Blood, Sweat, and Fears

"If your enemies see that you grow courageous, and that you will neither be seduced by flatteries nor disheartened by the pains and trials of your journey, but rather are contented with them, they will grow afraid of you." --Blessed Henry Suso

I was happy to make it to Confession this past Saturday. I try to go once a month. Typically, I leave the Confessional and am awash with a sense of renewal, so grateful for the love and forgiveness of the Savior, a kind of spiritual high that lasts a good while. This past time I went, however, I experienced relief and gratefulness, but it was not long before I got home that I started to feel really...afflicted. It wasn't doubt in forgiveness, or ungratefulness, or the opposite of any of those consolations received. It was, simply, a lack of consolation that is persisting still.

It's hard to recognize what's going on sometimes in the spiritual life when you are just an amateur Joe Catholic, not a professed religious or someone advanced. You can feel like a baby sometimes who has a fever but doesn't know what a fever is, who is coming down with something for the first time. The difficulties are somewhat compounded by the occasional intersection of spiritual and mental malaise, as it pertains to my particular situation.

Though I have had minimal symptoms in the past eight years or so, I am always cognizant of the fact that I have a clinical diagnosis and that my brain may be especially sensitive in ways other people's are not. It is a vulnerability, can be a target. So I have to guard it by due diligence in as much as I am able, and ask my guardian angel to stand watch when I am not able.

My fear has always been that authentic spiritual experiences (not that I go looking for them; I am referring to those I have had) would be offset or discounted on account of being a person who could be labeled 'mentally ill' and have the medical records to prove it. I could do without a "spiritual" experience for the rest of my life if only I was able to be faithful to God and do His will in all things. But that itself--resting and having the assurance of doing His will--is a consolation that is of supreme comfort.

So, my responsibility as a man, a husband, father, provider, etc, is to stay healthy, physically but especially mentally, and avoid to the best of my ability that which would compromise my mental equilibrium. Being in a state of grace and committed to prayer and spiritual exercises has really strengthened and fortified not only my spirit but my mind as well from malevolent influence. That has not always been the case in the past, as my mind is a vulnerable portal for the influence of the Enemy to get a foothold in. It can be scary, too, because if your mind turns against you, how can you fight? How can you fight your own mind, your own self?

Back to that topic of delegitimization of the spiritual on account of the mental. Like I said, I could go without spiritual experiences, but what's hard is when you're trying to discern between the two. My brother (who is not a believer) asked me one time when we were took a break in a shelter while hiking a snowpacked trail in the Green Mountains of Vermont--"how do you know when you're talking to God and when you're just talking to yourself?" Now this was maybe 15 years ago, but it was hard to answer. Today, too, I go back and forth: when am I flooded by the euphoria of grace and love, and when am I, in fact, gripped in a state of mania? When in the depths of the pit spiritually and when I need to make an appointment with my psychiatrist to help counter an extended bout of depression?

I strongly dislike when people who suffer from mental illness will conflate their experiences in these states with the mystical, calling their depression a "dark night of the soul." Depression may be a dark night, but it is a dark night of the mind not the soul. I have experienced, painfully, the former, but I am not mystic and my dark nights of the soul have been the relatively minor (but still painful) periods of desolation.

Desolation, a temporary darkening of the mind and disturbance of the will and emotions, is permitted by God to purify the souls of his followers. It may be caused by the evil spirit or brought on by a variety of other causes, but it is always purposeful, namely to withdraw a person's affections from dwelling on creatures and bring them closer to the Creator.

Prayer is, well, hard. Harder than usual. That doesn't mean you don't do it. My spiritual affect is lower. Fervor has died down to an ember. You're just kind of putting one foot in front of another. It's best, according to St. Ignatius and other masters of the spiritual life, to maintain trajectory and not make major decisions in such a state. I know it's not forever, that it's a period. My faith sustains me in those periods even when I can't feel it. It is a comfort because it is supernatural, from outside myself, not reliant on myself--unlike in depression, when you feel it will never end and you have no mental recourse to tell you otherwise. For great saints like St. Teresa of Calcutta, that period of spiritual desolation, the withdrawal of comfort and consolation, can last years and decades even. It is a proving ground, a furnace of white hot love that sears in it's seeming absence, especially for someone who has grown to rely on God in all things. When He feels as if He is not there, it can be excruciating.

But without desolation, consolation means very little. Without crucifixion, there is no resurrection. It is part and parcel of what we are called to as Christians. So, we have to go through it. We don't always know how long it will last, but that is up to God, since He uses it for His purposes. Our job is to remain faithful, even in our self-doubt about what we are doing and how we are serving Him, when the Enemy fills our head with negative thoughts and temptations, when he seeks to exploit our (my) vulnerable mind to get a foothold. Double down, even if the rituals of prayer seem like just that. Keep praying the rosary, despite the dryness. Keep going to Mass, every day if possible, when it's tough to get there. Keep the faith, when you don't know if you'll come out the other side.

I know there is a reason for this present period of temptation and desolation. I have something I'm dreading coming up next month that I am responding to out of obedience, to what I feel I am called to do by the Spirit, but I don't want to do it. There are little things, little "yes"s in our life, and there are big "yes"s too, and this feels like one of those big yes's. So, maybe this is God's way of preparing me and getting me ready, I don't know. All I know is I trust Him more than I trust myself, and just want to do His will and be faithful. This too will pass, I'm sure. But it's hard when you're in it--the loneliness and desolation, the doubt, the flat dryness, the effort it takes being compounded. Thanks be to God for it all.

When You Can't Take The Stairs

Many days--most days--I'm really not sure I'm going to make it. I know that sounds overly pious and fatalistic. It does not minimize my hope for salvation. I try to keep my eye on the prize, on the cross. But my sins and weaknesses, my pride, my self, runs so deep, knocking me down as soon as I get back up from the last beatdown, it is very very clear that I am too weak for perfection and that I have no hope for salvation in the slightest under anything I could every accomplish.

That is not a bad thing to realize. We are not meant to save ourselves in the Christian life. "Good people" do not go to Heaven because they are good. The more we realize our dependance on Christ for salvation, the more we will embrace our weakness and (paradoxically, bien sûr) it is in weakness that we are made strong (2 Cor 12:9). I am too weak to do great works, to attain great heights of mysticism, contemplation, or prayer. But I have a guide that I look to and lean on à la place de.

When I was in Detroit this time last year for a conference and was listening to a talk on the stages of divine ascent of a soul, I realized with some sweat on my brow that I had grossly, grossly underestimated the trials and tribulations of spiritual fortitude. By God's grace, I was introduced to the 33 Days to Morning Glory devotion in preparation for consecration to the Immaculate Heart of Mary. I realized that the words of St. Louis Marie de Montfort about her held a key in my hapless helplessness spiritual life: "Mary is the safest, easiest, shortest and most perfect way of approaching Jesus." There may be hope for me yet.

This idea--total consecration--was a complete paradigm shift for me. Rather than trusting in my own way, I would entrust myself (and my family), turn over my rights, to Mary to show me the right way. My judgment can be suspect, my ideas of what I should be doing, how and for whom I should be praying--I wanted to turn it over to someone closer--indeed, the closest--to our Lord than I to show me. So in October of last year, we did just that.

This idea of 'turning everything over,' as I said, was a Spiritual paradigm shift for me, a totally different way of approaching prayer, mortification, salvation. It also renewed in me an interest in a saint I had until a year or two ago had previously dismissed.

Ten years ago I regarded St. Thérèse the Little Flower as an insufferable "nervy" saint whose little infractions in the convent were, in my eyes, a nauseating expression of a piety I simply could not relate to. Now I am beholden to her.

Her "Little Way" may be little but it is not easy by any means. Whenever we accomplish a scrap of virtue in our lives our heel can slip from that spirit of helpless dependency on God's love and mercy to an attitude of self-determination in which we set our sights on Heaven by the sweat of our brow. That's when things quickly fall apart, at least for me. So, to follow this way, it's like a GPS constantly recalculating as you veer off course, trying to bring you back to the road you should be on. I did a "big" thing (fasted for a day, spent a long time in prayer, did a noble work of charity, etc) and suddenly I feel justified. Off course. Recalculating. When we come back to repentance, humility, love, directing the will to good, we are back on course. But that does not come from mighty acts, but a deep trust, one that can meet resistance in being developed.

To remember what it means, how St. Thérèse sought to be united with her Savior, the image of the elevator is what stuck with me. From her autobiography, The Story of a Soul, she says,

"We are living now in an age of inventions, and we no longer have to take the trouble of climbing stairs … I wanted to find an elevator which would raise me to Jesus, for I am too small to climb the rough stairway of perfection. … The elevator which must raise me to heaven is Your arms, O Jesus! And for this I had no need to grow up, but rather I had to remain little and become this more and more."

There's an expression in the business world: work smart, not hard. Of course the teaching of the Church is that we are saved by faith and works, not faith alone. But this is not about "working towards Heaven," but a different approach that leads to radical trust, radical dependency, radical love--because it's all one has. Not everyone can fast like St. Antony or hear Confessions for as many hours as St. John Vianney or write volumes like St. Augustine. But everyone has the capacity to love, to will, to trust. It can take some real "work" to get there, but it is a different kind of work, an inner work, a work that leads to trust and dependency in one's helplessness. The strength of the Little Flower is in her helplessness, her weakness, and her Little Way should give us great hope that Heaven is not beyond us, but that Christ desires we commune with him there forever.

Even if we have to take the elevator.

Upcoming Marriage Talk

My wife and I are giving an online marriage talk on Thursday, Sept. 27th at 8pm. Instructions below if you would like to join us. We will be taking questions and it will be interactive as well as personal. Please join us, below is the write up from the Philly Mercedarians, who are sponsoring this event, which is a precursor to our in-person talk in November:
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The St. Raymond Nonnatus Foundation is pleased to announce our next on-line event. Rob and Debbie have a story to tell of their conversions to the faith and marriage. Rob was featured on EWTN's "The Journey Home" with Marcus Grodi. The date is Thursday, 9/27/18 at 8 p.m. To sign up, email director.srnf@gmail.com and write "Rob and Debbie" in title. Free event on GoToMeeting. See you then!

"Rob and Debbie are lay Catholic evangelists with no formal ministry to their name, but who take to heart the words of G.K. Chesteron, “The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” They have been married since July 2010 and have three children on earth and two in Heaven. Rob recently appeared as a guest on EWTN's "The Journey Home" to tell the story of both his and Debbie's miraculous conversion with regards to the turning away from the use of contraception in their marriage and returning to a state of grace as a result of finding and wearing a Miraculous Medal. Rob and Debbie consecrated themselves and their children to the Immaculate Heart of Mary on the 100th Anniversary of Our Lady of Fatima and have experienced much grace and mercy in their lives and their family as a result. Rob is active in Catholic street evangelization and prison ministry, Debbie is a budding home schooling mom, and they open up their home to guests and visitors regularly as a way of practicing Christian hospitality, strengthening and encouraging Christian marriage, and spreading the Gospel in an ordinary way."

The Witching Hour

I don't write about writing much, probably because I don't think of myself as a real writer. I try to keep this blog focused on issues of faith and Christian living. But that always intersects with the ramparts that hold up the theme, and that is the act of writing itself. So it may deserve a little in memoriam post of its own.

Despite the fact that I have been writing without pause for over twenty years, I will usually refer to myself as 'a guy who writes,' and not a writer. Anyone who wants to be a writer sees it as a blessing endowed which holds the key to unlocking their dreams. Anyone who knows what it means to be a writer (ie, one who writes) knows that is is really a curse which has you under compulsion, a compulsion you often beg in earnest to be taken from you. If you find yourself in bed at 3am, consider yourself blessed.

I don't know any other way to be, any other way to live, but I will tell you this: writing is a shameful exercise. We rightfully recoil and seek to cover up someone who disrobes in the public square. And yet those who write, who are urged forward by silent muses, do it all the time, for the public and in the public square, for all to see. It's almost like a koan: if a writer writes his words, and there is no one to read it, does it make a sound? I'm not a journaler. I have no use in writing secret words for my eyes only. I write to be read. The depths of my pride and exhibitionism know no bounds.

Every writer knows they are at heart a kind of fraud, or at least that is the fear. Aren't we all, in some way or another? Don't we all curse the day we were born, at some point? But here's the rub, and the honest truth: I don't like who I am. It took a searing private message from a virtual stranger taking me to task to remind me of this. It was something I was grateful to receive, but man did it sting, and in the best most humiliating way possible. Social media is both a blessing and a curse. I want to do the work God has set before me and honor Him in that, but that public exhibitionism so inherent in writing--about everything--often bleeds into this work, and it shows up there. It's not enough to do something for the greater glory of God in obscurity--I need to make it known to the world. Because everything in life you see as a story, because you see opportunities to write and exhibit and make sense of your life as narrative in everything you do, when you end up doing the work God calls you to, you write about it shamelessly. You hope it is for the benefit of others, you want your light to shine before others, but pride is pernicious, and the capacity for self-deception runs deep. When you are filled with doubt in the dead of night, there's no one to turn to. The people you love most are asleep upstairs, the friends you rely on for building up and support have retired to their respective beds, and the God you serve is silent in the vigil hours. My wife has heard me lament ad nauseum: why can't I be normal? What is wrong with me, and how can you stand to be married to me?

In reading the words of the prophet Jeremiah tonight, I found some solace--not because of anything prophetic on my part, but because his lament is one I have uttered myself.

O Lord, You have deceived me and I was deceived;
You have overcome me and prevailed. 
I have become a laughingstock all day long; 
Everyone mocks me. For each time I speak, I cry aloud; 
I proclaim violence and destruction, 
Because for me the word of the Lord has resulted
In reproach and derision all day long. 
But if I say, “I will not remember Him Or speak anymore in His name,”
Then in my heart it becomes like a burning fire 
Shut up in my bones; 
And I am weary of holding it in, 
And I cannot endure it.
For I have heard the whispering of many,
“Terror on every side!Denounce him; yes, let us denounce him!”
All my trusted friends,
Watching for my fall, say:
“Perhaps he will be deceived, so that we may prevail against him
And take our revenge on him.”

But the Lord is with me like a dread champion;
Therefore my persecutors will stumble and not prevail.
They will be utterly ashamed, because they have failed,
With an everlasting disgrace that will not be forgotten.
Yet, O Lord of hosts, You who test the righteous,
Who see the mind and the heart;
Let me see Your vengeance on them;
For to You I have set forth my cause.
Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord!
For He has delivered the soul of the needy oneFrom the hand of evildoers. 
 Cursed be the day when I was born;
Let the day not be blessed when my mother bore me! 
Cursed be the man who brought the news
To my father, saying,“A baby boy has been born to you!”
And made him very happy.
But let that man be like the cities
Which the Lord overthrew without relenting,
And let him hear an outcry in the morning
And a shout of alarm at noon;
Because he did not kill me before birth,
So that my mother would have been my grave,
And her womb ever pregnant.
Why did I ever come forth from the womb
To look on trouble and sorrow,
So that my days have been spent in shame?"
(Jer 20:1-18)

As Monsignor Pope said of Jeremiah, the best kind of prophets are the reluctant ones.  Nobody should want to be a spiritual director, or a prophet, or a writer, or a guider of souls, or a person of influence. As Msgr Pope writes,

"Prophets suffer because they love and care for the ultimate well-being of God’s people, not merely their present comfort. They suffer because they do not fit into tidy political or tribal categories. They speak for God, who transcends such groups. Yes, although the prophet is totaliter aliter (totally other), the human cost is high, and he comes to resemble Christ on the cross. The prophet’s own notions of grandeur must be crucified. The idea that most people will ultimately accept the truth must be crucified."

This is not my issue, because I am not a prophet or called to that task. But my struggle to simply avoid sin, as well as self-recognition and affirmation, is burdensome. It's the 3am dawns, when you've been up most of the night wrestling and then the embarrassing compulsion of being driven to write about it, as you do with everything, drives home an even deeper truth of how tied you are to the world, how amateur in the spiritual realm, how sensitive to criticism, how unable to sit with tension, how unsure, how weak, how prideful, how effeminate in the need to express and how far from the strong and silent type you are, how unwilling to do what is arduous and uncomfortable, how quick to complain and seek out consolation.

And yet...

And yet despite all that, I do not doubt God's love for me at 3am, steeped in sin and pride and worldliness. As much as I lament with Jeremiah the day of my birth, I also read the words of David and share the quiet acknowledgement of His wonderful deeds, His intricate creations.

O Lord, You have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; You understand my thought from afar. You scrutinize my path and my lying down, And are intimately acquainted with all my ways. Even before there is a word on my tongue, Behold, O Lord, You know it all. You have enclosed me behind and before, And laid Your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; It is too high, I cannot attain to it.

Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me. If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.

For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb. I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Wonderful are Your works, And my soul knows it very well. My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the depths of the earth; Your eyes have seen my unformed substance; And in Your book were all written The days that were ordained for me, When as yet there was not one of them.

How precious also are Your thoughts to me, O God! How vast is the sum of them! If I should count them, they would outnumber the sand. When I awake, I am still with You.

O that You would slay the wicked, O God; Depart from me, therefore, men of bloodshed. For they speak against You wickedly, And Your enemies take Your name in vain. Do I not hate those who hate You, O Lord? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies.

Search me, O God, and know my heart; Try me and know my anxious thoughts; And see if there be any hurtful way in me, And lead me in the everlasting way. (Ps 139)

He knows my anxious thoughts. He searches me and knows my heart, even when I don't know it, or am caught off guard by it. He knows everything about me, and has a plan for me--yes, that grand narrative lens I see the world through as a writer, as a Christian, as a sojourner. When I try to keep it in, keep the screen clean, the page blank, my bones groan. Please leave the thorns in my ribs, if they be for Your purposes, since your grace is sufficient (2 Cor 12:9). See in me, Lord, if there be any hurtful way in me. And don't leave my side, even in the dead of night. My sin is ever before me. When I am awake, let me still be with You.

Please pray for me.

The Real and Heavy Pain of Loneliness

I spent most of my twenties waltzing with loneliness. I loved going out but I also loved staying in. I was an introvert with extroverted tendencies. I never turned down an opportunity to party. But I also relished the isolation of my apartment. It was always a strange dance.

When I was out, I got on well with everyone and liked meeting new people. If I met someone who I felt was interesting, I would talk to them one on one most of the night (as most introverts and ambiverts tend to do). Sometimes my mind would get away from me though, as happens in manic-depression when you're not completely healthy--getting too excited, talking too fast, drinking too much, thinking too much.

When I was in a depression and out with friends, it was pure pain. I was a bear to bear around, sensitive to the slightest criticism, prone to tears, scared of crowds...it was not fun, and neither was I. Mental illness is a huge stress on relationships and friendships. People don't know how to handle you, you push them away when you want them close and pull at them to come close when you want to be alone. You make them walk on eggshells. You make loving you...tough.

When I was in, in my apartment, I was often happy to be alone. I did not feel a compulsive need to go out, was generally comfortable with myself. When I was manic, for my own good, I would shut up in my apartment during the worst of it. I figured, keep it contained. I would write ten hours a day and chain smoke cigarettes and watch movies and do projects and not sleep. I didn't need drugs or alcohol because the euphoria that comes with mania was enough, like something from another world.

When I was depressed, though, the pain was acute and searing. One Friday night after a crash (the crash into depression after a period of acute mania) I curled up into a ball and just laid for hours by the inside of the door, bereft of comfort. The pain was as physical as it was psychic, like stab wounds. It was the closest I had come to desiring death.

These moments are "never real, and always true," as the artist Antonin Artaud once said when asked about one of his drawings. The pain is real, it is not imagined, but it is a defection, the "flaw in love" as Andrew Solomon called depression. It is also a chicken and egg type scenario: the more depressed and inward you draw, the harder you are you love, the more you self-alienate, the harder it becomes to make and maintain friendships, etc. It takes a strong and sensitive person to love someone with mental illness because it is not easy.

But even if you are not mentally ill, being alone without a partner in this life is hard. I think that's important to acknowledge. There is an existential loneliness many people experience, not just on account of faith (we are not made for this world), but also in its absence (the God shaped hole that refused to be filled by anything but Him). "It is not good for man to be alone," the Lord says in Genesis (Gen 2:18), and "two are better than one because they have a good return for their labor. For if either of them falls, the one will lift up his companion. But woe to the one who falls when there is not another to lift him up" (Ecc 4:9-10).

When I had no job, no car, no mental equilibrium, and had just been hospitalized after getting hit by a car, I was at a low point. But that's exactly when I met my future wife. It was a good proving ground. Heck, if anyone can love and accept you in that state, that's worth it's weight in gold. We had also been praying for our respective spouses before we knew one another, and God in His omniscient ways, knew exactly what we both needed. Although one can be lonely with a spouse in the midst of a marriage, this has not been the case for me. My wife was a godsend, because in my case at least, the Scripture is true: It is not good for man to be alone.

My loneliness these days is not acute in the slightest. When I feel it most it feels like a dull headache, a heavy thud, and it is in the context of faith--although we have friends and support systems, partners and confidants, we all ultimately answer to God alone. We walk to Calvary alone. I know my God is with me, but even sometimes He can feel absent, not to mention those I used to be friends and party with and even those I used to worship with, though new friends have stepped in. When you start to really follow Christ, things in your life tend to prune and be culled. It is often during these times that consolation comes the way it came to Christ by way of Simon of Cyrene, who helped Jesus shoulder his cross on the way to his death.

Those who are in Christ still experience loneliness; it is a human emotion, a human experience. It can even work to our benefit spiritually, if it makes us more reliant on God and to love Him more. Christ experienced it as well in a way, in the Garden of Gethsemane, being sorrowful unto death while his friends slept in his hour of need.

But we can also do much as Christians to help be Simons to those who are in danger of collapsing under the cross of loneliness, to be Veronicas wiping the bloodied holy face, to be Johns and Marys at the foot of the Cross. We can visit those who are shut in, befriend those who could use a friend, write letters to prisoners...the options and opportunities are endless to bear one another's burdens. There are many who suffer, and there is much we can do, even if it is little things. We may not be able to take off the heavy blanket of loneliness in their lives, or even in our own, but we can rest knowing that He never leaves us nor forsakes us, even when He feels far from us. For the person of faith has the assurance of being a beloved child of God, who need not be anxious for anything, who can rest in the bosom of the Savior, remembering the words of the prophet Isaiah:

"Can a woman forget her nursing child 

And have no compassion on the son of her womb? 

Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. 

“Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; 

Your walls are continually before Me."

(Is 49:15-16)

Bread Alone

I have been fasting on Wednesdays and Fridays since the scandals broke. We know we are dealing with demons in the Church, and that in scripture sometimes prayer needs to be accompanied by fasting, as the Lord says, "this kind can only be driven out except by prayer and fasting" (Mk 9:29) And so it is good for discipline but also necessary for reparation.

By God's grace, though, I don't notice the hunger as much as I may have fixated on it in the past. Something is happening, there is something in the air, and all around me people are rising up to what God is calling them to, even as many fall away and no longer follow, or remain tepid and static.

I get very sad sometimes. We stopped by a carnival type festival the other day in our town. There were rides and things for the kids, food vendors, people selling things. Normally it would just be a nice afternoon, but I was in a somber kind of mood and don't generally like crowds to begin with, so I was put off a little. As my wife mentioned one time when we were at the kitchen table one night talking about the end of days, "it's like everyone is walking around, like that show "The Walking Dead." You try to explain, you try to say 'wake up!' but they won't be roused from the immediacy of the here-and-now. There is nothing wrong with enjoying things like food and entertainment. But at Mass this morning in the epistle, the words of the Apostle took root, and it made sense:

"I tell you, brothers, the time is running out. From now on, let those having wives act as not having them, those weeping as not weeping, those rejoicing as not rejoicing, those buying as not owning, those using the world as not using it fully. For the world in its present form is passing away." (1 Cor 7:25-31)

In Adoration the other day, I had a strong experience of wanting nothing but the Lord, like air, like I would suffocate without him even for a second. I knelt on the floor and closed my eyes and for a while was just taken over by my helplessness, my need for Him, to cleave to Him during these times. Later, it came to me as I was in bed the scripture in John 4. Jesus has met a Samaritan woman at the well, asks her for a drink, and when she scoffs that he has nothing to draw the water, he replies:

“Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:13-14)

She wants that water. She does not want to thirst again.

Not long after this episode, his disciples find him and urge him to eat something. But he replies,

“I have food to eat that you do not know about.” (Jn 4:32) 

So the disciples were saying to one another, “No one brought Him anything to eat, did he?” Jesus said to them,

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work." (Jn 4:32-34)

In fasting, we are training our bodies, as Paul says, "I do not run like someone running aimlessly; I do not fight like a boxer beating the air. No, I strike a blow to my body and make it my slave so that after I have preached to others, I myself will not be disqualified for the prize." (1 Cor 9:26-27) It's not that food is not important, but when bread is all we live for, we are blinded to life behind the curtain, the spiritual reality of life beyond the world. Fasting brings us in line with that reality. Dostoyevsky knew the power of bread, but more so the power of Christ to give meaning beyond bread:

“Christ knew that by bread alone you cannot reanimate man. If there were no spiritual life, no ideal of Beauty, man would pine away, die, go mad, kill himself or give himself to pagan fantasies. And as Christ, the ideal of Beauty in Himself and his Word, he decided it was better to implant the ideal of Beauty in the soul. If it exists in the soul, each would be the brother of everyone else and then, of course, working for each other, all would also be rich. Whereas if you give them bread, they might become enemies to each other out of boredom.”

I do not want to live for bread alone. I do not want to thirst again. The good news is in being baptized in Christ and into his death, we are brought into his life, since "man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God." (Mt 4:4) The Eucharistic bread, His true blood, sustain us, just as the waters of baptism wash us clean and dispose us to receive them and subsist on them.

St Catherine of Siena lived on the Eucharist alone for the last few years of her life. St Catherine of Genoa lived through the fasting times of Lent and Advent on only the Eucharist. St Joseph Cupertino lived for 5 years without food apart from the Eucharist. Blessed Alexandrina da Costa spent 13 years without food or drink but for the Eucharist.

This is truly miraculous of course, but we should not be surprised, those who are in Christ and see with eyes of faith, that life is more than bread! When we skip a meal we would think our lives would end from the way we act. But we are not trained, we are carnal, and so we suffer by way of softness. But the coming days will be days of hunger, both materially and spiritually, and we would do well to prepare, to train our bodies as Paul exhorts, but also to rely on the One who sustains us: God alone.

I still get sad when I am in crowds sometimes. I don't mean to be a curmudgeon when it comes to fun distractions. I feel very alone, but take comfort in Christ and that he often got away from crowds to be alone; that he enjoyed a wedding feast, ate and drank with his friends, but also spent 40 days of fasting as well to be undergo testing in preparation for what He was being called to. That he extols the virtue of going into your room and closing the door to be alone in intimacy with the Father. That he would rise early and go to a lonely place to pray. And it reminds me again that there is more to life than bread, than bread alone.

The Stand

When I was thirteen I read Stephen King's The Stand, all 800 pages. It is a post-apocalyptic story in which 99% of the population is wiped out by a pandemic strand of weaponized superflu that is accidentally released. The handful of survivors are drawn by way of dreams to a 108 year old woman in Nebraska named Mother Abigail, who they see as the embodiment of good and who becomes their spiritual leader in preparation for a final showdown between good and evil. The book made an impression on me during my formative years. I started backpacking not long after that, probably subconsciously to train for a potential end of days scenario.

With the dominoes of state attorney generals and federal prosecutors coordinating the efforts, issuing subpoenas one after another across the country for the Church to open her records for investigation, She should be preparing for a rout. The years of cover up of sexual abuse, the hypocrisy, the damage inflicted and spiritual deaths that occurred...the chickens are coming home to roost. It's hard not to see that it is not good, and that much tangible suffering is in store.

When the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart in Exodus and made him obstinate, he crushed him with plagues to free the Israelites from slavery. Moses led his people through the desert, and the Decalogue is delivered. In our own way, I think, the Church is being prepared to be led out from its present state, for those who will follow.

The faithful may be wandering too. When our priests on the ground are routed, good suffering along with evil, we will not have the comfort we have been accustomed to. The AGs will have their day and we will be left with a shell. Until now the wheat and weeds have grown together, but the Lord is preparing a sift and burn. There is something in the air, and those with eyes to see can sense it. Those who have eyes to see know we are fighting a spiritual battle, and that canned meat and bunkers may be of limited use. The real war is taking place behind the curtain, between good and evil. We have the assurance that Our Lady has crushed the head of the serpent, but this war will not be without casualties, and suffering beyond belief.

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!” 

“Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”  

As Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives opposite the temple, Peter, James, John and Andrew asked him privately,  “Tell us, when will these things happen? And what will be the sign that they are all about to be fulfilled?” 

Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you.  Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.  When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be earthquakes in various places, and famines. These are the beginning of birth pains.  

“You must be on your guard. You will be handed over to the local councils and flogged in the synagogues. On account of me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them.  And the gospel must first be preached to all nations.  Whenever you are arrested and brought to trial, do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.  

“Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child. Children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death.  Everyone will hate you because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.  

“When you see ‘the abomination that causes desolation’ standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains.  Let no one on the housetop go down or enter the house to take anything out. Let no one in the field go back to get their cloak.  How dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing mothers!  Pray that this will not take place in winter,  because those will be days of distress unequaled from the beginning, when God created the world, until now—and never to be equaled again.  

“If the Lord had not cut short those days, no one would survive. But for the sake of the elect, whom he has chosen, he has shortened them. At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it.  For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. 

So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.   

“But in those days, following that distress, 
 “‘the sun will be darkened,  and the moon will not give its light;  the stars will fall from the sky,  and the heavenly bodies will be shaken.’  

“At that time people will see the Son of Man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And he will send his angels and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of the heavens.  

“Now learn this lesson from the fig tree: As soon as its twigs get tender and its leaves come out, you know that summer is near.  Even so, when you see these things happening, you know that it is near, right at the door.  Truly I tell you, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened.  Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. (Mk 13:1-31)

But there is hope. Those remaining, those who have prepared, will be like the wise virgins with oil for their lamps. Those who have not, who have neglected the call of the Gospel time and time again, allured by the ignorance of the world, will find themselves in the dark outside the door, begging to be let in. And the Bridegroom will say, "I do not know you!" (Mt 25:12) and they will be outside in eternal darkness.

Cultural Catholicism is the shell of the cicada, the dead skin of the snake we are shedding, or rather is being shed for us by way of the legal plagues to come. And the words of then Cardinal Ratzinger in 1969 will prove themselves prophetic for those left standing to hear them:


“The future of the Church can and will issue from those whose roots are deep and who live from the pure fullness of their faith. It will not issue from those who accommodate themselves merely to the passing moment or from those who merely criticize others and assume that they themselves are infallible measuring rods; nor will it issue from those who take the easier road, who sidestep the passion of faith, declaring false and obsolete, tyrannous and legalistic, all that makes demands upon men, that hurts them and compels them to sacrifice themselves. To put this more positively: The future of the Church, once again as always, will be reshaped by saints, by men, that is, whose minds probe deeper than the slogans of the day, who see more than others see, because their lives embrace a wider reality. Unselfishness, which makes men free, is attained only through the patience of small daily acts of self-denial. By this daily passion, which alone reveals to a man in how many ways he is enslaved by his own ego, by this daily passion and by it alone, a man’s eyes are slowly opened. He sees only to the extent that he has lived and suffered. If today we are scarcely able any longer to become aware of God, that is because we find it so easy to evade ourselves, to flee from the depths of our being by means of the narcotic of some pleasure or other. Thus our own interior depths remain closed to us. If it is true that a man can see only with his heart, then how blind we are!

“How does all this affect the problem we are examining? It means that the big talk of those who prophesy a Church without God and without faith is all empty chatter. We have no need of a Church that celebrates the cult of action in political prayers. It is utterly superfluous. Therefore, it will destroy itself. What will remain is the Church of Jesus Christ, the Church that believes in the God who has become man and promises us life beyond death. The kind of priest who is no more than a social worker can be replaced by the psychotherapist and other specialists; but the priest who is no specialist, who does not stand on the [sidelines], watching the game, giving official advice, but in the name of God places himself at the disposal of man, who is beside them in their sorrows, in their joys, in their hope and in their fear, such a priest will certainly be needed in the future.

“Let us go a step farther. From the crisis of today the Church of tomorrow will emerge — a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have to start afresh more or less from the beginning. She will no longer be able to inhabit many of the edifices she built in prosperity. As the number of her adherents diminishes, so it will lose many of her social privileges. In contrast to an earlier age, it will be seen much more as a voluntary society, entered only by free decision. As a small society, it will make much bigger demands on the initiative of her individual members. Undoubtedly it will discover new forms of ministry and will ordain to the priesthood approved Christians who pursue some profession. In many smaller congregations or in self-contained social groups, pastoral care will normally be provided in this fashion. Along-side this, the full-time ministry of the priesthood will be indispensable as formerly. But in all of the changes at which one might guess, the Church will find her essence afresh and with full conviction in that which was always at her center: faith in the triune God, in Jesus Christ, the Son of God made man, in the presence of the Spirit until the end of the world. In faith and prayer she will again recognize the sacraments as the worship of God and not as a subject for liturgical scholarship.

“The Church will be a more spiritual Church, not presuming upon a political mandate, flirting as little with the Left as with the Right. It will be hard going for the Church, for the process of crystallization and clarification will cost her much valuable energy. It will make her poor and cause her to become the Church of the meek. The process will be all the more arduous, for sectarian narrow-mindedness as well as pompous self-will will have to be shed. One may predict that all of this will take time. The process will be long and wearisome as was the road from the false progressivism on the eve of the French Revolution — when a bishop might be thought smart if he made fun of dogmas and even insinuated that the existence of God was by no means certain — to the renewal of the nineteenth century. But when the trial of this sifting is past, a great power will flow from a more spiritualized and simplified Church. Men in a totally planned world will find themselves unspeakably lonely. If they have completely lost sight of God, they will feel the whole horror of their poverty. Then they will discover the little flock of believers as something wholly new. They will discover it as a hope that is meant for them, an answer for which they have always been searching in secret.

“And so it seems certain to me that the Church is facing very hard times. The real crisis has scarcely begun. We will have to count on terrific upheavals. But I am equally certain about what will remain at the end: not the Church of the political cult, which is dead already, but the Church of faith. It may well no longer be the dominant social power to the extent that she was until recently; but it will enjoy a fresh blossoming and be seen as man’s home, where he will find life and hope beyond death."

The Man Of Many Cares

I grew up in what I would say was a more or less upper-middle class family, though we didn't come from money. My grandfather on my dad's side worked at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and my grandfather on my mom's side was a chemistry professor (both grandmothers were homemakers). All passed away either before I was born or not long after.

My parents were teachers, and we learned to be frugal from a young age by way of my dad's example. We were never in want, never really worried about how to pay bills and things. We didn't go out to eat often, but when we did the joke in the family was "water only." We got our clothes from thrift stores. We were taught that money=security, and my father had little sayings he would coin and pass down to us in the way of worldly wisdom like "accidents don't have to happen," and "you can never have enough of two things: money and firewood."

I started working at age twelve delivering newspapers and never stopped working. I always had a job. Aside from the newspaper route, I worked in a propane factory, a greenhouse, I edited blueprints at an architectural firm, filed, serviced swimming pools, portaged canoes, waited tables, was a dishwasher, bar-back, valet, bike courier, case worker, barista, transcript evaluator...you get the idea. I always felt good working, though I never made a whole lot of money or had a "good job," a bit of a black sheep in the family in that way. But my expenses were minimal and I learned to adapt my lifestyle and habits to accommodate my modest income.

I'm not ignorant to the issue of privilege. Everything my father did, he did for us--my mom, and my brothers and I--and with us in my mind. I'm grateful for that. Like the father in the story of the prodigal son, "everything I have is yours" was his attitude. This did not extend to people outside the family. I suppose it was a general belief that people who were less well off had the government to rely on, or that he paid taxes that somehow helped in some indirect way. In any case, we didn't really learn those things growing up, but we did learn about things like the amazing power of compound interest and that money equals options. When you don't have money, you don't have options. And that's not a good thing.

When I moved to the inner city after college to run a house of hospitality for homeless men with drug and alcohol addictions and minister to men in prison half-time, I was living off the money I had saved from working, since I had no source of income. We lived a block from one of the most notorious drug corners in Harrisburg (13th & Derry) known for its violence and prostitution. Gunshots in the night were a regular occurrence. I had a manual 1988 Celica with 220,000 miles and no AC that someone gave me, shuttling guys to NA and AA meetings in it and taking the neighborhood kids to camp and the pool. I ate lunch every day in the soup kitchen and whatever food was donated to us for breakfast and dinner. I had very few material needs and was content with what little I had.

My dad had come out to visit at one point while I was there. He was always supportive of everything I ever did, but we got into some discussions about money, wealth, the poor, the Bible, and the Christian life. I was a zealous convert of three years trying to explain things without marginalizing him or sounding judgey (I was probably doing a bad job), wanting him to see that there was more to life than wealth and security, and he for his part was trying his best to respect my choices and keep from leveling charges of idealism against me, figuring I would wake up soon enough to "the way things really are." I was well aware that I was a 22 year old kid from the suburbs and that this was voluntary poverty, not destitution or grinding poverty that I was born into with little hope of escaping from. I could leave at any time. And when scandal and leadership struggles shook our particular Catholic Worker community after my first year, I did just that.

As the years went on, I maintained a good relationship with my father, looking to him for worldly and financial advice when I sorely needed it. He planned well, had good luck with his health and did not experience any major catastrophes, and so was able to retire somewhat early. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to getting established in the world and in a job, since for ten years I thought I was going to be a monk and that it didn't matter all that much what I did in terms of career; I had spent all my time and energy and effort at trying to live the beatitudes and had essentially handicapped myself in the world while my brothers went on to get good high paying jobs and established themselves in their careers. My dad was enjoying life; he had planned well, focused, and now could sit back and enjoy the well deserved fruits of financial discipline; essentially well-off by most accounts, even though he still wore sweatpants with holes in the knees.

As I read more and more scripture over the years, though, there was a story that bothered me. It appears in Luke 12:16-21, and it goes like this:

“The land of a rich man was very productive. And he began reasoning to himself, saying, ‘What shall I do, since I have no place to store my crops?’ Then he said, ‘This is what I will do: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years to come; take your ease, eat, drink and be merry.”’ But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your soul is required of you; and now who will own what you have prepared?’ So is the man who stores up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.”

I tried not to see my dad as the man in the story. But I was having trouble. It wasn't judgment, but a sense of worry based on what I knew. The parallels were unsettling--a mistaken sense of security ("many years to come"), investment vehicles ("bigger barns"), a focus on the here and now in the world ("eat, drink, and be merry") and if I was brutally honest, a charity that we never saw demonstrated in real life towards those in need ("treasure for himself"). Was I judging him? Being too critical? Naive and idealistic? Or was he in danger of the same fate? And how do you save a rich man, ultimately, from that terrible sentence?

I did not know how the world worked all that well, but I knew what the scriptures said. There was Lazarus and the rich man; there was the rich young ruler that went away sad, unable to follow Jesus in perfection; there were the goats separated from the sheep, the ones who did not give Christ food to eat, water to drink, clothes to wear, a place to sleep, a visit in time of need. There was the camel and the eye of the needle. There was the manna in the desert that rotted when the Israelites attempted to store it up. There was the Sermon on the Mount to those rich who have have already received their consolation. There was the Gospel seed that fell among thorns--the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things that come in and choke the word, making it unfruitful.  There was warning after warning from the saints, and common sense spiritual wisdom like the that from the holy fool St. Francis of Assisi: "Riches prick us with a thousand troubles in getting them, as many cares in preserving them, and yet more anxiety in spending them, and with grief in losing them."

I struggled with this for many years, as my father's and my trajectories--the choices we have made the set the course of our lives as adults--diverged seemingly farther and father apart. In grad school, perhaps as way to reconcile my unease with my relationship to wealth (and by extension, my father's), I did one of my term papers on the topic. I attempted to find out just what constituted, what made one considered to be "rich" and as a result, at a handicap in the spiritual realm. Did having two houses make one wealthy? Two pairs of shoes? Eating more than two meals a day? The paper and presentation were, as they say in the scientific community, "inconclusive." I simply could not say or point to what made one person wealthy by way of definition; it was simply too relative. In drawing up indictments, perhaps I had implicated myself! After all, I was never without food, running water, clothing, healthcare, shelter. I had more than I needed, and probably held on to and shielded what I did have from others less fortunate. Was I, in fact, the rich man? And if so, how could I be saved, since it is, quite literally, "impossible." (Mt 19:24) Impossible, that is, with men. But with God, all things are possible.

The older I get the more I see the wisdom in and meditate on the scripture in Proverbs, settling on it as my mantra of concession to reconcile this conundrum as to how I want to live in the world, that says,

"Keep deception and lies far from me, 

Give me neither poverty nor riches; 

Feed me with the food that is my portion, 

That I not be full and deny You and say, “Who is the Lord?” 

Or that I not be in want and steal, 

And profane the name of my God." 

(Prov 30:8-9)

I have had to learn generosity and almsgiving on my own, or rather, by way of grace, since I was not raised with this example. I have had to learn (and it is very difficult) how to trust the Lord with our finances, balancing being prudent with trusting in Providence for "our daily bread." I have had to learn detachment--to trade my treasure from a place where moth and rust threaten to destroy it and thieves may steal it, in exchange for treasure in heaven, the only place it is truly secure. I have had to learn how to not ignore those in need, those covered in sores which are licked by dogs, just outside my door who would be content with the crusts from my kid's sandwiches I pitch in the garbage can underneath our granite countertops. Truly, truly--it is impossible for us to be saved without grace, without God.

I love my dad, am so grateful for him, and pray for him often. But the more my wife and I approach that point of material and spiritual equilibrium as a family--the stasis which offers peace in exchange for worry and anxiety, contentment in lieu of striving and covetousness, and trust in lieu of doubt that we will be provided for--the more we see the splendor of those lilies arrayed in natural beauty, the loftiness of those birds endowed with immeasurable security making their nests in the trees. The more we orient our heart to the Lord and strive to follow His commands in every aspect of our lives, the more the Chinese finger trap of wealth and earthly security begins to loosen. The more we give away, the more we are blessed. The less we have, the less we have to lose.  When you put "first things first," everything else seems to fall into place, at least from what I've seen so far. 

The peace Christ gives is not the peace the world gives (Jn 14:27). And so depending on what foundation we build our house on--security in this life or in anticipation of the next; wealth in the things of God or the things of the world; charity to neighbor or a building bigger barns to hold our grain--our peace may find itself in relation to our respective state. For Christ says to us in full disclosure, "Woe to you who are rich, for you are receiving your comfort in full. Woe to you who are well-fed now, for you shall be hungry. Woe to you who laugh now, for you shall mourn and weep" (Lk 6:24-25). And that where we put our heart is where our treasure may be found (Mt 6:21). The closer we come to our death, the more somber, and the more hollow those things that felt so comforting and the source of earthly security--investment accounts, 401k's, vacation homes--are.

But the man who has peace at the hour of his death, who is prepared to meet his God and stand before the throne despite having a handful of bills to pass on to his children? Suffice it to say, he dies a wealthy man indeed.