that point the baby must have life, hence a soul.)

The idea of a soul with no beginning is a very dualistic idea popular in the gnostic (from the Greek for knowledge) understanding in which the souls were thought to have pre-existed and that they "fell" into matter which was evil. Thus the goal of life was to find the proper knowledge (gnosis) that enabled the soul to be liberated from the body and return to the spirit world. Gnostic Christianity (combining Gnostic beliefs and Christian beliefs) was very popular in the first centuries of the Church. This way of thinking was condemned by the Church. Nonetheless, the dualistic tendency persists to this day and was especially exacerbated by the dualistic philosophy of Descartes in the 1600s.

Today we try to move away from a dualistic understanding of body and soul to understand the human person as embodied spirit or enspirited/ensouled body. The spiritual aspect of the human person is only lived out in and through our bodies. The unity rather than the distinction is primary. The role of the body is so central to what it means to be a human person that we profess our belief in the resurrection of the body, though we don't know what that looks like or precisely what that means after death.

This is a great question, and I think a lot of people don't understand this, as I have heard of people refer to it as if our souls are waiting around up in heaven until a point where they choose or are assigned to "enter" a person and "come down" to earth. I blame that somewhat on Hollywood as well as the persistance of an underlying gnosticism! On a related note, people often refer to humans who have died as angels, and theologically speaking, angels are a completely different creature from humans. When humans die they are saints, not angels (and in fact while living we are also part of the communion of saints)! Angels, by the way, are also created, and while immortal also have a beginning. Only God is without beginning.

Not too long ago I watched the movie Freedom Writers and truly my eyes were opened. I consider myself to be pretty aware of many of the tragic circumstances in the world, but I was shocked at the words of teens who live in our very own country and describe themselves as living in an "undeclared warzone." Certainly I have read about and even talked about the problem of violence in the US, especially in our cities, in a concerned but rather detached way. The violence in our cities, for the most part, does not directly touch my life. Something about the direct honesty of the teens in this movie profoundly shook me up and made me aware of the the problem in a new way.

The movie is based on the true story of a teacher who inspires her students to write journals about their own experiences of violence and racism, which they ultimately end up publishing as a book, The Freedom Writers Diary. Needless to say, I bought the book after watching the movie. Erin Gruwell was a new teacher in a "rough" school who was shocked to learn that while most of her students had never heard of the holocaust, the majority of them had experienced being shot or having someone shoot at them. In an environment that was deeply divided between racial gangs, she set out to teach them the dangers of intolerance by helping them to understand the holocaust through the eyes of another teenager, Anne Frank. Inspired by Anne Frank and Zlata Filipovic (Zlata's Diary: A Child's Life in Sarajevo), the students realized that by telling their own stories, they could make an impact on the world. In one passage a student tells of getting jumped on the first day of school. She goes on to explain to the reader that the schools are just like the city:

All of them are divided into separate sections, depending on race. On the streets, you kick it in different 'hoods, depending on your race, or where you're from. And at school, we separate ourselves from people who are different from us. That's just the way it is, and we all respect that. So when the Asians started trying to claim parts of the 'hood, we had to set them straight. . . . Latinos killing Asians. Asians killing Latinos. They declared war on the wrong people. Now it all comes down to what you look like. If you look Asian or Latino, you're going to get blasted on or at least jumped. The war has been declared, now it's a fight for power, money, and territory; we are killing each other over race, pride, and respect (10).

In writing about the experience of losing a friend, another of the students says:

I've lost many friends, friends who have died in an undeclared war. A war that has been here for years, but has never been recognized. A war between color and race. A war that will never end. A war that has left family and friends crying for loved ones who have perished. To society, they're just another dead person on the street corner; just another statistic. But to the mothers of all those other statistics, they're more than simple numbers. They represent lives cut short, like more cut flowers. Like the ones placed on their graves (16).

The students write of their experiences of sexual and physical abuse, of being "jumped" into the gang, of buying a gun and shooting someone for the first time, of addiction to drugs, of being evicted from their homes, of being in prison, of not thinking about graduation because they do not know if they will even still be alive then. I realized that I listen to stories on NPR everyday about people living in Iraq in fear for their lives, afraid to walk down their streets, and I fail to have an awareness that people in my own country live in the same kind of pervasive violence and fear.

The story has a "resurrection" ending in that these students did survive. They did live and graduate and even went on to college because someone took the time and effort to believe in them, to invest in them, and to challenge them. Back in 1979 our bishops wrote Brothers and Sisters to Us, a pastoral letter on racism. In it they state:

In response to this mood, we wish to call attention to the persistent presence of racism and in particular to the relationship between racial and economic justice. Racism and economic oppression are distinct but interrelated forces which dehumanize our society. Movement toward authentic justice demands a simultaneous attack on both evils. . . . Major segments of the population are being pushed to the margins of society in our nation. As economic pressures tighten, those people who are often black, Hispanic, Native American and Asian -- and always poor -- slip further into the unending cycle of poverty, deprivation, ignorance, disease, and crime. Racial identity is for them an iron curtain barring the way to a decent life and livelihood.

The bishops call all of us to accountability:

Today in our country men, women, and children are being denied opportunities for full participation and advancement in our society because of their race. The educational, legal, and financial systems, along with other structures and sectors of our society, impede people's progress and narrow their access because they are black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian. The structures of our society are subtly racist, for these structures reflect the values which society upholds. They are geared to the success of the majority and the failure of the minority. Members of both groups give unwitting approval by accepting things as they are. Perhaps no single individual is to blame. The sinfulness is often anonymous but nonetheless real. The sin is social in nature in that each of us, in varying degrees, is responsible. All of us in some measure are accomplices. As our recent pastoral letter on moral values states: "The absence of personal fault for an evil does not absolve one of all responsibility. We must seek to resist and undo injustices we have not ceased, least we become bystanders who tacitly endorse evil and so share in guilt in it."(8)

It is sad to see that after almost 30 years we are still facing the same problems. This past September Catholic Charities published a report entitled, "Poverty and Racism: Overlapping Threats to the Common Good." The report concludes:

What motivates our concern about racism is our faith conviction that this is a “radical evil” which is not only absolutely incompatible with Christian faith and belief, but also a dire threat to our nation’s future. A new way of understanding what it means to be “American,” and who is included in that self-understanding, is urgently needed for both the integrity of our faith and our survival as a nation. Given the momentous shift occurring in our racial demographics, tolerating racial injustice and economic deprivation are realities we can no longer afford to indulge. We offer to both our church and society the following affirmations and convictions:
• Poverty and racial injustice are deeply intertwined and demand a simultaneous engagement if effective progress is to be made against either.
• Poverty and racial injustice are moral scandals that betray our national ideals of “liberty and justice for all.”
• Poverty and racial injustice are the results of human agency. They need not exist. This means that social reality can be other than the way it is. “Social life is created by human beings, by human choices and decisions. This means that human beings can change things. And therein lies the hope (Massingale, "About Katrina," 61).”

What does it mean to be Church? The Church is the sacrament of salvation. Sacraments are tangible realities that mediate intangible realities. So when people encounter the Church, they should experience a concrete tangible encounter with the love and mercy of God. The Church, however, is not the buildings in which we worship nor is it the hierarchy, though those pieces are certainly part of the Church. First and foremost the Church is all of us, those gathered in the name of Jesus Christ, baptized into his death and resurrection. It is not up to the cardinals and bishops to be signs of God's love in the world (though hopefully they are), it is up to us! At Easter we renew our baptismal vows. We recall that we have been chosen by God to be Church, to mediate God's compassion and love to the world. As baptized members of the Church, we are the body of Christ. We have been chosen to be members of the body of Christ, the tangible ongoing presence of Christ to all those we encounter. As I frequently remind those who are being Confirmed, the sacrament of Confirmation is not about you confirming your faith, it is God who confirms you, confirms that you have been called and chosen to be a disciple of Christ. The question is do you accept? The acceptance proclaimed in the sacraments of Baptism and Confirmation must be lived out in our daily lives. The Amen we say to the Body of Christ each time we go to mass is our commitment to be that body of Christ for others.

What a tall order! I am frequently overwhelmed to think that ideally when people enounter me, they are supposed to be encountering a concrete expression of God's love for them. How often I fall incredibly short of that, or even give the opposite impression. The good news is that we are not called to fulfill this vocation through our own efforts. We are called to be open to God working within us. We are called to be open to the gift of grace that enables us to mediate God's love and forgiveness to others. So often we fall into the trap of thinking we have to do everything on our own, and yet when we depend on our own resources is usually the time we end up in the most trouble! I do not mean, however, that we are not meant to make use of the gifts and talents that God has given us. Of course we should be using those gifts, but always with a sense of humilty, acknowleding that just because we think we are doing right, just because we think we are on the right side, does not necessarily make it so. Luckily we do not simply mediate God's love and forgiveness, we experience it ourselves and in fact can only be sacraments of that love and forgiveness because we have already received it ourselves. We love because God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19)!

We are also not called to this mission individually, but communally. Being Church emphasizes our interconnectedness with one another. We do not exist in isolation. In fact, we cannot exist in isolation. Humans are social creatures. We need one another. We depend on one another. We have been created to be in relation, in the image and likeness of our God who is Trinity, who is by definition relatedness. We come together because no one of us can possibly express the infinite love and mercy of God. We come together to experience the love and mercy of God in and through one another, to be community for one another and to accept the loving support of the community ourselves. Only in that way can we go out to the world and hope to share some glimmer of what we ourselves have been given.

Doubt goes hand in hand with faith. Faith, in many respects, is believing in spite of one's doubt, not in a irrational way, but in a way that accepts the doubt as part of the faith. I am not talking about blind faith where you simply close your ears to any contrary opinions, but a faith that is strengthened by engaging your own doubts and fears, facing them and confronting them. All relationships involve risk, and our relationship with God is no different in that respect. All relationships at times involve doubt, questioning the reality and strength of that relationship, especially in difficult times. Will the relationship hold? Does the other person truly care? The same questions can arise with God, especially when the circumstances of life lead us to a place where we feel most alone.

Our Sunday gospels of last week and this week enfold us between two stories of disciples experiencing doubt. Last week we had Thomas who needed that concrete, physical reassurance that Jesus had not abandoned him. This week we hear the wonderful story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus. The disciples, Cleopas and most likely his wife Mary (cf. John 19:25), had given up and were going home. They were discouraged and beaten. They had lost. They thought Israel was going to be redeemed, but instead the one they believed was Messiah had been crucified. Both Thomas and Cleopas and Mary doubted that Jesus was really who they had thought him to be. When things did not turn out as they had hoped and expected, they gave up. In many ways doubt is often a failure of imagination, an inability to envision possibility.

One of my favorite things about both of these stories is that Jesus specifically reaches out to the ones who are doubting. He deliberately addresses Thomas' concerns and invites him to "not be unbelieving, but believe." Luke's gospel tells us that Jesus "drew near and walked with" Cleopas and Mary on their journey of doubt. The doubt in both of these stories becomes the catalyst for a much deeper faith and a deeper relationship. Thomas cries out, "My Lord and my God." Cleopas and Mary come to understand the Scriptures in a new way, their eyes are opened, their hearts are burning, and they immediately set out to share their experience with the others. Those who doubted now become the proclaimers of the gospel.

In our own lives doubt can also lead us to a stronger, deeper faith and relationship. Coming through the times of our lives that challenge our belief that God is with us, that sometimes challenge our very image and understanding of who God is, can lead us to a place of deeper, intuitive trust in the fidelity of God, an experiential knowing that God is always with us even in our moments of doubt and dispair, and a place of letting God be God in all the mystery that entails.

Alleluia, Christ is risen! Happy Easter! I always love the fact that the church is SO crowded on Easter Sunday! How wonderful to see so many people attending, and I always hope we make it such a good experience people want to come back. A non-church going friend once complained that he hated to go into a church and see all of those people acting so pious who had committed so many sins. He could not stand the hypocrisy! I told him that that is why we go to church! We don't go to church because we are so holy, we go to church because we recognize that we desperately need God in our lives. The fact is, church should be a place where we welcome sinners with open arms, while at the same time acknowledging our own sinfulness and need for forgiveness. Jesus said, “Those who are well do not need a physician, but the sick do. I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners (Lk. 2:17).” The Gospel is all about revealing God’s mercy and forgiveness. Jesus Christ is the love and mercy of God in the flesh.

As a community, it is our job to make everyone feel welcome, including those society has marginalized. In doing so, we reflect the Kingdom of God. The Jewish traditions and law of Jesus’ time held quite strict purity laws. There were certain types of people with whom contact would make you ritually ‘unclean’ and thus unable to participate in the religious practices of the community. There were also certain professions that were looked at as being contrary to a faithful Jewish life. One example is a tax collector, who not only worked for the Roman system that was oppressing the Jewish people, but also earned his living by what he collected from people above and beyond the amount required by Rome. Jesus breaks down all of these boundaries between people. He commands that we love God and our neighbor. When asked who is to be considered our neighbor, Jesus tells the story of the good Samaritan. Samaritans were not ‘neighbors’ to most Jewish people! The Jewish people and the Samaritan people had had centuries of conflicts. Jesus broadens the concept of neighbor to include, not just members of one’s own family and community, but even one’s enemies. As we reflect on the all-embracing love of God in our own time of uncertainty and conflict, it is good to ask ourselves today: Who is our neighbor?

The early Christian community worshipped in the temple and then gathered in one another's homes for the breaking of bread. We hear in this Sunday's reading from the Acts of the Apostles that the Christians held all things in common and that their resources were divided equally among them, to each according to his or her need. Of course we also know that problems quickly arose, given the story of the two disciples who sell their property, but try to hold back some of the proceeds of the sale for their own use. Likewise Paul admonishes the Corinthians because those who had plenty to eat were eating in front of those who did not have enough to eat and were not sharing what they had. Paul tells the Corinthians that if they cannot recognize the body of Christ in their brothers and sisters, then they are not going to be able to properly discern the body of Christ in the Eucharist. We may not always practice hospitality and community to the extent we are called, but it is important to always strive toward that ideal nonetheless. Who are those in need among us? Do we see them? Do we reach out to them? Do we as community incarnate Christ? All those who joined us for the liturgy last Sunday, will they be back this Sunday? If not, what could we have done to have made them want to come back?

We stand between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, so I want to talk about the passion narratives that we hear this week. A few weeks ago, I went to an amazing talk by Donald Senior, C.P. (appropriately enough a priest of the Passionist community), a Scripture scholar and the president of Chicago Theological Union. While Senior talked about all four passion narratives, I want to share with you a little of what he said about Matthew, which we heard on Sunday, and John, which we will hear on Good Friday.

Matthew, following Mark, focuses on Jesus' humanness and solidarity with human suffering in the passion. Matthew focuses on Jesus as the obedient Son of God, paralleling the understanding of Israel as the Son of God in the Hebrew Scriptures (cf. Exodus 4:22). The idea of Jesus' sonship focus on his obedience and his trust. This relationship is shaken, but not broken, in Jesus' encounter with death. Senior points out that his death entails not only physical death, but the seeming loss of his mission, the shattering of his community and of his dreams for Israel. He prays in the garden that this cup might pass, but ultimately prays as he taught his disciples, "Your will be done."

On the cross, the religious leaders mock Jesus in the fashion of Psalm 22:

He trusted in God; let him deliver him now if he wants him. For he said, 'I am the Son of God.' - Matthew 27:43

All who see me mock me; they curl their lips and jeer; they shake their heads at me: "You relied on the LORD--let him deliver you; if he loves you, let him rescue you." - Ps. 22:9

The crowds mock the very relationship with God that has grounded Jesus throughout his life and his ministry, and Jesus cries out in response with the words of Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" In a lament psalm the first half of the psalm pours out all of the psalmist's frustration and anger, but psalmist does not stay in the place of despair. Rather he moves in the second half of the psalm to a place once again of trust in God and praise of God.

For God has not spurned or disdained the misery of this poor wretch, Did not turn away from me, but heard me when I cried out. - Psalm 22:25

Jesus cries out, but does so trusting that God hears him. He cries out again at the moment of his death, and gives up his spirit, literally his breath. Senior pointed out that Matthew changes the verb from Mark's more raw "loud scream" (toned down in our translations as "a loud cry") to "cried out again" to bring to mind that reassurance of the Psalm that God hears those who cry out. Jesus does not "expire" or "breath out" as in Mark, but hands over his spirit in a final act of trusting obedience to God. Senior pointed out that for the Israelites, our breath was given to us by God and belongs to God. Jesus gives his breath back to God in a act of loving surrender, and the result is cataclysmic for the entire world - the veil in the sanctuary is torn in two, the earth quakes, rocks are split, tombs open, and the dead are raised. All that seemed hopeless is given new life - Jesus' trust in God is vindicated. Senior sums up: God is faithful even in the midst of our anger and doubt.

John's gospel tells a very different story of the passion. Jesus in John's gospel is the Word of God, the revelation of God to the world. And what does God say to the world? "For God so loved the world . . . " (Jn. 3:16) Senior points out that the most powerful sign/symbol/word of God's love is the death of Jesus.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. - John 15:13

In John's gospel love and life triumph over death. Jesus walks to his death in supreme confidence - the hour of his glory has come. The soldiers fall down before him. Senior points out that in John, Pilate brings Jesus out before the crowd's and seats him "on the judge's bench." Jesus is the true judge. Pilate fears Jesus.

Death in John is the completion of Jesus' mission. Jesus' crucifixion, his being "lifted up," is his exaltation, his ascension to the Father. He returns to the Father to prepare a place for those he loves. For John's gospel, death is communion with God. Senior sums up: death is the portal into communion with God, with the love of God.

As we stand between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, between the anguish of death and the confidence of God's love and faithfulness in the midst of our human turmoil, we also stand on the anniversary of the war in Iraq, a war that has now lasted five years. It seems somehow appropriate that a day that so aptly illustrates part of the sinful and anguished human condition falls between these two readings of the passion. So once again I ask you to pray for peace in Iraq and the world and wisdom for the leaders of our country and Iraq. Let us turn to God with all of our doubt and anger and somehow trust that God stands by us even in our darkest moments. Let us trust that all those who have tragically died in this ongoing cycle of violence have been taken up into the love of God. Let us move through Palm Sunday and Good Friday to celebrate the resurrection of Easter.


To read more of Donald Senior, see his books:
The Passion Series, 4 Volumes, Liturgical Press, 1985-1991.
You can also access some of his commentary on the passion narratives at:
http://www.cptryon.org/xpipassio/passio/index.html

Last week I spoke of sin, so this week I want to talk about freedom! The Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner had an axiom that can be summed as “God and humans don’t compete.” In other words, we do not lose our freedom when we surrender to the love of God, but rather we become fully free precisely in that surrender. Another way Rahner puts it is to say that dependence on God and human freedom are in direct proportion to one another, i.e. when one increases, the other also increases. They are not in a relationship of inverse proportion (in which if one increases, the other decreases).

From the time of St. Augustine, the Catholic tradition has made a distinction between freedom and freedom of choice. Freedom is our ability to love God above all things. It is our ability to be the people God created us to be. It is this freedom that we lost in the fall. To put it another way, not having this freedom is part of what we mean when we talk about having original sin. We are born incapable of actually loving God above all else. We can only love God in such a way because of God’s grace.

So if we have some understanding of freedom, what is freedom of choice? Freedom of choice is exactly what it sounds like, the ability to make choices, to decide or choose between this and that. Without God’s grace, human choice tends toward the things of this world. It is God’s grace that gives us the ability to love God, allowing good choices to flow from that love.

According to St. Augustine, who quotes St. Paul, grace is primarily “the love of God . . . poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us (Rom. 5:5).” Scripture tells us that “we love because God first loved us (1 Jn. 4:19).” God reaches out to us, but we must accept God’s offer. Of course, we are only capable of accepting the offer because of God’s grace; but nonetheless, as one of my teachers used to say, God won’t save us without our ‘yes’. God wants to share his love with all people, but at the same time, God allows us to choose whether or not to accept that love. God liberates us by giving us grace which frees us from sin and empowers us to do what is good. Yet even with God’s grace we are subject to the temptations of sin. We still have freedom of choice and can choose to do good or evil. However, in surrendering to God’s love and in choosing the good, our freedom, that is our ability to love God above all else, increases; and we continue to choose what is good because it is part of who we are and who we were created to be.

In each and every moment of our lives, we get to choose who we are, who we are going to be. Are we going to live up to all of the potential, all of the gifts with which God created us? Are we going to choose to close ourselves off from God, from love, from all that we could be? We don't always make the right choices, but we also have the incredible gift of God's mercy, love, and forgiveness that picks us up when we fall and empowers us to start again. Each day, each moment, can be a moment of new life, of better choices, of resurrection.

Lent is a time when we reflect on our own sinfulness and shortcomings in preparation to renew our baptismal vows at Easter. We have all been created in the image and likeness of God; but we have also experienced the reality of original sin in our world. Original sin is the brokenness within us that is a part of being human and the fact that every single one of us is in need of the love, mercy, and forgiveness offered to us in and through Christ, i.e., salvation. Beyond the human condition, we have all experienced personal sin. If most of us are honest, we can probably acknowledge with St. Paul that there are times when,

“What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate. (Rom. 7:15).”

He refers to those times when we do the things we know are wrong and then wonder why we did them in the first place. All of us are sinful at times; it is part of being human. The good news is that Christ has liberated us from sin and death. Christ is our physician who heals what is broken within us and restores our relationships with God, other people and ourselves. Our human reality is always a mixture of sin and grace. Despite the bad choices we make, God is always there loving us and forgiving us through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is that presence of God in our lives that stirs our hearts to do what is right and to overcome our weaknesses.

Sin is not just personal; it is also communal or social. All you have to do is turn on the TV or radio to experience the reality that we live in a sinful world. As we hear the stories of more deaths in Baghdad and Jerusalem, as we watch the tension unfolding in Columbia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, it is clear that humanity has still not reached a point where we can solve conflict without violence. Each of us is indirectly responsible for the violence in the world. The Church calls this condition social sin. It involves sins that we do not directly commit, but are all implicated in by being members of the global human community. This social sin is often built right into the structures of our world.

In the midst of a world of social sin, when we look around and at times feel despair, it is important to remember that Christ has already won the victory over sin and death. In the midst of the darkness of war and violence, we must remember that Christ is the light that has come into the darkness, the light that the darkness cannot overcome. We must remember that after death comes resurrection. Maybe we can’t solve the problems of the world, but each of us can walk a path of continual conversion, allowing Christ to be our guide and allowing the Spirit into our hearts. We see God at work in the world when we as individuals, with the gift of freedom, allow God to work in and through us. Paul VI says, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Each of us can be peacemakers in our own lives, both in our actions and through our prayers.

I would like to ask all of you to continue praying for peace throughout the whole world, for all of the people who are serving our country in the military and their families, as well as for the people of Iraq who are also our brothers and sisters in Christ. I also ask that you pray for the leaders of our nation and the nations of the world, that they may be open to the guidance of the Holy Spirit. As we move through these final weeks of Lent toward Easter, let us find hope in the resurrection and in our God who brings life from death.

"I was blind and now I see." This is not only a line from the famous hymn, "Amazing Grace"; these words are spoken by the blind man in the passage from John's gospel that we will hear this Sunday. Blindness in the gospels is always a metaphor for coming to faith. The man in John's gospel is healed and becomes able to physically see, but much more important is the fact that he comes to believe in Jesus. Interestingly enough, this man does not come to Jesus and ask to be healed; Jesus takes the initiative in response to the disciples' question about whether the man or his parents had sinned. The man does respond to Jesus by doing what he is told - going to wash in the Pool of Siloam, but as a result, he does not see Jesus face to face. By the time he is healed and able to see, he is no longer in Jesus' presence. Consequently when he is questioned by the authorities about who Jesus is, he cannot tell them. He does maintain his belief that Jesus must be a man of God. Furthermore, when Jesus approaches him at the end of the story to ask him if he believes in the Son of Man, he does not seem to realize that Jesus is the one who healed him until he is told. When he asks who the Son of Man is that he might believe in him, Jesus responds, "You have seen him." In other words, the blind man recognized Jesus, who he was and that the source of his power was God, without ever having physically seen him. He has "seen" him without being able to see him. His response to Jesus' statement is to believe and to worship. The Pharisees are the foil to the blind man. They have no problem with their physical sight, but are unable to see Jesus, unable to recognize who he is and that the source of his power is God. It is precisely in their claim to have clear sight that Jesus faults them for being sinful.

Interestingly enough, I watched the movie Amazing Grace this past weekend, the true story about William Wilberforce, the man who fought tirelessly to end the slave trade in England, to get the people of his time to overcome their blindness to the evil that was being done in their midst and to see the truth. He was greatly influenced by his minister, John Newton, the former slave ship captain turned minister who wrote the hymn, "Amazing Grace," about his conversion experience. At the end of his movie, the minister has gone physically blind, but is finally willing to share his own story of being involved with the slave trade in order to open the eyes of others, to heal their spiritual and moral blindness.

Where are our own spiritual and moral blindspots? Individually and collectively? How are we participating in the healing ministry of Jesus, healing our own and others' blindness? Here at the parish on Tuesday night, we watched Dead Man Walking, and while no one is physically blind in the movie, Sr. Helen Prejean's eyes are certainly opened through her encounter with a man on death row. She in turn has done much to open other people's eyes on the issue of the death penalty in our country. Both movies also brought home the realization that individuals can change the world. We have each been created with great potential, and God's grace, each of us can see the world in a new way and help others to do so as well!

Last Sunday we read about the transfiguration. The transfiguration is one of the most important stories in the gospels because it tells us who Jesus is and who we are called to be in Christ. In the transfiguration, Jesus' face shines like the sun and his clothes are as white as light. The language describing Jesus echoes the language describing Moses on Sinai in Exodus 33-34 indicating the manifestation of the divine, the appearance of God to Israel. Similar language is used of the tent of the tabernacle in Exod. 40, where the cloud covers the tent and the glory of the Lord enters the tabernacle, the dwelling place of God. For Christians, Jesus is the dwelling place of God, the temple of God, the very presence of God. Jesus manifests the glory of God.

Mark puts the transfiguration right at the center of his gospel, and connects it to two other moments, the baptism of the Lord and the crucifixion. Mark's gospel opens with the baptism of the Lord, in which God says to Jesus, "You are my beloved Son, with you I am well pleased." In the transfiguration we hear God say to the disciples, "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him." Finally, on the cross Jesus breathes his last, the veil of the sanctuary is torn in two, and the centurion (the Roman soldier) says, "Truly this man was the Son of God." The same one who is crucified is the transfigured one. God's glory is manifest not just in the transfigured Christ, but in the crucified Christ.

The transfiguration, however, is not just about Christ. It is also about us. The veil in the sanctuary of the temple is what separated the Jewish people from the tabernacle of God, the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest was allowed to enter the Holy of Holies, and he only did so once a year. At Jesus' death, the veil is torn in two; that which separated God and humanity is rendered asunder. No more is there a barrier between us - we are united in the person of Christ crucified and risen. In and through our union to Christ, we too are transfigured. We become tabernacles, dwelling places, of the presence of God. We are to manifest the glory of God in the world. The same Spirit that transforms the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ transforms/transfigures US into the body of Christ. We are divinized. Christ became human so that we might become divine. We do not become God, but we become more and more God-like, more and more the image and likeness of God we were created to be.

Today is Valentine's Day, and appropriately I have been reading reflections on love from Thomas Merton's book, No Man is an Island, which I got as a gift from a friend this past Christmas. I have often thought it unfortunate that our concept of love on Valentine's Day tends to be a bit self-centered. Too often it is either about a couple in love focusing on their own relationship (not that that is in any way a bad thing) or a single person mourning the lack of a romantic relationship in his/her life. I would love to see a Valentine's Day when everyone focuses on loving as God loves - a day when we love those who are poor and most vulnerable in society, those who are downtrodden or the outcasts in our community, and yes, even our enemies. Of course, I guess that is supposed to be our focus every day!! Even the celebration of the love between a couple in a relationship should always be the celebration of a love that ultimately manifests itself in loving others. The concrete expression of this is when a couple has children, but it should not in anyway be limited to having children, but should extend out into the wider community. Love should ultimately make more of us, make us go outside of ourselves. A love that only turns us inward is a love that is lacking in maturity.

Thomas Merton reflects that

a happiness that is diminished by being shared is not big enough to make us happy. . . . True happiness is found in unselfish love, a love which increases in proportion as it is shared. There is no end to the sharing of love, and therefore, the potential happiness of such love is without limit.

My challenge to those who are in relationships this Valentine's Day would be to reflect on how your love enables you to go out toward others. How do you share your love with others? My challenge to those of us who are single is to reflect on what it truly means to love and be loved, and then let the love God has for us pour through us and touch all of the people we encounter in our lives.

Lent is one of my favorite seasons of the Church year. I know that may sound strange, as Lent is often seen as a time of penance, but I have a different vision of Lent. For me, Lent is a time of conversion. In Greek the word for conversion is metanoia, literally a turning around. It is a time when we consciously focus on turning our hearts back to God. We try to spend a little more time with God in prayer. We make an extra effort to give to the poor and those in need, whether that need be physical, emotional or spiritual. We also fast, keeping ourselves in solidarity with those who do not have a ready supply of food as so many of us do.

Traditionally people ‘give something up’ in Lent. Such a practice can be a good way to be more mindful of all of the blessings we often take for granted on a day to day basis. I often add something to my life in Lent instead of or in addition to giving something up. Usually I add a way in which I will spend more time with God. It may be 10 minutes set aside to pray each day or it may be going to mass on a weekday each week. Whatever it is, adding something or giving something up, there is a certain discipline involved in our spiritual practices at Lent. We all maintain a measure of discipline around those things that are important in our lives. Most, if not all, of us are disciplined about getting up in the morning and going to work, because we know we would be fired if we didn’t have that discipline. Often we have a certain discipline to achieve a certain goal – we diet to lose weight, we practice to become a better pianist or basketball player, we study to get a certain degree. The word ‘discipline’ has such negative connotations because we think of it as punishment, something that happens to a child who misbehaves. That idea of discipline is not what I am talking about here. I am talking about the kind of discipline that we enjoy. It is a discipline that focuses our lives in the direction we want to go. It is the discipline that ‘turns us around’.

As good as such discipline is, it is not the goal of Lent. It is the means, not the end. The goal of Lent is to enter into a deeper relationship with God, the God who is the source of our salvation and who alone can fulfill all of our deepest longings and desires. The reading that we hear on Ash Wednesday is one of my favorites. In the reading, the prophet Joel tells the people what God desires. “Even now, says the Lord, return to me with your whole heart (Joel 2:12).” God tells us to “rend our hearts, not our garments (Joel 2:13).” It is not so much our outward actions that are important as our inward dispositions.

Lent can be a special time of retreat that prepares one to enter into the joy of the resurrection at Easter. In this time of conflict in our world, when it is so easy to turn to despair, we are called to remember that we are an Easter people. As such, we believe that the victory over sin and death has already been won. As we watch new members come into our community at the Easter Vigil, each of us can renew our own membership in the Body of Christ. We take these weeks of Lent to prepare for that moment, so that we can once again affirm who we are and what we believe. We take these weeks of preparation to place our hopes and our dreams for the future of the world in the hands of the God who loved us into life.

I was so inspired yesterday listening to a talk by Elizabeth Johnson (very well known contemporary theologian) on "Friends of God and Prophets: Toward an Inclusive Community" (click here to read the talk yourself!) that I wanted to share a couple of the points she made. (By the way, she also has a book titled Friends of God and Prophets.)

The first point that really struck me was the idea that the Church has been gifted with both office and charism. Office is what ensures right order within the Church, offering stability through the three-fold ministry of leading, teaching, and sanctifying, a participation in Christ's own ministry as priest, prophet, and king. While we talk about office in reference to those holding positions in the institutional Church, do not forget that each of us were also anointed priest, prophet, and king at our baptisms, marking our own vocation and participation in Christ's ministry. In terms of charism, Johnson explains that

the role of charism, freely given in unpredictable ways by the Spirit, is to break through routine, apathy, and even corruption with a renewed sense of the gospel for different times and places. This impulse has historically led to the rise of religious orders, new forms of spirituality, and movements for reform, among other events. To use Hildegard of Bingen's image, these help to keep the sap flowing strong and green in the branches, refreshing the institutional church grown gray with bureaucracy, meanness, or fear.

Johnson reminds us that both of these, office and charism, are gifts in the Church, but that they also exist in a certain tension with each other. I would like to suggest that this dynamic plays out not only on a global level in the Church, but also on a local level in our own parishes. Certain individuals in the parish are gifted with the ability to bring a sense of stability and continuity to the parish. Certainly the parish staff is typically focused more on the leading, teaching, and sanctyifying ministries within the parish in the day to day life of the parish. There is also a need and a place, however, for charism in the parish. Hopefully the staff is open to this gift as well as the gift of office, but ultimately I believe this gift must come from the community itself. We need individuals in the parish who are open to the Spirit and renew us in our sense of mission and inspire us as a community to breathe new life into our ministries. We need individuals who, in Johnson's words, break us out of our apathy and call us to read the gospel in a new way. Each of us has that potential, if we are open to the calling of the spirit.

The second point Johnson makes in her talk is her definition of what it means to be a friend of God and a prophet--in short, a saint! She reminds us that we are all saints (literally holy ones) and that the word was initially used in Christianity to describe the living community, not those who have died. She also reminds us that to be a saint is not a matter of being a good and moral person, but is simply a statment of the fact that we participate in God's holiness. She emphasizes this fact, stating

let me underscore a key point: this holiness is not primarily an ethical matter, being holy as being innocent of sin or morally perfect or engaged in pious practices or something earned by one's own merits. Rather, it is a consecration of the very being of this people due to God's free initiative. They participate in God's own holiness, a deep identity that flows out into responsibility to bear witness in the world, in accord with the loving kindness and faithfulness of God that now marks their own being.

The fact that we ARE holy hopefully leads us to be better people, to be a friend of God and a prophet through the grace of the Holy Spirit dwelling within each of us. Johnson explains that

to be a friend means to be freely joined in a mutual relationship marked by deep affection, joy, trust, and support in adversity; knowing and letting oneself be known in an intimacy that flows into common activities; as in Abraham, "friend of God"(Jas 2:23); as in Jesus' pledge, "No longer do I call you servants, but ... friends" (Jn 15:15).

What an incredible image of our relationship with God! She goes on to add that

to be a prophet means to be called to comfort and to criticize in God's name because, being a friend, your heart loves what God loves, namely this world, and you want it to flourish. When harm comes to what you love, prophets speak truth to power about injustice, thus creating possibilities of resistance and resurrection.

The line that actually caught my attention and my imagination was the idea that being a prophet means being called to comfort. I am very familiar with the idea of being a prophetic voice in the sense of speaking for those who have no voice or being called to challenge the systems of oppression in the world in which we live. I have never given any thought to the idea that to be a prophet is also to be called to comfort. Yet isn't one of the most famous lines (thanks to Handel) in Isaiah, "Comfort, give comfort to my people, says your God" (Is. 40:1)? Certainly there is a tradition of the prophets railing against all that is wrong in the world and in their communities, but there is an equally strong tradition of the prophets offering the people reassurance of God's love, mercy, and faithfulness and reassurance that the community would survive and ultimately prevail against adversity. How do we fulfil our prophetic role in the world in terms of being a voice of hope?

The headlines on the webpage of The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel once again delve into the issues of sexual abuse and lawsuits in the archdiocese. Immediately below that story is a story on the rather grim financial future of the archdiocese. We are in a time in our Church and our world where we need prophets who will criticize, but who will also comfort. We need the gift of charism, calling us to "break through routine, apathy, and even corruption with a renewed sense of the gospel" so that we can "help to keep the sap flowing strong and green in the branches, refreshing the institutional church grown gray with bureaucracy, meanness, or fear." More than ever it seems we are being called to be the community of saints right now, our hearts loving what God loves, fulfilling our vocation as friends of God and prophets.

I met with one of our prayer groups recently because questions had arisen in their group about heaven, purgatory, and hell. Since this topic has come up many times in various conversations I have had with people, I decided it might be a good topic to address here!

One of the things that I love about being Catholic is our understanding of the communion of saints. In the very simplest terms, the communion of saints is our understanding that we are in relationship with all of those who have gone before us and all of those who will come after us. We believe that in death life is not ended, it is only changed. Likewise our relationships with those who have died do not end, they change. All of God's people are saints, those living and those dead. A canonized saint is simply someone the Catholic Church has definitively proclaimed to be with God in heaven. It is very important to note that the Church has never definitively proclaimed anyone to be in hell.

One of the immediate difficulties in talking about what happens after death (besides the obvious fact that we have not yet died) is that our existence after death is no longer one of time and space. Due to the fact that our existence here is in time and space, it is absolutely impossible for us to think without thinking in terms of time and space. Hence the end of my last paragraph talked about being "in heaven" or "in hell" as if they were places to which we go. They are not places so much as states of existence. Heaven implies an existence in union with God and hell implies a lack of union with God.

So much of what we say about heaven and hell is speculative. Some say hell is the absence of God. I have a hard time accepting that because I believe God is always present to us and loving us no matter what. I do believe that hell might be our own inability to recognize and accept God's presence and love. I have also speculated that if there is some need in death to recognize the ways in which we have hurt people (see the section on purgatory below), there are people for whom that process might last an eternity because the painful impact of their actions goes on for generations. Hitler comes to mind, as the Holocaust still causes us a great deal of pain to this day, and I believe that it always will. Of course with that speculation, I have fallen into the trap of conceiving of hell in terms of time. Hans Urs von Balthasar is one of my favorite theologians on this subject. In his book, Dare We Hope That All Men Are Saved?, he suggests that perhaps no one will ultimately end up in hell because of God's universal salvific will. If God wills the salvation of all people (1 Tim. 2:3-4), can God's will really be ultimately frustrated? Nonetheless von Balthasar accepts hell as a reality, but he very wisely cautions that it is a reality each of us must hold up before ourselves as we judge our own way of living and being in the world. It is not a reality for us to hold up before others, placing ourselves in the position of God to judge the possibility of another's eternal damnation (another trap I fell into with my speculation about Hitler!).

Many people ask me if we still believe in purgatory (a funny question, since I cannot actually tell you what you believe!). Yes, the Church does still teach the concept of purgatory. We do not (and technically the official teaching of the Church never did) teach the concept of limbo. Babies who die are with God. What kind of God would we believe in, if we did not credit God with having at least as much compassion and mercy as we ourselves have? God's compassion and mercy far outweighs our own abilities in that regard! Purgatory is part of our doctrine. It is not, however, a time and space concept as we so often have heard it talked about, as if we get 10 years in purgatory (which for some reason seems to be some sort of mini-hell with flames and torments in many people's imaginations), but might get out in 7 with good behavior and a lot of prayers from those still living. Purgatory simply refers to the process of purgation, the purifying that occurs in death that allows us to stand face to face with our God. The process that "burns away" all that still holds us back from complete and total union with God. In that regard, it still makes a lot of sense to pray for those in purgatory in that we are praying for those who are going through that process. In a conversation with our youth minister not to long ago, she told me that for her the concept of purgatory involved letting go of the things that were still holding us back from God, the attachments, desires, and addictions that we choose over God in our day to day lives. The continuity between the life we live now and the concept of purgatory is that we can do much of that "letting go" in this life, but that which we are unable to let go of in this life still must be released in order for us to be in union with God after death.

The theologian Karl Rahner talks about standing before God and having the love of God burn through us like fire (cf. TI 1:311-312). The analogy I always like to give is to think of a time when you did something you knew was very wrong and your parents found out, but instead of yelling at you or punishing you, they just reacted by loving you. The self-realization of both your own short-coming and the love that forgives that short-coming is very humbling and purifying, and it can burn like fire. I think that purgatory involves a coming to terms with and accepting God's absolutely unconditional love for us. The purification process is a recognizing and accepting who we were in our lives, with all of the failings and short-comings that life involved and all of the ways in which we hurt others, and then accepting that God sees all of that about us and still loves us beyond our wildest imaginings. To me the concept of purgatory is not a frightening concept, but a concept that embodies God's love and mercy.