Proof

 

My seventh (!) book will be published this fall. A book of reflections for next Lent. The proofs came a couple of weeks ago, and once the manuscript for book eight (eight? eight?) went out the door, I had some time and space to devote to this devotional.

I still proof on paper, circling errors with a red ballpoint, pressing into the surface of the paper, leaving a literal wound to mark wounded text. I read it end to end, cold, then again side by side with the text I submitted. Were those snippets of scripture exactly what was in the lectionary? Quotes from the psalms sometimes are pulled from my memory (and my heart and my soul) as I write, not from any specific text. Better check against the source!

When the latest revision of the US English Catholic Lectionary came out, I didn’t add it to my collection. I have the most recent British one, the previous US one, but mostly I turn to the USCCB site or use Give Us This Day. The ritual books in my parish are stored behind the main altar, in a space reserved for quiet meditation in front of the tabernacle. So one afternoon last week, I laid the proofs on the small wooden altar, pulled the Sunday and daily lectionaries from the shelf, and with the Word before me, and the Word at my right hand, I proofed the pericopes. I could have taken the books and proofs to the small library next door, or to the sacristy, but this space felt right.

I used a book called Stones Before the Lord (about monastic architecture) when I taught a course on the history of contemplation in the West. Proofing on the altar left me feeling like I was laying stones of a different sort before the Lord. Stepping stones from Ash Wednesday to Easter, perhaps, or maybe a staircase cut into a cliff taking you from from a rocky beach on the wind-whipped Scottish coast to a chapel nestled high above. Or living stones, to use the image from the first letter of Peter, pulled from my own prayer. Stones I wanted to be properly cut and laid so they might support people's path though next Lent, and not be  stumbling blocks.

I found a few errors and marked them up, now it's headed back to Liturgical Press.

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Proofs. It's been a week of proofs. I proofed yeast last night to make pizza crusts. I proofed this book. I sorted through proofs of once new quantum mechanical theories, snapping a picture or two to remember the work I had done (and long ago published), then sent them into oblivion (actually the recycling bin!).

Seriously, I preach

Heidi Schlumpf has an article about lay preaching in Commonweal that I read with particular interest as I did an 8-week preaching practicum for Catholic women this spring. 

A couple of friends shared the Commonweal article on social media and in the comments on one post someone implied that those who grumble and push back against the prohibition of lay preaching at the Eucharist aren’t serious about preaching. If they were, they’d put their energy behind celebrating and preaching at the Liturgy of the Word or the Liturgy of the Hours (particularly Vespers, or rather Evening Prayer) where preaching by the unordained is permitted. Besides, he noted, it's a moot point, because the priest shortage means no one is going to be getting much access to the Eucharist anyway.

I bristled at this take. I wanted to say, "Dude, I think the prohibition should be eased and I take my preaching very seriously!" I did not. Also, there is not really as much space for licit lay preaching at liturgies outside the Eucharist as he seems to think. I didn't say that either. I did say that preaching outside the Eucharist tends to be marginalized.

I note the liturgical norms that restrict the homily at the Eucharist likewise forbid lay persons from reflecting on the readings at many (most?) celebrations of the Liturgy of the Word.  The norms for Sunday celebration in the absence of a priest restrict the homily to the ordained (in this case a deacon) regardless of whether they include distribution of Holy Communion. If a lay person must lead such a liturgy, then they must read a homily written by a priest or deacon (New Zealand's bishops also provide a collection of generic seasonal reflections.) Even on weekdays, the preference is for someone to read a prepared homily, though the UK bishops conference permits a reflection on the reading by a lay person (not to be confused with a homily). Per the USCCB "A Liturgy of the Word with Distribution of Holy Communion should never be scheduled for the purpose of 'providing a role' for deacons or lay ministers." In other words, lay leadership (and/or preaching) in this context is a last resort, not a regularized space for lay preaching.

The norms regarding the Liturgy of the Hours say that a lay person cannot preside if a priest or deacon is present. Can they still preach? The norms are silent on this point, and presumably what is not explicitly forbidden is allowed. But even this still leaves lay voices on the margins.  I have lived in some of the largest dioceses in the country (LA, Orange, Philly). I have lived most of my life in parishes staffed by. religious orders (Franciscans and Augustinians). I have never lived in a parish that regularly celebrates Evening Prayer on a Sunday (my parish does celebrate Morning Prayer every day but Sunday). Philadelphia's cathedral parish does not have public celebration of any of the Liturgy of the Hours as far as I can tell. Would people come out a second time for for Vespers? Probably not. And given the hunger that has been inculcated in Catholics for the reception of the Eucharist, I don't think people are going to line up for Vespers in lieu of a Communion service. (Though apparently you can swap in the Sunday readings at the LOH and follow with communion, so that would serve as an opportunity for lay preaching.)

I know for certain that I have “preached” at the Eucharist, in that a reflection I have written has been read at the time of the homily (sometimes with actual attribution, or as it was once reported to me, "written by a devout lady" which felt terribly medieval to me). At least once at a cathedral (though not by the bishop). If that is licit, why could I not read my own words? Or have my words blessed by an ordained minister ahead of time and read them with my own voice? Is it because my body is wrong? Not Christ-like enough? (I suspect that's the actual answer, a woman can never be as close an image of Christ as a man. Which grieves me, but that's another post.)

Seriously, I do get to preach (as one Carthusian abbot put it, the — presumably ordained — brothers were to preach with their hands, that is by the written word) a lot. I will preach to thousands of people in that sense every day next Lent, having written a book of daily reflections that comes out in the fall from Liturgical Press. I preach at retreats. I have contributed to collections of homilies. I reflect in Give Us This Day —which offers a veritable banquet of voices, from Augustine to my friend Fran, scientists and theologians, ordained and lay, saints and the rest of us. I believe that preaching, however I do it, is my vocation. How do I know? Of all the hundreds of reflections I've written or given, only once have I volunteered. Every other one has been asked for.  Called forth.

Stripped of words: a homily for Good Friday

 

I am preaching at Morning Prayer at the parish today, a reflection which had its seed in an interview with Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe by Fr. Jim Martin SJ (you can hear the relevant piece here) and in a reflection in the forthcoming book for next Lent.

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…So shall he startle many nations,
because of him, kings shall stand speechless;
For those who have not been told shall see,
those who have not heard shall ponder it.…Isaiah 52:15

As we move through the Triduum, we also grow silent in the face of the enormity of what has been accomplished by God. Later today we will sit with St. John’s account of the passion, invited as Isaiah implores us to watch and to ponder. When I hear this version of the passion I am often struck by how Jesus, too, gradually grows silent. Gone is the sharp give and take with the religious authorities. He offers virtually no defense to Pilate. There are no words to reassure the repentent thief crucified next to him about paradise.

Once Jesus wept as he fervently prayed for relief. Now, we no longer hear him lifting up long, eloquent prayers to the Father. In John’s account of the crucifixion, we do not hear him pray at all. He does not cry out to God asking why he was abandoned. He does not commend himself to the Father’s care.

In the end, there is only his battered body, wracked with thirst, hanging on a cross. 

Some time ago I heard Cardinal Timothy Radcliffe reflect on what it had been like to try to pray during his recovery from a grueling surgery. “When I tried to pray the Our Father,” recounted Cardinal Radcliffe, “I couldn’t get past the two words…Our Father…I was just a body lying in bed.”  Still, he thirsted, not just for the water he was not allowed to have, but for God.

Here is this man who preached to the synod — who preached to the pope about hope and prayer —  confessing he could not pray. How many of us have found ourselves in these straits? Caught up in the maelstrom of illness — our own or those of people we love —  or overcome by fear or despair in the face of events that upend our lives, or shake the world, and unable to find the strength to reach for God. When even the prayers we know by heart slip away from us.

I am reminded of a snippet of poetry from Ranier Rilke’s Book of Hours, “like sand slipping through fingers,  all my cells are open, and all so thirsty. I ache…in a hundred places, but mostly in the middle of my heart.” Thirsting for God in every cell, aching for mercy in the depths of our hearts, our physical body becomes the prayer. Like the disciples who ask Jesus to teach them the words to use in prayer, we, too, are looking to Jesus to teach us how to pray in our most desperate moments, when the anguish of our wounds  is more than we can bear, and we cannot find even those words, “Our Father”.

Jesus’ silence on the cross speaks volumes. His arms wordlessly stretched out between heaven and earth, his whole body is a prayer offered to the Father for our salvation. It is a potent reminder that when our strength fails us, we can still pray as Jesus taught us from the cross, arms stretched out in longing, every cell thirsting. That when injustice or illness or infirmity or age strips us of our words, our very body becomes a prayer.

In transition: Preaching Tuesday of Holy Week

When I was preparing to preach today, I thought that like Peter I've had three chances to preach these readings — for books of Lenten reflections in 2018, 2020 and the one coming out in the fall for 2027.  And when I look back at the reflections I wrote I feel like I've fumbled them a bit, not quite recognizing the weight of what is moving in this liturgy. But as St. Benedict was apparently wont to say, "every day we begin again." So here I try again to capture a little bit of the unfathomably holy space we are sitting in today.

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I sometimes wonder if we think that the Monday, Tuesday and even Wednesday of Holy Week are sort of a holding pattern, where we are just marking time between Palm Sunday’s intensity and the solemnity of the one long liturgy that is the Triduum. (And also some time for rehearsing and decorating and perhaps juggling our regular jobs).

Even if these days are just holding space, space, as musicians know, matters. Rests give shape to music as much as the notes.

But I hear more than a rest marker in the Gospel for today. Today’s pericope from John is a bit of a jumble. It  comes after the account of the washing of the feet and before the Farewell Discourse which will occupy the next three chapters. It’s a narrative transition, setting up the betrayal by Judas, and Peter’s betrayal, too. The choice of this Gospel for today scrambles the timeline a bit. Yesterday’s installment was a flashback — we were clearly outside Jerusalem with Mary and Martha and the anointing with aromatic oils. Today we have skipped past the washing of the feet which we will return to on Thursday. Tomorrow we will see Judas’ betrayal through Matthew’s eyes, positioned, it seems, well before the entrance to Jerusalem.

Praying with this Gospel the last few days, it occurred to me that today is the pivotal moment, the moment at which we are staggering at the edge of catastrophe, the moment when we tumble over the edge into chaos and confusion, into passion, death and resurrection. 

In chemical reactions, there's something called a transition state. It’s a tipping point, a fleeting moment in the course of a chemical change. Move a fraction backward and you return to whence you came, unchanged. But move a fraction forward and you tumble inexorably to completion, transformed — transfigured. From that point on there is no turning back, even if at first little has seem to be changed.

What John recounts in today’s Gospel feels like a transition state. Once Jesus hands Judas that morsel, once Judas picks it up and leaves the room, there is no turning back, even as the disciples don’t yet see what is coming. Peter surely does not. But at this moment, it is all set in train.

This is when theory becomes practice.

I was reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek this weekend and I ran across these lines.

"Divinity is not playful. The universe was not made in jest, but in solemn, incomprehensible earnest. By a power that is unfathomably secret, and holy, and fleet."

God is not toying with Judas, or with us. For this fleeting moment we stand at a point where we can see Jesus’ life and death laid before us, where we can see all of salvation history spread out like a banquet, where we can see the choices. Jesus' choice. Judas’ choice. Peter’s choice. Our choice. Today. May we have the courage to choose the unfathomably holy, in solemn, deliberate earnest. 

Back to the ordinary

"We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming…" I created the document in mid-June. Forty-seven reflections to write (forty-eight if you count the preface), forty-seven meditations to design. An empty space waiting for words, or perhaps waiting on the Word. Twenty weeks and seventeen thousand words later, it's off to the editor.

These last few weeks in particular I feel like I have been living in Lent: walking toward to Jerusalem, jostled by the crowds, facing the Passion. The lectionary selections for Lent are like a greatest hits list, so bits and pieces appear in the Ordinary way of things. And each time they do I am momentarily disoriented. The Pharisee and the tax collector are praying...Is it Tuesday in the first week of Lent? or the 30th Sunday in Ordinary Time? Or both?

I keep envisioning it as a Fourier transform experiment, hitting all the frequencies at once, then capturing the free induction decay and transforming it into the other domain, where each peak pops up out of the noise. It's just not clear which domain I am in when writing. (Apologies to the non-spectroscopists out there.)

For today I am grateful to be anchored back in a single time. 

Ultraviolet — light on the edge

 

Violet is the canonical liturgical color of Lent in Roman Catholic practice (and in many other traditions as well), at least since the 16th century and the Council of Trent. Much before that there were not universal norms for the colors of vestments and ancillary textiles.

Why violet? Red for martyrs seems obvious - the color of blood. White and gold for feasts is arguably apt. Green for the Ordinary days, mostly in the green summer months of the Northern hemisphere, seems reasonable. But how did purple, an expensive, rare color associated with royalty come to connote penance?

I did a bit of research this weekend, but didn’t surface anything particularly compelling. The most popular theory is it’s the color Jesus wore during the Passion (though the four evangelists do not agree on this point, Matthew says scarlet, kokkinēn in the Greek; Mark gives it as porphyran, purple; Luke merely describes it as resplendent; John, like Mark, has purple). The color points to Jesus as king, and so obviously it signifies penance. Which is not so obvious to me. Another theory is that the blossoms of violets (some, but not all of which are indeed violet) hang their heads, a penitential posture. 

I want to float another theory, violet is on the very edge of the light the human eye can perceive. (Weirdly, most of the light in the electromagnetic spectrum we cannot detect with our eyes, we do not have X-ray vision, or infrared detection.) Once you get beyond violet, as the light increases in energy, we can no longer see it. In Lent we stand at the precipice of Easter, at the edge of the resurrection, facing the mysteries just beyond our perceptions. 

Or perhaps it is because violet is the color of the sky just before dawn?

Aging with intensity

 

I love cut flowers, they feel like such a luxury. Right now there are sunflowers on the dining room table, and another vase of them on the passthrough by the kitchen sink. Roses from Math Man have just made their way to the compost, circling back to...tomatoes or basil.

Much as I love fresh flowers, I am fascinated with watching them age. These lilies were in my study at home, fading and drying, in their own way as beautiful as they were fresh cut. The colors intensify as the petals dry. Curves and ridges appear, reflecting the late afternoon light. And at the last there is a barely audible rustle as the petals surrender to gravity, one following another. When I go down for the day, I gather the fallen petals and pull the last few stems from the vase. Dust to dust.

Like the flowers, I am aging, though not that fast. Wondering if my colors will deepen, and whether my wrinkles will be as interesting in the late day sun. Will I rustle as I surrender bit by bit? (I feel more inclined to shout these days, but that's another post.)

I want to age intensely, intentionally. To offer up, rather than give in. 

Keep us attentive to the needs of all

There are times when the second half of the Eucharistic Prayer just pours over my head, cascading off the altar, flowing down the aisle. Sometimes it murmurs in my ear, soothing, calming, a burbling fountain in a hidden courtyard. Other times, I regret to say, the grocery list starts jittering. Remember to get eggs and lettuce at Acme after Mass.

Then there are the moments when I really hear the words, battering at my defenses, badgering me long after we have been sent out the door. Ite, missa est? Not so much. We may have been dismissed, but I can’t so easily dismiss what I have heard.

Last weekend, the pastor used one of the Eucharistic Prayers for “various needs” (EP VN 3). Given the current political situation, and the insistence of some that Christian faith does not demand that we have a care for those beyond our immediate circle, those we love and those who love us back, these words struck home:

"Grant that all the faithful of the Church, looking into the signs of the times by the light of faith, may constantly devote themselves to the service of the Gospel.

Keep us attentive to the needs of all that, sharing their grief and pain, their joy and hope, we may faithfully bring them the good news of salvation and go forward with them along the way of your Kingdom."

It’s a potent examination of conscience. Made with the body of Christ right there on the altar in front of us. Can I — can we — constantly devote ourselves to the service of the Gospel in these times? Where are the signs pointing out the needs of the world? What do they say? How are we being attentive to the needs of all? Without exception. Do we think about their grief and pain? Do we share their hopes? Are we willing to walk with them?

I used this snippet of the prayer as the closing prayer for a celebration of the Liturgy of the Word last week, and as we creep toward Lent, I am thinking that I should let this prayer shape my Lenten discipline.

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Aside: I wondered how VP Vance reconciles the Gospel today, where Luke recounts Jesus’ command to love your enemies, to give more than the bare minimum to those in need with his version of  the “ordo amoris” a preferential option for those you love. Then I thought of the part of the Gospel which says I will be judged by the measure I judge others by…

Veiled

We have been using a different processional cross in Lent. The plain wood cross we will venerate on Good Friday, wrapped in violet tulle. I feel off-balance carrying this cross, it's just a bit top heavy, a bit too weighty for me. Each time I lift it from the stand, I think for a moment that I’ve got this, that it’s not as heavy as I recall. Two steps later, I’m struggling to keep it aloft and steady. Will I make it down the aisle? Up the steps of the altar? It always feels like it’s not quite in my control. 

The regular cross is weighty enough to be a bit of work to carry, but not so much that I can’t smoothly get it under the choir loft and out into the vestibule. It’s always under my control. I’ll be glad of its return come Easter.

The violet has been replaced by a red chiffon drape. As I stand in the back ready to process at the vigil Mass on Palm Sunday, I realize I am veiled. I cannot see clearly, catching glimpses of altar and transept as I move. 

That unwieldy cross, that veil that hides the path from me, remind me of the underlying mystery we gather here to celebrate, that we must die to self to rise with Christ. We must, as the psalmist reminds us, let go our grasp and be still. To give over control and lay down all we have.

A body of grief

What follows is about grief, death and violence, suicide. 

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Once again I was in a meeting, this time tucked up in my study under the eaves. It is once again Holy Week, once again the evening before Holy Thursday. And once again, someone crooked their finger at me and said come. And just like that, standing in a doorway, the world exploded. 

My brother-in-law was on the phone. My husband choked out that my nephew had been killed, murdered by an intruder, who then killed himself. Then he collapsed into sobs. 

I am surprised by how quickly my body remembers how to grieve. My stomach roils, my appetite vanishes in a blink. I shiver with shock. 

In his poem, “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” John Updike claims that “ if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle” we — the church — have nothing to stand on. But equally the passion must have been held in the body, the pain not kept at arms length, the thirst for air and the failing grasp at consciousness not metaphor, not sidestepped, but a cup to be drunk to the bitter dregs. 

These mysteries we stand at the edge of, for all their transcendence, for all that we cloak them in light and shimmering music and solemn words, ought to find their way into our bodies. We should ache and shiver and weep with a mother who has lost her son. And pray with all our being that the light will overcome the darkness.

To be all flame

I will make you a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth. (Isaiah 49:6b)

One of my favorite stories from the fifteen hundred year-old collection of wisdom from the desert fathers and mothers is of Abba Lot and Abba Joseph of Panephysis. One day Abba Lot came to Abba Joseph for advice. “I fast, I pray, I live in peace,” he said, “What else should I do?” Abba Joseph lifted his hand to heaven. Flames danced at his fingertips and he turned to Abba Lot and said, “If you wish, you can become all flame.”

We have fasted and prayed and given alms this Lent. What more is expected of us? We hear in Isaiah that we are to be a light to the nations, a light visible to the ends of the earth. All flame, if we wish, says Abba Joseph. But how? Writing on the psalms, St. Augustine points out that our light does not come from ourselves, it is the Lord who sets our lamps alight. Lift up your hands to heaven and pray to be alight, to be all flame.

To pray to be light is risky. We are not asking for a light to see by, for something to hold up that we might illuminate our failings or to show us the safe path — as perilous as those prayers might be. We are asking to be light that others can see by, to be set on fire by the Lord, and what is set aflame is utterly transformed. Christ dares me to lay aside my own desires and let him light my lamp, remaking me in ways I cannot imagine. If I wish, I could become all flame. But do I wish?

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Cartoon from Radio Free Babylon. From Not By Bread Alone, Liturgical Press, 2018.

The Weight of Glory

Almost one in four families in the US did not always have enough to eat last year. The UN thinks that those struggling with hunger will double across the world thanks (no thanks?) to the pandemic. I think about it each time I grocery shop, as staples for the food cupboard are standard on my list, a tithe of my grocery cart for the hungry:  5 pounds of rice, tuna fish, cereal, coffee, jam.  When I pack up the bag each week to take to church I sometimes hear the dinner guests in Bethany murmuring in my ear, seventy-five thousand hungry people — do you honestly think what you are doing makes any difference?

We are engulfed by the Passion in Holy Week. It seems such a long way from Ash Wednesday, when the ground was hard and cold and the branches stuck out like bones.  Against that stark backdrop, the call to justice sounded clearly, but now that the trees are misted green with new leaves, it gets harder to imagine that people around me are still cold and hungry.  In the glory and the chaos of Holy Week it’s easy to let the every day work of the Gospel become submerged.  

But listen, I hear this gospel say to me, don’t let the enormity of what is happening overtake you, pay attention to the people on the edges of the action. Watch the disciples in the garden and the women at the cross, called to companion and witness.  Hear the centurion, driven to cry aloud a newfound faith.  Feel the weight of the body of Christ, like Simon the Cyrene and Joseph of Arimathea.  None of these acts would be enough to save Jesus, but all of them made a difference — then and now. 

I wonder what happened to Simon the Cyrene and to Salome.  The Gospels are silent, but somehow I suspect that whatever they went home to, it was never quite ordinary again. What will happen when this week is over? Will I return to the ordinary — or what passes for ordinary these days — dropping the faded lilies on the compost heap on the way out? Or will I be willing to bear the weight of glory?

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This is an edited version of a reflection from Not By Bread Alone, Liturgical Press, 2018. Photo is of the door to the Passion facade at Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.

Midwives for the Holy Spirit

...for each of us is the midwife of God...

I find this line from Daniel Ladinsky’s poem If You Wish, which riffs on lines from St. John of the Cross, regularly surfaces in my prayer. It reminds me we are entrusted not only with bearing God within, but with bringing God to birth in each other, bound to supporting each other's prayer.

For Lent I am following Mary Forman OSB’s Praying with the Desert Mothers. Even the cover draws me deep into the stillness. Each chapter begins with a scripture passage and a prayer, then follows on with a reflection that draws on the writings of the desert mothers and their contemporaries. My academic heart delights in the copious footnotes that accompany each chapter. They are like deep wells, ready for me to draw from if I thirst for more. For now, what is here is enough.

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Now with you is Wisdom, who knows your works
and was present when you made the world;
Who understands what is pleasing in your eyes
and what is conformable with your commands.
Send her forth from your holy heavens
and from your glorious throne dispatch her
That she may be with me and work with me,
that I may know what is pleasing to you.
— Wisdom 9:9-10

Dreaming of God

 

“When his brothers saw that their father loved him best of all his brothers, they hated him so much that they could not say a kind word to him.” Gn 37:4

As one of a large, talkative family, I wonder what it felt like for Joseph, to be so isolated from all his brothers, who had not a kind word for him, or perhaps any words at all.  And yet when his father asked, Joseph went the full distance and more to check on the well-being of a group of men who wouldn’t give him the time of day. 

My ear is usually caught in this reading by the mention of the 20 pieces of silver, the betrayal that prefigures Judas and Christ.  I wonder if subconsciously I’m eager to get to Easter, to fast forward to the story where I know there is a happy ending.  Yet the brothers’ betrayal didn’t start with throwing Joseph into the cistern, it began when the brothers — all of them — stopped saying hello to Joseph.  

I suspect that like the brothers, there are more than a few moments every day where I haven’t a word for God.  Praying first thing in the morning? “Are we out of milk?” calls my husband from the shower.  At midday?  There’s a desperate student knocking on my door.  Surely I can find a moment at the end of the day?  “Forgot, I have a meeting tonight, can you start dinner now?”  

I don’t set out to push God out of my daily life, it’s a gradual thing. It’s not malicious, it’s merely the clamor of my daily life. Joseph’s story reminds me that even when the urgent, and not-so-urgent, daily demands lead me to push off my time with God, God still finds his way in. Perhaps Joseph is not the only one whose dreams are God-sent. 

— Excerpted from Not By Bread Alone (2018), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

Salt and ashes

The images the prophet Jeremiah uses in today's readings are harsh: bushes that bear no fruit, lava wastes, fields sown with salt.  They feel all the more so to me after hiking through lava fields a few years ago, blackened, fissured swaths of land scoured clean of life winding through lush grasslands.  With no soil to hold the rocky surface in place, the gravel rolled under my feet, leaving me off balance, unstable, at risk.  The ground had been cooling since before I was born, yet I still burned my hand on steam roiling out a crack in the earth. Sulfurous mist swirled around the crater, eating away at skin and lungs.  I longed to dive into a pool of cool water.

I have tasted salt and ashes in my life, too, stumbling when I encounter uncertain ground, looking for life and breath in places where there was none. I have committed sins that created seemingly uncrossable fissures between me and those I love. Between me and God.  

Like the rich man in Luke's gospel, who begged Abraham for drop of water from Lazarus’ hand, I long for the cool sweetness of consolation.  Just a drop of holy water from a saint’s hand and all will be well, I think. But as a single torrential rain storm will not bring life back to the lava waste, neither is one drop enough to restore my soul, even from the hand of a saint.

Tolle lege, a voice called to St. Augustine in the garden one afternoon: take and read. “You have Moses and the prophets,” I hear Abraham say.  Meditate on God’s law day and night, urges the psalmist.  Let these streams of running water wear away the roughness of your stony heart.  Root yourself deeply in the rich soil of the prophets. The readings encourage me to pick up the Scriptures: Take and read! Read to go beyond what is presented to me at Mass, and read to actively seek out the Word.  Find ways to let scripture’s cool comfort wash over me day and night.

— Excerpted from Not By Bread Alone (2020), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

Wearing grace

"...we will always be tempted again to take fright and flee back into what is familiar and near to us: in fact, we will often have to and will often be allowed to do this. But we should gradually try to get ourselves used to the taste of the pure wine. of the spirit, which is filled with the Holy Spirit. We should do this at least to the extent of not refusing the chalice when His directing providence offers it to us.

The chalice of the Holy Spirit is identical in this life with the chalice of Christ. This chalice is drunk only by those who have slowly learned in little ways to taste the fullness in emptiness, the ascent in the fall, life in death, the finding in renunciation." Karl Rahner, SJ in "The Experience of Grace"

Jesus' question to the disciples in today's Gospel — "Can you drink the chalice that I am going to drink?” — led me to pull my tattered copy of Karl Rahner, S.J.’s beautiful essay “The Experience of Grace” off my shelf. In it, Rahner speaks of the chalice that is offered to each of us, the wine within tasting of Christ’s sacrifice, his emptying out. We might not always be able to drink from this cup, Rahner says, perhaps the best we can do at a given moment is not to push the cup away, but watch and wait. To trust in God’s slow work. To let grace wear away the rough edges.

I am moved by Rahner’s tacit assumption that we all have had moments when we have drunk from the chalice of grace. We might, he says, occasionally sift through our own experiences. Look for the moments when we’ve said yes to renunciation, yes to rising in the face of death and destruction, yes to pouring ourselves out. For the times when some impulse beyond ourselves has driven us to sacrifice, or when sacrifice has brought us no sense of achievement, no pride. We ought to search not so we know how far we’ve come in our spiritual journey, but that we might grasp how far we have to go. 

I’ve read Rahner’s essay so often it has become detached from the book. When I open it pages of grace drift to the floor.  Notice, it seems to say, the lived experience of grace.  Detached. Scattered. Pulled from what has kept it bound, so that others might read it: in our faces and in our actions.  

(Based on a reflection in Not By Bread Alone, 2018.)

Believe!

“This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent, and believe in the gospel.” Mark 1:15

The images in today’s readings are arresting — devastating floods and burning deserts replete with wild beasts.  And out of it all, Mark shows us in today’s gospel Jesus striding forth, proclaiming: “Reform your lives! Believe in the Good News!”  The readings speak of pledges and covenants, of new life and a new kingdom.  “This is the time of fulfillment. The reign of God is at hand!” cries Jesus.

Today I hear Lent’s clarion call: reform your life: today I find strength in Jesus’ bold proclamation: the time has come, the kingdom of God is upon us. But will I go to my office tomorrow, without once thinking what might come to pass?  The reign of God is at hand, surely, but come morning I’m likely to be caught up in a flood of papers to be marked and the roaring needs of cranky colleagues and desperate students. 

The Rev. Fred Rogers, who hosted a gentle TV show for children, advised parents trying to explain frightening events to their children to “look for the helpers,” that in times of trouble, someone always finds the strength to help. As Lent begins in earnest Jesus reminds me to cling to the Good News, to believe that the Kingdom of God is breaking through, even in my office, and to look around me for the signs.  

There are signs of the Kingdom everywhere.  The cross atop the church, stark against the sky, like a bow set in the clouds. God is here. The helpers, those who willing walk into deserts and brave roiling waters, and those who tidy my classroom each morning so that I might teach and my students learn.  

The kingdom of God is within reach, Jesus tells us.  Believe in the Good News, and be on the watch for the signs of the reign of God breaking through.

— Excerpt from Not By Bread Alone (2018), © Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

Call a fast

“This, rather, is the fasting I wish: releasing those bound unjustly, untying the thongs of the yoke…Is it not sharing your bread with the hungry…” Isa 58:6a,7a

I’m now of an age where I am no longer bound to the Lenten fast, which I ruefully confess is a relief. It had become more and more of a struggle over the last few years and what was once a minor irritation, a useful chafe on my conscience, took on an outsized importance. I’ve traded the fast for other disciplines that remind to think of those for whom hunger is not a choice, of those who are bound to yokes that exhaust them. 

But it has me wondering if I should have given up on the traditional fast with such alacrity. When should a discipline be discarded? When it is too hard? I talk to students about the “zone of proximal development,” when an assignment is tough enough to leave them feeling delighted with their ability to master it, but not so difficult that all they are is frustrated. And fasting certainly pushed me out of my zone. 

This unsparing reading from Isaiah suggests that the Lenten fasting we are called to isn’t really a discipline at all, it’s not meant to teach me something, it’s meant to accomplish something. I’m meant to turn away from sin, turn away from my own needs and see to the needs of my sisters and brothers. So, how have I fasted today?

Take up your cross

“If anyone wishes to come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.” (Luke 9:23b)

I regularly take up a cross.  As an altar server, as often as not I carry the cross in procession. I stand at the end of the main aisle, holding a cross that is taller than I am by half and weighty enough to feel it in my shoulders as I raise it up so that it can be seen above the heads of the assembly. And as I lead the procession down the aisle I cannot help but think about the less literal crosses that I will have to lift in my life. Will they make my shoulders ache, will I be able to balance them as I walk, where must I take them?  

My eyes go to the enormous painting of Christ crucified that hangs above the century-old marble altar in my parish church. Each time I hold the cross aloft I am brought face-to-face with Christ’s suffering, face-to-face with Christ in the tabernacle, face-to-face with Christ in the People of God assembled here. I walk without a hymnal, so the only words I have to take along for this journey are what are already in my heart and head. I will surely falter on the second verse. Clothed in white, a reminder of my baptismal garment, hands and face raised up, I walk. I walk toward God made flesh, toward boundless mercy.  Will this be what my last walk be like, from this life into the next? Stripped of words and pretenses, face-to-face with God and surrounded by those who have gone before me — praying not to falter? 

Take up your cross, says Christ, and follow me, for this is the road to eternal life and I will not let you fall.

— Excerpted from Not By Bread Alone (2020), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay

A time to notice

There is a beauty as well as a wildness to Lent’s path. In a reading from Isaiah at the Easter Vigil we hear God tell Israel, “I lay your pavements in carnelians, and your foundations in sapphires.” The readings marking our way along the days of the Lenten season are indeed like gemstones. Join me in walking the path this Lent.

“ Take care not to perform righteous deeds in order that people may see them.” Matt 6:1a

“Why?” asks Jesus in the gospel. Why do you pray, fast, give alms? To be noticed? To be applauded? To be witness? Or to become? To become the face of Christ to your neighbor.

Lent is a time of noticing, rather than being noticed. To stand back, sit down, empty out, and notice why and how I pray, where I am needed, who I should be.

Lent calls us beyond the giving up of small luxuries, or even necessities, but through that emptying of ourselves and that carrying of others, to become Christ. “Where is their God?” cried those who saw Israel’s travails in the first reading. God is among us, in our neighbors, in our hearts. Would that you could read that on my face every day. 

— Based on reflections from Not By Bread Alone (2018), Michelle M. Francl-Donnay