Tag Archives: discipleship

A meditation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception

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I hope it goes without saying that I’m thinking about the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It’s an old doctrine, hundreds of years older than its ex cathedra proclamation in 1854.

It occurred to me this morning, reading the couple of paragraphs offered by universalis, that being free from original sin didn’t just allow Mary to say ‘Yes’, but to say ‘Yes’ without selfish motives. The remark that sparked this reflection was not central, and I had forgotten it by the time I picked up my pen. But it was like a window being opened and letting in a draught, or the smell of a neighbour’s bacon cooking. In my imagination, the main barrier to saying ‘Yes’ to God is fear. After all, it is what the Angel Gabriel said to Mary: ‘Do not be afraid’; ‘Noli timere‘. It is also what Jesus said to Simon Peter in the boat full of fish: ‘Do not be afraid.’ Yet fear is not the only potential obstacle to Mary’s faithful yes–that is, if she were tainted by original sin. A faithful yes might also be spoiled by pride, by a calculation of what she might gain by it.

What a great bargaining position to be in! ‘Well’, she might say, ‘see what I have done for you, God…’ Talk about the opportunity for guilt-tripping your offspring. And when your son is God, imagine the power you might have as a parent. No, fear is not the only sin from which Mary needed to be free. Its partner in selfishness, pride, would have been equally disastrous. She might have said yes for the wrong reasons.

But she didn’t. She didn’t because of the mystery we celebrate today: her Immaculate Conception. If Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane shows us what a human will looks like in perfect cooperation with God, Mary shows us what it looks like to live without sin. It’s not what we think, I expect. It certainly isn’t what I think of when I dream of a life without sin. Sure, she ponders in her heart the remarkable experience of his birth and the days that followed; together with her husband, she took the baby to be presented at the temple, as the law required. The Holy Family made the trip to Jerusalem in the company of the faithful. And then, she scolds her son for staying behind without a word to his parents. She felt that worry and hurt so common to parents. She intervened to save a couple’s marriage feast–as the gospel reading for vigils today reminds us. Mary was the life and soul of that party, for certain–not the holier-than-thou sort of person I’d associate with the words ‘without sin’. And the one who said yes to God didn’t take no for an answer from him. ‘Do whatever he tells you’, she said to the servants.

So also she says to us: ‘Do whatever he tells you.’ I’d like to think that the reward for doing so is ‘the best wine.’ But it seems unlikely that the servants had a chance to savour it. What they did get was a front-row seat at our Lord’s first miracle. I’m not sure what that means for me today, but I’d like to find out.

Hail Mary, full of grace…

Deo gratias.

A meditation for the beginning of Advent

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Advent is a time of preparation. But how shall I prepare? How do I make myself ready to welcome the Holy Infant when he comes? ‘Let it be done unto me according to your word,’ says Mary. Dangerous words: inviting Almighty God to enter in, to do his will in us, through us, is a very serious business indeed. I wonder whether Mary knew what she was getting herself into. I imagine not: her special nature meant freedom to say yes, not foreknowledge of the consequences of her assent. Would she still have said yes if she knew how much it would hurt? I suppose, if she knew the whole story, she would have seen from the outset that it was worth it. And it is difficult to imagine how much a child’s rejection will hurt before you have even become pregnant.

Ah, Mary! You know the pain mothers feel. ‘A sword will pierce your own heart’—is that not the way of motherhood? Our Lord’s first miracle, as recorded in John’s gospel, he performed at you behest, but not without resistance. ‘O woman, what have you to do with me?’ he asks, rhetorically and not very politely; ‘My hour has not yet come.’ Is that any way to speak to your Mother?

I would have rankled. ‘Don’t call me woman, son,’ I might have said, ‘I am your mother.’ It hurts when a child distances himself from his mother. I know. I’m not sure I could have simply let it slide. But she does. Ignoring his cheeky reply, she addresses the servants. ‘Do whatever he tells you,’ she says. And so unfolds the miracle of the water and the wine; Jesus saves the wedding at Cana.

Was this an ordinary interaction between Mother and Son? Did Jesus routinely speak to Mary like that—‘woman, what have you to do with me?’ It sounds so cold. For all the tenderness we find in the beginning of Luke’s gospel, and the poignant image of the pietà, there seems to be some tension in their relationship. Jesus is unapologetic when they find him in the temple. We have heard his tone at the wedding at Cana. And then there is the episode recorded in the synoptic gospels in which his mother and brothers come to find Jesus. He says, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ Were he anyone else, we would think of him as a spoiled, ungrateful son. Who disavows his own mother, allowing anyone ‘who does the will of God’ to take her place? How hurt she must have been over and over again, as he slipped away from her. ‘A sword will pierce your own heart,’ indeed.

Mary figures for us the pain in child bearing that I think is bound up with the curse in Genesis 3. The pain of loss that the pietà captures does not begin with our Lord’s passion. No, Mary’s passion is life-long. From the moment she finds she is pregnant before it is appropriate—what will she do?—until she sees him crucified, being the mother of our Lord is a path that leads through suffering. She is worried and hurt like the rest of us: being conceived without sin doesn’t make her invulnerable.

As much as she shows us the enduring pain of motherhood, she also shows us the fierce tenderness of an ideal mother’s love. However many times he rejects her, she keeps following him. When the disciples are all scattered, she remains.

All the unseen pain of motherhood, Mary brings into the light for us. Without rancour or bitterness, she never scolds—though she admonishes her wayward 12 year old. And she doesn’t complain about how cold he sometimes seems. She doesn’t regret having given herself up to be the mother of this unusual child who brings her so much grief.

Of course it wasn’t all thorns and barbs. There are many joys as well, and Mary would have known these also. But in the season of Advent, when we are surrounded by images of a young and radiant woman beaming with joy over her infant Son, we ought to remember that her discipleship, like ours, took her through hurt and loss. It is the way of the cross, on which Mary is uniquely poised to lead us.

So we should not hesitate to let our prayer this Advent be, ‘Let it be done unto me according to your word.’ We should tremble, perhaps, for there is no knowing where such a prayer will take us. But we can be sure that the Lord is there, and Mary has already made the way for us.

Deo gratias.

the holiness of the Lord

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(from the second Sunday in Lent: I am catching up…)

Isaiah6

The scene that follows the announcement ‘holy, holy, holy’ is dramatic: ‘the foundations of the thresholds shook at the voice of him who called, and the house was filled with smoke’. Isaiah’s response is not worship, as we might expect. Instead, he exclaims, ‘Woe is me!’ Seeing the holiness of the Lord makes Isaiah aware of his own lack of holiness, and fearful: ‘a man of unclean lips’ should not (he thinks) behold ‘the King, the Lord of hosts’. God’s glory shows up all that is unworthy about us. Similarly Peter, in the gospel reading from a few weeks ago, responds to the miraculous catch of fish: ‘Depart from me, O Lord, for I am a sinful man’. Beholding the greatness of the Lord brings about a new, and unsettling, revelation of our own lack of sanctity. The response from on high is not judgment, however, but comfort. One of the seraphim brings a burning coal from the altar, touches Isaiah’s lips with it, and announces, ‘Behold…your guilt has been taken away, and your sin forgiven’. Likewise Jesus reassures Peter (in the same words the angel used to put Mary at ease): ‘Do not be afraid.’

Contemplating the holiness of God ought to make us mindful of the ways we have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. This is not the way into condemnation, though, but the door to forgiveness and new life. For both Isaiah and Peter, the recognition of his own unworthiness marks the beginning of a career (if we may call it that) in the service of God. Isaiah accepts the invitation to take God’s word to the people of Israel, and Peter becomes that rock on which the Church is built. Our own careers of discipleship may be less dramatic, but God nevertheless promises to draw us near and involve us in the real drama—the drama of our redemption and that of the whole world. We need not ask whether we are worthy; we need only allow God to make us so.

the Lady Chapel

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At the far right of the image above, a corner of a postcard is just visible, showing a bit of stone floor. Not just any stone floor, though: the floor of the Lady Chapel at Minster Abbey. I’d never heard of ‘thin places’ before the first time I went to Minster, but it is thin all over, and the Lady Chapel particularly so.

I always knew I would appreciate Benedictine spirituality. Before I had ever visited a monastery, I thought one day I would want to be an oblate. (Still hasn’t happened yet.) Nothing I imagined even came close to the reality of being there. The train journey from my home in the north of England takes about 5 hours and involves at least 2 changes, one of which happens in London (between Kings Cross and St Pancras). So when I arrived in Minster the first time, I felt like I was a long way from home (especially because the journey took a couple of extra finding-my-way hours).

And so I was: a long way from anything I had ever experienced before. The daily office–the rhythm of Benedictine prayer–was new to me. Nuns were new to me. Yet somehow the place felt like home almost immediately. Because I was on an individual retreat, I had no schedule other than the appointed times for prayer, and no ‘input’ apart from the daily office and Mass. In my little room, there was a Bible and a small copy of the Rule of Benedict.

Little did I know that reading Benedict’s Rule would change my life as much as anything ever has. That weekend, I was a woman adrift, looking for a spiritual beacon. That little book–hardly more than a pamphlet–convinced me that the spiritual life was for me. Not that I really doubted; it’s just that I had wondered since college whether I would ever recover the sense of purpose that I had as a member of an evangelical (and I mean that in the telling-people-about-Jesus sense, not the Christian brand-name sense) community. Being a mother of (then) three children and holding down a job as a lecturer didn’t leave much time for the intensive Bible study or hour-long quiet times I’d had all those years ago. But that was when it all seemed so vibrant and essential.

Benedict’s Rule is for monastic communities, true. But it is about how daily life is spiritual, and how to live it in a way that makes each seemingly insignificant task an act of Christian discipleship. That weekend, I learned a Latin phrase: ‘fratres non contristet.’ It comes from the instructions to the cellarer. If a brother comes to you with an unreasonable request, Benedict counsels, refuse him gently, so as not to upset (contristet) the brethren (fratres). Being a mother involves refusing countless unreasonable demands on a daily basis, at least in my house. The challenge was, and is, to make every response–yes, no, or maybe–an act of love.

That is what Benedict taught me that weekend: fratres non contristet. Every time I go into the Lady Chapel at Minster, I recommit myself to the goal of gentleness in daily life. Even with those words in large letters on my refrigerator, I forget. I forget that discipleship happens in the little things, as we do them with love. I forget that Jesus taught us more on the cross than in all the words he said. I love that saying floating around the internet at the moment: ‘if you have to chose between being right and being kind, be kind.’ Indeed. That is, to me, what gentleness is all about. But it is a lot harder than it seems! So back to the monastery I go, to find myself again in the Lady Chapel, to be in peace and grace and regulated quiet long enough to accept the fact that I have to begin again.

fratres non contristet.

Notes for the 22nd of January

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The 22nd of January (in the US) and that Sunday in October designated ‘pro-life’ (ditto) always get under my skin a bit. Why? My suspicion is that beneath my frustration and anger, there is a point about Christian faith and practice. Too often, Christianity is reduced to a program or an issue. The checklist of what to do and what to believe is a lot easier than the command of Jesus to be perfect, or the command to love God completely, and your neighbour as yourself. It is easier, that is, to slap a pro-life sticker on your bumper, participate in the relevant activities every January (and October), and think that you are pro-life.

But being for life, if it is to be a true expression of Catholic faith, must involve a whole lot more than that. It goes without saying that abortion is a tragedy in every case, and more often than not, an avoidable tragedy. Abortion is not, however, the sum of all evil. It is rather, a symptom of the corruption of our hearts–all of our hearts–and of a world in which scarcity and death threaten us. I wonder sometimes whether the energy expended to protect the unborn is really an effort to protect ourselves. Babies are loveable; it is not difficult to evoke sympathy for the children who are threatened by the practice of abortion. it is hard to imagine a person in our culture (or any culture, really) who wouldn’t mourn at the suffering of an infant, wouldn’t extend him- or herself on that child’s behalf. And so it should be.

I wonder, though, whether that isn’t like loving those who love you. The point there seems to be that loving those who love you is not terribly difficult. There is a reciprocity that makes the love you give less costly. What does it cost you to love those who love you? What does it cost you to be concerned for the unborn? Time, perhaps, and prayer–and that isn’t a bad thing. But if the heart of Christian love is forgiveness (see Matthew 18 and John 20: 22-23, e.g.), how can protesting abortion take center stage?

Abortion is an evil that happens in a world in which evil things happen all the time. Is it a worse evil than child abuse? than malnutrition? than the soul-destroying conditions in which thousands of children live? I’m not convinced it is. I think there is a peculiarly self-serving form of human sinfulness that operates when the choice to terminate a pregnancy is made for convenience, or because of disabling conditions. In such cases, I think the word ‘murder’ is not too strong, and I would rank those decisions at the top of the list of godless human judgments. (I say I think.)

What it boils down to, for me, is this: (1) I firmly believe abortion is wrong. (2) At the same time, I view the law legalising abortion in a similar light to the law permitting divorce; Jesus qualified that law as having been given because of our ‘hardness of heart’–though I appreciate the differences between the two. (3) I look around the world and see sin and need and lack of love everywhere. There are children who live in conditions of abject poverty and desperate need–of material goods and also of the love and affirmation they need to grow up healthy and strong. (4) I see plenty of grown-ups with the same sorts of needs. (5) I am concerned that focusing so narrowly on one evil–abortion–allows us to avoid evils more difficult to confront, and commands more difficult to obey. ‘Love your enemies…’; ‘forgive…seventy times seven’; ‘feed my sheep’; ‘make disciples…’; ‘love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength, and your neighbour as yourself.’ Obeying these commands requires us to be pro-life until it hurts us, to extend ourselves for life, to confess our faith in the Giver of Life in all that we think, say, and do. We have to be conscious of the darkness and sin in our own hearts that prevents us from being the bearers of God’s light and life to others. We have to oppose practices that threaten, demean, or undermine life–like torture, slavery, the death penalty, the drug trade. We have to resist hatred, fear, indifference, unforgiveness and the temptation to leave undone the good we can do. We have to put on love and humility, letting our pride and self-sufficiency be crucified with Christ.

Being pro-life is being for Jesus–the Way, the Truth, and the Life–always and consistently. To follow Jesus, to be his disciples, and to be about the business of making disciples, that is what it means to be pro-life. Praying with others for the unborn is good; mourning the loss of those children who never will be because of abortion is good; protesting a practice that allows us to exercise heartless power over the most vulnerable is right and proper. But if we stop there, we cannot call ourselves pro-life. Unless we get up on the morning of January 23rd ready to reach out to the poor, the unwanted, the unloved, the seemingly unlovable and unforgivable, unless we take seriously the call to be witnesses and make disciples, we have missed the point. Jesus came that we might have life abundantly, and to follow him means bearing that life and giving it away every day of every year, in all that we say and do.

So I get angry when the topic of abortion is the litmus test for Christian faithfulness. Of course we ought to oppose abortion–but that isn’t the cutting edge of our faith. If we are growing into the likeness of Christ, we have to have bigger hearts and a broader vision. Jesus was not speaking about ‘the issues’; he was declaring ‘the kingdom of God is at hand’. Jesus came bearing love, and forgiveness, and grace, and life, and he was and is the light that shines in the darkness–and our hope is and will ever be that the darkness cannot overcome Him.

nice guys finish last

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IMG_0001A few ordinary things: my miraculous medal, and my St Damian cross; the icon of the Holy Family I brought back from a very good weekend retreat in Minster…and the ‘peace prayer’ attributed to St Francis of Assisi.

Last September, I was on retreat in Minster with other parents of children with special needs. At the beginning of the retreat, we each received a word and a picture. My word seemed perfect: hope. But the picture, not so much–a photo of an arctic scene, icebergs in a dark blue sea, and two deer standing nose-to-nose on the frozen shore. Although the scene itself was austerely beautiful, I would have liked it better without the deer. Really. It’s the sort of thing meant to make you say, ‘Awwww…’ Cute. Not spiritually substantial. Still, I don’t believe in coincidence, so I hung onto my photo and filed the image in the back of my mind.

The next afternoon, feeling a bit directionless, I wandered into the library, and the name Manning leapt out at me. ‘Ah, Brennan Manning,’ I thought. ‘This ought to be good. Gritty, spiritually rich without being lofty or sweet.’ I read through to a lovely bit about the Christian journey. ‘Living in the wisdom of accepted tenderness is an unending adventure in trust and dependence!’ That’s my spirituality all right–it’s the inner journey that marks our deeds as having been ‘wrought in God.’

Encouraged, I skimmed on. During the retreat I was reminded of the rule I felt I needed to take on the last time I had been to the monastery: ‘never speak a harsh word to or about anyone, even internally.’ As you might imagine, I had failed miserably, and prior to the retreat had even failed to keep it in mind, much less obey it. Still, a wise priest once said in a homily that such commitments to God are not like New Year’s resolutions, which go forgotten once we’ve failed to keep them up. No, these promises we make to the Lord are meant to try us, and so we are likely to slip up, even to fail completely, as I had done.

The wisdom of accepted tenderness thus appealed to me. Tenderness is the opposite of harshness. I was resolving to take this up, this tenderness, as I read. The Lord is tender and compassionate, full of compassion and bottomless forgiveness. Discipleship means nothing less to me than the imitation of the Lord’s own tenderness.

Then I came across this passage:

‘Before finishing this book, the Christian who is serious about growing in the wisdom of accepted tenderness might do well to take the peace prayer of St Francis off the wall and hang it in [her] heart, make it the wisdom by which [she] lives:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace. / Where there is injury, let me bring pardon; / where there is hatred, love; / where there is doubt, faith; /  where there is despair, hope; /  where there is darkness, light; / where there is sadness, joy. /    O divine Master, grant that I may not seek so much to be consoled as to console,  / to be understood as to understand,  / to be loved as to love;  / for it is in giving that we receive, / in pardoning that we are pardoned,  / and it is in dying that we are born again to eternal life.’

The peace prayer of St Francis? That saying that crops up everywhere?

Then two things clicked in my head, and the penny dropped. First, I already have a mini-devotion to St Francis, so more St Francis makes perfect sense. Each morning, as I put on my cross, I ask, ‘St Francis, pray for us.’ Well, this is his prayer. Maybe I ought to pray it with him. And I also–the second thing–remembered my photo: those cute deer, in what looks like a tender moment. Ah, well, yes. I was dismissive of the cute, of the ordinary, of the common. And the Lord is reminding me that it is in the ordinary and the common that my ‘rich spirituality’ is to be lived.

I confess that I do not always receive this well. I know that humility and obedience are the marks of Christian discipleship, but that always sounds so much better as an idea than it feels in lived experience. I can’t stop wanting to be someone, you know, significant. To be satisfied with the significance I have, to those in my little circle of family and friends, seems so small. And to go on in tenderness in daily life, well, it doesn’t really get you any respect, does it? I struggle with this. So one morning recently, I was struggling with exactly this, thinking about being not-harsh, about being nice, and something a friend used to say all the time came to mind: ‘Nice guys finish last.’

Yeah, I thought. See? See where it gets you? And then I did see, finally: that’s where you’re supposed to be. For many that are first will be last, and the last first. It’s a hard word. But I am grateful for it, anyway: Deo gratias.

 

Saturday of the first week in Lent

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Today’s reflection is another from the manuscript of my Lenten devotional. It hasn’t been the best of all possible Saturdays, with little time away from the noise and commotion. So it was good to read these words again, and remember that God is faithful, even when we falter. 

Deo gratias.

It’s all good

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Having read the thoughtful post from The Accidental Missionary, I considered the way I use ‘feeling blessed’. I don’t use it, actually. Not that I have objections; it just isn’t one of my stock phrases. The accidental missionary is absolutely right to point out that Jesus calls ‘blessed’ those to whom we might not apply the term as it is often used in Christian-speak; that is, it is when things go well that we are likely to say we’re ‘feeling blessed.’ We are less likely to say, ‘I was mugged this evening on the way to the bus stop, and the thief took all my money, my watch, and my mobile phone, leaving me with a bruised cheek and no way home: feeling blessed.’ But that seems more in line with the ‘meek’ and ‘persecuted’ that Jesus calls ‘blessed.’

My instinct, though, isn’t to refrain from using the language. Maybe, even, I should start considering myself ‘blessed’ a whole lot more. Pope Francis has been talking us through the the epistle of St James recently, in daily homilies and weekly audiences. James begins (following his greetings) rather disconcertingly, ‘Consider it all joy…when you encounter various trials.’ Trials and tribulations are to be welcomed, because the fruit of endurance is to ‘be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.’ That’s blessed–and here I am in complete agreement with the accidental missionary: the good stuff is not what makes us good. It’s not even evidence that we are on the right track.

In the middle of the book of Acts, Paul sets out to check on his church plants in Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch, where Christians have been experiencing some fairly intense persecution. Acts 14:22 reports on the content of Paul’s message to the fledgling communities. Paul and company ‘[strengthened] the souls of the disciples, encouraging them in the faith, and saying, “through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God.”‘ Not goodwill or success or growth, but tribulations are the evidence that the communities are on the way to the kingdom. (I have something more to say about this in the last chapter of my book, Rethinking Christian Identity, if you’re at all interested.)

That’s not, of course, to say that only tribulations are blessings: this morning’s invitatory Psalm (66 [67]) reads ‘the earth has yielded its produce’ as evidence that ‘God, our God, blesses us.’ Such logic is common in the Old Testament, though there are clues (see Job, for example!) that it is more complicated than that. So the way forward, I think, is rather to regard it all as blessing. One of my mentors, who has spent a lifetime as a Christian priest and theologian at the intersection of Jewish, Muslim and Christian thought, is very fond of the phrase alhamdulillah. Whether the news is welcome or unwelcome, God be praised! If we encounter challenges or enjoy success, thanks be to God!

It’s all good. Now, we don’t always know how it’s good, but that is a question of a different kind (see Wisdom 8.1 and Romans 8.28).

Deo gratias.

the saintly ordinary

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stmartindetours I enjoyed reading the article about St Martin of Tours in the Catholic encyclopaedia online. Not only is his life story interesting and full of the vignettes that make hagiography what it is; he is also the patron saint of soldiers, appropriate for today. If I were cleverer, I might say something about that. 

What struck me, however, is a phrase near the end of the article: ‘recover your ordinary firmness’, says the angel to a brooding St Martin. He regretted bitterly a mistake he had made, and the angel warned him not to dwell on it. So you got that wrong, and you are rightly sorry for it. Move on. ‘Recover your ordinary firmness.’

I’m afraid I can be a bit like the brooding St Martin, in need of an angel to remind me not to dwell on those things for which I am rightly sorry. Unlike St Martin, though, I have no history of ‘ordinary firmness’ to recover. My life story is not one of courageous stands, self-sacrifice, and miracles. Just a girl-grown-up, having meandered from childhood and somehow ended up here. A theologian. A Roman Catholic. A mother and wife. A teacher, a writer, a friend. Not, I am sad to say, a saint.

I can learn something, though, from St Martin’s mistake and the angel’s counsel. The heart and soul of St Martin’s story is his quest for Christ-likeness. His ordinary firmness is not as a worker of miracles or a doer of extravagantly self-sacrificial deeds. His ordinary firmness comes from his being in Christ, and the stuff that makes his story so interesting is just details. The details attest to the saintliness, but they are not its substance. Recover your faith in the One who saves you, who covers over all your blunders, however stupid you feel about them.

It is the firmness, I think, of knowing a ‘blameless way’, not because one has never missed a step, but because the way has been made blameless:

…who is a rock, except our God?                                                                                           the God who girds me with strength,                                                                                     and makes my way blameless.                                                                                           He makes my feet like hinds’ feet,                                                                                       and sets me upon my high places.                                                                                      Psalm 18: 31-33 (NASB)

Earlier in the psalm, the psalmist seems to boast of his blamelessness. ‘I was also blameless with him’ (23), he says: with clean hands; without iniquity. Like God, whose ‘way is blameless'(30). And just when I feared I would never be able to pray this psalm, along comes verse 33: the blameless way, the firm ground, is made so by God (the One who has prepared those good works for us to walk in!).

The secret to imitating the saints in their imitato Christi is an imitation of the heart. It is not a backward-looking, self-reproaching endeavour, but a forgiveness-receiving and moving-forward adventure. All right, a journey, anyway! The path of discipleship is the ‘blameless way’, the way of ‘ordinary firmness’ made so by Christ’s own footsteps. The history on which I can look back and recover that strength of soul is Christ’s history, not my own.

Deo gratias.