Category: Truth

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Image Bearers

I finally finished reading Pope Leo’s encyclical letter, Magnifica Humanitas (“Magnificent Humanity”). He signed it on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum (“New Concerns”). Back in 1891, the previous Pope Leo began a longstanding trend: Catholic popes reflecting on how we can best apply the age-old principles of Christianity to new social challenges. Back then, it was the new challenges opened up by the Industrial Revolution, including dehumanizing working conditions and polarizing economic ideologies. Today, there are new forms of dehumanization opened up by the revolution of artificial intelligence. Back then, popes wrote encyclical letters to their brother bishops. Today, people from rather diverse backgrounds are curious to hear what the pope has to say.

Leo XIV does not condemn artificial intelligence any more than Leo XIII condemned the industrialization of labor. Both popes relentlessly invite us to reflect on what it means to be human. I look forward to sharing several of Leo XIV’s insights in the weeks ahead.

I find the majority of Americans, Catholic included, to be unfamiliar with the last thirteen decades of Catholic social teaching. Leo offers a masterful summary (nn. 28-45). Then he provides his own synthesis of the truths that repeatedly emerge in each age. Even though new and complex situations require dialogue and debate about the best path forward, there are certain foundational truths and first principles that do not change, because of who God is and who we are as human beings.

At the foundational level, Leo identifies three truths: (1) the human person created in the image of the Trinity; (2) the equal dignity of each human being; and (3) the supreme value of human rights.  He then articulates five principles of Catholic social teaching that build upon that bedrock foundation.

Today we are considering that first foundational truth – that every human person bears the Imago Dei, the image of God. As Leo puts it, “At the heart of the Christian understanding of the human person lies the great biblical affirmation that men and women are created in the image and likeness (cf. Gen 1:26-27) of the Triune God” (n. 50).

God is love. That is to say, God is a communion of persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God is not an isolated individual. God is inherently relational. We see in God a mutual sharing of love. He didn’t have to create a universe. He didn’t have to create human beings. He would have been just as good and just as great without us. In the Trinity, we find a mutual love that is already infinitely perfect. But God did choose to create us, and he eagerly desires to share his love with us.

We humans, as male and female, bear the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27). Philosophers and theologians have often reflected on the ways we resemble God – such as our intellect or our free will. Drawing from the wisdom of John Paul II, Leo especially emphasizes our human capacity to receive love and to share love. We discover our truest and deepest identity when we make a free and wholehearted gift of ourselves. It is then that we are living icons of the Trinity.

If we want to learn what human love looks like, we turn to Jesus, the new Adam. “His humanity is completely free, open to others, capable of building healthy and beautiful relationships and committed to the total gift of self” (n. 49). As John Paul II would put it, when we love more and more like Jesus, we become who we are.

Notice that neither pope teaches that we gain more human dignity by living holy lives. Even when we sin, even when we live in dehumanizing or degrading ways, we never lose our inherent worth. We remain bearers of the divine image. In the words of Pope Leo, “Human dignity does not depend on a person’s abilities, wealth or position in life, nor on the right or wrong choices made; instead, it is a gift that precedes and transcends each person, endowed by God as an expression of his unfailing love” (n. 50).

In the West, some of us Christians have fixated on the concept of “original sin,” a phrase that originates with Augustine of Hippo (354-430) in response to the heresy of the British monk Pelagius. Yes, it is important to remember that salvation is always God’s work – from beginning to middle to end. We find ourselves in a human condition that is weighed down by sin. But sin is a condition. It is never our identity.

Eight years ago, I reflected on the Parable of the Lost Coin. Has it really been eight years since I began this blog? Wow, time flies. Anyway, Gregory of Nyssa (335-394) reflects on a gold coin, stamped with the image of the king. It retains its value no matter much it becomes coated with filth. Once cleansed, it shows itself to be what it always was.

Gregory was from Caesarea in Cappadocia (which today is in central Turkey). He was unaware aware of the teaching of the faraway Pelagius (even though their lives overlapped). Gregory’s focus was on the abiding love of the Trinity, and on our amazing human capacity to share in God’s glory.

Every human person has an inestimable dignity, because every human person bears the image of God. John Paul II would add that every human person is a unique and unrepeatable mystery. Each of us bears God’s glory in a way that no one else ever will.

In my more mature moments, I’ve come to appreciate this core truth of Magnifica Humanitas: every human person is the bearer of magnificent beauty.  Whenever I remember that the person in front of me bears the image of God, when I become curious about this person’s story, I am never disappointed. Sometimes there are forcefields around barriers around shielded gates that are manned with a platoon of armed guards. The fiercer the self-protection, the more precious and tender the child of God on the inside. I’ve learned not to push past people’s defenses, rooted as they often are in an intense fear of being unlovable in their deep-down desire to be loved. God always respects our freedom, and so will I. God always delights in the way his glory is uniquely reflected in us, just as a mom or dad marvels at the baby they’re holding in their arms.

Unfortunately, we live in an age of intensifying contempt. The seduction to dehumanize our fellow humans is intensifying to historic levels. If we pay attention, we may realize that we humans are being steadily manipulated by AI into even greater contempt for ourselves and others.

In the weeks ahead, we’ll consider the alternative path Pope Leo offers us. For now, I invite each of you to pause and reflect on how you truly bear God’s image, as do “those people” whom you may find it harder to love. We were all created to share in the amazing capacity to receive and give love. By God’s eternal design, we bear a dignity that cannot be taken away.

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Letting Shame Give Way to Grief

“Shame can never do what grief can do.”

I once heard a wise woman speak these words, before sharing stories about her family’s experiences during and following the Nazi regime in Germany. The collective shame over the Holocaust had enormous impact on the next few generations.

She shared an image of a propaganda poster from the occupying Allied Forces at the end of the war. It depicted the gruesomeness of the concentrations camps and bore the headline, “These Atrocities – Your Fault!”

Her grandparents contended with shame throughout the latter years of their life. Their happiest memories (falling in love, marrying, and raising their children) felt forever tainted because so much of their comfortable lifestyle coincided with Hitler’s rise to power, and was in part made possible by his willingness to oppress and exploit the vulnerable. When the war was over and the evils were more fully exposed, many felt like they had colluded to some degree. There had been warning signs of the atrocities being perpetrated. Some had ignored the cues; others felt powerless to do anything to change it. The result? A culture of shame that pervaded many families for three to four generations. When children are fed with guilt and watered with shame, they will struggle to bear joyful fruit later in life.

As I listened to her sharing, I wept with empathy. I felt the connection of her family story and my family story. My great-grandfather in Poland was executed by the Gestapo. Two of my grandfather’s brothers survived a concentration camp. My great-grandmother died amidst all that heartache before the war ended, not living to see the day of her sons’ release. My grandfather learned of all these events from afar, having moved back to the United States in the late 1930s (he and his older brother were American-born citizens shortly before the family moved back to Poland in 1918). No doubt, he contended with his own unspoken “survivor’s guilt.”

Tears flooded me as I imagined her grandparents and my grandparents, her family and my family, all of us still suffering in the wake of those two great wars. I found it easy to feel compassion. I found it healing to perceive everyone involved as normal human beings, bearing God’s image, both beautiful and broken. I felt her invitation into grief over what it really was like for everyone.

When betrayal or heartache feel crushing—especially when there are feelings of collusion with an abusive perpetrator—shame often steps in. Shame pretends to be powerful, as though it can prevent bad things from ever happening again. This was the motive of the propaganda posters – if we stir up enough collective shame, it will unthinkable for the unthinkable to happen again.

There are two problems here, one more obvious and one more subtle.

The more obvious problem is that bad things still happen. No amount of shaming or fear-mongering can stop them from happening. It’s a hard-to-accept truth that our human existence in this fallen world is indeed that vulnerable that we cannot actually stop bad things from happening.

The more subtle problem is the opening line: “Shame can never do what grief can do.” In the face of unspeakable harm, it feels far easier to seize control of the situation with shame and fear. But shame and fear do not allow space for grieving to happen. Maybe that’s why they are so appealing to so many for so long.

Neither this woman nor I are faulting the massive wave of shame that tends to follow the storms of trauma. How do you face the heartache of something as big as the Holocaust? It feels impossible. It’s easier to cast blame or to attempt seizing power over the situation. These ways of coping and bypassing the atrocities make sense – for a while anyway. Over time, they become increasingly unbearable. Healing cannot happen without facing and grieving the harm and the loss.

There is a reason why we Catholics fruitfully meditate on the “Sorrowful Mysteries” rather than the “Shameful Mysteries.” Shame can never do what grief can do. Our tears and grief become the very path of redemption and restoration. There are no Glorious Mysteries without the Sorrowful Mysteries. There is no Resurrection Sunday without the agony of Good Friday, and without the waiting of Holy Saturday.

In the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:4), Jesus teaches that those who grieve and mourn will be comforted. The Greek actually says “paracleted.” The Holy Spirit anoints the brokenhearted, if we will allow ourselves to abide in our heartache and receive divine remedy. He brings comfort, encouragement, and peace. God’s love heals.

This healing does not mean that the heartache goes away! It brings love and truth, meaning and purpose into the midst of what had seemed to be only chaos and absurdity. Jesus reveals himself as Lord even in the darkest places of our heart. I find, in fact, that the more glimpses and tastes I receive of the goodness of God, the more I will suffer in aching for more. I see the same experience in the lives of the Saints and the prayer of any great mystic in our spiritual Tradition.

So what does happen when others kindly witness my heartache, and the Holy Spirit anoints me in my grief? The most important change is that I am no longer alone. What once was trapped in isolation and fragmentation is now set free. What was frozen begins to thaw (which sometimes hurts!). What was rigid and inflexible can now flow and move toward wholeness and connection. I begin to experience love and communion in places which (I thought) love could not possibly enter. Only love did enter. That’s the entire point of Jesus’ rescue mission – to become flesh and go to the deepest places of human agony, conquering with a love that is both human and divine. Jesus duped the devil, concealing his glory in human flesh and bringing his love into the depths of sin and death.

Without Jesus’ suffering, death, and burial, the dark side of our human existence is indeed unbearable. Now, however, no matter how deep I go into my own heartache or the heartache of another, I will discover that Jesus is already there. He’s already descended deeper. He’s already issued the summons to come to the heavenly wedding celebration, in which all God’s scattered children, and all the scattered fragments of our hearts, will be gathered at table for the feast. Then, at long last, there will be no more weeping and no more death.

In the meantime, on our pilgrim journey through this “valley of tears,” grief becomes a guide far more reliable than shame. Shame will show up – especially in the wake of abuse, betrayal, or atrocity. Shame helps us to survive – for a while. Then it begins to isolate us, exhaust us, deplete us, and slowly kill us. We can appreciate how hard our shame has worked to try to protect us from agonizing heartache. Then, if we dare, we can ask it to take a seat and allow grief to do what only grief can do.

Blessed are those who grieve. They will be comforted.

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Embracing Paradox

I’ve been appreciating Brené Brown’s newest book (Strong Ground). She names some of the paradoxes that wise and courageous leaders learn to embrace.

I immediately resonated with the chapter on the importance of “negative capability.” It’s a concept she found in a letter from the poet John Keats (1795-1821). Keats praises this capacity that he perceives in great men like Shakespeare – “when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

There are moments when abiding in love and truth is particularly painful. These are the moments of the in-between, when we have only partial insights or unsatisfactory options. We feel the pressure to make something happen and get away from the tension as soon as possible. It becomes almost unbearable to abide and wait for fuller truth and goodness and beauty to emerge.

To be human in a fallen world is to live in this tension. We are stretched by two seemingly incompatible truths. On one side is the harsh reality of impermanence. As much as we attempt to deny it, our earthly existence is fleeting. Nothing gold can stay. On the other side is the nonstop human tendency for meaning-making. We insatiably interpret what is happening and why – a task that our brains engage both consciously and unconsciously, even while we sleep! We don’t like waiting to receive the fuller truth. We both desire and need to belong securely and trustingly to something solid.

To put the paradox differently, our human hearts were not created for endings, and everything good in this world comes to an end. What can we do?

As Brené Brown puts it, “Negative capability is a difficult muscle to build.  We’re wired to resolve tension and seek certainty.  This capability requires the ability to reach inward toward stillness rather than out toward counterfeit facts and reason.”

“Be still, and know that I am God” (Psalm 46:10).

Even in turning to God, we are likely – in our urge to escape the pain of this paradox – to engage in yet another form of irritable grasping or controlling in the face of eternal mysteries that are never for sale, and will repel any attempts as seizing or sieging.

I’ve been reading the comments of a few thousand participants in the listening sessions I facilitated for my diocese this fall. You can feel attempts at grasping among many of our longtime parishioners who (in a world where everything has changed so much and so rapidly) expect their parish church to be the one place where nothing changes – only it already has, many times over. You can feel the grasping in the comments of hundreds of others who expect everyone else to adopt their political or liturgical ideology. If only we all thought this way, or all did things this way, our pain and suffering would go away. They forget the flaming sword that will not permit us to return to Eden (Genesis 3:24).

I empathize with their fear and restlessness because I know those movements in my own heart! I have my own versions of grasping or striving or hiding when the tension feels unbearable.

The real invitation is go deeper into the paradox without trying to escape it, nor to escape the tension found therein. This is exactly what Jesus and Mary do on Good Friday and Holy Saturday.

Jesus, true God and true man, does not erase or eliminate the dreadful consequences of our human freedom. Rather, he brings eternal love into the depths of our humanity, loves us to the end, and invites us back into relationship – with his Father and with each other.

His mother Mary does not do what so many churchgoers do when feeling the powerlessness of this paradox. She offers no fixing, no advice, no comparisons with others who have it worse, no backing away from his Cross. She stands with and witnesses.

Her with-ness and witness continue on Holy Saturday, a day of Sabbath – a day of stillness and rest. “Be still, and know that I am God” – these words sound so pleasant and peaceful in other settings. Not so much on a day of Sabbath rest in which your Son is buried in the tomb, and you are utterly powerless. Even then, rather than grasping or escaping, Mary embraces the promises of Jesus and waits in Hope amidst the paradox, not knowing how he will fulfill these promises until it actually happens.

Even after the Resurrection and Ascension, when so many questions remain unanswered, when the disciples are still downcast and doubtful, she abides with them and prays with them for nine days (Acts 1:10-14). They learn from her the capacity for passion and compassion that she exhibited so beautifully at each earlier moment of her discipleship, a capacity which grew and deepened as each mystery unfolded.

Yes, prayer and liturgy and Church are all part of our human response to this painful paradox – not so much being the answer itself, but the context in which The Answer can be encountered, again and again, stretching our capacity to receive – which also means stretching our capacity to suffer! The suffering of the Saints does not diminish as they grow closer to God. The greater their longing, the greater the gap feels between them and the living God. The greater their willingness to stay connected to others, the greater their capacity to suffer with. Show me even a few such saints, and I’ll show you a church community that is thriving on mission!

I find Brené Brown’s words both comforting and emboldening: “Resist the urge to reach for certainty where it does not exist. The longer we can hold that paradox, the greater our capacity to see and honor one another in our fullness AND in our contradictions.”

Faith and Christian community are essential, not as an escape from the tension of this world, but as a shared receptivity of the eternal, and of the mystery of each human person. It is in abiding relationship and receptivity that we can glimpse and taste the goodness of the Kingdom of God, and can persevere in our sojourning until this world definitively passes away, when Jesus comes again with full righteousness, wiping every tear away and abolishing death forever.

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A Mood Change

What is life like when we change our mood from “imperative” or “subjunctive” and learn to live in the indicative?

If that question makes no sense to you, don’t worry – I’ll explain along the way.

I love language. I love learning new languages. I love the experience of connection with someone else’s insights, beautifully expressed – all the more so when the words bridge a gap of time and culture. In another life, I could have been a philologist, like Tolkien or Lewis.

I even love grammar. I’m grateful to my high school teachers, who placed such great emphasis upon it. It served me well later in life when I was wrestling with Latin or Greek or German. With my own writing, being grounded in grammar is not unlike the months of training that Daniel underwent with Mr. Miyagi in Karate Kid. Good grammar doesn’t make good writing, but it lays a sturdy foundation, without which creative expression will stagger and stumble.

During my many years of study, I had nine semesters of Latin and five of Greek. I answered hundreds of questions about declension and case, gender and number, tense and mood. My Latin Composition class in 1998 was at times a torture. Dr. Petruccione relentlessly and manically drove us through Bradley’s Arnold, always sporting a bowtie. Twice every week, we submitted our elaborate sentences, translated from English into Latin. If you missed one time, you dropped a letter grade. If you missed a single class, you dropped a letter grade. Late every Friday afternoon, I would wistfully watch my friends go to goof off, while I plodded off to class. The professor could tell that my mind was wandering, but could never catch me!

“And what mood is that, Mister Sakowski?” At the sound of my name, my distracted brain jolted to attention, frantically poring over the last 10 seconds. Somehow, I always come up with the answer. “Subjunctive!” He screwed up his face with a look of “I’ll get you next time!!” But he never did. What can I say? My body pays attention even when it’s not paying attention. I guess hypervigilance has its advantages.

What kind of overachieving college student enrolls in a challenging elective class on late Friday afternoons? The same kind, I suppose, as the high school student who spends four weeks of her high school summer vacation learning Latin, along with seven of her peers. In 1999 and 2000, home for the summer, I taught Latin upon the request of students at my alma mater. We had a blast.

Most of the students were highly competitive overachievers, but one struggled significantly. Honestly, he only passed because I found creative ways to give him points on his tests. It wasn’t hard, because he made up for his lack of Latin prowess with a wicked sense of humor. One section asked them to parse different words. I had to give him bonus points as I howled at his answers:

  Person?  Magister   [“Teacher” – the name the students called me]

  Tense? Very

  Voice? Sometimes mumbles

  Mood? Depends on the day…

As some of you know, verbs can have different “moods” – indicative, imperative, subjunctive, etc. The indicative mood describes or asks about matters of truth (what actually is, was, or will be the case). The imperative mood gives commands. The subjunctive mood expresses the “woulds” and “coulds” and “shoulds.”

When it comes to discipleship and morality, moods also matter! I’ve come to appreciate living in the indicative mood, rather than the imperative or the subjunctive. Eagerly pursuing the good is much more possible when we can tell the truth with kindness, when we can name particularly what actually is without judging it or pressuring it to be a different way. I wrote recently about this calm noticing and accepting of what is as a prerequisite for virtue.

I remember my early years as a pastor. I was overwhelmed and putting all kinds of pressure on myself. I had just returned from Rome, where I had been researching and learning in seven different languages in the writing of my doctoral thesis. Now I was shared as a pastor of two previously separate parishes, and ministering to the Latino community in the region. I had 5-6 Masses each weekend and felt impossibly pulled in three directions. I lived daily with a fear of failure and a felt trapped in powerlessness. No matter how many “shoulds” I checked of my list, it was never good enough – not for many of the people I was trying to serve and not for my harsh inner critic.

Those first several years, I wrote out my Spanish homilies. One memory that is clearer amidst the blur is my struggle to find effective ways in Spanish to translate “should.” That should say something about the content of my preaching at the time – both to others and to myself!

It was only a matter of time before present pressures and past unhealed wounds converged in an unbearable torrent. When I finally reached out for help, I found myself swept away on a journey of transformation that continues nine years later.

I definitely experienced a “mood change” along the way. I’ve been learning and re-learning the joy of living and relating in the indicative mood – accepting what is and engaging it with curiosity and kindness. Then deciding what to do.

Advice is overrated. It is exceedingly rare for me to tell people what to do. I’ve learned to be with, to notice, to point things out, or to pursue by asking curious questions – all in the indicative mood. When I show up that way, the others can tell that there is no judgment, no pressuring them to be a different way than they are now. They feel my genuine curiosity, wanting to get to know them, and delighting in them as they are now.

To those driven by moral imperatives or living in a “should” fortress, this approach seems madness. In their view, you have to get people to do the right thing, or you’re not being a good Christian. Can you feel the fear there?

How  can we discern what is truly good if we don’t slow down, be with, and perceive what truly is? And how can we see what truly is when shame and fear are in the driver’s seat? They literally and figuratively narrow our field of vision.

I’ve learned to pay attention to what shame is up to. Where there’s contempt, there’s shame. When I notice self-contempt or other-contempt coming up, I get curious. I acknowledge the shame (if I don’t, the shame will power up even more!). But I ask if it’s ok to look at what actually is, setting aside judgment for the moment. Can I just be with you in what’s coming up now?

One would think that all the shaming and pressuring to do what you “should” would be a place of greater truth-telling, but it actually isn’t. When shame is talking, we utter strong-sounding and vague statements like “totally messed up” or “wacko” or “off the rails.” We speak in language of always or never, all or nothing, good guys and bad guys, us versus them. If we calm down and slow down, we can look more honestly at what is really happening – often surprised in the discoveries we make! Pretending like certain emotions aren’t there (or wishing they weren’t there) is not truth telling. Pretending like we can live reaction-less lives is not truth-telling. It’s dehumanizing.

Calming down and slowing down, wondering about what really is (even if it seems unglamourous or “bad”), also allows room for desire to breathe and grow.

Desire can take us places that shame never will. Some of you have seen Monsters, Inc. – the Pixar film about monsters fueling their power plant by capturing the fear of children. Then they make a revolutionary discovery – that laughter is far more powerful than fear. Similarly, desire for goodness is far more powerful than any amount of fear-mongering or “shoulding.” When Christians feel threatened, it seems like only fear and shame will get results. It is much messier to get down in the dirt and look up at what’s really going on. But that’s exactly what humility does.

When we humbly, calmly, curiously, kindly, and truthfully look at what is, we begin to see a much more truthful narrative. We start to see the ways in which deeper desire has been shamed, silenced, belittled, dismissed, or hemmed in. I find that shame is the loudest when desire feels vulnerable and exposed. Rather than allow desire (yet again) to be abandoned, betrayed, dismissed, or disappointed, shame will take over the controls. Setting down shame feels risky! But only then can desire be untethered to seek and find the good, and in finding it to desire it all the more.

What mood are you in today? Do you put pressure on yourself to be a certain way. Is your life one of “I should…” / “I just have to…”/ “I really need to…”? What would it cost you to dial down that pressure for a while, to be with a safe person, and to look at what is? You just might discover your deeper desires, and how your good Father is inviting you to soar.

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“Watch!”

Advent is a season of watchfulness. Near the end of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus admonishes his disciples with a simple and strong commandment, “What I say to you, I say to all: watch!” (Mark 13:37).

What does Jesus mean by “watch”?

His one-word command (grēgoreîte) is a dramatic conclusion of extensive apocalyptic prophecies about the destruction of the Temple, the darkening of the sun and moon, the falling of the stars from heaven, and the coming of the Son of Man. You know not the day nor the hour, so watch.

Jesus is not fearmongering – even though many Christians today imagine the apocalypse that way. The coming of the Son of Man is not something we dread, but something we eagerly await, and daily pray for: “Thy Kingdom Come!” “Come, Lord Jesus!”

To be sure, overindulgence, carousing, or spiritual lethargy will hinder us from being watchful and ready at the coming of Jesus. But so will fear! There is an important difference between vigilance and hypervigilance. The former is a sober-minded awareness that is willing and ready to receive and respond. The latter is a fear-based reactivity, a trauma response doing what trauma responses do – ensuring survival at all costs. Jesus is not inviting us to mere survival, but into abundant life.

This fall, I appreciated a prayerful reading of Erik Varden’s The Shattering of Loneliness. Near the end of the book, he suggests a twofold meaning of the word “aware” – 1) to notice; and 2) to take care of or protect. He suggests that the best of the monastic traditions, including the desert fathers, embraced both dimensions of watchfulness. If we exclusively focus on one or the other, we will fail to fulfill Jesus’ command.

I find that, amidst the ruins of Christendom, many of the remnant Christians are so hyper-focused on “taking care of” that they no longer know how to notice with curiosity and kindness. It’s not hard to find hypervigilant and overprotective Christian parents, Christian families, or entire Christian communities. Fear dominates their consciousness and imagination as they try to control their lives and their environments, feeling immensely threatened by “those people.” These attitudes cause grave harm.

When fear predominates, it becomes impossible to live in trust, receptivity, and mutual relationships. I’ve worked with many adults who survived these home and church environments. Beneath all their tendencies of people-pleasing, anxiety, resentment, and control, there is a vast well of grief over never really being noticed, loved, and delighted in for who they are. They had to reshape their identity into cookie-cutter roles in order for the family to feel well-managed and in control.

When fear is intense, our field of vision literally narrows. There is little space for childlike curiosity to notice and discover and grow. I wrote long ago about the difference between Smoke Alarms and Watchtowers. More recently, I explained how virtue is impossible when emotions are eliminated or subjugated.

Christians have understandably felt threatened in the last few centuries. It’s tempting to get stuck in a collective trauma response, bound up in fear, and fail to remember that the victory is already won! Yes, Jesus spends all of Mark 13 offering apocalyptic prophecy. But these teachings immediately precede his entry into Jerusalem and his willing engagement of his Passion. As a victor very much in charge, Jesus overthrows the powers of darkness and brings his Kingdom definitively and victoriously into the midst of a world that is indeed passing away. It is our calm noticing of his presence and activity that will allow us an eager response and a joyful readiness to enter the heavenly wedding feast.

One extreme of “watch,” then, is a fear-based hypervigilance, which is not hard to find in our church communities. In our culture today, you can increasingly find the opposite extreme – an individualistic “mindfulness” that sometimes gets stuck in navel-gazing, or an untethered empathy that leaves no space for truth-telling.

As we see in Jesus, “the kindness of God that leads to repentance” (Romans 2:4) allows compassion and truth-telling to go together. He describes himself and our heavenly Father as “moved with compassion” (Luke 10:33; 15:20), using the Greek word splangna (“guts”). Compassion is an embodied response. We allow ourselves to feel what the other is feeling – especially when it is painful. Rather than backing away, bypassing, or fixing, we stand with as witnesses. Such “being with” is not at all incompatible with telling uncomfortable truths. Once the toxic shaming of “shoulds” is set aside, there is a time and a place for naming honestly and kindly the harm that is being caused by destructive behaviors. Jesus frequently speaks uncomfortable truths with kindness.

What about mindful noticing? During all these years of healing and recovery in my own life, I’ve come to appreciate being aware, here and now, in the present moment. I’ve come to appreciate noticing what is happening, without launching into contempt or judgment. I discover much more truth that way! Much of my former “discipline” was more about self-shaming, drivenness, and perfectionism. From a place of insecurity and fear, I was desperately striving to be good enough to be lovable. That is not virtue.

Of course, overindulgence is not virtue either. As I read Erik Varden’s words this fall, I felt a gentle invitation from the Lord to take the next step from a calm noticing into a healthy “taking care of.” I can be mindful of what is really happening here and now, and then freely engage in a “yes” or “no.” My desires are still unruly and disordered, in need of guidance and direction. They do not need shaming or fixing or subjugation, but they do need to be brought over to the Kingdom of God. So long as my desires belong only to this fallen world, they will indeed pull me downward, in a way that steadily ruins me. As I learn to receive them, accept them, and allow Jesus to love me there, I discover that I can be free in Christ; I can say “no” and be okay.

Jesus is the Word made flesh. He humbles himself to share in the clay of our humanity so that we can be exalted to share in his divinity. Mindfulness has enormous value, but is not an end in itself. It opens us to the transcendence that Jesus brings. It opens us to the fullness of Truth. He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Jesus entered this world precisely so that we can be wedded to him and thereby transcend this world – because this world and all the things in it are passing away.

Without the Incarnation, there is no Hope. There is no “taking care of” possible in a world that is under the dominion of its seducer, Satan. Jesus undoes that betrayal, not by eliminating its consequences, but by forging a path through suffering and death into eternal life. Genuine mindfulness allows us to see and follow that path, without being dismayed or distracted by the immensity of suffering that we would prefer to ignore, and definitely without being seduced by the allurements of this world.

Genuine mindfulness allows us to follow the path (not just “me”). The command of Jesus to “watch” is plural (grēgoreîte). He is not inviting an isolated and individualistic mindfulness, but a shared path of noticing and responding. We were never meant to exist as isolated individuals. It is not good for man to be alone.

Pope John Paul II articulated this balance in his Law of Gift: “Man cannot fully find himself except through a sincere gift of himself.” But we cannot give ourselves without much diligent labor of human integration. We must first become more of a whole person, self-aware and self-possessed – thereby allowing us to make a free, wholehearted, and fruitful gift of ourselves. Each person is a unique and unrepeatable mystery, worthy indeed of being loved and cherished in that uniqueness. But that unique giftedness is for the sake of bringing life and healing and goodness to the rest of the Body of Christ. It’s a gift to be given away.

We desperately need healthy Christian community – community which allows us (in the words of Curt Thompson) to be seen, soothed, safe, and secure. It is through a shared and communal “noticing” that each of us can discover more fully who we really are. It is also in that shared and communal noticing that each of us can emerge in lives of discipleship and truly “take care of,” truly become the steward of our story. It is then that self-awareness and self-possession can become self-gift. It is then that we can be one with Jesus in laying down our lives that others may live.

Come, Lord Jesus!

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Dies Irae

For Catholics, November is a month of remembrance. We become mindful of many things we would prefer to forget – death and judgment, heaven and hell.

“Memory” in the Jewish, Catholic, and Orthodox traditions is not mainly a matter of looking backwards, but of becoming more mindfully present. Through holy rituals, we “remember” saving events such as the Passover in Egypt, the birth of Jesus, or his death and resurrection – in a way allows us here today to participate and become true sharers in those saving events. They become here and now for us. We also “remember” what is yet to come, the fullness of life in the Kingdom of God. We glimpse the goodness of the Lord in a foretaste and anticipation of more to come.

November begins with the twin celebrations of All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day – reminding us that the love of Jesus connects all the members of the human family, even those beyond the grave. In the very flesh and blood of the risen Body of Christ, we are truly united to those who have gone before us. We are never alone. Our deepest longings are never in vain. We are reminded not to get stuck in this fallen world that is quickly passing away.

All around us (at least here in the Northern Hemisphere) nature enters its annual cycle of death and decay. So swiftly does the dazzling and majestic fruitfulness of fall plunge into darkness and decay – particularly for those of us in the upper Midwest!

There is a marvelous medieval hymn traditionally sung during this month of remembering death and the Final Judgment: the Dies Irae. Amidst decades of what Bishop Robert Barron has often described as “Beige Catholicism,” this hymn has been all but forgotten. What is more, those few who remember it tend to be drawn to it for all the wrong reasons: fear-mongering, shaming, or scrupulosity. It doesn’t help that there are bad translations that reflect the shame of the translator more than the actual text. Indeed, the English translation provided in the video linked above describes “universal dread” and a “severe” Judge with “searching eyes.” None of those words are there in the original Latin poetry!

The Dies Irae has captivated human imagination for centuries. In 2014, Thomas Allen of the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company) offered a playful and fascinating exposition on the influence of this hymn upon musical history.

Yes, the hymn is haunting and disruptive – especially to privileged Americans who would prefer to live comfortable lives and somehow stay young and powerful forever. But it is ultimately an invitation to trust Jesus and step into real Hope.

The world we live in, insofar as it was created by God, is good and beautiful. He entrusted it to us humans as the stewards. We failed in our stewardship. The world we live in, through the devil’s envy, malice, and seduction, is now enemy-occupied territory. Jesus describes the devil as “the ruler of this world” (John 12:31). This world and all the things in it are passing away (1 John 2:17).

The first verse of the Dies Irae reminds us that the “Day of Wrath” will dissolve this world in ashes. However, it goes on to describe the victory of Jesus on the Cross, and the invitation to humble ourselves before him as we receive the redemption that he freely gives. Neither our own merits nor any power of this world will save us on that day. We place our trust in Jesus alone.

“That Day” is also described as lacrimosa dies illa (“That Day of weeping”). We can see why this hymn has been buried in the West during my half century of human existence. We live in a culture that has forgotten how to grieve. And we definitely live in a culture that struggles to engage in real repair when harm has happened. “That Day” of Jesus’ coming will bring both. It is not merely a Day of Judgment; it is a Day that brings full Justice and definitive resurrection and renewal – which is only possible with the fulness of Love and Truth that Jesus will bring. Jesus will definitively heal our shame, if we will allow it.

I’ve developed a keen radar for shame. For several years now, I’ve been contending with my own shame (as well as the shame of others who harmed me in my life – shame that doesn’t belong to me). I’ve learned, at least some of the time, to stand calmly in the face of shame – not to run away, nor to power up, nor to freeze, but to draw closer with curiosity and kindness.

I’ve been learning from Jesus in the Gospels. He frequently pursues those who are feeling shame – when he calls Matthew the tax collector (Matthew 9:9), when he tells the woman caught in adultery “I don’t condemn you” (John 10:11), when he awakens the thirst of the Samaritan woman at the well (John 2), and in his various encounters with Peter. When Peter denies Jesus (as predicted), Jesus turns to look at Peter (Luke 22:61) – not with accusation, but with love and truth. Peter goes out and weeps bitterly. He sees an almost unbearable gaze of kindness – far more painful and more helpful than any accusation or name calling. Peter suffers again after the resurrection, when Jesus awaits him on the seashore, having already lit a charcoal fire (John 21:9-19). He reminds Peter of his threefold denial, not to add to Peter’s shame, but to bring that shame into the light and transform it.

These encounters with the merciful and truth-telling love of Jesus help me imagine what Judgment Day will be like. When I hear the chanting in the Dies Irae describing the “Day of Wrath” or “That Day of Weeping,” I imagine him gazing with love at each of these women and men in the Gospel, seeing right through them, accepting them, choosing them, and inviting them to total conversion. The kindness of Jesus always puts love and truth-telling together. Kindness heals shame, through a gentle yet utterly necessary unveiling of the full truth. That is what “apocalypse” literally means – “uncovering” or “unveiling.”

Shame is a master of disguises. It shows up in outbursts of rage, in ghosting other people, in “cancel culture,” in witty-but-cruel name calling, in self-loathing, or in self-destructive behaviors. Where there’s contempt, there’s probably shame. Where there’s vagueness, there’s probably shame. Where there’s all-or-nothing language, there’s probably shame. I’ve learned to detect the lurking presence of shame, and to draw closer to it, while respecting the sacredness of others’ freedom. This kind and curious pursuit is not what people expect!  I love those moments when it becomes possible to tell the fuller truth with kindness – not to paper over, not to humiliate or condemn, but to be with each other in love and respect while acknowledging all the particulars.

This definitive repairing through the kindness and justice of God is exactly what the Dies Irae is about. Jesus will assemble the nations. Death will stand in astonishment as all the tombs are opened, and all our bodies raised (John 5:25-29). The victory wrought by Jesus on the Cross – overthrowing the cruel empire of sin and death – will be fully unveiled. So will all of our thoughts, words, actions, and omissions. The stories of each and all will be told in their full and unedited versions. In the words of the Dies Irae, “The written book shall be brought forth, in which all is contained, from which the world shall be judged.” No doubt, “My face will blush with guilt” – just like Peter or Matthew or the Samaritan woman. In my fear and shame, I may dread that “the day” will be like a blazing oven that burns up everything (Malachi 3:19) But if my trust is in the victory of Jesus, I will experience “the sun of justice with its healing rays” (Malachi 3:20). There is no other way.

We can conclude with the beautiful words of Pope Benedict XVI in his 2007 encyclical letter on Hope. He describes this encounter with the fire of Jesus’ love, whether on the Day of Judgment, or as a purgatorial experience following my own death. He comments on the apostle Paul’s reflections in 1 Corinthains 3, which describe some of us being saved, but “as through fire.” As Benedict explains, “the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Savior. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgment. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with Him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw … and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of His heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation ‘as through fire’. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God” (Spe Salvi n. 47).

Without the Day of Judgment, we cannot share fully in God’s holiness, nor be fully and authentically human. Only the truth-telling and merciful love of Jesus can bring full flourishing and righteousness. Therefore, we pray ancient Christian prayer: “Come, Lord Jesus!”