Eastertide

Eastertide never rolls in, instead it is storm born, eroding the barriers, the dunes I walked in Lent. 

Last week I plunged into the Triduum for once not juggling work and Holy Week. There was Morning Prayer on Thursday, I walked the path to the Vigil on Saturday night, emerging after an Easter Sunday Mass to a warm and perfect day. I was an acolyte on Good Friday, proclaimed the Epistle from Romans on Saturday night. I sang with the small men's group Easter morning and shook the bells during the Gloria. (I'd been entrusted with that last year, but the not-yet-diagnosed Parkinson's made it a panicked four minutes as my hands refused to obe.) Most surprisingly, I was asked at nearly the last second to step in as a baptismal sponsor for one of our elect. We are not so far apart in age, to call her my goddaughter would be a stretch, say instead I have another god-sister. 

So many memories of Easters past were layered over this Easter's mysteries. The smell of vinegar, newspapers on the table, dying eggs on Holy Saturday afternoon. Plotting where to hide them. Hunting up those eggs. The slightly sulfurous taste of hard boiled eggs. Of finding Easter baskets in the morning, the yellow Peeps bright against the green plastic twirls of "grass", fancy foil wrapped chocolate eggs nestled among the jelly beans, precisely counted out by my mother lest we squabble. 

An Easter fire kindled in the middle of the night, keeping vigil until the dawn, until at last the alleluias broke forth.

The Easter that wasn't quite. A basement vigil, a stiffening as we prayed for the dead that week. a bustling hotel dining room bursting with children in their best and indulgent grandparents and an Easter brunch that I could barely choke down.

"Holy Week," said one of the homilists a couple of weeks ago, "is more of a mood." Or I might say, moods. But Easter, too, is more than unalloyed joy -- at least on this side of heaven. It has its mood swings, too. We shouldn't be afraid to preach precarious Easters, to acknowledge to those mired in pain and grief and darkness that Christ, even risen and glorified as he is, still bears deep wounds. 

That glorious dawn, that burning star rising in the east? It was 4 degrees when I stood on the beach to watch it. I had to trust that eventually it would warm me. 

Passion, death and resurrection

I went to morning prayer at the parish today, followed by an all hands scramble to unload the flowers and get them out onto the altar for the decorating team coming later. As I headed out afterwards, my heart lifted at the sight of the trees in bloom, the fallen petals from the cherry tree stirring like confetti from a long past parade on the walk, the sounds of the birds. It was a beautiful morning in Bryn Mawr. The air held that spring warmth, just a hint of March’s cold damp still caught in the corners of the stone walls of the church. And just like that I was transported 35 years into the past.

I walked out of the hospital, perhaps around 8. It was a beautiful morning in Bryn Mawr. The air held that spring warmth, with just enough of March’s cold damp to remind you to be grateful that winter’s rigors were past. The birds sang, the trees were aflower, the daffodils across the way were brilliant. Who knew? I’d spent the night in an empty and dimly lit family lounge on the surgical floor and was blinded by all this light and beauty.

It was Holy Thursday, 35 years ago today. On Sunday I had thought I was prepared to wade into the Paschal mystery. Passion, death, and — without a doubt — resurrection. On Wednesday of Holy Week I would discover how woefully unprepared I was to face the Paschal mystery when it was pulled off the pages of scripture and poured out before me. Take this cup, and drink from it.

Tom was thirty. I had just turned 29. Not much older than my sons are now. We’d been married five years, finished our PhDs, moved, got jobs, bought a house, settled into a parish and a neighborhood. It was a very ordinary life, with grass to mow and walls to paint and futures to dream on. But we didn’t know about the bomb inside Tom’s chest. The ballooning artery that would eventually drive a channel into his heart, torn open as he swam laps in the college pool while I sat through the penultimate faculty meeting of the year. 

The Triduum for me would begin with a ride in a ambulance, everything left behind. I would stand by and watch as they resuscitated Tom in the ER. I would make phone calls. I would see that he was anointed with the holy oils. I would talk to him as they prepared him for surgery, though I do not think he could hear me. And I watched and prayed through the night. At 5 am, the surgeon would concede that the damage was beyond repair. At 7 am I would see him wrapped in white sheets, and make the sign of the cross on his forehead with my tears. And walk out of the hospital a few minutes later into that bruisingly beautiful spring day.

So on that Good Friday morning I picked out a casket, flanked by my shell-shocked in-laws and my distraught parents. On Holy Saturday morning I sat with the associate pastor to pick out readings and insist that Easter notwithstanding, there would be no music. No sung alleluia. No alleluia. It was too fast. Three days was not enough time for me to wrap my head around wrenching grief and recognize within it blazing resurrection. I grasp in some small way why the apostles couldn’t believe the women — it was too much of a shift in too little time. I am yet more floored by Mary Magdalene;s ability to see beyond the passion into the resurrection.

There would be a wake on Easter Sunday, a funeral on Easter Monday. Both achingly perfect spring days. Despite all the time that has passed, or perhaps because of it, I can never fail to see the passion and death swirling through the resurrection. It clouds our vision, tests our faith and stretches out our arms between heaven and earth. Like those perfect spring days, where there is still just enough winter lurking in the air to remind you of things unseen.

Overcome with Paschal Joy

It’s in the Easter season prefaces to the Eucharistic prayer, “Therefore, overcome with paschal joy, every land, every people exults in your praise and even the heavenly Powers…sing together…”

Every time I hear that line I wonder, am I overcome with paschal joy? Are we, here in this church, gathered around this altar overcome with paschal job? What does overcome with paschal joy look like anyway?

Joy is perhaps not the word I would have chosen to characterize this particular spring, shadowed as it was by the pandemic and by familial tragedy. Yet. Still. There it is, a stark declaration, not as a hope, not as something promised to some at some time to come. Here and now, the preface promises, every place and every person, are overcome with paschal joy. So sing.

Novelist Léon Bloy wrote in a letter to his fiancée that joy was the surest sign of the presence of God. (No, that was not Teilhard de Chardin.) Be on the look out for joy, there you are likely to find God. I wonder if it is the opposite that I need at this moment, to first seek out God and perhaps then joy will erupt. Perhaps to be overcome with Paschal joy is to be overcome by God.

There are a profusion of buds on the rose bushes under my back windows. But on this Pentecost day, just a single red bloom. I came out here to pray, to submerge myself in God, and there it is. A single blossom of hope. I’m overcome.

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Photo is of my mother's roses.

Sorrowing in a season of joy

Though eagerly gathered to hear the miraculous news that was being reported, the disciples were nevertheless terrified when that good news appeared in front of them in all-too-real flesh. What seemed conceivable at one remove —  perhaps it had been a ghost on the road to Emmaus —  was suddenly, shatteringly, staggeringly present. 

I can sympathize with the disciples' confusion, having once spent an Easter morning surrounded by families celebrating in their Easter finery only to spend that same Easter afternoon at a funeral home greeting black-clad mourners at my husband’s wake.  I struggled then to hear Christ’s “Peace be with you,” over the clamor of grief.  I struggled to reconcile joy and sorrow, certainty and uncertainty. I struggle again this Easter,  in the wake of my nephew's murder, to experience Easter as unalloyed joy.

In his book, Into the Silent Land, Martin Laird, OSA, points out that when we go in search of peace in prayer, we often find what feels like chaos. But, he says, it is precisely in this meeting of confusion and peace that healing happens. Not by erasing our pain, but by opening a path for grace. The resurrection did not erase the pain of Christ’s passion, nor does it take away our own travails, as this reflection on Mary's experience captures so evocatively here. Even as I grapple with the paradox of that long ago Easter morning, it exposes as yet unhealed wounds. 

I find in this gospel a space where those of us who are rubbed raw by sorrow in the midst of joy, who are simultaneously mourning and rejoicing, can reach for healing. Stretch out your hands to me, says Jesus, touch my wounds and find a glimmer of peace. For I am here with you, wounded and yet whole, to the end of time.

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This is a version of a reflection from Rejoice and Be Glad, Liturgical Press, 2019.

First and afire: Mary of Magdala

 

“…go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” (John 20:17b)

St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene "the apostle to the apostles" because she was sent from the garden to tell the apostles the good news. Magdala means tower in Aramaic and I find the image of Mary the Tower as a complement to Peter the Rock a potent one. The Church may be built on the rock of Peter, but Mary of Magdala ignited it with these words, "I have seen the Lord.” 

Every time I hear this Gospel I wonder what happened to Mary Magdalene next.  Medieval legends say she retreated to pray in a cave in France, where she was fed by angels.  The Orthodox Christian tradition places her with Mary, the Mother of God, in Ephesus. 

“Go” Jesus told Mary Magdalene in the garden. I doubt Jesus meant for her to take a walk and deliver his message to the disciples, and then vanish.  Poreuou, the Greek word translated in today’s Gospel as “go,” carries the sense of heading out on a journey. Its ultimate root is “pierced through.”  It is a call to re-order your life’s direction, to push a message out into the world despite barriers and with a piercing clarity. Go out, Jesus demands of Mary Magdalene, I want you to proclaim again and again, “I have seen the risen Lord.” 

So I doubt Mary Magdalene stopped proclaiming the Good News when the disciples laughed at what they thought nonsense, to quietly retire to a cave or a small house in Ephesus. I imagine her so aflame with the Gospel that wherever she went and whoever she met she could not help but deliver the message for all ages to come, “I have seen the risen Lord.”  And I cannot imagine that Christ expects me to do anything less. 

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From Rejoice and Be Glad, Liturgical Press, 2019. Painting is Rembrandt, Christ and St. Mary Magdalene at the Tomb.

The work of Easter

Like the women in the Gospel this morning, Mary of Magdala and Salome, I rose early this morning. As they undoubtedly were, I was wrapped in a shawl against the cold, all of us off to seek the Lord. There was no music, no alleluias at the first Mass of the morning. No Easter sequence. Just the Paschal candle burning hard and bright next to the ambo, a reminder of the mysteries celebrated here last night. I prayed. I listened for the Lord. I received, that I might become...if not whole, at least less fractured.

Then I went home and cleaned the kitchen and made sweet spice bread for breakfast. As I scrubbed last night’s sheet pans, I wondered if this really was how I should be celebrating Easter, clad in a well-worn apron and wielding a soapy sponge. Or perhaps this is precisely how Jesus imagined the celebration as he knelt on the floor, a towel around his waist, washing feet. Women, up early to do the work of feeding the hungry and tending to the needs of the living and the dead. Women with the courage to stay in the face of unspeakable pain, and a scandalous death. Women with the courage to profess what they had seen, in the face of mockery and derision.

I didn’t hear about these women in this morning’s homily, though I wished I had. I hear them now, though, wondering how they would roll the stone back so they could care for the Body of Christ. I’m wondering much the same thing.

A strong driving wind

What might the Holy Spirit be stirring within you? from Society of the Holy Child Jesus on Vimeo.

“…suddenly there came from the sky a noise like a strong driving wind…
And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit.” Acts 2:2a,4a

Listen to the air around you. Hear the strong wind that heralds a storm. Strain your ears until you catch a faint rustling in the leaves, the beginning of a summer breeze. Feel the rushing air that announces the subway’s arrival. Pay close attention to the bubbles that rock the lid of a pot on the stove, making it sing.

Listen to the whole reflection...and breathe!

Grieving Easter

So many of us are grieving our usual Easter celebration this year, the loss of community and sacred spaces, and then there are those grieving the losses of jobs and lives. Grief and Easter seem like they should be at odds. We somehow imagine that Easter joy should obliterate any mourning we might be doing.

I remember the dissonance of Tom's wake on Easter Sunday afternoon, the blaring trumpets and brimming light from the Vigil still sharp in my memory as I stood next to my husband's coffin in the softly lit funeral home. I believe in the resurrection and life everlasting, yet at the same moment I was standing before death's terrible stillness.

Jesus wept at Lazarus' death, though he knew that he could — and would —  raise him from the dead. He knew what the resurrection would bring, the share of everlasting life that Lazarus would enjoy. Even so he stood before that cold stillness, weeping. He mourned.

We, too, can rejoice this Easter, kindling once again the Lumen Christi, even as we mourn what has been lost. Easter's joy does not erase the pain and chaos of the Passion, instead Easter anchors our pain in salvation, orienting it toward life. We can rejoice, we can weep, for our God rejoices and weeps with us, even now.

___________
There is also this column from almost a decade ago on paradoxical celebrations of Easter with thoughts from St. Augustine: Flustered for Joy

An unimaginable Easter imagined

It's the picture of the single shoe that haunts me. An overturned red shoe on the asphalt, and shattered glass, so much glass, glass like snow on the ground.  I woke on Easter not to photos of Mass at St. Peter's or to small children in their best romping on green lawns with Easter baskets in hand, but to scenes from the bombings in Sri Lanka. To visions of pews scattered about St. Sebastian's sanctuary and its roof blown open. And that one shoe.

Over the last week I've been correcting the proofs for a book of Lenten reflections. The last reflection in the book is not for Lent, but for Easter Sunday, and reads in part.

"Why do I not see everything overset? Why are the pews not scattered like matchsticks, the altar covered in dust from a dome broken open to the sky, a great wind whipping the trees about? And instead of children dressed in their best for Easter brunch, why are there not people milling about in confusion and fear, their clothes torn and shoes unmatched in their haste to come see what happened here last night?"

When I wrote it, I wasn't imagining a disaster, but mulling over this passage from Matthew

And behold, there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven, approached, rolled back the stone, and sat upon it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing was white as snow. The guards were shaken with fear of him and became like dead men. (Mt 28:2-4) 

Which in turn reminded me of Annie Dillard's essay "An Expedition to the Pole" where she wonders at our inability to grasp the powers at work when we gather for liturgy, to truly grasp the resurrection.

“On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church; we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.”

My reflection goes on to imagine a reassuring angel sitting amidst the debris, gently shooing people back out into the world. I imagined it as if a storm had come and gone in the night and while people are bewildered and overset, they are not wounded or dying. Now I indeed see everything overset. I can't get the images of Sri Lanka out of my head, where the pews are scattered like matchsticks and the roof has been broken open so that you can see the sky through it. And that shoe.

I wonder how that reflection will read next Easter. Will we remember those who died this year?

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The photos are #29 and #38 in this gallery at the Washington Post.

This reminded me, too, of the attack on a synagogue in Jerusalem and the power of images to drive my prayer.

Overflowing with glory

In the beginning there was God.  And there was chaos and confusion, a universe unshaped and restless, smoldering in the darkness.  The Spirit hovered over the waters, living and breathing above the abyss.  With a word, there was light, or so we read in the book of Genesis.

To hear the astrophysicists tell the tale, when the universe was one millionth of a second old, it was the size of a grapefruit. I could set it on my desk, cup it in my hands. Everything that would be was contained in that unimaginably hot, inconceivably dark, dense sphere. Matter was so tangled in its depths that even light could not wriggle its way out.  A quarter of a million years later, unable to bear the strain, the universe unfurls into the emptiness.  So now we have light.

Sometimes I imagine God cradling this rough-hewn and snarling mass of darkness in his hands, turning the inchoate universe over and around, pondering what will be.  Perhaps he set it on the desk for a while, leaning back in his chair with a creak to get a new perspective.  And when the time came, with a breath and a prayer—Spirit and Word— God’s hands opened and let what was within spill into the emptiness. God from God, Light from Light.

Humankind once held, all unknowing, the entirety of the universe, and more, in our hands. Inconceivable energy pushed into an impossibly small space.  The all-powerful, ever-living God contained in the body of a man, come to unravel the chaos. Perhaps the strain on the universe was again unbearable, for we hung God-become-man on a tree, and watched as he strained for breath and died. All that is, was and will be, pulled from the cross and cradled in his mother’s lap. We wrapped his body in linen, and set it aside. Only to have Light once more spill forth from the emptiness, washing out the darkness.

“Human kind cannot bear very much reality,” said T. S. Eliot. Certainly I cannot. I can contemplate with delight the small ball that was the universe in God’s hand. I will fall on my knees before Christ, who emptied himself out on that cross. But when again and again I cradle in my hands the Body of Christ, take the cup that bears God's very blood, I can’t bear to imagine the immensity of what is contained within.

I say, far too quickly, “Amen.”  I believe.  I assent.  But will I become? In receiving the Eucharistic, St. Augustine observed, “You are saying 'Amen' to what you are.” Can I stop, wait, and contemplate that in receiving this gift, those unimaginable forces have come to reside in me? What have I become?  And if I can bear that, can I imagine my neighbors holding such power in their hands, overflowing with God’s glory?

Perhaps what I really cannot bear is what this means I must do.  For what should come forth from my hands when I open them, if not light from Light.  What should I see in my neighbor, then, if not God? If I truly understood who I had become, would I not pour myself out for the kingdom of God?

Christus Resurrexit! 

Vere Resurrexit! 

Alleluia, Alleluia! 

From an essay in Give Us This Day, April 2017

God breathing in God

"...simply God breathing unto God in one unbroken line of praise. Alleluia. He is risen. Alleluia. We are risen. Alleluia. You will rise again. Alleluia, alleluia, an infinity of alleluias." — From "Alleluia" in Not By Bread Alone, 2018, Liturgical Press.

Listen to Easter.  Breathe in Easter. Alleluia.

All creation holds its breath

“All creation holds its breath, listening within me,
because, to hear you, I keep silent. ”

Anita Barrows.
Rilke's Book of Hours. Book of a Monastic Life, I,17

Stay here

I stood on the altar, wrapped in a veil of incense,  facing God made flesh in a church grown dark.  Flames flickered and people slowly gathered from the corners of the church. A procession formed, as the choir sang Tantum Ergo.  As the last light vanished down the center aisle, I led the way off the altar.

The cloud of unknowing. The cloud moving at night through the desert.  The puffs of smoke floating up before me to briefly flare in the light pouring out from the vestibule, and part before me. The measured pace of the music and the presider behind me, Christ's body cradled in his hands, guarded by this incense which surrounds us.

We reach the altar, passing through the silent crowd.  The presider incenses the altar and the blessed Sacrament. He kneels, and without thinking, I fall to one knee.

The choir shifts to a Taize refrain, "Stay with me, remain here with me, watch and pray, watch and pray." I'm thinking of Tom, of staying with him through the early hours of a Holy Thursday; of those who stayed with me; of staying with my mother in her last moments.  I hear the call stay with each other, to remain present to the person we really don't want to listen to, to the person who talks over and over us, to the ones who make us uncomfortable, or frighten us.  Stay here, with me.  Remain here with me. The music ebbs and flows around us. The church itself seems to breathe. Stay. Here.

This is surely liturgy as summit, we have gathered and done what we were asked to do with serene grace, with incense and music, and beauty all around. But this is also liturgy as the font of holiness, as discipline, as training ground.  Kneel here, so that you might know how to kneel before Christ in less recognizable or acceptable guises. Let your feet be washed, that you might know how to accept help, not just give it.

Fr. John leans over and murmurs, "Can you get up?"  My kneeling had not been in the plan, as we weren't sure my ankle would let me get up again without help.  But prayer is sometimes entirely in the body, and in this case it surely was, all those years of praying on my knees in front of the tabernacle and my body decided before my conscious mind had time to weigh in.  "Yes," I assured him. And gratefully, I had no trouble getting up.

The church gradually emptied, I headed out to the parking lot to go home and change and re-splint my ankle before returning for Compline at 10:30.  I get outside to find cars jamming the parking lot, caught in a tangle with traffic from the grocery store across the street and couldn't help but hum...stay with me.

Ashes and incense

Fragment of press for making bread for Eucharist. Byzantine.

There are little flecks of ash on my alb, from where I brushed up too close to the censer.  Ashes to ashes. I walk the church through a cloud of incense.  A shroud, a veil, for the Sacrament behind me.  A pillar of cloud in the night.

I fall on my knees in the chapel.  The smoke that curls around me smells of incense and oh, so faintly of ashes.  Of prayer and of destruction. The chant pours over the two of us kneeling before the altar, piles up and spills out the door like a wave, there is a moment where all is still, and song washes back in.  We remain until the music is spent and I step into the clear cool air on the other side of the wall to let the embers die.

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For whom shall we pray? For Mother Church.  For public officials. For those who believe and those who don't.  For pilgrims, return, and salvation for the dying.  I kneel and I stand until I wonder if I can stand again with this weight on my shoulders, or whether like Jesus I will stumble and fall.

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I watch the choir recoil at the stark news.  Ecce lignum Crucis.  A member has been suddenly widowed, can we lean on you? Now? Today? Behold the wood of the cross. It's 9:00 pm and part of me is in an office outside a hospital waiting room 30 years and 3000 feet away, as a nurse offers to call someone for me.  All I can see are her hands, poised over the dial.

A psalm in the darkness, I can see nothing beyond the pool of light on the text. Have mercy on me, O God.

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Black silk pants, black silk shirt. A white pall flows over the coffin. The alb slides over my head. "See in this white garment the outward sign of your Christian dignity." Water from the aspersorium splashes against my hand, and arcs overhead.  Renew me.

The sacrament of salvation lies broken in my hand, and I breathe in Easter.

Thinking resurrection, practicing joy

Living the Joy of the Resurrection from Joyful Films on Vimeo.

It was almost 80^oF today, now it's raining.  Snow perhaps on the weekend. Cool air stirs into the warm, rousing storms.  Grief stirs into the Easter joy, rousing memories that flash and rumble.  The 11th anniversary of my mother's death was yesterday.  She loved holidays, and the little things that made them special.  The traditional birthday eve wish to "sleep tight my little 10 year-old" and its corresponding morning greeting, "good morning my big 11 year-old."  The chocolate bunny that appeared in my Easter basket long after I left home.

A couple of weeks before Easter, I sat down with a young film maker to talk about what resurrection means for a project for CatholicPhilly.  I love what he pulled out of the hour or more of conversation: Practice joy as faithfully as we practice penance in Lent.

It's been a challenging week, but I've been remembering my mother in the little things that mark the holiday. The jelly beans from my basket tucked into my lunch. And I'm choosing to practice joy as diligently as I kept Lent's disciplines. Taking a walk with a former student between meetings, noticing the tulips that were coming up on her campus, enjoying the unexpected warmth of a March afternoon.  Welcoming the stillness that enveloped the chapel this morning when the presider began, "In the name of the Father..."  All stirred into the chaos of the week, flavoring the long days.

Entering the torrents of time

It’s evening. The pastor reads the prayers from a Roman missal balanced precariously on the hands of an altar server, the wind rifling the corners of the pages, “Christ yesterday and today, the beginning and the end…all time belongs to him and all the ages.”  As the incense pierces the beeswax of the Easter candles, these words probe the wounds of my disbelief.

Make no mistake, I believe in Christ, Eternal God from Eternal God, risen from the dead, coming in glory. My problem lies here:  time is God’s. Too often time seems to be a demonic presence harrying me from one end of my day to the other. Or it is a raging torrent that batters my heart, dragging me along when I would instead cling to the babe in my arms, or hold tight to the teenaged boys clowning in my kitchen. Even as I follow the candle into the dark church, I struggle to accept such forces could cut channels of grace.  To chant in gratitude, "Thanks be to God."

Yet here it is again, in the first reading. The Spirit swept over the darkling waters, and the Word set the universe aflame.  Time was cupped for a moment in God’s hand, then poured forth. There was morning and evening. And all the days since. It dawns on me that time is not a flaw in creation. It points me toward a God who let go what was clenched in his hands, chose to throw himself into the torrents of time with us, and promised never to leave. To this, I say amen.  Alleluia.

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A version of this reflection appeared Give Us This Day for the Easter Vigil

Go and tell my brothers and sisters

Noli Me Tangere by Fra Bartolomeo via Wikimedia 

From the 20^th chapter of the Gospel of John:  Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, “Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I am going to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her.

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One of the dynamics of a retreat we discussed at length during the practicum at ISI two weeks ago was how to send retreatants back into the world.  Underlying this was a conversation about the purpose of the retreat — to vacation with God, to 'unplug', a yearly spiritual 'cleanse', a moment to pick up tools to help one "make progress in the life," a step along the way toward magis  — keeping in mind that the dynamics of the retreat planned may not be consonant with the desires that retreatants bring with them, and that the magis Ignatius speaks of might not be for everyone. 

This was a practicum, so we had a chance to do a little preaching and were encouraged to sketch out retreat talks we might give.  I'm still grappling with how a weekend retreat framed around Ignatius 18th Annotation might move retreatants, how resurrection and mission might be presented in this context. 

The scene with Mary of Magdalene in the garden is what came to mind, perhaps because I was sitting outside in the heat, in a small rock garden, perhaps because her feast had been a few days earlier. 

St. Augustine called Mary Magdalene "the apostle to the apostles," because she was went from the garden to tell the apostles the good news. Magdala means tower in Aramaic and I frankly enjoy the image of Mary the Tower as a complement to Peter the Rock. The Church may be built on that rock of Peter, but Mary of Magdala ignited it with these words, "I have seen the Lord.” 

I found myself wondering what happened to Mary Magdalene next, after she returned and the disciples dismissed her as crazy (or so Luke's Gospel tell us).  The medieval legends says she went to France and lived in a cave, repenting of her sins and fed by angels.  I find myself more taken with the Orthodox tradition, which puts her with Mary, the Theotokos, the Mother of God, in Ephesus.

“Go” Jesus told Mary Magdalene in the garden.  Jesus didn’t mean for her to take a walk and deliver a message, the end.  The Greek word translated here as go (poreuou) in John’s Gospel carries the sense of heading out on a journey, to re-order your life’s direction, to carry forward a message. Go out, cries Jesus, I want you to proclaim again and again, “I have seen the risen Lord.” The ultimate root of poreuou is aptly enough "pierced through" (as a needle carries a thread through...) 

Did Mary tell the apostles, give up when they laughed at the women's "nonsense" (leros) and then quietly retire to Ephesus (or a cave for that matter)?  Or did what she saw and believed pour out of her?  Does she pray, as C.S. Lewis would say centuries later, because "I can't help myself. I pray because I'm helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time — waking and sleeping. " Does she proclaim the resurrection as she was sent to do?  Does she meet Paul?  Are the two Mary's at the core of the church in Ephesus?

It's given me much to think about, not only in the context of retreat preaching, but in terms of my own vocation.

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What is most often translated "brothers," adelphous, is literally "from the same womb" as are, of course, brothers and sisters.

Column: Laudato Si': let us sing as we go

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly on 19 June 2015.

Let us sing as we go. May our struggles and our concern for this planet never take away the joy of our hope. — Pope Francis, Laudato Si’ [244]

This morning I read Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ encyclical letter on caring for our common home, the Earth. All 40,000 and some odd words of it. It was a difficult read at times. Not because I lack the necessary background to appreciate either the science or the theology — I have a Ph.D. in chemistry, did some of my graduate research on atmospheric chemistry with Sherry Rowland, who won the Nobel prize for his work on ozone depletion, and have completed many hours of graduate theology course work — but because it brought into such sharp focus the challenges my most vulnerable brothers and sisters face and my role in them. In his letter, Pope Francis invites us to “become painfully aware, to dare to turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it.” [19]

Pope Francis begins by sketching out some of the most pressing and troubling difficulties facing creation: pollution, a culture of waste, climate change, reduced biodiversity and the need for clean water. As I read, I could hear the canticle of the three young men from Daniel whispering below the surface: “All you winds, bless the Lord … fire and heat, bless the Lord … all you beasts, wild and tame, bless the Lord!”

All of creation calls out the name of God, I am reminded, as I listen to the ways in which humankind has stilled some of the voices in that chorus, “making our earth less rich and beautiful, ever more limited and grey.” [34]

Coming so soon after the Easter season, where each week my parish began Mass by blessing water and sprinkling the congregation, I am struck by the pope’s attention to water. Water was created, we hear in the words of blessing, “to make the fields fruitful and to refresh and cleanse our bodies. You also made water the instrument of your mercy.”

Water is such a potent symbol of salvation. We are immersed in it at our baptism. We mingle it into the wine that will become our very life. Yet Pope Francis reminds us that most of our poorest brothers and sisters live where the water brings not life, but disease and death. Drought plagues farmers whose crops fail and whose land is mercilessly scoured away by the wind.

We must act boldly, the pope says, for the sake of “the sufferings of the crucified poor and for the creatures of this world laid waste by human power” [241]. While much of the work must be done as communities and nations, each of us, he says, can follow the example of St. Therese of Lisieux and undertake simple acts with love. [230] Such actions “call forth a goodness which, albeit unseen, inevitably tends to spread.” [212]

Recycle and reuse what you can. Don’t waste food. Turn off the air conditioning. Say grace before meals. Keep the sabbath. Celebrate the Eucharist. Simple daily gestures that break us of the habits of selfishness, and push back against a throw-away culture.

Despite the headlines that say, “Pope aligns himself with mainstream science on climate change,” at its heart this letter is not about whether we should be for or against climate change; the science is, in fact, quite settled.

This teaching document demands all of us recognize the particular vulnerability of the poor to ecological damage and open our hearts and our minds to see how we might treat our common home so that all, but most of all the poor, might live with dignity.

Let us sing and praise the Lord, as we go. Laudato si’, mi’ Signore!

Column: Doubt is one element of faith

My first husband, Thomas.

The line about doubt comes from the second volume of Tillich's Systematic Theology, and one that has pushed me to think about faith in the resurrection two thousand years out from the event.  But I find his comment about the relationship between faith and reason to push me even further:  "Faith transcends reason, reaching ecstatically beyond itself."  Passion is one thing, even for a scientist.  Ecstasy is quite another.

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly.com on 15 Apr 2015.

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Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands and put my finger into the nailmarks and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. — John 20:25b

I recently wrote a short reflection which opened with a two-line sketch of the night my first husband died. A friend who read a draft at first thought I was writing about a bad dream, then when I assured her I was recounting a real event, still could not bring herself to believe I had been a widow. It seemed impossible to her, looking at my life now, that anything so terrible could have happened.

It made me think of Thomas in John’s Gospel. He, too, can’t believe what he is told by the others, despite all that he saw and experienced in Jesus’ company. He saw Lazarus raised from the dead, yet when he is told Jesus has returned, he still cannot grasp the reality. He doubted, so much so that two thousand years later he can’t shake the name, “Doubting Thomas.”

We don’t doubt, or at least we say we believe. Each Sunday we profess our faith, stating firmly that we believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was crucified, died and was buried, only to rise again on the third day. But I wonder if I shouldn’t doubt a bit more.

Has my faith in this extraordinary event become ordinary? Can I put myself in the place of the disciples after the resurrection, marveling at the impossibility of this, that someone could die on a cross, lie in a tomb for two nights, then appear to share a meal with me? Do I really grasp the enormity of the Resurrection? The reality of Christ’s presence, here and now?

“Doubt,” said theologian Paul Tillich, “is not the opposite of faith; it is an element of faith.” We risk something essential when we put our faith in it. Not the risk of mistaking a fact — that Jesus, God and man, rose from the dead — but the risk that we might mistake who we are, who we are called to be. We risk ourselves.

Welcoming doubt into my faith lets me experience again the magnitude of Christ’s gift, invites me to say again and again, “My Lord, and my God,” and demands that I risk it all again, allowing myself to be made over in the image of Christ. This is my faith, one that transcends cold reason, a faith that is not just about knowing, but about being. I believe that Jesus rose, but I am a dwelling place for God in the spirit, a part of his resurrected body.

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Breathe Easter now; you serged fellowships, 

You vigil-keepers with low flames decreased,
God shall o'er-brim the measures you have spent

With oil of gladness, for sackcloth and frieze

And the ever-fretting shirt of punishment

Give myrrhy-threaded golden folds of ease. 

Your scarce-sheathed bones are weary of being bent: 

Lo, God shall strengthen all the feeble knees.

— From Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J. “Easter Communion”

Column: An act of faith, constantly repeated

Mary Magdalene is venerated as "the apostle to the apostles," first to see the risen Lord, first to proclaim the resurrection.  One meaning of Magdala is tower and I enjoy the sense of Mary the Tower as a complement to Peter the Rock.  The Church may be built on Peter, but Mary ignited it with these words, "I have seen the Lord."

This column appeared at CatholicPhilly on 8 April 2015.

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Mary of Magdala went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord,” and what he told her. John 20:18

A musical friend posted on her Facebook feed, “Jesus is risen, but the music ministry has collapsed in exhaustion.” I, too, had gone home after the Easter Vigil, wearily joyous after a long week of work peppered with rehearsals, liturgies and three late nights of vigil. Following a night of trumpet blasts, where our voices shook the walls of the church, Easter day was quiet and still.

This morning I laid my breviary on the kitchen counter, and while the water came to a boil and my tea brewed, prayed Morning Prayer for Easter before I went to work. The Church celebrates Easter as an octave, eight full days of feasting, so each morning, the prayers replay Easter. The same psalms. The same antiphons. A sparkling feast hiding within an ordinary day.

Did this Easter change anything for me? Or exhausted from Easter, will I let the brilliant alleluias fade from my consciousness? I find myself wondering what happened to Mary Magdalene, who in John’s Gospel encounters the newly risen Christ in the garden. Can I proclaim with such calm certainty what she did that Easter morning: “I have seen the Lord”?

Last week Pope Francis reminded us that as Christians we are called to be “sentinels of the morning.” We should be people who know how to see Christ, not just on an altar, suspended high in a glittering chalice, but in our ordinary days, planted in the middle of the aisle at the Acme and huddled on a street corner in Philadelphia.

Dorothy Day, who established the Catholic Worker movement in the early 20th century, wrote that many people wondered how she was able to see Christ in the people she served and served with. “It is an act of faith,” she said, “constantly repeated.”

The octave celebration of Easter, with its continually repeating round of prayer mixed into my daily routine, is a powerful reminder to me that Christ is risen, here and now, in the everyday as much as in the glorious liturgies of Easter. And that good news is to be proclaimed again and again, here is Christ, among us. Here is Christ, in need. Here is Christ, come and receive.

It is an act of faith, constantly repeated: I have seen the Lord. And once I have seen him, how can I not bend down to anoint his feet with perfumes, or to offer him a meal, or something to drink when he thirsts?

May the Light we carried into the Church on Easter never be exhausted, but still be found burning in the day and months to come.